“You should be ashamed of yourself!” he whispered angrily at someone behind Nina.

She turned her head and saw the blue-eyed soldier she had seen on the tram.

“You should take off your hat when you come into a church!” the server told him.

“But I’m a woman, and women have to cover their heads in church,” said the newcomer, throwing open her greatcoat. “You can check if you like.”

The server faltered. “Good gracious… and I thought—but what a face!”

It was, indeed, difficult to tell from her face that she was a woman. She had no eyebrows to speak of, her throat sagged, and half of her front tooth had been broken off. She had the look of a heavy drinker.

Nina approached the icon of St. Nicholas the Miracle Worker, the protector of those in trouble, and began to pray under her breath. “Help me, desperate and sinful as I am, to find a way to live.”

As she was praying, the blue-eyed soldier-woman stood behind her, scrutinizing her intently.

“What’s your name?” she asked at last.

“Nina.”

“Really? That’s my name too. Only I don’t like it—everyone calls me Shilo.”

She stroked the golden dragon on the back of Nina’s coat. “That’s some coat. Present from your man, is it?”

Nina shook her head. “No, I made it myself.”

“So, you’re one of us, are you? A working-class girl? I thought you had a lover working for the state department store. I knew a guy who was the boss of a chemist’s shop; he gave all sorts of presents to his girlfriends—condoms, douche bulbs, you name it. A nice guy, but he got shot for fraud.”

“I don’t have a lover,” said Nina.

“You must have someone! Is it a husband?” Shilo opened her eyes wide and nodded sympathetically. “So, they’ve arrested him, have they? And confiscated his property? The police have gone crazy lately. They’re picking up every profiteer they can find and arresting them under Article 7 of the Criminal Code.”

Nina did not bother to contradict her. The woman was clearly unhinged.

“Here, will you sell me your coat?” asked Shilo suddenly. “I love it.”

“I don’t have anything else to wear though,” Nina replied.

“We can swap. I’ll get a coat for you. I can give you some money too.”

“Citizens, the church is closing,” they heard the server say.

Shilo grabbed Nina by the arm. “Let’s go back to mine—I can sort it out.”

“Where?”

“You can stay over at my place. You don’t have anywhere else to go, do you?”

Nina glanced in wonder at the icon. St. Nicholas had sent her a miracle after all.

4

Shilo led Nina to an ancient monastery in the center of the city. A lantern hung above the iron-bound gates, and from time to time, its faint light fell on the writing of a notice on the gate: “—Corrective Labor.”

Nina was too hungry and too cold to feel anything, including fear. She did not care where Shilo was taking her, to a monastery or a homeless shelter.

Shilo knocked quietly at a side gate. “Zakhar, open up!” she called.

Behind a metal grille in the window, a head appeared for a moment. “Is that you, Shilo?”

“That’s right.”

“And who’s that with you?”

“A seamstress. Fyodor Stepanych asked me to find one.”

The bolt rasped, and the gate opened. “Come in.”

Under a low stone arch, a guardhouse had been set up, lit dimly by a paraffin light. The gatekeeper, a strapping young soldier, looked at Nina with suspicion.

“Show me your documents!” he demanded.

“She doesn’t have any,” said Shilo. The next minute, Nina saw her take a purse out of her pocket—Nina’s own—and count off a couple of rubles for the soldier.

So, she was the one who robbed me, Nina thought, amazed.

What should she do? Demand her money back? But Shilo would never give it back, and then Nina would end up out on the street.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s go,” ordered Shilo.

“Don’t be afraid if you see a skull lying about,” she added a moment later as they walked over a board that had been put down over a puddle. “This used to be an old cemetery for noble families. Some of our girls messed it up a bit. Time was, you’d dig up some dead fellow out, and there’s enough gold on him to open a jewelry store. Then we’d have a party with Fyodor Stepanych; he’d bring vodka and food, and we’d have a feast that went on for days. But there are no more graves left to rob now—nothing but bones. Fyodor Stepanych keeps telling us to bury them, but they keep coming up again. Seems they don’t like being in a common grave, so they come climbing up out of the ground.”

“Who’s Fyodor Stepanych?” asked Nina

Shilo laughed. “He’s in charge of this center of corrective labor—prison, that is. I’ve been in here two weeks. It’s not bad.”

“You’ve been in here?” asked Nina in shock. “Do you mean to say you’re a prisoner?”

