The Russians Collection

by Michael Phillips

  Life had become unbearable in the city, but it was still home for Anna. The people she cared most about were there. Even if she sometimes felt as if her life had ended with Sergei’s death, her sons and adopted daughter had established themselves, and it seemed unfair to uproot them just for her own satisfaction. And oddly, Anna had no serious desire to leave St. Petersburg. The memories here were painful at times, but they were her only link to her dear Sergei. She wasn’t ready to cut herself off from them, and never would be.

  Thus, one way or another, Anna managed to cope. She gave thanks to God when she felt good, when moments of happiness penetrated the gloom. And the other times . . . well, she was just learning how to accept them.

  “Mama!”

  Anna turned toward the familiar voice that somehow rose above the noisy sounds of the crowded market.

  “Yuri! Whatever are you doing here?”

  Elbowing his way through the crowd, Anna’s eldest son strode toward her. He seemed to have sprouted several inches in the last six months. Cutting a path through the mass of shoppers, he could have been a man, not a fifteen-year-old boy. But as he drew close, the smoothness of his beardless cheeks revealed his youthfulness. Still, he was already nearly as tall as his father had been, with a lean, strong figure. His resemblance to Sergei and the Fedorcenkos was still marked, even though, unlike Sergei, Yuri’s hair and eyes were dark brown. His high forehead and well-sculpted jaw bore all the pride of the family whose nobility predated even the Romanovs.

  “You shouldn’t have to be spending your day in these lines,” said Yuri.

  “It must be done,” Anna replied. “But you still haven’t answered my question. What are you doing here? Why aren’t you in school?” One thing Sergei had desired more than anything was that his sons get a proper education. Anna was determined to see that through, no matter the hardships it brought.

  “School has been canceled, Mama.”

  “What?”

  “No electricity, no food to feed the students, no transportation for those who live too far to walk.” Yuri shook his head. He was obviously not pleased. His education was as important to him as it had been to his father. “Even some of the teachers have joined the strike. Some students, too. I’ve heard most of the schools in the city are closing.”

  “What next?” sighed Anna.

  “I hate to tell you.”

  “What do you mean, Yuri?”

  “It’s Andrei.”

  Anna closed her eyes and sighed. Andrei was probably deliriously happy about the cessation of school. The only reason he attended at all these days was because of Sergei. But now schools were closed, and revolutionary activity had escalated in the city. Anna felt her stomach tighten in apprehension.

  “I thought I should find you, Mama,” Yuri went on. “Maybe you can stop him.”

  “Stop him?”

  “He wants to join the demonstrations. He would have gone directly downtown, but I talked him into coming home first. I told him—” Yuri faltered and glanced down. But he wasn’t the type of person not to see a task through to the end, even if it was unpleasant. “I told him it would be a terrible thing if something . . . happened to him and he hadn’t seen you first.”

  Yuri bit his lip. The memories of his father’s sudden death were still raw and tender. Anna wanted to weep; she wanted to embrace her son, hold him as if he were a child. But it would not have been fitting in that public place, so she merely patted his arm.

  “I tried to get Andrei to stop by Uncle Paul’s on the way home from school,” Yuri continued, steadied by the diversion of his talk. “I thought Uncle Paul might be able to talk some sense into him. He wasn’t home, but Aunt Mathilde said she would let him know we wanted to see him.”

  Anna glanced at the line in front of her. It had crept forward only slightly since Yuri’s arrival. So little food was coming into the city; people were apt to drop any task at even the slightest hint of the arrival of a shipment of bread.

  “We must have bread,” Anna said.

  “I know, Mama.” Yuri obviously perceived her conflict. “I’ll wait for the bread.”

  Mother and son exchanged looks that went far deeper than the words they spoke. Shared grief and loss had brought them close, but they had always had a level of mutual understanding that had never developed between Anna and Andrei. Was it because Yuri was so much like his father? Or simply that his sensitive nature had lent itself more naturally to closeness?

  Anna had always had a more difficult time with her younger son. His manner, his sense of adventure, his passion were alien to Anna. He was more like his aunt Katrina in that way. But instead of opposite personalities enriching each other as they had between Anna and Katrina, the differences between Anna and Andrei only created a chasm between them. Sergei had been much better with Andrei. That had been Sergei’s gift, after all. He had been a man who could bridge chasms—between servant girl and prince, Cossack and gentleman, or illiterate peasant and intellectual.

  But Sergei was gone.

  Anna nodded toward Yuri, then turned away from the market. She had to depend on herself now. She had to learn to meet the crises of life alone. Well, she wasn’t truly alone. God was still with her.

  2

  Paul was sitting in the parlor. Andrei was nowhere to be seen. When Anna entered the flat, Paul jumped up from where he had been sitting and strode toward her.

  “Anna, you’ve come home just in time!” Paul said.

  “It’s not the coincidence it appears to be. Yuri found me at the market and told me about Andrei’s crazy intentions.”

  “I just finished talking to him—”

  “And has he left?”

  “I tried to talk him out of it,” Paul said defensively.

