“I will. God watches over those who are careful.” He flicked the reins. “Wake up, old boy.”
As I walked back to the house, I glanced up at the schoolroom windows, wondering how everyone was doing. Dmitri stood at one, looking down at me.
I forced myself to smile and give a quick wave. Even as I scolded myself for being so paranoid about the informants for the Okhrana, a shiver still ran through me. Just exactly who was Dmitri Antonovich, and why was he in our house?
Chapter Six
ARCHER WAS GONE by the time I went back inside, and Zarja jumped at the chance to talk about Dmitri.
“I only caught a glimpse of him, but he’s a fine-looking young man,” Zarja said. “Those eyes! I’m sure many young girls have gotten lost in them.”
She was right—that is, if a girl wanted to let herself get lost in them and had time to think about that sort of thing.
“Lottie, did you hear me? You don’t look like you are listening.”
“What?” I asked.
“I said he doesn’t look much like a tutor. The ones who have been here before couldn’t withstand a strong gust of wind, much less your brothers’ antics. Maybe this one will stay.”
“I love your optimism,” I said. “But I don’t share it.” I wanted to chat, but I was already late. “I’m sorry; I have to go. I have to pick up a few things at some shops, and then they are expecting me at the hospital.” I got a basket and then went back outside to load it up with some food from Ivan’s delivery.
I decided I wouldn’t go the back way. I’d let the man in front of the house see me. Better to act as if everything were normal.
When I went out the front door, I pretended to ignore him as I walked away, though I did look back when I turned a corner. I breathed a little easier to see he hadn’t followed me.
My errands and the walk to the hospital took longer than I had planned. The basket was filled with a cabbage, some flour, and some eggs, so it was heavy, and I had to avoid some streets I normally took because so many troops were out practicing.
I stopped into the pharmacy that supplied us with some of our medicines. I’d made an arrangement with the pharmacist to give him English lessons in exchange for putting us at the top of the list for new deliveries. He wasn’t in, so I left a message with a young man stocking the shelves.
“Could you tell him Charlotte from the hospital stopped in? We’re running short on hydrogen peroxide.” We were about to run out, and I’d hoped to hear that a new supply would be arriving shortly.
“I’ll tell him,” the man said.
I continued on, trying to walk faster, thinking I was going to be late. I passed one bakery with a huge line of women standing patiently out in front. It seemed that every day the lines for bread grew longer, and our ration cards only allowed a small amount at a time. We were lucky Ivan brought us enough flour that the cook at the hospital could make bread for the patients. We couldn’t ask to use the patients’ own ration cards. They wanted their families to have them.
When I was almost at the hospital, I heard shouts and saw a crowd gathered in front of a bookstore, one I’d been at before. Rivkin’s was owned by the parents of one of Raisa’s friends. It was full of books in several different languages and very popular with university students. I pushed my way forward to get a better view. A policeman was trying to keep people back from the entrance. I held the basket to my chest, dreading to find out what was happening.
Two other policemen dragged a boy out the door while a woman followed after them, begging for them to let him go. The boy was struggling, though he was so slender they had no trouble holding on to him. He had blood running out of his nose and his face was all swollen. I couldn’t see his features very well, but I thought I knew him. My legs began to tremble.
“I told his mother last week they’d come for him eventually,” I heard a woman say.
“What did he do?” a boy asked.
“He spoke out against the czar, and I’m sure he’s been associating with radicals. He comes and goes at all hours of the day and night. He should have just stayed with his studies. Now his mother may never see him again.”
A third policeman raised his truncheon and hit the young man. The prisoner screamed out in pain and raised his head. I did know him, Samuel Rivkin. He’d been part of our group that had met to go on picnics on the Summer Islands in the Neva. I hadn’t seen him since I’d stopped going to school.
“Samuel!” I yelled, trying to get through the crowd. They couldn’t be taking Samuel away. He wouldn’t harm anyone, and he was younger than me. He was Miles’s age.
“Be quiet! Don’t draw attention to yourself!” a man near me said. He and the other people close by drew away from me as if I had suddenly developed a contagious disease.
Samuel turned his head in my direction, his eyes searching the crowd. When he saw me, he called out, “Charlotte! Charlotte! Help!” The policeman clubbed him again, and he sagged down between the two holding him up.
I took another step forward without thinking. An old woman grabbed my arm and held on to it with a tight grip. “You can’t help. Stay here or they will arrest you, too.”
Before I could decide what to do, the two policemen shoved him in an automobile, then got in after him and drove away. The third policeman said something to the woman who had come out of the store. It had to be Samuel’s mother. She stuck out her chin and replied to him, but I couldn’t make out the words. He hit her then, so hard she fell down against the side of the door frame. It all happened so fast. I hadn’t thought he would hit her.
The crowd surged forward, shouting angry words, no longer so afraid. I found myself moving with them, shouting too. The policeman turned to face us, raising his truncheon and yelling for us to move aside. He pushed through the crowd and then hurried down the street, looking back over his shoulder.
I ran to the woman, who was still on the ground. A man reached her before me and helped her up. Her hand was bleeding, so the man pulled out a handkerchief and gave it to her. There was far too much blood for it to be a mere scrape.
