He stared up at the painted ceiling, craning his neck, strap of his satchel sliding down his arm. He struck Nikita as hopelessly backward, wrapped in fur and rough brown fabric, his face too-open, enthralled as he stared at the train station like it was the inside of the Kremlin.
To a trapper kid from Tomsk, it probably seemed like a palace.
“Ha!” Ivan laughed. “Look at him.”
Sasha blushed, but grinned, and kept looking. “It’s beautiful.” Wondrous. Exhilarated.
The others laughed.
Monsieur Philippe looked on with a smile that curdled Nikita’s insides.
He said, “Pick up your tongue and come on, pup.”
~*~
Sasha’s neighbor back home, Andrei, had been to Moscow before – it was where he’d learned his stories about the Cheka, which he’d then horrified all the children of Tomsk with – and had described it to Sasha. But no story could have prepared him for the spectacle of the capital.
“This is just the train station,” Nikita said, voice dry. But when Sasha darted a glance toward him, he saw the beginnings of a smile tucked into the corners of his mouth. “Wait until you see the Kremlin.”
“The Kremlin?” Sasha echoed, disbelieving, before the vaulted, painted ceiling drew his gaze again. It was unbelievable.
“I imagine the major general will want to see his new weapon,” Nikita said, now with distaste in his voice.
“I’m hungry,” Ivan announced.
Feliks said, “You’re always hungry.”
Sasha’s hunger was a dull murmur deep in the pit of his stomach. He’d been so exhausted from the constant swaying of the train, but now, standing on unsteady legs, the thrill of being somewhere new had given him an adrenaline boost. He felt wide-awake now. He wanted to explore.
“You should see Kazan Station,” Philippe said, appearing at his elbow. “It’s even more impressive.”
Sasha sent him a disbelieving look and he laughed.
“It’s true, I promise. Moscow is a beautiful city.” He made a face. “She’s a bit battered at the moment. But. Beautiful.” He laid a fatherly hand on Sasha’s arm. “Come, Sasha, and we’ll see about supper.”
Around them, disembarking passengers headed for the doors. Young men from Siberia in rough homespun and furs, as dazed and curious as Sasha felt. Soviet officials in heavy coats, faces set in unreadable masks, jowly and red-eyed from vodka. Cheka officers, the badges flashing on their chests, several of them cutting glances toward their small group. One in particular nodded, and Nikita nodded back.
A thought struck Sasha, suddenly. “Why were we alone on the train car?” he murmured, not intending anyone to hear.
But Philippe said, “Those officers were checking in with local GPU officials in the villages.” Collecting grain, and arresting those who tried to hide it under floorboards. “But Captain Baskin and his men were on a special assignment.”
“Me,” Sasha said, belly clenching.
“Quite right,” Philippe said, oblivious to his discomfort. “So we had special accommodations.”
“But…” He turned to face the old man. “Why?”
Philippe smiled at him, eyes dancing. “Because you’re going to save the country, Sasha.”
He gulped.
“Don’t worry. I’ll explain everything in due time.”
~*~
As a boy, Sasha had traveled by both horse and dog sled, in the winter, with his father to deliver pelts to some of Tomsk’s smaller satellite villages. By comparison, those primitive cottages made Tomsk seen like a metropolis, bustling with university students, eastbound travelers, miners, trappers, and craftsmen. Thanks to the permafrost layer, Tomsk hadn’t suffered the farming collectivization that had ravaged the more western, agricultural areas of Siberia, and so the city had remained somewhat prosperous under Soviet control.
So Sasha thought he knew what a big city looked like.
He was wrong.
Even in the dark, Moscow gave an impression of vastness: all clashing rooflines, twisting alleys, and the smell of too many people. Filthy snow, scurrying rats, crumbling stonework. The factory belched powdery smoke against the black sky, and crouched at its feet were a half-dozen wooden buildings with open, glassless windows, sounds of voices and crying babies coming from inside: barracks for the factory workers.
The building looked new: flat-faced white concrete lacking all the charm of the imperial-era buildings. Utilitarian and featureless, half of its windows lit up in checkerboard pattern all the way up its ten stories.
