by Glenn Meade
The duty officer shrugged. “He’s a resourceful man. The last time he broke out he reached a village thirty miles from here before we caught up with him. Sergeant Mersk beat the captain to within an inch of his life for that. How he lived I’ll never know.”
Yakov tapped his cigarette in an ashtray. “Because Andrev is a born survivor, that’s why. The kind this revolution needs.”
“Now it seems his luck’s run out.”
“We’ll see. I take it he hasn’t asked to see me yet?”
“No, he’s still in the sick bay.”
Yakov stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. “You may go. Find my brother, Stanislas, and send him here.”
“Yes, comrade.”
The man left and Zoba said, “Good luck convincing the captain. Something tells me you’re going to need it.”
Yakov’s face was solemn as he opened a desk drawer and removed a wooden frame containing an old photograph. It was an image he always cherished: of his mother and Stanislas, Uri, and his father, all of them together, taken in a St. Petersburg studio. He showed Zoba.
“The day it was taken, my mother was growing steadily worse with TB. Uri’s father took us all by carriage to a fair in St. Petersburg. I think he thought it would cheer up my mother and give Stanislas and me a happy memory with her. He had our photograph taken—so we’d always have it to cherish. Uri’s father was that sort. A good and thoughtful man.”
Zoba rubbed his hands together as he prepared to step out into the cold night. “I hope his son makes the right decision, Leonid.” He left.
Yakov consulted his pocket watch: 8:05. He opened the top button of his uniform tunic, poured a vodka into a shot glass, knocked it back in one swallow, and slapped the glass on his desk.
He looked again at the images in the photograph. “Come on, Uri, get sense. You don’t need to be a martyr.”
It was bitterly cold outside, a blustery gale tossing snow flurries against the windows. The snow fell thicker and thicker. Yakov stood staring out at the swirling flakes as if hypnotized. It was on a cold winter’s night like this that he and Uri Andrev first met. A night of birth and near-death, in which their lives were forever intertwined.
Yakov closed his eyes tightly. How could he ever forget the slums of the Black Quarter, the anguished screams and drunken cries that echoed like church bells in his mind? He recalled the despair of his childhood, the filthy stench of poverty that never left his nostrils. And in an instant his memories flooded back …
12
With its glorious Winter Palace, broad boulevards, and leafy parks, St. Petersburg was one of the most beautiful cities on earth, the Paris of the north.
But there was another St. Petersburg, a squalid capital of filthy backstreets, crime, and poverty, where hundreds of thousands of working families were crammed into crumbling tenements owned by rich landlords.
It was into this world that Leonid Yakov was born, in the harsh, dangerous district known as the Black Quarter. His father worked as a deckhand out of St. Petersburg docks, a cruel, bearded man whose breath always stank of alcohol.
Yakov loved his mother. She was a proud, strikingly handsome woman who found work as a cleaner in the houses and gentlemen’s clubs of St. Petersburg’s wealthy. It was backbreaking labor that often lasted from dawn until dusk and paid a pittance, and then she came home to kneel and scrub their own lodgings, determined to keep her family scrupulously clean despite the squalor all around them.
Every night she would read to Leonid, from a children’s book or from the newspaper. She always kept books by her bedside: Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, even Karl Marx. Big, thick, well-thumbed books and a worn dictionary that she studied every day. Yakov never forgot that.
And he never forgot the haunted look in his mother’s eyes. A look that he in time realized was a mixture of exhaustion, hunger, and later the gnawing tuberculosis that ravaged her body with fits of coughing. One in five children died in Russia from hunger, neglect, or disease, and Yakov had already lost his young sister, Katerina, to TB in the harsh winter of 1901.
He recalled the sunny day in February he helped his mother carry the bony, stiff corpse wrapped in a tattered blanket to the paupers’ cemetery. When they said their prayers for the dead, when they had held each other tightly and clung together, crying, Yakov climbed down into the open pit to bury the tiny body. No gravestone to dignify his sister’s existence, just a plain wooden marker he cobbled from firewood, and which recorded her brief life.
