The Midwife of St. Petersburg

by Linda Lee Chaikin

  Natalia gave a short laugh, then ceased as both Josef and Sergei fixed their gazes upon her.

  “Let Karena go to the medical school if Zinnovy can arrange it—” Sergei began.

  “Do not contradict your papa.”

  Josef turned calmly again to Karena. She sat rigid in the hard-backed chair, sickened by disappointment.

  Professor Josef removed his spectacles from his pocket. He breathed moisture on each round lens and polished them thoughtfully with a napkin, before pressing them in place. “Perhaps next year.” Then more confidently, “Next year, there will be money enough. Dr. Zinnovy may be able to reserve a place for you.” He smiled, but as he glanced about the table at the fallen faces, the smile faded. “We shall see … we shall see.” He picked up his cup of coffee and finished it.

  Karena looked at her mother. Madame Yeva had been unusually silent all morning. She kept her eyes on her breakfast plate. Karena understood now why she had been so quiet. She must have known about the letter. Her mother, better than anyone else, understood and shared her crushing disappointment. And now! She’d come so close, with even Dr. Zinnovy on her side.

  Next September, she was sure she would hear similar arguments once more. There seemed no options except to settle down and marry Ilya.

  She felt a lump lodged in her throat. She reached for her glass of goat’s milk. Her stomach churned with nausea. She stood up, pushing her chair back, feeling her face grow warm. She exited the room quickly.

  Karena rushed out the front door. Madame Yeva turned toward her husband. She reached over and laid her hand upon his black coat sleeve.

  “Josef,” she urged, “is there nothing to be done?”

  “There is nothing, my dear.”

  Sergei pushed back his chair noisily and stood to his feet. “War or no war, I have to work in the fields today with Ilya.” He looked down at his father as if to say something more, but turned and left. A moment later, the back kitchen door gave a decided bang.

  Josef sat in aggrieved silence. Yeva sighed.

  Natalia stared at her fork as though she wondered what it was. Aunt Marta was looking at her brother Josef with sympathy. Yeva lifted her cup of tea and drank; it was now lukewarm. She would talk to Karena later. Her daughter already knew much about birthing, and she could teach her still more. There was no reason why Karena could not take over the medical work here on the land. There was certainly enough sickness to keep anyone busy these dreadful days!

  Natalia slid from her chair. “I must go into town, Papa. I am to help Madame Olga with her shopping before classes. She wants to get it all done and be back home before it gets too hot. She’s promised to pay me today.”

  Josef nodded. Natalia came over to him and bent to kiss his bearded face.

  “You be a good girl today,” he said.

  “Papa, Boris will be conscripted soon. If we can’t marry, at least let us seal our engagement!”

  He patted her hand. “We’ll see, Daughter, we’ll discuss it with your mother later.”

  Aunt Marta began to clear the table. “Don’t forget to bring Madame Olga the loaf of bread I baked for her,” she told Natalia. “It’s wrapped and sitting on the table by the door. She owes me for the other loaves too. Be sure you collect my kopecks. I want to order new yarn.”

  “Yes, Aunt Marta.”

  Madame Yeva spoke up. “And tell her I will call on her tomorrow morning if her new supply of cough medicine arrives by post. On second thought, tell her I will call on her regardless.”

  “Yes, Mama, because if you don’t, she will complain you are neglecting her aches and pains. She is always complaining of something.”

  “That is not for you to say. She is old and needs your sympathy. Go now, so you will not be late.”

  Natalia kissed her cheek and hurried off. Madame Yeva remained at the table, troubled. She tried to concentrate on her own difficulties to mask the pain she felt for Karena’s.

  Czar Nicholas II was soon expected to declare war with Germany and her allies, including Turkey, which bordered Russia. For now, life went on normally in the Peshkov household, but already she was concerned about her medical supplies. With war coming, would she still receive shipments? The breeze coming through the open window stirred the curtains. “It will be most warm today,” Yeva commented.

  “The cabbage must be picked before it begins flowering,” Aunt Marta told Josef. “I will need to do preserving all week. Tell Sergei to help me clear out the storage room.”

