Chimes of a Lost Cathedral

by Janet Fitch

“Can we see her?” asked a small girl, dried snot all over her face.

  “She’s so pretty,” said a tall girl.

  “She’s ready for bed,” I lied. “We’re just going to put her in her basket now.” But she wouldn’t cooperate, started to cry as soon as I put her down, made me pick her up again.

  A girl clung to my skirt, dangerously close to my concealed gun, looking up at me with such adoring eyes it was terrifying. “Comrade Marina…will you stay with us now?”

  “All night.”

  “You smell good. Comrade Zoya’s mean. She hits.”

  They were all over me, patting me, hanging on to me. It frightened me how ravenous for affection they were. I hated to be cold, hold them at arm’s length, but I had to. They wanted so much—to touch my hair, my dress, my breasts, my legs, sit on my lap, get under my skirt. I had to watch Iskra like a pawnbroker. They loved her, but it all had an edge of hysteria. They demanded to hold her, fighting among themselves for the privilege. I didn’t trust their enthusiasm. They were frenetic and full of sudden tempers. One minute it was giggles and kisses, the next a fury of hair pulling and weeping. Hugging my legs, burrowing into my clothing. They would make wonderful pickpockets. I couldn’t allow myself to be mobbed. Yet they were only small children, and their desire for closeness was genuine. They were so unused to experiencing affection from adults. If I didn’t get control of them, I would be eaten alive.

  That first night, out of my depth, I fell back on the classic announcement of bedtime.

  “It is not,” said the tall girl, with a swagger.

  They were so dirty. Didn’t anyone even try to keep them halfway clean? “We’ll have a wash first.” I made it sound like I was giving in. “Get a partner and line up.”

  “We don’t have to.” The tall girl was going to be trouble, with her dark eyes, her stubble of dark hair, chin tilted up.

  “Only if you want a story,” I said.

  “What kind of story?” I could see her wavering, sensing a ruse.

  “You’ll see,” I said.

  “Alyona, quit.” Another girl, sharp nosed, grabbed her and pulled her into line. “There, Comrade.”

  And with Iskra in the sling, we paraded down to the washroom, the two oldest girls carrying the pot of boiling water from the stove between them. It was dangerous, but carrying it myself and the baby was more so, and them carrying her was out of the question. In the dank tiled room, I mixed our hot water with cold from the tap and, with a bar of harsh brown soap, washed their faces and hands, getting to know them as I handled them, washing necks and ears, elbows and arms. I even used the corner of my apron to clean their teeth with boiled water. I inspected their heads for lice, caressing, careful of scabs. I felt like an English nanny, like I should have been wearing an enormous starched apron and white cap.

  I made up a silly song for the procedure. “Give meeeeeee, those grubby little hands…”

  Such a difference from the Infant Department. Less heartbreaking, and yet, I had a great deal to learn. What to do about pinching, tattling, the furious tears, the incessant stealing from one another? It was hardly a Dickensian regime—Orphanage No. 6 was a progressive Soviet institution and forbade any kind of coercion or physical punishment, withholding of food or isolation. One had to be clever to earn compliance—though most of the matrons just threw up their hands and allowed anarchy to reign.

  I relied on the girls’ instinctive desire to be tended, even if there was nothing I could do for their hunger. Who didn’t want to be cared for? To be recognized as human and worthy of tenderness? Unlike many of the women on the late shift who spent their time in the staff room, I stayed in the dormitory all night, writing as they slept, soothing if they woke, changing wet sheets, feeding the stove, sometimes taking a sobbing child on my lap and singing “Fais Dodo…” Most of all, they loved their stories. Then they would forget to slap and pinch each other, and I could make demands. They had to be washed and in their beds, tucked in, if they wanted me to tell them the tale. If someone was acting up, no story. Ah, the might of the collective.

  They wanted to hear about Iskra’s father. I made up stories about him, fantastic enough that even six-year-old Olya, who barely spoke, could understand they were stories, and we could change them if we liked. They loved that power, that I could change whole lives any time I wanted to. I turned Kolya into a mountain man, a hunter and tamer of horses, who could ride his shaggy pony standing straight up on its broad back. How a white witch once stole Iskra away and took her to live in the far, far mountains, and my adventures in trying to get her back. They lay in their cots and sucked their thumbs, imagining it all.

