by Gill Paul
Maria felt a tingling on her scalp. She put down the bowl she was holding in case she dropped it, then sat heavily on a chair. “I should be overjoyed,” she commented. “I loathe that man. I blame him for the death of my husband and the disappearance of my daughter. He’s the one who engineered a regime in which Russians’ lives were worth less than air.” She gestured with a flick of her hand. “Yet now that he is dead, I just feel flat.”
“He should have answered for his crimes in a court of law,” Ludmilla said. “I would like to have seen him get twenty-five years in a gulag.”
“There would have been justice in that,” Maria agreed. “I wonder what will happen now. Probably life will go on as before and we won’t even notice the difference.”
When she went out with the children the next morning, church bells were tolling.
“Nice music,” Anna said.
“Yes, I like the sound too,” Maria said, stopping to tuck a lock of blond hair under her granddaughter’s woolly hat and adjust the blanket over Alexei’s knees.
* * *
In the weeks after Stalin’s death, new political leaders took over and the rhetoric changed subtly. It was announced that thousands of political prisoners were to be freed from gulags, and as early as Easter, the husband of one of their neighbors in Petrodvorets returned. One day he came out to sit on a wooden bench in the garden while Maria was weeding the vegetable patch and the children were chasing each other and shrieking.
She went over to introduce herself—his name was Viktor—and was horrified to see up close how raddled he looked. His face was beetroot-colored, and she recognized the cause as exposure to the elements rather than the reddish hue some men took on from excessive drinking. He was bone-thin and walked with the aid of a stick although he could only be around forty, perhaps younger. More than that, he looked defeated. There was a hopelessness about him that made Maria wonder what kind of person he had been when he was first sent to the gulag.
It seemed intrusive to ask about his experiences there, so instead she told him the names of her grandchildren and chatted about the vegetables she was growing.
“You have no idea how extraordinary it is simply to sit on a bench doing nothing,” he said. “If I’d tried this back in Gdovsky, I would have been beaten half to death and had my rations slashed.”
Maria shook her head, lost for words.
“I can’t talk to my wife about it. I couldn’t bear for her to know how bad it was.”
“What work did you do?” Maria asked.
“Felling trees mostly. Logging. Summer and winter, rain and shine.” He looked at his hands and Maria saw that his fingers were bent into claws and the knuckles swollen. “I’m lucky I didn’t starve to death. Many men did. Others were killed by falling trees or the cold or the beatings.”
“I don’t think you were lucky,” Maria sympathized. “Far from it.”
“Do you know what I was sentenced for?” His eyes met hers. “I told a joke about a Party official back in 1937. What an idiot. That was no year for joking.”
“My husband was executed that same year for being a kulak,” Maria told him. “And he couldn’t have been less of a kulak. He was a shock worker, a Party man through and through.”
“At least we can talk about it now,” Viktor said. “Times have changed to that extent.”
“I’m still cautious when talking to strangers,” Maria said. “Things don’t change overnight. But you are my neighbor and you have suffered so much that I trust you. If you ever want to talk about your experiences and don’t want to distress your wife, you can tell me. I’m an old lady who has lived through many sorrows and I am strong enough to listen to more.”
Viktor lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Thank you,” he whispered, close to tears. “No one has been kind to me for such a long time that it makes me emotional. Forgive me.”
* * *
That evening, after the children were in bed, Maria told Stepan and Ludmilla of her conversation with Viktor.
“He seems broken,” she said. “I don’t know if he can ever recover from what he has been through. Sixteen years have been stolen from him: years when he missed his children growing up, when his wife struggled to cope on her own. I don’t understand . . .” She turned to Stepan. “You were a good little Bolshevik when you were younger. Did you change your views after what happened to your father?”
“I changed my views long before then,” he said, “because of what my father told me about the informers and purges at his work. The ideas behind Communism are sound, but the wrong people got into power.”
“Why did the Russian people not rise up in protest?” Maria asked. “They rose to overthrow the Romanovs, but not Stalin. Explain it to me.”
Ludmilla replied, “The fear crept up gradually. It was easier to keep quiet while the NKVD were terrorizing someone else’s family. When my mother was arrested I couldn’t find a single person to testify on her behalf. They said she shouldn’t have been so stupid as to make a stand over religion. They thought silence would keep them safe—then they started getting arrested anyway.”
“Peter spoke up for other people,” Maria said bitterly, “and look where it got him.”
She hadn’t been to the cemetery for over a month now. She would go that weekend, she decided, so she could tell him that Irina was getting married to Ludmilla’s cousin; the wedding was set for spring the following year. Maybe there would be more grandchildren soon. She certainly hoped so. Perhaps Irina could be persuaded to move to Petrodvorets so Maria could look after her little ones alongside Stepan’s.
* * *
One morning in late April, Maria took the children to the palace’s Lower Park. The ice on the ponds was thinning and they entertained themselves throwing stones to crack it.
“Stay away from the edge,” she called as she sat on a bench to watch. The cold was still bitter and she didn’t fancy leaping in to rescue one of them. An image sprang into her head of Katya falling through a hole in the Ice Road. She couldn’t bear to think of her struggling and choking in panic in the freezing water. Pray God death had been instantaneous.