There was something else Yakov never forgot that sunny morning as he comforted his mother—the images of the tsar’s power and wealth that seemed to mock their poverty and suffering, and sent a powerful flood of anger surging through his veins.
When he heard the bells of St. Isaac’s Cathedral ring out and he looked across St. Petersburg’s rooftops, he saw the city’s shining golden domes, the many splendid mansions of the rich, and a thousand glinting windows in the tsar’s vast Winter Palace.
It was that winter his mama’s belly became heavily swollen again. The same winter his drunkard father went to work on a steamship to America and never came back.
A few months later he remembered climbing the tenement stairs and seeing bloodstains leading to their room. Shocked, Yakov ran inside and found his mama lying on the bed, clutching her swollen belly, screaming with pain, livid fear in her eyes. “Leonid, fetch help! Go to the hospital and ask for Dr. Andrev—hurry! Tell him that your mama’s ill; her baby’s come early.”
Yakov’s heart chilled as he watched in horror the crimson clots staining the bedclothes between his mother’s legs. A neighbor came and used a towel to try to stem the bleeding. “Fetch a doctor fast, boy!”
Yakov ran furiously to the city hospital, four streets away, as snow began to fall. Breathless, he halted outside the entrance and saw a shining black horse and carriage with the leather hood pulled up.
Seated in the carriage was a coachman and a neatly dressed boy about Yakov’s age, ten, with a thoughtful face and big dark eyes.
Beside him sat a girl, a year or two younger. She was beautiful, with big, slate-gray eyes and perfect skin. She wore a pastel blue coat, a scarf, and mittens, her blond curls peeping beneath her woolen hat.
A tall, distinguished gent strode down the hospital steps and went to climb into the carriage, joining the coachman and the children. He wore a gray hat and he carried a doctor’s black bag. He looked tired as Yakov ran up to him. “Please, I’m looking for Dr. Andrev, I need his help.”
The coachman went to raise his horsewhip at the scrawny waif pestering his client. “Get away, you scumbag. The doctor’s just come off duty.”
“I need the doctor.” Yakov was defiant and grabbed the bridle to stop the horse from moving. “Didn’t you listen to me, you idiot?”
“Why, you little—”
The doctor grabbed the coachman’s raised arm. “No, don’t touch him—don’t I know you, child? You’re Mrs. Yakov’s boy.”
“Yes, sir, Leonid. My mama said to find you. Please, sir, she’s dying.”
“Get up here. Coachman, drive as fast as you can.”
A breathless Yakov rushed the doctor and the young boy up the tenement stairs into the room while the young girl and the coachman remained out in the carriage. Crowds of neighbors parted to let the doctor through.
One of the women said, “She’s bleeding badly, sir. We can’t stop it.”
The doctor examined the patient and said to the woman, “Get me hot water, lots of it, and soap, quickly. Everyone else get outside, now!”
The clot of neighbors melted as the woman ran to fetch water. The doctor removed his overcoat, rolled up his sleeves, and opened his black bag. Leonid Yakov’s eyes were wet. “Is my mama going to die?”
The doctor said busily, “I can’t answer that question. My son, Uri, will take you outside while I tend to your mama.”
Yakov said fiercely, “No, I’m not leaving her.”
But the doctor stood no nonsen
se and ushered Yakov out the door. “Your mama’s hemorrhaging badly; she’s a very sick woman.” The doctor snapped his fingers. “Uri, go outside and you and Nina keep this young man company and out of my hair.”
Yakov stepped down onto the pavement, lit by gas lamps. The pretty girl in the pastel blue coat stepped out of the carriage. “May I join you, Uri?”
“Papa says we’re to keep Leonid company, Nina.”
Yakov thought that Nina looked as perfect as a porcelain doll. Mesmerized by her beauty, he felt his heart beat faster. She had long dark eyelashes and the softest skin Yakov had ever seen. The working-class dung pile threw up the occasional rose, but none as beautiful as this girl.
The dark-eyed boy beside him was tidily dressed and well scrubbed. He didn’t look snooty like some rich kids, but Yakov resented him. He resented all the rich and their children. “What’s your name?” Yakov demanded.
