With dragging feet she crossed the bare boards of the landing and knocked at the door. Their name, Kusminski, was written on a curled card fixed to the jamb with a rusty pin. There was a long interval before she heard footsteps, then the door opened and her mother welcomed her inside with a nod and a few grunted words of greeting.
The news of the great crowd marching down the Nevsky Prospekt was received with no interest by her mother, whose whole manner suggested that this visit was merely a necessary ordeal. Stale smells mingled in the atmosphere: cooking fat, medicines and the disgusting emanations of a diseased digestion.
‘Here’s our little Dima.’ Her mother led her to the gloomy salon where the boy was reclining by the stove. ‘Always with a book in his hand – Dima, show your sister what you are reading now.’ He looked up in silence and showed her the book, a lanky nine-year-old whose overlong blond hair hung straight over his eyebrows. ‘You see, German, he reads German already. Nine years old! Can you imagine, to be blessed with such a clever son? Dima will be the salvation of this family, I know it.’ The child did not stand up to greet her and neither their mother nor her own mother, a dark figure bustling in her wake, prompted him to remember his manners. Although the room was warm, he wore a knitted scarf tucked into the neck of his smart blue jacket.
‘I was clever, at that age. Latin and Greek. Poetry … Ovid, Catullus … the wars, the wars, always about their wars …’ The hoarse old voice on the far side of the stove faded to silence. Until he spoke she had not noticed her father; he had shrunk to something yellow-skinned and bowed like a crescent moon, his face below his coarse knitted cap half a skull already.
‘I wish he’d keep quiet, he’ll disturb the boy.’ Her mother in contrast had swelled to an unhealthy bulk, her once-fine bosom subsumed by fat, her rosy cheeks now pallid cushions. Her hair was worn in the same style, held up by combs, but they had been inserted unskilfully, at crazy angles, and locks were bidding to escape. Lydia had always recalled her mother wearing filmy blouses, soft and delicate against her cheek when they embraced, but now she wore a grey shirt that was almost mannish, with a button hanging loose and darned patches under the arms where the rubbing flesh had worn the fabric.
‘I’m going to write to my cousin and see what he can do about getting our Dima a place in the Gymnasium,’ she continued. ‘He was a lawyer, he should know somebody. The boy needs to have his mind stretched, his teachers don’t see that he’s bored, they don’t challenge him enough. And he needs to get out of this dreadful city, out in the country so he can run about and get some colour in his poor cheeks.’
Her father looked from one person to another, obviously struggling with the fact that there was a stranger in the room. ‘A girl, is it a girl? What’s she come here for?’ Getting no response, he retreated for a moment into his muddled thoughts, his fingers picking at his frayed cuffs. ‘I remember something. Passer mortuus est meae puellae, Passer deliciae meae puellae. That’s Latin, I remember it. The sparrow’s dead. Couldn’t see any sense in it, but I learned it all the same, when you’re a boy you have to learn.’ He coughed, a weak, wheezing noise like a worn-out harmonium.
‘We thought he might not last the winter this time.’ Lydia’s mother spoke as if her husband were not in the room. ‘Night after night he was coughing like that and keeping us all awake. Poor Dima was exhausted going to school in the mornings. Here around his eyes he was quite grey. Of course he has such fine skin it shows immediately the state of his health …’
‘And he is delicate, your brother. We have to take very good care of him. Country air is what he needs. If we had our dacha still it would be different.’ Grandmother drew Lydia away to the table, which was covered with a fringed red jacquard cloth much spotted with grease. She alone seemed to be unchanged, a white-haired old woman in black with small, round brown eyes. The whites were tinged with yellow, but there was still vitality in her look. At the neck of her dress she wore a pink cameo brooch which seemed to dig uncomfortably into the wrinkled flesh above it. The brooch was finely carved with the head of Diana, her long locks caught in a fillet with a crescent on the brow, her small mouth curled in a smile. It was the only beautiful sight in the room. ‘It’s only by the grace of God and because we are so careful that Dima is still with us. One cold after another … ah, at last, there you are, girl – now we shall have some tea.’