Her thoughts turned to her childhood, when Anastasia fell through the ice on one of the ponds at the Catherine Palace. Maria had warned her it might not take her weight, but she insisted it would and stepped out: one foot, then the next. There had been an eerie cracking sound before she fell through, arms in the air, coattails flying, and disappeared underwater. Maria was the only person nearby. She screamed with the full force of her lungs and kept screaming in blind panic. Should she crawl out onto the ice to save her sister? Anastasia’s head bobbed up, then disappeared again. Was she going to die?
One of the gardeners came running full pelt along the path and Maria pointed, screaming, “She’s in there! She fell!”
The man ripped off his jacket and spread it on the ice, then lay full length along it. He reached into the hole, groping around, then ducked his head underwater. Maria held her breath. It seemed an age but was probably only seconds before he grabbed Anastasia’s arm and pulled her up. She gave a loud gasp, spluttering for breath.
Another gardener arrived and between them they managed to ease her carefully across the ice then back onto dry land. Maria was trembling in shock, and she burst into tears as they wrapped Anastasia in their jackets. The second gardener scooped her in his arms and ran with her toward the palace.
“You’re OK,” the first one told Maria, patting her shoulder. “Don’t worry. She’ll be fine.”
Maria remembered the terrible weight of guilt. “I should have tried to save her,” she sobbed.
“Then we’d have been rescuing the two of you.” He smiled, and his face was kind. “You did the right thing. Mighty powerful lungs you’ve got.”
Anastasia did not even catch cold after her winter dip, but Maria got a fierce scolding from her mother. “Honestly, I thought you were the sensible one. Why on earth did you not stop her? I’m disappointed in you.�
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That had been a common refrain in her childhood: she’d been a disappointment. She hoped none of her children felt that way. There was never any need to chastise her grandchildren, who were happy, affectionate creatures. She watched as they hunted for more stones, the air filled with their joyful shrieks. She loved the way their chuckles came from deep in their bellies. It was a sound she never tired of.
In the distance she could see two men and a woman walking arm in arm down the path from the palace. One of them seemed unsteady on his feet and the younger man was helping him. As they passed the Grand Cascade and turned toward her, she recognized Stepan and Irina and waved. What was Irina doing here? Who was the older man, and why were they coming to see her? Something about him seemed familiar, but she couldn’t think what.
They kept advancing, and when they were just ten yards away, Maria rose to her feet and blinked hard. The old man looked like Peter. Was her mind playing tricks? Was she going mad? Her heart began racing. His hair was silver, his face had deep grooves like the trunk of an ancient tree, but surely those were his eyes?
“Maria, my love,” he said, and it was Peter’s voice. But it couldn’t be. That wasn’t possible.
Maria screamed at the top of her voice, just as hard as she had screamed when Anastasia fell through the ice. She kept screaming, the sound erupting from her lungs in powerful bursts. The little ones were scared and scurried to hide behind their father. Tears began to stream down her cheeks. If this was a trick, it was the cruelest trick ever.
“It’s all right, Mama,” Irina said, reaching for her arm. “It’s him. It’s Papa. He’s back.”
Maria stopped screaming for a moment to stare at him, and that was when Peter stepped forward and pulled her into his arms.
Chapter 57
FOR SEVERAL MINUTES THEY STOOD, ARMS WRAPPED around each other. Maria breathed in the old familiar Peter scent, but still her brain kept protesting. It can’t be. This must be a dream. Any minute now I will wake up.
She pulled back to look at him and saw his cheeks were streaked with tears, like her own.
“You’re trembling,” he said. “I’m sorry to shock you.”
“I d-don’t understand,” she stammered. “I have been visiting your grave for over fifteen years. In Preobrazhenskoe Cemetery. This can’t be.”
His hand stroked her cheek and she felt self-conscious about her wrinkles and the hair that had gone white as goose feathers. She was no longer the pretty girl he had married but a plump elderly woman of fifty-three. Since the end of the siege she couldn’t stop herself eating. He was thin, so thin. She could feel his ribs through the coarse ragged cloth of his jacket.
“H-how is this possible? They told me you were executed.” Could he be a relative of Peter’s? No; she was sure it was him. She looked from Stepan to Irina, and they were grinning from ear to ear, her grandchildren puzzled but silent in Stepan’s arms.
Peter spoke in a voice that was raw with emotion. “I was sentenced to death by the troika and led out to a van thinking I was about to die. But instead of facing a firing squad, I was taken on a journey of several weeks to a gulag in Norilsk, in the Arctic Circle. I was there until recently.”
“But why didn’t you write? If I’d only known . . .” Maria still couldn’t believe it.
“None of us were allowed to contact our relatives. We were sentenced to twenty-five years without communication privileges. I tried many times to get a message to you, but . . .” A shadow passed across his eyes. “It was not possible.”