“May I look?” I asked her. “I’m a nurse, and I think you might need stitches.” She shrank away from me, and I thought she was going to refuse, so I introduced myself. “My name is Charlotte Mason. I’ve met Samuel and I’ve been to your bookstore. I really would like to help.”
Her skin color had a grayish cast to it, and I was afraid she was going into shock. “Can we go inside the bookstore? You’re getting too cold out here.”
She let the man help her inside, and from the way he spoke to her, it was clear they knew each other. I saw a shawl draped over the chair behind the counter, so I grabbed it and wrapped it around her.
Once I got the cut cleaned up, I saw it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. While I bandaged it, she sat quietly, but when I finished, she finally spoke.
“You know Samuel?” Tears ran down her face, though she acted as if she didn’t notice them.
“Yes. I met him through a school friend. We used to go to picnics together.” I don’t know why I told her that, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“He’s a good boy,” she said. “He’s done nothing wrong.” She didn’t speak again, just nodded her head when I explained how to take care of the cut.
“Can I do anything else for you?” I asked.
She shook her head, still crying.
The man nodded at me. “She’ll be all right. You should go now.”
I went outside and stood looking up and down the street. Everything had gone back to normal. The crowd was gone, and the falling snow had covered up any sign of blood. It was as if Samuel hadn’t even been there.
The thought of Samuel in prison made my stomach twist. They’d beat him to find out what he’d been doing and who he had been seeing. Had a watcher been monitoring the bookstore? Who had turned Samuel in? I had to tell Raisa what had happened. I didn’t know how to help him, and I doubted if she did either, but I needed to see
her.
I managed to get a droshky to take me to her uncle’s house, but when I arrived, the housekeeper said she’d gone out. She wouldn’t tell me where.
“Who are you again?” the woman asked, her eyes narrowing.
“A friend from school. I’ll come back later.”
“I don’t know when she’ll be back. It will probably be a waste of your time, and she has a lot of work to do.”
“I don’t mind,” I said, putting on a smile. Old witch.
When I finally made it to the hospital, I walked inside and my legs immediately began to shake. The fear I’d held in check rose up, making my breath come in gasps. I tried to set the basket down, but it tipped over and the cabbage rolled out. I picked it back up, willing myself to calm down.
Galina Petrenko, the head nurse, walked in as I was trying to take off my coat. My arms were so shaky they weren’t working quite right.
“You’re very pale,” she said. “Are you feeling ill?”
I managed to get the coat off, but instead of putting it in the armoire, I hugged it to me. “I saw the police arrest someone I know. It was terrible.”
“Oh, dear. I’m sorry. Who was it?” Galina had the most soothing voice. I’d seen it work on patients, and it was already working on me. I felt less shaky.
“An acquaintance I met through a school friend. I don’t know him very well, but he’s younger than me, and they dragged him off and hit him like he was some terrible criminal.”
Her eyes widened. “It’s getting worse and worse. They can’t go on terrorizing us. There is only so much people can take.” She sighed and shook her head. “You should sit for a while and have some tea until you feel steadier. You don’t want the patients to see you like this.”
“Is the doctor here?” I asked.
“Yes, she’s just washing up.”
I heard Dr. Rushailo’s voice. It sounded like she was talking to another nurse.
“I’m all right now,” I said. I hung up my coat and smoothed my hair. I didn’t want the doctor to see me upset. She was always so calm no matter what went wrong, the way a doctor should be.
Dr. Rushailo walked in, writing on a clipboard. “A girl. Six pounds, four ounces,” she said to Galina and me, “and healthy, though it’s clear the mother has not had enough to eat for a long time. If the food situation gets much worse, we’re going to see smaller babies who will struggle more.”
I didn’t know how many babies Dr. Rushailo had delivered in all the many years she’d been in practice. It had to have been hundreds, and there were dozens of girls in Petrograd with the first name of Serafima because of her. She delivered most of the babies in the patients’ homes except when she referred women to the hospital who had complications. She and my mother had worked hand in hand to get the hospital started.
“Oh, I nearly forgot,” the doctor said. “Lottie, I’ve told the other nurses, but you need to know too. I’m beginning to see some measles cases in the city. We’re going to have to limit visitors to just husbands or grandparents. No older children visiting for at least the next month.”
I nodded. I knew it would be bad if any of the newborns came down with measles.
“I should go,” the doctor said. “Anything I need to know about?”
“No.” I never mentioned the food and medicine shortages to her. The doctor had enough to deal with. “But can I talk to you for a moment about my stepfather?” I asked. “I need your opinion.” When she nodded, I explained about Papa. “Since I can’t convince him to see you, should I try to get him to see another doctor?”
“If he has another episode, definitely. The slurring of the speech and the difficulty walking concern me. I’ll give you the name of a good doctor.”
She flipped a page on the clipboard, wrote a name on a blank sheet, and gave it to me. “How is the studying going?”
