‘No!’
‘Will you listen!’ For one moment furious temper flared. They glared at one another. Then Tonia, outgunned for the moment at least, subsided, sulkily, and let Anna speak. ‘What I suggest is this. First, I’ll take the little boy – what’s his name?’
‘Stepan.’
‘Stepan. I’ll take Stepan with me, back to the apartment. Your cousins ’Tasha and Nikki are there – they’ll help care for him for now. Then I’ll find a doctor, and I’ll come back. Once your mama is better then you can both come to join us. How does that sound?’
‘Anna,’ Lenka whispered, agonized, ‘no! Take Tonia – you promised –’
Anna spread helpless hands. ‘Lenka – I can’t! The child simply won’t come! I can’t shackle her and drag her through the streets!’
Tonia had settled upon the floor beside the pallet again. ‘I’ll take care of you, Mama. We don’t need her. We don’t need anyone.’ Her back was turned resolutely upon Anna, and upon her own small brother.
Lenka closed her eyes in a gesture of defeat. ‘You promised!’ she said, bleakly, to Anna.
‘Lenka – I’ll take Stepan. I’ll leave him with Volodya and the others. Then I’ll bring a doctor back to you – when you’re better you can all come to the apartment.’
Lenka turned her face from her. Tonia tilted her small, fierce white face to look at her aunt. ‘She doesn’t want to live with you,’ she said, calmly. ‘She hates you. She’s told me. Lots of times.’
The room was oppressive, the stench of Lenka’s illness overpowering; yet the weight of this child’s hatred was worse. Anna stood with leaden heart, defeated and helpless. Then she walked to the silent child who crouched in the armchair. ‘Come, Stepan,’ she said, gently, reaching her arms to him. ‘Come to Aunt Anna. We’ll go and see ’Tasha and Nikki, shall we?’
He shrank back, thumb still jammed in his mouth, eyes wide with terror.
‘Come, now.’ She picked him up. He was rigid, his slight frame a tense weight in her arms. ‘Say goodbye to Mama and Tonia – you’ll see them again soon.’
Tonia did not even bother to turn her head. Lenka lay like death, her eyes closed. Stepan buried his head in Anna’s shoulder, the small body, desperately light and undersized for his age, curled into a taut, defensive ball.
‘I’ll be back soon,’ Anna said. For all the notice mother or daughter took she might just as well not have spoken. At the door she remembered something. Balancing Stepan awkwardly on one arm she felt in her bag for her heavy purse, extracted a few of the coins she had picked up from the bank that morning. ‘Tonia, take these – you might at least be able to buy some food to see you through until I get back with the doctor.’
At the sound of the chink of coins Tonia’s bright, dirty head came round quickly. She scrambled to her feet, snatched the money from Anna with no thanks then went back to her vigil at Lenka’s bedside.
‘Aren’t you going to say goodbye?’ Anna asked uncertainly, her heart aching for the little boy in her arms.
‘Goodbye, Stepan,’ Tonia said, heartlessly, not turning round.
‘Goodbye.’ As Lenka opened her eyes the tears were released. They ran down the creases of her haggard face and into her hair. ‘Remember, Stepan, be a good boy.’
Anna could bear no more. Clutching the child who now sobbed heartbrokenly in her arms she all but ran from the room.
* * *
There was no doctor to be found; at least, there was no doctor that Anna could find who was willing to risk life and limb to go into the area where Lenka lived in order to treat an almost certainly dying victim of the typhoid epidemic that was sweeping the city. The most she got for her gold was a tired and discouraging shake of the head and a bottle of medicine of dubious worth to a woman already debilitated by want and starvation.
‘I’ll fetch them both,’ Volodya said, reassuringly. ‘If I have to carry the pair of them I’ll get them back here, don’t worry. I’ll go first thing in the morning.’
‘The morning? But, Volodya!’
‘Anna, my love, it’s too late now. The city isn’t safe at night, you know it. One more night won’t hurt. Then we’ll get them back here, safe and sound, you’ll see.’
Anna spent a haunted night. In the big bed beside her Stepan shivered and whimpered desolately like a young animal deserted by its mother. He would not allow her to touch him but curled about a small, soft silken pillow he had taken from one of the chairs, burying his face in it if anyone spoke to him. She had not been able to coax a single word from him since she had brought him away from that terrible room, though he had eaten with steady and voracious appetite anything edible that had been put in front of him. Heavy-eyed, she rose in the morning and hurried Volodya away on his errand.
