A sudden tightness in my throat, down to my solar plexus. Why should I care, when I had Genya? But on some level I still did. Look at her face. Had he made love to her? No, he wouldn’t have. Though he couldn’t resist an admiring female, even if she was chubby and wore glasses and talked about integers and valences. And she had beautiful skin, and her gray eyes were shaded by long, white-tipped lashes. In fact, she wasn’t even fat anymore. She looked…pretty.
She gazed toward the hall that led to the kitchen, where her mother had returned to her cooking; to her father, reading on the divan; to her sisters; then back to me, pleading with me not to say anything more.
I lowered my voice. “Is he here in Petrograd?”
“No,” she whispered. “He went back to the front. That was months ago—in July, before the offensive.”
I could feel my eyes stinging. He’d been here, while I was out in the country mowing weeds.
“Do you mind?” she whispered, touching my sleeve. Her bottom lip trembled.
“No,” I said and tried to smile. What was done was done, and anyway I had Genya. In just a few minutes, I would see him. The hell with Kolya.
“I told him about Genya. Was that right?”
“Of course.” A soothing thought. He deserved that, for leaving me alone for all those months. Did he think I would wait forever?
Sofia Yakovlevna asked us to clear the table for dinner. I knew I should leave—not impose myself on their hospitality—but Genya might be coming, so when she asked me to dinner, I agreed with alacrity. I was going to see Genya. And Kolya? Kolya was the past. Ancient history. I telephoned home, told Ginevra where I was, that I’d be home later. I was in no hurry to see Father, and had seen enough of Mother and my governess to last a decade.
We sat down to eat, dragging Solomon Moiseivich’s footstool into place so that he could keep his foot up. It was so good to see the whole family again. Mina told me about all the people who had come to pose for photographs since I’d been gone—Tereshchenko and the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet both! Kerensky himself had come the day before yesterday. “Talked without stopping,” said Solomon Moiseivich. “He’s due for a nervous collapse, if you ask me. But the picture turned out well.”
A pounding interrupted us in mid-meal. I jumped, recalling the day that revolutionary soldiers burst in to search the flat. But this time Dunya raced to answer the door. In a moment, she returned with Sasha Orlovsky, and behind him, my own sweet Genya. Did I fly? Or had he crossed the room in one step? I leaped into his arms, and we kissed in front of God and all the Katzevs.
Anton Chernikov squeezed past us. “Oh, look. The rusticated cousin returns.”
I breathed in Genya’s scent, like fresh mown grass and the harsh makhorka tobacco he smoked. Everyone was watching, but this was more important than finishing dinner. I breathlessly thanked the Katzevs, and together we ran down the stairs as if the building were burning.
Out in the street, we floated above the city, cartwheeled over people in shoes and coats. We walked sideways along pastel buildings glowing in the twilight. We used the trees for toothpicks. “I heard Father threatened you with the police.”
His laughter, rich, huge. “And let me tell you, the Red Guards came right away. How dare I shout love poems at such an important man?” He tugged on my braid, pulling me closer. “This was what you looked like at nine, isn’t it? God, I wish I had been there.” He cupped my face in his palm and kissed me. I didn’t know if people walked around us or if they simply had vanished. “How was it out in the boonies without me?” he whispered. “Horrible and dusty and ridiculous? Were you ready to die of boredom?”
“Every day. Twice sometimes.” I rubbed my cheek against his hand. “They had to keep the knives out of reach. Take me home, Genya. While they’re all still at Mina’s.”
Haymarket Square seemed strangely empty this evening, the stalls closing up early, though the weather was fair. Was there some new curfew? We crossed the luminous Catherine Canal at the Demidov Bridge and raced up narrow Grivtsova Alley, the tops of the buildings still in light, up the dark stairs two at a time. Today we would make right what had gone wrong then.