  “Sergei is busy in the fields, Marta. He’s also preparing for his return to the university. And, Sister, Sergei does not like to do women’s work. Ask one of the young peasant boys to help you.”

  “Women’s work,” Marta snorted. “If you saw how I break my back from dawn to dusk, cooking and slaving for the family, you would have more respect for my work.”

  “A job of great importance,” Yeva spoke up in a soothing voice. Sometimes her husband infuriated her. She looked at him. “Is that not so, Josef?”

  “Yes, yes, by all means, Marta. The food this morning was most wholesome.” He pushed back his chair. “I must go, or I will be late to teach the summer class.”

  After Josef left, Marta went off to her domain, the awesome kitchen and the great Peshkov vegetable garden. Yeva went her own way to organize her medical duties for the day. She would need to call on Anna this morning to see how she was feeling. She must write the recommended doctor in Kiev, though who would pay for his services? Anna Lavrushsky had little money.

  Yeva frowned. Sergei must be the father, even though he denies it. Josef refused to believe it and would not hear of giving money to the family. I must do something. She walked to her medical supply closet. She would also need to stop by her brother Matvey’s bungalow to bring him his needed medication.

  She located her last clean, ironed apron. The starched, striped linen felt good between her fingers. The very smell brought back memories of her youth in training at the medical college. She enjoyed wearing the professional-looking student apron. Odd how long these aprons lasted—twenty years—but she had treated them as precious relics, like her mother’s wedding dress, now two generations old and still functional, though out of fashion. She remembered packing this apron when she’d fled the Imperial College of Medicine and Midwifery in 1893 …

  Oy, so be it. Disappointment dogged one’s footsteps from childhood to the grave. There was nothing to be done about it but to keep struggling and moving onward, hoping tomorrow would be better.

  Vaguely, Yeva thought of Dr. Zinnovy … Dmitri. She had not kept up with his glowing career.

  Perhaps it was an error to have allowed Karena to entertain plans to attend the same medical school. Becoming involved with her old friend Lenski, and now Zinnovy, invited trouble.

  Josef wanted Karena to marry Ilya. He’d spoken to her just recently about such a marriage.

  “Karena is now well past the age, Yeva.”

  Yeva ran her fingers across her forehead, thinking. Yes, she must think. She must make no rash decisions. She would think long and hard about consequences; there were always consequences. She was glad her brother was here until next month. She would discuss the matter with him.

  TEN

  Trouble, to Be Sure

  A summer of national and personal discontent was ending. Harvest was in earnest in the wheat fields, and the grass in the wide front yard was now shriveling beneath the Russian sun.

  Karena walked along the wagon road, wrestling with her emotions. She wanted a long walk this morning with nothing more than the song of the field larks and the bright sun on her back. She neared the cutoff to the wide public road to the village. The harvest winds that blew against her were bidding farewell to so many things, reminding her that both earth and man were fatigued. The approaching winter would arrive with brutal indifference, smothering all in a vast, icy shroud.

  The wind caught away her red hat, and she rushed after it. Horse hooves thundered against the road, and
she saw Imperial soldiers riding toward her. She stepped back from the road, her hand holding to a rustic fence post where wildflowers persisted in defiant bloom. She waited.

  Trouble, to be sure.

  The dozen Russian soldiers rode down the road, slowing as they neared where she stood. Sergei had described them as czarist demons on horseback; it did them injustice. These were no ordinary peasant foot soldiers. All rode smart-looking horses and were led by a crack Imperial officer—

  Colonel Aleksandr Kronstadt looked her way.

  Karena drew in a breath and lifted her chin. He dismounted, tossed the reins to the rider beside him, and walked toward her, removing his gloves. Looking toward the bushes, he paused to retrieve her red hat.

  She saw the same handsome features, the interesting green-gray eyes.

  “Miss Peshkova.” He bowed lightly and with exaggerated fanfare presented her red hat.

  Karena snatched it.

  He leveled a look toward her that caused her flesh to prickle.

  “You haven’t changed,” he said. “You’re exactly as I remember.”

