The Midwife of St. Petersburg

by Linda Lee Chaikin

  Durnov gave a heavy shrug. “Do not get me wrong, Kronstadt. Personally, I do not care that Grinevich is dead. He was not a pleasant fellow. But we have our orders from Petrograd. The Bolsheviks must be arrested. Do not forget Sergei is on file with us for distributing Iskra.”

  “I interviewed many in the village. Lenin’s newspaper is not to be found.”

  Durnov reached into his military jacket and pulled out a cigarette. He held it between his blunt yellow teeth, searching for a match. He struck it, protecting its feeble flame from the hot wind.

  “Never mind the Bolshies for now. Begin with Menkin. What did you discover about this old Polish Jew?”

  He kept his voice unemotional, acting the perfect military officer newly pressed into the secret police. How can I gain a transfer back to my regiment in the Imperial Cavalry? I would rather face Germans!

  Alex pulled his notepad from inside his jacket and flipped it open.

  “Professor Menkin arrived in Kiev two months ago from his apartment in Petrograd to work on a religious manuscript—”

  “Possibly a front. What kind of religious manuscript? Rasputin again?”

  Alex flicked an insect off his notepad. “No, quite the contrary. Its title is Messiah, Religious Philosophy or a King? Menkin arrived here in June and went straight to work on his research. His niece, Miss Karena Peshkova, has been working with him as his secretary, also aiding with the research. There’s no evidence of Menkin’s involvement with Bolshevik propaganda. He did not know Professor Chertkov, nor is his name on a list of Chertkov’s defenders. He was born—”

  “What of Miss Peshkova? Did she know Chertkov?”

  Alex leafed through his notebook, as though searching to renew his memory. “She took several of Chertkov’s history classes before she graduated the college. That was over three years ago. No trouble where she is concerned,” he added smoothly. “She has an ambition to become a doctor. She is trying to get admittance into the Imperial College of Medicine and Midwifery. She was refused for the third time just recently.”

  “A woman doctor? What is Russia coming to?”

  “She appears to be most intelligent, sir. I checked her college grades, and she received excellent marks.”

  Alex tapped the end of his pencil on the notepad. He found it frustrating to have his mind fixated on Karena. He’d thought of her many times since Kazan but had fully intended to keep away from her. That is, until events had forced him to collect information on her family. He knew, for instance, or he should say suspected, a past relationship between Madame Peshkova and Dr. Zinnovy. The jeweled pendant Tatiana made so much about in Kazan must have been given by Zinnovy to Madame Yeva when she was a student at the college.

  He also discovered Ilya Jilinsky was expected to marry Karena. Would her family see her married to the Polish peasant before he marched off into the upcoming war? Alex did not think so, as Ilya would be leaving with the other conscripts camped across the road.

  “So Miss Peshkova shows a tendency against the standard role of women in Russia, and she also took a class from Chertkov,” Durnov said thoughtfully.

  “She does not seem the type to involve herself with the rowdy Bolsheviks. Her mother attended the Medical College in Petrograd. It is natural for the elder daughter to carry on the tradition.”

  Durnov turned his head and looked at him searchingly, smoking his cigarette. Alex tried to become unreadable.

  “And the Polish Professor Menkin?” Durnov asked.

  “He was born in Krakow of the Jewish Menkin family. He’s the older brother of Madame Peshkova. A few of the Menkins, including their grandparents, were gentiles from Finland. They were all loyal to the czar.” Alex flipped through his notebook.

  “Ilya Jilinsky and his grandmother also live here. Both are from Warsaw—”

  “Jews?”

  “Yes. They occupy the bungalow year round. They’re related to Madame Peshkova through marriage, not blood.”

  “Why are they outside the Jewish Pale of Settlement?”

  Alex leafed the pages again, irritated. “They have renounced Judaism. They were baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church over a dozen years ago and attend St. Andrew’s with Josef Peshkov.”

  As he and Durnov both knew, baptism into the Russian Orthodox Church allowed Professor Menkin and Madame Peshkova to escape state persecution and have more freedom to live as they wished, although Jews were still watched, whatever religion they claimed.

