Blood of the Czars

by Kilian, Michael;

  Buildings and houses fell away and they were soon traveling in darkness except for the patch of road held in the headlights. An occasional military vehicle would roar by them on the narrow road, frightening Tatty each time, but none ever stopped.

  At last he bumped over railroad tracks and entered the village, pulling to a stop by the little square. He turned in the seat, raising his eyebrows and shoulders in question. She told him to proceed straight ahead and then, choosing the darkest street she could see, told him to turn right. She picked a darkened house with a wall and gate five doors down. Giving him an extra ruble and fifty kopecks, she let him take two drinks of her vodka and then said good night. She closed the door and went to the gate. The cab had not moved. She waited as long as she could, then, sweating despite the numbing cold, pushed the latch of the gate. It gave a loud clank, a noise that seemed to her as loud as thunder, and gave way. She slipped inside, closed the gate behind her, and stood motionless in the black shadows of the narrow yard, fearing that she had awakened everyone in the house, that the people here might have dogs. There was only silence. At last, the cab drove away.

  The village railroad station was small and empty. A short ways down the line, a man was standing in the dimly lit window of a squat signal tower. The station door was open. In a country that so prized security, secrecy, and paranoia, she was amazed to find so many unlocked doors.

  The stationmaster would be there in the morning. She did not want her sleeping body to welcome him. Waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, she sought out the women’s room and slipped inside. She curled up on the floor, wondering what she might be lying in, wondering if there would be rats.

  The morning came with much noise outside, but it was not the kind she feared. The women were arriving with their goods for the Moscow free market. One of them barged into the lavatory, stepping over Tatty, going about her crude toilette as though there were always someone lying on the floor. Tatty sat up, murmuring good morning, and went to wash her face and hands in the ice-cold water of the rusty sink. The outside air was even colder on her skin.

  The women, perhaps three dozen of them, were sturdy-looking, though many were old. Their sacks, satchels, and baskets contained a market full of things—chickens, eggs, gathered roots, nuts, milk, knitting, homemade beer, wine, and vodka, odd household objects—anything that could be sold for profit at the chief form of capitalism openly tolerated in Moscow.

  Tatty bought a sack containing four live if silent chickens from one, a weary-looking babushka, paying what she judged from the woman’s expression to be a fair Moscow price. She then slung it over her shoulder and moved about the others who had gathered on the platform, looking for the friendliest face. She quickly changed her mind, seeking out instead the craftiest. She settled on a brown-faced woman dressed more warmly than the others, who had a large, long-handled square basket. There was cloth peeping out from the top but Tatty guessed by the way the sides bulged that it contained something heavier, probably liquor, illegal homemade liquor.

  “The train comes soon?” Tatty asked.

  The woman scowled at the track. “Some days.” She looked up at Tatty, then down, assessing her top to bottom in a quick glance, her Asiatic eyes lingering on Tatty’s boots. “You are not from here. You are going to Moscow?”

  “Nyet,” said Tatty. “Minsk.”

  “Train to Minsk stops not here.”

  “I’m not traveling by train.”

  The woman stared at her.

  “Have you vodka for sale?” Tatty asked.

  The woman’s stare darkened. “You want vodka?”

  “Yes.” Tatty did. She had left the bottle Spencer had given her on the filthy women’s room floor and did not want to go back for it.

  The woman studied her very carefully this time. “Five rubles. Very good vodka.”

  The price was inflated, but that did not matter. Tatty gave her a ten-ruble note. The woman quickly opened the basket, pulled out a bottle wrapped in newspaper, and put it into Tatty’s sack with the unprotesting chickens.

  “You are not traveling by train? How are you going to Minsk?”

  “I don’t know.” Tatty went into her lines about the wife-beating in Moscow, this time saying she was fleeing to her Polish mother in Minsk, a Polish mother without a husband of any kind. For a long moment, she was afraid the woman was going to ask her something in Polish. Tatty spoke not a word of Polish, except for kilbasa, which she thought meant sausage.

