Sisters of the Cross

by Alexei Remizov

  Burkov House is the whole of Petersburg.

  The main frontage of the house faces into the lane toward the barracks—those are the richer apartments. That’s where Burkov himself lives, the former governor. You can see his importance from his uniform, which sheds a radiance like electricity, and his hallway is filled with people showing off their gold buttons and epaulettes. On the floor above lives the barrister Amsterdamsky, who takes two flats for himself. Above him are the Oshurkovs, husband and wife, who occupy ten rooms, all of which are filled with various little gewgaws scattered here and there, and there is also an aquarium with fish. Their servants are changing all the time. The Oshurkovs’ neighbor is a German, Doctor of Medicine Wittenshtaube, who cures all diseases with X-rays. Above the Oshurkovs and Wittenshtaube lives the wife of General Kholmogorov, or “the louse,” as people around the flats call her. There is no one living above the general’s wife, and below Burkov’s flat there is just an office and a bakery on the corner.

  As for Burkov himself, no one saw him, and there were just rumors about his being the cause of his own self-destruction; apparently when he was governor somewhere in Purkhovets and was putting down an insurrection, he got so carried away that among a mass of other papers he wrote a report to the ministry that he was completely unsuitable, and was summoned to Petersburg and pensioned off—a happy ending, but not at all what he had expected.

  On the other hand, anyone could see the wife of General Kholmogorov, and everybody knew very well that she had income enough in interest alone to live on for the rest of her life—and she was going to live on for a good fifty years. Strong and spry, she would outlive everyone. As the palmist had said, there was no visible end to her lifeline. Besides that, they knew that the general’s wife went to the public baths every Tuesday, sweating away in the steam room, and had made herself so fit that she would never grow old, but remain just the same. And people also knew—God knows how—that she had seemingly nothing to repent of: she had not killed anyone or stolen anything, and she would not kill or steal, because she just ate and drank, digested and made herself fit. Finally, everyone knew that, when going out of the house, she invariably carried a little folding chair with her that she took in case anyone was to attack her—so that every day you could meet her taking her constitutional along the Fontanka, and on Saturdays and Sundays, on the day before religious holidays and on the festive day itself, in church on Zagorodny Prospekt and leaving church.

  Every time the midday cannon booms out, Burkov’s maid Susanna appears outside. She looks more like a young lady or a typist from some government department than a maid, as she leads the governor’s fine red setter across the yard. The dog is called Inspector General, and she can scarcely control it on its uncomfortable steel chain. On Wednesdays the carpets are brought out into the yard, and before public festivals the soft furnishings as well, for the cleaners to shake and beat them with such force and such a din that sometimes it seems as though guns are being fired on the Neva to warn of an attempt on the life of the tsar, or a flood. All these carpets and furnishings come out from the rich apartments at the front end of the building, from Burkov, Amsterdamsky, the Oshurkovs, from Wittenshtaube and General Kholmogorov’s wife.

  The back end of the building consists of small flats with middling tenants and the majority even more modest. Here we can find the shoemaker and the tailor, the baker, bath attendants, barbers and a laundrywoman, two milliners, three dressmakers, a sick nurse from the Obukhov Hospital, tram conductors, engine drivers, men who make hats, umbrellas or brushes, shop assistants, plumbers, typesetters, and various mechanics, technicians, qualified electricians with their families, their dusters, their medicines, their jars and cockroaches, and all sorts of young ladies from Gorokhovaia Street and Zagorodny Prospekt, dressmakers and girls from the teashop, and smart young men from the baths who would wash Petersburg ladies on demand. This is where the corners for rent are, too.

