Sisters of the Cross

by Alexei Remizov

  Evdokiia Andreevna told her story: “I remembered then how, when we were trying to get Pasha used to working in the firm, he would bring home a book and say that he had been at Petrusha’s with Piotr Alekseevich, who brought him luck. He came to believe in you, father, from his earliest years he came to believe in you. I thought to myself: ‘You are the only person who can cure this terrible malady of his and his misfortune.’ We asked Father Semion, the priest from the Church of the Resurrection, to sprinkle holy water over him, but Pasha would not let him. He called him a crushed peppermint beast. We wanted to take him up to Khapilovka to Brother Ivanushka, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Thanks be to our doctor, Nikolai Fiodorovich, who thought of sending for you. You have cured him, father!” Then the old lady made a great sign of the cross in the old-fashioned way and bowed down to the ground. “For casting out the unclean demon like a wild beast!” the dark old women whispered from the corners.

  Meanwhile Evdokiia Andreevna carried on crossing herself and bowing low.

  On the third day Plotnikov woke up and, as if nothing had happened, he traveled into town and returned safely only in the evening. That evening he dragged Marakulin off to Lavrov’s bar.

  They were sitting in the corner room on the left as they used to do before and, as before, there was an orchestrion playing.1 Plotnikov was remembering the past: their school and all their teachers, and Chistye Prudy and Kuskovo. He could even remember Lavrov’s special cold summer soup that Marakulin used to like. But the sound of the orchestrion made them feel melancholy; they had no desire to bring back the past. The old times were there as though spread out on the palm of your hand, but somehow they could not imagine why the past had been like that, and could it only be there for it to be remembered by them? When Marakulin looked into the hidden corners of his life, he realized that in reality nothing had changed: in those days he used to feel exactly the same—even about the summer soup at Lavrov’s—only he remembered it all vaguely, quietly, with occasional flashes of clearer recollection. But when all’s said and done, do people ever change? They were sitting in the corner of the room on the left, as they used to before and, as before, there was an orchestrion playing.

  “But I am on your Arkady Pavlovich, the policeman’s side,” said Plotnikov. “You shouldn’t have insulted him then. It was over there that he and I sat,” he went on, pointing in the direction of the private rooms on one side and slapping his pocket with a grunt. “Five hundred rubles it cost to agree to an amicable settlement, and all because of your Fenia!”

  “Dunia,” Marakulin corrected him.

  “Dunia, Fenia, it doesn’t matter. Let’s go, my friend, to see Arkady Pavlovich, he’ll be really glad. Do you know they gave him a cross for his work during the Moscow uprising, a real cross, and they moved him to the Tverskaia police station. He’ll be really glad! But do you know, Petrusha”—here Plotnikov leaned across and began to speak in a low voice—“I have faith in you like I do in God, and when things aren’t working out in my affairs, I only have to think of you and pronounce your name aloud and—just like that—everything becomes as it was before. What I think is that, when my end is coming and it’s time for me to die, I’ll simply call for you, and you’ll come and stop me from dying. I’ll be meowing like some mangy cat, and you’ll make me a man again. So you see, Petrusha, that’s what I think of you.”

  They were sitting in the corner of the room on the left as they used to do before and, as before, there was an orchestrion playing.

  But the odd thing was that, when he remembered the old days, even the summer soup at Lavrov’s that Marakulin loved, and even when he was admitting to his faith, Plotnikov was never once curious and never once even thought to ask how Marakulin was managing, and what was even odder was that, though never taking his eyes off him, he seemed to see him as someone completely different, not Marakulin, but whom—God only knows. But perhaps he saw him precisely as one whose affairs you didn’t ask about. After all, you didn’t ask the Iverskaia Virgin how she was faring! It seemed outlandish and strange.

  Marakulin spent one more day at the Plotnikovs’ house. Plotnikov took him out to the warehouse at Ilyinka, then to the Tverskaia police station to see Arkady Pavlovich, but to Plotnikov’s great regret he turned out not to be there, and in the evening he saw Marakulin off at the railway station. Saying goodbye, he repeated once again that he had faith in him as he did in God, and that if he were just to see him, he would rise from his deathbed, meow like a mangy cat, and turn into a man again.