  Girls 6–9 was exhausting but in a different way from Infant Department. Anything could happen in a split second. I had to be on my toes. Their emotional outbursts could be downright dangerous. I caught sight of normally placid Matya about to throw a pot of boiling water at Anoushka because of some slight I could barely understand. Adoration of Iskra could easily flip into envious harm. The girls themselves didn’t know what they would do next. They were riding their own tigers at all times.

  The season deepened. Autumn turned to frost. Now the windows coated over in their miraculous patterns, and my girls shivered, two to a bed, Olya and Alyona, Mashka, scabby Shushka. Their gaunt blue faces, their runny noses. I dragged my stool up among their bunks and recited the verses I composed in the night for them—working in their names, which they adored, and also those of my coworkers, which made them laugh in bubbling skeins. I gazed at them with the eyes of someone leaving. Iskra, awake in her sling, recited along with me in her private language, which I had yet to translate.

  In the land beyond the seas

  Live ten maidens fair

  Olya, Alyona, Mashka, Shushka,

  Lena, Zoya, Rada the bear,

  Katya, Matya, Anoushka there.

  Into the frost and the swirling snow,

  Into the forest to cut some wood,

  Into the forest to cut some wood

  with saws and little axe they go.

  One night, Comrade Tanya of the pancake makeup lingered in the doorway. She usually abandoned her own post with Girls 9–12 to pursue some sort of personal activity like stealing the children’s milk or smoking cigarettes with her Communist friend down in the lobby. But now she just waited, arms crossed, a sour look on her face. She still hadn’t forgiven me for being hired before her illiterate friend. She believed her party membership instantly awarded her the status of commissar, and sneered at us and our lowly status as mere “citizens.”

  “I don’t know why you bother with this,” she interrupted me, mid-stanza. “Lalala, the dancing deer and the prancing mice. You’re not doing them any favors. Softening ’em up, telling your stupid stories, tucking ’em in nighty night.”

  The girls stared at her with loathing, knowing they were being robbed of their poem. “Shut up,” our bold Alyona said. “What do you know?”

  “I know you kids’re gonna have to fight for what you get when you go to the detsky dom.” The permanent children’s homes, to which they would be transferred after Orphanage No. 6. “There ain’t no magic deer and golden fishes there. Better get used to it here, or you’re gonna take it all the worse when the other brats are beatin’ you up and eatin’ your food. Trust me, you’re doin’ them no favors, Miss Wash Your Hands, Nighty Night.”

  The girls swiveled with their big eyes to me, frightened and wanting me to defend them, to tell them this wasn’t their future. What kind of monster would say something like this in front of children? Scaring them about the detskie doma—when they were already afraid. What was the point of it?

  “Isn’t it better to be warm for a while before you have to go out in the cold again?” I countered. “Or would you just rather stand in the cold because it’d be worse to have to leave a warm shelter to go back outside?” Two could play this game. I let my gaze run over my anxious charges, feisty Alyona and her poor cropped head, little baby Olya, fingers in mouth,
leaning on Matya’s shoulder. “I say, grab a little warmth when you can. That’s a skill too.”

  Tanya came the rest of the way into the room, and when she spoke, she was speaking in earnest. “Look, Marina, I know you think you’re doin’ ’em all a favor with your hugs and pretties, but seriously, now. Seriously. It doesn’t help ’em. These ain’t gonna be just regular kids, they’re orphans and they’re gonna have to tough it out, and they got a long way to go.”

  I ran my eyes over my pitiful, scabby charges, human beings so desperate to be loved. “But they are regular kids. How can you take this one little scrap of childhood away from them?” I knew I shouldn’t be getting into a debate with her in front of them, but she was the one who had called me out—I needed the children to hear the other side. That I didn’t agree with her, that her point was not the only one.

  “I seen kids who come from your soft homes in here, haven’t I? We all have. They’re the ones we have to fish out of the canals. I’m tellin’ you, you got to let ’em take their lumps, straight out. Harden ’em up for what’s ahead.”