  “Indeed, Colonel Kronstadt? I’m sure I don’t know what that may mean.”

  “A compliment, of course.” He glanced toward the wood-and-brick manor house, perhaps a hundred yards back, and then toward the golden wheat fields bending in the wind.

  “Pleasant,” he said. “I like the swaying of the wheat in the wind.” His gaze returned to hers.

  Karena stared back as coolly as she could manage. “Are you looking for someone, Colonel?”

  His eyes narrowed. He flipped the back of a glove against his other palm. “Yes, I am, Miss Peshkova, but it will wait until this afternoon. I’m on my way into the village to report to Major-General Durnov, who’s arrived from Kiev. There was trouble last night with the revolutionaries. Your chief gendarme was attacked. I don’t suppose you’d know anything about it?”

  She did her best to keep her gaze from wavering under his. So the higher authorities already knew. Policeman Leonovich must have sent a wire to Kiev to the Imperial officer in command, named Durnov.

  Alex hadn’t expected her to know about the violence, for he went on, his voice casual. “I have several hundred foot soldiers and their captains about three miles down the road.” He gestured his dark head in the direction he’d come from. “They’re on their way to Warsaw to join up with the Russian army. I suppose you know Russia is at war? Our men and horses need to bed down for the night. We’d like to use Peshkov land across the road, behind those trees over there, where nothing is planted.”

  Who would dare refuse the soldiers of Czar Nicholas II? That Alex even asked was unusual.

  “Yes, by all means, Colonel. The unused and harvested areas are at the soldiers’ disposal. I’ll make mention of the need of food to my mother.”

  “The soldiers are obliged. I suppose you understand why the commander in charge is here?”

  Karena’s heart went heavy. She saw his alert gaze watching her response, but she remained silent.

  “The army needs more soldiers,” he said without emotion. “I’m afraid your village will be missing most of its young men within a week.” He looked off toward the ripening wheat fields. “This isn’t going to help your father’s grain harvest. Calling up men now seems unfortunate, but the orders came from Petrograd.”

  So then, now it is Petrograd … To her it would always be St. Petersburg.

  Karena thought sadly of Ilya, Boris, and the rest of the young men she knew and nodded. She wondered if Alex was on his way to Warsaw, but she dared not show interest enough to ask. She had thought, from Tatiana’s last letter, that he was stationed at the Winter Palace, working with Major-General Durnov in the Okhrana.

  His jaw flexed as he watched her. “Then I’ll be on my way to the village. I’ll be here a few days with Durnov to look into last night’s violence.” He nodded good-bye, turned, and walked to his horse, mounting with the ease of an experienced cavalry officer.

  Karena, anxious at the turn of events, remained by the fence post, watching. He sent some men back to the main column with news of where they would make camp, then rode with two soldiers toward the village.

  Troubled, she hurried back toward the manor house. Her mind was now on Sergei and Lenski and the ordeal that must surely be ahead. What Alex had communicated was telling beyond his carefully chosen words: the secret police were here to learn the details of Grinevich’s beating, and although he had not mentioned Sergei, she believed Alex suspected his involvement.

  Karena hurried up to her bedroom to be alone for a few minutes in order to think through her dilemma. She was not there long before Madame Yeva’s stout voice dispersed her musings.

  “Karena?”

  Karena massaged her neck and face, trying to relax into her usual smile before she appeared before her mother.

  She stepped out onto the wooden landing and leaned over the rail to look below. There must be no sign of dismay. She did not wish her mother to worry over the disappointment she’d received earlier that morning at breakfast—or to guess that she was with Sergei at last night’s meeting.

  Madame Yeva stood between the kitchen and the front hall. Neighbors said they looked much alike, mother and daughter—golden haired, fair skinned, blue eyed—though her mother was a few inches shorter. Karena was also fairer, due to her gentile father. Madame Yeva attributed her fair appearance to maternal grandparents from Finland, which was now under the Imperial boot of the Russian czar.

  “Come down, Karena. I need you to make a medical call.”

  Karena hurried down the plain, scrubbed, wooden steps.