  At night, when the train had passed the station at Klin, Marakulin suddenly asked himself: had the whole Moscow visit been just a dream?

  Everything had been outlandish and strange: both the way Plotnikov had faith in him as he did in God, and how for some reason he had dragged himself over to see the warehouse at Ilyinka, and even to the officer at the Tverskaia police station, Arkady Pavlovich, whereas he had not gone to the Kalitnikovskoe cemetery and, after all, he should have gone to the Kalitnikovskoe without fail and stood at the graves for a while, well, if only to look at them, to look at them and take his leave.

  And a kind of melancholy swept over him.

  1. A mechanical keyboard instrument designed to imitate an orchestra.

  From first thing in the morning Vera Nikolaevna would run around giving massages to her patients, while in the evening she would sit over her textbooks; she was preparing to take her leaving certificate. She had not given up her cherished dream: no matter what it cost she wanted to get into the medical institute. Studying alongside Vera Nikolaevna was Anna Stepanovna, for whom things were not going well at Ledniova’s Model High School.

  Thanks to the existence of some mysterious fund for the provision of uniforms, Ledniova, who was headmistress of the High School, was for the time being paying Vera’s salary out of her own pocket, and this generous subsidy was handed over to her with Ledniova’s favorite deliberations about good works in general, about the decline in morality, and about her own sacrifices: in her very own High School she was giving lessons without any pay.

  According to Anna Stepanovna, God alone knew what was going on in the High School. Model chaos reigned in the model school. It was not that the school let the children do what they liked—pupils on a long leash, as it were—no, it was not a question of their being mischievous; the teachers valued the pupils as the resource that was bringing in the funds, and the children prized highly such an attitude toward them. Of course, no punishments were prescribed, and the school had to push pupils’ marks up so high that the parents would never think for an instant about taking their daughters away from Ledniova and enrolling them in some other teaching establishment. Apart from that, Ledniova herself, the headmistress, really did give lessons, and she not only did so, but she liked to be present at lessons taught by her other staff, testing her unpaid teachers by asking them questions. And everything was far removed from the prescribed curriculum and completely different from what was in the textbooks approved and sanctioned by the ministry; thus, in the great French Revolution it was not Robespierre and Marat who had been active, as taught by accepted tradition—far from it: what did Robespierre and Marat matter?—no, it was Hugh Capet who had been active and perished for his misdeeds along with King Louis.

  Model chaos was completed by model overcrowding and model cold in the Model High School. The cold was as cold as it can get; the stoves were never stoked—and that not only in the classrooms, as should have been done for the proper control of pupils’ health, but even in the teachers’ common room. It is true that the children seemed to feel no particular hardship; they jumped and ran and danced—there was regular uproar in the High School—but somehow it was not very fitting for the teachers to raise such a din. There is no way you can make a squabble without making a noise, and it was not appropriate for them to be noisy. Headmistress Ledniova had just one reply to all their complaints:

  “That’s as may be,” the headmistress would say, “but you should have seen what i
t was like in the Karasev High School, or you should spend some time in Spasskaia High School. There you would find out what real cold is like.”

  Ledniova’s answer took Anna Stepanovna away from Petersburg and back to her native Purkhovets, and she was reminded of the Purkhovets inspector of people’s schools, the famous Obraztsov.

  And by some sort of family connection that famous Obraztsov was no less than half-brother to Ledniova, born of the same mother.

  Rakov the historian spoke of Obraztsov with great respect. According to Rakov, if Obraztsov had lived in ancient times his name would unfailingly figure among the sayings recorded in the temple at Delphi, and a carving of his head would have graced the top of the Parthenon in Athens. And Rakov the historian was never mistaken.

