Sisters of the Cross

by Alexei Remizov

  But the song did finish. Just the accordion was now playing on its own. Leaning on her stick, the girl was hobbling over the gravel, and seemed to be circling around through the yard, holding out her tambourine and smiling. With her pure, open face she was gazing up toward the windows, just as the cat Murka had once looked up at them when she was rolling about on the stones in agony.

  Akumovna started weeping bitterly, like a child somehow, no doubt remembering all her trouble, how she had gone around the whole wide world like a rolling stone.

  Marakulin rushed out onto the street and finally caught up with the musicians beyond the gates.

  “What’s your name, little girl?”—and he touched her hand.

  “Maria,” replied the girl, looking at him unsmilingly with her pure, open face.

  The accordion player had also stopped and raised his peaked cap a little. Swarthy and pockmarked, he was probably her father.

  Marakulin’s fingers sought out Plotnikov’s crisp, new banknote, crumpled as it was, and thrust it at the girl, all twenty-five rubles of it, and without a backward glance he went back into the courtyard. Behind him he could hear the wild sweeping song. Infused with the endless expanses of the steppe it was, and the vastness of the sea. The tambourine struck against her knee, like a sinking heart.

  He was going by his own even, straight path to Nevsky Prospekt. Night was already falling. There, on the Nevsky, he would wait until he saw Verochka. He would stand all night in wait for her. And he wouldn’t make any mistakes. It was a white night, after all, and white would not deceive him!

  The white night would not deceive him; some woman dressed in dark clothes shoved past him and, holding up the hem of her dress, walked on fast toward Anichkov Bridge. Everything she was wearing was dark in color—dress, hat, and gloves. He recognized Verochka and rushed after her. But by Anichkov Bridge Verochka merged with a crowd of women who looked like her—she wasn’t the only one wearing dark clothes.

  “Verochka!” he called to her, “Verochka!”—looking into the eyes of each dark figure, and not only of two or three: there were many of them, and they all dodged him and gathered together in another place, from where they seemed to be quietly and imperceptibly creeping up on him. Quiet, dark figures, and something dark and cold enveloped his heart like a snake.

  And that night, that night of the last Thursday before Trinity, Marakulin dreamed that he was sitting at a table with a samovar in some large room crammed with furniture, and everything was scattered and thrown around, like when you gather things together prior to moving, and the people in the room with him were all strangers, tired and dejected-looking somehow. And sitting next to him—he noticed this with a feeling of disgust—was a snub-nosed, naked woman with prominent teeth, and someone else besides, dressed in dark clothes—and they were bending over the junk, sorting out old bits of cloth. Grabbing hold of a glass in vexation, he took aim at her empty, naked skull.

  But she, the snub-nosed, naked woman with prominent teeth got up and ran toward the door: “On Saturday,”—her teeth rattled as she laughed—“Don’t you forget to give a pound to Akumovna”—her teeth rattled as she laughed—“And your mother will be dressed in white”—the woman with the prominent teeth laughed again.

  “A pound of what? Of grain, of silver?” he began to argue with bitterness, as if he were defending some last right of his not to be subjected to any time limit and to any special Saturday. “Well, come on then, don’t fool about! You mean a real pound sterling, do you?”

  “On Saturday,” laughed the snub-nosed woman, naked and with the prominent teeth and, without turning round, clattered down the stone steps into the yard.

  In the yard—and it was the Burkov yard—the tenants were pouring out from all the apartments, and from the wing and Gorbachov’s corners: all seven janitors, including the senior janitor Mikhail Pavlovich and his wife Antonina Ignatievna, and the passport officer Iorkin, and Stanislav the clerk with the bitten-off nose, and Kazimir the fitter, the doorkeeper Nikanor and Vaniushka, his son, sentenced by the children to death through hanging, as well as the children who had condemned Vaniushka, and the Persian masseur from the public baths, and the little girl who had brought milk out to Murka, along with shoemakers, bakers, bath attendants, barbers, dressmakers, milliners, a night nurse from the Obukhov Hospital, tram conductors, engine drivers, men who made hats, umbrellas or brushes, and plumbers, typesetters and various mechanics and electricians with their families, all sorts of young ladies from Gorokhovaia Street and Zagorodny Prospekt, dressmakers and girls from the teashop, and smart young men from the baths who would serve Petersburg ladies on demand, and the old woman with her stall by the baths who sold sunflower seeds and all sorts of rubbish, and unemployed cooks, a house painter, a joiner, and a mead seller and all the peddlers, in a word—the entire Burkov flats, the whole of Petersburg.

