by Follett, Ken
Grigori walked past with a glance of contempt, but one of them accosted him. “Hey, you! Why is your hat on?”
Grigori walked on without replying, but another member of the gang grabbed his arm. “What are you, a Jew?” the second man said. “Doff your cap!”
Grigori said quietly: “Touch me again and I’ll tear your fucking head off, you loudmouthed schoolboy.”
The man backed off, then offered Grigori a pamphlet. “Read this, friend,” he said. “It explains how the Jews are betraying you soldiers.”
“Get out of my way, or I’ll shove that stupid pamphlet all the way up your arse,” said Grigori.
The man looked to his comrades for support, but they had started beating up a middle-aged man in a fur hat. Grigori walked away.
As he passed the doorway of a boarded-up shop, a woman spoke to him. “Hey, big boy,” she said. “You can fuck me for a ruble.” Her words were standard prostitute’s talk, but her voice surprised him: she sounded educated. He glanced her way. She was wearing a long coat, and when he looked at her she opened it to show that she had nothing on underneath, despite the cold. She was in her thirties, with big breasts and a round belly.
Grigori felt a surge of desire. He had not been with a woman for years. The trench prostitutes were vile, dirty, and diseased. But this woman looked like someone he could embrace.
She closed her coat. “Yes or no?”
“I haven’t got any money,” Grigori said.
“What’s in that bag?” She nodded at the sack he was carrying.
“A few scraps of food.”
“I’ll do you for a loaf of bread,” the woman said. “My children are starving.”
Grigori thought of those plump breasts. “Where?”
“In the back room of the shop.”
At least, Grigori thought, I won’t be mad with sexual frustration when I meet Katerina. “All right.”
She opened the door, led him in, and closed and bolted it. They walked through the empty shop and into another room. Grigori saw, in the dim illumination from the streetlight, that there was a mattress on the floor covered with a blanket.
The woman turned to face him, letting her coat fall open again. He stared at the thatch of dark hair at her groin. She put out her hand. “The bread first, please, Sergeant.”
He took a big loaf of black bread from his sack and gave it to her.
“I’ll be back in a moment,” she said.
She ran up a flight of stairs and opened a door. Grigori heard a child’s voice. Then a man coughed, a hacking rasp from deep in his chest. There were muffled sounds of movement and low voices for a few moments. Then he heard the door again, and she came down the stairs.
She took off her coat, lay back on the mattress, and parted her legs. Grigori lay beside her and put his arms around her. She had an attractive, intelligent face lined with strain. She said: “Mm, you’re so strong!”
He stroked her soft skin, but all desire had left him. The entire scene was too pathetic: the empty shop, the sick husband, the hungry children, and the woman’s false coquetry.
She unbuttoned his trousers and grasped his limp penis. “Do you want me to suck it?”
“No.” He sat upright and handed her the coat. “Put this back on.”
In a frightened voice she said: “You can’t have the bread back—it’s already half-eaten.”
He shook his head. “What happened to you?”
She put her coat on and fastened the buttons. “Have you got any cigarettes?”
He gave her a cigarette and took one himself.
She blew out smoke. “We had a shoe shop—high quality at reasonable prices for the middle class. My husband is a good businessman and we lived well.” Her tone was bitter. “But no one in this town, apart from the nobility, has bought new shoes for two years.”
“Couldn’t you do something else?”
“Yes.” Her eyes flashed anger. “We didn’t just sit back and helplessly accept our fate. My husband found he could provide good boots for soldiers at half the price the army was paying. All the small factories that used to supply the shop were desperate for orders. He went to the War Industries Committee.”
“What’s that?”
“You’ve been away for a while, haven’t you, Sergeant? Nowadays, everything that works here is run by independent committees: the government is too incompetent to do anything. The War Industries Committee supplies the army—or it did, while Polivanov was war minister.”
“What went wrong?”
“We got the order, my husband put all his savings into paying the bootmakers, and then the tsar fired Polivanov.”
