Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

“But for how long?” Fanya wondered out loud once Kollontai had left. “She’s going to speak for the Workers’ Opposition at the World Congress.”

“How do you know?”

“She told me before you arrived.”

“Oh dear,” Caitlin said, for want of something stronger. If the Zhenotdel director went against Lenin’s wishes, and spoke up for the Workers’ Opposition in front of the foreign comrades, she would almost certainly be inviting retaliation against her own organization, and Russia’s women would be the losers.

“Do you think it’s worth trying to change her mind?” Fanya asked. “She sometimes listens to you.”

“She listens to everyone,” Caitlin said. “And then she goes her own sweet way. And she’s usually right. Maybe this time as well. She sees the whole picture better than we do.”

“I hope so,” Fanya said, sounding far from convinced. “Because if she’s wrong…”

“The Orgbureau will have to find a lower place than last on their daily agenda.”

That at least made Fanya laugh.

Caitlin picked up her bag, checked its contents. “I’m going home. It’s been a depressing day, and I want to catch Sergei before he goes out.”

An hour later she waswishing she hadn’t. An innocent remark of hers had sparked an argument, and that in turn had swiftly escalated into a major row, one that encompassed not only them but also their world and everything in it.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” she said, as he stood there with head in both hands, as if he feared it might fly off. She could feel the tightly wound force of his anger and the precarious control she had over her own.

She tried chiding him gently: “You once said that living through that first year was more than any man could hope for.”

“I was wrong,” he said coldly, blue eyes brimming with the pain she could never seem to reach.

“You were right,” she retorted. “We have to remember how far we’ve come.”

“It doesn’t seem so far since they’ve started dragging us backward. And with people like you so sold on the wonders of the New Economic Policy that you won’t lift a finger to stop them.”

The quivering finger aimed at her face was too much. “I’m not pretending everything is wonderful,” she said icily. “If anyone’s pretending, it’s you. It’s you who’s stuck in—” She heard her own voice rising and cut it off. “This is getting us nowhere.”

“Stuck in what?” he asked, as if he actually wanted to know.

“In… in this all or nothing mentality,” she said. She knew by now that she was probably wasting her breath, but persisted regardless. “You behave like a child who throws away a toy because it’s not the exact one you wanted. You either sit here and sulk, or you sit in your club and get drunk with your equally apoplectic friends and wonder where utopia went. For God’s sake, Sergei, if you think we’re being dragged back, then why not pull in the other direction? If people like you and your friends don’t take responsibility, you can hardly complain when careerists grab all the jobs that matter.”

He’d been inching toward her, and for a moment she actually thought he would hit her, something he’d never done. He didn’t, but the smile he offered instead was full of contempt. “You’re living in a dreamworld,” he told her.

“I may be,” she snapped back. “I know you are. Take a walk, Sergei; look around the city. Take a train out into the country. Everyone’s exhausted. Everyone’s hungry. We needed peace. And by God we needed the NEP—”

“Like a man with broken legs needs brand-new boots,” he said sarcastically. “You take a walk. Every day we’re giving away the things we fought for, the things our comrades died for. You’re so wrapped up in your women that you can’t see the truth in front of your face. Don’t you realize that it will all have been for nothing? All the death, all the suffering. And you have the nerve to accuse me of shirking responsibility!” He reached for his cap, face pale with rage. “Because I won’t accept your blind optimism, I have to be sulking!” he almost shouted in her face. “It’s you who needs to wake up!”

The door slammed behind him, and she waited for the wash of cold indifference that she knew would follow. Each time it came a little quicker. Saving her, destroying what was left of them.

She stood there, fists clenched, for several moments, then slowly spread her fingers. The papers she’d brought home from the office were on the table. There was work to be done.

It was past midnight whenshe finally put down the pen, stretched out her arms and legs, and yawned. Her eyes ached and she felt thirsty. After adding the finished report to the pile, she went to plug in the hot plate under the kettle. The socket gave its usual impersonation of a firework, just in case she’d forgotten that the building needed rewiring. Some hope. The whole of Russia needed rewiring.

She remembered Lenin saying that electrification plus the soviets equaled Communism. It would probably be a long wait.

She went across to the window and leaned out. It was gone midnight, and the heat of the day seemed at last to be dissipating. In the street below, two drunks were having a loud but good-natured argument about which breeds of dog made the tastiest stew. She wondered how drunk Sergei would be if and when he came home, and whether by then he’d be angry with her or himself.

She pulled what remained of the curtain across the window and roamed restlessly around the room, waiting for the water to boil.

The box of photographs caught her eye. She took it down and sat on the bed, then, after a moment’s hesitation, opened it. Her family stared up at her. They were standing outside the church on Fifty-Eighth Street, all in their Sunday best. Almost ten years ago now—her father still looked middle-aged, and so did her Aunt Orla. Her brother Fergus had either taken the picture or had already moved to Washington at the time; her sister, Finola, still looked like a child, though she must have been almost twenty. All were smiling but her younger brother, Colm, who was doing his best to look like a stranger. Colm who had died in the Tower of London, refusing to admit he had any regrets.

She didn’t miss her father, nor Fergus or Finola, much though she loved the two siblings. But she did miss Colm, and by God she missed her aunt. It was almost six months since the last letter had reached Moscow, and that had been posted two months before. She had no idea whether Orla had received the last few she’d sent. Or whether Orla was still alive. Orla was sixty-eight now, and over the last few years she’d had several bouts of serious illness.

Maybe next year things would be easier here in Moscow, and traveling abroad wouldn’t be so difficult. Surely no one would begrudge her a month away, not after all this time.

Picking the photograph up, she recognized the corner of another and pulled it out from under the pile. It was her and Jack McColl, arm in arm on the Coney Island beach, in the spring of 1914. More than seven years ago.

With an angry sigh, she closed the box. The past was the past—there was no point in trying to live there, no point in trying to bring it back. Particularly when there were no real regrets. Sadness perhaps, but she’d never caught herself longing to turn the clock back, never wished she’d taken a wholly different path.

She made the tea, placed it on the chair by the bed, and undressed. She reached for the threadbare white nightgown, then left it where it was. It was too hot.

She turned off the light and sat up in bed sipping the tea. Outside in the street, two cats were screeching, presumably at each other. Like Sergei and her, she thought, remembering their row.