“We’re on eight,” Nikita said, leading them to the building’s main door. It boasted a fresh coat of black paint, glimmering faintly with condensed moisture in the glow of an overhead electric light. Sasha thought of the intricate detail on the front door of his home and found this one flat and foreboding by comparison. There was no decoration on this door, no love. No life.
Nikita let them into a dim concrete stairwell that smelled of dampness and garbage. Sasha’s breath caught in his throat. Nothing in Tomsk smelled like Moscow had so far. Nothing looked like it, either, the sheen of more condensation on the stair treads and walls, the crawling patches of mildew.
Nikita kicked aside a bundle of cloth that looked like a holey, discarded jacket and started up the stairs, unaware of the horror blooming inside of Sasha behind him.
Their footfalls rang loud, echoing off the concrete, and the walls seem to tighten fraction by fraction as they trooped up the stairs. Every other landing fed out into a long hallway lined with doors. Sasha heard the high, thin wails of several babies crying, and the rough shouts of grown men, the words muffled by the walls. Garbage and broken furniture was piled up outside apartment doors, and the smell seemed to intensify as they climbed.
On one landing, a family of five sat huddled in rags, their faces sooty and their knuckles scraped. They ate beans straight out of the can. The mother held a two or three-year-old child on her lap, and his eyes, enormous and blue, followed Sasha as he walked past, caught between averting his gaze and staring back.
He’d seen families camped out in reindeer-hide tents back home, wood smoke billowing through ventilation holes rigged carefully at the tops, but even that sort of life seemed preferable to camping in a concrete stairwell. More dignified, for sure.
“Better than the barracks,” Kolya muttered.
Sasha thought of the long wooden building he’d seen outside the steel factory and shivered.
Behind him, Monsieur Philippe began to huff and puff as the stairs switched back, and then back again, over and over.
“Not as young as I used to be,” he lamented, wheezing. “I wasn’t built for apartment living.”
“Where do you live, then, Dedushka?” Feliks asked.
Philippe made a breathless sound and didn’t answer.
Finally, they reached the eighth floor, another hallway like all the rest, smelling strongly of cramped humanity, the air cold enough to turn their breath to white plumes. Dim electric bulbs set at intervals down the ceiling cast their shadows in monstrous shapes, hump-backed and long-fingered, like something from a folk tale.
Nikita fished his keys from his pocket with a jingle and let them into the third door on the left. There was a quiet click and the room filled with light.
It was small, that was the first impression. And sparse. A narrow living room fed through a propped-open doorway into a narrow kitchen with one window, greasy panes smearing a haze of light from outside across lino floors and metal-faced cabinets. Two stacked mattresses on the floor behind the sofa clearly served as someone’s bed, heaped with blankets and crumpled pillows.
Sasha spotted a radio, an oddly dainty table, a few solid wooden chairs. The sofa boasted a folded stack of blankets at one end, like someone slept there also. A hallway turned a corner, leading to what must be bedrooms and a bathroom.
Someone closed the door behind him, and for a moment he knew claustrophobia, trapped in such a small space with six men who
were essentially strangers…and essentially the enemy. He hadn’t been brought up a proper White, but his parents weren’t Bolsheviks, and neither was he. He…he…
A hand landed on his shoulder, solid and grounding. “Home sweet home,” Ivan said, cheerfully, and the sudden surge of anxiety eased.
Sasha took a deep breath and smelled the faint musk of dried sweat, a hint of melted snow, and the echo of tea. Human, lived-in smells.
And then he began to see the small signs of such things: the dog-eared paperback book on the table. The row of socks hung up on a line to dry over the radiator. The homely clutter of pots, and pans, and tea kettle and tin cups beside the kitchen sink. Dried mushrooms on a string above the stove. A row of polished, knee-high dress boots beside the door – city boots. The hooks for coats and scarves.
“Do you all live here?” he asked.
“Yes,” Kolya said. “Thankfully we don’t have families.”
When Sasha turned to glance at him, he found Pyotr’s gaze instead.
“Sixteen people live next door,” he explained, sadly.
