Chimes of a Lost Cathedral

by Janet Fitch

  I guided our hands until he could feel the boat turning, then guided them back to the center. He laughed, as excited as a child. “Look, I’m doing it!” Captain Kidd.

  As we bounced along the waves, wind in our ears, I studied the star-filled sky, located the Great Bear, or as they said in the West, the Big Dipper, and counted the five spans from its head and foot up to Polaris, the North Star, as Aristarkh Apollonovich had once taught me. North, off to the left above the line of trees. We were heading west-northwest. “See that star all alone, about halfway up above the trees?”

  “Sure,” he shouted back. “Or maybe the one next to it.” Smart-ass.

  “See the Great Bear?”

  “Sure, they teach us all about that at the Higher Orphan Academy.”

  So I taught him the rudiments of navigating by constellations, the certainties of the night sky. Though he was skeptical, he needed me, and the comfort of believing in me outweighed his doubt. I taught him to recognize the Great Bear—“They thought bears had tails?” It didn’t inspire confidence. I taught him that the night sky was like a big wheel, and as the night wore on, the stars would turn, all but Polaris. I drew the wheel on the back of his tiller hand, then traced its turning, like opening a doorknob, then poked the center of the wheel. “That’s the one we steer by. The North Star.”

  I taught him to count the distance from the bear’s foot to his ear. “Can we call it a wolf?”

  Better the wolf should be up in the star-filled heavens than pulling a knife on us here in the boat. I saw a theme emerging in the poem of our voyage. “Why not?”

  Thank God we had the stars, a clear night. I never thought I would have to do this in earnest but the sky proved true, and there was Polaris halfway up the sky, above the starless line of trees. “If you can find it, you’ll never be lost.” A funny thing for me to say, who was more lost than anyone.

  “It’s like that statue…the guy on the rock, down by St. Isaac’s. Just sits there, doesn’t change.”

  The Bronze Horseman. “That’s Peter the Great.”

  “Yeah. Let’s call him Peter.” Peter. It’s what we called Petersburg. My own fixed star, which lay farther and farther behind us.

  “Now look to its right. Farther up, see the upside-down M? That’s Cassiopeia, the queen on her chair.” We were going to devolve back to the first men, who told their stories about the stars. “The Wolf chases the Queen around the North Star.”

  “Peter, you mean.”

  “So sometimes you’ll see the Wolf upside down, and no Queen, because she’s beneath the horizon. Sometimes you’ll see the Queen and no Wolf. But Peter will always be there. He’s the ringmaster.” Call him Kolya. “Steer a little to the left.” He began steering right. Just like the Bolsheviks. “The other left.”

  He corrected course. “Maybe the M’s Marina.”

  Marina, running from the wolf, in an endless circle around the ringmaster? I preferred the other story. “See the space where there aren’t stars? That’s the shoreline, the trees. Keep Peter where he is and we’ll follow that line until we get to Finland. Keep the trees about there, so you can see the stars.”

  “You just figured this all out?” His voice awed that someone could observe something so simple and find a way to use it.

  “Steady as she goes.” Cradling my damaged hand, I crab-crawled forward and settled in against the crates. Immediately the ride smoothed with the extra weight in the bow. I sat back against the crates and watched the Milky Way, imagining riding that celestial road. The sky was immense and far away, and we were very small in a tiny boat, navigating like ancient men had always done.

  “What are you going to do when you get to Finland?” he shouted out over the engine’s clamor.

  “Got an old friend in Kuokkala.” Maybe. I hoped Makar wouldn’t want to come with me. I didn’t want to be responsible for this unpredictable orphan who had just killed two men and stolen their boat. “How about you?”

  “Maybe I’ll sell off that vodka and go back to Petrograd, be the new Wolf.”

  He made me laugh. In less than an hour he’d gone from panicked weeping to planning to take over the Finn’s bizniss. “Don’t forget the brother in Sestroretsk. They might recognize the boat and come after you.”

  “Don’t you worry about me,” he called back, his voice full of swagger. “Fuck the Wolf. And his brother.”

