by Janet Fitch
It was fully night when he revealed the flat’s final secret. In the back hall, past a tiny kitchen, a door revealed a miracle. A private bath. Toilet, sink, little clawed tub. He turned on the taps, and water ran. But that wasn’t the end. In a few moments, hot water splashed into the slipper-shaped tub. “Your bath, madame.” He extended his hand, helped me in. I had to suck my teeth as I lowered myself into the steaming tub—the water was that hot, and my body had been thoroughly tenderized. But then, such bliss. Kolya knelt next to me, soaped a washcloth. Pears soap…It brought back my childhood, the English herbs, slightly resinous, Avdokia kneeling by the tub, washing me. I should have gone back for her. Everything could have been different…which wasn’t to say it would have been any better. I had to remember that. There were infinite ways things could go wrong.
But right now, Kolya Shurov was washing my back, the old scars. Shampooing my hair. It was mesmerizing to be so intimately tended, his strong, short fingers rubbing my head, then pouring water through my hair. “It’s grown out,” he said, squeezing it with the side of his hand.
I was a boy the last time he saw me, leaving him at the Tikhvin station, as he’d wept and begged me to come back. I didn’t want to think about that now. Life was giving us another chance. I wouldn’t question it, question what he was doing here or how long he would stay. I could feel he was dying to tell me. He was fat with secrets. I had secrets too, but unlike him, there would be no fun in revealing them.
Kolya scrubbed my feet, my knees and elbows, the water in the tub grew as murky as standing water in a Petrograd courtyard. As he laved me, he sang a song. I didn’t recognize it at first. And then I realized he was singing in English, and though it was somewhat changed, I knew it. “The river’s so empty nowadays. / All the gray horses are gone…” He rinsed out the cloth, hung it on the side of the tub. “I try to remember the tango, but one can’t dance it alone…Some friends set it to music. Like it? The drowned bell is a little obscure, but it was quite the success.”
“When did you learn English?” I said.
“One does what one must,” he said in English.
I rested my head on the back of the tub. Yes, yes, there was something about him, now it had come up. “That’s where you’ve been, England? Where in England?”
“Different places. Regret is a bell, a secret, / An island carved in the mind. / Brave words once said in a station…”
My poem had become a song. People in England sang it. “Funny, I pictured you in Paris. At a café, drinking champagne with a flock of attentive mademoiselles.”
“Oh, squadrons of them. Battalions,” he said. He pulled the plug, helped me out of the filthy water. “Unfortunately, there’s not much of a living in drinking champagne, and money doesn’t come floating down the Seine. Many other things, but not money. Paris is stinking with émigrés—they’re driving cabs, waiting tables. Princes and generals.” He wrapped a clean linen towel around me and rubbed my shoulders. “England provided a clearer field. They remember Dmitry Makarov there.”
Oh God.
“There were some interesting prospects—better on a number of levels.” He lit an Egyptian cigarette, oval-shaped, from a box with a bird goddess on the lid.
As I dried my hair, he sat on the edge of the tub and ran a bath for himself. Hot water gushed. I thought of my poor orphans being washed ten to a pail of cold water. He climbed in, set the ashtray on the rim, and sighed as I combed my hair in the mirror, wiping the steam. “Look how domestic we are,” I said to him in the mirror. “Like an old married couple.”
“Married couples don’t fuck like that,” he said.
“How would you know?”
He turned his head to the side to puff on his cigarette. “From keen observation. How is your husband, by the way?”
“Writing propaganda for our masters. How about you? What brings you to our shores? Nostalgia for vobla?”
He stuck a foot up in the air, twitched it to the left and the right. A squarish foot, not as long as Anton’s nor as shapely as Pashol’s. Funny that the sailor had the aristocrat’s foot, the aristocrat a peasant’s. I picked up the washcloth, knelt and soaped it, scrubbed the wide sole, the sturdy toes.
“England and Russia signed a trade agreement,” he said. “At the end of March.”
Just after Kronstadt. You could never underestimate the duplicity of our masters. They had to have been negotiating it even before the New Economic Policy. At the very moment they were crushing the rebellion, they knew what was coming.