Inside, the Poverty Artel smelled of turpentine and smoke. A section of wall was in the process of being painted, cubo-futuristically, over the tiling of newspapers. I took off my coat. So this was what it usually looked like—unmade divan, unmade cot, chairs piled with papers and paint, ashtray overflowing, sunflower-seed shells crunching underfoot. He bustled about, pulling the sheets up on the divan, picking up clothes from the floor. “Forget about that,” I said. I pulled him down next to me, took the clothes from his arms, and tossed them back onto the floor. So much time had passed between us. I didn’t care how dirty the room was.
I could feel a hesitation on his part, a new shyness. “What is it?”
He gazed at me, worry in his hazel eyes under the shock of tawny hair. “There wasn’t anybody else, was there? Out there?”
Oh, was that it? I tried not to laugh. “Who? The twelve-year-olds? Or the old uncle with the beard halfway to his knees?”
He laughed, but the uncertainty remained. It had to be slain, this dragon of time and distance. I took his hand and kissed it, slowly, biting the knuckles each in turn, then kissing the palm until he groaned. I planted my fat lips on his, and our kisses began in earnest, his big fingers fumbling at my buttons, his floppy hair longer than ever, falling into his eyes. I pushed it from his face.
“I swore I wouldn’t cut it until I had you back,” he whispered into my neck. “I would have grown it as long as a Sikh’s.”
I raked my own hair free of its braid, pulled it apart so that it flowed over my back and shoulders, and he buried his face in it as if it were a wonderland. The room was cold but I took off my dress and tossed it aside, helped him out of his old jacket, his shirt. He looked at me so uncertainly. Why? The beauty of his body was Atlantean, his smooth wide chest hairless, so large, so different from Kolya’s pelt of chestnut fur. How warm he was. I pressed my cheek to the muscle right over his heart to listen to the blood surge inside him. It was like a Niagara. With my finger, I traced the dip above his rib cage. He was big and bulky and warm, his heavy arms laced with sinews like a ship’s rope. He tried opening my corselette, fumbling to work the buttons far too tiny for him—or was it that his hands were trembling? I pushed him away so I could unfasten it myself and let him see me, my breasts and shoulders dotted with summer freckles, his expression better than any mirror. I opened his worn trousers and slid my hand in. He groaned. He was huge, and ready—so that wasn’t what was making him shy.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.
“You won’t,” I said. I didn’t care if he did. I produced a condom, hoping it wasn’t too small, but he managed to roll it down over himself. Would he think I was a trollop, a jade? Would it break? I’d take that chance. I wanted him. I pushed him back onto the gritty sheets and lay over him, my hair a crimson tent.
Oh, the bliss of that hour. It had been months since I’d slept with Kolya. Before the revolution. We made love and it was far more serious business than it was with Kolya. We were naked in our feelings, stopped and started again, then lay wearily in each other’s arms as the last light faded from the room. I felt as though I were rocking on a barge, on the Volga with my bargeman-Keats, the river so wide you couldn’t see both banks.
Finally the Interlocutors returned, banging on the door. “Open up!”
“Go away!” Genya shouted back.
More kicks from the other side. “Pigs,” we heard someone shout. We grunted like swine, making ourselves laugh.
Genya insisted on escorting me home, arm in arm in the dark. I could feel the uneasiness of passersby now, a tangible wildness in the air. I thought of Vaula’s warning, how things might have changed since I’d been gone. Yet seeing Genya, who would have the nerve to disturb us? The lights reflected in the canal for us alone. We crossed at the Bank Bridge, with its gold-winged griffins
glinting, so close to the flat where Kolya and I…I pressed into Genya’s side. All that seemed like another century.
When we turned onto Furshtatskaya, our flat was lit up like an ocean liner. I knew they were waiting up for me. We kissed a long time, my lips swollen and raw, my body still tender, my hair a cloud of tangles. After that, I felt I could face anything.
The younger dvornik stepped out of the shadows with a lantern, but seeing it was me with Genya, he waved genially and went back to his cubby, where he was playing cards with a friend.
“I really should go.”
Genya released me but as I moved away, he snatched me up again. “Don’t. Don’t ever go.” His arms tightened around me. “Don’t go to them. I can’t stand it. I hate them. I want to fight a duel with your father. I want to have him on the ground under my boot. I’ll show him no mercy.”