  And they are all looking up toward the window, as the cat Murka had looked up, rolling around on the stones in agony, as the wandering singer had looked up, the little girl Maria with her tambourine, circling around the courtyard on her one leg.

  “What did she say?” they ask Marakulin.

  But Marakulin is standing as though framed by the window, like some holy elder Kabakov, calling down a voice from heaven in his prayers, as he stands facing the people.

  “One of us shall die,” says Marakulin.

  And in reply the entire Burkov yard whispers to him in mortal anguish:

  “Surely it will not be me, Lord? Surely it will not be me?”

  And up in the heights, much higher than the four brick Belgian chimneys with their lightning conductors, airplanes are sailing like great green birds, their huge green wings covering the sky.

  “Surely it will not be me, Lord? Surely it will not be me?” the entire Burkov yard whispers in mortal anguish.

  And now it seems that Marakulin is making his way home to the Fontanka, when something strange happens: he seems to hear the bells ringing out for the evening service at the Church of the Resurrection on the Taganka, and he’s not going in through the front door, but from the kitchen; he half opens the door, and by the kitchen range some sort of woman is sitting who looks quite like Akumovna, only this is not Akumovna; she is dressed all in white. “Your mother will be dressed in white,” he remembered the words of the snub-nosed, naked woman with the prominent teeth, and he hurled himself into the room.

  It was the same room crammed with furniture, and everything was scattered and thrown around in confusion, like when you gather things together prior to moving, only there are no strangers now, there is not a soul in the room, just his mother sitting there, his mother with a cross on her forehead.

  “She has already come and sat down,” says his mother, talking about the one who is sitting in front of the kitchen range dressed in white, and suddenly she bursts into tears.

  And he knelt down, bending his head as beneath the stroke of an axe, in despair and mortal grief.

  That was how Marakulin woke up: in despair and mortal grief. It was Friday. He was struck by the sudden gloomy thought that he had until Saturday, and that only one day remained. He went as cold as ice. He did not want to believe his dream, and yet he did believe it and, since he believed, he was condemning himself to death.

  Man is born into the world and is already condemned; all are condemned from the day of their birth. People live under sentence, but completely forget about it, because they do not know the hour when it will come. But when the day is pronounced, when the time is measured out, and the term is laid down, when Saturday is indicated—no: that is more than man’s God-given strength can endure. For when God endowed men with life, He condemned them, but concealed from them what would be the hour of their death.

  Marakulin believed his dream and felt that he could not bear it, that he could not wait for Saturday. In despair and mortal grief he wandered around the streets from morning on; he could do nothing but wait for night to come; then he would see Verochka; he would tell
her everything and take his leave of her.

  And now on his path so straight and even, where even the last shadow and trace of hope had vanished, the dark, evil forces of despair had already begun their work, quiet and clinging like little worms, gnawing away and untethering him from life, eating away at his last links with the firm foundation of his existence.

  It was hard for him to tear himself away from life.

  Perhaps, after all, dreams are just dreams. When put to the test they may not come true at all. Why then did he have such belief in his dream? And should one really believe some dream like that? God knows what doing so might lead to! Indeed, it is never like that. Before death people always dream of something quite plain and simple, like losing a boot, or something like that, or getting ready to go on a trip abroad….

  Marakulin remembered about the trip abroad, about Paris, that paradise of his—and he came back to his senses.