“British labor unions pushed the trade deal through. They knew that the revolution was going to topple unless Lenin got some help—grain for the harvest shortfall, and the restoration of manufacturing. Now he’s offering concessions in exchange for hard currency. Mining, industry. You can’t make this kind of thing up—Western trade unions, pushing for a treaty that’s going to help bloodsucking capitalists get their hooks into Bolshevik Russia. There’s a poem in there somewhere, don’t you think? You could call it ‘Zholty Dom.’” Yellow house—another way of saying madhouse. He turned over in a slosh of water like a fleshy seal so I could wash his back, perching his chin on the tub’s rim. “Of course, the capitalists need a little help when it comes to dealing with the Kremlin. Someone with Russian insight, who knows the game. So who happens to be in London just at this very time? Why, our old friend Nikolai Shurov!”
“I’ve heard of him,” I said, smoothing the creamy soap over his shoulders. He still had freckles…like mine. Iskra would have had them too. I kissed them, trying not to think about the new political turn. “Shurov, wasn’t he a speculator, an agent of counterrevolutionary émigré groups?”
He laughed, flicking his ash into the ashtray he’d placed on the floor. “Biznissman. Old family friend of Dmitry Ivanovich Makarov, Russian liberal and friend to the English.”
And shot in a Cheka cell.
I didn’t know how I felt about Kolya trading on Father’s reputation to find a place for himself in the world. I tried to get over my sense of shock. Of course he would use whatever tool came to hand. He was stateless, a pariah at home, a foreigner abroad. He wasn’t doing anything any of us wouldn’t have done. Though it looked as if he was doing better than we ever would.
“This Shurov, he meets a friend of your father’s, Sir Graham Stanley, owner of coal mines in Wales and a steel factory in Sheffield. Sir Graham is particularly interested in the idea of Russian mineral rights. Oil, specifically. So, they meet with Litvinov and Chicherin, our good Soviet foreign representatives, first in London, then in Moscow, to see what goodies the Bolsheviks might be willing to lease. They even meet with the Great Revolutionary Devil himself.”
“You met Lenin?” It was ludicrous, but I believed him.
“Or a brilliant facsimile.” He ducked his head back into the water, holding his cigarette aloft. He shook the water off his face and hair like a dog. “No doubt he’d read my Cheka file, but nothing was said about that. Nothing must disturb the deal with Sir Graham. Suddenly capitalists are back in vogue. The very thing I would have eaten lead for last year. But this year I’m the honorable Mr. Shurov, of the What-Can-We-Do-for-You Shurovs of St. Petersburg, Moscow, London, and Nottingham, England. Yes, Mr. Shurov. No, Mr. Shurov. Chicherin himself takes my calls. Mr. Shurov calling on behalf of Sir Graham Stanley. Oh yes, Mr. Shurov, what can we do for you? Hang around, you’ll see.”
The very thing Varvara had seen coming, that she could not abide, that had driven her—yes—to the river, or a bullet. This should not be happening here. This influence peddling, this selling of the Russian storehouse, exactly what we had fought to rid ourselves from. Yet I also understood—what else could we do? We had to get food to the Povolzhye. At least the government had finally relented, allowing foreign famine relief. It was a maze, a labyrinth over a cesspit. While the Cheka still hunted for the poet Marina Makarova, the lover of sailors.
He got out of his tub, that good sturdy body streaming with water. I gave him a t
owel and he began vigorously rubbing himself, singing a snatch of “The Internationale.” “They’re desperate for cash, your masters. I’ve helped broker purchases of the people’s art—and not just your baba’s bric-a-brac. The émigrés are throwing a stink, of course. It never occurred to Chicherin that the rightful owners would get wind of the thing and sue. But as a go-between, I can help Sir Graham and the heroic Soviet Republic. I’m a most useful fellow.”
The Bolsheviks going into business with Western capital, while arresting leading intellectuals right here at home. You would think they couldn’t get away with it, that the West would see through their smiling faces. But the business folk didn’t want to see the shadows in the corners, the bloodstains on the tile.
Suddenly it was too hot in the bathroom and I wasn’t used to drinking. I had to open the door. “What about the famine?”
“Soviet officials are in Riga right now, negotiating with the American Relief Administration.”