  “Menkin is acquainted with the writings of the revolutionaries Lenin and Trotsky,” Alex went on. “However, I do not think he is a Bolshevik. He is known to dine with Miliukov when in Petrograd.”

  Miliukov was one of the founders of the cadets, a group that favored a constitutional monarchy, such as Great Britain. Their name cadets was taken from the Russian initials of the Constitutional Democrats.

  If Alex agreed in part with any movement to end the autocratic system in Russia, it would be the cadets. Another side of Professor Menkin he appreciated.

  Durnov squinted off toward the bungalow. He drew on his cigarette. “What of his revolutionary work in Poland?”

  So Durnov knows. Alex had toyed with leaving out that information but saw the danger of it now.

  “Menkin’s politics in Poland were radical and nationalistic. He supported an independent Poland, free of Russia and Germany, which was the cause of his dismissal from Warsaw University. He attended a meeting held by a revolutionary-backed students’ group, and the government moved in and ordered the university to remove him.”

  Durnov crushed his cigarette on the bottom of his boot. “That does not look good for him. One so intellectual should have been more cautious in his associations.”

  “It does not seem likely either Menkin or Josef Peshkov would be involved in organizing a Bolshevik rally with Lenski,” Alex said.

  Durnov pursed his lips.

  “They would seek to influence Duma members and military officers,” Alex persisted.

  “Anything more on Menkin?”

  Alex went on in a monotone, convinced he was digging the unfortunate professor’s grave. “Menkin spent two years in a Siberian work camp for his seditious writings while at Warsaw University. He then went to Petrograd, where he now resides. He writes for various publications in and out of the country. He has friends and connections in New York, and his essays are seen on a regular basis in a Jewish intellectual quarterly. None of his writings deal with Poland or the czar.”

  Durnov’s saddle squeaked. “That will be Menkin now coming down the road. The young peasant must be Jilinsky.”

  Alex surveyed the fair-haired Ilya Jilinsky who had paused to wait for Professor Menkin to join him before walking to meet them. Ilya appeared rather boyish, slender, and browned by the sun. The professor had straight shoulders and walked from the bungalow using a cane.

  Alex would have liked to ride forward to meet Professor Menkin, but Durnov remained seated on his horse in the shade. It was a way to show superiority, to make them come to him.

  Alex turned his full attention upon Professor Menkin, who stopped a short distance ahead and stood leaning on a cane, his loose-fitting peasant tunic flapping in the wind. He was far from being in his dotage. The deep-set eyes were intelligent and piercing beneath a swath of silver gray hair that fell across his tanned forehead. His jaw was square, his stance resolute.

  “You are Professor Matvey Menkin, the uncle of Sergei Peshkov?” Durnov demanded.

  “I am Professor Menkin, yes. Sergei is my nephew by marriage. What do you want with me?”

  “Your business here in Kiev—what is it?”

  Alex edged his horse forward. He saw Menkin measure him with a steady eye, and Alex liked the flicker of courage.

  “I am a writer and a historian. I came for the summer to work on my manuscript, to be published in New York. If you have come to the Peshkov manor for supper, then this young lad here”—he nodded to Ilya Jilinsky—“will take you there. I believe the family wil
l soon be prepared to spread a festive table before you, though I cannot vouch for the Madeira.”

  Alex found a smile tugging his mouth as he glanced at Durnov. Durnov was blunt and businesslike, but he had never been a cruel man. There was little Durnov liked better than a good supper—though he had a reputation for preferring to wash it down with vodka.

  Durnov sighed his regret.

  “That is good, Professor Menkin, that is good.” His tough tone eased. “My soldiers will eat, and Colonel Kronstadt and I will wait for your brother-in-law, Josef. Unfortunately this is not a time for good food and social talk.” Durnov paused, and Alex shifted slightly in his saddle. “Chief Gendarme Grinevich is dead. Murdered by the stinking Bolsheviks from your village. I am under orders from the Okhrana to arrest Sergei Peshkov for beating and kicking Grinevich to death last night.”

  The thunderous silence was sickening.