A young girl entered the room carrying their samovar with arms so thin that it seemed doubtful that she was capable of bearing the weight. She proceeded towards the table with such exaggerated care that Lydia was put in mind of a wirewalker she had once seen at a circus. When the steaming silver pot was set on the table she looked around at her mistress with an inquiring expression in her dull eyes.
Lydia’s mother nodded and the maid withdrew almost as slowly, returning a few moments later with cups. ‘What happened to Douniasha?’ Seeing the servant who had cared for her as a child and loyally served them all through fat and lean years without complaint was the one aspect of the visit which had offered Lydia pleasure.
‘We had to get rid of her.’ Her mother passed a cup brimming with watery tea. ‘What a disaster that woman turned out to be in the end.’ She shook her head.
‘What happened? You never told me anything about it. I can’t imagine old Douniasha doing anything really bad.’
‘Neither could we, but we should never have trusted her, never.’ Grandmother joined the lamentation, her eyes bright with indignation. ‘A woman like that, who had lost her own children – we ought to have foreseen it.’
Lydia had a dim memory of Douniasha’s arrival from the railway station, a big woman with stooped shoulders and bony hands whose touch was nevertheless soft and gentle. Her mother’s family had once been country gentry, comfortable in a small way but without enough wealth to survive the reforms of the past decades. There had been bad harvests, and an epidemic of a terrible fever which had carried off half the peasants on their diminished estate. Douniasha had lost her husband, three children and her own parents and had arrived with a note from Grandfather commending her with the words, ‘She is a good woman and I cannot bear to see her starve with the rest.’
‘She was kind – she used to fry potatoes for me.’ Lydia searched her memory for more evidence for the defence and was surprised at her mother’s angry retort.
‘Did she? Well, I’m not surprised at that either. She was always half mad, if you ask me.’ She dropped her voice to a whisper so that Dima, still reading by the stove, could not hear. ‘Don’t you realize? She almost killed your brother. She let the stove smoke. We had gone to church. The whole place was a cloud of charcoal fumes. He could have suffocated. Babushka and I only just got back in time – he was hardly breathing, I thought he’d die right there, right then …’ The two women crossed themselves quickly, exchanging glances and nodding, agreeing with each other on the gravity of their old servant’s crime.
There was a rasp of breath as her father rose to his feet, pausing unsteadily before shuffling towards the table. They ignored him as he fumbled with the chair, dragging it out with difficulty so that he could lower his frame to sit. Since no move was made to pour him tea, he began to draw long, unsteady breaths and try to speak, but the effort was too great and he sat helplessly, his clawed hand twitching on the table top as he tried to summon the strength to make a gesture.
‘I think Father would like some tea.’ Lydia tried to speak without making it sound like an accusation. One cup remained on the tray. Her mother gathered her skirts and walked heavily across to her son.
‘Dima, my dear’ – she put her hand on his arm – ‘come and have some tea.’
‘I want to read,’ he replied without looking up from the page.
‘Won’t you come and have just one cup with us?’
‘I wish you’d leave me alone.’ His full pink lips drooped with distaste.
‘Very well, dear. You keep on with your reading if that’s what you want.’
She returned
to the table and filled the last cup for her husband with very little grace.
Lydia sat in silence, contemplating the home to which she was to return in a few months’ time. Her mother and grandmother seemed to have become more than half crazed in their obsession with her spoiled pet of a brother. The boy was already looking at her with undisguised resentment. Her father had truly lost his mind, and would die perhaps as much from neglect than as a consequence of his broken health.
Her family, she appreciated now for the first time, had never given her natural affection, only loaned it until her brother, the more worthy recipient, had appeared. Even he was not loved for his own sake; mercantile to the marrow, they invested care in him looking for a good return when he was old enough to follow a profession.
Among other children who had no parents at all, Lydia had never pitied herself. Her fallen family were part of her lot in life and she had better gifts in her good health and strong legs. Sitting among them now, seeing how misfortune had poisoned their spirits, she felt nothing for them, only a gnawing anxiety for her own future.