He came back late in the morning, sombre-faced and alone.
‘Dead? Lenka’s dead?’ Anna whispered, trembling. ‘But, Volodya – she can’t be! She was alive! Yesterday – she was alive!’
‘I’m sorry,’ Volodya said. ‘Anna, I’m so sorry.’
‘You saw her? You really saw her? You’re sure?’ Urgently she caught his sleeve. The hurt and the misunderstandings, the betrayals and the wasted love – it was all still there, all still waiting to be resolved. ‘She can’t be dead!’ she burst out, shaking her head. ‘She can’t be!’
‘Anna, I saw her.’ Volodya’s eyes were darkened by the memory of it. The finding of that emaciated, stinking corpse in a room that smelled of death and corruption was not to be easily forgotten.
‘And Tonia? The little girl?’ Anna glanced about distractedly, as if the child might appear from behind the curtains or under the table, ‘Where is she? Why isn’t she with you?’
He took her by the shoulders, holding her, wanting to take her in his arms, deterred by the fierce and shocking force of her grief that held her rigid, that repulsed all comfort, that for the moment even denied her the ease of tears. ‘Anna – she wasn’t there. She’d gone. I asked everywhere. No-one had seen her. No-one knew where she’d gone.’
‘But she can’t just have disappeared into thin air! She must be somewhere!’ Torn by her own guilt she lashed out at him. ‘Volodya, how can you have been so stupid as to leave without finding her? Someone must have come – taken her to comfort her –’
‘Anna, no! I tell you I asked everywhere. Hardly anyone even knew the child. Hardly anyone, come to that, seemed to know Lenka, not even her closest neighbours.’
‘Then where is she? Where’s Tonia?’ The words were anguished. If it were indeed true that Lenka was dead, then all recompense, all atonement, was in the child. And she was gone. Gone, Anna knew with a heartbreaking certainty, because Lenka’s daughter would go anywhere, face anything rather than turn to her mother’s detested sister.
‘She can’t have gone far.’ He was gently reasonable. ‘She’s been through a dreadful experience – seeing her mother die –’ Anna flinched from that, covering her face with her hands, seeing that fierce, loving, sharp little face, remembering the tender care in the small hands.
‘– she’s probably hiding somewhere. She’s very young and she’s had a terrible shock. But she knows where to find us. She’ll come, Anna, you’ll see. In a day or so, she’ll come.’
Anna dropped her hands, shook her head. ‘No. She won’t come.’ A small sound caught her attention. She turned. ‘Stepan,’ she said, softly.
The child’s elfin face was expressionless. The enormous eyes held uncertain, flickering shadows of grief and fear. When Anna held out her hands he stepped backwards, clutching his cushion, watching her, but did not have the confidence to turn and run.
In a single step Anna was beside him, had caught the unresponsive child to her, hugging child and cushion together, fiercely, burying her face in the tangled dark curls of his hair.
‘Anna?’ Varya called. ‘Anna, where are you?’
* * *
The final upheaval, which brought about the violent death of any hopes of democracy in Russ
ia, came at the end of that October. Between Lenka’s death and this last bloody convulsion seven or eight weeks passed; weeks of hardship, tension and uncertainty. The country drifted like a rudderless ship in stormy seas. An attempted counter-coup led by the royalist General Kornilov was defeated only after his march upon Petrograd came perilously close to success. And meanwhile the war ground disastrously on as the German forces moved, an armoured and efficient nemesis, ever closer to the capital; a capital in which the fighting between the factions of the so-called Government was savage enough to constitute a full-blown war in itself. There was too another menace; in the south and east the White armies, loyal to the Tsar, were mustering their considerable strength with the support of those Western powers who were desperate to keep the German armies pinned down along the Russian Front.
In the city hunger, deprivation and disease wracked a despairing and overcrowded population. As summer became autumn in a country beset by war and by civil strife, a country in which even the most basic discipline and organization had collapsed, things could only go from bad to worse. Winter was again approaching, and with it the spectre of worse hardship, of real starvation.