“Why?”
“Polivanov allowed workers’ elected representatives on the committee, so the tsaritsa thought he must be a revolutionist. Anyway, the order was canceled—and we went bankrupt.”
Grigori shook his head in disgust. “And I thought it was just the commanders at the front who were mad.”
“We tried other things. My husband was willing to do any job, waiter or streetcar driver or road mender, but no one was hiring, and then with the worry and lack of food he fell ill.”
“So now you do this.”
“I’m not very good at it. But some men are kind, like you. Others . . . ” She shuddered and looked away.
Grigori finished his cigarette and got to his feet. “Good-bye. I won’t ask your name.”
She got up. “Because of you, my family is still alive.” There was a catch in her voice. “And I don’t need to go on the street again until tomorrow.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed his lips lightly. “Thank you, Sergeant.”
Grigori went out.
It was getting colder. He hurried through the streets to the Narva district. As he got farther away from the shopkeeper’s wife his libido returned, and he thought with regret of her soft body.
It occurred to him that like him, Katerina had physical needs. Two years was a long time to go without romance, for a young woman—she was still only twenty-three. She had little reason to be faithful to either Lev or Grigori. A woman with a baby was enough to scare off many men, but on the other hand she was very alluring, or she had been two years ago. She might not be alone this evening. How dreadful that would be.
He made his way to his old home by the railway line. Was it his imagination, or did the street appear shabbier than it had two years ago? In the interim nothing seemed to have been painted, repaired, or even cleaned. He noticed a queue outside the bakery on the corner, even though the shop was closed.
He still had his key. He entered the house.
He felt fearful as he went up the stairs. He did not want to find her with a man. Now he wished he had sent word in advance, so that she could have arranged to be alone.
He knocked on the door.
“Who is it?”
The sound of her voice nearly brought tears to his eyes. “A visitor,” he said gruffly, and he opened the door.
She was standing by the fireplace holding a pan. She dropped the pan, spilling milk, and her hands went to her mouth. She let out a small scream.
“It’s only me,” said Grigori.
On the floor beside her sat a little boy with a tin spoon in his hand. He appeared to have just stopped banging on an empty can. He stared at Grigori for a startled moment, then began to cry.
Katerina picked him up. “Don’t cry, Volodya,” she said, rocking him. “No need to be afraid.” He quieted. Katerina said: “This is your daddy.”
Grigori was not sure he wanted Vladimir to think he was his father, but this was not the moment to argue. He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. He put his arms around them, kissed the child, then kissed Katerina’s forehead.
He stood back and looked at them. She was no longer the fresh-faced kid he had rescued from the unwelcome attentions of Police Captain Pinsky. She was thinner and had a tired, strained look.
Strangely, the child did not look much like Lev. There was no sign of Lev’s good lo
oks, nor his winning smile. If anything, Vladimir had the intense blue-eyed gaze that Grigori saw when he looked in a mirror.
Grigori smiled. “He’s beautiful.”
Katerina said: “What happened to your ear?”
Grigori touched what remained of his right ear. “I lost most of it at the battle of Tannenberg.”
“And your tooth?”
“I displeased an officer. But he’s dead now, so I got the better of him in the end.”
“You’re not so handsome.”
She had never said he was handsome before. “They’re minor wounds. I’m lucky to be alive.”
He looked around his old room. It was subtly different. On the mantelpiece over the fireplace, where Grigori and Lev had kept pipes, tobacco in a jar, matches, and spills, Katerina had put a pottery vase, a doll, and a color postcard of Mary Pickford. There was a curtain at the window. It was made of scraps, like a quilt, but Grigori had never had any curtain. He also noticed the smell, or lack of it, and realized the place used to have a thick atmosphere of tobacco smoke, boiling cabbage, and unwashed men. Now it smelled fresh.
Katerina mopped up the spilled milk. “I’ve thrown away Volodya’s supper,” she said. “I don’t know what I’ll feed him. There’s no milk in my breasts.”
