Chimes of a Lost Cathedral

by Janet Fitch

  “How’s the harvest looking?” I wanted to throw him too. “Will there be enough rye to plant for next year?” When all he probably knew about rye was cutting it—and not only rye.

  “Oh, let’s not talk about rye,” he said. “A dull subject, even to me.”

  Naturally. We were silent for a while, jolting and jarring on the untended track, gazing at the board. “How was it in Ekaterinburg?” I said. “Are the Whites still there?”

  “Liberated, July 14, 2nd Red Army. And not a moment too soon. They must have shot twenty thousand workers. Even hosted a pogrom on the way out. I didn’t think there were that many Jews in Ekaterinburg.” He pursed his fat lips. “Pawn to queen four.” He sat back, satisfied. “That’s how you can tell when the Whites are losing—follow the trail of dismembered Jews.”

  I shuddered. It had happened on July 14. Iskra had been a week old. I stared down at the tiny board. Twenty thousand. The very same troops who had massacred so many in Izhevsk just a short few weeks before we’d arrived had gone on to ravage Ekaterinburg. Exactly where the Red October had been heading. The same White Army that had taken the men from Praskovia’s village. Perhaps their husbands and sons had been among the pogromists—who could tell? I was learning one thing, people could go straight from church to hammering nails into a woman’s eyes. Nothing would surprise me again.

  I took the agronomist’s pawn. Though it opened my queen to attack, I would take his as well. Something needed to happen. “So where are they now?”

  “Tukhachevsky took Chelyabinsk at the end of July—5th Red Army. They’re across the Tobol now. Omsk by October. You heard it here first.” He touched his queen, but didn’t pick it up. “The English will abandon them soon—they’re starting to see their White angels aren’t so spotless. You should see the local whores—dolled up in English woolens. The corruption would make you Petrocommune fellows weep.” The men at his side were dozing. “The Whites are supplying our armies with half our weapons and food. Trotsky’s sending them roses. Kolchak keeps his hands clean, makes a big thing of it, but everyone else is up to their eyeballs. The peasants are raising armies in the east, all on their own.” Just as Yermilova said would happen. He moved the queen after all. “Queen takes pawn.”

  Iskra woke and started to cry. “She’s hungry,” I said. “Excuse me, I have to feed her. Can we finish later?”

  “Feed her, I don’t care,” said the man, grinning. Those horrible lips, moistening each other.

  I jiggled her on my knee. “She can wait.”

  “Babies shouldn’t go hungry. Don’t mind us.”

  But I did mind. Normally I wouldn’t, but this man was far too interested in seeing me feed my baby for my taste. He gave me the shivers. But what was I to do? In compromise, I reached up over the heads of the spets couple into my bunk for Iskra’s cloth—a bit of modesty—only to find the boy reading my notebook, one leg crossed over the other, like a man reading a newspaper. He’d gone through my sack—my meager belongings, that brat! I would have slapped him but I didn’t want his mother to get involved. Instead, I took hold of the hand that held my notebook, and squeezed it. Staring him in the eye, daring him to cry out. I’d gotten plenty strong this summer working the fields, I could have broken that grubby paw, but when I saw the tears in his eyes, I let him go, pulled the notebook out of his hands and stuck everything back in the sack, knotted it and pulled my cloth out from under him.

  “Play chess,” the Chekist called out.

  “Right there.” I sat back down, put the cloth over my shoulder and undid my dress, put Iskra to the breast.

  It was a long game. Torture, with Iskra slurping and smacking under the cloth, drawing the attention of the already too attentive Chekist, while I continued trying to play. He ended up winning, but I made him work for it. No more rude comments about “girl players.” As soon as we had finished, he gave me my half sausage, and set the board up again for another game.

  The days passed. I learned about the Petrocommune men. One had been a shipping clerk at Eliseev’s specialty grocery in old Petersburg, the other had worked for the government in the timber industry. I lay in my bunk, playing with Iskra, and gazing at the passing trees outside the window. I wrote a poem about chess, a city of chess pieces, the chess game of our times. I recited Akhmatova aloud to her, and Blok, and Mandelstam—bathing us both in their verbal coolness. The spets woman was complaining about Perm, talking about her sister who lived in Kiev, on and on, I decided to cut a corner from a diaper to stuff into my ears. But when I rummaged in my sack—no scissors. The scissors I’d won from the Vikzhel men. There was no doubt as to what had happened to them.

