Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

When Jack wasn’t with her, the reality of her situation quickly reasserted itself. The frustration and boredom that came with enforced seclusion was bad enough without the knowledge that what followed might well be worse. When she did get to leave the house, it would probably be to see Sergei, and since she doubted that anything good would come from the meeting, that prospect was far from enticing. She didn’t want anyone killed—Jack, Sergei, even Brady—but a peaceful resolution was hard to imagine.

She thought about their conversation of the night before. Jack had been honest, she thought, probably more so than she had. She still wasn’t sure why she’d come all this way, or which of the reasons she’d given were half-truths and rationalizations.

It was certainly true that she felt an obligation to Sergei and, rather more surprisingly, one to Komarov as well. What she hadn’t mentioned to Jack was her reluctance to leave him again.

All feelings, of course. A cold appraisal told her that Sergei and Komarov had respectively abandoned and kidnapped her and had thereby forfeited any claim to loyalty. And if her work in Moscow wasn’t more important than her feelings for Jack, why had she given him up in the first place? With the Zhenotdel facing a probable crisis, getting home to the capital should have been her top priority.

She told herself things might have been different if there’d been an easy way to return, if trains had been running to Kerki, if it hadn’t seemed certain that Brady and her husband would disable the Red Turkestan . She could have insisted that the soldiers take her back across the desert, but memories of the way some had looked at her on the outbound trip had been enough to quash that idea. Being raped, murdered, and left for the vultures hadn’t seemed like much of a future. So going on with Jack had hardly been irrational.

Trouble was, she knew she’d have done it anyway.

And even more disturbing than the knowledge that she wanted to go with him was the realization that she had no burning desire to go back. Or at least not yet. She remembered telling Jack, on the day they left Kerki, that as far as each other was concerned, they would have to learn to live in the present. And for seven wonderful weeks, they’d given a good impression of doing so. But she’d known it couldn’t last forever, that sooner or later the future would come banging on her door.

Did she just need a break? Her life over the last three years had been a damned sight easier than the lives of most Russians, but it had still been a great deal harder than anything she’d ever known before. Ten-hour days and six-day weeks without any breaks in a country whose economy had virtually collapsed and whose people were dying in droves. It might have been worth it—she still thought it had been—but the cost had been high. Almost everyone she knew seemed physically and emotionally drained, herself included. So why not take the long way back—leave India with Jack, visit her family in Brooklyn, and only then return to her desk in Moscow?

Or was that also self-deluding? Over the last few months, other people’s doubts and worries about the state of the revolution had felt like constant companions. Sergei’s sense of betrayal, Komarov’s fear of where all the killing would lead them, Kollontai’s pessimism, and Arbatov’s gaping chasm—only four years had passed since all these people had ecstatically welcomed the revolution, and now the only thing they had in common was the sense that it was all going wrong.

The revolution had certainly lost its soft edges, its warmth and comradeship. And, she thought, its outlandishness, its impudence and cheek. It had become less Irish, more English. Lenin might look like a leprechaun, but these days he felt more like an irascible principal whose pupils had let him down.

The sound of children’s voices came floating through the window, but she couldn’t see anyone. They were probably in that courtyard she and McColl had been shown. Why not go down and see? Harry Sinha hadn’t objected to her meeting his wife.

She dressed in her Russian clothes, which she had finally managed to wash and dry in the serai the previous day. The long skirt and linen blouse seemed modest enough, as did the leather sandals she’d been wearing since Kabul.

It took some time to find her way down to the courtyard because the house—houses, really—seemed like a labyrinth. The young voices rose and fell, coming from this direction and that, until she turned the handle on a large wooden gate and found herself the object of many astonished eyes.

One of the women—a girl, really; she couldn’t have been much more than fifteen—broke the spell by walking forward, smiling, and ushering Caitlin to one of the seats. “You must be our father’s guest,” she said slowly in English, before unleashing a torrent of Urdu at the other women and children.

Caitlin introduced herself.

“I am Maneka,” the girl said, bringing her hands together in a namaskar . Like all the other girls, she was wearing a white muslin shift with a colored border. Bangles carved from bone circled her forearms. “You are English?” she asked.

“American. I grew up in New York City. Have you heard of it?”

“Yes. There’s a picture in one of my books—the Statue of Liberty.”

“That’s the place. Now can you tell me the other girls’ names?”

Maneka introduced everyone in turn, starting with Katima, whom Caitlin knew was Sinha’s wife, and then presumably working her way down through the family pecking order. The three adult women smiled and brought their palms together; the seven other girls giggled and did the same. The big bright eyes in the dark brown faces made them all seem astonishingly beautiful.

Katima’s English was not very good, and after sharing a warm but halting conversation with Harry’s wife for several minutes, Caitlin was claimed by one of the girls, who shyly asked her to come and see a pair of lizards resting on a rubbery leaf on the other side of the courtyard. Then another child demanded attention, and another, until Maneka pulled rank and asked for help with her English. By the time an hour had passed, Caitlin was feeling almost part of the family.

On those rare occasions when she had some time for reflection, she felt the gentle pull of two contradictory emotions: on the one hand, the old anger at women’s position in the world—these women sequestered in their courtyard, while the men ran the world outside—and on the other, a slight hint of envy.

What was she envious of? The simple camaraderie, perhaps. And knowing your place in the world rather than having to fight for it every day. Which was no more than she should have expected—no one knew better than a Zhenotdel worker how hard it was for women to set aside those expectations learned in childhood and reinforced each day thereafter.

Watching one of the smaller girls rocking a doll to and fro in her arms, Caitlin wondered, not for the first time, whether she wanted children. Maybe later had always been the answer, but she was in her thirties now, and she didn’t want age to decide the matter for her.

Something of this must have shown in her face, because Maneka’s next question was on the button. “Children,” the girl said tentatively, waving an arm at the ones all around them. “You have?”

“No,” Caitlin said. She still could. She could turn her back on Russia, stay with Jack, hope to bear their children. Was that a life she wanted? Was that the life she wanted most?

Deep inside the heavily perfumedbush, McColl removed the kurta, dhoti and turban he had been wearing on top of his European shirt and trousers. That was the trouble with the British Empire, he thought, rolling the trouser legs down—if you didn’t want to stick out like a sore thumb, you had to swap outfits every time you changed social circles.