Sisters of the Cross

by Alexei Remizov

Well, the theater and the dancing were all well and good, but the fact was that Anisim had long ago stopped sending her money. Instead of by Vakuiev, she was being kept by a certain prominent old man who had installed her in this apartment, and it was for him she had changed her name: Variaginsky was an important person who was often at court.

  “He’s like a little old man who sees a mouse with his left eye. He blinks and the mouse is gone. When he opens his eye again, there is the mouse, again as live as can be, a tiny, little, gray mouse.”

  For a long time now Anisim had not been sending her any money, and she was really short of funds. What she really needed was for old Variaginsky to deposit capital in her name, and then…

  “I shall show the whole world who I am, and then they’ll see!”

  Yes, she would show her true worth, her name would resound throughout Russia, throughout the whole of Europe—around the whole world. She had chosen the burning road for herself, but after all you wouldn’t get anywhere by choosing a commonplace route. You couldn’t forge your way ahead on your own. If you didn’t have money, they wouldn’t let you in anywhere and they’d rub you out, even if you were the devil himself. You needed to be able to tell lies and to have money, to tell lies and to have money—that’s what you needed. And she had tried to live in the ordinary way. She knew what that involved only too well. She wasn’t going to set up as a laundress—or was she really supposed to take up such work? She was not willing to live in Kuznechny Lane with the palmist, nor would she live in Gorbachov’s corners. But when the old man deposited some capital in her name, when she had some money, then…

  “With money you can buy everything,” Verochka shouted in her wild voice, not the call of those who see the true state of things, but a challenge, a wild shout about some special right to overcome all earthly resistance, as the old phrase goes: by climbing a stairway to heaven, or by using a ring buried in the earth, to turn the whole world upside down—this was both defiance and a shriek of despair at the burning road that lay before her: “I am a prostitute and I shall be a prostitute. But next year I shall show myself, and you will see me. Vera Nikolaevna would not refuse to take money, and that other lady of yours with the pitiful smile would take it also. The only thing is that nobody gives it to them, whereas every man gives me money. I know how to lie, and I shall take what is mine!”

  And she rushed around to show off her fine clothes, opening up every chest of drawers and her wardrobe. Dresses and underclothes in no particular order flew toward Marakulin, and already a multicolored heap of silk and lace had piled up between the yellow sofas rising like the black mound of coal outside the Belgian factory.

  “And this is all mine,” she shouted. “Look, these are all presents, and all of it is mine!”

  Marakulin had stood up, wanting to stop her, but it was already impossible to get near her, so he sat down again on the yellow sofa. Meanwhile Verochka, in a kind of frenzy, was crumpling, tearing, and hurling things about. And when the chests of drawers were empty and the boxes turned upside down, she started on the knickknacks, spinning them around, rolling them over and breaking them. Then she started piling everything together in one great heap.

  “And all this is mine—my presents!” she shouted, straining her voice to the utmost—and then without any voice at all.

  For a moment Marakulin felt an irresistible urge to take a match, strike it, and set fire to the heap of possessions in order to annihilate everything, the whole heap, the entire mountain of clothes and those yellow sofas, yellow screens, yellow lampshades, yellow cushions—all presents.

  Verochka had snatched a little bronze tortoise off the shelves and held it out toward him, wanting no doubt to make him a present of the tortoise.

  “When they say ‘pres’…when they say ‘pres’…when they say ‘pres’…” he said, looking straight into Verochka’s eyes as if beating her with the words and not taking the present. Then, without finishing what he was saying, he ran out of breath and suddenly his shoulders began to heave.

  Yes, she knew quite well herself: there was nothing in the apartment that belonged to her. And one should not give other people’s things away. Presents are not normally given away, either, but all the same you can give one as a gift. But none of what was here belonged to her; they were not presents, all of them were somebody else’s things, and one should not give other people’s things away. The owners here were old Variaginsky, the one who saw the mouse, chief cashier Glotov, and anyone who had money and could give away money, and the more he could give, the more important he would be. Everything of hers had been defiled and contaminated by the hands of others, she could not now kiss Vera Nikolaevna, she had nothing to kiss her with: everything had been put to use, everything had been soiled, spat upon.