In the apartment on the Fontanka it was becoming harder and harder to keep the children clothed and fed. And meanwhile the obstinate, fruitless, depressing search for the missing Tonia went on. Margarita too had disappeared after the fire that had destroyed her apartment. And though Anna knew that in a city teeming like an antheap with displaced people any attempt to find someone who quite clearly had no intention of being found was doomed to failure from the start, yet still she felt she had to try. It was a weary and heartbreaking task. And, often as she told herself that she was not alone in being exhausted, hungry, constantly fearful, constantly nerve-strung, it rarely helped to ease the burden. It was a time to dim even the brightest of spirits.
She took to dreaming of Sythings.
Standing stoically for hours on end in yet another queue, or lying too worried and too tired to sleep by Volodya’s side she perfected the art of withdrawing to her own safe and secret world. She walked the tranquil woods and gardens, listened to the birdsong and the music of the little fountain. In her imagination she roamed from room to room in the house, each dearly familiar piece of furniture, each ornament, each picture as clear in her mind as if she stood physically before them. And always these enchanted wanderings ended in the music room, with its great, gleaming piano, its music stands, its comfortable furniture, its wide French windows onto the terrace. And her violin, in its scuffed leather case, lying still where she had left it last, silent and waiting. Once she dreamed so vividly of that room and instrument that she woke with desolate tears streaming down her face. Struggling to control them, she was aware of Volodya awake beside her. Wordlessly he reached for her, drew her to him to cry soundlessly against his shoulder. He did not ask her why she cried. And she, ashamed, did not tell him. But Volodya was a sensitive man, and he loved her: he knew what lay behind the shadows in her eyes.
The political situation in the city meanwhile grew more confused and volatile every day. The war had been unpopular; now it was detested. Kerensky and his Liberals had had their supporters, even amongst the mass of the workers; now patience had run out and they were reviled as useless and worse than useless. The rumours grew and persisted of a White army gathering to the south; gathering to murder the people, to reinstate the deposed Tsar, to bring back the bad old ways. An army, what’s more, that was backed by foreigners; the mere thought was enough to bring bile to the mouth of any true Russian. It was at the end of October that the seething pot boiled over; and armed revolution came again to Petrograd.
* * *
‘What on earth’s happening?’ An anxious Anna was waiting in the hallway of the apartment when Volodya came in, having been watching for him from the balcony window.
Volodya unwound his scarf and unbuttoned his coat. His clothes were shabby, his face thin; none of them had had enough to eat for weeks, and what there was both Anna and Volodya tended to give to the children. Even Varya had lost weight.
‘The Provisional Government has fallen. The Bolsheviks have taken the Winter Palace and the Fortress. It’s said they control the Post Office, the Telephone Exchange and all the stations. Red Guards are everywhere. They’re arresting people; there’s been some looting.’ He passed a tired hand through his hair.
Anna watched him, concern in her face. ‘It’s no more serious than usual, is it?’ she asked, uncertainly. ‘I mean – it’s all happened before – it won’t affect us, will it?’
‘I don’t know. I just don’t know. The Bolsheviks are true fanatics, Anna. Anyone who isn’t for them is accounted against them.’ He cast a sombre look about the despoiled but still obvious grandeur of the apartment. ‘I wish we weren’t living here. Perhaps we should look for somewhere else.’
‘But why? Why should we? What harm are we doing?’
He shook his head, wearily.
‘Volodya, I don’t understand what’s happening. Why shouldn’t we be here? What are you afraid of?’
He took her hands in his. ‘Anna –’
‘What’s that?’ Anna turned her head. There was shouting outside in the street. They both ran across the ruined ballroom to the balcony. Men were running in the streets. ‘Cossacks! Cossacks marching on the city! The traitors Krasnov and Kerensky are bringing Cossacks to Petrograd! The city is besieged!’
‘Look, Aunt Anna, look at the aeroplane! What’s it doing?’ Nikki had joined them, excitement on his face. Anna looked up. A small aeroplane was swooping over the city, showering the streets with pamphlets that whirled and fluttered in the air like snow. ‘I’ll get one!’ Before they could stop him Nikki had darted back into the apartment. A moment later they saw him slip out into the street, pick up one of the pamphlets and scurry back up the steps. ‘There! Read it, Aunt Anna, tell us what it says.’