“Don’t worry.” From his sack Grigori took a length of sausage, a cabbage, and a tin of jam. Katerina stared in disbelief. “From the barracks kitchen,” he explained.
She opened the jam and fed some to Vladimir on a spoon. He ate it and said: “More?”
Katerina ate a spoonful herself, then gave the child more. “This is like a fairy tale,” she said. “All this food! I won’t have to sleep outside the bakery.”
Grigori frowned. “What do you mean?”
She swallowed more jam. “There’s never enough bread. As soon as the bakery opens in the morning it’s all sold. The only way to get bread is to queue up. And if you don’t join the queue before midnight, they’ll be sold out before you get to the head of the line.”
“My God.” He hated the thought of her sleeping on the pavement. “What about Volodya?”
“One of the other girls listens for him while I’m out. He sleeps all night now anyway.”
No wonder the shopkeeper’s wife had been willing to have sex with Grigori for a loaf. He had probably overpaid her. “How do you manage?”
“I get twelve rubles a week at the factory.”
He was puzzled. “But that’s double what you were earning when I left!”
“But the rent for this room used to be four rubles a week—now it’s eight. That leaves me four rubles for everything else. And a sack of potatoes used to be one ruble, but now it’s seven.”
“Seven rubles for a sack of potatoes!” Grigori was appalled. “How do people live?”
“Everyone is hungry. Children fall ill and die. Old people just fade away. It gets worse every day, and no one does anything.”
Grigori felt heartsick. While he was suffering in the army, he had consoled himself with the thought that Katerina and the baby were better off, with a warm place to sleep and enough money for food. He had been fooling himself. It filled him with rage to think of her leaving Vladimir here while she slept outside the bakery.
They sat at the table and Grigori sliced the sausage with his knife. “Some tea would be nice,” he said.
Katerina smiled. “I haven’t had tea for a year.”
“I’ll bring some from the barracks.”
Katerina ate the sausage. Grigori could see that she had to restrain herself from gobbling it. He picked up Vladimir and fed him more jam. The boy was still a bit young for sausage.
An easy contentment crept over Grigori. While at the front he had daydreamed this scene: the little room, the table with food, the baby, Katerina. Now it had come true. “This should not be so hard to find,” he said ruminatively.
“What do you mean?”
“You and I are fit and strong and we work hard. All I want is this: a room, something to eat, rest at the end of the day. It should be ours every day.”
“We’ve been betrayed by German-supporters at the royal court,” she said.
“Really? How so?”
“Well, you know the tsaritsa is a German.”
“Yes.” The tsar’s wife had been born Princess Alix of Hesse and Rhine in the German empire.
“And Stürmer is obviously a German.”
Grigori shrugged. Prime Minister Stürmer had been born in Russia, as far as Grigori knew. Many Russians had German names, and vice versa: inhabitants of the two countries had been crisscrossing the border for centuries.
“And Rasputin is pro-German.”
“Is he?” Grigori suspected the mad monk was mainly interested in mesmerizing women at court and gaining influence and power.
“They’re all in it together. Stürmer has been paid by the Germans to starve the peasantry. The tsar telephones his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm and tells him where our troops are going to be next. Rasputin wants us to surrender. And the tsaritsa and her lady-in-waiting Anna Vyrubova both sleep with Rasputin at the same time.”
Grigori had heard most of these rumors. He did not believe the court was pro-German. They were just stupid and incompetent. But a lot of soldiers believed such stories, and to judge by Katerina some civilians did too. It was the task of the Bolsheviks to explain the true reasons why Russians were losing the war and starving to death.
