Джанет Фитч - Chimes of a Lost Cathedral

“I need to leave, Kolya,” I said, my voice rising, an edge of hysteria. “I don’t want to be what they have on you.”

“There’s plenty of time,” he murmured, his hand on my neck, sliding down inside my slip.

“Stop it.” I grabbed his hand and bit it. “Listen to me. Get me my papers, or I’ll find a way, I swear.” I didn’t realize until now that I could not stay here anymore. I couldn’t be a Gumilev, living so nobly among the ruins, proudly, bravely, steadily, while the Cheka pounded on my door. Or an Akhmatova, that tower. I wanted more than to witness the end of all this, and then to be killed myself. “You’ve spent too much time among the English. You’ve forgotten what it’s like. You haven’t seen what we’ve become.” I heard the panic in my voice, but I couldn’t help it. “I’ve been in that cell, Kolya, and you haven’t.”

His upturned blue eyes, finally serious. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll get things going, all right? I can’t guarantee it’ll happen by the time we sign—we’re pushing for a quick resolution. But I’ll contact the trade office in London, get things started from that end. ‘My assistant requires a visa.’” He nodded at me, as you nod to a child, so that he’ll nod in return. “I swear. You’ll get your papers, and then if you decide you don’t need them, you can put them in a drawer.”

I wiped my face, exhausted. Clever Kolya, too clever by half. But as long as I had those papers, it didn’t matter what he thought.

I couldn’t sleep, not even after the nightclub, the sex, more champagne. As he slept, I wrote:

He lay on the bed, snoring, spread out like a king, as if no harm could ever come to him. His daughter had slept the same way. God, I loved this man, but we’d both become what we had within us to become—he the businessman, gambler, maker of deals, charmer for a purpose and for no purpose. And I was still me, after these long and difficult years, putting one word against the next, holding up my tiny pocket mirror to the world. We’d grown into our destinies, Kolya and I. Yet after everything, I still felt him like a rush of cocaine. The smell of him all over everything, the bed, my hair. We could have another child…

He turned over, making the springs squeak, squinted against the light. “What are you writing? Come back to bed.”

“Go back to sleep,” I said. “I’ll be up for a while.”

He stretched like a cat, twisting his solid body clockwise and counter, enjoying each ligament’s torsion, poured himself some water, drank it down. “What’s it about?”

“Roses,” I said.

The time would come when you couldn’t even say Pushkin, or Blok. People wouldn’t know what that meant. Russia without her poets… what would that place be like? Poetry replaced by prose—like dance replaced by long-distance marching. Nothing to recite when life turned and flashed its teeth, and you had to retreat inside yourself to the place only poetry could reach.

He got up, nude, shuffled to the toilet, pissed like a fire hose. Then he was back, leaning over me, kissing my neck, loosening the pen from my hand, putting it on the table, screwing the lid back on the ink. There was no question of writing when Kolya was awake. A haze came over me, I got lost, his touch, his spell. But I knew now I would not give him another child, not in Russia. He could have me, body and soul, but not that.

I went out the next day to sniff the wind, see if I could learn something more about Gumilev. With a hat, new dress, new shoes, who would recognize me? Still, I went to the House of Scholars, where I was not as well known. I found a handwritten sign on the wall:

I stood staring at the note. Noon today. The black clock over the entrance showed quarter past eleven. In “The Lost Tram,” he had imagined everything, though he’d placed his requiem at St. Isaac’s.

The church was cold, the marble dirty, a feeling of neglect, death and more death. There were requiems all day for the fallen. The writers stood together, just as they had with Blok, but far more perilously. His studio students, hundreds of people. Each of them knew he would be watched, his presence noted, but it was the moment to show one’s face, albeit silently, with eyes lowered. The choir sang, the ruddy priest grimly swung his censer. No coffins. No bodies. It was a brave thing on the part of the priests as well. I prayed for him, and the Tagantsevs, for all of them, the precious ark of Russian culture, slipping away. What would become of us? Akhmatova stood by the wall. She looked ready to collapse. To have lost not one but two of her great generation, first Blok and now her husband, her friend. She was the only one left. So pale, thin, and tall. Grief personified. I stood near her, not daring to speak. There would be no more services like this. I imagined they’d close the cathedral after these requiems. “Vechnaya pamyat’…” we sang. Akhmatova crossed herself.

What we’ll be asked to bear, before this is over, her profile seemed to say. Remember this. We can’t save anyone, we can’t save ourselves. All we can do is the thing no one wants us to do, live on. And spare ourselves nothing.

Yes, she would witness, and wait for the executioner. Just as Gumilev had done. These giants. I thought with shame how I’d begged Kolya for that visa. But I remembered too what Gorky had said: She’s a martyr looking for a cross. And what greater cross than Russia? I recognized her old friend Olga Sudeikina. I saw Anton, standing with Sasha and Dunya, and he saw me, even in this crowd, even in my new finery. I nodded back. Yes, I’m still here. Still above ground. Don’t ask. He started toward me, but I shook my head, pulled my hat lower, and backed into the shadows.

I returned to the consular district, back to our little flat, missing my friends, feeling my forfeited place in the family of Russian courage. I felt the chill of autumn coming, the anxious calls of birds taking to the air, the honking of geese. Bears in the forests were gorging, preparing for a long sleep. And how long would our sleep be—our Sleeping Beauty castle back under the spell of the sorcerer? How many more centuries before we awakened again?

The phone was ringing as I entered the flat. Not thinking, I answered. “Hello?”

A man spoke in terrible Russian. “Izvenite. Nikolai Stepanovich tam, pozhalusta?” An English accent.

“He’s not here,” I said in English.

“Stanley here,” the man said. “Give him a message, will you? Tell him Adela’s arrived safely, she’s tucked up at the National, safe and sound. And we’re looking forward to seeing him.”

“I will tell him,” I said, and hung the handset onto the cradle.

So Sir Graham Stanley was not a figment of Kolya’s imagination after all. He had a certain kind of clipped voice, a regional accent. I wrote down the message. Sir Graham called. Adela’s arrived. Hotel National. Look forward to seeing you. The National—Moscow’s best hotel, it was their equivalent of the Astoria. First House of the Soviet. Obviously open for foreign businessmen of a certain rank.