Anton told about the approach to the North. “You couldn’t have gotten there and back in such a short time,” said the Tsar. They didn’t tell him about the snow tornado.
Cat talked about Žmey-Aždaja and why he was being kept awake all winter, the rattle of human suffering, and that they had placated him for the time being, but not forever. The Tsar: “What I want is peace and succor for my people; I assume that’s a noisy desire, too.” Playing along, as if he couldn’t imagine that the ice-dragon of old legend was a real creature coiled around the edge of a harbor. Belief, like everything else, ebbs and flows.
All Elena said was “We found the Firebird’s egg. Now that there’s a chance of winter when there should be winter, and a chance of spring and summer in their own turns, we could release the egg to the wild. And we did. The Firebird hatched.”
“Ah,” said the Tsar. “I once had an advisor who studied the Firebird. He is now, um, retired. He has written me bits of what he thinks may have happened. I don’t know how much of your story is fanciful, how much is bald lies. But I hope the Firebird has revived itself in time. The wildness and plenty of Russia is not dead.”
“The plenty needs to be shared,” said Cat, “so that Žmey-Aždaja doesn’t wake out of turn again.”
“Easier said than done,” said the Tsar, picking up a crystal bell and ringing it, a signal that the interview was over and the children should be ushered away.
“Wait,” said Elena. “I came to Saint Petersburg to ask you to release my brother Luka, who was conscripted to help dig new canals around this great capital and drain the unseasonable floods.”
“I’m lifting my decree of your imprisonment,” said the Tsar. “Don’t push me.”
“I promised her I would find him,” said Anton. “Do it for me.”
“Don’t tell me what to do. I’m glad you’re home, but you’re still young enough that I can give you a caning for insolence. I can’t release one young soldier boy among many. Every conscript has a family who needs him. Russia needs him more. Without these canals, our capital city will drown.”
Anton, furious, turned his back to the Tsar and walked to the windows.
“But we’ve told you. The floods will recede now that Žmey-Aždaja isn’t melting the harbor ice out of anxious insomnia,” said Cat.
“I know about anxious insomnia. Go,” said the Tsar.
The double doors opened. The maid curtseyed, ready to escort them away. Anton shouted, “Look! Look! On the ice!”
The Tsar sighed. He crossed the salon to join the children glancing up and down the frozen river in front of the Winter Palace.
From the right, from that branch of the Neva River that flows from Lake Ladoga to the north, a colorful swarm of life-size matryoshkas came skating along. The citizens of Saint Petersburg cried aloud in shock and delight, as if they’d suddenly found themselves in a storybook. The matryoshkas weaved and bobbed and made elegant figures among the crowd, and came to rest at last in several square formations, like chocolates arranged in a gilt box. Ten across and twenty deep, they lined up on the river ice in front of the Winter Palace.
At some signal that no one could hear, the heads of the dolls came off, and the dragon-tooth soldiers climbed out, replacing the heads of their substantial wives and standing at attention, each next to his jolly Russian doll.
“There’s your army,” said Anton. “They can dig your emergency canals and reservoirs. Those conscripts from the farms and the fields, like Elena’s brother; they can be freed. They can go home.”
“I still hope you never have to be Tsar,” said the Tsar, shaking his head. “But should it happen, I think you might make a good one.”
“Will you release Luka? Will you give your word?”
“Do you ask for the word of the Tsar?” he said. “I am the Tsar; I am the word.”
As they watched the soldiers and their partners, then, right before their eyes, it seemed that the toy roundness of the swollen matryoshkas gave way to a more ordinary human lumpiness. The soldiers began to look only like the next horde of immigrants, newly arrived from some part of the country infrequently remembered. The swarms of city dwellers coursing up and down the esplanade took them in, ignored them, went about their business.
The influence of magic only lasts so long. This was now a new population from the provinces to feed and to house and to line up for work. Despite the aggravation to his existing headache, the Tsar began to give his orders.