  “Yasha?” I asked, leaning over the side of the bunk. “You didn’t happen to see a pair of scissors, did you? Brass, about four inches long?”

  He turned his innocent face up to me from the lower berth where he sat with his parents, the father reading, the mother knitting. The boy was holding the skein of yarn.

  “No, he hasn’t been using your filthy scissors,” the mother said. “What are you insinuating? Are you calling my boy a thief?”

  Ah, the smile on the brat’s face hidden behind his mother told me everything.

  “He got into my things. I was wondering if he’d developed a fondness for them.”

  Her homely face, red-cheeked and sweaty in the heat. “You tramp. You railway slut. Sitting up there with your disgusting bastard. How dare you call my son a thief!”

  “Talya, please,” her husband said.

  She brushed him off like a moth that had landed on her shoulder, and stood, bringing her face up to mine. “Say it again and I’ll smack you.”

  “Your brat took my scissors,” I said.

  She reached out and slapped my face. The sting of her hand, her ring on my cheek. The Petrocommune men didn’t know where to put their eyes, they were embarrassed for both of us.

  The Cheka man smoked his cigarette, enjoying the show.

  “Don’t you speak of my son, you whore, you cheap trash. Women like you shouldn’t be put in with decent people. If anyone should be thrown off the train it should be you.” Her breath was hideous. Bad dental care, poor food, the whole place would ignite on the fumes if there were a spark. “Apologize to us this instant.”

  “Ask him if he didn’t go through my things when he was up here the other day. Reading my notes, pawing through my belongings.”

  I could see the part in her hair as she leaned over her son, making her mooing sounds. “Yasha. You didn’t do any such thing, did you, sweetheart?”

  “No, Mama.” But the smirk returned as soon as her back was turned. That little criminal was splitting a gut at this.

  “Good, that’s a good lad.” The Chekist reached across and squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “Good lad.”

  What game was he playing? This man disliked little Yasha. He’d made that clear with the suggestion that he teach him chess. But perhaps he recognized himself in the boy—the liar, the sneak—traits that might end up making a good Chekist. “Never tell them anything. If they want those scissors, they can bloody well search for them, and good luck—right, kid?”

  Now the boy wasn’t smirking.

  “I beg your pardon?” said the mother.

  “He’s got ’em, all right.” Inhaling his cigarette, then examining its lit tip. “Innocent people, see, they get this moment of shock. A moment where they don’t even understand that someone’s accusing them of something. It takes a second to get it—oh, I’m being accused of, say, taking some scissors.” I could see the part of the mother’s hair, where the dye stopped and her roots began, and the Cheka man, his legs set wide, crowding the shipping clerk, whom he’d turned to address. “Then they start yelling. You can’t fake that kind of outrage. I didn’t take them! I wouldn’t touch your lousy scissors. I didn’t even know you had any, and if I did, I wouldn’t have touched them. Where a guilty person starts defending himself right away: How dare you! They get all puffed up. They overdefend, they attack
, they spread it out—Who are you, some railway whore, and We are good law-abiding people! The innocent person sticks to the facts. The guilty go for pride and honor. And the born thief says nothing. He waits for confusion to rule and slips out when he has a chance. Good for you, kid. If this was the street, this would be your chance to inch for the door and make a run for it.” The Cheka man stood. He held out his hand. “Davai.” Give it.

  “I didn’t take them,” the kid said softly, retreating deeper into the berth.

  His interrogator reached in, as fast as a snake, and dragged the kid out of his lair by the arm, shoved him to the floor. “I don’t think your dad beats you enough. That’s half the problem right there.” He unbuckled his pants and started to pull his belt out.

  The woman grabbed the man’s shoulder, clutching the cloth. “Don’t you touch my son!” He shrugged her off. The force threw her back against the window.

  On his knees on the filthy floor, the boy scrambled into his mother’s sewing basket and came out with the small brass scissors. I hated that kid but still—the sight of him on his knees holding the scissors out made me ill, the fear in his face, the whimpering of his mother. The man ignored the boy, rebuckled his pants. Did he beat his own children with that belt? Had his father beaten him that way? “Give them back to the girl. Say sorry.”