  I fingered the ammunition boxes in my pocket as Makar spoke into the wind, feeling his way along the handholds of his imagination. “You know, the Wolf wasn’t going to let me in on anything. Son of a whore just wanted me to be his donkey, sell scumbags in front of the Little Brick. Now his suppliers can talk to me. Or maybe I’ll go to his competitors—even better. That guy you called Saint Peter, he knows things. He can’t even walk. He could use a partner.”

  “You be careful.” How could I tell him what I knew about the big man with the salt-and-pepper hair? “That is a really bad man.”

  But who could tell what would happen to Makar. Maybe he would end up being the new king of Petrograd—what did I know? Maybe he would become a commissar of foreign trade. I was through with predictions.

  “First thing, they’ll try to knock me off,” he shouted. “I’ll need a gun.” He was already planning how to take over the Wolf’s business. “I come back wearing his coat, I’ll need more than talk, you know?”

  He wanted my pistol, that’s what he was saying. “No. You’re asking for trouble.”

  “I’ve got money now. I’ll go back to Saint Peter.”

  What do you want, Marina? Maybe I had a deal for him. “What if we get there—if we get there—I let you have it. The boat, the gun, the whole thing. Just do me a favor when you get back.” If the boat held, if the gas held, if fortune favored.

  “You know I will,” he said. “Stvol or not.”

  I thought of Anton, alone there, unprotected, with his ideas about the future. “There’s a man, a poet, his name is Anton Chernikov. He’s one of the eggheads at the House of Arts. Tall, pale, dark hair, grumpy. They’ll be hosting a Blok evening at the end of the month. Find him, and just…be his friend. Will you do that for me? He’ll need a friend, even if he doesn’t know it. Give him a little money, check on him from time to time, agreed?”

  “He’s your boyfriend?”

  “No. My boyfriend’s the one whose flat we just robbed.”

  He started to laugh and I joined him, as the Wolf chased me across the sky.

  I leaned against the crates of vodka, gazing up at the stars, thinking how Kolya would feel to see our flat, what I’d done to it—all that was left was the red-and-pink wallpaper. He’d certainly know my answer to what he’d proposed. If he’d loved me less selfishly, I’d be aboard the Haarlem tonight, instead of risking my life out here with the unpredictable Makar, a good chance of drowning before we ever reached Finland.

  “Marina, something’s happening. The trees are gone.”

  I sat up. I could see stars all the way down to the horizon. A light blinked on shore. I knew where we were. Lisy Nos. The Fox’s Nose. Right across from Kronstadt. If Pasha had run, this was where he would have come ashore. “The coast comes to a bend here,” I shouted. “Turn right. Steer toward Peter. And stay away from the shore.”

  We were out of Neva Bay and into the Gulf of Finland, the deep water. When the shoreline turned west again we’d be at Kuokkala.

  Now the boat rocked heavily on the swells, rolling in sideways. We wallowed in the troughs, not enough to capsize us but enough to upset our skipper. “This is making me sick,” Makar said. “You steer.” But I couldn’t stand up.

  “Just zigzag a bit,” I shouted back. “Try not to let them come at you sideways.”

  He did as I asked. The small boat still rose and fell, but more like a horse at a canter, not wallowing in a sick-making way. “You know a lot,” he said. “How come you know so much?”

  “Because I’m old,” I said. “You’ll catch on. Maybe you should go back to school. You c
ould go to the Rabfak.” The Workers’ University.

  “Eh. Schoolteachers and me don’t get along,” he said.

  “Read books. And talk to smart people. That’s school too.”

  “Your friend—he’s smart like you?”

  “Very smart.” Smart enough not to have come. Anton would have been suicidal by now. The death of the two men on Krestovsky would have been enough to have him running for home. He knew himself, I had to give him that. He knew his limitations, as I never did. I thought to mention that if the boat flipped over, the boy should cling to it, but I figured that would panic him more than help. He had pretty good instincts, except for the quick trigger finger.

  The rocking was pretty rough, though, even with him zigzagging into the swells. How far was the shore? I imagined five hundred yards. Less. I could swim that—I hoped. Kick off my boots, lose my sheepskin, and hope there were no odd currents. Appear naked on the shore of what might be Finland or might still be Russia, newborn. Perhaps one of those crates of vodka would float.

  “Look,” he said. “Is that it?”