  He was standing in front of some sort of fence completely covered with posters, and he could not recognize where and on what street he was standing. He could see the spire of the Engineers’ Castle2 rising above the trees, but when he walked along the fence, heading, as he thought, straight toward the spire, it suddenly disappeared. He dared not go any farther, as though that way lay his Saturday, his allotted span, the hour of his death. He turned back and, catching sight once again of the spire, walked boldly along the fence in the opposite direction. The spire remained in his field of vision for a long time, but then suddenly vanished, just as it had the first time. He dared not go any farther, as though that way lay his Saturday, his allotted span, the hour of his death. So he walked along the fence, keeping an eye on the spire of the Engineers’ Castle, to and fro along the boundary that he had set for himself, in despair and mortal grief.

  It was misfortune that was leading him on, hurling him from street to street, from one lane to another, diverting his gaze and confusing him—it was his destiny that cannot be overridden and from which there is no escape.

  Grief at his own mortality and despair at his burden eventually exhausted him; the span of his life and hour of his death were forgotten. His head sank down, but his legs were still strong, and they brought him out on the right path; he was going along Engineers’ Street, and he crossed the road to the Mikhailovsky Palace.3

  Then he was stopped by some tattered old woman, wrinkled and with watering eyes. She had clutched at his arm for him to take her across the street. Although she was so small—just a bag of bones, hanging onto him as though she had no legs of her own—she seemed so heavy to him that he could hardly walk out with her to the line of the tramway in the middle of the street. Then, when he started to cross the rails, the old woman seemed to grow even heavier, and God knows how he did not fall under the tram. Ringing its bell insistently, the hurtling tram passed so close to him that he could feel its heat.

  Marakulin let go of the old woman and started to run.

  Feeling hot and cold all over, he ran to the Narva Gate, running away from the bony old woman, running from his fated end. For some reason he was heading for the Narva Gate, somewhere beneath the Narva Arch, where he thought there would be no bony old woman, where he would forget about his predicted end, about his last hour, about Saturday.

  However, for some reason, when he reached Gorokhovaia Street, he did not go along the Garden Ring Road, but turned along Gorokhovaia toward the Fontanka.

  On the Fontanka in a street near the Burkov flats they were trying to catch some young lady, a revolutionary presumably. The police had sealed off the lane, and there was no way through. Marakulin came to a halt.

  They had been chasing the young lady for a long time, and finally some men in civilian clothes, probably detectives, surrounded her and led her off to a cab. The young revolutionary somehow reminded Marakulin of the wandering girl singer; was it her pure, open face that reminded him of her, except that the revolutionary was tall and rosy cheeked. Her hairpins had slipped out, and her straw hat was askew, with her long light-brown hair in disarray. A police officer climbed into the cab beside her, and she was taken away.

  “She’s just like Maria Aleksandrovna,” thought Marakulin, “she’s the same sort of person, preparing herself to be a victim and ready to die for humanity once more,” and he walked along the Fontanka, past the Burkov flats.

  At the Izmailovsky Bridge, just a few steps from the beer saloon, he caught up with a lady; no longer young, gray-haired but strong and healthy, she was striding along at a steady pace, as though she was out for a constitutional. When Marakulin was about to overtake her, she suddenly bent double and foolishly started to run; at that very moment there was a shot from the beer saloon and a shout for help! And the lady was lying on the pavement with her spine shattered and her face pushed into the stones—a strong, healthy old woman and beside her, smoking slightly, lay her folding chair.

  “Well, that’s immortality for you!” thought Marakulin, as he realized that this old woman was none other than his unfortunate general’s wife, that very louse of a general’s consort whom he had endowed with absolute entitlement in his own cruel Burkov night.

  And now blind chance had robbed her of her absolute entitlement, and her folding chair had not availed her.

  People were running up from the Fontanka and the little side streets; they were gazing at the victim’s face with curiosity, with horror, and with that particular malicious delight that shows when living eyes confront the eyes of a dead person. But she—the carefree, sin-free, immortal one—was now lying motionless with her spine shattered, hapless, helpless, and having drawn her last breath.

  A policeman had run up, and Marakulin said to him: “That is our lady from the Burkov flats, the wife of General Kholmogorov.”

  They carried the general’s wife away—the white gauze on her hat had come loose and was trailing out behind her like a spider’s web. Marakulin was walking at the front of the crowd, behind her and her folding chair. He was going past the flats again and did not call in, but came out onto Gorokhovaia Street, and then went along Gorokhovaia right through to the Admiralty, saying mindlessly again and again: “Well, there’s a woman supposed to be immortal! Well, that’s immortality for you!”