  “And what about you, Petrusha, wouldn’t you like some, eh?” she suddenly asked with a certain venom in her voice. “Yes, what about you—would you like some, eh?”

  Marakulin got to his feet.

  “So this is what you’ll get,” said Verochka, sticking out her tongue, “You’ll get nothing! You are just a beggar, and I don’t accept beggars, do you hear me? I don’t accept them!” Her shameless eyes glinted like two knife blades, and her loosened hair seemed to burn her with fire.

  Marakulin followed wherever his legs would take him, taking no heed of the streets. There was a slight December thaw with a warm wind wafting in, and the streetlamps seemed like enormous stars and moons descended from heaven and hanging in the mist…. Coming out from Podiachovskaia onto Sadovaia Street, he began to cross to the other side, and then stopped abruptly. Where the bell hangs at the gates of the Spasskaia district there now stood a fireman in a huge brass helmet, a real fireman, only on a superhuman scale and wearing a brass helmet that reached up higher than the gates.

  In his terror Marakulin started to run. He could feel his innards rising and crushing his throat. When he got home and was alone in his room in the Burkov flats, he realized that he was weeping, as he had wept only once before in his life, on the day when his old nurse was passing away.

  And during the night he dreamed that he was lying in the yard in front of the Burkov House, but the courtyard seemed larger than it was in reality. Although the yard was hemmed in by the sides of buildings, the peddlers’ storage booths seemed farther away somehow; the carriage shed, the channel for slops and the rubbish pit seemed much farther away, and the piles of various bricks under the windows, and of gravel and of refuse seemed even higher. Nor was he lying by himself in the courtyard; alongside him lay stretched out all of the inhabitants from both the richer end and the back end of the building, from the wing and from Gorbachov’s corners. Even though there were many individuals he did not know by sight, still he guessed—and in fact there could be no doubt—that this gentleman and lady were the Oshurkovs, who occupied ten rooms filled with all sorts of objects; their entire apartment was filled with things, even an aquarium with fish. And that man over there in the top hat, such a lively person, was the barrister Amsterdamsky, a cheerful man, he knew how to manage his affairs, the doormen in the senate probably wait for him, as they do at Easter. And Burkov himself was lying there, the former governor, the destroyer of himself. However, since no one had seen him, but seen only his uniform, then it was, properly speaking, not he who was lying there, but his uniform. And alongside the uniform were the chief janitor Mikhail Pavlovich with his wife, the God-fearing Antonina Ignatievna, and the merchant Gorbachov with some little girl, his daughter, whose fingers he had broken in a storeroom full of rats. Also Vera, along with Akumovna, and Stanislav, the clerk, and Kazimir the fitter and Adoniia Ivoilovna, and the Damaskin artistes, Sergei Aleksandrovich and Vasily Aleksandrovich, Vera Nikolaevna, Anna Stepanovna and the midwife Lebedeva covered with the winter fur coat that had been stolen from her at Christmastime, and the doorman Nikanor, and the students who used to sing burial hymns at night—they continued to lie beside each other in their bright new student uniforms and with the brass tap tha
t was their only possession—and all seven caretakers and the passport officer Iorkin, the janitors with their firewood, Iorkin with his face and hands all covered in ruble health stamps, and the children were lying there in a heap, and the Persian masseur from the baths, and the little girl who had brought the milk to Murka, she lay there with the piece of broken pottery, and the cobblers and bakers, and bath attendants, hairdressers, tailors, milliners, a sick nurse from the Obukhov Hospital, tram conductors, engine drivers, men who made 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, and girls—dressmakers and girls from the teashop, and smart young men from the baths who would wash Petersburg ladies on demand, and also the old woman with her stall by the baths who sells sunflower seeds and all sorts of rubbish, and unemployed cooks, and a housepainter, and a joiner and a mead seller, all kinds of peddlers, loaded down with dates and Lenten sweets smelling of toadstools to have with their tea—in a word, the entire Burkov House, the whole of Petersburg. But when Marakulin had recognized these people from the Burkov flats, he began to look more closely, and then he saw not the burkovites, but his mother, father, and sisters, the old man Gvozdev, Aleksandr Ivanovich Glotov, the accountant Averianov, Chekurov, Lizaveta Ivanovna, and Mariia Aleksandrovna, Rakov with his winning ticket for two hundred thousand rubles, and Leshchov and Pavlina Polikarpovna, and all the saints and holy fools, elders and brothers in Christ, and various Belgians and Germans—the Germans pressed around Dr. Wittenshtaube, who can cure any disease with his X-rays—and finally all of wandering Holy Russia.