  A light, way up ahead, a couple of streetlights, a small town. A lantern moving on shore. Sestroretsk, it had to be. “Cut the motor.” Someone waiting for the Wolf, gazing out to sea.

  “How do I do it?”

  Oh damn. Carefully, I crawled back, keeping my weight low and in the center, rejoining him in the stern. I didn’t dare touch the motor’s spinning reel. My right hand still throbbed with pain, but I managed to light the lantern, keeping it low, beneath the sides of the boat, shielding it from shore. I pushed the throttle all the way left. It slowed and sputtered but wouldn’t quit. The motor could be heard a quarter mile.

  Makar pointed to a square button, a piece of metal painted red. “What’s that?” A wire connected it to a cylinder. I pressed and held it—and merciful Virgin, the engine shut down.

  Without the motor roaring, how silent it was. Just the swells and the beat of the waves. “Find an oar,” I said quietly. By the low lantern light I picked up the other, placed it in the starboard oarlock. “Put it in the lock and for God’s sake don’t drop it.” The wind had fallen off. It had been of our own making. Makar took his oar and dropped it into the port lock. He missed, but managed to grab it before it fell. “Sorry.”

  “If you have to let go, remember to pull it into the boat first,” I whispered. “I’m going to turn us around now, so don’t row until I say so. Coming about.” I pulled on my oar, turning the boat in the cold and the spray. Then we began rowing, propelling ourselves backward, stroke by stroke. Now I was the one closest to the lights on the shore, my right hand twanging. I wondered if I could really swim to shore if I had to. We were ridiculously off rhythm. If he kept pulling after the waves lifted us, we were going to get nowhere.

  “Ti MORryak, ti kraSIvi sam saBOYu…” I started to sing, low. “You sailor, you are so handsome, and only twenty years old…Sing with me. Love me with all of your soul…”

  “I don’t know it.”

  It was such an old song, I thought everyone knew it. But he was an orphan, he knew street songs, the songs of the besprizorniki. In a low voice, I taught him “You, Sailor”—he picked up the refrain right away, the sailor’s part. Across seas, across waves, now here, but tomorrow there.

  We approached Sestroretsk, dipping the oars quietly, and now I was thankful for the swells, the breaking of the waves on shore. We were close enough to hear a dog bark across the water. Silently now, we pulled. I found a star I could keep the stern of the boat trained on, dead opposite Peter. I saw someone on the dock with the lantern, but they could not see us. It was only after the lights were very small that I dared speak again. “Be careful here on the way back,” I said.

  “Across seas, across waves, now here, but tomorrow there,” he sang.

  “We can turn the motor on if you like.” Though my hand hurt just thinking of it.

  “No, this is nice,” he said. “How much farther?”

  “Not far. A few miles.”

  “I’ll row. You go sit down, and watch Peter and Queen Marina.”

  I handed him the port oar, making sure he had it firmly before I let go, and crawled back to the crates, where I could rest and watch Polaris. He started a new song, an orphan’s song about how everyone hated him, how he would die alone.

  I crammed my fox-fur hat deeper onto my head, wrapped my coat tighter, listening to Makar sing, lulled by the rhythm of his rowing.

  It was nice like that. I felt free. Just a few last hours in this boat, neither Russia nor Finland, neither past nor future, not here nor there, just me and the kid on the black, star-dotted water. I could hardly imagine how I might remember this hour in the years to come, how I would tell this story.

  “Think you’ll stay in Finland?” the orphan asked.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do in twenty-four hours,” I said.

  If you’d asked me yesterday, I would have said Buenos Aires wasn’t far enough. But the reality was beginning to set in, the gravity of what I’d done. Never to see Russia again. Everything I knew and loved, behind me. I just pray I’m buried on Russian soil, Avdokia had once said. I didn’t think she got her wish. And I certainly would not see a Russian grave, not Tikhvin Cemetery, not Novodevichy with Iskra.

  Russia was a book whose cover was closing, and ahead lay the scent of wormwood and the bread of exile.

  I suddenly saw them, our great poets, like a forest of tall trees, just as they’d been the day of Gumilev’s requiem at Kazan Cathedral.

  While here, wrecking our youth’s last days

  within the blaze’s blinding smoke

  we have all steadfastly refused

  to dodge a single savage stroke.

  I was glad of the dark, that Makar couldn’t see my face right now.

