“Vladimir the Cossack and his Horse of Marvels!” I imitated his ringmaster tone.
“That fat pony. It was always trying to bite me,” Kolya said, toying with his cigar. “What was its name?”
“Carlyle.”
“Dmitry Ivanovich’s choice, no doubt. I was terrified of your father in those days. I was sure he’d catch on that I was in love with Vera Borisovna and challenge me to a duel.” He traced the top curve of my breast, then the U of it. “I had my first orgasm thinking about her.”
Only Kolya would admit to such a thing. I wondered how he liked her now—crazy, in her nightdress, trying to untangle that nest of fine chains.
“I lived for those summers,” he said, his fingers in my cropped hair, my head tucked under his chin. I could hear his voice rumbling through his chest. “Listening to Vera Borisovna sing on the porch after dinner—do you remember?” He brushed his fingers against my abraded lips. “She would come and kiss Volodya good night. The windows all open, a gentle breeze, and her in her evening gown, her perfume…”
“Après l’Ondée.”
“She’d kiss him, then she’d come over and kiss me, too. On the forehead. I think it was the zenith of my young life.”
I nuzzled his well-shaved cheek. His lime cologne. Who else would remember her as she had been, in her lilac dress, her bare shoulders, the laughter in the twilight? “Thanks for taking care of her. It was good of you.”
Outside the wind whistled, shaking the outer windows, where in here, only the springs spoke, the crackle of the fire.
“I wish I could do more.” He plumped the fat pillows, sat up higher. “I think the English girl might have better luck getting them out. They take care of their own, the English.”
“I hope so. But Mother doesn’t seem to care anymore. Seryozha’s death was the last blow.”
He stubbed out his cigar, drank off the port, and placed the empty glass on the bedside table. “Just as well,” he said. “What’s left, even if she does get out? No money, no skills. Maybe she could remarry…but if not, can you imagine Vera Borisovna in a bedsit in London, living off charity?”
“Father has friends in London. Surely they’d be of some help.”
He kicked off the sheets, wiping the sweat from his face and revealing the red-gold glow of his body in the lamplight. “Oh, it would be fine at first. The distinguished guest, risking all to flee to the West. Embraces all around. But one week turns into six, then to ten, and they’re wondering if she’s ever going to leave. Hints about the family closing up house and traveling for a while. She gets the message, and so comes the ghostly drift from home to home, begging for a little space. ‘No, don’t trouble yourself, dear.’ I think she knows that. If it were me, I’d rather starve to death in my own bed.”
“I think that’s what she’s doing.”
How callous we’d become, to talk calmly about Mother with such fatalism. If I left Russia with her, I could support her, save her from the fate Kolya had so vividly outlined. But I had turned down Father’s offer of England. I had chosen to align my fate with Russia’s.
Kolya pulled me to him, draping my leg over his hip. I tasted his port wine cigar breath as his lips brushed mine. “I’ve told Dmitry Ivanovich he ought to leave, for her sake.”
“Let’s not talk about him.”
“But he’s decided to defend Russia instead. Citizen Quixote.” He pressed his hand to mine, palm to palm, and slowly our curled fingers interlocked like swans bowing their heads in the corps de ballet. “Poor devil.”
“Don’t you dare feel sorry for him.”
“I feel sorry for every living soul right now.”
We lay there for a while, mournfully, understanding our mutual weaknesses, not needing to speak. Seryozha was dead, the world was exploding, and what we had was our passion for each other, our mingled souls and histories. The fire cracked and popped.
Finally he brightened. “Wait!” He got up out of bed, padded out to the sitting room, his strong muscled buttocks and thighs bare in the firelight. “Remember this?” The gramophone by the settee, all set up for a night of love—with Mina. My anger flared like a sudden rash and died away just as quickly when the guitar, the voice of Carlos Gardel filled the lantern-flickering room. Mina didn’t tango. He held out his arms for me to come join him. The song spoke to what was true about us—passion and danger, longing, rebellion, tenderness. I didn’t have to know Spanish to understand what it was about.