Oh.
Oh.
“I’m hungry,” Ivan announced, stepping away, dropping onto the stacked mattresses with a relieved-sounding sigh.
“What else is new?” Kolya said, kicking his boots as he stepped past him. “It’s Feliks’s turn to cook.”
Feliks groaned.
“There’s bychki,” Nikita said. “Bread. Maybe some eggs left. And kielbasa.”
“Bychki,” Feliks said, reverently, and hurried to hang up his coat and hat and go into the kitchen.
Sasha shrugged out of his own outerwear when Kolya reached to take it from him, toeing off his boots as he watched his things go up on the wall hooks beside the other men’s.
Monsieur Philippe, he noticed, hung up his hat, but kept his fur coat pulled tightly around him as he walked deeper into the room. “What a lovely home,” he said, smiling, as always.
Ivan snorted. “Yeah. Lovely.”
“Pyotr, show our guests where they’ll sleep,” Nikita said.
“Right.”
Pyotr seemed even smaller and younger out of his coat, gangly like Sasha, but with narrower shoulders and smaller hands, a slight twist in his spine somewhere that caused him to hunch forward just a little as he walked. His clothes seemed too big for him, shirt baggy at the waist, the cuffs folded over. Hand-me-downs.
Little brother, the others had called him. He must be wearing his brother’s clothes.
“This way,” he said, motioning for Sasha and Philippe to follow him down the short hallway and through a door on the left into a bedroom. It was small, the walls painted a dirty white, two twin beds shoved into opposite corners. Between them, a night table topped with a brass lamp and an empty ashtray. Another book, its pages yellow and tattered.
“I sleep there,” Pyotr said, pointing to the bed on the left. “Kolya sleeps there. We make Ivan sleep out in the living room because he snores.” A soft smile touched his mouth, there and then gone again. “Feliks sleeps on the sofa. They let me have a real bed because of my back.” He twisted his hands together self-consciously. “But you can, um–”
“We won’t steal your bed, dear boy,” Philippe said. “Don’t you worry about that.”
Pyotr’s eyes widened. “But–”
“You can bunk with me,” Nikita said from the threshold, and they all turned to look at him. He stood half in shadow, his face concealed.
Pyotr swallowed audibly. “That’s…that’s Dima’s bed.”
“And now it’s yours. Get your things, bratishka.”
“Yes, sir.” Pyotr got to his knees and pulled a battered suitcase from beneath the bed. Grabbed the book off the nightstand and opened the drawer to pull out three more.
“So you’re the bookworm,” Philippe said. Every observation the old man made came out full of affection and approval. “How are you enjoying Anna Karenina?”
Pyotr blushed as he stood, balancing the books in an awkward, one-armed hold, shoulders pulled askew by the weight of the suitcase. “Very much.”
Philippe nodded. “I think it’s every Russian’s duty to read Tolstoy.” He turned to Sasha. “Perhaps he’ll let you borrow it, Sasha. A wonderful novel.” His eyes were bright and multi-faceted as tiny gemstones.
“It’s very good. I think you’d like it,” Pyotr told Sasha, then blushed again. Said, “Um, okay,” and left them room in an awkward, embarrassed shuffle.
Philippe sighed when he was gone. “I fear that one’s not hard enough for this war. Men like that don’t normally fare well in battle.”
“But you think I will? I’m not a soldier, Monsieur Philippe.”
He gave Sasha a level – for once unsmiling – look, and said, “Not yet, you mean.”
~*~
Supper was bychki on stale black bread, topped with a fried egg apiece. It was salty, and hearty, and hit Sasha’s belly like a rock – in a good way; he didn’t realize he was hungry until he took his first bite. Nikita and Kolya sat at the table, while the rest of them sat on the sofa or cross-legged on the floor. Pyotr was at Sasha’s elbow, on the floor, and Sasha could smell faint traces of the other boy’s sour sweat. He was nervous.
So was Sasha.
Feliks was telling a story about a woman named Natalia – “when you put your head between them, you could rest them on your shoulders, I swear” – that made Sasha’s face feel hot (Pyotr stared down at his half-empty plate, cheeks flaming), when Nikita interrupted.