I searched for his mouth again.
“Marry me,” he said. “Come live with me. You don’t have to go back.”
I thought of that room, the divan with the dirty sheets, Anton pounding on the door. “But how shall we all sleep? Standing up like horses in a stall?”
“We’ll levitate. Sleep in midair. The night will be our eiderdown.”
I had to kiss a mouth like that. I rested my fingers on his lips, memorizing them like a blind girl. And then I left him there, watching me, the dry leaves whirling about his feet.
24 The Coming Storm
PIPE TOBACCO GREETED me when I returned. I walked past the doors of my father’s study, straight to my room, wondering if it was too late to take a bath. I began to peel off my hastily assembled clothing—I’d misbuttoned my dress. It made me laugh. How I would have loved to spend the night in Genya’s arms, in that little flat, even with its fleas and Anton writing his articles. But I couldn’t be greedy. It would have been too strange if the Interlocutors had returned while we were lying together in the wash of fragrance and sweat, talking about childhood, about rivers and birds.
Sitting before my round vanity mirror, I began to brush out my hair. What a crop of snarls. I still remembered it flowing down, framing Genya’s face in a red waterfall. The enamel bangle fell back from my wrist. Why did I still wear it? It seemed a sign of something, a delectable complication. I was not too young to have had a past, I thought with a certain pride. That’s how young I was.
In the hall, a shuffle. A quiet knock. The door cracked open. Ginevra, still fully dressed. I returned to my toilette. My face was smooth with satisfaction. Hers, on the other hand, was worried and drawn. “Your father’s been waiting. He wants to speak to you.”
“He told me he never wanted to speak to me again. I’m taking him at his word.”
“Marina, don’t be a child.”
If I were Mother, I would pretend I had a headache. But I was not her. I would rather face the firing squad and get it over with. I threw a shawl over my nightgown, hoping I didn’t stink too badly of lovemaking, and followed the English down the corridor, preparing for a brawl.
I found Father at his desk, in the room I’d always loved, with its soft green striped wallpaper covered with photographs, its masculine smell of tobacco and leather and wood smoke. The big leather-topped desk with its spindle corral kept his papers from running away. The light from the green-shaded lamp washed over the bookcases on the walls, making Tolstoy and John Stuart Mill my witnesses. My father looked the same as always, only with a harder edge, his crisp, wavy hair even crisper, his neat beard more sharply trimmed. He stared me down. “You couldn’t wait twelve hours to go running off to your…factory boy?” he said.
I should have expected this. No one grants freedom—it has to be won. Our revolution had taught us that much. “That’s right. I went to see him. He’s not going to disappear. I’ll leave if you want me to, but I won’t be a prisoner.”
He fiddled with his tobacco pouch, packed the bowl of his pipe. His delicate fingers scrabbled, uncertain, in the curly threads. “Don’t I have enough to do without you running around the city like a bitch in heat? It’s disgusting. I should have left you at Maryino.”
Although I told myself I cared not at all what he thought, this characterization struck me with force, and my tears came. As if it was his right, as if he owned me. “Is that your answer? Move the women to the country, your son to military school?”
I noticed a subtle shift in his expression, a slight smile. He could see he had landed his blow. But there was something more. “Sorry to disappoint you, but in fact your brother is adjusting quite well.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“He’s made friends. He even won a prize in mathematics.” He opened the right-hand drawer of his heavy desk and took out a small packet of letters, set them on the leather desktop. He tipped his chair back, clasped his hands behind his head.
The letters were addressed in Seryozha’s handwriting, although I did notice the flourishes had been subdued. Already changing. The postmark was Moscow. I wiped my eyes on the back of my hand, and opened one of them.
My bunkmate’s name is Pyotr Gagarin. He’s from Suzdal. He’s pretty funny. I’m learning to fence. It’s strict but not impossible. And nobody compares me to Volodya. I miss Petrograd, but Moscow’s impressive. They let us out in the afternoons. I love how old it is. The bells are incredible.
