* * *
“There is going to be a child.” She released the words into the dark above the bed, not sure whether she wanted Vadim to hear her whispered news.
He heard, and turned to her. “Is there? Are you sure?”
“Oh, yes. In mid-May, the doctor said.”
She did not know how to interpret his silence.
“I will need some knitting wool.” Are you not glad? She wanted to ask, but feared the answer and kept the thought to herself. They had talked little about starting a family; in the six years of their marriage, in contrast to the country’s turmoil, their home was a refuge, quiet and safe.
Now she could leave her teaching position with dignity. She had begun to feel out of step in the classroom, where portraits of the imperial family had been replaced with Lenin’s grave countenance. Reference to God was forbidden, and it seemed more and more of her job involved leading the children toward involvement in Young Pioneers. Now, she could walk away before her loyalty to the new order could be called into question.
When Filip came, he hollowed her out, taking with him the sheltering contents of her womb. His breech birth left her uterus so damaged that the doctor and attending midwife removed it, telling the exhausted young mother only after she regained consciousness.
The baby was surprisingly small, for all the pain and disruption of his arrival. Zoya peered at the little wizened face, marveled at the blankness of its expression, except for a hint of smugness around the tiny puckered mouth. I am your child, it seemed to say. There will be no other.
It took time for Zoya to see this child as a gift from God. The entire experience, the interminable pregnancy, punctuated with episodes of unaccountable bleeding that sent her to bed for days at a time; the hellish birth, which left her lying in her own sweat and blood, barely aware, before the blessed relief of deep sleep, that the moans still reverberating in the overheated room had been her own.
Father Yefim came, held her hand and encouraged her to pray. But her mind felt numb, her body violated; she could not force the words out of her desiccated mouth.
“God allows us to suffer so we will cherish our children. He will not send more pain than we can bear.” Eyes closed, he recited phrases meant to give her comfort, but she could not fathom their relevance and soon fell asleep, lulled by the rhythmic droning of his familiar voice.
“I have no quarrel with God,” she would reply when she awoke and he was gone. “But there was no we in this event, was there?” She covered her mouth with the edge of the sheet, even though no one but the sleeping baby was there to hear the impertinent words. This child, why did he have to announce his arrival with such wrenching ferocity, the memory of which convulsed her with fresh waves of dread? If God had done anything, it was to guarantee that she would never go through this again. She was grateful for this proof of divine mercy, but felt vaguely ill at ease, as if she had misunderstood an important lesson, failed to grasp the kernel of truth in a complicated parable. It was too much to think about. She slept.
There was no one to help her with the child. In spite of the best efforts of the sanatorium and the healing effects of the Black Sea climate, Zoya’s mother had succumbed to tuberculosis the previous year. Travel was difficult, requiring special passports even within the same district; no other female relatives from either side of the family lived close enough to make the journey, or want to. Only her father was nearby, and he knew nothing about babies.
He was a beaten man, her father. Accused of being a monarchist and White Army sympathizer, he was stripped of his upper-grade teaching position and now worked as a janitor at the elementary school. “I was lucky,” he said. “Some of the teachers were hounded to the point of madness.” He reached a tentative finger into the basket where his grandson lay, quiet and watchful, dark eyes scanning the limits of his visible world. “Is there more tea?”
Refilling his cup, Zoya did not ask about her father’s colleagues. She knew there had been hasty interrogations, People’s Court trials convened on the spot, followed by swift executions. She preferred not to hear how rough, unschooled hands reviewed the scanty evidence of treasonous leanings, based, sometimes, on a lazy student’s personal grudge against a stern teacher.
Even at home, it was best not to talk about patriotism; the word’s meaning shifted constantly from one week to the next, as nascent political parties scrabbled for power in a government as raw as it was chaotic. When the civil war ended, Lenin died, and Stalin emerged victorious, she felt, frankly, indifferent. What did it matter? They were all guilty, in her view. All of them, whatever they called themselves, were complicit in the murder of the tsar and his radiant family.