  The man who owns the corners is the merchant Gorbachov, “old tight lips,” as his nickname is around the flats. He owns three stalls on the Field of Mars as well. Getting on in years, stumpy, thickset and with a touch of gray in his hair, he is a pious man, and on Saturdays he spreads incense around every one of his thirty corners. On public holidays Gorbachov has crowds of young girls swarming about, wearing little black scarves, as well as alms-collector nuns dressed in boots. At Easter all these daughters of harmony sing fervently and joyfully “Christ is Risen from the Dead” for him. Everyone knows Gorbachov: he is not greatly loved, and he himself cannot stand the sight of children. They say that General Kholmogorov’s wife cannot put up with them, either, but she has never had any of her own. Gorbachov on the other hand had a little girl. He kept her in an empty storeroom full of rats, beating her and even breaking her fingers, until he drove her to her death. The children tease Gorbachov and follow him around in wild hordes, calling him every sort of name, mocking his incense, and his nose with wild horsehair growing out of it and, because of this, wild coarse language flows around the yard—such strong language as you will rarely hear even in prison, though prison is where it was perfected.

  “The times are ripe, the cup of sin is full, punishment is at hand. I’ll hang all you little rascals up on a rope,” grumbles the tight-lipped, insulted, exasperated old man, sniffing with his Gorbachov nose and pulling at his wild horsehair, as he spreads incense around all his thirty corners on Saturdays, savagely and bitterly intermingling the divine and the obscene.

  Gorbachov’s corners are well known. This is where you’ll find the old woman with her stall by the baths who sells sunflower seeds, carobs, fruit drops wrapped in fancy pink paper, salted herrings, pickled pears, and besides her you’ll find unemployed cooks and various people like the restless old man Gvozdev, and a housepainter, and a joiner, and a mead seller, and peddlers to boot.

  The peddlers’ lockers—their storage booths—stand over the basement wood stores, from the channel for slops on one side to the rubbish pit on the other. In the early morning when the janitors are tidying up the yard and sweeping it, the peddlers at their booths have brisk work flying through their hands: apples, oranges, dried peaches, prunes, dates and other sweetmeats and delicacies—all this is laid out carefully and enticingly rearranged, spruced up and refurbished, and then wheeled over to the Fontanka and looking so tempting and tasty that you’d think no one could resist buying at least a date or some Lenten sweets smelling of toadstools to have with their tea.

  And just as Gorbachov’s odd corners are never empty, so the peddlers’ lockers are always laid out with delicacies and sweetmeats.

  Not far from the corners is the janitors’ lodge, and there are seven janitors. Externally they all look so healthy, and yet they’re all ill with something, and it would be amazing if one of them were healthy for a change. And the janitors’ work is by no means easy: stay on duty, carry the firewood around and take it to where it should go, and do everything in double-quick time. There is only one perk—that is the firewood itself. Only at the posh front end of the block do they have the landlord’s wood. The ones at the back buy their own, and all seven janitors without exception sell firewood.

  Above the janitors’ office lives the senior janitor, Mikhail Pavlovich. His noble appearance befits him more for work at the Aleksandr Nevsky monastery, and he wouldn’t be one of the least there, either, never taking less than a ruble tip from his present clients at holiday times. Above Mikhail Pavlovich live the passport officer Iorkin and the clerk Stanislav.

  As far as drinkers go, everyone knows that Iorkin has not a single person to rival him in the whole of Burkov House. And on public holidays he may make his way up to some flat on the fourth floor, quite often ringing at the door and muttering that he has come to collect his twenty-kopeck gratuity for the feast day. However, at this point he may fall down on the threshold as if stone dead. Once, whether it was at Christmas or Easter, he rolled down the stairs from step to step—bump, bump, bump—until he became so covere
d in bruises and welts from the stones that people couldn’t recognize him. After the New Year, at Epiphany, Mikhail Pavlovich’s wife, Antonina Ignatievna, being a God-fearing woman, would take him to a holy brother in the harbor district, trying to bring him back to the true path. And, indeed, he did repent, giving the brother a written note, pledging himself to abstain from drink until the next New Year. Iorkin trades in health-tax stamps and for him these stamps, especially the ruble ones, are the same kind of treasure as firewood is for the janitors in Burkov House.

  Iorkin’s flatmate, the clerk Stanislav, and his friend, the fitter Kazimir, have long been known for prowling at night up and down all the staircases, and there has never been an occasion when any of the cooks or the serving maids have been able to resist them. Any guardsman from the Semionovsky regiment is simply rubbish compared to them.

