She led me towards the bedroom. “Don’t worry, madam,” she told me. “I’ve had brothers and sisters enough of my own. I’ve seen how it’s done.”
She stripped off my clothes and laid me gently on the bed. I heard a nervous cough, and realized that Nicky had followed us in.
“Out of here, Prince Nicky,” Vera said briskly. “This is woman’s work.”
“I want to stay,” Nicky said firmly.
“Well you can’t,” Vera retorted.
“Please, Mama, let me stay. Let me hold your hand.”
If anything was wrong with this baby, born so much before it’s time, there would be no Konstantin to calm me, to tell me that everything would be all right. I needed Nicky by my side.
“Let him stay,” I said.
“Huh!” Vera exclaimed. “The very idea!”
But she had learned long ago that there was little point in arguing with any of the Mayakovskys.
“It’ll soon be over, madam,” Vera assured me.
“How … how long has it been so far?”
“About twelve hours.”
Twelve hours! It seemed as if I’d always been lying on this bed, writhing in agony, fretting about what premature birth might do to my baby, wishing a doctor would arrive.
Nicky sat next to me on a little stool. Occasionally his eyes would droop and his hand would fall from mine, but the shock would awaken him immediately, and he’d reach for me once more.
“It has to come soon,” I screamed, as another spasm of pain shot through my body.
I felt Nicky’s hand squeezing encouragingly. “Don’t worry, Mama,” he told me, “we’re going to have a beautiful baby.”
What courage he gave me.
Outside, the gunfire continued unabated. Where were Peter and Sasha, the two possible fathers of my baby? Sasha would be in the thick of the fighting, a pistol in his hand, taking risks most men would consider insane. And Peter? Probably selling bullets to both sides, or else taking the opportunity to plunder the houses of the rich.
The shooting intensified. Out on the streets, my comrades were fighting for their lives and for the Revolution, but I could spare no more thought for them then. I was fighting too, for the small life inside me which had decided it was time to come out and face the world.
“The head!” Vera said. “I can see the head. Push harder, madam.”
It was the eighteenth hour. I didn’t know how I could summon up the energy to push any more. Yet somehow I did.
“There she is,” my maid said.
She! A girl! Nicky left my side and rushed around the bed. I tried to raise myself on one elbow, but I was too weak.
“What’s that coming from her tummy?” I heard Nicky ask, the exhaustion in his voice now tinged with excitement.
“Back in the mir, we call it the rope of life,” Vera said.
“Is my baby all right?” I croaked, but so faintly that I don’t think either of them heard me.
A cry!
“You hit her!” Nicky said accusingly.
“Just waking her up.”
“Is she all right?” Tell me she’s all right,” I pleaded.
“Why are you cutting the rope?” Nicky asked anxiously. “It won’t hurt her, will it?”
“Not even a little bit,” Vera replied briskly. “Now get from underfoot while I’m washing her head.”
Vera was suddenly standing over me, holding the baby in the shawl which had once been Nicky’s – and Konstantin’s. I looked anxiously at the baby’s big black eyes, her tiny nose, the wonderful little mouth through which she was screaming her protest at her rude awakening.
“She’s a bit underweight,” my maid said, “that’s only to be expected, but otherwise she looks fine. And she’s very noisy and demanding, Prince Nicky, just like her big brother.”
“What will you call her, Mama?” Nicky asked, looking down at the sleeping baby.
I thought of the massacre on Nevsky Prospekt, of the dead child I’d held in my arms. “I’m going to call her after a little girl who was killed before she ever had a chance to grow up,” I said. “I’m going to call her Tania.”
From outside came the sound of machine guns, spitting death.
Whatever my feelings of duty towards the Party, the birth had left me too weak to be of much use, and I was forced to stay in bed, listening to the fighting going on outside, wishing I could take part in it, but glad I could not. On the third day, when the sounds of battle had all but disappeared, Sasha came to see me. He looked as haggard as I had ever seen him – but at least he was still alive.
“I only j … just heard,” he said, leaning over the crib and looking down at the baby. “What’s her name?”
“Tania.”
“Tania,” he repeated softly. “I th … think she’s got my eyes.”
“What’s been happening on the streets?” I asked.
“It was t … terrible,” he replied, his joy at seeing the baby now battling for control of him with his painful memories. “W … we must have lost hundreds of men. It’s all over.”
“What is?”
“Our ch … chance. Most of the C … Central Committee have been arrested.”
“Lenin?”
“He’s run away. He’s h … hiding in the forest.”
Our leader, hiding in the forest! Like a common criminal. “Is there anybody left to run the Party?”
“St … Stalin. The Government doesn’t seem to th … think he was involved.”
Of course they’d think that. How like Joe to sit in the wings while our more charismatic leaders occupied the centre stage, and then, when they were vanquished, take over the whole theatre.
Sasha bent forward and gently tickled Tania under the chin. She gurgled happily. “The new offensive on the Western Front has f … failed,” Sasha continued mournfully. “People are saying that Lenin led the rising on the orders of the German H … High Command.”
“That’s absurd!” I said, but I could see how it might seem that way.