“It was unfortunate, but necessary,” Vadim said on the one occasion when the topic came up between them. “And they are still a threat, even in death. As martyrs, they will continue to attract support, particularly abroad. Comrade Stalin is right to be vigilant.”
Zoya flushed deeply, surprised by the vehemence of her feelings. “It was barbaric. Are we pagan Pechenegs, or ancient Romans, who thought nothing of removing their fathers, their own brothers, just to have a turn at sitting on the throne a few years? They are assassins. Tsar Nicholas was a gentle man. He loved peace and family life.”
“No doubt some hundred years from now he will be elevated to sainthood,” Vadim predicted. “In the meantime, please keep these views to yourself, my dear.” He filled a pipe with Turkish tobacco and lit it, leaning back in his chair, watching his wife through half-closed eyes.
“As he should be,” she muttered, returning to the mending in her lap. Even a Communist Party member, it seemed, could never have enough good shirts.
2
NASTYA WAS A TALL, gaunt woman who brought vegetables to Yalta’s open-air bazaar from her small tenant plot in the Ukrainian countryside.
“Not much there. Ne mnogo,” Vadim observed, peering into her roughly woven basket, the straw dark as strong tea, stained by many years’ use.
“Shto Bog dayot. What the Lord provides,” she answered unsmiling, squinting up at him from her mat, her bronzed face rugged as the land.
“And the kolkhoz? Doesn’t the collective distribute the goods fairly?”
She glanced up sharply, meeting and holding his gaze for an instant before shifting her eyes to one side. For a while, in the first flush of postrevolutionary euphoria, it had been possible to speak one’s mind, to criticize officials and policies openly in letters to the myriad newspapers that sprang up like mushrooms after rain. That time had passed; the dissident presses were closed down, and one wrote such letters at one’s own peril. “The kolkhoz? It’s the same barin, only this landlord wears a cap with a red star instead of a frock coat. These are my vegetables. I grew them myself.”
“Govern your tongue, woman,” Vadim warned. “What of the citizens’ council, and the Komsomol? Aren’t the young people making sure everyone has their say?”
“Da, da.” Nastya waved a hand. “Yes, of course. The beets are fresh, sir. I pulled them early this morning,” she addressed a middle-aged man in a summer coat and dusty boots. She brushed a clod of dirt off the vegetables and cradled them in her hands for the customer to see. The man shook his head and moved on.
Vadim, too, was ready to walk on, but something about the woman held him. Was it the strong hands, with flat, stony palms, hands so unlike Zoya’s smooth long-fingered ones? Or the hint of insolence in her knowing eyes? “Listen—what are you called?”
She hesitated. “Nastya,” she finally answered.
“Nastya. I would buy your beets, but I brought no bag to carry them home.”
The woman turned her head to one side. “Masha!” she called, and a child of three years or so stepped out from behind her back. In one swift gesture, Nastya removed the oversized yellow kerchief from the girl’s head, shook it briskly, and wrapped the beets, tying the corners together in a neat package. “Bring it back, if you please, next market day,” she said, pocketing the coins while the ch
ild stood in silent acquiescence, doe eyes unblinking in her placid face.
Vadim was halfway down the row of vendors when he stopped, turned, and came back. He liked this woman, her quick thinking, her serious demeanor and sturdy practicality. “How many more do you have at home?” he asked, nodding at little Masha.
“She is my last. I gave my man and two sons to the motherland”—she crossed herself—“and the older daughters all found husbands, thank the Lord. Slava Bogu. Even if one is a cripple and the other a drunkard.”
“Nastya. My wife is sick. She needs someone to help her with the baby until, you know, she gets back on her feet. I’m not a wealthy man, but I can pay you more than you get for your vegetables.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. Two months, three? She is very weak, and the baby cries . . .”
“Does she have milk?”
