Clutching them still, she climbed into the chilled bed, pushed them for the time being under her pillow. She would find a place of safe-keeping for them tomorrow.
It was a very long time before she slept.
* * *
The timing of her first visit to Margarita was dictated by the degree of unrest still prevailing in the city. For two days it was too dangerous to venture out. On the third day, however, even Volodya thought it safe enough for her to go to find her youngest sister. It was with real excitement that she set off towards the Liteini and Sasha’s and Margarita’s apartment.
The first moments of astonishment and delight could not have been more as she had hoped. Margarita showed every sign of pleasure at seeing her, asked non-stop questions – and characteristically barely waited to hear the answers – as she made tea. Yet Anna thought there was an edge of strain in the light voice, the too-bright laughter.
‘Me? Why I’m very well of course.’ Margarita pirouetted, smoothing the waist of her pretty dress. ‘Can’t you see it? Just driven absolutely to distraction by all this foolish revolution nonsense. Why can’t everyone just settle down and enjoy themselves again, that’s what I want to know. Sasha?’ She looked up at her sister’s question, blue eyes limpid. ‘Oh, he was fine last time I heard – letters take such ages of course – more tea?’
Certainly it was obvious that she was in no immediate need of help, financial or otherwise. Of all of them, indeed, Rita seemed to have fared the best. Her shelves were stocked, her small apartment warm and comfortable.
Anna could not, then, quite understand the obscure feeling of unease that dogged her as she took her leave and made her way back to the Fontanka.
Volodya was waiting for her; he too had been busy and produced, with the air of a magician bringing rabbits from hats, tea, sugar and fresh-baked bread. He eased off her shoes and chafed her cold feet. He listened to her account of her visit to her sister and with sensible words calmed her disquiet. He drew laughter from her as he told of an incident in the bread queue that morning, and grateful thanks at the news that he had suggested to Varya that Natalia’s two children, ’Tasha and Nikki, might come to stay for a few days, and had persuaded from her the reluctant agreement that Anna herself had been utterly unable to extract.
In the cold kitchen as she tried to express her thanks, he kissed her. And, gratefully and with real affection, she kissed him back.
That night, he came to her bed. In such strange and confusing times it was good not to be alone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Margarita pushed impatiently through the excited crowds, uncaring of the growled complaints and hard looks occasioned by her ready use of elbow and shoulder. The man who stood upon a chair and harangued the throng punched the air with his fist as he spoke.
‘And I tell you, comrades, that we did not fight and die in the streets – in these very streets – for the right to continue a Tsarist Imperialist war –’
‘Bloody Bolshevik,’ a man muttered as Margarita passed, and she dodged with practised speed as another standing nearby lunged at the speaker, grabbing him by the collar. ‘And what’s wrong with the Bolsheviks, my Menshevik friend?’
She reached the edge of the gathering. The whole of the Liteini was blocked by the meeting.
‘– what good have our sacrifices done us? Our sacrifices, comrades, not the sacrifices of the petty bourgeois who sit on their fat behinds around a table and call themselves a parliament! Our sacrifices! What good has it been, tell me that! The people still starve, still die for nothing under the filthy guns of tyranny –’
‘Mind where you’re going, girl!’ A man caught her arm. She snatched it away; saw the speculative look in his eye as he took in her fashionable dress and hat, the cloud of golden hair. Damn it that she could have been so stupid as to leave her brown cloak in Vassili’s room! Unseasonally warm as the April day was, the enveloping garment was disguise and protection in these dangerous days. She slid swiftly into the crowd like a fish into water, leaving the man staring after her.
‘I tell you this, comrades: you have more in common with the workers of Germany, the poor bloody bastards who suffer as you suffer, and die as you die, than with those that seek to rule you now – traitors all, to the revolution and to the people –’
She was almost at the crossroads. Hampered by her slim, hobbled skirt she hurried along the pavement. Swore under her breath as, suddenly, from a nearby turning a large group of men – yes, and some women too, she noted with disdain – erupted into the main street and advanced on the Bolshevik meeting, staves and cudgels in hand.