The Americans?
“They’re the ones who know how. They fed Belgium after the war, and Poland. They’re the only ones who can handle the scale, and they’re surprisingly incorruptible.” Americans rescuing Russia from the Bolsheviks’ mistakes. The ultimate irony.
“Lenin’s worst nightmare.”
“He’s got no choice.”
I thought of my orphans—so many, and they just were the ones with the will to make it to Petrograd. What of the millions too weak to even walk out of their izbas? The stories I’d heard were too awful to be believed, but I believed them. We had to eat the baby, my own children had whispered to me.
“Everybody’s anted up,” Kolya said, examining his chin in the mirror, wondering if he needed to shave. “The émigrés, the laborites, the pious churchgoers. But only the Americans can organize it.” He sudsed his face, washed the soap from his hands. “Of course, there’s a snag vis-à-vis the Bolsheviks. The Americans are demanding to bring in their own people, hire local help, man their own kitchens, run their own trains.” He began to shave with a glinting razor, starting with his neck, washing the foam from the blade with each stroke. “Their man Herbert Hoover’s pretty canny. He knows not a bag of grain would be left for the Povolzhye if they left it up to us. Naturally, the Bolsheviks think they should run the show—when they couldn’t run so much as a tobacco shop.”
The children had told me how they searched the dust along the railway tracks near stations, looking for wheat that might have spilled, staying alive grain by grain. “It wasn’t until last month they even admitted there was a famine.”
“They wanted the trade agreement to look good. So they’d get better terms.”
How I’d missed knowing what was going on. Since I’d stopped going to Gorky’s, I was as in the dark as anyone. I read the signs, like a farmer reading clouds or the thickness of fur on caterpillars. We saw arrests, the sudden appearance of flower shops, and guessed at the rest. We combed every article for loose grains of news.
He examined his smooth face in the mirror, stroking his cheeks, rinsed and dried his razor. I pressed myself to his warm, moist back, resting my chin on his shoulder. I should tell him that I was tainted, that the Cheka was looking for me. I could ruin all his hopes for his deal if they found me here. He saw my worried face in the mirror. “Don’t be sad,” he said. “Things are going to work out. Trust me, this is just the beginning.”
I started to cry. How could I let him believe I could be part of this? “Kolya, there’s something I need to tell you—”
But he turned and put his fingertips to my mouth. “Talk tomorrow.” And replaced his fingers with his lips.
63 Secrets
I woke in the morning to find my love on the telephone, speaking low. Then he hung up, asked for another number, a Moscow number. “Yes, hello,” he said, in English. It was a shock. He’d never spoken more than two words of that language in his life. “Good to hear you too, Graham.” He had trouble with Graham, he pronounced it Gram. “Yes.” He laughed, sipped from the fragrant tea he’d made, stirring with a little spoon, that light chime. He sat on a chair he’d dragged up to the telephone on the wall in the little hallway. “Yes, well, they’ve been through it. You can’t expect—” He laughed again. The sun filled the white curtains, painting them with the boughs of the trees just outside. The warm air sucked the thin fabric, making it billow, then pulling it flat. Kolya perched in his fine underwear, socks and garters, his hairy legs and arms solid. That adorable, maddening man.
And I was happy. Nothing had changed, everything had changed. Beads of sweat clung to my hairline and under my breasts, the fragrance of the sheets. I yawned and turned onto my side, watching him, that mobile mouth, the persuasive sandy voice—and a slow, liquid pleasure rose from my thighs and my hips to spread throughout my body like wine. He was here. He had come for me, plucked me from the sea just as the water closed over my head. I could still feel his lips where he’d eaten the strawberries from my hand. I put my mouth where his had been.
“God, don’t let them pull that—” he said. Pull that…I had not heard that before. “No. Litvinov assured us— Mmmm. Yes. It’s sitting in Amsterdam, all ready to go. I can have it here in five days, maybe less, but don’t tell them. We’ll just have to watch the docks when it gets here. But I’ve got good contacts in the railway union. We won’t have any trouble with them.” He listened, drinking his tea. “A week, two at most. Good. Send her my love. Of course. Easy Street. See you soon.” He replaced the handset onto the cradle above him, stood and stretched.
