Chimes of a Lost Cathedral

by Janet Fitch

  The girl whined and leapt between us, trying to separate us, grabbing for his cock. He took her by the collar. “See this?” he said to her, her chain doubled in his fist, his face twisted with desire. “This is a woman. This is your queen. Apologize!”

  She spat in my face.

  He slapped her backhanded, flung her into the corner of the divan—her mouth a mute square, her eyes brimming alive with wounded fury.

  “I thought I could never love a woman.” He was groaning, stroking himself while running his hand over my body, my thighs, my buttocks. “I thought all women were disgusting bags of fluids, tears, monthly blood, milk—but look, I don’t find you repulsive. There’s no one like you…” His voice, that compulsive rumble, that obsessive flood. He shoved me back onto the divan, fumbling his cassock aside. His organ rose whitely from its root. He held himself out so I could admire it. “I remember that night, your flesh so inspired me, I wrote you my love letter.” His blue eyes black with the drug and his own desire, the darkness of the world coalesced in them. “Let me see your pussy. Let me smell your flowers.”

  I was two people now, Iskra’s mother and this thing, Arkady’s black queen. Both at the same time. No one was watching, no one was keeping score except our audience of one. And then he was on me, in me, and I was glad for the cocaine, which both urged me on and let me step away, to watch myself, out where it was crisp and clear and horror could not reach me.

  “Tell me how you’ve waited for me…how you dreamed of me. Makarova, there’s no one like you…”

  As he thrust into me, I plunged my hand into the cushions. There was nothing behind them but loose stuffing. It was all a joke. A cosmic joke. Queen Persephone, the queen of this filthy prison, this freakish dungeon. With Hades, her Dark Lord, plowing her fields.

  A sound rose above Arkady’s groans, a sound like the wind keening. Behind him, she stood, holding my pistol in both hands. She was not so far gone as all that. She was terrifying, magnificent. Pointing it at us. Was this how I would die, killed by this tormented girl? If it would be so, I was ready to stop this nighmare. But Arkady looked up, panting, following my gaze. Disengaging, his organ springing free as he moved toward her. “Put that down, Olimpia.”

  In that moment, I saw. The last human part of her remembered the tortures she’d suffered at his hands, the abasement. She laughed or growled, baring her teeth.

  “Obey me!”

  She fired.

  The bullet caught him in the chest. His mouth opened in surprise. And he toppled onto me. I shoved him away and he fell on the table, overturning it, and from there to the floor, where he lay gasping, the blood bubbling from the wound, spreading black under him. She fired again, squeaking, like a rabbit’s scream, but there was nothing left in the cylinder. The gun had told its six lives.

  His gaze flew from her to me, above him on the couch. “Makarova…” He gestured for me to come closer. His erection, I noted, still rose from his monk’s skirts, as if word of his shooting hadn’t arrived yet. He reached out for me. “Marina…” Why was he still alive? Would I have to kill him myself, the way I’d once killed animals still alive in their traps?

  “I thought you said…Shinshen…was immortal.” And he laughed, coughing up blood, turning his head to breathe. A last joke.

  Banging, shouts in the hall.

  Don’t hesitate.

  “Alas,” I said.

  And stepped down onto his neck, cracking it under my heel.

  25 The Annunciation

  Crows cawed, pecking through the tatters of the night. A thick, icy fog had settled on the monastery during the night, and rising out of the whiteness, I could see the vague outlines of Holy Trinity, featureless and abandoned, and the Church of the Annunciation.

  The Annunciation…The Archangel Gabriel came to the Virgin with the prospect of the divine, but he was also the Angel of Death. Yet the Archangel had died and I had lived. I was free. I was on my way.

  Here was the Benz Söhne, parked halfway up on the curb. I’d taken my boots back from Klavdia, and her coat, but hadn’t thought about the car. My pockets jingled, heavy with the boys’ pocketknives, though my skin still lay on my body, intact. And someone was waiting for me. Someone precious.

  I had lived. I was going home.