“L … let’s leave here now,” Sasha suggested. “Let’s take the ch … children and make a new life somewhere else. I want to be with you and my little d … daughter.”
“Your daughter!” said a scoffing voice from the doorway. “What makes you think she’s your daughter?”
The tone, rather than the voice, carried me back to my days in the mir. Big Sasha and little me, sitting by the well, perfectly happy, perfectly relaxed in each other’s company. Peter appearing from nowhere, and spoiling those meetings for ever.
And here he was again, standing in the doorway of my cramped bedroom, an evil grin on his face. I felt the hatred flow between the two men like an electric current. It was years since they’d met, but time had only increased their mutual loathing.
“I said, what makes you think she’s your daughter?” Peter asked again.
“Anna and I are I … lovers,” Sasha said proudly.
Oh, my poor Sasha!
Peter shrugged his massive shoulders. “I mount her now and again myself,” he replied.
Sasha turned to me, a look of horror on his face. “Is that t … true, Anna?” he demanded.
“I was carrying out Molotov’s instructions.”
“And is the b … baby mine?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I want it to be.”
Sasha turned again, ready to fling himself at Peter.
“The baby!” I screamed. “Think of the baby!”
Sasha’s hands fell to his sides, though rage still filled his scarred face. “She’s r … right,” he said to the man in the doorway. “This isn’t the p … place to settle things between us. But they w … will be settled, Peter. One way or the other.”
He walked quickly to the door. Peter stood aside to let him pass, and I just lay there, miserable, wishing I’d told Sasha the truth long ago. Peter walked over to the crib, examined the infant and then, to my astonishment, tickled her under the chin just as Sasha had done.
&nb
sp; “You’ve robbed him of one family already,” I said bitterly. “Why must you try and take this one from him?”
“If something’s mine, I never give it away,” Peter replied.
“I will not have Tania used as a weapon,” I told him.
Peter picked the baby and rocked her in his cradled arms.
“Did you hear me?” I demanded, but he didn’t seem to be listening.
I watched with stunned fascination as Peter – the man who had thrown his workers’ small children out onto the street in midwinter – played with my baby. Finally, and reluctantly, he placed her gently back in the crib.
“If you need anything, let me know,” he said. “I can lay my hands on most things.”
“And how will I pay you? In bed? Those days are gone forever.”
“There’ll be no charge,” Peter replied, walking towards the door.
“It’s not like you to give something for nothing, Peter,” I mocked. “Are you turning soft?”
He wheeled round, and though there was a smile on his face, I could tell he was angry. “It’s not something for nothing,” he said. “It’s an investment.”
“Was one of those men the one you made Tania with?” Nicky asked when Peter finally left.
“Yes.”
“Which one? The big bear or the beanpole?”
“It could be either.”
Nicky nodded his head, as though he’d suspected that was the case.
“I like the beanpole,” he said. “I don’t mind if he comes and plays with Tania sometimes.”
But would Sasha ever come again – or had I hurt him too deeply? So much of our lives seemed to have been interwoven that I couldn’t stand the thought of losing him completely. And now the Bolshevik grab for power had failed, now it seemed like I had lost, forever, the chance to help build a better world for my children to grow up in, I needed his friendship more than ever.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
For days I lived in dread of hearing that Sasha had killed Peter and been arrested – or that he’d tried and been killed himself. But our worst fears are rarely realized and tragedy, when it comes, sneaks up unexpectedly and taps us on the back with its icy finger.
Peter was no longer in Petrograd. He left the city almost as soon as he’d made his ominous farewell to me. Did I think he had run away? Not for a minute. Whatever else he was, he was no coward. And in my relief that he’d gone, I never really stopped to ask myself why he’d gone. Party business, I blandly assumed. So it was, but I should have remembered that Peter’s actions never had a single purpose. I should have used my influence to find out exactly what he was doing – I should have started trying to protect Sasha earlier.
Not that Sasha wanted my protection – he wanted nothing from me. If we met accidentally, he would turn away. He had requested, and been granted, the right to be excused any duties which would involve him working with me. We had once been friends and lovers, now he would not even accept me as a comrade.
He visited Tania when I was not in the house – “Beanpole came again today,” Nicky told me. I could have forbidden the visits as a way of putting pressure on him to at least talk to me, at least let me explain. But I didn’t. I’d told Peter I would not allow him to use Tania as a weapon – I was not about to use her myself.
And then, early in August, Sasha disappeared completely. “He’s working on a special project. Something for Comrade Stalin,” a Party worker whispered to me in the ladies’ washroom of the Smolyn Institute, which had once been a posh girls’ school and was now our new headquarters.
Stalin! But Stalin was as thick as thieves with Peter. And Sasha had neither the ability nor the patience for ‘special projects’. He was a street fighter like me, not a revolutionary bureaucrat of Stalin’s ilk.
I worried about him, my brave, naïve Sasha, but there was nothing I could do. How could I make sure he didn’t fall into any of Peter’s traps when I didn’t even know where he was?
It was about three weeks after Sasha’s disappearance that the rumours started to fly.
“General Kornilov’s going to stage a coup.”
“You can’t be serious!”