  When some teacher or other complained to Obraztsov that the school was damp and cold and only six degrees Centigrade, this is what he replied in words worthy of Ledniova herself: “For heaven’s sake, six degrees,” he exclaimed, “that’s real luxury! Now in Pokidoshenskaia Province when I was carrying out inspections there, I once came into a school where the children were all wearing sheepskins, and the teacher was in a fur coat and galoshes. I sat there for a short while and got chilled to the bone myself. I was going to make a note about my visit, but the ink had frozen. The teacher blew and blew into the inkwell, trying to thaw it out, but nothing would work. So I had to leave without making a note. That’s what real cold is like—but you’re in clover here.” And when some teacher or other complained about overcrowding and that the school was filled to the limit, then also Obraztsov was not at a loss: “For heaven’s sake,” he exclaimed, “you’ve not seen real overcrowding! When I was carrying out inspections in Pokidoshenskaia Province, I once went into a church school, an almshouse. There in a single room were the beds of the almswomen, and a goose sitting on its eggs and squawking in its basket, and a calf was mooing, and there in the same room the children were working at five desks. There was nowhere to swing a cat, and the air was so foul that I could hardly breathe. That’s what real overcrowding is like—but in this school you are really in clover!” And to the teacher who told him about the masses of frogs in the school that even crawled under your blanket, Obraztsov gave a rebuke worthy of the Delphic oracle, and Purkhovets or Pokidosh or wherever it was were entered willy-nilly into Rakov’s ancient history. “And there are not really ‘masses’ of them,” Obraztsov exclaimed. “You only have to have a dozen, and you are already calling them ‘masses’! You’ve not seen what ‘masses’ can be! In Pokidoshenskaia Province, when I was carrying out inspections there, I once saw a school in which the ceiling was literally seething with cockroaches. If you slammed the door, then they would pour down like rain. Now that was what you could call ‘masses’! I came back home from the school and took my clothes off, and there were cockroaches all over me, like on the ceiling. My wife even took fright and pushed me out into the frost, where I finished changing my clothes. But here you’re in clover!” Yes, Rakov the historian was right as usual.

  But if we had to inscribe the name of the famous Purkhovets inspector among the other entries in some temple at Delphi, we would have to award an even higher place to the headmistress Ledniova, who possessed the great art of never spending a kopeck from her own funds and who could so cunningly beguile not only her starving teachers but, as people said, even the ministry itself.

  The winter was passing. The black mountain in the yard of the Belgian factory was melting along with the snow. Spring was setting in, bringing Easter with it.

  They felt no joy in welcoming Easter, just as they had felt no joy in celebrating Christmas.

  The clown Vasily Aleksandrovich had been discharged from the hospital. His heel had mended, but all the same it was not so good as it had been; it was as though he had no heels. He could walk to the newspaper seller at the corner of Gorokhovaia Street and back again—that was all he could manage. Instead of taking her leaving certificate, Vera Nikolaevna was advised by a doctor not to delay for a minute but to go somewhere or other in Abbas-Tuman.1 It looked as though there was something wrong with her lungs—there was some sort of squeaking and hissing sound in her lungs as she breathed. Because of the conditions in Ledniova’s model school, Anna Stepanovna’s health simply collapsed, and all she could do was smile with that terrifying, painful smile of hers.

  At Easter everything in the Burkov flats was as it had been every year at the time of the great church festivals for as long as Burkov House had been standing there on the Fontanka: events, incidents, public scenes, fistfights, punch-ups, calling for the police, ending up in a cell, and all this pushed to the limit and with more noise than usual.