The room itself had a madhouse air, the few remaining items of simple furniture standing on the thin rug like strangers on a railway platform, in no relation to each other. There were light patches on the dirty walls where there had once been pictures and dust lying thick in corners where the simple-minded servant had not noticed it and no one had corrected her. In one corner the roof had leaked, the wallpaper was peeling and marked with streaks. The samovar, she noticed, had formerly been used in the butler’s room of the old house; she remembered their old silver one, in whose shiny fat belly she had watched the reflection of her face distorting as she moved her head from side to side. This cheap nickel-plated vessel, chased to the depth of mere scratches with scrolls, showed brassy patches around the handles from use and stood crookedly on the table, having obviously been dropped and never mended.
‘So you’ll be graduating at Easter,’ her mother began with a weary air of responsibility. ‘And what then?’
‘I’ll become part of the Maryinsky Theatre company and dance in the ballets and operas there.’
‘What are they going to pay you?’ The question was put so rapidly that her mother almost spat.
‘Sixty-five roubles a month to start.’
‘Sixty-five! Can’t you get more?’ Both women were leaning intently towards her.
‘Everybody gets the same in the beginning. As you rise in rank so your salary goes up. That’s the system.’
‘Hum. Herr-um. Well, I thought it would be more. You’re supposed to be good, aren’t you? That’s what the letter said.’ Her mother grunted and Lydia felt that she could almost hear her thoughts as she planned how to spend the meagre sum. ‘Well, and I suppose we shall have to turn the girl out of her room for you.’
‘She can sleep in the corridor.’ Her grandmother was clearly eager to make Lydia feel at least minimally welcome.
‘And I am to have a debut performance in Paquita in May. The Directorate can arrange tickets for you if you want.’ Lydia tried to make the invitation sound unattractive, but the effort was unnecessary.
‘We don’t go to the ballet,’ her mother exclaimed with vehemence. ‘What an idea! Do they think we’re millionaires with nothing better to do than get dressed up to amuse ourselves? Even when we had money we didn’t fritter it away on entertainment. Your father always said a businessman should attend to business and not waste his time buying pictures and keeping musicians who only drink and laugh at you behind your back. And what would we do with Dima? He would be tired out, poor lamb.’
Her mother’s contempt withered Lydia’s heart. She wanted to cry, but being well used to injuries she sat silent, trying to calm herself by listening to her breath. The voice of one of the teachers echoed in her thoughts, recalling the soothing discipline of school: ‘Don’t breathe into your stomach so you stand there heaving like a horse, breathe invisibly, down your back, here’; and she felt the pressure of a teacher’s warm hand over her ribs. In a little while the inner emptiness closed over like a hole in the ice freezing anew.
The maid, who had been waiting uncertainly by the doorway, asked if she should serve lunch. The meal consisted of a thin soup followed by buckwheat cooked with chicken fat which had a whiff of putridity that too much pepper could not disguise. Dima stirred his portion reluctantly but the adults ate every scrap and wiped their plates with bread like peasants.
There had been no mention of clothing and now that Lydia had seen the pitifully reduced style in which they were living she feared that there would be nothing to give her. The best she could hope for would be an old dress of her mother’s. With a heavy heart Lydia chose her moment to open the subject.
‘I won’t be able to wear the school uniform once I’m in the corps,’ she began. Her mother gave her a sharp look which suggested that whatever she was about to say would be unpleasant to hear. ‘So …’ Her nerve failed and her mouth could find no more words.
‘She’s surely not expecting us to clothe her when she can see that we can hardly even feed ourselves.’ Her mother spoke to her grandmother in the same tight voice full of anger that she had used to talk about her invalid husband.
‘I’ll get a grant from the school – a hundred roubles,’ Lydia added rapidly. ‘But I have to buy shoes and tarlatan for my practice dresses.’
‘A hundred roubles – well, you’ll just have to make do with that.’
‘But it won’t be nearly enough – don’t you understand? I haven’t any other clothes, we’ve got to buy everything.’ By a supreme effort of will Lydia kept her voice from rising to a scream.
