Джанет Фитч - Chimes of a Lost Cathedral

He turned his innocent face up to me from the lower berth where he sat with his parents, the father reading, the mother knitting. The boy was holding the skein of yarn.

“No, he hasn’t been using your filthy scissors,” the mother said. “What are you insinuating? Are you calling my boy a thief?”

Ah, the smile on the brat’s face hidden behind his mother told me everything.

“He got into my things. I was wondering if he’d developed a fondness for them.”

Her homely face, red-cheeked and sweaty in the heat. “You tramp. You railway slut. Sitting up there with your disgusting bastard. How dare you call my son a thief!”

“Talya, please,” her husband said.

She brushed him off like a moth that had landed on her shoulder, and stood, bringing her face up to mine. “Say it again and I’ll smack you.”

“Your brat took my scissors,” I said.

She reached out and slapped my face. The sting of her hand, her ring on my cheek. The Petrocommune men didn’t know where to put their eyes, they were embarrassed for both of us.

The Cheka man smoked his cigarette, enjoying the show.

“Don’t you speak of my son, you whore, you cheap trash. Women like you shouldn’t be put in with decent people. If anyone should be thrown off the train it should be you.” Her breath was hideous. Bad dental care, poor food, the whole place would ignite on the fumes if there were a spark. “Apologize to us this instant.”

“Ask him if he didn’t go through my things when he was up here the other day. Reading my notes, pawing through my belongings.”

I could see the part in her hair as she leaned over her son, making her mooing sounds. “Yasha. You didn’t do any such thing, did you, sweetheart?”

“No, Mama.” But the smirk returned as soon as her back was turned. That little criminal was splitting a gut at this.

“Good, that’s a good lad.” The Chekist reached across and squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “Good lad.”

What game was he playing? This man disliked little Yasha. He’d made that clear with the suggestion that he teach him chess. But perhaps he recognized himself in the boy—the liar, the sneak—traits that might end up making a good Chekist. “Never tell them anything. If they want those scissors, they can bloody well search for them, and good luck—right, kid?”

Now the boy wasn’t smirking.

“I beg your pardon?” said the mother.

“He’s got ’em, all right.” Inhaling his cigarette, then examining its lit tip. “Innocent people, see, they get this moment of shock. A moment where they don’t even understand that someone’s accusing them of something. It takes a second to get it—oh, I’m being accused of, say, taking some scissors.” I could see the part of the mother’s hair, where the dye stopped and her roots began, and the Cheka man, his legs set wide, crowding the shipping clerk, whom he’d turned to address. “Then they start yelling. You can’t fake that kind of outrage. I didn’t take them! I wouldn’t touch your lousy scissors. I didn’t even know you had any, and if I did, I wouldn’t have touched them. Where a guilty person starts defending himself right away: How dare you! They get all puffed up. They overdefend, they attack, they spread it out— Who are you, some railway whore, and We are good law-abiding people! The innocent person sticks to the facts. The guilty go for pride and honor. And the born thief says nothing. He waits for confusion to rule and slips out when he has a chance. Good for you, kid. If this was the street, this would be your chance to inch for the door and make a run for it.” The Cheka man stood. He held out his hand. “Davai.” Give it.

“I didn’t take them,” the kid said softly, retreating deeper into the berth.

His interrogator reached in, as fast as a snake, and dragged the kid out of his lair by the arm, shoved him to the floor. “I don’t think your dad beats you enough. That’s half the problem right there.” He unbuckled his pants and started to pull his belt out.

The woman grabbed the man’s shoulder, clutching the cloth. “Don’t you touch my son!” He shrugged her off. The force threw her back against the window.

On his knees on the filthy floor, the boy scrambled into his mother’s sewing basket and came out with the small brass scissors. I hated that kid but still—the sight of him on his knees holding the scissors out made me ill, the fear in his face, the whimpering of his mother. The man ignored the boy, rebuckled his pants. Did he beat his own children with that belt? Had his father beaten him that way? “Give them back to the girl. Say sorry.”

Yasha handed them up to me, the tears in his terrified eyes were real. “Sorry,” he whispered.

I nodded. He was sorry, that was clear.

The mother ruined the moment by grabbing him and slapping him herself. “How dare you steal, and then hide it in my basket! What will people think of us?”

He sulked the rest of the day, which was fine with me. Even the mother was wonderfully subdued, apologetic. She offered to share some of their food with me. “Raising children now, in this climate. You’ll see. Everything’s upside down.” The thick-lipped Chekist kept me under close surveillance, nodding at me meaningfully.

I took Iskra for a little walk on the platform at Vologda. Though it was still hot, you could feel autumn in the bright air, the birches turning yellow inside the deep green pines.

Alas, we had work to do. No time for poetry. I handed my pail up to the assistant engineer and asked him to drain off some boiling water for me. I amazed myself, this new mother-person I’d become, worried about disease and rashes and illness, sanitation and linens, a real German housewife. How my father would enjoy this if he could see me now, how Kolya would laugh. Yet I was proud of those clean nappies.

It was a big station, full of exhausted, overdressed Russians with bundles, children, and Komi women selling food. Passengers didn’t dare go far, but took turns leaving the train, walking the platform, not to lose their spaces. “Go, go,” said the spets woman, her name was Natalya Romanovna. “You do take good care of that baby. Honestly, I’m surprised. When I saw you, I thought, Oh no, and a baby too. It’ll just cry the whole time, and stink to high heaven. But you do a real good job.”

As I washed diapers at the end of the platform, leaning over the red feathers of Iskra’s hair, I inquired of a loitering mechanic, “So what do you hear about the English?”

“A few sorties up around Onega, but the trains have been getting through,” the mechanic said. “The Americans are gone, now it’s just the English.”

“We’ll be done by spring,” said the Cheka-agronomist. He’d developed a nasty habit of creeping up on me. Whenever I turned around, there he was, this stocky, lecherous, thick-necked man who now saw himself as my personal savior. “Denikin’s the one to beat. He’s closing on Tula. He could be in Moscow in six weeks if they don’t sell all the guns to us first.”

“Yudenich’s still there, in Estonia,” the mechanic said. “Waiting for his chance. I wouldn’t count my chickens yet, brother.”

“If the English had given half a hand to Yudenich, Petrograd would be gone already,” said the fat man. “That should tell you something. They don’t trust him any more than anyone else does.” He put his hand on my shoulder in a false gesture of reassurance. He just liked to touch me whenever he could, see if he could get a look down my dress.