  The midwife Lebedeva had another robbery, although this time it wasn’t a winter fur coat that got stolen, but the thirty-two rubles that she had saved up to buy another coat. She had kept the money wrapped in a stocking in a locked chest of drawers. The stocking was still there, but the money was nowhere to be found—it was as though it had been consumed in the stove. Once more 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, 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! The baker Iarygin from the Burkov bakery, after kissing everyone three times on Easter Sunday, lay down to sleep in the evening on a plank above the kneading trough and then apparently turned over awkwardly and fell into the dough. All night he was sucked farther down into the dough. In the morning, when they tried to get hold of him, there were only his legs sticking up out of the trough. A good baker he had been, Iarygin! Stanislav the clerk and Kazimir the fitter, on the lookout for a bit of fun and games, gave Iorkin the passport officer too much to drink. Now Iorkin had been strictly observing the New Year pledge he had given the brother not to drink vodka. Swigging down a tumblerful of strong pepper vodka after long abstinence, he went crazy and plunged into a fight—and all this happening in broad daylight at the time when in the corners young girls wearing little black scarves as well as alms-collector nuns in boots were singing “Christ Is Risen from the Dead” for Gorbachov. Kazimir managed to jump away, but Stanislav came to grief. Iorkin scooped him up and threw him to the ground, forcing him down and pressing on him with his knee. He grabbed him by the head and bit off his nose. The governor’s ginger dog, Inspector General, who just happened to be in the yard, gobbled up Stanislav’s nose there and then. Burkov himself, the former governor who had destroyed his own position, was coming back on Easter Sunday from visiting some important people and accidentally left his Easter egg behind in the cab. It was only on the next day that he realized this. He announced to the police that they must find the Easter cabby and this doubtless remarkable egg, and all the papers reported this the day after. And on that same day the youngsters in Burkov House were playing at conducting a court-martial. They condemned Vaniushka, the doorman Nikanor’s son, to death by hanging, and they carried out the sentence. They dragged the boy into the coach shed and strung him up with reins around his neck. No sooner had they gone away than the feeble boy went blue in the face and nearly choked to death. Finally, and quite without warning, the Oshurkovs, man and wife, committed suicide. Around the yard no one could understand why they had to kill themselves; they had a flat with ten rooms, after all, and all ten rooms filled with all kinds of things, including an aquarium with fish. “They were a good master and mistress,” all the servants said, including both the cooks and the housemaids, none of whom would have been kept on for any length of time, however, because of these various things that the Oshurkovs kept around them in the house.

  One evening soon after Easter, on St. Thomas’s Day, Sergei Aleksandrovich called in at Marakulin’s for a glass of tea, having come to an agreement with the theater about a tour abroad. Vera Nikolaevna and Anna Stepanovna also came to tea, as did the clown Vasily Aleksandrovich with his stick. They talked about Damaskin’s theatr
ical trip abroad, which Sergei Aleksandrovich himself saw as nothing but the salvation of Russia. According to him, Russia was almost choking to death on all these Rakovs, Leshchovs, Obraztsovs, Ledniovas, Burkovs, Gorbachovs, and Kabakovs and for the first time would use its art to reveal itself to the city of great people—to the heart of Europe—to Paris, and would be victorious.

  “Really, why not?” said Sergei Aleksandrovich, getting into his stride as though he were in some sort of theater, “We shall all go together. We all need to go abroad—if only for a month or a week, it doesn’t matter how long—just to have a look and free ourselves from all this stuff in the Burkov flats. You, too, need to go, Vasily. We’ll drag you along with us! And you, Vera Nikolaevna, can forget about Abbas-Tuman!”

  “But what money will we be traveling on?” asked Anna Stepanovna, smiling.

  “What do you mean: on what money?”

  “How on earth can we get to go abroad?” observed Vera Nikolaevna.

  “I will get the money,” said Marakulin, suddenly remembering about Plotnikov. “I shall get a thousand rubles!” He said this with such faith and such assurance that they all believed him and did not talk any more about money.

  The question was decided: they would all go abroad together to the city of great people—to the heart of Europe—to Paris. Their heads were all spinning. They constructed all sorts of notions, developing details with such faith and fervor, as though this journey abroad really was linked with the salvation of Russia—their own salvation, too, and they would only have to cross the frontier for that process to start.

  There, somewhere in Paris, Anna Stepanovna would find her proper place on earth, her heart would be uplifted, and she would smile in a quite different way, and there, somewhere in Paris, Vera Nikolaevna would recover and receive her leaving certificate, and there, somewhere in Paris, Vasily Aleksandrovich would climb onto the trapeze once again and perform wonders, and there, somewhere in Paris, as Sergei Aleksandrovich danced to win the heart of Europe, Marakulin would find his lost happiness.