  “I’m sorry, Paul, that was unfair of me.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You have every right to wonder. Trusting me to discourage a revolutionary is like entrusting a hen house to a fox. But he hasn’t gone yet. He is in his room changing out of his school uniform into clothes he deems more appropriate for radical demonstrations—whatever that might be!”

  “Would it help for me to talk to him?” The sincerity of Anna’s query was real, for, despite their differences, she knew her brother, Paul, to be a wise man.

  “I doubt that you will be able to just let him go.”

  “I can’t very well lock him in his room, can I?”

  “It wouldn’t help. I should know.”

  “What should I say to him, Paul?”

  “Many years ago a very wise young woman told her impulsive brother that he should give himself time to grow up, to get his education and learn about life before he jumped into its many frays. Had circumstances not conspired against me, I would have listened to that advice.”

  “If only I could be as naive as the girl you spoke of . . .” Anna closed her eyes as if she might be able to conjure up an image of that girl who now seemed only to exist in their imaginations. “She’s gone, Paul. In her place is a woman who has seen perhaps too much of life.”

  “Go and talk to your son, Anna. You will do fine.”

  Andrei was gathering together a few items on the table he and Yuri used as a desk. Andrei let Anna into the room then continued with what he had been doing. Anna watched as he put his sketch pad and a packet of charcoal into a satchel. Lately, he hardly went anywhere without these things. As with his grandfather Viktor, Andrei’s grief had unearthed an artistic talent within him that helped him emotionally as no human had been able.

  Anna recalled his first drawing. He had hesitantly showed it to his mother, a look of wonder on his face.

  “Andrei, this is very good. I didn’t know you could do this sort of thing.”

  “I didn’t either. It . . . just came. It was almost like someone else did it.”

  “It looks so much like him.”

  “Do you think so, Mama? That’s why I did it, you know. I was so afraid I’d forget what he looked like.”

  Now Anna glanc
ed at the wall where the drawing hung. She felt a sudden tightness in her chest as she gazed into her Sergei’s tender eyes. Andrei had not only made a likeness of his father, but he seemed also to have captured Sergei’s very soul. She could almost hear Sergei’s gentle, vibrant voice say, I will never leave my beloved family, as long as I live in your hearts.

  Anna somehow received strength from the simple charcoal drawing. She took a breath, stepped into the room, and closed the door behind her.

  “Andrei, where are you going?”

  “Mama, please don’t try to stop me.”

  “Could I?”

  “Papa wouldn’t try. He let me go to Father Gapon’s march.”

  Anna bit her lip. Andrei had no sense of diplomacy. He usually said the first thing that sprang to mind, thinking about his words only later, if at all.

  “And that is the only argument you can give me?” said Anna. “It hardly makes me any more eager to send you into . . . heaven only knows what.”

  “You don’t need to be afraid for me—”

  “What makes you think you’re so invincible?” Anna spoke more sharply than she intended, but all she could think of in that moment was her Sergei leaving one morning full of life and hope, and returning a lifeless form in the arms of a peasant. Didn’t Andrei understand that she feared the same thing happening every time her sons left her sight? Sometimes she awoke shaking from nightmares in which the bodies of Andrei and Yuri were being carried to her in the strong arms of a stranger.

  “Mama, I won’t die.”

  “Because you will it? Because God wills it? How can you be so sure?”

  “Will you try to protect me for the rest of my life, then?” he snapped. Then he added more contritely, “Mama, it’s not a good thing to live in fear. Don’t make me live that way. Please!”

  “Andrei . . .” Anna sighed.

  He was only thirteen years old. A child, though he often tried to act like a man—a brash and cocky one sometimes. But his wide-set pale gray eyes and blond hair, as unruly and curly as Anna’s, and his broad, open face gave him the look of childish innocence. The appearance of a cherub, not a hardened revolutionary. He had definitely inherited his grandfather Yevno’s look of honest simplicity along with his solid, muscular build. But Andrei was in no way as uncomplicated as old Yevno had been. The simple innocence was but an exterior shell around the burning passions and convictions that lay within.

  Until Bloody Sunday, Anna had always been amused by Andrei’s affectation of the radical persona. The family had chuckled when he spouted jargon he’d obviously heard from the students his father tutored or from things he’d read. But that one horrible day—that day when the tsar’s troops had fired on peaceful demonstrators, killing and wounding hundreds—had wiped away forever all sense of amusement.

  Perhaps Andrei had become a man that day. After all, he had watched as his father was shot down, and he himself had been seriously wounded. Just as an entire nation had lost its innocence that day, so had Anna’s youngest son. The Russian people had lost their Little Father; Andrei had lost his father. And as the people’s devotion toward their beloved tsar and undying faith had crumbled, so had the faith of a little boy.

  “Son, I know your beliefs mean a lot to you,” Anna said. “It’s an admirable thing to be a . . . person—” She couldn’t bring herself to use the word man. “A person of conviction. I only wish that you would let yourself grow up a bit more. Finish your schooling, at least. You know that’s what your father would want.” That last statement was perhaps unfair, but she was running out of arguments.