Naked, we danced, slowly, separated only by the thickness of our bodies, our essential selves once again foiled from perfect fusion by bones and flesh, and yet still yearning.
Kolya opened the drapes. Outside, the dark winter dawn crawled toward us along the white brow of the Neva. He’d already dressed, was in his old army uniform—epaulets removed for safety’s sake, officers being uninvited guests at the party of the revolution—and set a tray on the bed. Real coffee and good black bread, herring and sour cream. “Where are you going?”
“I’ve got business,” he said. Beezneez—he used the English word. “I’ll be back. Keep warm. Eat something.”
“What business?” I sat up in bed. Out on the Neva, one sledge toiled along, like an ant in a sugar bowl. “There’s no business in Petrograd.”
The corners of his eyes turned up like his nose. “That’s when there’s the most business.” He kissed my lips, bruised from the nighttime of unaccustomed passion. Smoothed my hair. “Silly.”
“Don’t go.” I clung to him.
He grabbed my haunch. For some reason my flesh always conformed to the shape of his hand. “You think I’m not coming back? With that waiting for me?”
I pulled him toward me. I was raw as a grated radish, but I still wanted more. My greed was unslakable. “Forget business.”
“I’m not a girl,” he said, kissing me again. “I can’t loll around in bed all day dreaming and writing love poems. I’ve got things to do. But I’ll be back. There’s a pail of water by the washstand. Stay warm and think about me.” He pushed me away gently, stood, buttoned his coat, sticking his fur hat on his head.
And he was gone.
I ate fatty herring, sour cream, and black bread. After the previous night, I felt drugged, so safe in this hidden place, the smell of my love all over me, the tattered splendor. I hadn’t realized how tired I was. Tired of queues and district soviets and frozen potatoes, tired of the communal squalor of the Poverty Artel, tired of the daily terrors and having to be a grown-up every day, tired of thinking and fighting and waiting my turn, while the real me was left unknown. I sat on the fragrant bed and watched the snow fall outside the windows. I should go and tell Genya what had happened. The knowledge tugged at me, but it seemed too far away. As any child can tell you, you must not leave an enchanted place or it will be lost to you forever. All that will remain will be a ribbon or a slipper, an enameled bracelet on your arm, the smell of honey and Floris Limes in your hair.
33 Speculation
I KNEW WHAT BEEZNEEZ Kolya was conducting out there. Every morning the citizens of Petrograd woke to see blood in the snow where some speculator had been shot by the Cheka overnight, caught hoarding or dealing in contraband. Dressed in black leather, with Mausers at their hips, bands of Chekists raided buildings all night long. Not the Poverty Artel—we were too poor for hoarding—but in the front building, when the electric lights came on after midnight, everyone knew a raid was about to occur. And I’d found a hidden space off the mansion’s laundry room piled high with barrels and boxes, rugs, art in frames. It was strictly illegal—all art belonged to the people now, their national heritage. Perhaps some of my parents’ things, too.
Before the last of the sun’s frosty light dropped into the gulf, footsteps sounded on the bare parquet. I hid behind the door, but it was Kolya, balancing two full bags, one on each arm. He unpacked them gleefully, like a child, showing me cheese, butter, potted meats, a dusty bottle of Napoleon cognac under a red wax seal.
“Manna, my d
ear. Hallelujah.” He made the sign of the cross, priestlike, over a can of deviled ham.
“The Cheka has permission to shoot speculators on sight,” I said.
He pinched my cheeks as one would a fussy child. “Lucky for me, their eyesight isn’t too good.” He pulled at a lock of my hair, let it fall. “I wish you hadn’t cut it. I miss it long. Was it always this red?”
“Mother hated the red.” I watched him open the brandy, breaking the seal, tucking it under his arm, pulling the cork. “She thought it was vulgar. When I was little, she used to have Avdokia rinse it with rosemary and walnut shells to try to darken it.”
“Didn’t want to be upstaged,” he said. The cognac unstoppered, he went looking for the glasses. They were still by the bed where we’d left them the night before.