Vadim reddened. “I—I think so. These are women’s matters. You must ask her yourself. I’ll arrange the temporary travel permit. You can bring the little one, too,” he added, regaining his composure.
So Nastya came, leaving Masha in her sister’s care, because a city, no matter how beautiful, was no place to raise a healthy child.
* * *
Filip thrived under Nastya’s care. From the first day, in spite of his undernourished frailty, she handled the infant fearlessly—not without affection, but with the assurance of a woman with no time to waste.
“Ai!” Zoya half-rose from her seat at the kitchen table. “You’ll drop him!”
Nastya passed the pale squirming body from one hand to the other, balancing him over the basin while ladling warm water over his head. “I raised six brothers while my mother worked in the fields, then my own five. I never dropped one of them, not that you’d see any damage.”
She placed the now quiet baby on a towel, rolled him gently but firmly from side to side. Like a yeast bun, Zoya thought, but said nothing. In no time at all, the new mother was holding the bundle, deftly diapered and swaddled, in her arms.
“I will bring you milk, and tvorog, farmer cheese, from the country, if I can,” Nastya said, submerging the baby’s spare blanket and tiny shirts under the tepid bathwater. “You can’t feed a baby with smiles. Where is your laundry pot?”
“Behind the stove,” Zoya said, her gaze fixed on her ravenous son. Expressions of tenderness, amazement, and curiosity passed in quick succession over her face, then dissolved into a momentary wince of pain as Filip latched on. Within minutes, they both settled into the rhythm of his sucking, and she was overcome with a hypnotic tiredness, a bone-melting fatigue so insistent she felt her arms relax and her head swirl with fog. I will be the one to drop him, she thought. She tightened her grip and forced herself to focus, watching Nastya rinse a handful of soiled diapers in the last of the bathwater. Humming to herself, Nastya wrung out the diapers and added them to the clothes in the laundry pot, filled it with fresh water, sprinkled in some washing soda, and pushed the vessel to the back of the stove.
“After it has boiled, I can hang the laundry in the courtyard?” Nastya asked, taking the sated infant from his mother and tucking him into his basket. “And you must sleep now, too.”
Zoya allowed herself to be led to bed. “That tune you were humming—what was it? I know it but can’t remember . . .”
“Just something that popped into my head. My mother used to sing it.” Nastya closed the curtains against the afternoon light.
“Yes . . . yes.” Zoya drifted off, becoming aware, just before sleep took her, of the words. It was a Christmas hymn, coming to her in the pure sweetness of nuns’ voices, reminding her that, with the birth of her child and slow recovery, she had not been to church in many weeks, and of how much she missed it.
She could not have gone to church, as she well knew, until the requisite forty days had passed after the birth of her child. She was not sure how becoming a mother made her unclean, or why the natural cycles of a woman’s body made her less worthy.
“It has to do with original sin, Zoya Stepanovna,” Nastya reminded her. They walked, Nastya restraining her longer, quicker stride to match Zoya’s slow progress. In the baby carriage, Filip slept, his tiny fists clenched above his head, his face bathed in a dewy sheen of perspiration. Vadim had stayed home, claiming to be suffering from indigestion.
“You mean Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden?”
“I don’t understand it myself. In the village, we think of the forty-day ceremony as bringing the baby into the fold, for everyone to see.”
“Isn’t that what baptism is for?”
“Baptism makes you a Christian, and it can be done in secret. This tradition is more . . . public.”
“Jesus spent forty days wandering in the wilderness,” Zoya observed.
“Yes, and Noah floated in his ark for forty days before landing on Mount Ararat,” Nastya added. “But I don’t know what any of it has to do with the birth of a child.”
They fell silent, each keenly aware of the precarious status of their religious observances. There was no need to talk about the escalating church and monastery closings, or the diminishing number of priests still able to serve the remaining believers.
“Sit here a moment.” Nastya indicated the wide limestone church steps. “I will have them tell Father Yefim you have come za molitvoy—to receive a prayer for your son.”