  I passed under the arch and through the broken gates, turning onto Nevsky Prospect. How bright it seemed in the milk-white mist. The sights of early morning began to appear and their ordinariness moved me. I’d been locked in the no-time of Arkady von Princip, the halls of the Dark Lord, only to find myself returned like Orpheus to the Soviet dawn: orphans selling newspapers, people leaving for work, lighting cigarettes, rubbing their eyes. Fortunate humans, who’d never seen a crucifix adorned with real hands, or a girl etched like an illustration in a book of woodcuts. I had cut her collar, but she only went to him and knelt in his blood, washing herself in it, covering her face and limbs as he gazed up into nothingness. Shinshen the immortal had met his soul, and died.

  How beautiful everything was to me. A skinny horse and driver emerged from the fog, rattling by me, clippity clop. A man pushed a baby pram full of firewood. A boy called out, “Yudenich takes Gatchina! Pravda’s got it, four kopeks, right here! Lines to Moscow still free! Petrograd holds firm!” There was still a world, where news went on and armies marched and mothers took children to school. And soon that would be me, taking Iskra in her little pinafore, a bow in her fox-red hair. I didn’t care anymore if Kolya came home. This was the important thing—these people, queuing at a bakery. People in leather jackets and old overcoats crowding into a government office. Soldiers loitering outside their Red Army club. It was all still going on. I had a job, a place on this earth, and a child waiting for me. Here was the train station, that cathedral of hope and despair, millions on the move, train-deafened orphans…But my child wouldn’t be among them. Not her, the flower of my life, my tiny sun.

  I hurried onward. Above me, the horses of the Anichkov Bridge reared and struggled with their grooms—never free, never subdued. The human condition. I sped past the old roller rink where I’d once skated with Volodya and Seryozha, now a movie theater, and past the Hercules club, still closed at this hour, and Mina’s building at Liteiny, where she’d locked her heart against me. I did not feel that grief now. It was nothing to me, compared with rejoining Iskra. I redoubled my pace, a stitch in my side, but grateful I didn’t have to run barefoot, as many an orphan had done before me.

  I rushed past Alexandrinsky Square and its terrible statue of Empress Catherine atop her bell. Never again would the Archangel haunt the dreams of the city’s orphans. They’d have only the cold to fear, hunger and ordinary death. No monsters or myths.

  Now the Europa’s huge blocky form took shape—its roofline, the dark facade. I began to run, my boots flapping on my feet. Strange, a crowd had gathered on the corner. There was never a crowd in Petrograd now. But people stood shoulder to shoulder, their backs in overcoats, their breath like steam from a manhole. “What’s going on?”

  “A jumper.” “Some kid.” “They do this all the time.”

  My mouth went dry. I pushed my way through the onlookers. The matrons were all here: Nadezhda. Alla. Polya. Tanya. Who was tending the children? They turned to me, their expressions equal parts horror and guilt. The way they tried to catch at my arms. Now I was fighting my way to the front. “Marina.” “Marina, don’t.” “It’s nobody’s fault.”

  Clusters of children. Cross-Eyes, tearful. “He kept saying I didn’t mean to.” Nikita was wearing my sheepskin. “We thought you was dead.” Makar, hollow eyed. “He’s been cryin’ all night.”

  I didn’t mean to.

  A jumper.

  Oh God.

  Maxim.

  The solid bulk of Matron blocked my way. Her firm grip on my arm. “Don’t. The ambulance is on its way—”

  I broke from her and shoved into the center of the crowd. Two policemen stood over a body.

  Patched pants,

&nb
sp; the too-large boots.

  the son of my dreams.

  He thought he had betrayed me, that he had killed me.

  I wrestled myself clear, knelt at his side.

  And then, I saw.

  Tight in his arms,

  in the curl of his body,

  a smaller form.

  Her face

  beneath his chin

  Their blood interlaced.

  Why

  Did he think he was saving her?

  So she would not be

  orphaned

  like him?

  I released her from his arms.

  Held her close.

  Someone wrapped my sheepskin around my shoulders.

  Her blood leaked

  onto the pavers

  but no flowers bloomed.

  As if in sleep

  long-lashed eyes

  the bow of lips

  the tiny hands

  Oh Maxim…

  couldn’t you have waited?

