Джанет Фитч - Chimes of a Lost Cathedral

“Don’t stop, we’re almost there,” he said, pulling me to him as if we were dancing.

We crossed into Salt Town, past the heavy facade of the Stieglitz Museum to the ancient St. Panteleimon Church with its domed cupola and square bell tower. “Let’s go in,” he said, opening the door for me. It was awfully unlike him. But pleasant inside, empty and cool. Our footsteps resounded between ten-foot-thick walls. The iconostasis was still intact. I’d have thought the Bolsheviks would have confiscated it for its gold and silver. A priest conducted a service for three old ladies, who sang like perfect fountains in a convent courtyard, liquid and serene. The fragrance of powdery incense excited long-ago memories. I remembered walking through Gabriel’s door and into Arkady’s world. And it was Kolya who had sent me there. If you ever need money. So much of my fate bound up with this one man, so much pleasure, so much suffering. In the end, I supposed, we were each other’s destiny.

The Theotokos watched me. Was this what you wanted? Gazing at me with such pity. Kolya put some coins in the offering box, lit a candle that had already been burned, and handed it to me. The simple, symbolic act was like a marriage. We’d never had that, something solemn. With us it was either sneaking or pretending. He took my hand and kissed it. The priest glanced up to see if we’d stay for confession, but either God knew it all or the heavens were as empty as a beggar’s pockets. In the one case, there was no need, and in the other, no sense.

Outside I blinked, temporarily blinded. Kolya took my hand. Where was he taking me, back to Furshtatskaya Street? Perhaps we would slip back into ourselves as we had once been, and start again. But no, it was still 1921, and the leafy, elegant houses were as dirty and dilapidated as everywhere else. Here was the Muruzi house, where the Poets’ Guild was garrisoned—Gumilev’s group. Were they still meeting, now that the Maître was under arrest? Had they too been taken in the sweep?

Mother’s old friend, the art dealer Tripov, lived there. Arkady’s one-time customer. I wondered if Kolya knew Arkady was dead. He must, or he wouldn’t be here, walking around like an English aristocrat. If it wasn’t for Kolya, I’d never have known the name Arkady von Princip. On the other hand, Kolya never said, Go have an affair with the Archangel . Who could say whose fault it was. Life wasn’t a tapestry, it was some sort of felt, formed by water and pressure—primitive, yet stronger than anything woven, impossible to tear.

We entered the square by the Preobrazhensky Church, where Avdokia once bought oil and potatoes while Mother prayed for deliverance. A man smoked in the shade—was he selling something, or watching one of the flats? Over a doorway a flag hung, white with a blue cross. “That’s new,” I said.

“Finnish consulate,” Kolya replied, kissing my cheek. “Things are changing. In six months, you won’t recognize your Soviet Russia.”

“I already don’t recognize it,” I said.

We stopped on the south side of the square, in the shade of a maple. How much he looked like Iskra—I couldn’t get over it. Grief ripped my throat. How could I tell him about her, how could I even begin? Not yet. I would savor what the gods had offered one precious moment at a time.

“I used to pass here on the way to your house,” he said. “Like the poor country cousin, hat in hand.”

The most confident boy in Petersburg. “Poor you.”

“Your father was so brilliant, he could cut you with a word. And your mother —”

“Let it go. Please.” The last thing I wanted was to talk about my parents. Enough to have him back, for however long. He pulled me into an archway, pushed me against the wall, kissing me as if he would devour me. Pressing into me, raising my skirt, anyone could have come by and seen us. But I couldn’t have stopped him if I’d wanted to. Were we going to do it up against the wall like some poor soldier and his whore? I twisted, but he held me there, grappling with me, whispering how he adored me, making me laugh.

At last, we passed into the courtyard of a once-stately building, where he led me to a battered door, yanked it open. Then I found myself upside down, heaved over his shoulder, as he stumbled up a flight of dark stairs to another door. Leaning on the wall, he opened it with a key and carried me in, raced me through a hall and into a light-filled room—table, brass bed, where he dumped me like loot after a robbery.

Oh, to make love to Kolya Shurov again. Our lips needed no introductions, our skin no drinks or chitchat. We only managed to get some of our clothes off before we couldn’t even be bothered with that. We panted, we clawed as if we were scrambling from a well that was filling underneath us. As if we were running a relay but both of us running at once.

I came to myself with one boot still on, my panties looped around that leg, the sheet torn off the bed exposing the striped mattress. Kolya still wore his socks and his singlet. Sock garters. We lay gasping on the beach, having made it to shore with our pirate’s plunder. He brought in a bottle of beer and some glasses, opened it—the fizz, amber, the bitter bright taste. I was so thirsty, I drank mine in three gulps. Where did it come from? Where had any of it come from?

“To our new life, Marina. May all our troubles be memory, and may our memories fade.” We drank, watching each other without blinking until we had drained the small, faceted pink stakany to the bottom, and then he refilled them. The flat looked out onto the square. From the bed I could see the dome of the church, the tops of the trees through the light curtains.

“Is the man still there?” I asked. “There was a man by the church.”

He got up, all rosy, sturdily built, his body hair red-gold. He went to the window, peered down. “Gone now.” He opened the windows, let the freshness roll through. The curtain took the wind like sails. “Like it?” He smoothed his unruly hair as he lay down next to me. “The flat, I mean.”

“Whose is it?” I asked, pouring the last of the beer into our glasses.

“Yours. If you want it,” he said. That mischievous smile. My bright fox. A private flat like this would be the possession of a commissar at least. A telephone hung on the wall. How did he get it? “Whose place is this, really?”

He tapped his nose. For him to know and me to find out. How he loved a secret. He carried a box to the table, opened it. A gramophone! A little gramophone, all in a box: a miniature horn, turntable, everything folded out. He laid a disk on the spindle, cranked it, and lowered the needle. The room filled with music—“Mi Noche Triste.” He’d been that sure of me. These sounds contained the worlds we’d lost that day, betrayals and heartaches, but I couldn’t remember them now, only the joy, and the possibility that it would resume. What were the chances? Life could turn around as fast as the Bolsheviks.

He plucked the beer glass from my hand, set it onto the table, and pulled me to my feet. I held on to him to remove that one remaining boot, and my underwear, before he placed one warm hand on my back, the other to my palm, and we danced. Five years since that first tango. Five years since the afternoon on the Catherine Canal, my hairpins falling. And here we were again. We danced as if we’d done it every day of our lives. We made famous the space between table and bed, the curtains blowing, nothing between my skin and his, our bodies pieces of a puzzle that we had solved. He ran his hands down my hips, holding on to me, kneeling, pressing his cheek to my pelvis as if listening to my heartbeat there. Whose dream could this possibly be?

Later, I lay on the bed, its linen on the floor, covered with sweat and his unique odor. He brought in a tray with vodka, roasted chicken, fresh summer pickles, black bread, and butter. Together, we made the bed and sat in it. I couldn’t stop eating. Licking my fingers. It was a sin when there was famine in Russia, when children were eating dry grass. Yet I stuffed myself shamelessly. He’d made coffee, real coffee, with evaporated milk, fed me pastries—hand pies with apples. My starving orphans just blocks away. And yet I couldn’t help it. So easy to be virtuous when you had nothing. In the face of riches, I was as squalid as anyone. Yet if I ended in some Cheka cell when all this came to pieces, who would thank me for not enjoying the pies?