Джанет Фитч - Chimes of a Lost Cathedral

The very thing Varvara had seen coming, that she could not abide, that had driven her—yes—to the river, or a bullet. This should not be happening here. This influence peddling, this selling of the Russian storehouse, exactly what we had fought to rid ourselves from. Yet I also understood—what else could we do? We had to get food to the Povolzhye. At least the government had finally relented, allowing foreign famine relief. It was a maze, a labyrinth over a cesspit. While the Cheka still hunted for the poet Marina Makarova, the lover of sailors.

He got out of his tub, that good sturdy body streaming with water. I gave him a towel and he began vigorously rubbing himself, singing a snatch of “The Internationale.” “They’re desperate for cash, your masters. I’ve helped broker purchases of the people’s art—and not just your baba ’s bric-a-brac. The émigrés are throwing a stink, of course. It never occurred to Chicherin that the rightful owners would get wind of the thing and sue. But as a go-between, I can help Sir Graham and the heroic Soviet Republic. I’m a most useful fellow.”

The Bolsheviks going into business with Western capital, while arresting leading intellectuals right here at home. You would think they couldn’t get away with it, that the West would see through their smiling faces. But the business folk didn’t want to see the shadows in the corners, the bloodstains on the tile.

Suddenly it was too hot in the bathroom and I wasn’t used to drinking. I had to open the door. “What about the famine?”

“Soviet officials are in Riga right now, negotiating with the American Relief Administration.”

The Americans?

“They’re the ones who know how. They fed Belgium after the war, and Poland. They’re the only ones who can handle the scale, and they’re surprisingly incorruptible.” Americans rescuing Russia from the Bolsheviks’ mistakes. The ultimate irony.

“Lenin’s worst nightmare.”

“He’s got no choice.”

I thought of my orphans—so many, and they just were the ones with the will to make it to Petrograd. What of the millions too weak to even walk out of their izbas? The stories I’d heard were too awful to be believed, but I believed them. We had to eat the baby, my own children had whispered to me.

“Everybody’s anted up,” Kolya said, examining his chin in the mirror, wondering if he needed to shave. “The émigrés, the laborites, the pious churchgoers. But only the Americans can organize it.” He sudsed his face, washed the soap from his hands. “Of course, there’s a snag vis-à-vis the Bolsheviks. The Americans are demanding to bring in their own people, hire local help, man their own kitchens, run their own trains.” He began to shave with a glinting razor, starting with his neck, washing the foam from the blade with each stroke. “Their man Herbert Hoover’s pretty canny. He knows not a bag of grain would be left for the Povolzhye if they left it up to us. Naturally, the Bolsheviks think they should run the show—when they couldn’t run so much as a tobacco shop.”

The children had told me how they searched the dust along the railway tracks near stations, looking for wheat that might have spilled, staying alive grain by grain. “It wasn’t until last month they even admitted there was a famine.”

“They wanted the trade agreement to look good. So they’d get better terms.”

How I’d missed knowing what was going on. Since I’d stopped going to Gorky’s, I was as in the dark as anyone. I read the signs, like a farmer reading clouds or the thickness of fur on caterpillars. We saw arrests, the sudden appearance of flower shops, and guessed at the rest. We combed every article for loose grains of news.

He examined his smooth face in the mirror, stroking his cheeks, rinsed and dried his razor. I pressed myself to his warm, moist back, resting my chin on his shoulder. I should tell him that I was tainted, that the Cheka was looking for me. I could ruin all his hopes for his deal if they found me here. He saw my worried face in the mirror. “Don’t be sad,” he said. “Things are going to work out. Trust me, this is just the beginning.”

I started to cry. How could I let him believe I could be part of this? “Kolya, there’s something I need to tell you—”

But he turned and put his fingertips to my mouth. “Talk tomorrow.” And replaced his fingers with his lips.

I woke in the morning to find my love on the telephone, speaking low. Then he hung up, asked for another number, a Moscow number. “Yes, hello,” he said, in English. It was a shock. He’d never spoken more than two words of that language in his life. “Good to hear you too, Graham.” He had trouble with Graham, he pronounced it Gram. “Yes.” He laughed, sipped from the fragrant tea he’d made, stirring with a little spoon, that light chime. He sat on a chair he’d dragged up to the telephone on the wall in the little hallway. “Yes, well, they’ve been through it. You can’t expect—” He laughed again. The sun filled the white curtains, painting them with the boughs of the trees just outside. The warm air sucked the thin fabric, making it billow, then pulling it flat. Kolya perched in his fine underwear, socks and garters, his hairy legs and arms solid. That adorable, maddening man.

And I was happy. Nothing had changed, everything had changed. Beads of sweat clung to my hairline and under my breasts, the fragrance of the sheets. I yawned and turned onto my side, watching him, that mobile mouth, the persuasive sandy voice—and a slow, liquid pleasure rose from my thighs and my hips to spread throughout my body like wine. He was here. He had come for me, plucked me from the sea just as the water closed over my head. I could still feel his lips where he’d eaten the strawberries from my hand. I put my mouth where his had been.

“God, don’t let them pull that—” he said. Pull that… I had not heard that before. “No. Litvinov assured us— Mmmm. Yes. It’s sitting in Amsterdam, all ready to go. I can have it here in five days, maybe less, but don’t tell them. We’ll just have to watch the docks when it gets here. But I’ve got good contacts in the railway union. We won’t have any trouble with them.” He listened, drinking his tea. “A week, two at most. Good. Send her my love. Of course. Easy Street. See you soon.” He replaced the handset onto the cradle above him, stood and stretched.

I felt too lazy to get out of that messy bed. I watched him through the curls of shiny brass. “Who was that?”

“My partner, Sir Graham.” He slid onto the bed like a boy falling onto a pile of leaves, nuzzled my neck, bit my shoulder, stroked my arm. He didn’t seem to care how bony I had become in the time we’d been apart. If he found me attractive, that’s all I cared about. I reached under his singlet to feel his chestnut pelt. Ah, I had missed that. Anton had only a few stray hairs, without curl, although Pasha… may he rest in peace. So many men, but only one Kolya. How I loved that good ruddy skin, all the textures of him, his curls growing out, the smoothness of his closely shaved face, though I missed the beard he’d worn as Mechanic Rubashkov and my peasant husband. How many lives we’d lived through together. I knitted my fingers in with his, threw my leg up over his hip. “Why don’t you take off your socks?”

He kissed me, but shoved my leg off him, sat up. “Don’t you like my socks?” They were an argyle plaid. “I have some errands to do. Eat some food, write me a poem about how much you love to fuck me.”

“Send who your love?” I asked, sitting up against the big pillows.

“Lady Stanley,” he said. “Lumpy, middle-aged. She grows sheep. They win prizes. Also she paints on plates.” He tugged down the sheet, traced the curve of my breast, tickling the nipple, making it stand up. “Don’t be jealous. She wears gum boots, probably to bed.” He bit my haunch. “Poor Graham.”