  THIRTEEN

  HaMashiach

  Karena entered Uncle Matvey’s bungalow thinking of Alex. He was likely to arrive soon with his commanding officer, and then interrogations would begin. She thought of her brief meeting with him earlier on the road. For a moment, his eyes had looked directly into hers, and once again, as on that fateful day on the wharf at Kazan, she had sensed his awareness of her, not as a possible revolutionary under suspicion, but as a woman.

  Then again, maybe it was her own feelings she was interpreting. She was reading too much into his look. Perhaps he was merely noting the differences between wealthy aristocrats like the Roskovs and the gentry. The difference was a chasm. While most of Karena’s wardrobe was for life in the countryside of Kiev, Tatiana had jewels and Parisian gowns.

  The bungalow was not typical, although it once had been, before Ilya and Grandmother Leah Jilinsky came here and settled after a pogrom in Warsaw had left them destitute and alone. Papa Josef had added two tiny bedrooms, so that when Uncle Matvey came from St. Petersburg, he could have the larger room connected to a cubbyhole for use as an office.

  The original bungalow was built of thick, dressed logs with a hall and two rooms. One of these was used as the kitchen, containing the stove, which reached nearly to the ceiling. Close to the stove and just under the roof was a platform wide enough for the family to use as the warmer sleeping area when the snowy Russian winter came. Karena and Natalia had used it growing up, when they had come here to spend a night and visit Uncle Matvey. Karena could still remember waking those early mornings to the delightful aroma of Grandmother Jilinsky’s sweet breads, fresh and warm, waiting on the back of the stove.

  On some evenings, Uncle Matvey and Ilya would have dinner at the manor house, and after supper, they would gather with Papa Josef and Sergei around the large kitchen table, drinking coffee and smoking their pipes, and discuss everything from the future of Russia to emigrating to America through Ellis Island in New York—something her father would not even consider.

  The peasant’s bungalow was normally lined with wooden benches along the walls, but Grandmother Jilinsky had furnished her kitchen with a large dining table and six comfortable chairs. One corner of the room displayed an icon hanging in a niche, though neither the Jilinskys nor Uncle Matvey paid it any attention. It was there to assure any outsiders and watchful officials of their loyalty to the state church.

  Orthodox Jews considered such icons in their home tantamount to gentile idolatry, but Grandmother Jilinsky boasted her eyesight was getting so poor she could hardly trouble herself to see it in her “good Polish kitchen,” and Ilya, having lost his parents in a pogrom, was not inclined to think much about religious traditions.

  By the side of the house, an enclosed yard had stabling for two horses. There was also a bathhouse and a small cellar. In the latter, Grandmother Jilinsky stored her root vegetables for the winter, along with preserved foods and salted meat.

  Karena caught a waft of cabbage and beef cooking and went to the kitchen through the open doorway. She found the big pot simmering on the stove and lowered the flame. The water in the coffeepot was boiling, unattended.

  Grandmother Leah Jilinsky stood in front of the small window, staring out toward the road and the soldiers. Her eyes, when she turned toward Karena, were brimming with fear and hatred. She had spent a half century enduring the pogroms in Nalewski, the Jewish quarter in Warsaw, and her past cast long shadows on the present. Her aged face and sunken cheeks told of a lifetime of insecurity. Her home, usually a place of refuge from the uncaring world, had always been a knock away from the invaders.

  Russia had its own pogroms, as Karena knew well enough. She’d been a child when she heard about the dreaded Kishinev pogrom of 1903 and the devastation to Russian Jewry. Jewish families were grabbed from their very beds, their eyes gouged out, and their babies and children tossed from windows onto the pavement below. Many even had nails pounded into their flesh and were left to die in their sufferings. The rampage had gone on for three days in autocratic Russia, where a person could hardly breathe without the czar’s approval, yet the czar had done nothing.

  That was also the time she had first heard the name Theodor Herzl, the founder of the World Zionist Organization, and his call for a Jewish homeland. Herzl had since died, but the Zionist movement lived on under its new president, Chaim Weizmann. Karena had learned much of the movement to return Jews to Palestine through working with Uncle Matvey on his manuscript, for as he said, “You cannot adequately discuss the Messiah without also understanding the land and the people to whom the land was promised.”