  Weddings, funerals, events, incidents, public scenes, fistfights, punch-ups, calling the police, ending up in a cell—someone shouting, a cat meowing, someone else being strangled—that’s the way things are every day.

  Burkov House is like the Viazma doss-house in Petersburg—anything can happen there.

  Marakulin’s landlady, Adoniia Ivoilovna Zhuravliova, has her flat, number 79, at the back end of the block.

  Number 78 has the midwife Lebedeva living in it. During the pre-Christmas fast someone stole her winter fur coat, and they never found the thief. It’s as though her coat had been consumed in the stove. People blamed the doorkeeper Nikanor for not keeping an eye open—but how could he spot everything? He was on his feet all day, then at night he had to get up to answer people ringing the bell, and so it went on the whole year round. Of course, this was a clever thief, an inside job, nothing you could do about it!

  Flat 77, also on the same floor, once had two students living there, Sheveliov and Khabarov. They looked well-off, dressed in good clothes, and paid the rent a month in advance. They lived in isolation, had no one knock at the door, and invited no one to see them. There was not a sound coming from their flat, and they did not keep any servants. Usually they went out in the morning and only came back home late in the evening. They were busy making money to help any friends who were less well-off than they were, as they explained when they went around collecting money from all over the Burkov flats, both the posh part and the more modest apartments. There was only one drawback: they often used to sing at night, not loudly, but all the same you could hear them singing a requiem for some reason or other: “Rest Among the Saints,” “Mourning at the Graveside,” and “Eternal Memory.” Naturally, this nocturnal singing of burial hymns gave their neighbors a certain feeling of trepidation, even if it did not alarm them outright. And then what happened? A month or so later it turned out that they were not students at all and their names were not Sheveliov and Khabarov, but Shibanov and Kochenkov, the most regular thieves, and their flat looked as if it was never lived in—it was empty, not even a chair with one leg missing, nothing apart from a tallow candle end stuck into an empty beer bottle and some sort of brass tap—that was it. But they had swindled quite a lot of people, so they were arrested.

  After the students, apartment number 77 was occupied by two performing artistes, the Damaskin brothers. Sergei Aleksandrovich was from the ballet—according to what people said around the flats he had taken exams in twelve languages and had studied every subject under the sun. Vasily Aleksandrovich was a clown from the circus, or a “cloon,” as they pronounced it around Burkov House. He could breathe fire, was afraid of nothing, and used to fly on a balloon. The brothers were called “artistes” by the senior janitor, Mikhail Pavlovich, who treated them with an unusual respect that he couldn’t really account for, as if he were talking to a holy brother from the harbor district.

  Vasily Aleksandrovich, the clown, had a body shaped like a teacup. Sergei Aleksandrovich was slim and neat, like a young lady of sixteen. When he walked, it was as though his feet hardly touched the ground, and he was as stubborn as a three-year-old child. His shoes seemed to have no heels, and every minute he seemed to be testing his legs with exercises. He would swing his feet around from side to side, like a cockerel flapping its wings. Vasily Aleksandrovich performed only in his own circus, and every evening he would put on some kind of turn—that was what was expected. Sergei Aleksandrovich danced in the theater, and also gave lessons, either at his own flat or in his pupils’ houses.

  The artistes earned good money, but they threw it around like wood shavings. Sergei Aleksandrovich used to play at cards and always lost. They were never out of debt and often they were desperately short of money.

  Neither of them was older than Marakulin. Sergei Aleksandrovich had been married, but his wife had left him. Although he assured her that love comes only once—she being the only love of his life—if he went after his girl pupils, that was just connected with his work, and if he was chattering with some beauty or other, then he was just talking to her as he would to anybody, without being seriously committed; nevertheless his wife had left him. Sergei Aleksandrovich lived quite a pure life. Vasily Aleksandrovich, on the other hand, needed to have a new young lady every day, he couldn’t live without that, and he wasn’t at all fastidious; he wasn’t at all afraid, even if he knew about some hidden drawback. He used to go to church, although not very often, whereas Sergei Aleksandrovich stayed at home, even at Easter. Once when Sergei Aleksandrovich had a toothache and decided he was dying, not even then did he think of calling the priest. On the contrary, he warned his “slave”—as the artistes called their cook, Kuzmovna—and in a very threatening way. “If you bring in a priest,” he said in the frenzy of his toothache, “I’ll kick the scoundrel downstairs!”