“That’s enough,” he said, and Feliks’s voice cut off abruptly. “Our guests don’t want to hear about your exploits.”
Sasha hiked his shoulders up around his ears. He wasn’t about to admit to being a virgin.
“It doesn’t bother me,” Philippe assured. “We’re all men here. I’m no stranger to these kinds of stories.”
But the air had shifted in the room, grown heavy and fraught. Tension skated up Sasha’s arms, went rippling down his back, winding his spine up tighter and tighter as each silent second ticked by.
Nikita pushed his plate away and the scrape of it across the table was too loud. He turned his head slowly, gaze going to Monsieur Philippe, the slate gray of storm clouds. “I bet you know lots of stories, don’t you?”
Philippe lowered his cup slowly, expression calm. But careful. “I do know a good many stories, yes.”
“Some ghost stories, I think,” Nikita said.
“Yes.”
The entire apartment seemed to be holding its breath. There were no sounds save the soft scrape of metal against leather as a knife was drawn: Kolya.
“Monsieur Dyomin,” Philippe said, “I hardly think that’s necessary.”
“Why don’t you tell us a ghost story?” Nikita said. A muscle in his jaw twitched, the only outward display of agitation. “Maybe your own.”
A beat passed in which no one moved or breathed. And then Philippe smiled. “Is that what’s been bothering you, Captain? You’re afraid I’m a ghost?”
“I know you are.”
“Ah. Well. I’d be careful, if I were you, Captain Baskin. What’s a good and patriotic officer like yourself doing telling stories of the empire?”
“They aren’t stories!” Nikita sprang to his feet, his chair skidding backward across the floor. It happened so fast it took a moment for Sasha to realize he’d pulled a gun – and was aiming it at Philippe.
“You’re very upset,” Philippe observed mildly, unperturbed. His level gaze was somehow more frightening than the gun, the way he didn’t seem to care that he was about to be shot.
Nikita took a deep breath through his nostrils. Sweat had beaded at his temples, and a lock of hair, now-damp, fell across his forehead. His eyes were electric. But his hand didn’t move, the gun unwavering. “Convince me you aren’t the Monsieur Philippe the Black Crows brought to Nicky and Alix.”
Kolya groaned quietly. “Nik…”
Ivan stood up, his towering height bringing his head almost
to the ceiling, and moved toward the old man as if he meant to hold him down and force answers from him if he wouldn’t explain himself.
But he did explain. Philippe sighed and said, “I’d hoped not to have this conversation so soon.”
“Too bad,” Nikita said.
“These confessions are dangerous.”
“So am I.”
“I have no doubt,” Philippe said with another sigh, this one weary. He studied his hands a moment, and when he lifted his head, Sasha felt a sensation like a finger running down the knobs of his spine, a physical touch of excitement and dread.
What’s happening? he thought. He glanced at Pyotr and got a skittish shrug in return.
“Yes, I am that Monsieur Philippe,” he began. “But I’m not a ghost – I’m very much alive. My death was a rumor that dear Militsa helped me spread because it was better if I disappeared for a while.”
Still holding the gun, Nikita said, “Keep talking.”
And Philippe did.
~*~
It was half-fable, half-anti-Bolshevik dream. And apparently it was true. It went like this:
Philippe Nazier-Vachot was introduced to the last tsar and tsarina of Russia by the royal couple’s close friends, the Montenegrin sisters Militsa and Stana: the Black Crows.
“What beautiful, good-hearted young people they were,” he said, smile turning faraway and dreamy. He didn’t look at the gun as he spoke, instead passed his gaze around the group, meeting each man’s eyes, a storyteller with a talent for drawing in his audience. The radiator hummed and Sasha imagined its heat was that of a bonfire, that they were victorious hunters settled in for the night, on seats of felled logs, their dogs sleeping and licking at reindeer bones at their feet. “Brave, ambitious Nicholas. And dear sweet Alix, so fragile, but so gracious. I could never repay the sisters for introducing me to them. It was a gift to know them.”
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