I felt too lazy to get out of that messy bed. I watched him through the curls of shiny brass. “Who was that?”
“My partner, Sir Graham.” He slid onto the bed like a boy falling onto a pile of leaves, nuzzled my neck, bit my shoulder, stroked my arm. He didn’t seem to care how bony I had become in the time we’d been apart. If he found me attractive, that’s all I cared about. I reached under his singlet to feel his chestnut pelt. Ah, I had missed that. Anton had only a few stray hairs, without curl, although Pasha…may he rest in peace. So many men, but only one Kolya. How I loved that good ruddy skin, all the textures of him, his curls growing out, the smoothness of his closely shaved face, though I missed the beard he’d worn as Mechanic Rubashkov and my peasant husband. How many lives we’d lived through together. I knitted my fingers in with his, threw my leg up over his hip. “Why don’t you take off your socks?”
He kissed me, but shoved my leg off him, sat up. “Don’t you like my socks?” They were an argyle plaid. “I have some errands to do. Eat some food, write me a poem about how much you love to fuck me.”
“Send who your love?” I asked, sitting up against the big pillows.
“Lady Stanley,” he said. “Lumpy, middle-aged. She grows sheep. They win prizes. Also she paints on plates.” He tugged down the sheet, traced the curve of my breast, tickling the nipple, making it stand up. “Don’t be jealous. She wears gum boots, probably to bed.” He bit my haunch. “Poor Graham.”
“I thought you didn’t like the English.”
“I like doing business with them.” He went to the table in his argyle socks and his erection, buttered some bread, brought it back to eat it—dusting me with crumbs. He offered me a bite. “They don’t see the rest of us as quite human. But once you know that, you can work with them. Which is to say, they’d sell out their own mothers, while saluting the Union Jack. Crazy, but…”
The English had brought him here. Also my poem. What were the chances that two such people, loose in a world of chaos, would end up together in this pretty flat, on these crumpled sheets? There was no reason to believe it would go on, but for this moment, I would drink it deep.
“I could see you living in England,” he said, running his hand along my flank. “In a big hat. Playing croquet. When I’m done here, maybe you’ll come with me.”
I opened my mouth to say that I wasn’t going to pretend. No fantasy futures, I’d had that burned out of me. The future was unknowable. In trying to
imagine it, you were just projecting the present. But he put his fingers across my lips, kissed the crumbs from the corner of my mouth. “Just think about it. How long has it been?”
“Eight years.” My father, at Oxford. Father…How could I tell him? He’d never understand. “What’s sitting in Amsterdam?”
“A ship, loaded with grain, medicine, for the Povolzhye. A goodwill gesture.” He said it in English, obviously a Sir Graham phrase. “It’s been sitting there a month, we just got clearance from the Bolsheviks. Even with a famine, they sit on their hands. That’s your Soviet government.”
Those sons of whores. A hard knock on the door broke into my fury, and I flew out of bed, sank to the floor.
“It’s only my driver,” Kolya said. “What’s wrong with you?”
“They’re all Cheka.” I raced down the hall, shut myself in the bathroom. I heard Kolya answer the door—men’s voices, laughter. A minute later, Kolya rapped on the wall. “You can come out now.”
I cracked the bathroom door, listened, padded back into the flat, peered out the cutwork curtains. No car. No one standing in the square. “They’ll be watching you,” I warned him. “Everyone they send to you will be Cheka.”
He pulled on his pants, buttoned them. “You’re telling me something I don’t know?” He found a shirt in the wardrobe, crisp, pressed. “Why are you so jumpy?”
So I told him about Gumilev, the sailors’ club, the search of my room at the House of Arts. “If I hadn’t been working that night, you wouldn’t have found me at Blok’s funeral. I’d be with Gumilev in the Peter and Paul Fortress.”
“But why would they want you? A girl who writes little poems.” To him, there was nothing more innocent.
“Sit down.”
Kolya sat at the table, half dressed, and listened to each worsening turn of the story. Father’s imprisonment, Varvara’s offer to keep him alive in exchange for my service. My conversation with Gorky. The ear. His body dumped on my doorstep. Burying him with only Gorky in attendance.