‘Listen as your comrades at the Front are listening!’ The impassioned voice echoed still behind her, bouncing from the walls of the buildings that lined the wide thoroughfare. ‘They don’t want to fight this war – they are refusing to fight this war! They are deserting – deserting by the thousands – by the hundreds of thousands. You know it! You know them! These are the brave lads who are standing up for their rights, and for the rights of every one of us. Now that Comrade Lenin is back with us –’
‘Look out!’ someone shouted.
Margarita plastered herself up against the wall as the grim-faced oncoming marchers broke into a determined trot, pouring past her and ploughing into the outer edges of the meeting, weapons raised.
She lifted her skirts and sped the last few yards, turned into the familiar street, shrieks and screams of anger, outrage and pain dying behind her.
She ran up the stairs to the apartment, fumbling in her bag for her key as she went. ‘Damned hooligans! Barbarians! Godforsaken apes, the lot of them!’ She swung herself briskly up and around the painted banister post onto the landing. A woman was coming out of one of the doors. She turned as she heard Margarita’s coming. For a moment they were eye to eye. Then the other woman – dark-clad and fat as a priest, Margarita thought contemptuously – stepped back, drawing her skirts aside, pursed her mouth, openly insulting, making as if she would spit.
Margarita, smiling viciously, gestured obscenely with her fingers.
And then saw Anna, waiting at the front door of the apartment.
She watched the other woman down the stairs, turned and sauntered defiantly towards her sister. She looked, Anna thought, quite exceptionally beautiful; thinner than she used to be, her face fine-boned and taut, the wide blue eyes a blaze of bright colour beneath the mass of her hair. Beautiful, yes; but not happy. ‘Fat bitch,’ she said, casually, as she reached to fit the key into the lock. ‘Fine neighbours I’ve got!’
‘Margarita!’ Anna said, unhappily.
‘Oh, do stop it, ’Noushka. Come in or stand there, but don’t lecture me. I’m not in the mood.’ She snatched her hat from her head and tossed it onto the table.
Anna followed her into the apartment. No sign of deprivation here. Despite the warmth outside the stoves glowed with heat; the paint was fresh, a new set of curtains decked the windows.
Margarita walked to the window, stood looking down into the street. She said nothing.
Irritatingly Anna felt every bit as awkward as she knew her young sister was hoping she would. ‘I – we – haven’t heard from you for a week or so. Mama – asked me to check that you were all right –’
Margarita turned, her sudden smile seraphic. ‘No she didn’t, Anna, don’t talk such nonsense. Mama doesn’t care whether any of us lives or dies. It was you who wanted to know if I was all right.’
Anna shrugged.
Margarita walked to the table, opened a silver box, took out a cigarette and lit it, taking a long, satisfied pull at it before throwing back her head to blow the smoke theatrically into the air. ‘I’m all right,’ she said, lightly.
‘You are?’ Her sister’s voice was openly, tartly sceptical.
‘Yes. As all right as anyone can be, that is, who has just heard that a bunch of bastard peasants has burned down her country home.’ She drew on the cigarette again, watching her sister. ‘Are the English peasants prone
to fire-raising, Anna? Are you sure your precious Sythings is safe?’
‘Oh, Rita, I’m so sorry. Drovenskoye is gone? I’d heard reports – it’s been very bad in the countryside they say.’ Anna stepped towards her sister, hand outstretched, and stopped as Margarita turned, avoiding her. ‘Your mother-in-law? And Sasha’s sister? Are they safe?’
Margarita turned to look at her through a cloud of smoke. ‘I’ve no idea,’ she said, coolly.
Anna surveyed her sister helplessly. In the half a dozen times they had met since her return to Petrograd she had never once come near to breaking this bright and brittle shell with which Margarita had armoured herself. ‘Does Sasha know?’
Margarita lifted a shoulder.
‘Have you heard from him?’
The swift irritation that any reference to her husband seemed to occasion flickered in Margarita’s face. ‘Of course I haven’t heard from him. I’ve told you – how ever many times have I told you? – he’s at the Front. How the devil do you think he’d find time to write with things as they are? They’re saying whole regiments are refusing to fight, that men are executing their officers, have you heard? The whole thing’s a shambles. If Sasha’s in one piece I doubt if his priority would be to write to me!’