  He was silent for a long time, but the slight movement of his mouth and eyes indicated he was in deep thought. He plopped down on his bed and rested his chin in his hands.

  “I’ll probably never be old enough,” he said. “Not in your eyes.”

  “You are my baby, Andrei, but I promise if you give a little now, I will try to give a little later.”

  “Okay,” Andrei grunted reluctantly.

  “Thank you,” Anna said, then withdrew and left him to his thoughts.

  When the door clicked shut behind his mother, Andrei got his sketch pad and a piece of charcoal and resumed his seat on the bed. He turned over a fresh sheet in his pad and began drawing from memory a scene he had observed on the way home from school. A beggar had been standing on a corner with tin cup in hand. A gentleman in a fine cashmere suit and natty bowler hat, carrying a mahogany walking stick with a gold handle, passed the beggar, pointedly ignoring him. Another man, a poor working man in coarse clothes and tattered cloth cap, paused and dropped a coin into the fellow’s tin cup.

  Andrei’s keen artistic eye had taken in the most minute details of the scene—the sharp line of the gentleman’s nose and the likeness of a serpent on the golden head of his stick; the jagged scar on the working man’s cheek and the homemade mittens on his hands. But Andrei had especially noted the surprise on the beggar’s face, the brief flicker of hesitation as he perhaps debated returning the hard-earned kopeck to the fellow.

  The sketch that grew on the blank sheet did not have the representational detail that Andrei’s grandfather Viktor used when he drew. It was more Impressionistic in style, the lines at times vague. Yet when Andrei completed the drawing, the haughtiness of the gentleman, the humility of the worker, the wonder of the beggar, were in no way compromised by the style. Even the serpent on the walking stick bore an unmistakable arrogance.

  Andrei studied the work in progress. Perhaps he was too young to join those who clamored for freedom, but no one could stop him from embracing their plight in his heart. And suddenly an idea struck him—a way to obey his mother but at the same time strike a blow for freedom.

  After fleshing out the sketch, Andrei paused, thought for a minute, then wrote a phrase at the bottom of the picture.

  “Give your all to fight the oppression of the boyars!”

  He drew a border around the entire drawing as he had once seen on a handbill posted on a wall. He started to sign the drawing with his own name but on a sudden impulse he wrote instead, Malenkiy Soldat, “Little Soldier.”

  Andrei smiled. He liked the idea of a pseudonym; all the revolutionaries had them. His nom de guerre.

  A knock at his door made him look up. For the first time, he became aware of the passage of time. It had to have been at least two hours since he had spoken to his mother.

  “Come in,” he said.

  It was Yuri. Andrei would never have thought to knock on the door to his own room so as not to interrupt his brother’s solitude. But, then, that was Yuri.

  “Look who I’ve got with me!” Yuri announced.

  Andrei saw a diminutive figure peeking over Yuri’s shoulder.

  “Talia!” Andrei grinned. “What are you doing here in the middle of the week?”

  “I could ask the same of you,” Talia replied. She followed Yuri into the room and shut the door.

  “But they hardly ever release you from that prison of a ballet school.”

  “The ballet is on strike, so they couldn’t very well keep the students without instructors or mentors.” Talia paused and wrinkled her nose with disapproval. “I just hope it doesn’t go on for too long. I’m already getting a late start at the school, and missing time can’t be good for my career.”

  “Oh, you and Yuri!” Andrei exclaimed with a hint of disgust. “Such slaves to your educations. I say we couldn’t be luckier.”

  Yuri raised his eyebrows. “That’s because you don’t give a fig about your future.”

  “I only care about the future of my country,” retorted Andrei.

  “All right, you two,” Talia interceded, “I may not have a very long holiday, and I don’t want to spend it being a referee.”

  She plopped down on the bed next to Andrei, and Yuri, not really angry, followed.

  Andrei didn’t care what they thought of him for hating school. Any holiday was to be greatly appreciated, especially if it could be spent with his best friend,
Talia. The daughter of Raisa, their housemate, Talia was twelve, a year younger than Andrei. She had always been petite, with fine, expressive features. Demure, quiet, at times even self-effacing, she was as loyal a friend as anyone could desire. She and Andrei and Yuri might have been thrown together by chance when their parents decided to live together, but the friendship that had grown between them was a real and vital one. For the last five years they had been practically inseparable. And, though their various boarding schools now forced them apart much of the time, the ties between them were still strong.

  A year ago the three had participated in the childish rite of becoming blood brothers and sister. The little wounds on their fingers where they had drawn and mixed their blood were healed now and nearly invisible. But because the rite itself had only been an expression of the devotion that had already been present, the reality would never fade away.

  Still, Andrei always felt more confident about Talia’s friendship when they were together. Yuri would always be his brother, but there were no blood ties, childish rites aside, to guarantee Talia’s fidelity. She had been in the ballet school only a few months, but that new world might one day steal her away completely.

  “What have you got there?” Talia tried to get a look at the sketch, but Andrei’s arm obscured part of it.

  Andrei, never shy about his drawing, lifted his arm.

  “Are you going to tack that up on the Winter Palace?” Yuri asked with some amusement.