  Yasha handed them up to me, the tears in his terrified eyes were real. “Sorry,” he whispered.

  I nodded. He was sorry, that was clear.

  The mother ruined the moment by grabbing him and slapping him herself. “How dare you steal, and then hide it in my basket! What will people think of us?”

  He sulked the rest of the day, which was fine with me. Even the mother was wonderfully subdued, apologetic. She offered to share some of their food with me. “Raising children now, in this climate. You’ll see. Everything’s upside down.” The thick-lipped Chekist kept me under close surveillance, nodding at me meaningfully.

  I took Iskra for a little walk on the platform at Vologda. Though it was still hot, you could feel autumn in the bright air, the birches turning yellow inside the deep green pines.

  The slight breeze ruffled

  a million tiny flags,

  capturing your upturned gaze.

  What can you see, my dear?

  What do you know?

  Your laughing eyes,

  so much like his.

  Alas, we had work to do. No time for poetry. I handed my pail up to the assistant engineer and asked him to drain off some boiling water for me. I amazed myself, this new mother-person I’d become, worried about disease and rashes and illness, sanitation and linens, a real German housewife. How my father would enjoy this if he could see me now, how Kolya would laugh. Yet I was proud of those clean nappies.

  It was a big station, full of exhausted, overdressed Russians with bundles, children, and Komi women selling food. Passengers didn’t dare go far, but took turns leaving the train, walking the platform, not to lose their spaces. “Go, go,” said the spets woman, her name was Natalya Romanovna. “You do take good care of that baby. Honestly, I’m surprised. When I saw you, I thought, Oh no, and a baby too. It’ll just cry the whole time, and stink to high heaven. But you do a real good job.”

  As I washed diapers at the end of the platform, leaning over the red feathers of Iskra’s hair, I inquired of a loitering mechanic, “So what do you hear about the English?”

  “A few sorties up around Onega, but the trains have been getting through,” the mechanic said. “The Americans are gone, now it’s just the English.”

  “We’ll be done by spring,” said the Cheka-agronomist. He’d developed a nasty habit of creeping up on me. Whenever I turned around, there he was, this stocky, lecherous, thick-necked man who now saw himself as my personal savior. “Denikin’s the one to beat. He’s closing on Tula. He could be in Moscow in six weeks if they don’t sell all the guns to us first.”

  “Yudenich’s still there, in Estonia,” the mechanic said. “Waiting for his chance. I wouldn’t count my chickens yet, brother.”

  “If the English had given half a hand to Yudenich, Petrograd would be gone already,” said the fat man. “That should tell you something. They don’t trust him any more than anyone else does.” He put his hand on my shoulder in a false gesture of reassurance. He just liked to touch me whenever he could, see if he could get a look down my dress.

  I snapped the diapers to get as much water out of them as I could, and laid them in the sun, away from my admirer.

  He leaned over to where I was squatting, his shadow shading me. “You’re avoiding me, Marina Dmitrievna.” I cringed. How could he know my name? From the visit from the railway Cheka? I never used my patronymic on the train.

  “I’m just trying to get these diapers done.”

  “Leave them. Let’s go have some samogon with some friends of mine. They say it’s good for the milk. Makes it flow like a fountain.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was to go drinking with this man, or meet his friends. I certainly didn’t want him thinking about my milk flowing like a fountain. It made me ill to think that he had given such consideration to the condition of my milk. “No, I think I’ll live instead,” I said. “It’s all poison.”

  He brushed his hand against my shoulder, the tips of his fingers. I shuddered despite myself. “Suit yourself,” he said.

  The full moon filled the windows of the rocking train. Everyone was asleep, including the Chekist, out cold on the bottom bunk opposite after his party in Vologda, snoring even louder than the train. I recognized everyone’s night sounds now—the Petrocommune man from Eliseev’s with his whistling snore across from me, and below him, the timber man, who was a tremendous farter. We knew each other all too well. The rising moon was like a small child trying to peer above a table, enormous and white, round-faced.