“Fine,” I said. I wasn’t going to tell her the truth. She’d been so encouraging about my plans and said she’d put in a good word for me with the admissions committee once I passed the entrance test for medical school. The Women’s Medical Institute was one of the best medical schools for women in the world, and they didn’t often take foreigners, so I needed all the help I could get.
“Good. I know you can do it.” She got her coat and put it on.
The rest of the day flew by. I cleaned instruments, boiled the silk thread for stitching up incisions, and gave bottles to some of the babies. By the time I left, it had been dark for hours.
I didn’t want to go by the bookstore again, so I took a different route to see Raisa, one that took me past our old school. Everyone had gone home for the day, and the building was dark. I tried to remember sitting inside, practicing our Italian conversation or working out our algebra problems. It all seemed like it had happened in another life.
I walked faster. I needed to see Raisa.
I knocked on the door of her uncle’s house, holding my breath to see who would answer. When Raisa opened the door, I had to keep from flinging myself at her.
“Charlotte! I didn’t expect it to be you. Is anything wrong? Is it Miles?” Her hand went to her throat.
“It’s not Miles. I wanted to talk to you for a minute. Can you come out?”
She got her coat, and we walked to a little park down the block. I waited until there was no one near us and then told her what I’d seen. Her eyes closed and her head tipped back. I knew she was going to faint, so I grabbed her right as her knees buckled. A man on the other side of the park saw us and ran to help. We managed to get her over to a park bench and sit her down.
I put my hand on the back of her head and moved her so that her head was in her lap as the man hovered around.
“It’s all right. I’m a nurse,” I said to him. “She’ll be better in a moment. She heard some bad news.” I wanted him to go away before Raisa came to in case she said something he shouldn’t hear. I’d never expected her to faint.
He nodded, an understanding look on his face. Three years into the war, bad news had become commonplace.
She came to quickly, and when she looked at me, she put her hand to her throat again. “I feel like I might throw up,” she said.
“It will pass soon. Just sit quietly for a minute.”
I waited a few minutes before I asked her a question that had been worrying me all day. “Did you know Samuel was associating with some radical group?”
“No,” she said. “But I’m not surprised. There are groups everywhere working for change. People have realized we can’t wait any longer.”
She’d said “we can’t wait.” It would be just like Raisa to throw herself into one of the groups trying to bring down the czar. She was desperate to do something that might get her father out of prison.
My stomach turned at the thought of what could happen to her. I didn’t want her putting herself in so much danger.
I started to ask another question, but Raisa held up her hand. “Don’t,” she said. “Sometimes it’s better not to ask questions.”
I grabbed her hand. “Be careful,” I said, hearing how ridiculous my words sounded, as if they would make any difference.
“I am.” She stood up. “I have to get back.”
“Is there something we can do for Samuel?” I asked.
“I’ll go see his mother tomorrow and find out if she’s heard anything. I can tell her who to go see.”
“What should I do?” I felt completely helpless.
“Nothing. Please, Charlotte, don’t get involved.” She darted away so fast I didn’t have time to say anything else.
I headed for home as tiredness washed over me. The weight of the day pressed down on me so much each step was an effort.
When I finally reached our block, I saw the glow of a cigarette a few feet from our front door and a couple of dark shapes. My steps faltered. Another watcher? I didn’t know who else would be standing outside in the cold so late.
As I turned around to go a different way so I could reach the ho
use from the back, I heard a burst of laughter and a voice I recognized. It was Osip, our footman, and I knew he was talking to Vladislav, the footman next door. Vladislav worked for another retired general, General Stackleberg, who was a little older than Papa. The general and Papa weren’t close friends, though they were cordial. I think the general’s wife hadn’t liked my mother, so she kept her distance from us, and after the woman died, the man rarely left the house.
“Hello,” I called out. Osip replied but Vladislav did not. The man threw his cigarette down and went back into the Stacklebergs’ house. He never responded to anything I said for some reason. I knew from Osip that he had worked on one of the Stackleberg estates until all the regular footmen had been called up. He, like Osip, wasn’t considered fit enough to be in the army. Osip’s eyesight was too poor, and Vladislav had a problem with one of his feet. Osip had said that Vladislav hadn’t wanted to come to the city, but the general had insisted, threatening to make Vladislav’s family move out of their house on the general’s estate.
“Everything all right?” I asked Osip as we went inside. Unlike Archer, Osip actually liked us, and I relied on him for updates on how the household had managed on any particular day. My brothers were good at not mentioning disasters.
“Everything is fine. A quiet day,” he said.
“Is … is the tutor in?” I didn’t know how to ask if Dmitri had quit or not.
“Yes,” Osip said. “I hope he doesn’t leave until the end of the week. I’ve made a bet with Vladislav and I’ve got him lasting five days. Vladislav has him only lasting for three.”
After the day I’d had, I didn’t think I’d find anything funny, but Osip’s words made me smile. Even with everything happening in the city, some things never changed. Osip and Vladislav always bet on each tutor.
“I hope you win,” I said as I went upstairs. I tried to be quiet so my brothers wouldn’t hear me. If they did, I wouldn’t be able to leave the house again without them knowing. They’d want me to play music with them or work on some magic trick.
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