  Abandoning Russia. As I had abandoned everything.

  I gazed up into the bristling stars, rocking in the waves and the pull of the oars, and wondered if somewhere there was another nursery on another Furshtatskaya Street, where another three girls stood over a different basin of water, and other wax was poured. I wondered what my fate would look like in that other world, whether I’d still be rowing here with Makar, the dead bobbing in my wake, the living going on nobly, holding up the domes of the cathedral without me.

  As I fled, to hide in the West, shucking my burden, dodging the blows.

  The oars slowed. Makar was tiring. Just as well. No point in arriving before dawn.

  “Sing us a song,” he said. “It’s nicer that way.”

  What should I sing him?

  How about “Do Not Awaken My Memories”? Varvara’s joke that evening outside Belhausen knitwear factory, where we had distributed her illegal pamphlets so long ago. She’d lost her way, trying to steer a straight course by a crooked star.

  All my songs died in my mouth, tragedies of parted lovers and faithless ones, women seeing soldiers off to war. How could I sing them now? I would have to break into the vodka and drown myself. All of our songs so bitter. Ironic—how I had once loved to pose as the melancholy girl singing Russia’s soulful tunes. I’d gloried in them—before I myself had felt the sorrow that had given them birth. Now that I felt them truly, I was unable to bring myself to sing them. They were too sharp. They would shed too bright a light now that I had been that woman watching the road, and also the faithless one, had known love’s flashing steel, the spear of longing. I was still bleeding from it.

  Fleeing Russia, I was more Russian than I’d ever been.

  But why should I allow my grief to rob me of my songs? I argued with myself. These songs were mine. I paid for them. I would own them as I pleased.

  Quietly, unsteadily, I began to sing “The Wide Expanse of the Sea.” The splashing of oars matched my voice. “The sea stretches wide, the waves they roll far…Far from our land, far from our land we go.”

  I thought of the lucky people somewhere, who’d lived their lives unbroken by circumstance. They must look in the
mirror and, seeing themselves old, feel a jolt. Bewildered when grandchildren paged through their albums and laughed at the photographs, the old-fashioned clothes and hairstyles. Those people had become exiles without even knowing it. But I would not be surprised. The doors were already swinging shut, my clothes going out of style on my back.

  And I would never return to my own native land, back to the one place that had ever mattered, the fixed point around which my whole life revolved—the House of Arts, that fraternity of the Word, the ship on the Moika Canal. Anton, my friend, lover, editor, in his window. Don’t go, we need you…It would all take place without me, the autumn season at the House, the Blok memorial and all the memorials to come…the new issue of Anvil would have a poem of mine, but after that—nothing. I would never see them again—Kuzmin and Chukovsky, Mandelstam, Inna Gants. New poets would arrive and they would never know my name. And how long until the ones I knew forgot me? Remember that girl who lived on Slezin’s floor, Anton’s girlfriend? Whatever became of her? I would disappear like a rock falling into water, as if I were already dead.

  Eventually, inevitably, the stars turned in their great circle, and the shore began its shift, the line of trees not just to the east but also ahead. “We’re almost there,” I told the boy. “Let’s stop here, take a rest.”

  I found the anchor in the bow of the boat and gently dropped it, the rope playing out until it caught and held.

  Rocking on the swells, wrapped in my sheepskin and scarf, I thought about what Anton had said. Was it true, my life as a poet was over? If so, it was already done. I was cut off and already withering, severed from the living Russian language. Events would take place this fall without me, the writers coming together, that family of art, and I would be alone, more alone than I’d ever been in my life. Without lovers, friends, family, child, country.

  When Iskra was coming, the midwife made me say goodbye as if it is your last day on earth. Forgive them.

  I said goodbye. To the poets who knew me, and to the generation whose names I would never know, and who wouldn’t know mine. Goodbye to Russia, my native land, Mother Blackearth, with your orphans and your lunatics, your poets and rivers and graveyards. And Petersburg, to your waters and your graces and your sins. Goodbye to the kind ones, who kept my nose above waterline, to those who loved me, the living and the dead. And goodbye to you, my dearest, my fox, my folly, and my fate…I forgive you. We could not be other than what we were. I loved you more than anything, my dear, except freedom.