  All I could think of was being back in Kolya’s embrace. This same moon was peering in at him, somewhere up ahead. Dream of me, Kolya. Feel me. I’m on my way. I breathed, and projected myself into the astral, and flew out across the miles, Iskra in the crook of my arm, west to Petrograd, following the train lines. We dipped over the canals and the vast shining Neva, peeked into windows, looking for him. We landed on a windowsill—Kolya at a desk, the lamp lit, the window open, he was smoking a cigarette, writing a letter. To whom? He looked tired. I didn’t like to see him like that. I wanted to rub my palms over his forehead and erase those lines. They didn’t suit him. I’m coming, my dear.

  I needed to urinate, but dreaded the long march to the filthy toilet. Next to me, Iskra lay, her tiny upturned nose, the bow of her mouth. What could she be dreaming? I hated to wake her, but I would not leave her here alone. At least at this time of night, there might not be a queue. I clambered down, trying not to step on the woman and her son, and the husband below, then lifted the baby’s sleeping weight out of the berth and snugged her into the cloth. I had about two seconds to quiet her between her awakening and the first shriek. I was getting pretty good at this. Then we began our awkward, jolting, swaying stumble through the crowded car, stepping across people sleeping on the floor with their bags and packages. They slept pretty well considering the clanging and rattling of the unmaintained train and my misplaced steps. God, what a stink. Gas and bad teeth and unwashed bodies worse than any zoo. The longing face of the moon followed me down the car.

  I used the unspeakable hole at the back of the train, holding my breath until I could open the door again.

  There in the narrow corridor, waiting for me, loomed the Chekist’s fat face. He pushed me back into the WC, shut the door. In this stinking hole, he was on me, crushing me to the wall next to the toilet, smashing Iskra between us to plant a repulsive, boozy kiss on my lips, clawing at my dress, popping the buttons from its bodice. His disgusting hands grabbed my bare breast. I screamed, but who could hear me in this coffin over the grinding of metal on metal, the clangor of the train? He clapped his hand around my throat, cutting my wind, and with the other
, unbuckled his famous belt. I heard it hit the floor as his pants dropped, God, he was going to rape me right here in the crapper with my daughter tied onto me. She was screaming now that she had the room.

  Perhaps wanting a better grip on my body, he reached into the cloth and grabbed her. He was trying to pull her out by her arm! Oh God, her screams. I had no thought but to stop him, stop him from hurting my baby. I reached through the slit in my skirt and pulled out the gun, pressed it deep into his chest. Do you know what this is, Mr. Cheka? Without hesitating, I fired.

  The impact slammed him back against the door. He slid down, but there was no room to fall, he sagged onto me. I tried to open the door, but he was in the way. The baby screamed and screamed. He was holding his chest, blood bubbling out of his mouth. I had to stay out of the blood. I climbed onto the surround of the toilet, so he could fall against the wood. I put the gun back in my pocket—searing hot against my belly—and pushed open the door into the narrow corridor.

  It was full of people. I could see their staring eyes in the moonlight. Boys. Orphans, traveling for free huddled in the filthy corridor. Gaping at me. “Help me open that door,” I ordered over Iskra’s screaming. “Quick.”

  A boy reached over and pulled open the rear carriage door. His eyes gleamed with respect in the moonlight.

  The sound of the train, the couplings, the fresh air, twice as loud now. I could no longer hear Iskra’s shrieks, or the man’s chest-shot gurgle, or smell the odor of offal and blood. All I knew was that I had to get rid of this Chekist or they’d come looking for his murderer. I pulled him out of the toilet on the blood-slick floor—my God, he was still alive, wheezing. The blood made the floor slick. “Help me,” I begged of them. “I can’t let them find him here.” First they pulled off his boots and went through his pockets. They took his clothes except for the bloodstained shirt, stripped him fast as one would skin a rabbit. Then they helped me pull him out onto the platform between the cars—the platform, too, was full of beggar children, riding out here in the dark and the wind and the scream of the metal. The bigger boys were the ones who shoved the Chekist out into the rushing darkness, onto the tracks. We stood on the platform among the smaller children, as his naked body disappeared in the moonlight. He was gone. Ten yards, twenty yards. The moon our only witness.