It was meant to be celebratory, a visit to Saint Petersburg’s first ice-cream parlor. The new delicacy was so popular, though, that the establishment had sold out of its top choices: chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. All they had left was potato, cabbage, and a flavor called winter, which tasted like balsam on ice. Madame Sophia paid. They ate in silence, looking at their spoons.
Then at the reopened Vitebsky rail station.
Anton stood in a serge suit, belted at the back. A schoolboy’s felt cap was jammed on his head and a red scarf wound around his neck. His chaperone, a brute with arms like a stevedore, was there to keep Anton from boarding the train at the last minute, slipping away to find another adventure. The very existence of a railroad station was agony. All those beckoning whistles, those clouds of steam.
Travelers hurried through the concourse, presenting their platform tickets to attendants. The porters hauled luggage on wheeled carts, groaning. Shipping trunks suitable for ocean travel, matching luggage of Italian leather, the occasional crated pianoforte intended to grace some dacha in the country. Plumes of ostrich feathers, and cologne; courtesy and the lilt of easy laughter.
Most travelers, though, wore shapeless coats of brown and grey and charcoal. Boots of leather, if they were lucky. If not, rank claddings of felt, laced with strips of hide. Every female traveling in any class other than first wore a head scarf, even baby girls. Elena was no exception.
For the time being, she’d forsaken the fur coat that Baba Yaga had bequeathed her. She didn’t know how to mount a third-class carriage wearing a coat that would be the envy of her fellow passengers. They’d assume she’d stolen it. But it was stored in some lengths of brown paper and wrapped in twine to which Luka had attached a handle made out of a twig, for easier carrying. It would make a warm blanket for Mama, if Mama was still alive to need warmth.
Yes, Luka was there. Changed from his adventure, too; changed in ways that Elena couldn’t yet understand. Perhaps she never would. In a few short weeks, he’d grown to a man. His face was now more guarded. Some hunger lines had been erased, and he looked fuller, pinker. There were new lines around his mouth. Lines not of hunger but, perhaps, anger. He didn’t talk much. But he’d greeted his sister with a shout of delight, that human sound of a human bell.
The Moscow train was scheduled to leave at seven in the evening. They would take it to Novgorod, then transfer to a trunk line as far as Borsky. From there they’d find out if another train was heading toward Tyer or Plinsk. If not, they’d get a lift on some farm carriage, if one was passing, or shoulder their burdens and walk.
The night had fallen, the conductors were shouting for stragglers to board the train. Madame Sophia took Korsikov’s arm and retired to her carriage at the kerb, waiting there for Cat.
“We must go,” said Elena. She set down the basket with the hen of the tundra in it. “There is little chance we will meet again, but we must not mind too much.”
Cat: “Don’t say that. No one can know what will happen next. This escapade began by a bolt of lightning striking the bridge north of Miersk, throwing us into each other’s lives. We didn’t call for that lightning, nor did we recognize it for what it meant to us. How can we think we know everything now?”
“We’ve talked of this already.” Elena was too brisk, thought Cat. “Someone like me isn’t made to live in the wide world, but in the scratchy nest of a village. I must take care of my mother, if it’s not too late, or mourn her and live in her memory. I promised my father I would. If Miersk is even still
there.”
“If you should depart Miersk for any reason, leave word where you are going. When I am grown up some more, and Madame Sophia and my parents are no longer organizing my days for me, I’ll hunt for you. Ma chérie. This is not the end.”
“This is good-bye.” Elena threw herself into Cat’s arms. She didn’t cry. She clutched as a drowning child clings to a savior. It seemed she was shuddering for everything: for the departure of her worldly friend, for the life that Cat and Anton would probably make together, for the evaporation of the fantastic from her days, for the relief of securing Luka’s release, and — she knew — for fear of what she would find when she finally made it to Miersk.
Cat’s eyes ran, more out of sympathy than worry. She enjoyed a larger imagination for possibilities. For her, it wasn’t a question of when, but how.
“We promised Žmey-Aždaja,” she whispered. “We haven’t yet worked out how we will do it, but it’s our job to try. That part isn’t done yet.”