  “You are in trouble?”

  She nodded, beginning to cry. “My husband knows officials.”

  “You have internal passport?”

  The sound of the English word startled her. Then she remembered. The Russian word for passport was pasport.

  “No. He has all my papers. I ran away. I was drunk. I took a taxi here. I have to get away. To Minsk.”

  “You have money?”

  “Da. A little.”

  The woman folded her arms and looked off in the direction of the train.

  “Do you know anyone going west, who could give me a ride?”

  The woman’s distant gaze did not change. “No. I know no one with car.”

  “Do you know anyone with truck? Going to Minsk?”

  The woman didn’t move. Tatty crumpled up a five-ruble note and put it in the woman’s hand. She looked at it, and then down at Tatty’s boots, staring hard. They were black, like her own, but they were Louis Jourdan. Tatty gave her another five rubles.

  She looked back down the tracks, but her demeanor changed. “Is road leading west from square. Follow it four kilometers to main highway. Is café there. Roti and Valentina manage café. Valentina is good woman. I sell her vodka. Tell her I send you. Olga. Give her money. She will find you ride. Valentina has many friends among truck drivers. Go now. You are with me too long.”

  Tatty picked up her chicken sack. The woman was looking at her boots again.

  “You are Polish?”

  “Da. Polska.” It sounded right.

  “You Polish have it too good.”

  Once out of sight of the village, Tatty paused to roughen up her boots with a stick and muddy snow, an act that she expected would be rendered unnecessary after a day or two more on the road. She lingered to take two swallows of the woman’s vodka, a strong, raw stuff that had about as much in common with the good Stolichnaya as cheap California chablis did with Bollinger. She was thankful for it, nevertheless.

  She reached the café ravenous, weak from the walk and the night. The man Roti had only just opened up, but was able to provide her with kvas, fish, sausage, and cheese while he heated up the stove. She ate wolfishly, embarrassed by her slovenly looks until she reminded herself how much her safety might depend on her scruffy appearance. Roti kept looking at her in such lusting fashion she wished she looked ten times scruffier. She was hot now in Jack’s lumpy fur hat, but she kept it on to cover her stylish blond hair.

  Others came, ate, and left, including two militiamen. They studied her, but as men, not police, and finally departed as well. Tatty had let herself feel secure because they were only militia. She supposed this was a mistake.

  Valentina proved to be an attractive, fat, blonde, blowzy, cheerful—and, for so small a place—somewhat worldly woman, who accepted the mention of Olga’s name and a folded ten-ruble note as crude protocol to be dispensed with as quickly as possible. Once it was, she carried on as though she and Tatty were old friends, taking her back to the kitchen, asking about Moscow, asking about Warsaw, accepting everything Tatty told her. She readily agreed to arrange Tatty a ride as a matter of course between chums, and just as chummily pocketed another ten rubles. She eyed Tatty’s boots with friendliness as well, but her own legs were much too short and plump. Tatty gave her the chickens instead.

  The truck driver Valentina procured was named Pavl, a youngish, not unattractive man with a bluish cast of beard on his cheeks and a brown birthmark on his forehead. Though thin, he had very wide cheekbones. His eyes
were of a blue much darker than Tatty’s. When he laughed and joked, he seemed something of a leering, country dolt. When serious, he looked quite wise.

  He agreed to take her to Minsk only after much thought and two cups of kvas. She offered a hundred rubles. He ended up with twice that.

  As they pulled out onto the road, he began to talk, about himself, about anything that seemed to come into his mind. Many of his words she did not understand, but she murmured what she hoped were appropriate responses at appropriate times. For all her fatigue, she sat erect and very much awake. The traffic on the highway was sparse, but regular. Her feeling of security had vanished with the heat of Valentina’s kitchen. Out in all this morning brightness, out in this forbidding countryside she knew nothing about, so far from safety on the map of Russia in her mind, she was quite afraid.

