The Midwife of St. Petersburg

by Linda Lee Chaikin

  “Yes, I know, my dear child, this is a sickening shock to us all,” he said. “But when we stop to think about it, it’s not so surprising. Not when we remember what Sergei means to Josef. It would hurt Josef far more to see his son arrested than to make this confession in his place.”

  Her mind fought its way back from the whirlwind of anguish and grief.

  “Such love on Papa’s part,” she said. “He’s willingly going to take Sergei’s punishment.”

  Uncle Matvey looked down at her so sharply that for a moment she wondered what she might have said to upset him. Then she saw he was not angry with her, but thinking of something that had suddenly arrested his mind. His distant gaze was directed out the window again, as he absently fingered his pipe.

  She stood, curling her fingers along the back of the chair. She shook her head slowly, doubtfully. “But Papa’s arrest may not be enough to satisfy them. Sergei could still be arrested. If Grinevich saw him there last night—if he named Sergei before he died—they could hang both Papa and Sergei, and Papa will have done this for nothing.”

  He shook his head. “No, Josef arranged to place the guilt of evidence on himself alone this morning when Policeman Leonovich called on him. By the time Kronstadt talked to him, Josef had already settled his plan. Leonovich agrees with Josef that he was there last night, that he was the one who arranged for Lenski to speak. Leonovich satisfied Major-General Durnov, at least. Josef has made some kind of bargain. I do not know what it is. Neither does Sergei, but it’s enough to safeguard your brother.”

  Karena was horrified. Bargain? What bargain could he make with the Okhrana?

  “What of Colonel Kronstadt?” she asked. “Is he privy to it also?” Anger churned in her heart.

  “No, I am quite sure he is not, though Ilya thinks differently.”

  “Papa Josef, as a zemstvo member, dismissed the extreme notions of Lenin,” she said. “It is most absurd to think he would be the head of the party in the village. Who would believe it? Every Sunday he is at the church. The Bolsheviks are mostly atheists.”

  “Josef took Sergei’s incriminating evidence from his room and planted it in his own so they would find it.”

  He had planned everything. Sergei must keep silent; he must promise to go to the university and become a lawyer, so that his father would be proud. How this ironic turn of events must be stabbing Sergei’s heart! If he spoke the truth, he would be arrested, and his father would be devastated. And yet, to allow his father to take his place—

  Karena’s gaze met her uncle’s. Matvey nodded as he read her question.

  “Yes, that was why Yeva wanted Sergei to come back to the house. She knew of Josef’s plan. She wanted to tell Sergei that she had reluctantly agreed to let Josef do this, because he meant so much to his father.” Uncle Matvey added quietly, thoughtfully, “Yeva realizes Josef is more devoted to Sergei than to anyone or anything else in this life. At present, very little matters to him, except that Sergei lives.”

  What will we do without Papa Josef? What of the farm? How will we manage?

  Karena’s heart might as well have been sawn in two, so divided were her loyalties. Young, reckless Sergei and her sober, quiet papa. How could this be? Was there no way to escape this crushing destiny?

  They must lose either Papa or Sergei, and Papa had all but decided the outcome on his own. He had chosen to become the scapegoat.

  She turned toward the kitchen door, but Matvey intervened.

  “I understand your feelings in this, but it is not for you to decide.”

  “Not mine?” she questioned.

  “No, it is between Josef and Yeva.” His face was grim, his eyes sympathetic. “You must respect your father’s decision. It’s his alone to make.”

  The long moments ticked by. Slowly, she turned away from the door and sat down.

  Uncle Matvey watched her with sad approval. “Some things must be borne,” he said. “We must be brave. Yes, be brave. You see? There is no choice. Josef has made up his heart. Yes, I stated it correctly, his heart, not his mind.”

  He put his hand on her head as though she were a little girl again. “And if Yeva can let her husband go for his son’s sake, then you and I must release him.”

  She slowly lowered her head as her eyes dimmed with warm tears.

  “I see you understand,” he said quietly. “These bitterest of decisions leave no pleasant consequences.”