  In the Aleksandrovsky Garden he was about to sit down on a bench, but suddenly jumped up as though he had been stung, and he carried on farther on his way. He stopped by the monument to Peter the Great:

  “Piotr Alekseevich,” he said, turning toward the statue, “Your Imperial Majesty, the people of Russia are drinking infusions of horse manure and subduing the heart of Europe for a ruble and a half’s worth of vodka with cucumbers. I have nothing further to say!” With that he took off his hat, bowed, and went on along the English Embankment, then across Nikolaevsky Bridge to Vasilevsky Island.

  On a little street between Sixth and Seventh Lines beyond Sredny Prospekt, a crowd of people blocked his way. They were all just standing there so completely silent, that you could have heard a pin drop. Under a tree sat an old woman, shaking her head with its heavy ringlets of white hair. She was just gazing out, and from her submissive eyes quiet, humble streams were running down her cheeks, streams not of tears, but of blood.

  “She’ll never live to see the day,” thought Marakulin. “Lizaveta Ivanovna did not see out her time, she did not accomplish the task God had set her. She did not pass on her happiness, poor woman!”—and suddenly he felt a terrible thirst, as though those quiet tears of blood had scorched him.

  On Seventh Line, not far from Maly Prospekt, right next to an enormous building there was a little one-story house with a beer saloon. Marakulin managed to find some forgotten ten-kopeck piece in his pocket, and he turned off to enter the bar. He was tormented by an unbearable thirst.

  Facing the window, he sat down at a dirty wet table and picked up a newspaper, not to read, but just as a reflex action.

  “You can feed a hungry man, you can make someone rich who’s poor,” he heard a familiar voice and familiar words. “But once you fal
l in love—and if the object of your love does not respond—then, for the life of me, there is nothing to be done!”

  “That restless old man Gvozdev said it on Murka’s day, that’s who it was!” Marakulin remembered, putting down the paper and reaching for his warm beer.

  “You’re forever joking, Aleksandr Ivanovich, but I recently ate a mouse at the Afon monastery inn. I had a bet for five rubles with the brothers there. ‘If you eat it, Gvozdev, that’s five rubles for you, but if you don’t eat it, then you have to cough up to us.’ All right, they caught a mouse on the spot—there are plenty of them around the inn—it was a little gray one, a tiny thing. I took the skin off it, roasted it a little around the sides to make it taste better, cut it into slices, salted them, blessed myself, and ate it all up. I demolished the mouse, sir! I collected the five rubles, choking with laughter, and I says to them: ‘You Afon monks have paid me five rubles for eating a mouse, but at Prokopy the Righteous’s Church I ate a rat this size without any salt, just for one ruble!’ You see, Aleksandr Ivanovich, I have to get by somehow!”

  Then, in reply to Gvozdev, someone’s emotional voice drawled out: “I am just dying for love of you and your marvelous sweet eyes!”

  “I myself, Aleksandr Ivanovich, am a great one for the women!”

  By now something heavy had fallen onto the sticky floor, writhing about and weeping bitterly, as only children can, as bitterly as Akumovna wept at Maria’s singing, when she remembered everything that had happened to her.

  Marakulin drank up his warm beer, making his thirst only worse, and went out onto the street.

  He was going by his own even, straight path to Nevsky Prospekt. Night had already fallen. There on Nevsky Prospekt he would wait until he saw Verochka. He would stand all night in wait for her. When he saw Verochka, he would tell her everything and take his leave of her. And he wouldn’t make any mistakes. It was a white night, after all, and a white night would not deceive him!

  The white night would not deceive him. Verochka appeared immediately; he recognized her by her dark clothes. But he froze in horror: every last woman was wearing dark clothes—everything was dark, their dresses, their hats, their gloves. And they did not try to dodge him. They were walking along with stately assurance past a policeman in his white uniform, stepping around another policeman in white uniform, as though taking part in some ancient ceremonial dance, from the Znamenskaia Church to the Admiralty, and from the Admiralty back to the Znamenskaia Church.