Anna smoothed the paper.’Citizens of Petrograd, I call upon you to save the city from anarchy, from tyranny and famine, to save Russia from the indelible shame to which a handful of ignorant men, bought by Kaiser Wilhelm’s gold, are trying to subject her. The active army looks upon these criminals with horror and contempt. Their acts of vandalism and pillage, their crimes, the German mentality with which they regard Russia – stricken down but not yet surrendered – have alienated them from the entire people.’ She looked up. ‘Is that right, do you think? Are the Bolsheviks in the pay of the Germans?’
Volodya shrugged. ‘Who knows? Come now – come in and close the windows. We can do nothing but wait. If Kerensky really has got an army at his back then the Bolsheviks could collapse in a matter of days. We’ll just have to wait and see.’
But in the event it was not the Bolsheviks who collapsed but Kerensky and his army, mainly because most of his soldiers deserted to their comrades in the city as soon as they got close enough to do so. On 1 November, the day after Red Guards had inflicted heavy losses on the White army of General Krasnov at Pulkovo Heights, on the outskirts of Petrograd, a truce was arranged and the General promised to have Kerensky arrested and handed over to the Bolsheviks. The former head of the Provisional Government escaped just moments before the Cossacks came to take him; but he was finished, and so was his attempt – the first, and many feared the last, in Russia – at something close to a liberal democratic government. The Bolsheviks were in control of the capital, and also of Moscow. In several other parts of the vast country, however, Bolshevik takeovers had come to nothing; and with the active help and participation of Tsarist Russia’s Western allies the White army was readying itself to fight back; civil war loomed, and anti-foreign fervour reached fever pitch.
Fanaticism stalked the city now, triumphant. All too clearly Anna saw the reason for Volodya’s disquiet on the day of the Bolshevik takeover. The decree known as ‘Order Number One’ was issued, abolishing all ranks in the armed forces – the main effect of which, predictably, was that what small degree of discipline had been left in the ar
my and the navy disappeared completely, officers no longer had control over the troops and the men deserted by the thousand and poured back from the Front to the already chaotic cities. Unpopular officers were ‘tried’ and shot with no ceremony. Anarchy reigned. Throughout November and into December the new Government consolidated its grip on the city and on its population. Property was confiscated. Varya’s last pathetic possession, the wrecked shop on the Nevsky, was taken from her. No citizen was allowed to draw more than ten roubles a day from any bank, and no money could be transferred abroad. Ration cards were issued, but only to workers. So far as the new ‘People’s Government’ was concerned, anyone else could starve. Any personal property could be confiscated; jewellery, furniture, money, anything that caught the eye or attracted the interest of the Red Guard, and there was no redress. ‘Take everything!’ Lenin told his audiences of students and workers. ‘Take everything, because everything is yours! Country places, land, houses, banks, securities. Take them because they belong to you – take them because they are yours!’ And take them they did. The pendulum had swung from one extreme to the other and a deprived and tyrannized people took its revenge for the years of oppression. In the ensuing weeks, as always, the innocent suffered along with the guilty.
In early December Lenin brought into being the All Russia Extraordinary Commission for the Suppression of Counter Revolution, known generally by its acronym CHEKA; Donovalov, had he been alive, would have recognized the organization, which was to become the most powerful body in Lenin’s Russia. The country once more had its Secret Police.
The money Anna had had transferred from England was lost when the banks were nationalized, though not before she had managed to withdraw a fair amount in gold. They hoarded the coins, hiding them with Mischa’s pieces of jewellery beneath the floorboard in the bedroom they shared, eking it out from week to week. And as winter grasped the city with skeletal fingers Anna’s thoughts, no matter how hard she fought against it, turned more and more often to England; to Sythings, safe and lovely in its green valley, to comfort, and to an end of fear. To a normality that had never before seemed precious, but that now seemed worth all the fortunes of the world. Despite the negotiations going on between the Soviet Government and the Germans, the British Embassy was still open. She had her passport. The way was still open. But only for her. It would be difficult to leave her mother – though in truth her feelings for Varya were more of duty than love – and even more so to leave Volodya, of whom she was very fond. But the children. Here was the thread, no, the chain of steel, that held her. How could she abandon the children? Lively ’Tasha, laughing Nikki, and, most loved of all, the painfully quiet and withdrawn Stepan, Lenka’s son. She could not leave them. It was out of the question. And so – watched, had she but realized it, by a painfully aware and equally painfully silent Volodya – she once again put off making a decision. Something would happen; life surely could not continue to be so hard? Once things settled she would see what she could do about getting them all to safety.
Strange Are the Ways Page 58