  I was probably holding her too tight, but Iskra started to cry, and then Mashka did, and Olya. Comrade Tanya left, tail twitching, happy she’d put a wet blanket over our shred of contentment. I had to quiet them all down, which I did by telling a silly story about Comrade Tanya sitting outside her house in the snow, and her neighbors asking why she didn’t come in, and she said it was because she’d have to come out the next day anyway—she would be colder if she went inside.

  Once I got them to sleep, I nursed Iskra, looking down into her uptilted eyes, and hummed “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” I took care not to nurse her in front of the girls, not out of modesty but respecting the intensity of their yearning. I couldn’t help thinking about what Comrade Tanya had said. I knew most of the women here thought as she did. But how hard did a child have to be to live in this terrible life? I considered my time with them as a little vaccination against the hardship ahead. It was their childhood itself I was trying to rescue. My dimmed lantern barely illuminated their little shaved heads covered with knitted caps, two to a pillow. Even if for a few minutes a day, I wanted to give them something sweet to remember, a story at bedtime, the sense that someone was watching over you as you slept and noticed your tears, your snotty nose, your shivering. Would it really make their lives in the detsky dom harder when it was gone, or would it give them a little fire to carry inside them, to warm themselves in the long cold nights?

  I tried to imagine the ache of having been well treated, and then thrown to the wolves. What if Tanya was right? Maybe living with wolves from the start would be better. Perhaps it was my bourgeois upbringing, wanting to give them a bit of that sweetness without considering its ramification. Was it harder having a childhood snatched from you, or never having one at all? I wanted them to have something to remember, Olya, Anoushka, little Mashka, during the years of nights to come, at least one poem they might recite to themselves under the snow.

  Two days after my confrontation with Comrade Tanya, I was transferred to Boys 9–12, Room III.

  Someone was making a point.

  20 Chieftains and Untouchables

  I now worked with Comrade Nadezhda of the beauty mark, in a big dormitory formed by breaking through a wall in a hotel suite, warmed by stoves at both ends. My new charges, Boys 9–12, needed no organizing; they’d already created their own organization, their own secretive culture, even their own lingo, which they used in front of adults—though to be sure, languages were my strong suit. Theirs was the law of the horde, and no mercy was in evidence, anywhere. I thought I understood about orphans from the little girls, but that had been a mere outpost of the country I’d entered. Now I’d arrived in its central districts. The boys had chieftains and chargés d’affaires, poets and traders, whipping boys and untouchables. Their brutal mistreatment of one another was the law, rarely contradicted by child or adult.

  The first night, I caught Makar, a slight but furious boy, systematically kicking a bigger but meek one they called Cross-Eyes, in the clear space between the bunks. The bigger boy lay on the floor protecting his head cradled in his arms, gasping with each blow.

  “Stop that!” I yanked Makar off by his collar.

  He glowered at me with all the hatred his ten-year-old soul could muster, but said nothing.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “None of your business is what,” he said boldly.

  I helped Cross-Eyes up. He bent to the side he’d been kicked on, wiped his eyes and his snotty nose on his sleeve. “Are you all right? What was going on here?”

  He sniffled and shrugged. “We was just playing.” I examined the other boys who’d been watching it all, but not one spoke up for the victim, expressions so blank you could post a handbill. So. Nothing left to be done.

  A minute later, a solemn boy with big dark eyes, Maxim, leaned over to examine Iskra in her basket. “He owes him money, see?” he said under his breath. “And can’t pay. So Cross-Eyes gives Makar ten kicks.” Then he walked away, as if he’d said nothing. Gives him ten kicks. In lieu of payment, the opportunity to kick him ten times. But payment for what? They had nothing.

  I asked Nadezhda about it, after the boys were asleep.

  “Best to turn a blind eye,” she said, turning a page of her newspaper. “They’ll do it their way in the end, believe me. Why work yourself up?” Natural self-government. It was enough to make Kropotkin renounce anarchism.

  I soon learned that the central concern of Room III was gambling, and payment was extracted in all sorts of ways. You had to let them do it too. There was nothing else they cared about, and they had no toys or other games. They made their cards from pieces of cardboard, and woe to the boy caught cheating. When they lived on the streets, they had money, but in here, beatings were the rate of exchange. Or clothes. Sometimes a child suddenly had no shoes. Hair snatching was the most disgusting of their trade items—there were always a few boys who looked like they had the mange. It was all about cheating and debts.