  The panic

  in his ten-year-old mind

  Iskra!

  that perfection

  Iskra!

  the wheel broken.

  Iskra!

  my spark.

  my little fox

  Was this the way our tale ended?

  The ambulance came. Men lifted Maxim onto a stretcher, carried him to the wagon. I didn’t want to leave him alone, but he was too big—how could I carry them both? I kissed his dear face, watered it in my tears as I held Iskra bleeding to my chest. His poor face—even in death, so worried. Where do they bury the orphans?

  They tried to pry Iskra away from me. I bit the man’s thick hand. They would not take her. May lightning strike and thunder roar, and the world drown in my tears. Arms reached, hands clutched. “You’re making it worse.” “Come, let them do their jobs.” “She’s gone now, Marina.”

  “No!” They could not have her. “She’s not an orphan!” She would not go into the ground where the orphans go, their arms small comfort around each other’s necks.

  The ambulance men tried to talk sense. “You’ve got to give her to us, devushka.” “We can’t stay here all day.” They had other bodies to gather, other deaths to reap.

  “She can’t be alone, she’s only a baby. I’ll bury her myself! Please, I have a plot. For the love of God!”

  They gazed at each other, at Matron. I backed up into the fog, let its nothingness slide closed behind me.

  Once, death had been just a rumor, romantic, veiled in poems. Now it had a name, a color, a weight. Her body was as light as a rabbit’s. I sat on the steps at Gostinny Dvor, in the empty arcade, my child wrapped in a kerchief someone had handed me. The Fates had waited for this moment to take the single thing I could not bear to lose. My baby, the broken weight of her, her blood seeping into the soft sheepskin. Where such life had been—nothing.

  I sat there gasping, as if I’d swum a great distance, as if the air had thinned, there was no oxygen left. Iskra, my love, my heart.

  Buildings appeared and disappeared as I wandered, eyeless, with my daughter in my arms. Stopped finally on the Chernyshevsky Bridge, wrapped in fog. The water below flowed green-black, gelid with coming ice. Once I’d stood right here with Genya, gazing out on a moonlight-painted expanse in dead winter, the Germans on their way. So many futures written on this river’s empty page. And now I saw nothing.

  I could part the waters today. Green-black

  down

  down

  down

  Yes, this was the day. The day of all deaths. But how to put her down to climb the balustrade? I could not put her down, and I couldn’t climb it holding her, and I would not drop her in alone. I just stood, holding her, my empty lungs, my broken life.

  A man stepped out of the fog to smoke a cigarette. He eyed me as if he knew what I had in mind.

  I moved on, wrapping the fog around myself.

  Foot after leaden foot, I drifted. Perhaps I would wander the fog forever with my dead infant in my arms, haunting the city, listening for the chimes of lost cathedrals. Heavy carts trundled into view and vanished. Factories. Barracks. Poor people, speaking softly. Soldiers.

  Which god had I slighted? Had I forgotten a burnt offering? Neglected to paint my doorpost with the blood of the lamb? What kind of a cursed thing was I?

  Iskra.

  Of all the mothers to have been born to.

  You, a perfect child, otherwise.

  I recognized the canal—I had marched here once, dug trenches. How could the earth bear so much weeping? How was it that there was still dry land?

  I asked a faceless man, “The Novodevichy Cemetery, is it far?”

  “Keep on straight, little mother.”

  Her tiny body, tinier than I could imagine, she had seemed so much bigger in life. She who had been more alive than anyone. The wonder in her eyes, her baby laughter. The way she’d grab my lips, blow bubbles. Where did you go, Iskra?

  From the depths of the white, church bells rang dolefully. My legs, heavy as anchors, followed the sound of their chimes to Novodevichy Convent. They still had a bell ringer.

  I stood in the back of the church with my baby in my arms, my dead baby, dumbly watching the candles burning in their stand. But it was too late for intercession, Iskra Antonina needed only the earth now, Mother Blackearth, the roots, the darkness. A coffin was being carried out of the chapel. A family walked behind. I followed them into the old cemetery. I had no one to walk with me. I wished Kolya had seen her, I wished he were here. But what difference did it make in the end whether you mourned together or alone? In death, you’re always alone.

