David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

‘And the family?’

‘Family? Papa and Mama are dead and my brother has gone away. There is no family now, only Maria Ilyainichina. She’s the only one who didn’t desert us.’

‘She is dying,’ Paul said. ‘With the best will in the world she cannot live much longer.’

‘I won’t leave her.’

She took the bowl of kasha to where Korovina lay. She placed it on the floor beside the governess and gently touched her shoulder. Paul carried his and Sofya’s bowls to a small stone sink and washed them out.

Sofya shook Korovina’s shoulder.

‘I can’t wake her.’

Paul put the bowls down and bent over the old woman. Her skin had the appearance of translucent parchment, as if it had already preceded her to the grave. Her eyes were shut but her lips parted, almost as though she was in the middle of saying something. Paul laid a finger against her neck to feel for a pulse but instead felt only a sense of revulsion. It was not revulsion at touching a dead body — he had handled more of those than he could remember during the last two years — it was actually touching the old tyrant herself that repelled him. The last time they had made contact was probably a slap she given him for some petty infringement or other. Now he felt nothing, nothing beyond the slight frisson of revulsion at having to touch her at all.

He could not feel a pulse and Korovina showed no sign of breathing. He turned to Sofya and shook his head, drawing the blanket over Korovina’s head.

Sofya pulled it back and groped under the blanket for Korovina’s talon-like hand. She knelt holding it. She wasn’t crying and she said nothing. Paul stood over her for a while then picked up the dead woman’s bowl of kasha . It was a relief really. It would make things simpler. He ate the gruel before it got cold.

The air in the attic was stuffy, as if everything that occurred in the house beneath had risen and concentrated around them, simmering under roof. After a while Sofya left the dead woman and came back to the table. They ate some more bread. Every so often Sofya glanced at the cot and her dead governess.

‘It’s quite warm up here,’ Paul said hesitantly.

Sofya said nothing.

‘We can’t keep her here.’

‘No,’ she replied tonelessly after a moment. ‘Of course not. Do you think I would want to?’

‘Do you know an undertaker?’

Sofya raised her head. ‘You’re supposed to report deaths to the dvornik .’

‘There’s a caretaker here?’

She lives downstairs,’ Sofya said. ‘It’s her job to deal with the bodies.’

‘Bodies?’

‘There was as influenza epidemic in the winter. Now with summer it’s malaria or cholera. And the Bolsheviks, of course. There’s always someone dying. Next winter it will be worse. All the warm clothing has been requisitioned for the army.’

‘Who’s this dvornik who deals with the bodies?’

‘Her names is Fedorova. She arranges for them to be taken away.’

‘I’ll go,’ Paul said. ‘Where does she live?’

‘I don’t know. Somewhere in the basements, I think.’

He went downstairs. It was dark and the corridors were poorly lit. A smell of boiled cabbage hung in the air like damp washing.

He passed a man on the stairs and asked for Fedorova. Below at the back of the house, the man said. Paul found his way to the kitchens and saw the woman he had spoken to in the courtyard. She was still scrubbing, now pans at a sink.

‘Are you still here?’ she said, seeing him in the doorway. ‘Alenkov, isn’t it? I thought I told you to bugger off.’

‘I’m looking for the woman, Fedorova.’

‘Oh? Well you’ve found her. And what business might you have with me?’

He gestured to the top of the house. ‘I went to see the Rostova girl to see if she knew anything about my brother. The old woman living with her has just died.’

‘Has she?’ Fedorova chuckled. ‘And about time, too. She glanced at the ceiling as if she might be able to see through it. ‘What do you expect me to do about it?’

‘Sofya Ivanovna said you were responsible for the bodies.’

Fedorova laughed. ‘She did, did she? For getting rid of them, perhaps. Not for killing them.’

‘I don’t think that’s what she meant,’ Paul said.

Fedorova dropped the pan she was scrubbing and, sighing, wiped her hands on a cloth. ‘Well nothing can be done tonight. If she’s dead she’ll have to wait till morning. But I suppose I’ll have to take a look myself.’

Paul followed her to a back staircase and watched her broad rump climb the stairs ahead of him. Pushing down with a hand on one knee with every step, she had to stop to rest on each landing.

‘They’ll be the death of me, these stairs,’ she complained. ‘I’ve been climbing them since I was a young girl.’ She looked over her shoulder at him. ‘I was a housemaid here, did I tell you?’

‘A housemaid?’

‘There must have been twenty of us. What a family! They made more mess than a troop of Cossacks.’

Paul followed her, flight after flight, then up the final staircase. At the top she farted, walked along the corridor and pushed open the door of Sofya’s room without knocking. Sofya was kneeling over Korovina again.

Fedorova looked at her, hands on hips. ‘Are you praying?’

Sofya got to her feet.

‘I was washing her face.’

‘Skala won’t have prayers said in his building.’

Sofya stared back at her. ‘This is my family house.’

Fedorova strode across the room and for a moment Paul thought she was going to strike Sofya. But she merely laughed at her and pushed her aside to see the body.

‘If she’d dead I’ll send up two men in the morning to fetch her.’ She bent over Korovina’s body and satisfied herself that the woman was really dead. ‘Where are her things?’

‘Things?’ Sofya repeated. ‘What things? She hasn’t any things . She sold everything so we could eat.’

The woman examined Korovina’s hands for rings then undid the blouse at her neck. She pulled out a chain and crucifix and yanked it off the dead woman.

‘And this bauble?’

‘She was an Old Believer,’ Sofya said. ‘She should be buried with it.’

Fedorova chuckled. ‘She’ll have found out her mistake by now.’ She put the cross into the pocket of her voluminous skirt.

‘I’m sure she would have wanted Sofya to have the cross,’ Paul said.

The woman turned to him.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Sofya.

‘Sofya, is it?’ Fedorova said to Paul. ‘You’re a quick worker.’

‘It isn’t important,’ Sofya said.

‘Did she leave a will?’ Fedorova asked.

Sofya shook her head.

‘State property then. You wish to make a claim?’

Sofya shook her head again.

Fedorova looked around the room, her eyes falling on the food they had bought at the market.

‘Where did you buy that?’ she asked Sofya.

‘I bought it,’ Paul said. In the market by Nikolaevsky Station.’

‘Well, if I were you I’d take it with you when you leave.’ Then she said to Sofya, ‘You’ll have to go in the morning as well. We need the room. Petersburg is filling by the day and rooms are in short supply. When the carpenters have finished dividing up the ballroom they’re coming up here to work on the attics. Skala can put several families up here.’

‘You’ll throw her out of her own family’s house?’ Paul said.

Fedorova turned her gaze on him again. ‘And why not, comrade? Who are you to care? You’re very free with your opinions, you and your fine lah-di-dah accent. Tell me, what did you do before you were in the army?’

‘I was a teacher,’ Paul replied, saying the first thing that came to mind.