  After Karena returned home from Kazan, she’d spent the rest of the summer, at her uncle’s request, writing letters to Chaim Weizmann, who was born in Russia and emigrated to England, asking questions that would be dealt with in Uncle Matvey’s book.

  Grandmother Jilinsky wrung her thin, wrinkled hands. “The soldiers have come for Sergei,” she said as she left the window. “There is no place of refuge, my child, not for any of us. They will take him away. They always take them away somewhere, somewhere.”

  Karena looked for faith to comfort the older woman and found she had little to offer.

  “We will pray to the icon,” Karena murmured from custom. “St. Nicholas will help. We will light a candle.”

  Grandmother’s eyes smoldered. “St. Nicholas! Oy vey! Why not the God of Abraham, I ask? Are you afraid to answer, my child? Then I shall speak! It is because neither St. Nicholas nor the God of Abraham can help us! They have not helped me in the past. Why should I still believe?”

  Karena went to the side of the kitchen chair and put an arm around her, patting her in wordless comfort and feeling her bony structure through the worn peasant blouse of bright colors. “Oh, Grandmother, you are so distressed. Why, look what Uncle Matvey says. He’s convinced God has not given up the seed of Abraham. That’s why he’s writing Chaim Weizmann.”

  “What can Weizmann do for the Jews?”

  “God may be using his movement to bring Israel back to the land to become a nation again. Uncle says some Jews think that Jesus was the promised Messiah. And many Christians say the Scriptures teach that Israel will be a nation again, and when it happens, the Messiah’s second coming may be drawing near. Mr. Weizmann is negotiating with the British parliament. He has something important that could be used in the war. In return, the British government may work for a Jewish homeland. Just think! A nation all our own. No more pogroms!”

  Grandmother Jilinsky looked doubtful. “Matvey, he is turning into a goy. I do not know what to make of him when he says that crucified one was the Messiah. My rabbi in Warsaw, when I was a girl your age, would groan in his grave if he heard that. How could the Messiah have come? Where is the kingdom promised to King David and his people? We are not even in the land.”

  “Grandmother Jilinsky, you just heard me explain about the new Zionist movement and what it may mean.”

  “We are scattered all over the world, forgotten, despised. Our bones are dried up; who can make these bones live again? Not Chaim Weizmann.”

/>   “No, not Mr. Weizmann. The Zionist movement is secular, but Matvey has researched another group of Jews, called Messianic, who are looking for Messiah to come to the nation Israel, to rebuild the Jewish temple in Jerusalem and establish peace.”

  Karena remembered Matvey’s references to the prophet Ezekiel. “You just quoted from Ezekiel 37: ‘Can these bones live?’ The bones are the whole house of Israel. And Matvey says many Bible scholars believe Israel will become a nation again. That isn’t all. God told Ezekiel that after we become a nation again, a time will come when God will breathe new spiritual life into Israel. So you see? There’s hope. Grandmother Jilinsky, what if Jesus truly is the promised Messiah?”

  The older woman stared at her. Karena hadn’t realized it, but in putting forth what Uncle Matvey was writing, she’d grown to embrace the ideas with unexpected enthusiasm.

  “Oh!” Grandmother Jilinsky exclaimed and rushed past her toward the black stove. Karena heard something sizzling in the fire. She turned and saw the water for coffee was boiling over.

  Karena laughed, and even Grandmother smiled as she added the right amount of coarse grounds to the pot, stirring it with a big spoon.

  Karena’s laughter faded into thoughtfulness. Talking about Jesus had brought a special mood to the little kitchen. Maybe I will do what Uncle Matvey suggests—read the book called Matthew.

  Through the window, Karena and Grandmother Jilinsky watched the czar’s conscripts make camp for the night in a distant section of the field where the wheat had already been harvested. Karena remembered that food needed to be scrounged up from somewhere—enough to feed a large group. She needed no reminder that Colonel Kronstadt and his superiors would dine at the manor house.

  And Sergei … What would happen? Surely there was no proof of his attending last night’s meeting. Maybe after questioning everyone, they would ride on in search of Lenski.