  After a moment she blotted her cheeks dry.

  “But Sergei!” she said. “Surely he won’t agree. I know him well enough. He argues with Papa Josef. He makes light of his stolid support of the autocracy, but he loves him dearly.”

  “Josef left Sergei no choice. We may not agree. We may see the cliff’s edge and desire to rush in to stop one from going over, but ofttimes we are helpless. I suppose there is no pain quite as bad as that. All we can do is share in the heartbreak. Let us hope that Sergei will invest his life at the university. For now, he lives for two men. No,” he said thoughtfully, “Sergei’s life touches all of us. This is not easy for Sergei, believe me. It has cut him to the quick. Perhaps God will use this tragedy to mold him. Sergei finds himself in the Potter’s hand.”

  Karena’s throat pinched with pain. She swallowed hard, pushing her hair away from her forehead. Uncle Matvey’s strange words created new footprints across her soul.

  “In such situations as these, Karena, we see that God alone is able to move in our lives and reach us. Without knowledge of God, there is no faith, and without faith in a sovereign God who is both Creator and Savior, there is no ground for hope.”

  She jerked her head up. She had never seen him more serious, nor his eyes more intense. Does he believe what he is saying?

  “You sound like you’ve changed your mind about the God of the Bible.”

  “I am only learning, Karena. I’ve been reading many books, as you know, including the New Testament. I thought it wise to understand about Jesus if I’m to write honestly about Messiah. I can now say the gospel of Matthew, with its many clear references to fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies, has all but convinced me there is to be a personal Deliverer, a Savior, through the royal line of David. Isaiah 53 tells me this person, the greater son of David, will suffer. I cannot read that chapter without the Crucifixion coming before me. I have read it dozens of times, and each time I am more convinced that it is not speaking of Israel’s sufferings, as the rabbis claim, but of Messiah himself. Questions remain, but if the answers keep coming as they have so far, I will see no obstacle to Jesus being the Messiah, or as the Greek language has it in the New Testament writings, the Christ.”

  A hundred different thoughts came to her mind, and each one led off to a question of its own. These were things she could not think on now.

  She turned to the window and stared helplessly at the manor house.

  FIFTEEN

  Questions

  It was nearing four o’clock in the afternoon, and Colonel Aleksandr Kronstadt had not arrived at the bungalow to question them. Karena was emotionally spent and felt that she must take her mind off the situation or go mad.

  “Uncle, if you’re not going to use your office now, I’ve some work to do on your manuscript.”

  Matvey reached for a book of poetry on the shelf, took out his pipe, and crossed his long legs, wincing. He settled back with his coffee. “My office is yours.”

  “Oh! Poor Uncle. I forgot!” She reached into her skirt pocket and brought out the medication Madame Yeva had sent her over with earlier in the day.

  “Another horse pill?”

  “If we coat it first with butter, it will slide down very nicely.” She smiled and went to the kitchen. She returned with a small dab of butter in a spoon. When she left him, he was looking dubiously at the large tablet he held between thumb and forefinger, while holding the spoon in his other hand.

  Karena entered the small room connected to his bedroom and faced the cluttered desk and two chairs, one of them beside his ov
ercrowded bookcase. Several thick research books lay open on the table. His typewriter sat amid a confusion of manuscript papers and other books, several of which Karena knew to be of rabbinical origin: writings on messianic hopes or the refutation of such hopes. The Old Testament, the Tanach, was there, along with the Talmud, which was Jewish history and commentaries written by ancient rabbis. Uncle Matvey had noticed that, for some reason, all the Jewish commentaries referred only vaguely to the coming of a personal Messiah.

  Why? she wondered, drumming her fingers. She bowed her head in a short prayer:

  God of Abraham, open my eyes, for I want to see. I do not want to be deceived. If Jesus is the promised Messiah, I want to know, and if he is not, I want to know. Amen.

  Beside the Scriptures was a stack of letters from Jewish organizations. A Russian New Testament was there as well, and she saw that Matvey was deeply involved in a study of the gospel of Matthew. She saw a verse underlined: “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel … God with us.”

