Джанет Фитч - Chimes of a Lost Cathedral

Matron was speaking to someone on the telephone, from what I could gather tracking down a load of rice. “It’s here, you devils, just bring it—before you find yourself in the fortress.” She lowered the earpiece to the cradle with a smart click, and took in the sight of me. She’d not changed—still a wall against the chaos—calm, heavy, and capable. “Are you back?”

“I want to help. Whatever you need.”

She smiled. “I saw you read, Comrade. At the House of Arts.”

A sun rose inside me. There were few people whose opinion really mattered to me, and hers was one of them. “I’m sorry I didn’t see you.”

“I didn’t want to disturb you. Sometimes I see you walking. It’s good you’ve come. Not everyone can look at this. Most people turn their heads, and how could they not? A problem without a solution, only grief.”

I started in the canteen. Little food, children in rags, scarce water. They were short on everything—chairs, and adults. So many orphans. All I could do was help them sit down, four to a chair, and keep the old-timers from grabbing their food and terrorizing them. Later, I washed them—Boys 6–9, a lesson in horror. What could keep human beings alive with so little flesh on them, their ribs like birdcages made of bamboo. I smiled and washed them as they stared and stared. Sang them a song, “Fais Dodo, Colin.”

There were few fights now—mostly they were in shock—but keeping them from being preyed on by the old-timers was no easy task. They’d snatch the food on its way to the new ones’ mouths. I put them to bed, told them stories—no sorcerers or magical infants, only funny tales of talking cows and wise ravens and sneaky foxes. They were as hungry for the security of a big person’s care as they were for potatoes and vobla.

I’d meant to spend only a day or two but ended up staying on through the days and nights, taking up the rhythm of the orphanage, soothing, watching over the children in their sleep, five to a bed, head to tail and more on the floor. Held them when they woke up screaming. What these children had endured to make that journey of thousands of miles—crossing the famine regions on foot, then fleeing by train to the farthest reaches of the country in search of food. I still remembered the children huddled on the carriage’s platform that night I shot the Chekist and shoved the body off the train. These children wanted to hear stories about houses of spun sugar where you could eat the doors and windows, about sheep knee-deep in green grass, and wolves valiantly beaten off by brave children with sticks.

One morning I returned to the House of Arts for my ration cards, to find the residents crowding the downstairs corridor outside the canteen. They stared at me as if I’d intruded from another world, as if I’d grown three heads. Anton pushed through the throng, flung his arms around me as if I’d just been saved from a shipwreck. “Where have you been?”

“At the orphanage,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“They arrested Gumilev,” Shafranskaya chimed in, her white hair twisted into a messy chignon, her crumpled floral dress misbuttoned. “Woke up the porter. Forced him to lead them to his room. And then to yours! They tossed it, took your notes, asked me and Alla if we knew where you were. Of course, we’d never heard of you. We didn’t even speak Russian.”

“Where’s Gumilev’s wife?” I asked. She’d come back from the country just at the wrong time.

“Still up there. She’s in shock.”

They’d arrested Gumilev. He always said they’d never arrest him—they had a gentleman’s agreement, him and the regime. He would teach, serve the Bolshevik state, and stay out of politics, and they would let him have his opinions, his prayers, his antique beliefs, and go on writing. Evidently not. Varvara had told me as much. It’s starting to look like a picture. “Has anyone told Gorky?”

No one knew.

I ran. I flew. Down Nevsky, through the General Staff arch, across Palace Square to the Troitsky Bridge. I caught a tram past the fortress, where Nikolai Stepanovich might now be imprisoned in a cold cell. I had missed the Cheka search by just a few hours. Saved by orphans. It didn’t matter that I’d drowned my dossier in the Neva. They had come for me anyway.

Though it was a hot August morning, I could feel the damp, cold walls of the Troubetskoy Bastion, the weight of the low ceiling. I did not turn my eyes from the east as we trundled past the fortress, staring into the sun glinting on the river until I jumped from the tram at Kronverksky Prospect and ran to Gorky’s house.

Molecule answered the door, her small face pale and drawn. There were dark circles around her eyes.

“I need to talk to Alexei Maximovich. Did he hear about Gumilev?”

She wore a work apron, her dark hair in a knitted beret. “It’s not just Gumilev. It’s all the intelligenty. Professors. Doctors. The relief committee. They even got Ukhtomsky at the Hermitage.” The director of the museum! Bozhe moi.

“Everything’s coming apart,” she said, “while Lenin’s got him writing to everybody in the West for famine aid. He’s even working with the Patriarch, if you can believe it.” Unthinkable. Who hated the church more than Gorky? “He’s just back from Moscow. He finally got permission for Blok to leave.”

Blok? I grabbed her arm. “Is Blok under suspicion?”

“No, he’s just sick. But here’s the thing—they won’t let his wife go, and he can’t go alone.” She wiped her eyes.

It was too much to take in. Gumilev, Blok. In the front parlor, the plants were dying, the furniture was dusty, the house felt uninhabited. “Where is everyone?”

“Gone.” She stuck her hands in her apron pockets. “Moura’s in Estonia. Maria Andreeva’s in Germany. She’s head of the Petrograd Office of Foreign Trade now—art and antiquities. It’s a mass sell-off.”

I followed her down the hall toward the heart of the apartment. No sounds came from any of the rooms, no laughter, no one talking on the telephone. How could Moura leave Gorky at a time like this? Everything was coming to an end. Now I could hear Gorky coughing.

“Lenin wants him to go to Germany to put pressure on them for aid. Is he the only person in Russia who can do anything?” she said under her breath.

“They’ve made sure there isn’t anyone else,” I said.

I knocked gently on the office door and opened it. Gorky sat in the middle of a fug of smoke, writing by hand. When he saw me, he waved me in with two nicotine-stained fingers. He was gray with exhaustion. And he was on his own now. Why had she decided to leave now, without him? Was she preparing the way? Or had she fallen under suspicion herself and decided to slip away when she could?

He reached forward and pressed my hand, gestured to a chair. His hand was hot. He was sweating, though the window was open and it was not hot in the room.

“Any news about Gumilev?” I took a seat in the leather chair where I’d once sobbed out my confession.

“They haven’t charged them yet,” he said. He rubbed his gray face with his large square hand. He was still in his dressing gown. “I never thought they’d arrest him.”

“They’re looking for me too,” I said. “They searched my room.” I hated to burden him with my problems, but he knew things, knew how a person should act. I would try to be brave, but my instincts were poor. If I was alive with any of my soul still intact, it was this man’s doing. In a way, he was my father, the father I never lied to. “I should tell you, I was seeing a Kronstadt sailor. They know that.”

When I saw the painful expression on his face, I wished I had kept that to myself. How tired he looked in that worn dressing gown, his seamed face, his hollowed-out chest. He turned his head to cough. He really needed to get out of Russia, every bit as much as Blok did. The phone rang, a relief. God knew from what hidden reserves he summoned the energy to keep his hand in all our lives. I tried not to eavesdrop, but how could I not. It was about Ukhtomsky, the roundup over at the Hermitage. Though it was perfectly calm in the room, I felt the storm raging outside—huge trunks cracking, branches flying in the wind. Would this be the final storm? I could almost hear the house groan.