  There they were, lying in the front yard of Burkov House as on a field of death, although these were not bones but living people, no dry bones but living people, all with active, beating hearts. In addition there were animals lying beside the people, the governor’s dog, Inspector General, on its uncomfortable steel chain, raising his clever muzzle this way and that. Murka, too, was lying close by, only she was covered by some smoky-colored tomcat. Then alongside Marakulin lay the wife of General Kholmogorov, the louse. And the streetlamps seemed like enormous stars and moons descended from heaven and hanging low in the mist over the Burkov yard.

  “The times are ripe, the cup of sin is full, punishment is at hand,” said Gorbachov in broken phrases as if half asleep, sniffing with his nose covered in horsehair.

  Then there was a jangling noise like that of a cutlass, and from one of the peddlers’ storage booths emerged a fireman, huge beyond human scale, wearing a great brass helmet, and he started forward, his boots knocking on the ground. Moving swiftly and easily he passed through all the housepainters, locksmiths, and peddlers, came closer to Marakulin and stopped when he reached him.

  It was the most ordinary of firemen—with a red face.

  It was at this point that Marakulin suddenly felt how difficult everything had become for him; he could move neither hand nor foot, and now he knew that he had not long to live; all he had left was the freedom to speak. And he also felt how difficult everything had become for all those on the field of death; they could move neither hand nor foot, and all they had left was the freedom to speak; feeling that his last moments had come, he could hear motor vehicles sounding their horns along the Fontanka.

  Above him, motionless, stood the fireman. It was the most ordinary of firemen—with a red face.

  And Marakulin would have liked to say something daring like some elder Kabakov, calling down a voice from heaven. He wanted to ask a question of the fireman on behalf of everyone, on behalf of the whole world, but he lacked the courage to ask in the Kabakov way on behalf of everyone, on behalf of the whole world, on behalf of all those on the field of death, so he just asked about himself:

  “Shall I be all right?”

  “Wait,” said the fireman.

  “Will it be all right?” Marakulin asked again, barely catching his breath and at the same time hearing how the motor vehicles were sounding their horns along the Fontanka.

  And the fireman replied to him, but so despairingly that he could barely finish his words:

  “It…will…be…all…right.”

  1. The balalaika is commonly thought to be of Central Asian or Caucasian origin.

  2. An ancient Russian stringed instrument, usually held horizontally and plucked as well as strummed.

  3. A river in Petersburg.

  Just before Christmas Marakulin’s cross got broken. Anna Stepanovna took it away to get it mended, and she went from the high school to the shops at Gostiny Dvor. There her purse was stolen and Marakulin’s cross went with it—a little baptismal cross made of gold.

  During the Christmas holidays Akumovna was telling fortunes, and it looked to Marakulin as though the cards had turned out really spiteful and were mocking them with all their merciless honesty. They foretold a happy journey—a noble person of some note, lots of money, if you haven’t got a letter today, then you’ll get one tomorrow, he drinks a little bit—and somewhere the side cards show grass and Christmas trees.

  But the cards were not lying. Whether Akumovna had foreseen the truth or even without the cards it had been decreed by somebody, soon after St. Tatiana’s Day, and quite unexpectedly, Marakulin had to leave Petersburg for Moscow.