Maria looked at his face and saw a world of suffering there. She wondered what he saw in hers. There was time enough for all that. For now, she took his chin in her hands and pulled his mouth to hers, closing her eyes and sinking into the sensation of his kiss. Her heart was beating so hard she was sure he would feel it. His hands were on her back, holding her close, and she wanted time to stop so that she could savor this moment and live in it forever.
* * *
“Babushka, who is that man?” a little voice asked.
Maria broke away and smiled. “These are your grandchildren,” she told Peter. “Anna and Alexei.”
He seemed overwhelmed as he looked at their luminous faces, so full of possibility. “Hello,” he said in a croaky voice. They peered at him with curiosity.
“How long have you known?” Maria asked Irina.
“Not long,” she said. “He came to the apartment in Leningrad this morning and I brought him straight here. Isn’t it wonderful?”
Maria still felt stunned. All those conversations she’d had with Peter in the cemetery; the mushrooms she thought he had led her to; the times when she could swear he had answered her. It was too much to take in.
“I must sit down for a while,” she said. “I need to think.”
“Irina and I will take the children up to the palace,” Stepan offered. “You two need time alone.”
They sat on the bench, hand in hand, bodies curved toward each other. Maria traced the line of a new scar on Peter’s brow, touched the cowlick hair, cupped his chin in her hand. She felt unbelievably slow-witted.
“Why did they not execute you?” she asked.
“I think they made a mistake,” Peter told her. “I was simply bundled into the wrong van. If I’m right, it means someone who was intended for a gulag was executed in my place.”
Maria thought back to the typed list the Bolshoi Dom officer had held. “Did you get the package I sent you in jail? The blanket and the warm clothes?” She remembered the unattended pile of parcels on the floor.
“No, nothing. But I knew you and Stepan would be doing all you could, and that comforted me.”
Maria tried to respond, but fresh tears came. She leaned her cheek against his so their tears mingled. “I missed you so much. I never stopped missing you,” she whispered.
“Me too,” he replied. “The only thing that kept me alive was picturing the day I would see you again. And now it’s here, it’s more magical than I could ever have imagined.”
* * *
It was too cold to sit outside for long, so they walked slowly back to the palace. Ludmilla came rushing over to introduce herself and flung her arms around Peter in tearful greeting.
“Why is everyone crying?” Anna asked.
“Because we’re happy,” Ludmilla told her.
“That’s silly,” Anna said with a frown, and the adults laughed.
They set off back to the flat together.
“You’re limping. What happened?” Peter asked Maria, gripping her arm.
Stepan answered for her. “When Mama broke her leg during the siege, she set it herself using a table leg.”
“You did what?”
She shrugged. “What else could I do? Anyway, it worked.”
She didn’t want to talk of that. She kept thinking of questions she wanted to ask Peter, things she wanted to tell him.
“I suppose Irina told you she is getting married soon,” she said.
“I look forward to being at the wedding,” he replied, smiling at his daughter.
Maria continued. “Did you see Yelena this morning? She works in a clothes shop; she’s crazy about fashion. And Mikhail is a carpenter.”
“No one has mentioned Katya, and Irina was vague when I asked,” Peter said. “Where does she live now?”
The group fell silent. Maria hesitated before replying. “She went missing after I sent her and Mikhail across the Ice Road during the war,” she told him. “I have been searching for years. I’m sure she will find us. It’s only a matter of time.”
Peter turned to Stepan, and Maria saw a look pass between them that she chose to ignore.
“After all,” she continued, “you found us, so it proves miracles do happen.” She squeezed his hand hard, willing him not to ask any more.
“Tell Papa how you helped all those people whose family members had been arrested by the NKVD,” Stepan said, pride in his tone.
“It was nothing.” She addressed
Peter. “I got to know an officer who was friendlier than most and he helped me track down prisoners who had disappeared in the system, so I could tell their families. He was the one who told me you were buried in Preobrazhenskoe.” She shook her head. “I suppose that’s what it says in the records.”
“I’m glad to hear there was one officer with humanity in that loathsome organization, but your missing persons work was always a bit risky.” He smiled fondly. “I suspect if I had been here I’d have tried to talk you out of it.”
“I doubt you would have managed,” Stepan told him. “I tried.”
They arrived at the apartment and the men sat at the kitchen table while Maria, Irina, and Ludmilla bustled around cooking. The children brought their toys to show this man who was their new grandfather, and he smiled to see the wooden ones he had made long ago being enjoyed by a new generation. He tested the wheels of the steam engine against his palm.
“These could use a little oil,” he told Alexei. “They are getting stiff. I’ll show you how to do it.”
Tears came to Maria’s eyes again and she knew they would keep doing so for some time to come. It was incredible. She kept touching Peter’s shoulder, catching his eye, fussing over him, as if he might disappear again if she stopped.
After they had eaten, she ran a hot bath for him and sat on the edge, soaping his bony back, where the skin was scarred and calloused, the ribs jutting out just as hers used to during the siege.
“Our neighbor Viktor has come back from a gulag,” she said. “He told me it is impossible to talk to his wife about it because it would upset her too much. I want you to know that you can tell me anything you like. I am stronger now than I was when you left—”