  But they saw no one who threatened them. There was little to see but dirty patches of earth and muddy snow; bare trees, birch trees, and pines; occasional streams; and the long empty road. After an hour or so, she let him have the vodka bottle and crumpled against the corner of the cab, falling immediately asleep.

  He seemed to awaken her an instant later, though opening her eyes she saw they were in a much different place.

  “Checkpoint coming up,” he said. “You must get in back.”

  “Will there be trouble? You know I have no internal passport.”

  “No. Easy checkpoint. I know this road well. They will not look in back. But you must get in there.”

  He helped her, but with more interest in grabbing a feel of her backside than in preventing injury, for she scraped and bloodied her knee again on the tailgate. The truck was carrying crates wrapped in burlap. She climbed over them and dropped out of sight beyond, sitting huddled in the darkness as he put the lumbering vehicle into gear again.

  A short distance later, when he slowed, her pulse began to beat faster, hammering furiously by the time he stopped. All but holding her breath, she heard Pavl say good morning and then another voice respond with words she could not clearly discern. For a long terrifying moment, there was no sound at all, then the other spoke once more, very briefly. Pavl lurched the truck forward, rumbling up through the gears with no great haste. Except for her clumsy climb to the rear, there’d been no more inconvenience than at a change booth on the Connecticut Turnpike.

  “Zhenshchina,” he called her. “Woman. Hurry.”

  “What?”

  “Around bend is bad checkpoint. You must get out, zhenshchina. You must walk.”

  “Through checkpoint?”

  “No, no. Go north here into woods. Walk kilometer, maybe. Then go west. Walk to river. Then follow river back to road. I wait by bridge. Go now. Hurry.”

  Standing on the road, watching as Pavl’s truck noisily dwindled into the distance, she felt as though she’d been left on another planet. She bit down on her lip, holding back tears, and anger. Tatiana Romanov would have thought it divine deliverance to be able to stand free and alone on this road those many decades ago, no matter what dangers might still have awaited her.

  Tatty leapt the shallow ditch at the side of the road and started into the woods, thinking how ridiculously visible she would be if she was still wearing her red coat, thinking of her friends so many thousands of miles away in New York, dining at the Edwardian Room. She trudged on, bending branches back from her path. Tatiana Romanov probably thought of friends in Paris.

  Reaching the river, she slumped to the ground, leaning back against a tree, so exhausted she could have slept right there. How wonderfully easy to give up now. How perfectly right to do so. She had done nothing wrong. There had been nothing but wrong done to her. Privations, indignities, terrors, all unwarranted and unjust, heaped upon her by grim, squalid people in dutiful, national purpose. They had no right to do this to her. Not to a person like her. They must know that.

  A large bird flew in swoops along the stream, lighting briefly on a branch, then darting away, so free.

  They dared do it to her, all right. They dared do it to anyone. They had tried to murder the Pope. They slaughtered those airline passengers.

  Pushing herself to her feet, she resumed her ordeal, following the river in the direction from which the bird had come, from which the bird had fled.

  She was actually surprised to find Pavl’s truck pulled off the road just a few yards past the bridge. He was putting papers and small personal possessions back into the glove compartment.

  “They search everything,” he said. “Very bad checkpoint.” He pulled the bottle of vodka out from under the dashboard. “They search almost everything.” He smiled, then pinched her thigh, painfully, and started the engine. She slid down in her seat, looking up and out the window at the tops of the trees. So many millions of Russian trees.

  She took the bottle of vodka from him, and drank.

  “We are almost to Smolensk,” he said, as two army trucks rumbled by them from the other direction. “There I must leave you.”

  “What? You agreed!”

  “Nyet. Valentina said you want to go to Minsk. I say only I give you ride. I do not say how far. I go only to Smolensk. My freight is for Smolensk. I cannot go farther.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? I paid you all that money.”

  “If I tell you, you might not come. You would pay me no money.”

  “You’ll get not a kopeck more.”