The boy said politely, “Uri. And this is Nina.”
“I’m Leonid Yakov.” He stared up at a filthy window, shadows dancing from a flickering oil lamp. “I hope your father’s a good doctor, Uri Andrev.”
“Why?”
“Because if my mama dies I’m going to kill him.”
The boy ignored the threat. “My papa’s one of the best doctors in St. Petersburg. He might be bad-tempered sometimes, but that’s because he gets angry with the world, and thinks it’s so unfair.” He studied the gaslit street, a confident look about him despite his age. “What’s it like living here?”
“What do you think?” Yakov was full of frustration and fear and he prodded a finger in the boy’s chest. “Where do you live?”
“Neva Boulevard.”
“Those big houses? You’re the son of a rich doctor. You’ve probably never been in a place like this before, have you?”
Nina said, “Of course he has. Tell Leonid, Uri.” Her eyes lingered on Uri with a look of admiration.
“My father delivers babies all over St. Petersburg,” Andrev answered defiantly, “and we’re not rich. So prod me like that again and I’ll punch you.”
Something in the boy’s tone said he meant it. He wasn’t some pushover wealthy brat. Yakov hated to admit it but he was beginning to admire Uri Andrev for standing up for himself. He had spirit.
Nina looked at him, her blue eyes pools of concern. “Why are you so angry, Leonid Yakov?”
The girl was so beautiful that Yakov could barely look her in the eyes and he thought, If you were poor and lived in the Black Quarter you’d be angry, too, but she had no idea of the harsh life around her.
From above, they heard a baby’s cry. Yakov darted up the tenement as fast as he could run and pushed in the door.
His exhausted mother lay on the bed, sweat drenching her face as she clutched a bundle in her arms. The neighbor was cleaning blood off the floor while the doctor scrubbed his hands in a bowl of soapy hot water.
His face was drenched in sweat but the tension was broken by the baby’s cry filling the air. The doctor beamed. “Good news, Leonid Yakov. Your mother’s going to live, and you have a baby brother.”
That night, snow falling beyond the window, Yakov rested by his sleeping mother. The doctor, Uri, and Nina were gone, and he was obsessed with worry.
His mother was unable to work, so they couldn’t eat. He fretted as he stared at his infant brother’s tiny pink face, mesmerized by its helpless beauty as he rocked him in his arms. Strange how a baby could make you feel so protective and loving.
What can I do to help? He was almost eleven, but children as young as nine worked in factories, bakeries, and markets, or as chimney sweeps and delivery boys. He was bright in school—he could read and write—but from now on he would have to forget about school. He made up his mind that if he couldn’t find work, he would steal food, but the worry consumed him.
A little after midnight he heard the soft clip-clop of a carriage out in the street. Footsteps ascended the tenement stairs. Someone rapped on his door. Yakov stopped rocking his brother and placed him by his still-sleeping mother. He crossed the room and cautiously opened the door.
The doctor was back. This time he carried two straw-made luggage baskets, a baby’s cot, and some bedding. He looked tired, dark circles under his eyes. “May I come in, Leonid Yakov?”
“Yes, sir.”
The doctor laid down the luggage baskets, cot, and bedding and removed his hat, placed it on the rickety table, then crossed to Maria Yakov and her baby. He studied their faces as they slept, then felt the mother’s brow. “Her temperature’s normal again. With God’s grace, your mother will be fine.”
“And my brother?”
The doctor nodded tiredly. “He came a month early but I think he’ll come through this. The cot once belonged to Uri. I thought your mother would find it useful. I have no need for it, Leonid.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You met Uri. He’s a good lad, kind and honest, as his mother was. I hope you liked him?”
The doctor’s breath smelled of plum brandy. Yakov recognized the smell from his father. The doctor wasn’t drunk but he had definitely been drinking. Yakov nodded and said honestly, “Your children didn’t seem spoiled like other rich kids.”
“My son and I are not rich, Leonid. I understand it may seem that way to you. But I’m just a busy doctor with far too many patients and too little time. Then again, perhaps if I didn’t drink so much and insisted that my patients pay their bills, I might have more money to my name. But life isn’t all about money.”