“That’s right. It’s fine so long as they give you a sentence without solitary confinement, taking into account your ‘low cultural level and difficult material circumstances.’ Fyodor Stepanych sends us out to make money, and we share it with him.”

“Doesn’t anyone run away?”

“We’d have to be fools to run away from here. Just you try finding a room to yourself outside with free food! They even take us to the bathhouse on Fridays, and the children even hold concerts for us to help reform us quicker.”

Nina gave a nervous laugh, despite herself. Well, she would have to live in a corrective workhouse for the time being. At least Alov would be unlikely to find her here.

Shilo walked onto the porch of a low one-story building and opened the door with a squeak. “In you come. Make yourself at home.”

The dark room smelled of candle wax and dust. Nina looked around. The room with its barred window was empty except for a pot-bellied stove, a bundle of firewood, and a trestle bed covered with a blanket.

“It’s a good place here,” Shilo said, spreading her greatcoat on the floor in front of the stove. “The angels often come and visit me in this room. I sit here with them at the window. We have a smoke, and they take all my sins away. It’s better than stain remover, I tell you.”

“Please,” asked Nina, “couldn’t you give me back my money? Everything I had was in that purse.”

“All right. But I get your coat. Deal?” Shilo tossed Nina her purse. “And I’ll find you another. Don’t you worry.”

“Are you going to steal one?”

Shilo did not answer. She reached under the mattress and took out a hunk of bread and a battered flask.

“Here,” she said, handing Nina the bread. “This is for you. And this is for me.”

She took a swig from the flask, and Nina caught an acrid whiff of home-brewed vodka.

“I like you, you know,” said Shilo a moment later. “It’s not even the coat. It’s just something about you.”

“What about me?” Nina asked.

“You’re like me, you see,” said Shilo. “Before they threw me out the window.”

Nina chewed away at the bread, feeling that nothing would surprise her any more.

5

They were awoken the next morning by a loud male voice. “So, who’s this then?”

Nina, who had slept on the greatcoat on the floor, sat up with a start to see a small, gray-haired Chinese man with a sheepskin coat over his shoulders.

“Hello, Fyodor Stepanych,” Shilo greeted the man cheerfully. “I’ve brought you a seamstress. Just look at what she can do!”

She handed the man Nina’s velvet coat. He examined it critically.

“Who taught you to sew?” he asked Nina.

“My parents were tailors,” she explained.

“Listen, boss. Take her on, why don’t you?” pleaded Shilo. “She can live here. She don’t have a place to go anyway—her husband’s been arrested for profiteering.”

Fyodor Stepanych scratched his chin thoughtfully. “I’ll need to give her a job and see how she manages. If you show you can do it,” he told Nina, “we’ll take you on. You can run courses in cutting and sewing. Let’s go!”

Nina could hardly believe her luck. If they let her stay here and paid her for her work, she would be able to raise the money for a ticket to Vladivostok.

Shilo gave her a blanket to keep her warm. Nina wrapped herself up in it and set off after Fyodor Stepanych.

In the daytime, the monastery did not look at all sinister. Nina saw brick walls with whitewash crumbling off in places, bare bushes, and puddles. It was clean and tidy, and the paths bore the traces of having been swept by a broom. There were no skulls anywhere to be seen.

In front of the ancient cathedral, a row of women stood performing exercises, supervised by a prison guard with a loudhailer. As she shouted out the order, they all raised their arms.

“Up on your toes!” she boomed. “Now breathe out!”

The prisoners obligingly breathed out small clouds of steam.

“I’ve introduced morning exercises to keep them fit,” Fyodor Stepanych said. “All our women here are victims of capitalism. Thieves and prostitutes, you know, and I reform them through labor. Nobody here is idle.”

With his captive women, he was like an estate owner with two hundred serfs. Some he used as groundskeepers and domestic staff, but most had been set to work making funeral wreaths and foot wrappings for Red Army soldiers.

Fyodor Stepanych made no secret of the fact that he sent the most accomplished pickpockets out to ply their trade.

“They only steal from the Nepmen,” he said. “And their number’s up soon, anyway.”

Nina knew already that “Nepmen” was the name for entrepreneurs who had been given permission to engage in manufacturing and trade since 1921. The NEP, or New Economic Policy, had been introduced to restore the economy to its prewar level. After this, the idea was that the class of Nepmen was to be “liquidated,” and the country would begin to build a truly socialist society in which all the means of production belonged to the state, and private enterprise would be forbidden by law.