  The letters from the rabbis were in response to Uncle Matvey’s question, “If the Messiah were to come in 1915, how would you recognize him?” Karena had typed the dozen or so letters that she had then mailed to Basel, London, and New York. Each rabbi had answered, but she was disappointed to see their lukewarm responses. “Do not stir up more trouble for the Jews,” one of them wrote back. And another, “Do you intend to reinforce the teaching that we are ‘Christ killers’?”

  Karena shivered with dread.

  Out of a dozen or so letters, only one rabbi, an Orthodox Jew, believed in a personal Messiah. And while the rabbi gave his opinion on the matter, he did not refer to even one passage of Scripture.

  Karena frowned, glancing up toward the window. Perhaps she shouldn’t be surprised. Even the World Zionist Organization, begun under Theodor Herzl, was secular.

  If there was no personal Messiah, then where had the idea come from?

  Karena gathered a stack of Uncle Matvey’s handwritten manuscript pages and sorted through them. Her interest was snagged at once. He had painstakingly written out reference after reference of promises and teachings about the coming of the Messiah from the Old Testament, beginning with Genesis, and added his own notes in parentheses:

  “Messiah is first mentioned in Genesis 3:15 as the seed of the woman. Notice that it is not the seed of the man, but of the woman. Here is the first suggestion of the virgin birth. God said, ‘I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head—(judgment of Satan)—and you shall bruise His heel.” Then Matvey had scribbled: “(This is our Messiah wounded for Adam’s fallen offspring).”

  He had found a New Testament verse describing the fulfillment. She typed the reference, Galatians 4:4–5, then struggled to find Galatians. At last she compared it to Uncle Matvey’s notes: “But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman (the seed of the woman), born under the law (He came when Israel was under the Law given to Moses), to redeem those who were under the law”—and here Matvey had underlined—“that we might receive the adoption as sons.”

  Amazing, Karena mused. She typed the next reference to the Messiah. “The promised Messiah is also of the Seed of Father Abraham in Genesis 22:18, and its fulfillment is mentioned in Galatians 3:16: ‘To your Seed’ (Abraham’s), who is Christ.”

  “Another very early reference to the Messiah in His redemptive work,” Uncle Matvey wrote, “was in the offering of Abel in Genesis, in the bringing of a lamb from the flock. Redemption was always accomplished by a substitutionary blood sacrifice, and around seven hundred years before Messiah was born of the virgin Mary, Isaiah the prophet wrote, ‘the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all’ and that Messiah would be ‘led as a lamb to the slaughter.’ ”

  Karena mused over the verses. Her heart was warmed. She sat thinking; then she looked over to the open window. She heard hoofbeats. Her heart began to race. That must be Colonel Kronstadt.

  A few minutes later, she heard the expected knock on the door and from the kitchen the voice of Grandmother Jilinsky, who’d returned from the manor. Her footsteps hurried to answer.

  Karena nervously smoothed her fair hair into place and straightened her pale blue peasant blouse and skirt. She picked up one of the rabbinical books, some manuscript pages, and a pencil so she would have a pretense for searching out her uncle, and then walked to the doorway of the study.

  Colonel Kronstadt was already being shown inside.

  Grandmother Jilinsky displayed her raw nerves by waving her hands about uselessly and talking too fast. She spoke not in Russian but in a mixture of Yiddish and Polish. Karena was surprised to hear Kronstadt reply in excellent Polish. Karena, who could speak Polish as easily as Russian, heard his voice, calm but firm, telling Grandmother that he was sorry to be late and to disturb her at this hour, but that he had his orders, and as any good Polish woman such as herself knew, orders must be followed. He would speak to Professor Menkin and to Miss Peshkova.

  “And to Miss Peshkova.”

  Stay calm. You have your firm alibi.

  “It’s all right, Leah,” Uncle Matvey interjected, coming from the kitchen. “I am expecting the colonel. Why don’t you go to your room and rest awhile? If the colonel wishes to ask you a few questions, he’ll call for you.”