  And he certainly would have thrown the priest down the stairs; Sergei Aleksandrovich was a great freethinker.

  Marakulin would only give a formal bow to the midwife Lebedeva. He did not care for her; she was rather sickly and always had an eye on what she might make out of you, so that she had two different tones of voice: one tone for those who had well-filled pockets and quite another voice for anyone who had nothing. The midwife soon stopped acknowledging Marakulin’s greeting, and he somehow ceased to notice her presence. Marakulin did not know the students and met them only a few times on the stairs, when he was going up and they were running down; at night he was the first person to hear their student funeral chant. At first glance he felt well-disposed toward the young men, so clever and happy with life. He became friends with the artistes, and he used to visit them to have a glass of tea in the evening.

  The artistes both came from a religious background and had been educated in a seminary. Both were like shaved chickens, and both pushed grief away. They never got depressed, and they wouldn’t ask favors of anyone else. Vasily Aleksandrovich was a clown who did not talk too much, but he was not one to hinder conversation; he was good-natured and used to laugh, even when there was nothing at all funny to laugh at, most likely following his own clownish line of thought. Sergei Aleksandrovich liked to talk. Apart from that he liked reading, and he read not only comic journals with pictures such as the Petersburg Satyricon, not only the famous Andrei the Sorely-Tried, and not only writers like Elza Gavronskaia. He also read Dread Secrets of the Underworld, The Terrible Adventures of Blackhand, the Bandit Leader, The Love Affairs of Beritsky, The Abduction of Liudmila, Alexander, Robber of the Woodlands…these were the sorts of things the clown liked. He would also read the latest book to have made a real sensation and you could see it everywhere—at Suvorin’s bookshop, and at Wolf’s, and at Mitiurnikov’s, on Nevsky Prospekt, in Gostiny Dvor, and on Liteiny Prospekt, and it could even be displayed in the only shop on Gorokhovaia. And over tea Sergei Aleksandrovich would generally reply to all Marakulin’s gloomy arguments with his own conclusions about the destiny and fate of all the countries, of all the peoples and of mankind in general. Then, however, he would come to a brief summary conclusion: “We must shake ourselves free of all this!” and saying this he would swing his feet around from sid
e to side, like a cockerel flapping its wings.

  Sergei Aleksandrovich was a great artist.

  Marakulin’s landlady, Adoniia Ivoilovna Zhuravliova, was not young. She was quite stout and very kind. She had been a widow for fifteen years. It was fifteen years since her husband had died a hungry death from cancer. He was buried in the Smolensk Cemetery.1 She was not from Petersburg herself, although her husband was a Petersburger. She was from the White Sea coast. Her husband’s business had been on Sadovaia Street, a draper’s shop selling plain calico and threads. She was letting the shop out for rent. She had no children either, just one nephew. This nephew would come to visit her at holiday times, Christmas and Easter. He would also give her his good wishes and congratulate her on her saint’s day and on her birthday. She was well-off, had plenty of money, but no one to spend it on. She was heartbroken that she had no children, and she used to grieve at the childless life that God had ordained for her.

  Adoniia Ivoilovna lived in the farthest room: when you went into the building her room was to the right of the hall. She would stay in all day, not going out onto the street. She found it difficult to go downstairs as her leg gave way under her. She found herself out of breath when going up, and she was afraid of the trams outside. Her only entertainment was in the kitchen—it was good to walk into Akumovna’s place to talk about various dishes.

  Adoniia Ivoilovna liked her food.

  The rooms were all in a row next to each other, Marakulin’s being closest to the kitchen, and in the morning Piotr Alekseevich could hear dinner being ordered. Adoniia Ivoilovna particularly liked fish dishes, and with what deeply felt relish she instructed Akumovna about sturgeon, in particular sturgeon soup: