by Debra Dean
And across the way is more fruit, these artfully arranged like jewels on velvet. Utrecht’s gorgeous, plump grapes are at their peak, his peaches so like the things themselves that their scent perfumes the air. And cherries like a string of bright rubies. One could weep.
The tables on the patio are laden with food. Platters of stuffed mushrooms and roasted vegetables, skewers of grilled lamb. Cheeses and smoked salmon and bowls of fruit nested in a bed of ice. There is an enormous white cake displayed on a separate table, tier upon tier of cake with ornately frosted swirls and leaves and roses, very rococo, like the gilt and plaster walls in the Winter Palace.
At each station, Dmitri asks Marina does she want some green salad? A slice of melon? Smoked salmon and pumpernickel? Long before they reach the end of the line, the plate he is holding for her is heavy with food. He guides her into the white tent and through a maze of tables and seats her next to a tired-looking woman in a bright pink dress.
“I’m getting a plate for myself.” He takes Marina’s purse and places it on the vacant chair to her left, then disappears into the crowd.
“It was a nice ceremony, don’t you think?” the woman in pink asks.
“Da.” Marina nods in polite agreement.
“When Naureen said Katie and Cooper were doing their own vows, I thought, Oh boy. But they were so thoughtful and simple, just right. My friend Tina—do you remember her?—when her daughter got married, they wrote their own vows, but they rhymed. It was awful—love, dove, above kind of stuff. And they had a juggler come down the aisle. I never did figure out what that was supposed to mean.”
The woman’s face is familiar, but Marina can’t place it. There are so many faces to remember, to put names to and order by rooms. Sometimes when she looks, all she sees is a vacant wall. It is frightening, this forgetting, like another little piece of her life slipping away. If she lets all the paintings disappear, she will be gone with them.
“Mama? Here, why don’t you eat a little something.” Marina’s attention is diverted to the plate in front of her.
“I guess these kids have seen that the old words don’t seem to mean much. Till death do us part. They know better.”
After a moment, the woman picks up Marina’s fork and spears a chunk of melon. “How about some fruit?”
Marina nods and takes the proffered fork and puts the melon in her mouth.
“Do you want some lamb?”
When Dmitri returns with his plate, the woman in pink is coaxing Marina through her meal.
“How’s this for irony?” she says. “Me trying to get her to eat?”
“She’s just tired. So many people, it tires her out.”
“Papa, I know. I know about her condition.”
Dmitri looks down into his lap and purses his lips. His chest lifts and falls.
“Andrei and Naureen and I talked last night.”
There is a prolonged silence and Marina’s attention fades away.
“I wish you’d told me.”
“I didn’t want you to worry.”
“She’s my mother.”
Dmitri nods like a chastened child.
“You haven’t touched the salad, Mama.” Marina hears a voice in her ear. “It’s tomatoes and mozzarella. You like tomatoes.”
No one mentions food. It is bad manners to refer to one’s hunger, worse to provoke the hunger of others with memories of meals eaten in the past. But at night, she dreams of feasts. In dreams, she moves inside a Baroque still life, walking down aisles of tables, some heaped with whole fish and glistening hams, others with rabbit and game. The abundance is heady, and she is drunk with the fragrance of apples. Here is a tableau of fruit and flowers, silver bowls heaped with lemons and grapes, and a pomegranate split open to expose a honeycomb of rubies. Goblets are brimming with red and white wines; they glisten with condensation. Next to them, breads and cheeses are carefully arranged on the heavy white linens. For the Baroque painter and his contemporaries, each of these objects was freighted with religious meaning. The red wine and bread symbolize the Eucharist, Christ’s body and blood. The tablecloth is Christ’s shroud. The glass decanter is the Virgin Mary, so pure that light shines through it. Oranges are the fruit of the Garden, but lemons are the bitter fruit of sin.
Her eyes fall on a peach, so ripe and round that she can almost feel the weight of it in her palm. She cannot remember what the peach symbolizes, but as she reaches toward it, she is stopped by the booming voice of Director Orbeli. He warns her that these are national treasures. “These are the lifeblood of the people. We must cradle them in our hearts and minds until they are safely returned.” She is flooded with shame.
When she turns away, a beautiful goddess in a flowing white gown offers her a slice of cake. She leans over and kisses Marina’s cheek.
“Don’t cry, Gran,” she says. “This is a happy day.”
Something far away explodes, a small popping sound like a champagne cork. She is waking up. She hears a stirring in the darkness, a few voices murmuring, and then someone at the far end of the shelter lights a candle. There is whispering; a shell has hit the museum. Her eyes follow the wavering light until it is snuffed out at the top of the steps. The darkness returns.
In the morning, Viktor Alekseevich Krasnov is dead.
There is such a fine line between the living and the dead that his death is detected only when Nadezhda brings him his tea and he does not raise himself from his bed. When Marina awakens, she sees Nadezhda sitting on the pallet with the body of her husband draped over her lap.
“He is gone,” she says flatly. She doesn’t cry, and there is no expression on her face. The tea cools on the floor beside her.
Marina comes and sits down beside her, and they watch the archaeologist as though he might move, though of course he will not. She is momentarily reminded of Veronese’s Pietà, a sixteenth-century Italian painting depicting the dead Christ hanging in the arms of Mary. In the flickering light of the single candle, the hollows in his face are sunken in deep shadow, and the skin pulled over his nose and cheekbones is like beeswax. She has always assumed that the Italian painter exaggerated the chiaroscuro to heighten the drama, the contrasts of light and dark, warm tones and cold, were so marked, but here it is.
It is strange what one can get used to. Every day now, people around her die, people she knew. At first this was cause for tears, but it turns out that human beings have a limited capacity for grief. Now, when the residents of Bomb Shelter #3 wake up in the morning, someone among them will have expired quietly in the night.
They are supposed to report the death, but if they do not, Viktor’s ration coupons can be shared between them for the remainder of the month. This is what Marina is thinking. Though the thought shames her, it persists: two hundred and fifty more grams of bread a day, one hundred and twenty-five grams apiece for the next eighteen days. Some people who lose loved ones are unlucky—the person dies at the end of the month and his death is of no benefit to anyone.
“He was a good man,” she says to Nadezhda.
Nadezhda sighs hollowly. “At least the children are not here to see their father like this,” she says.
Marina leaves her and goes to the bakery to get their bread rations. When she returns two hours later, Nadezhda seems not to have moved. Olga Markhaeva is sitting next to her, and Marina guesses that it is due to her that Viktor’s body has been moved over to the far side of the pallet. A blanket has been pulled up under his chin and his eyes have been closed.
Olga whispers to Marina, “I didn’t want her to sit alone. Did you hear? A shell blew out the skylight in the Spanish Hall last night. Every last pane of glass.”
Marina nods. News travels fast. In line at the bakery, several members of the Hermitage staff asked Marina to pass their condolences on to Nadezhda. She remembers the bread in her pocket and her ever-present hunger surges. It would be rude to pull out the bread without offering some to Olga.
“Please stay, Olga Markhaeva, and eat. W
e have extra now.” She unwraps the three thin slices of damp bread from their paper.
Olga quickly averts her eyes. “No, no,” she demurs and pats her stomach as though she is full. “I’ve eaten. Besides, I must go help with the cleanup. Of course it would be snowing.” She shakes her head wearily.
“Of course.”
All month, it has been too cold to snow. No one can remember such a winter, not even Anya. Minus thirty. Minus twenty-six. Minus thirty-five. But now, when the windows shatter, it warms up enough to snow.
“These people who believe in a god, why would they worship someone who does this?” Olga complains. “Ah, well, don’t get me started. Woe rides on woe and uses woe for a whip. I’ll leave you two to your breakfast.” She pulls herself to her feet and leaves.
Marina removes her bread from the paper and passes the two remaining slices to Nadezhda, who carefully divides Viktor’s ration in exact halves and returns a portion to Marina.
They eat the bread in silence.
Marina is already planning what must be done. They will have to fetch water to prepare the body and then find something to wrap it in. There are no coffins left. Even the museum carpenter, who built hundreds of coffins, was wrapped in a blanket when he died last week. There is no wood left for the dead. For now, the best they can do is to take Viktor down to the cellar room beneath the library that serves as the Hermitage’s morgue. Somehow they will have to carry him.
After they have finished their bread, Marina takes a bucket outside to the embankment fronting the Neva. She eases herself down the slippery steps to the river and waits in line to draw water through a hole cut in the ice. Full, the bucket is too heavy for her to lift, and she must pour more than half the water back out in order to carry it. Shifting the weight from one arm to the other, she trudges back across the street, through the museum, and downstairs to the cellar. While Marina was gone, Nadezhda has managed to undress Viktor’s body. The sight of his emaciated corpse is too awful, too horribly intimate. Eyes averted, Marina helps her to lift his body onto a bench and then pours the icy water over his limbs while her aunt gently washes.
They dress Viktor in fresh clothes and swaddle him in a sheet. With careful stitches, Nadezhda sews closed the shroud. After they have rested, each of them takes one end of the shroud and they try to carry the body through the shelter, but it quickly becomes apparent that they will have to drag it. Even so, they have to stop every few meters. Though the corpse weighs hardly anything for a grown man, it is an awkward bundle, and they struggle to heave it up the steps leading out of the shelter. The sheet catches and tears on the rough stone, and when the body threatens to slide out, they must stop midway so Marina can bind the unraveling end more tightly.
As they pass through the halls on the ground floor, dragging the corpse of Viktor behind them, Marina marks their passage past bare glass cases, past the missing bronzes and funerary of ancient Urartu. The only evidence of Viktor Alekseevich Krasnov’s lifework is shadows imprinted on the felt of the shelves. He never finished his book, she thinks. The pages of the unfinished manuscript are still on the desk, and later she will have to determine what is to be done with them.
Here, entombed in a glass showcase, is Viktor’s twin, another desiccated skeleton, leathery skin and bones with a length of linen draped over the hips. The mummy of the Egyptian priest Petese, it was left behind in the evacuation. The living that remained behind have suffered from the ravages of a relentlessly bitter winter, but the mummy, other than exuding a little salt which is regularly wiped off, is just as it was three thousand years ago.
When they enter the mortuary, Marina tries not to notice all the other swaddled corpses lining the room. They place Viktor’s body in a corner. Nadezhda slumps down beside the remains of her husband and closes her eyes.
“Come,” Marina urges and tugs gently at her aunt’s coat. “You must get up.” She is afraid that Nadezhda will simply die beside her husband. “We will go out tomorrow,” she promises her, “and see about finding a coffin. We will bury him next to his mother and father.” She has little hope that they will be successful. Even if they could manage a coffin, there is nothing to pay a grave digger. But she would promise anything now.
Nadezhda opens her eyes, and they travel slowly up the length of Marina’s outstretched arm.
“I won’t be able to do it alone,” Marina threatens.
Nadezhda nods, her eyes vacant and listless, and she holds out her hand for Marina to help her to her feet.
When they reach the staff entrance and step into the cold air, they are breathing heavily. Their breath rises in vaporous puffs. Nadezhda coughs and Marina hears the rattle. They stand for a moment in silence, looking out across Palace Square. It is a Tuesday afternoon, it has stopped snowing, and there are no new tracks in the entire square, no sound except for the rap of hammering on the roof above them. Soldiers have come to board over the shattered skylight.
The sun is setting already, and the clouds are tinted pink on their undersides.
“When I go, you must try to bury me beside him,” Nadezhda says.
Marina nods. It would be pointless to argue that neither of them is going to die. Already they move through their days like ghosts, one foot in front of the other, thin as vapor.
No one weeps anymore, or if they do, it is over small things, inconsequential moments that catch them unprepared. What is left that is heartbreaking? Not death: death is ordinary. What is heartbreaking is the sight of a single gull lifting effortlessly from a street lamp. Its wings unfurl like silk scarves against the mauve sky, and Marina hears the rustle of its feathers. What is heartbreaking is that there is still beauty in the world.
Helen is startled out of sleep by the sound of knocking. In the unfamiliar darkness, she gropes for the lamp and snaps on the switch. The travel alarm on the bedside table reads 2:39. The knocking at her door is soft but persistent, and then she hears her father’s voice.
“Elena? Elena?”
She wrestles off the cotton coverlet, stumbles around the bed, and then struggles groggily with the chain on the door before she can open it.
Dmitri is standing on the other side of the door, in the dimly lit hallway. An old wool robe is open over his thin pajamas. Tufts of white hair sprout at wild angles from his scalp, giving him the appearance of a lunatic. His translucent, gnarled feet are bare.
“She’s gone,” he says.
“Gone? What do you mean?”
“I woke up and she wasn’t there. I put the suitcase in front of the door, but she moved it.”
“Is she in the bathroom, Papa?”
“No.” His shaky fingers fiddle with a loose end of the robe’s belt. “I went up and down the halls and to the lobby. She’s gone.” Dmitri’s eyes are rheumy, and Helen sees again how very frail and elderly her father is.
“It’s okay, Papa. I’m sure she’s around somewhere.” Her voice exudes calmness, the voice that used to soothe her boys when they had taken a bad spill off their bikes or the monkey bars. “Here, sit down.” She grabs some clothes off the chair. “I’ll get dressed and go find her.”
Her father looks at the chair blankly but doesn’t sit. “I was so tired. Usually, I hear her.”
Helen takes the clothes she is holding and disappears into the bathroom. She keeps talking through the door as she changes.
“She’s done this before?”
“She gets up and wanders the house at night sometimes. But she’s safe there. I put covers on the door handles so she can’t open them.”
Helen splashes some water on her face, runs a comb through her hair, and emerges from the bathroom dressed in the slacks and shirt she wore yesterday. She slips on a pair of sandals.
Dmitri is too agitated to wait in his room, even after Helen explains that Marina might come back and he should be there. So she waits while he puts on pants and shoes, and they leave the door of the room ajar just in case. The two of them check the halls one more time before they descend the stai
rs into the lobby. Despite her father, Helen has somehow fully expected to find Marina sitting quietly in one of the high-backed chairs. She isn’t there, and there is no night manager on duty to ask if an elderly lady has passed through. Helen walks around the front desk and taps on the door marked “Office.” It is locked. Another door, not locked, turns out to be a narrow supply closet with mops and a vacuum and stores of toilet paper.
Outside, a sodium lamp washes Front Street with a peachy light. Helen steps out into the cool night and walks down the sidewalk a few yards in one direction and then the other, peering past darkened storefronts into the shadows cast by their awnings.
“Mama?” she calls. The streetlight is buzzing and she hears the monotonous bark of a dog somewhere off in the distance, but otherwise the only sound is the clack of her sandals on the sidewalk. It comes to her then that her mother may actually have wandered off.
“Any idea where she might go?”
Dmitri shakes his head mutely.
She heads to the corner and looks up Spring Street, sees nothing but a few cars angle parked in front of dark shops, and then she jogs the half block back to the inn.
“Let’s get the car. She can’t have gotten very far, but it might be faster. Wait here.”
Helen uses her room key to unlock the front door of the inn and climbs breathlessly up the stairs. All the way up she debates whether to call the police. Is there even a police force to call on this island? She has no idea, but first she’d better make sure her mother’s really gone, she decides.
She checks her parents’ room one more time, then grabs her handbag and a sweater out of her own room and returns downstairs. Her father is standing just where she left him, a little old man in a pajama top and unzipped trousers, his shoulders drooping under the weight of his misery. She takes his hand and says lightly, “It’s going to be all right, Papa.”