Another letter. I let my eyes drift down the page. He was playing poker and had not lost his spending money yet, had even won a few rubles.
Though I make sure to lose some afterward so the others won’t think I’m a shark. I won a prize in geometry, if you can believe it. They’re sure my draftsmanship will get me into the engineers. I’m starting to think that’s not such a bad idea.
He was learning to ride. They had given him a horse named Flea with three white stockings, “a most intelligent fellow.” I couldn’t put any of this together with the boy I knew as well as I knew any human being on earth. A horse? He’d always been terrified of anything bigger than our mother’s dog. And here were drawings: a quizzical bay, presumably Flea. Moscow, the church domes of every shape and size. A little crooked lane, a marketplace. Boys at meals, sitting very straight, their backs not touching the chairs.
I folded the letters into their envelopes, trying not to show any emotion. It couldn’t be real. “He’s faking. He’s just trying to please you.”
“Why don’t you want to believe that your brother is doing fine without you? That while you’re making a mess of your life he’s actually straightening himself out?”
Doing all right. Making friends. Doing all the things boys do. Trying to be the boy our father wanted him to be. Doubt shook me by the neck, like a terrier with a rat. If Father was right about Seryozha, what else was he right about? He thoughtfully cradled his pipe in his palm. “I called you here because I’ve made a decision. About your future.” He made me wait while he lit up again—his lawyer’s trick. “I will send you to England to complete your education.”
He caught me so off guard that I couldn’t formulate a response. I had just gotten home a few hours ago.
“Miss Haddon-Finch will accompany you,” he continued in a puff of fragrant smoke. “Some of my contacts have already made the arrangements.” Just like when he sent Seryozha to Moscow. It’s all been arranged. “You’ll stay with Mrs. Sibley’s sister in London this fall, take some time to get to know the city. Then in the spring you’ll apply to St. Hilda’s.”
Oxford. I’d dreamed about it ever since the year we spent in England, when he was lecturing at Christ Church. Clever, clever Father. He was offering me Oxford in exchange for the revolution, in exchange for Genya. My father hadn’t forgotten about university at all. He’d just made it impossible for me to attend here while offering an attractive alternative.
How different life would be if I took him up on this offer. I pictured myself moving through the cloisters of Oxford, talking about Shakespeare and Keats. Tea with the dons, rowing on the Thames with those shining girls. It all seemed so retrograde to me now. Could
I really see myself going off to Oxford to study dead English poets when there were living poets here in Russia I called by their first names? My country was transforming itself beyond anything England ever hoped for. St. Hilda’s had been the dream of a ten-year-old girl. I was a Russian poet, a woman. I would make my own life, to suit myself, and my future was here. “You still don’t see—I’m not your pawn, to be moved here and there to your liking. I believe in the revolution, and I intend to be part of it.”
My father’s face flushed dark against his curly reddish-brown beard. “Just because you’re here doesn’t mean you’re part of it, and just because you’re running around with a loudmouthed hooligan doesn’t make you a revolutionary. Only a trollop. And an idiot to boot.”
I was surprised how little it stung. “Go ahead, call me names. But I’ll continue to see that so-called hooligan. He’s an artist and a revolutionary and we’re very much in love.”
“The triple disaster,” my father said. He sighed, pressing his hands to his eyes.
As we glared at each other across the broad expanse of the desk, locked in that showdown, I saw we were exactly the same—our stubbornness the same, our brown eyes, his reddish-brown hair concentrated into my flaming red. I was more his child than he knew. But my womanhood had put a permanent barrier between us. He didn’t know how to be the father of a woman, and womanhood could not be undone. The future already a fact.
I left dry-eyed and gracefully, without so much as slamming the door. I felt strangely that I had won and yet lost.
My room already felt different to me, as if it belonged to someone else, someone who treasured trinkets and keepsakes and pictures in silver frames, a girl with lace-collared dresses. I had always loved the salmon-pink walls, but now they were cloying. I knew that whatever happened to me, to us, I would not be here long. Whoever this woman was that I was becoming, she would not live in a room like this.