  And how they stole from one another! No child ever possessed anything of his own. There was one boy, Sosha, a sad-eyed blond who barely spoke and had no friends. He seemed impossibly lonely. I sewed him a little horse made of rags and brought it one night, gave it to him. He called it Dima and seized on it like a box of sweets, ran off to a corner to play. But in a few minutes he brought it back to me, pressed it into my apron pocket.

  “No, Sosha, it’s for you.” I tried to give the little horse back to the boy, but he refused to take it.

  “You keep him.” He gazed down at the little horse, and a tear rolled down his face. “They’ll take him away from me.” How little it took to make them happy, but how vulnerable that little was. He would rather not have the horse and have him, than have him and lose him.

  The boys were wild and wary. Like the girls, they wanted to be near me, but unlike the girls, they didn’t dare touch me. It was as if I were a fire, they craved the closeness, but not the burn. I could understand that—people hated the besprizorniki, the parentless waifs. They pricked at adult consciences, and people didn’t respond well to guilt. The shame people felt to see these ragged urchins—skin blue in flashes under their terrible rags—was quickly translated into an armoring anger, as if it were the children’s own fault they were abandoned. Bad blood, people said, chasing them off as if they were rats. Assumed they were all thieves, which in truth, some were, but not all. They spit at them in the street, struck them with impunity. No wonder the children feared adults. They all hated going to school, which, in the progressive wisdom of the Commissariat, they attended with the local district children, where they were treated as if being an orphan were a bacillus.

  It still surprised me how many of my charges were interested in Iskra, how tender they were to her, that a young boy would want to hold a baby, and although I was afraid of disease, I would allow it as a special privilege—after a boy had washed his hands and scrubbed the nails
so that the blue-white of his skin would break your heart—I would let him have her basket on his bed, let him hold her hand and touch her soft cheek. “I love you,” I heard more than one of them whisper in her ear.

  And they, too, liked their stories and verses. I made up little chastushki couplets to make them laugh while I washed their hands and faces and scrubbed their teeth, inspected for lice. They were coming to trust me, and I was beginning to understand their organization—who had to be left alone, who could be cajoled, who longed for attention, and who had to be approached like a wild animal, never looked at straight on. But the routine was a great leveler, and all but the most rebellious were happy to submit to it.

  I began to tell them the story of the orphan Vanka Manka.

  “He lived in a city under the sun and the stars,” I chanted as I walked between the rows of their beds, Iskra on my shoulder. “It was called Pashapashol, and it grew up rich and beautiful on the banks of a wide river that said its name all day long—Pashapashol, Pashapashol. The city looked into the mirror of its waters, smiling at its own beauty and goodness.

  “The city was built on forty-eight islands, each island perched on a pillar of ice, and the ice itself was as clear as glass. Inside the pillars, bright fish lay suspended, orange and blue and red. And there lived the orphan Vanka Manka, and his sister, Snezhana, the snow child, whose freshness the sorcerer Shinshen craved for his own. One day, he bid his army of shadows to steal her away.”

  I made it good and scary, night after night, with plenty of plunder and sword fights and untold riches, which they loved hearing me describe in detail, amid many interruptions.

  One night I had Vanka Manka up on the rooftops, slipping between the chimney pots, looking for his stolen sister. Even Comrade Nadezhda was awake, listening, when the door to the Room III dormitory opened. In walked a big, wide, terrifying woman, solid, with a chin like an ironing board, and an unsmiling face. She looked like a Roman Caesar, Julius or Augustus. Matron. I could feel the same force emanating from this formidable woman as from the heavy writing that made my assignment on the board, that had seen fit to move me from Infant Department to Girls 6–9 and now to Room III. I’d been waving my hands in an extravagant gesture, describing Vanka Manka and the magical Book of Signs, when she’d come in. Was I about to be fired? Her face betrayed nothing but I sensed a heaviness that reeked disapproval. Was it Iskra, some other crime? Or—just perhaps—was Matron’s presence here purely a random occurrence? Then, in shuffled a group of serious-looking men and women in dark clothing who arrayed themselves inside the doorway.