  Marakulin came from Moscow. He was born and grew up in Moscow and did his schooling there. Before he went to Petersburg he had spent only five years outside the big cities. His business had taken him to such towns as Kostrinsk and Purkhovets. He had studied in the commercial section of a private technical school in Moscow. He had just started there when his mother died, and his father died before he finished school. His last years at school were difficult; he had to work things out for himself. He had two sisters, both older than he was and both married. When he was living in Moscow, he used to visit them often at first, but then less and less, until he hardly saw anything of them at all. While he was young, they had lavished love on him and spoiled him, and he remembered this, but they had forgotten. When he was living in the provinces, he used to write to his sisters often at first, then not so often, later just the usual greeting cards, and then he ceased writing entirely. They were the first to break off all correspondence. When he was living in Petersburg he had come to think that he had no family in Moscow, and only in the Kalitnikovskoe Cemetery were there two graves marked by crosses, one cross for his father and one cross for his mother.

  His father had been senior accountant with the Plotnikov firm, which had a factory in the Taganka district and wholesale warehouses in the Ilyinka area. His father had been a hardworking man who had made his way up through his own stubborn efforts. His mother was quite different. She was strange.

  Evgeniia Aleksandrovna, as his mother was called, was righteous, simplehearted, and sincere. Everyone knew of her righteousness, including Marakulin’s father; and those who often visited the house also realized her ways, so that when she was present they uttered not a word of gossip about the people they knew. Watching their words carefully, they would never say anything that could not be said directly to the person concerned. The possibility that there might be two opinions about anyone or anything, what could be said at home within the tight family circle, and what could be said outside it, if need be, in the presence of other people, such an everyday notion was beyond her, and she had no worldly nous. And for that reason there could always arise, if not a public scene, then at least an embarrassing moment, and Marakulin’s father had had to warn his wife more than once about that. This worldly nous that knows of two opinions is simply an intuitive form of self-defense, often rather ignoble, and cannot be regarded as wisdom. True wisdom that knows not two, but twenty-two, opinions is both knowledge and mercy. That highest of wisdoms she could not, of course, possess, but the wisdom that is prompted by unmediated perception, along with wisdom grasped by the heart, these she possessed. There was no
t a trace of half-heartedness or coarseness in her entire being. While she found it impossible to remain indifferent, she could not speak out with brutal frankness. She was moved and tormented by everything, had an extraordinary fund of compassion and sympathy, and was ready to help whomsoever it might be. And people loved her for those qualities. Everyone had known her when she was just a girl called Zhenia, and everyone had loved her for just those qualities. Just after she had left school, she fell in love with the student who was her brother’s tutor, and she looked with reverence at him as if he were God. And the student was all right; he was a serious student who just smiled and smiled and thanked people. Her father, Marakulin’s grandfather, was a doctor at Plotnikov’s factory, and he would often take Zhenia to the factory with him. Now Plotnikov had a young technician, Tsyganov, who spent time with the workers, arranging all sorts of readings for them and visits to the theater, and later people who knew even said that he raised a strike among them. The factory workers loved Tsyganov and did what he said. Zhenia had also spent time at the factory, and the sight of what life was like there made her feel sick at heart. When she got to know Tsyganov she volunteered to help him. She spent a lot of time with that technician, doing as much as her strength allowed. And when things went well and something got sorted out, with what joy did she recount her success to her brother’s tutor, to her very own student whom she revered as if he were God. And the student was all right; he was a serious student who just smiled and smiled and thanked people.

  Once Zhenia was sitting with Tsyganov, selecting books to read to the workers, these “books” being really propaganda leaflets. She was trying very hard: she really wanted them to be read as quickly as possible by those about whom she believed the truth was written in them, and that the pamphlets should show a way out of their pitiful lives for people for whom she felt sick at heart. She was hurrying, and it was the first time she had done it. Tsyganov was sitting alongside her at the same desk, sorting out the leaflets and not leaving her side; he was also hurrying, and he too wanted to get it all done as soon as possible, since it was dangerous work. And then, when everything was done, the leaflets selected and put in order, she was so satisfied and happy to think about how she would relate everything to the student, to her God. He now must surely have finished giving the lessons to her brother, and perhaps he would already be sitting by the samovar in the dining room with her father and playing chess. Now, as she was rushing to get home as soon as possible, Tsyganov suddenly threw himself at her and brought her to the floor….