He sliced a fat piece of ham and held it out to me. I opened my mouth for him to feed it to me instead. I would have liked to be one of those dogs who can’t eat if not fed by the master’s hand. As I ate, I wondered what it would be like to live with him, to follow him out into his mysterious world. It would be like walking through the looking glass. What lay on the other side of his life? Abandoned houses, villages, woods, gypsy camps? Was it true that there were men who could not love the way a woman loved, completely, devotedly? Akhmatova wrote,
No, I will not drink wine with you—
You’re a naughty one.
I know your ways—you’d kiss
Any girl beneath any moon.
I dreamed about fish swimming in dark currents under the frozen Neva. I was visited by the ghosts of the dead mansion, dressed in the fashion of the 1830s, watching us, watching me. I dreamed of Pierrot, Harlequin, and Columbine, and they became mixed together with Katya and the tough and the Red Guardsman from Blok’s poem, all at a masked ball in an open square like the Field of Mars, in the swirling snow.
The next night Kolya didn’t return though the hour grew late. I had no way to gauge the time once darkness came, but I imagined it was at least midnight and still no sign. I lit the lamps, waited. Paced. Imagined him dead. Shot, robbed, arrested. But no, surely he’d been delayed with one of his customers, some old gent who had opened a bottle of wine hidden for months in a dusty cellar, accompanied by treasured cigars. A school chum, someone from the university he stumbled across on Nevsky Prospect. In a city like this, it could be anything. Arrest, interrogation.
Or a woman. The thing I should not have imagined was impossible not to. The female body sang for him, and, as they say, a great violinist can play any violin. If I can’t have caviar…but he did have it. Absurd to think he could go from our bed, so thoroughly torn and abused that I had to completely remake it each morning, to someone else’s. We already made love four times a day. But what of his need for admiration, for desire? It drove him before it like the wind. Yes, he could be with some poor lovely Former he was “helping.” Just beezneez.
“Are you even a soldier anymore?” I’d asked the night before. His unit was down in the Ukraine—or were they? The Ukraine’s Rada, its parliament, had just signed a separate peace with the Germans while the Bolsheviks were still negotiating to end the war.
“It’s uncertain,” he said. “I’m still in touch with my superiors.” He arced his head from side to side, neither yes nor no. “Let’s say I’m a useful fellow.”
Yes, I imagined he was. Sitting in someone’s parlor—desperate Former People struggling to maintain their dignity—examining their objets d’art, a Fabergé egg, a jeweled dragonfly. They would speak of old times, friends in common, parties they’d attended—Oh, you were there?—pretending that nothing so low as commerce was taking place. While he eyed the dark-haired daughter, or the mistress of the house…the oval portrait on the yellow wall followed me with her eyes. You, too?
Well, they couldn’t eat their silver, their art. Wasn’t I grateful for the money he had left hidden behind the tiles in my father’s stove? What good were our Repin, our Bakst, Vrubel’s portrait of my mother in such times? You could not stoke the tin stoves with them. You could not get passage to Finland with their beauty.
I drank wine and out of sheer perversity imagined every violent fate that might have met him, then became terrified that it had really happened, that my ugly thoughts might actually become reality. Please bring him back, I prayed. But he’d always flown back before, eager for me, shortly after dark. Was he tiring of me, my neediness, my unquenchable passion? My body ached for him.
He returned in the early hours of the morning, stinking of vodka, reeling like a circus clown. Sank down upon the settee and attempted to take his boots off, failed. He held one foot up for me to help him pull it off, but I ignored it. He let it fall with a thud. “The city’s a ruin,” he said, removing a cigar from inside his jacket and cutting off the tip, lighting it. He puffed blue smoke into the air. “I fell over a dead horse tonight. Almost broke my damned neck. A dead goddamn horse, right in the middle of Bolshaya Morskaya.”
“Write to the mayor. Tell him dead horses are bad for beezneez.”
He stuck his cigar between his teeth and tried pulling his boot off again. “Marina,” he said cajolingly. “Marinoushka.” Drunkenly, he held his leg up with both hands, wagged it at me. I pulled off the offending footwear and tossed it into the fireplace, watched him scramble on hands and knees for his burning sole. His soul. Who did he think I was? “What the devil’s gotten into you?” he asked, retrieving the smoldering object, brushing off the ash and embers.