  “I don’t care. I like you. You are pretty little woman. I find you ride in Smolensk going west. You know anyone in Smolensk?”

  “Is there a Smolensk Social Register?” she muttered to herself.

  “What you say?”

  “I know no one in Smolensk.”

  “If I cannot find you ride west, I find you place to stay night in Smolensk.”

  “Spasibo.”

  “Maybe I find you place to stay where I stay.” He reached and pinched her again. He was steering the truck unsteadily. It was good that the vodka was all gone.

  “I must get to Minsk.”

  “You could be nice to me. I have been very nice to you.”

  A large bus careened past them, swaying, and roared off down the road. Pavl was not driving fast. He was stroking her knee.

  There were violent things she could do to stop this. Possibly, the threat of violent things would suffice. But she was afraid to try either. She was traveling toward safety, but, strangely, the farther they got from Moscow, the more insecure she felt. Pavl could cause her a lot of trouble if she displeased him. Anyone could cause her trouble.

  She took his hand. “I like you, Pavl Andreyevich, but I cannot be nice to you—to any man—for several days. Do you understand me?”

  He pondered this very seriously, then at last smiled, as though at a joke he had just come to appreciate. A very clever joke.

  “Ha, ha. Pavl is going to Smolensk on wrong day.” He began to though uproariously at this. The truck began to swerve.

  Tatty closed her eyes. She would not worry about his driving. There seemed to be some divinity looking out for her.

  As they approached the city, he had her sit on the floor out of sight. Her head kept banging sharply against the knob of the window crank in this position, but she endured. Her knee was a bloody mess. Taking off her gloves, she saw that she had broken off two fingernails, one torn so far back there was bleeding. In Manhattan, this would have been a major disaster.

  Pavl looked down at her hands with much fascination.

  “You are Polish, zhenshchina? You say you are Polish?”

  She nodded, then so did he. He didn’t speak after that until they were well into Smolensk, and gritty brick building fronts were all to be seen when she looked up out the window.

  When he finally stopped, dusk was gathering. They were parked in a dirt yard filled with piles of old metal and debris. There were no people in view. Beside the truck was a crude wooden shed with a small window.

  “You are to wait in there,” he said, a colder tone to his voice now. “If I can get to anoth
er driver, I will send him to you here. If not, I will come back and take you to place to stay.”

  “Spasibo.”

  “I will need money to give to other driver. To make deal.”

  “How much?”

  “Two hundred rubles.”

  “But that’s what I gave you for this entire trip.”

  “One hundred is for other driver. One hundred is for me. For being so nice. I know you are in big trouble, zhenshchina. I take big risk.”

  She pulled some crumpled notes from her pocket. During one of the stays in the rear of Pavl’s truck, she had used the time to carefully hide the bulk of her money in various parts of her clothing.

  “And now I want to feel your breast.”

  “You what?”

  “I want to feel your tit! That’s all I will do.”

  She bit her lip, to no point. She sighed, then opened her coat, unbuttoning her red silk blouse part way lest he tear it. Then she closed her eyes. He moved his rough hand over her skin with surprising gentleness, rubbing her nipple with his thumb.

  “You said this was all you would do.”

  He pulled his hand away. “Yes, and now I have done it. Pavl Andreyevich Sanko has felt your tit. Very nice, but not so nice as Valentina. Now go. I will do as I promised.”

  The shack seemed to contain as much debris as the yard outside. She seated herself on the floor, leaning back against a huge pile of rags, hugging her knees, feeling very sorry for herself. Pavl was probably the most honest man she would encounter in this ordeal, and her best guess was that he would pocket the two hundred rubles and do nothing more to help her, considering himself a noble fellow for not having tipped off the police. If he did not come, if no one came, she would spend the night in this place, and tomorrow, she would just do her best. That was what the grand duchesses had done day after terrifying day: their best. While there was still a glimmer of light, she would start trying to memorize the list of names and addresses Spencer had given her, a list too sadly short.