Elena couldn’t speak but she thrust her mother’s matryoshka at Cat. In lieu of a token from Baba Yaga, maybe. Better than nothing. If the needle no longer pointed to NORTH, any direction ahead was possible. Without parents or brothers to care for her, or even Baba Yaga, Cat needed it more than she did.
Anton didn’t lean in to embrace Elena. As she paused on the step of the train to look back one last time, he saluted her, one general acknowledging another.
“We’re off,” said Luka gently, pulling his sister to his side.
The train whistle blew, scattering pigeons, and a steam from train engines rolled in to divide the company, to leave them remote and isolated.
Curtains closing at the end of a drama.
Then forward Elena and Luka went, or backward, to find if they had done enough. If they had done it well enough. If the good doctor and Grandmother Onna and the others had been able to tend to their sick mother. If, if, if. Each if a magic spell all its own, portending separate new worlds.
Elena leaned her head against her brother’s shoulder and closed her eyes. She pictured herself on the arrival, and lights in the snow, and the astounded villagers gathering to hear their story. And she pictured a few eggs from the hen of the tundra, and a cup of milk heated in a pan, to warm the weary, to settle the stomach, and to help with sweet dreams.
As the lights of Saint Petersburg grew smaller behind them, twinkling and then indistinct, and as the train rocked through fields snowier than they’d been upon Elena’s arrival, she thought:
But how do we know if the good we’ve managed to do is enough?
There is always more to do.
She put her face in her hands to save her brother from having to see her wince. Being able to conceive such a notion — that there is always more to do — was both a challenge, she supposed, and a proof that, in some respects, she was no longer a child.
The window by her seat was blotched with spots of rain dried into spearheads of dust. The world beyond — it was just a few fields right now, under the darkening sky. A farmer shrugging at snow to be cleared from a stable door. His hand on his head, scratching his hair. A donkey nearby, tied to a limp old cherry tree in no shape to bloom again. But it had to bloom again. Hold on, dear world, she thought. We’re coming.
It would be unseemly of me to try to picture for you too specifically the moment of Elena and Luka’s return to Miersk. After so much time in isolation, I do not quite trust my own emotions.
There was something to hope for. Miss Bristol and Monsieur d’Amboise had followed Cat’s instructions, given on the night she’d left for the North. The butler had sold some of her extra clothes and sent some food to Miersk — though who knew if it ever got there. All along the route it would have traveled, people needed food.
And before the departure, Madame Sophia had provided for Elena a selection of modern cures and traditional physicks in twists of paper. She was to hand them to the doctor. And, hidden in his boots, Luka had some military pay with which to buy a cow that the whole village could tend. Now that Luka knew the ways of the world better, he was braver, and he’d go farther afield until he found a cow with enough breath and milk left to merit the expense. They’d need milk whether their mother had died or not.
Train service had not yet returned to anything like normal, and in fact it took them more than two weeks to organize their connections. They slumped and slumbered on old trains that broke down constantly. Finally, Elena and Luka were set down at the edge of the oblast, their own homely old district, and they had to cross the final stretches by foot. You must remember that no train regularly passed through Miersk. The Tsar might have been grateful to Elena for her contributions to the nation, but not so grateful he was going to charter her a private train. She was, after all, still a peasant.
So here they are, can you see them? It’s late morning on a day in early spring. The calendar hasn’t been fully realigned, if ever it will be. So the trees are all afresh with nubble and frowze of bud and flower. Birds have finished their morning chorus and are flicking about the verges of the track, their breakfast extending into lunchtime. Luka and Elena are carrying their coats over their shoulders.
Now they are recognizing a few outbuildings.
Now, around a rise, they see the spire of the chapel of Saint Veronika.
Now someone is shouting their names.
Yes, someone. Which someone?
He throws himself into their arms almost before they can believe it. Alexei, of course. Late in this tale, but who cares: this is what life is like. There’s always someone new coming down the road, through the door.