  “Is it Anna?”

  “No, not Anna.”

  Madame Yeva waited with her shoulders held as straight as a Russian officer’s. Her expression did not reveal any concerns simmering in her heart, for all emotion was washed away with practiced indifference. Karena wondered at times if some incident in her past had hurt her.

  Madame Yeva’s fingers were intertwined, hands resting against her striped medical apron. She wore a white cotton blouse with puffed sleeves, tight at the wrist, and a straight, ankle-length dark blue skirt. Her high-buttoned shoes were polished, though the heels showed signs of wear. The once all-golden hair had a liberal amount of gray in the braid wrapped around her finely shaped head. Karena could see lines of worry drawn, as though by an artist’s brushstroke, here and there on her face. She was forty-five now. She would have made an excellent doctor, Karena thought proudly, if only she’d been allowed to complete her training.

  Madame Yeva made a brave attempt at a smile, but her faded blue eyes showed internal worry. I understand your disappointment, they seemed to convey.

  Karena managed to return the smile. Yes, mother and daughter were alike. I am enduring my disappointment, her smile suggested, but please do not ask me to speak of it now.

  Afternoon sunlight trickled through the wooden window slats. Karena watched her mother move briskly across the room to the walk-in closet where the medications and birthing supplies were stored. She unlocked the door and lit the small lantern she kept inside on a trestle table. The light revealed floor-to-ceiling shelves that in earlier times had been neatly filled with apothecary supplies in bottles, tins, and vials. Karena followed her inside and surveyed the precious, dwindling supply.

  “Your Uncle Matvey’s gout is troubling him again. I’d like you to walk over and see him. Bring his medication. Let us hope it helps him this time. Tell Grandmother Jilinsky to stop feeding him the rich mutton pan drippings. Here is the dosage. It will be enough for three or four days. See that he takes the first dose while you are there, will you, dear?”

  “You know how he hates to swallow these big tablets. He says they get caught in his throat.”

  “Smear a bit of butter on the pills the way I showed you. They’ll go down much easier. Tell him I shall be over to see him in the morning on my way to Madame Olga’s. There’s something I want to talk over with him.”


  Karena glanced at her. Talk over? Was it about her? She nodded and watched as her mother took an opaque bottle from the shelf, shook some pills onto her palm, counted them, and then placed them in a small white cloth. Her mother was obsessed with cleanliness, insisting the English nurse, Madame Florence Nightingale, had been right about the spread of disease in the hospitals. She recalled Dr. Zinnovy using his own soap and boiled water.

  Yeva gathered the cloth at the top then tied it with a length of narrow ribbon from a roll that she kept on a wall peg. She wrote a note to herself on the ledger hanging there and then surveyed the shelves once more, shaking her head with apparent concern.

  “I do not know what we shall do.”

  Karena had grown up seeing her mother guard the medicine closet as though it housed the crown jewels of Czarina Alexandra Fyodorovna Romanova. Each year at the end of the summer it was always the same; her mother began the tedious process of making a resupply list before the long twilight of Russian winter.

  “This may prove to be one of our worst years,” Madame Yeva was saying. “Everything will be needed for the war. I would not deny our brave soldiers anything.” She closed and locked the door, dropping the key into her pocket. “Even now, the simplest things are becoming scarce. The supplies you brought in from the warehouse two weeks ago were lacking quinine and bitterroot. I sent off to Moscow for more. I wonder if we will get them.”

  Karena slipped the tablets for Uncle Matvey into her skirt pocket and turned to her errand when the sound of running footsteps came up the front porch and hesitated outside the door.

  Karena’s nerves clenched. The large manor house grew still and strained with expectation.

  The front door opened, and Natalia stood in the doorway.

  She widened her eyes expressively and looked from Karena to their mother.

  “We are having company tonight, Mama. Soldiers—Imperial soldiers.”

  Karena bit her lip. She was sure she knew who they would be.

  Natalia leaned in the archway of the open door, placing a palm on her heart, drawing in a deep breath, as though saving the worst news—where she was concerned—for last.