  The family stopped at a grave new-opened, a lone priest. The gravediggers took off their caps. Small candles were lit. I listened out of sight. The family had to lower the casket themselves.

  Vechnaya pamyat’

  Vechnaya pamyat’

  Vechnaya pamyat’

  Eternal memory…

  Standing in the frosty whiteness, I was grateful she’d been born in summertime, that she’d seen trees and green fields, and the pure Blokian blue of the sky. I would find a place to bury her where the boughs would overarch her in summer, deep in Mother Blackearth, who does not need our pleas or flattery, who knows what’s needed without being asked.

  I wandered the unkempt graveyard, and found a four-sided plinth near a bank of shrubs under some big bare trees. It would be easy to spot in the spring—if there was ever a spring. I set her on the frosted leaves in her blood-seeped blanket and began to dig, hacking at the heavy clay with Arkady’s hatchet. But in the end, I could not dig a hole deep enough. I sat like a child with a shovel at the shore, and wept.

  The shock on the gravediggers’ faces when I emerged from the fog told me what I looked like, with the bloody sheepskin and Iskra in my arms. “Please,” I begged. “Help us.”

  It took them just a few minutes. I tried to snip a piece of her hair with a penknife, but my trembling fingers couldn’t make the cut. I’d never cut her hair before. It was so shiny, so fine. I could not do the smallest thing. The shorter man mercifully took the knife from me and quickly cut off a small ginger lock, rolled it into a piece of newspaper he was using for cigarettes, folded the ends.

  I laid her in the grave myself. Tucked her in at the breast of the earth.

  Good night, Iskra.

  good night, sweet girl.

  Mama will come as soon as she can.

  We sang, “Vechnaya pamyat’.”

  Or they did.

  I gave each man a penknife in payment.

  How was it I did not go mad?

  How long must I go on?

  The strong must suffer everything.

  Madness would be a blessing.

  I wished I were stone.

  If I were stone

  I could make of myself a headstone.

  The sun had gone out. I lay curled on her grave, smelling the new-turned earth, seeing those hands dancing over the edge of the basket by the f
ire. The button nose, her impish eyes, her smile, her swoon as she suckled…my arms so empty, my breasts so full. I would stay here and die like a dog, I would howl from loneliness, I would stay until it crushed me. I took the gun out from Klavdia’s coat pocket under my sheepskin. Each cylinder, empty. Empty. Just when I needed the release.

  I had worried about all the wrong things.

  So much fate coiled in those round metal nests. If just one chamber had been occupied, I could put an end to this unbearable tale. A caesura, midsentence.

  “I worried about something like this.” The short gravedigger standing above me. His good kind face, a wide moustache like Maxim Gorky’s. He took the gun from me, that useless thing. “Come with me. I’ll take you to my wife. She’ll give you some tea. It’s not far.” His hand as rough as shoe leather as he pulled me to my feet. He smelled of earth. Blessed silent Mother.

  A rutted little road. The gravedigger’s ground-floor room. His tiny wife at the stove, boiling cabbage soup, a somber little woman in a patched apron, hair like ashes. A thin-faced child tugged at her apron. So there was a child. That’s why he was being so kind. A child, thin, but not in the ground. The wife said nothing. The gravedigger dragged a stool to the table. “The girl just buried her baby. She was gonna shoot herself.” He put my gun on the table. The woman crossed herself. “It’s a sin,” she admonished me. The child gazed at me with flat gray eyes. But what about God’s sin against me? Letting Maxim jump off the roof with my Iskra? Why don’t you ask me if I forgive God?

  She put a crust of bread before me. I could only imagine what a gravedigger made. “Keep the gun,” I said. “You can sell it.” She exchanged a glance with her husband, who nodded. She took it and put it high up in the red corner. No Chekists would come to visit this hovel. I gnawed the bread. She lit the samovar for tea. My ignorant breasts yearned for my baby. They didn’t understand there would be no baby, ever again. We drank the carrot tea in silence.