“Sir?”
The doctor smiled vaguely. “Nothing. As for Uri being unspoilt, you’re right, and I can thank his mother. She came from a military family. A simple, moral life was something she insisted on.” The doctor rubbed his eyes tiredly. “And Nina isn’t my child. Her parents are my good friends who asked me to pick up their daughter from music lessons.” There were only two chairs in the room and the doctor selected one. “Sit down, Leonid.”
Yakov sat.
The doctor took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. “Forgive me, but I had a busy night. After I left Uri home and took Nina to her parents, I had to return to the hospital to operate on a patient. Then I went home, poured a plum brandy, gathered some things before I came here, and … well, you know the rest.” The doctor lit a cigarette and for a long time he gazed again at Maria Yakov, then at her child, deep concern in his eyes.
Finally, he studied the stark room. His mouth tightened, as if he was angry or moved by the grimness around him, Yakov couldn’t tell which.
“How does my mother know you, sir?”
“I’m the doctor who delivered you, Leonid.” He smiled faintly. “As I recall, you were a spirited little boy even then. Impatient to greet the world with a loud, angry voice.”
“My mother never told me, sir.”
“After your father left, I found her some work at my doctors’ club. Did she tell you that?”
Yakov shook his head.
The doctor’s eyes settled on well-worn books by the bed. “Your mother’s a kind and honorable woman, Leonid. A caring woman. In a fairer world and with the proper education, she could have done well for herself. But this world we both live in is not often fair, as I’m sure you know.”
“Yes, sir. Why are you helping us, sir?”
“What are we if we can’t help others? We are nothing. Have you thought of a name for your new brother?”
Yakov’s gaze shifted toward the bed. The tranquil image of a sleeping mother and child would always bring out the tenderest feeling in him. “My mama said we would name him after you, because you saved the baby’s life. What’s your first name, sir?”
“Stanislas.”
“That’s what we will call my brother, Stanislas.”
The doctor looked touched, almost embarrassed. “That … that’s kind of you both. Very kind. Be sure to help your mother, Leonid. She’s had a difficult birth and almost died. Be good to her.”
The doctor patted Yakov�
�s head fondly, then he stood, handed him a small brown bottle. “I’ll come by tomorrow. Meanwhile, have your mother take just one of these pills if she feels pain. If you need me, summon me night or day, at any hour. I’ll come at once.”
The doctor took one last look at Maria Yakov, still sleeping, then ran a finger delicately across the spines of her bedside books. “Your mama reads a lot?”
“Every night, sir.”
He picked up one of the books. “Your mother likes Tolstoy.”
“Yes, sir.”
“May I tell you something Tolstoy once wrote, Leonid?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He wrote about our duty to each other as human beings. That whenever we’re offered love, we should accept it, with gratitude. That wherever we encounter tenderness, we should embrace it. And wherever we find a soul in need, it’s our duty to help lessen that need. Do you understand, Leonid?”
Yakov didn’t, but he nodded vaguely. “Yes.”
The doctor gave a tiny smile and placed an envelope on the table. “Perhaps not completely, but I hope that someday you will. Please accept this also, Leonid. I’ll say good night. Take care of yourself and your brother.”
The doctor left, his footsteps echoing down the stairs, and then came the sound of the carriage horses pulling away into the snowy night. Puzzled, Yakov dragged open the luggage cases and gasped.
Inside were tinned meat, jams, tinned herring and sardines, an entire sack of potatoes, dried corn, spices, flour, dried milk powder, a big tin of tea, and a huge jar of tiny pickled cucumbers. And clothes for him and his mother—sweaters, a pair of thick woolen scarves, shirts, and socks—some of them new, others used, but they were warm clothes, freshly pressed, and there were blankets and baby clothes and fresh sheets that smelled of lilac. Yakov buried his face in the sheets and inhaled the clean, perfumed smell. He felt overcome, and tears drenched his eyes.
When he tore open the envelope he found fifty rubles, more money than his mother could earn in months. And a note, in copperplate handwriting, with an address.