“He’s marching towards Petrograd. He could be here any day.”
The Provisional Government was thrown into a panic. It could not rely on the soldiers stationed in the capital, so to whom could it turn? To the workers, of course! Posters went up everywhere calling on all citizens of Petrograd to come to its defence. Weapons were issued to everyone who asked for them – including twenty-five thousand Bolshevik Red Guards.
For three hectic days we toiled to transform the city into a fortress, building barricades across all the prospekts, uprooting railway tracks to prevent troop movements. How I wished, as I laboured, that I had my oldest comrade by my side – Sasha, the man who’d guided me when I was a small child, turning my instincts into beliefs. But for him, I might not have been on the barricades at all. But for him, I might just have grown into Countess Olga.
Nicky likes him, I thought, pushing a timber almost my own weight into the barrier we were building around the Warsaw Station.
And perhaps Nicky’s liking would grow into love. Perhaps, one day, my son would be prepared to admit him into the family. If Sasha could find it in his heart to forgive me and if – after General Kornilov’s onslaught – I was alive to be forgiven.
The onslaught never came. There was a swing against Kornilov, even among his own men and he was arrested before he ever reached Petrograd. Bolshevik stock began to rise again. We were not traitors selling out to Germany after all. We had been there with the best of them, ready and willing to die to defend the city. Lenin was still in hiding, but other members of the Central Committee were released from jail and we were gaining new recruits to the Party every day.
Imagine the situation in Petrograd in the early autumn of 1917. Army units refusing point blank to go to the Front. Thousands of deserters wandering the streets in open defiance of the authorities. Food scarcer than it had ever been. Unemployment soaring as more and more factories closed down.
Imagine the situation at the Front. Muhziks deserting in large numbers and returning to their mirs to grab their share of the aristocracy’s land. Soldiers who would not serve in the trenches, but quite happily organized football matches against the enemy. Renegade units robbing the trains carrying supplies to their comrades. The Germans could have defeated us easily, but they didn’t choose to. Russia was no longer any threat – there was no point in wasting good men on her when they were needed on the Western Front.
It was obvious to everyone that Prime Minister Kerensky’s government had lost control. But what would replace it? There was only the Soviet, and the Soviet was now dominated by the Bolsheviks. Talk of a coup started in late September, and by the middle of October the question was no longer if but when.
Lenin, finally back in Petrograd, should have been elated. Yet he fretted. “I don’t trust the rest of the Central Committee,” he confided to me.
“But they’ve agreed that the coup should go ahead.”
“Agreed! Yes! But they can still call it off. Or worse, they might start the insurrection, lose their nerve and go into retreat. That’s why I need people like you, people I can rely on, to keep me informed. When it starts, I want you to travel around the city and see what’s going on. You’ll be my eyes and ears.”
The eyes and ears of the man soon to change the face of Russia. I’ve had worse roles.
The journalist is still here, sitting in the chair opposite me. His tape continues to whirr and record every word I say. He doesn’t switch it off even when I pause, as I’m doing now. Yet he’s no passive listener like his tape recorder. He’s weighing what I say – I can read it in his eyes. And he’s not weighing it for truthfulness or accuracy, rather it’s something else which balances on the other side of the scale. And I don’t know what that something else is.
I can hear the clock on the wall ticking away remorselessly.
<
br /> Tick, tick, tick.
Each second which strikes and is gone brings me closer the moment when I lose my freedom for ever, when I feel once more the terror I felt when I heard the midnight knock at the door …
A freezing January night in 1931. Two men in the doorway, their pale, belted raincoats almost ghostly in the dim light burning in the corridor lamp of that shoddy Moscow apartment block.
“Does Lyudmila live here?” one of them asked.
“Lyudmila?”
I could think of nothing else to say. My mind was as frozen as my body would feel once it was exposed to the icy winds of the Gulag.
“Lyudmila,” the OGPU man repeated. “Also known as Princess Anna Mayakovsky.”
I thought of trying to bluff it out, of saying, “You’ve come to the wrong house,” or “Lyudmila does live here, but she’s away on Party business.”
It would have been pointless. They knew I was Lyudmila. They were just going through the motions, playing their tragical farce as they always did.
The spokesman took a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket and smoothed it against the wall. “I have here a warrant for your arrest,” he said, squinting to read it in the poor light. “You are charged under the following articles of the Soviet Penal Code …”
So many articles. So many crimes I seemed to have committed. And all the time he was reading in his flat, judicial voice, one thought kept flying round my head. What can I give them? What can I say that will save me?
But I’d known, even before I opened the door and saw them – known from the moment I heard the knock – that Stalin had put a black mark against my name and I was doomed …
Forget the arrest, old woman. That can come later. It’s the Revolution this journalist wants to hear about, not your fall from grace. And what do I want? I want to discover what has suddenly made me important, so that I can turn it around, use it in my defence against Jennifer and Sonia.
“Is all this of any use to you?” I ask, looking for a reaction – a clue.
He smiles for the first time, as if he is amused by me, amused by the whole situation. “It would certainly be a revelation to my fellow countrymen,” he says.
The Silent Land Page 28