Here he is, gasping, grown taller since they saw him. What, what, they sputter, and also: When? And How?
It’s quite simple, really. When Elena disappeared, Peter Petrovich realized he couldn’t manage to tend to Natasha Rudina on his own. Grandmother Onna was dotty, his own leg was becoming infected, and so on. So he wrote to the báryn in Moscow and explained the situation: Luka drafted into the army, Elena run off to rescue him. The landowner may have been overly concerned with his own well-being, but he wasn’t a devil. He sent Alexei back.
“I set out after you.” Alexei to Elena, laughing, holding her hands. “I wanted to rescue you. I got as far as Plinsk before I gave up. I was afraid I’d get lost, and then we’d all be lost separately. I realized I had to come back and tend to our Mamenka. Somebody had to. The doctor couldn’t manage anymore.”
Elena was overcome. She hadn’t conceived that someone might try to rescue her. But this is how it goes, she thought. As Mewster said, always there is someone else’s life running on a track parallel to our own. “And Mama?” she said, when she could speak.
“Oh, Elena,” he said, his eyes a pattern of bright confusions. He looked from Luka to Elena and back again. “You will find her in the graveyard. No, no!” he shouted, darting after his sister and brother. “We’ll go together — wait for me!”
With their dropped luggage, he struggled to rejoin them as they ran up the low rise to the front of the chapel. The belfry was still scorched, the broken bell listing where it had been hauled to one side. Ferns unfurling at its chipped rim.
They breached the rusty churchyard gate and flung themselves through the garden of stone memorials to the paupers’ field beyond.
She is standing up. She doesn’t see them yet. She is terribly thin. Her hair needs a good soaping. She carries an old saucepan, the one with the hole in the bottom. She has filled it with flowers, blues and whites and now some yellows. Not sure exactly where her husband lies, she is tossing handfuls of petal to fall where they might. Some will fall on his unmarked grave. Yellow, white, periwinkle blue. Curtains of blossom, opening.
Now she is turning. Now she sees them. The petals in the air surround her, surround them all.
Later, I won’t say how much later, the three Rudin children are in the doctor’s surgery. Such as it is. Clothes, little bottles, notes in scrapbooks, powders and vials. Dust everywhere, even mold. Foul sm
ells competing for attention. Hardly hygienic, possibly even toxic.
Other villagers are here and there, outside, at their jobs of eking out a subsistence living. Only Grandmother Onna is in the room with them. She had been planning a squash pie, but she’s fallen asleep with her head on the table, almost into the rolled-out dough. They could make a death mask of her if they wanted, using the pastry crust.
It isn’t Grandmother Onna they’ve come to see, though. It is Peter Petrovich.
He is the one in need now. Whatever happened to his leg has seemed to hop to his heart. He isn’t breathing well, and he can’t sit up. He lies on his side. His knees pull a little toward his beard. He wears a knitted hat in bed.
“What can we do for you?” one of the Rudin children asks. They’ve all come to the same side of the bed. Elena sits on a stool close up to his side, as she used to sit playing at her mother’s sickbed. Her brothers stand nearby.
He can hardly see them through the pain, but he tries.
“I look at you,” he says. He points to Luka. “You are the most beautiful person I have ever seen.” Then he points to Alexei. “And you are the most beautiful person I have ever seen.” And Elena. “And so are you. The most beautiful. I’ve ever seen.”
“There must be something,” says Elena. “Another pillow. A glass of water?”
Luka cannot speak. He pushes aside the curtain so a little more light comes through, while there is time.
“I see the world,” says Peter Petrovich, though his eyes have a filmy, milky look. “I see the maple tree and the cow. I see the hen and the egg.” He pulls for breath as if breath is thick honey from a deep, heavy bucket; it resists him. “I see the spring riding … in over Russia … more powerful than Napoleon’s army. It is so beautiful. I cannot bear to leave it.”
They don’t need him to declare the special name of this day. They know it.
“What can we do?” This, now, is Alexei.
Egg & Spoon Page 34