‘It’s no use her telling us what we’ve got to buy, is it? We’ve nothing to give her, no money and nothing to pawn.’
‘You can’t get blood out of a stone, you know.’ For the first time since her arrival, Dima looked as if there was some possibility of pleasing him.
‘But what am I to do? I can’t walk the streets in my practice clothes.’
‘How dare you come home to us with your worries! Can’t you see we’ve got enough troubles of our own? We’re sitting here in rags and you want new clothes – you must be mad.’ Her mother rose to her feet and Lydia flinched, an old reflex remembered from the days when her mother was always angry and she was slapped almost every time she spoke. ‘I do the best I can, you know. I have some pupils, stupid girls but if their parents want to pay good money to give them some ladylike accomplishments I won’t complain. It’s better than taking in washing – oh, yes, we’ve been reduced to that before now. But you’ll be better off than us, you’ll be earning money, or so you tell us. If you want clothes you can surely provide them for yourself.’
Her grandmother looked on Lydia’s downcast face and tried to soften the truth. ‘Lydia, if they’re going to pay you this salary, perhaps you could ask for a loan, an advance – to be deducted from your future earnings.’
‘Of course, that’s the answer,’ her mother broke in at once. ‘There, that’s settled. They’ll give you a loan. Don’t ask for a kopeck more than you need and be sure to buy sensible things which will last. I know a woman who can fix you up with some good quality stuff at the right sort of price. I got this blouse from her, you wouldn’t believe what I paid for it. We’ll go shopping together. And maybe there’ll be enough to get some flannel for a shirt for Dima, he grows so fast I can’t keep up with him.’
The samovar reappeared and they drank more tea. With all the business of the visit concluded the atmosphere loosened. Lydia offered them titbits of gossip about the Court and society, how the Tsarina had looked during her pregnancy, how her long-awaited baby son behaved at his christening, how the Grand Duke Nikolai was so crazy about his actress mistress that he refused to marry even though he was past forty, how a young officer had tried to take home treats for his children from a Court banquet in his helmet then forgotten and put it on, raining grapes and sweetmeats on his own head. Mother and Babushka swallowed every tale with
relish, their dull eyes gleaming with such a greed for high living that Lydia grew disgusted and decided to leave, although the afternoon was still bright.
They sent her away with far more enthusiasm than they had received her, calling advice about the loan down the stairs after her.
By the Church of the Bleeding Saviour was a park, one of several lovely green spaces which led one after the other to the Field of Mars where Douniasha had taken her to watch the guards parade, and then to the Neva’s edge. As a child she had bowled her hoop in these gardens, and the fantastic shapes of the iron railings had appeared in her nightmares as serpents. Now in the dead of winter the tall lime trees were leafless and the paths empty. A couple of hardy sparrows hopping from twig to twig sent tiny showers of snow falling through the chill air.
As she walked to calm herself, she heard a distant, muffled crackle as if a hundred corks had been popped at one command. It was a sound that was familiar, although she could not place it. Across the open spaces she heard faint cries from several directions and she halted, recalling with foreboding thousands of men marching to the Winter Palace. She imagined the docile crowd running mad with fear if soldiers attacked them.
At the far end of the gardens a riderless horse, reins and stirrups flying, galloped into view, gathering speed across the snow-covered grass. Immediately the animal’s terror infected her; she felt her blood leap and her heart stick in her throat as if it would choke her. The crowd was coming, she would be killed if she was in their way. She turned and ran back towards the gate, quitting the path to bolt directly between the trees, her long, swift strides kicking snow high in the air behind her.
Within a few yards her heavy skirts had wound themselves around her legs and forced her to stop. The shouting was suddenly distinct, and with it a distant roar of a huge crowd in motion, the constant tattoo of shots and bugle calls sounding clear above the din. As she tore at the obstinate swathe of fabric around her knees, she saw a dozen men now running across the open space in panic. A slight rise in the ground gave her a longer view. The further gardens were covered by an agitated grey mass, men and horses barely distinguishable as they struggled together.
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