Zoya sat, choosing the end of the step shaded by a spreading acacia tree. The walk had wearied her. She closed her eyes against the wild array of colors shifting and swimming around her, not even able to remember what all these familiar flowers were called. Filip was still sleeping, with the barest shadow of a smile hovering around his lips. Watching him, she suddenly felt completely alone, as if they had all disappeared—her father, Vadim, Nastya—and she was left with the burden of survival, with this young life entrusted to her keeping. What if it happened? What then?
It was no idle question. People were here one day and gone the next. Would these prayers protect her then? Who could know? Zoya leaned her head against the baby carriage and surrendered to panic, its grip sending shivers down her arms and legs in spite of the warmth of the midmorning sun.
Filip woke up and wailed just as Nastya came out to tell her they were ready for the ceremony. Standing at the front of the sanctuary, Father Yefim beckoned for her to approach. He took the child from her and held him up, his firm hands easily encircling the little body. Zoya noticed the frayed edge of the priest’s cassock, the shiny, worn patches on his brocaded vestments, then forgot everything when her son disappeared through the altar gates, out of her sight. She knew it was a privilege given only to boys, that girl babies, while receiving the same prayers, were forbidden to pass the gates. Minutes later Filip, still crying, was back in her arms, but the separation, however brief, had seemed unbearable.
The service resumed, with Zoya first in line for Communion. When Father Yefim placed a drop of sacramental wine in the child’s mouth, Filip protested lustily, squirming and screaming. Zoya lowered her head and retreated to the back of the church in tears.
She was ashamed—of the priest’s evident shabbiness, of her own fears, of the church itself, which held fewer than half the usual number of people, of her son’s unequivocal rejection of his first taste of ceremonial wine. She had imagined it all so differently, each of them playing a part in this sacred pageant with the solemn dignity it deserved.
She barely heard Father Yefim’s abbreviated sermon and final benediction: “God willing, we’ll meet again next week”—words that offered scant hope and little comfort. After the service, everyone scattered as if eager to return to their harried lives. No neighborly chatting, no family news, no impromptu invitations to tea.
Two elderly nuns were the last to leave. Zoya watched them close the carved oak doors and walk briskly away, one carrying a bundle of vestments to launder, the other a pail of burnt-down stubs to melt down into new candles. She followed them with her eyes until the last glimpse of their
black billowing robes disappeared around the corner of the deserted street.
“Come, Zoya Stepanovna,” Nastya said firmly, pushing the baby carriage in the opposite direction. “Pora domoi. Time to go home.”
3
FILIP KICKED OFF his sandals as soon as he turned the corner, pushing them deep under the neighbor’s azalea bush. A few of the petals clung to his hands and he paused to admire them. He liked the way the deep-pink flowers glowed against his tanned skin; their velvety weightlessness intrigued him. He wanted to go home, right now, take out his watercolors, and paint. Maybe he could capture their fragile beauty if he mixed the colors just right. Even now he could see an overlay of white over the pink base, a tinge of palest yellow around the edges, a hint of almost-red at the stem end.
But Mama was waiting for the flour to make his birthday cake, and Avram might be busy with other customers, so he had to hurry. Filip jammed the petals into the pocket of his shorts and ran barefoot the rest of the way to the grocer’s shop. He ran in the road—its cobblestones were smoother than the rough-hewn sidewalk, and had better puddles. He jumped the puddles, but not always far enough to clear them, the satisfying splash of rainwater drenching his feet and legs. Filip laughed out loud at the cool joyous delight of it.
Avram’s shop was in the front room of his squat two-story house. He and his wife, Laila, lived in a small apartment in back, and rented the upstairs rooms to a succession of students from the university. They charged very little rent, and treated their young tenants to home-cooked meals and Yalta’s copious fresh fruit. “God gave us no children,” Laila would say, tying a clean apron around her slender waist. “But he sends us these fine young men. Jewish or not, it makes no difference. They need a home.”
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