“I thought you’d been shot. Anything could have happened. I hate just sitting, wondering whether you’re dead or alive.”
“Then you should be happy.” He grinned, teasing me, and touched my nose with a sooty forefinger. “So what’s the temper? I’ve been out seeing which way the wind’s blowing. Making my daily bread.” One boot on, one boot off, he poured himself a small glass of vodka, lifted it to me, and drank.
I sniffed him, his face, his collar. His hands. No trace of perfume. Nothing but cigar and vodka, maybe herring. “And you were mugged by a distillery.”
“An old friend of mine gave a little party.” He fumbled with the other boot and finally got it off. “Seems that she’d invited a poet. A great big boor spouting Bolshevik nonsense. Drunk as a cobbler.” He unbuttoned the top few buttons of his tunic as if it were choking him. “God I hate poets. They should all be long dead, leaving us their words but not their stink.” He grinned. “Especially this one, this ox, walking on her couch with his dirty boots, bellowing some dreadful love poems about some girl or other, some tramp who didn’t come home.”
Oh God, wasn’t there enough torment in this world? Genya, drunk, suffering…because of me. Kolya disgusted me, my own desire for him disgusted me, and yet—God!—this was me, not that brave, plucky girl so proud of heating water on a little stove.
“Stupid sap,” he said, staring at his cigar. “In a state like that over some little whore.”
“You bastard.” I snatched the Havana out of his mouth and tried to throw it, but he grabbed my wrist and slapped me across the face so fast I barely knew he had done it.
I held my hand to my cheek. The burn of it. The surprise.
“Oh God,” he said, realizing what he had done. “Marina.”
I began to scramble for my clothes, my woolen hose, my boots. I could hardly see through my tears.
“Stop, stop,” he took my boots from my hands, put them back on the floor. “Marina, oh God.” He sank to his knees, lay his head on my thighs, his tears soaking me. “I’m jealous, I admit it. I loved seeing him suffer. A big handsome devil like that. A Bolshevik! Oh, he’s going to go far in this new world of ours.”
How drunk was he? He was crazy! “I’m here with you, Kolya! Can’t you see that?”
“Yes, that’s just what I thought. I wanted to tell him, ‘I know where she is. She’s with me.’ Really work him up. Maybe he’d jump out the window.”
I could hardly take a breath. “But you didn’t.”
“No. Of co
urse not. A man like that could kill you with his bare hands.” He walked to the table on his knees and poured more vodka into his glass, sat heavily on the floor. “But you’d been his. This admirable fellow, this poet…and who am I? What am I? So I went out and got drunk.”
I sat down with him and rested my forehead against his. We two impossible people, in this impossible life.
“I do love you so, Marina,” he said. He had never said that word before. It worked its way under my skin, through the cage of my ribs, under my breastplate. It buried itself inside me like a jewel sewn inside a smuggler.
The next morning, I woke to noise somewhere in the house. I had been here long enough to sense the change. Rattling, men’s voices. Kolya came in, dressed and composed, a far different man from the one he’d shown me the night before. Nowhere could I see the vulnerability, the madness. This man was sober, efficient, all business. “We’re clearing out,” he said. “You’ve got to get dressed.”
I rose, looking for my clothes. “Where are we going?”
“Not you. Me. My men.”
“What men?” What was he talking about? I was with him now. There was no way back, no second plan. “Your regiment’s gone. They’re in the Don, with the Volunteers.”
He spoke softly, apologetically. “These are my own men, Marina.”
“Why can’t you take me, then? You have to. I don’t care where we’re going. You can’t leave me again.”
He knelt on the bed, pushed me back flat onto the quilt. “Go back to your poet,” he whispered in my ear. “You’re safe with him—though God knows I hope he doesn’t drink often. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Or go back to Vera Borisovna’s. But you can’t stay here and you can’t come with me.” Making me look into his eyes, see the seriousness there.