  “I shall make the coffee first and leave it to stay hot on the stove, and a platter of sweet breads to go with it.” She turned to Kronstadt. “Colonel,” she said stiffly, bowed her silver head, and left them. At the doorway, she glanced over her shoulder.

  Karena stood in the doorway to Uncle Matvey’s office, her arms full of research. She was deliberately looking at her uncle rather than at Alex, even though she sensed that Kronstadt was looking at her.

  “My niece, Miss Karena Peshkova,” Uncle Matvey was saying, and Karena was obliged to turn and acknowledge him.

  “Colonel Aleksandr Kronstadt,” Matvey told her. “He is well received by your Uncle Viktor and Aunt Zofia.”

  Karena realized Matvey didn’t know they had met in Kazan.

  Alex, however, walked forward and bowed smartly, expressionless and self-contained. He was well built in his precise-fitting officer’s uniform.

  “Miss Peshkova,” he stated.

  Their eyes met. His were interesting, not merely because of their unusual green color, but because they were so confident. His dark, chocolate brown hair, the flinty jaw, the flawless Imperial-officer manner—all served him well and could easily be intimidating.

  She was sure he was watching the heightening color in her cheeks.

  “I had the privilege of meeting your niece in Kazan in June,” he told Matvey, “and again briefly on the road this morning.”

  “Yes, we’ve met.” She found her voice and was proud of herself for sounding as collected as he. “We met this morning before I knew you were here in our village to arrest my father as a Bolshevik. Something, sir, I can assure you that he is not. My father is loyal to Czar Nicholas, as are we all.”

  Uncle Matvey cleared his throat and took a step forward as if to redirect Kronstadt’s attention to himself, but the colonel’s calm scrutiny of Karena continued.

  “I am under orders, Miss Peshkova. My duty is to the czar. My personal opinions of what may have occurred last night do not enter into the matter. I haven’t said your father is a Bolshevik; he has called himself one.”

  With Josef confessing he was a revolutionary to protect Sergei, how could she protest to the colonel that her father was loyal to the czar?

  Uncle Matvey’s voice came between them, assuring the colonel he would see him alone in his office.

  Colonel Kronstadt bowed toward Karena. He was turning to follow Uncle Matvey into the next room when the heavy rabbinical volume that she was holding slipped from the stack of papers to the floor with a thud.

  She was about to stoop and pick it up, but he did so for her
, looking at its title without a hint of qualm.

  “Research on your book, Professor?” He turned to look at Matvey.

  “I’m up to my ears in books, Colonel, but enjoying myself immensely with the topic. I fear I’ve made a mess of things, however. Karena’s been assisting me since I arrived in June by putting the manuscript into order. I’ll miss her when I return to Petrograd.”

  Alex smiled as he returned the book. The smile seemed to change his entire personality.

  “You heard his plea, Miss Peshkova. Perhaps you should return with him to save your uncle from drowning in his sea of books and papers. I’d like to hear your interpretation of his work sometime.”

  Karena hardly knew what to say to the veiled challenge and remained silent.

  She took the book he held toward her, meeting his direct look and finding it far from lukewarm. “Thank you,” she murmured meekly.

  “Colonel, you must come by my apartment, and we can discuss my findings,” Uncle Matvey said, handling the challenge for her. “Karena is likely to be there as well, since she hopes to enter the medical school.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Kronstadt said.

  Karena could have reminded Uncle Matvey that she would not be going to medical college this year, but if there was any chance she could get to Petrograd, she wasn’t about to throw snow on the kindling.

  “It should be a most interesting discussion,” Alex told him. “My cousin Michael is attending a Bible seminary in America, somewhere around New York. He is determined to carry on a theological debate with me. He’s hoping I’ll join him there.”

  “I’ll plan on an interesting discussion, then, Colonel.”

  Alex turned to Karena. She made no comment.

  “I’ll speak with Professor Menkin alone first. Please remain here, Miss Peshkova. I must question you before I return to the manor house where Major-General Durnov waits.”

  That was that. The mask of Imperial military professionalism came down again, and his face told her nothing more. He bowed and followed Matvey into the little office, closing the door.