‘No. I suppose not.’
Margarita leaned to the window again, peering down into the street. ‘There’s more trouble out there. They’re breaking up a meeting.’
‘There’s been trouble all over the city.’
‘I don’t understand in the least what’s going on. I thought they wanted to get rid of the Tsar? Well, they’ve got rid of him. What the hell are they all fighting for now?’
‘Power,’ Anna said, bleakly. ‘The revolution isn’t over, Rita. It’s only just started. The Socialists aren’t satisfied with sharing power with the Duma. They aren’t going to stand by and let the Duma reap the benefit of what they see as their victory. Volodya says they won’t be satisfied until they’ve taken complete control.’
‘Ah,’ Margarita said, lightly spiteful, ‘if Volodya said it, it must be so.’
Anna ignored the silly and obviously deliberate provocation; she had in these past weeks realized that Margarita the woman was little different to Margarita the child: to rise to her bait was to encourage her to even more outrageous behaviour. She had joined her sister at the window. Beneath them a group of men ran past, shouting and waving heavy staves. One of them had a pistol that he was firing wildly into the air.
‘But why are they fighting amongst themselves?’ Margarita asked after a moment, a sudden flash of real interest in her voice. ‘That lot down there are all Socialists, aren’t they? Yet they seem to hate each other more than they ever hated the Tsar!’
‘The same answer, I suppose; power. Whoever takes control of the people will in the end, they think, take control of the country. Since the man Lenin came back –’
‘Who exactly is he?’ Margarita had finished her cigarette. She wandered to the table, stubbed it with thoughtful deliberation into an ashtray.
‘A Bolshevik leader. The Bolshevik leader, I suppose you could say. One of the most dangerous men in the country, Volodya says. He’s been in exile in Switzerland. He’s stirring up the most terrible trouble.’
‘Well.’ Margarita had reached the end of her attention span. She stretched, bored. ‘As long as they leave me alone I don’t much care what they do. Now, Anna, I’m really terribly sorry – it’s absolutely lovely to see you, of course, but I am rather rushed at the moment. I have a visitor coming, a friend –’
Their eyes met, one pair questioning, the other defiant. Then, ‘Of course,’ Anna said, brightly, gathering her handbag and gloves. ‘I won’t hold you up. I just wanted to check that all was well.’
It is,’ Margarita said.
At the door Anna paused, looking down at her smaller, slighter sister. ‘Rita,’ she began.
Margarita was too quick for her. ‘Don’t,’ she said, swiftly, ‘don’t lecture me, Anna. Just don’t. We all have our own way of coping with things, isn’t that right? This is mine.’
‘Yes. I’m sorry. But, Rita, do try to come to see Mama just occasionally?’
Margarita shrugged unenthusiastically. ‘All right. I’ll try.’
She closed the door behind her sister with a sigh of relief, went back into the small parlour. A bottle of vodka stood upon the sideboard. She splashed a generous tot into a glass and tossed it back with one movement. Then as she lifted her head she caught sight of her own face in a small mirror that hung upon the wall. She stood for a long moment, her movements arrested, absolutely still, before turning fiercely away and reaching for the silver cigarette box.
* * *
Anna arrived back at the apartment, later that afternoon, dog tired and with aching feet, a loaf of bread and a few potatoes the prize for over two hours of queuing.
‘Anna, where have you been? You leave me alone here for hours on end. It isn’t fair, you know, it really isn’t fair! And where’s Volodya? I don’t see why you need both go out at the same time?’
Wearily Anna stood in the hall, eyes closed. Then she straightened her shoulders, walked down the hall to the parlour. ‘I’m sorry, Mama. There was a shop with some bread – I didn’t think I should miss the chance. And everything takes so long – there’s so much trouble in the streets again.’
‘Trouble in the streets! Trouble in the streets!’ Varya grumbled. ‘They need a good flogging, that’s what they need! It was never like this in the old days! In the good days of the Tsar! God’s judgement on us all, that’s what it is, you mark my words. God’s judgement! Anna, do light the stove, for goodness’ sake. And where are my chocolates?’