But not tonight. Vladimir yawned, so Grigori stood up and began to rock him, walking up and down, while Katerina talked. She told him about life at the factory, the other tenants in the house, and people he knew. Captain Pinsky was now a lieutenant with the secret police, ferreting out dangerous liberals and democrats. There were thousands of orphaned children on the streets, living by theft and prostitution or dying of starvation and cold. Konstantin, Grigori’s closest friend at the Putilov works, was now a member of the Petrograd Bolshevik Committee. The Vyalov family were the only people getting richer: no matter how bad the shortages were, they could always sell you vodka, caviar, cigarettes, and chocolate. Grigori studied her wide mouth and full lips. It was a joy to watch her talk. She had a determined chin and bold blue eyes, yet to him she always looked vulnerable.
Vladimir fell asleep, lulled by Grigori’s rocking and Katerina’s voice. Grigori carefully put him down in a bed Katerina had improvised in a corner. It was just a sack filled with rags and covered by a blanket, but he curled up on it comfortably and put his thumb in his mouth.
A church clock struck nine, and Katerina said: “What time do you have to be back?”
“At ten,” Grigori said. “I’d better go.”
“Not just yet.” She put her arms around his neck and kissed him.
It was a sweet moment. Her lips on his were soft and mobile. He closed his eyes for a second and inhaled the scent of her skin. Then he pulled away. “This is wrong,” he said.
“Don’t be stupid.”
“You love Lev.”
She looked him in the eye. “I was a peasant girl twenty years old and new to the city. I liked Lev’s smart suits, his cigarettes and vodka, his openhandedness. He was charming and handsome and fun. But now I’m twenty-three and I have a child—and where is Lev?”
Grigori shrugged. “We don’t know.”
“But you’re here.” She stroked his cheek. He knew he should push her away, but he could not. “You pay the rent, and you bring food for my baby,” she said. “Don’t you think I see what a fool I was to love Lev instead of you? Don’t you realize I know better now? Can’t you understand that I’ve learned to love you?”
Grigori stared at her, unable to believe what he had heard.
Those blue eyes stared back at him candidly. “That’s right,” she said. “I love you.”
He groaned, closed his eyes, took her in his arms, and surrendered.
CHAPTER TWENTY
November to December 1916
Ethel Williams anxiously scanned the casualty list in the
newspaper. There were several Williamses, but no Corporal William Williams of the Welsh Rifles. With a silent prayer of thanks she folded the paper, handed it to Bernie Leckwith, and put the kettle on for cocoa.
She could not be sure Billy was alive. He might have been killed in the last few days or hours. She was haunted by the memory of Telegram Day in Aberowen, and the women’s faces twisted with fear and grief, faces that would carry forever the cruel marks of the news heard that day. She was ashamed of herself for feeling glad Billy was not among the dead.
The telegrams had kept coming to Aberowen. The battle of the Somme did not end on that first day. Throughout July, August, September, and October the British army threw its young soldiers across no-man’s-land to be mown down by machine guns. Again and again the newspapers hailed a victory, but the telegrams told another story.
Bernie was in Ethel’s kitchen, as he was most evenings. Little Lloyd was fond of “Uncle” Bernie. Usually he sat on Bernie’s lap, and Bernie read aloud to him from the newspaper. The child had little idea what the words meant but he seemed to like it anyway. Tonight, however, Bernie was on edge, for some reason, and paid no attention to Lloyd.
Mildred from upstairs came in carrying a teapot. “Lend us a spoonful of tea, Eth,” she said.
“Help yourself, you know where it is. Do you want a cup of cocoa instead?”
“No, thanks, cocoa makes me fart. Hello, Bernie, how’s the revolution?”
Bernie looked up from the paper, smiling. He liked Mildred. Everyone did. “The revolution is slightly delayed,” he said.
Mildred put tea leaves into her pot. “Any word from Billy?”
“Not lately,” Ethel said. “You?”
“Not for a couple of weeks.”
Ethel picked up the post from the hall floor in the morning, so she knew that Mildred received frequent letters from Billy. Ethel presumed they were love letters: why else would a boy write to his sister’s lodger? Mildred apparently returned Billy’s feelings: she asked regularly for news of him, assuming a casual air that failed to mask her anxiety.