Anna bit her lip hard for a moment, then with precariously held patience said, ‘Mama, I’ve told you – we can’t light the stove. We’re very low on fuel. And there’s hardly any to be had. We must conserve what we have. It really isn’t that cold, you know. I’ll get you a rug, if you like, to put across your knees. And as for the chocolates, I gave you your allowance before I went out – it was supposed to last you the day.’
‘Allowance! The very thought!’ The white jowls wobbled pathetically. ‘I don’t ask for much, Anna – your poor Mama doesn’t ask for much, but how you can be so cruel as to deny me –’
‘Mama! I’ve told you! There are hardly any left! If you gobble them all up now you’ll have none, none at all.’
‘Don’t shout at me, Anna! There’s no need for that!’ The inevitable tears were squeezing from Varya’s eyes and running down her plump cheeks. ‘Oh, the shame! The shame and the pity of it! That my own daughter should treat me so!’
Anna, her patience fled, muttered a short, sharp and uncompromising answer to that as she stamped down the long passageway to the scullery that she and Volodya were using as a kitchen. The huge, wrecked, empty apartment was oppressive around her. They had spoken of trying to leave it, of finding somewhere smaller and easier to manage, but in present circumstances such plans were all but impossible. There was not a square inch of room in the city that was not already crammed with people. Her one half-hearted attempt to lobby a harassed Embassy official in the faint hope that he might be able to help with the problem had brought exactly the response she had expected; the British Embassy was not, understandably, interested in its citizens’ housing problems. It was interested in getting as many of those citizens as possible out of the disturbed city and back to Britain and to safety; when Mrs de Fontenay was ready to consider that option they would be all too eager to help.
She leaned for a moment, tiredly, against the sink. Not, she thought, wryly, that the thought of England, of lovely Sythings and of safety did not become, with each passing day, a more attractive temptation to the said Mrs de Fontenay. But how could she go? Having come in the first place to offer help, how could she now run away, leave Mama – Natalia – the children – in such uncertain circumstances and with absolutely no guarantee of their safety? And Volodya. There was, too,
now, the problem of Volodya. Dear, devoted Volodya, who undoubtedly loved her: and with whom she now found herself, to her private dismay, inextricably involved. It was not that she did not enjoy his warm and gentle lovemaking; she did. She enjoyed it very much indeed. Their snatched moments together in the quiet darkness after Varya had finally given in and allowed herself to sleep were perhaps the most precious of the day. Nor did she fail to appreciate how much they all owed him, how far they had come to depend on him. But she was all too honestly aware that she did not love him. She was very fond of him. She respected him. She used him, as a shield and a prop. But she did not love him.
She sighed, hugely.
The doorbell rang, brief and shrill.
Her heart jumped to her throat. ‘Damn!’ she said, out loud. ‘Who the devil’s that?’
‘Anna? Anna, there’s someone at the door!’ Varya’s voice was frightened.
‘Yes, I know, Mama. Don’t worry. It’s all right.’ The reassuring words were automatic, their conviction totally spurious. She went into the hall and opened the door with a dry mouth and her heart pounding in her throat.
A tall fair man stood upon the landing. He was dressed in working-man’s clothes, a cap jauntily upon his lank, over-long hair. His smile was charming. ‘You are Mrs de Fontenay?’ he asked, courteously, and then, at her bewilderment, his smile expanding, ‘Anna? Katya’s cousin Anna?’ His Russian was heavily accented. The accent was Finnish.
Anna stepped back. ‘Yes. Yes! Oh, do come in! You’ve come from her? You’ve come from Katya?’
He nodded, smiling at her excitement, reached into his breast pocket and brought out a thick envelope which he proffered her. ‘My name is Heimo. Heimo Puhakka. I have the honour of being your cousin’s friend. I have some messages for you, and this letter.’ He smiled his charming smile again. ‘A letter so long I fear it will take you a week to read it!’ He broke off, suddenly, coughing dryly.
Strange Are the Ways Page 54