Now he walked a circle around me, hands behind his back, as if I was a bit of statuary someone had deposited in his yard. Pulled off my cap and dropped it at my feet in the snow. “Who are you?” he asked in perfect Russian.

“Misha,” I said. “What about you, Pops?”

He glowered at my insolence. “How did you find your way here? Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m from here. I knew the way.” I didn’t want to say how. For all he knew I was the son—or daughter—of a servant. “I was living in Petrograd, but it’s a bad time in the city. I decided to come back.”

His face betrayed nothing. He came closer, sniffed my hair. He looked like the strong man in a circus, and he smelled of something. Incense? Saddle leather? “You’ve been in the village. What do they say about us?”

“They didn’t say anything. Only that your business was your own.” I didn’t look at him. I kept my eyes fixed ahead, like a good soldier.

“Until it’s not,” he said. He kept walking, his gait that of a military man, commanding. Perhaps he was a deserter, a noncommissioned officer hiding out, hoping to avoid the new draft. But who were these others? I counted six of them, four young women, including the gypsy, plus the young man who’d been chopping kindling and an older one in wire spectacles, his hair a wild bush—an intelligent if ever I’d seen one. Behind them, I could see what they could not—myself as a child, peering out from the lilac bushes beside the kitchen door, sticking out my tongue, and the ghost of my Golovin grandmother standing on the porch, preparing to summon her coachman to escort these strange people off the land.

“Go back to the village,” he told me. “Tell them monsters are living here.” He made a terrible grimace, and the others laughed. “With three legs and four heads. We’ll come and eat their children if they’re not good. Go on. Pick up your things and go.” He turned back to the house.

I picked up my bag. “My chicken,” I called after him.

He gave the order like a king expecting to be obeyed. “Give it its chicken back.”

The dark-haired girl handed me the white chicken, which I put back under my coat. That was it? He was sending me away? Returning me like a flat of bad eggs? “I walked all the way from Tikhvin. I slept in the forest. And now you’re going to shoo me away like some stray dog?”

“Isn’t that what you are?” he asked.

“I belong here.”

His people waited like children, not sure what was going to happen. Obviously few people said no to this man, this sergeant or corporal or whatever he’d been at the front.

“Suit yourself.” He turned and mounted the porch steps as if rising to a dais, and his entourage followed him like little ducks. They all went inside, and left me standing in the yard.

Snow fell softly on my cheeks, like the lightest touch of hands.

Well, I wouldn’t leave. I would stand here until they gave in, until someone took pity. I had foisted myself on the most hard-hearted of peasants, I would not be turned away now. Because I had no other ideas. I had reached the end of my resources. I walked out to a place where they could all see me—the larch stump, which was as wide as a table. I sat on it and watched the house, glancing up at the windows, wondering who was watching me. Nothing mattered but to be here, to spend the night under this roof again. I was home and here I would stay. I would simply outlast them. For the first time, I understood that the secret of resistance wasn’t heroism but simple pigheaded balk. There was no question of a fight—I didn’t have the strength—but I would shame him, if nothing else.

I toyed with the hatchet, slicing off shards of wood into smaller and smaller bits. I breathed great clouds of steam, my legs crossed, like a homeowner relaxing in his yard, smoking a cigarette. Yes, I was home. I knew that ownership was a thing of the past, but nevertheless, in some gut-level way, this was mine. The frosted gingerbread of the old-fashioned house, built by my great-grandfather for his bride, the allée, the aspens and forest, the river. How funny that it took a revolution for me to care, to feel its deep roots entwined with my own. Yet the larch had been cut down, as our family had been cut down. So which was the metaphor?

So many evenings on that broad porch. White nights and fireflies, our songs and plays. The tables and chairs set out in the yard for lunches and dinners with visitors. Lying on the musty cushions of the wicker chaise reading Oliver Twist and Le Comte de Monte-Cristo on drizzly summer afternoons. Wordsworth and Keats… Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art… The requisite nap in the white-curtained nursery, the silence of those hot hours. Yes, the house knew me. If it were a puppy it would leap up and lick my face. It was these strange people who didn’t belong. Someone inside played the flute, a mournful, quarter-tone Eastern melody, bizarre yet pleasant on the frosty air.

I balled up some snow, packed it tight and threw it against the front door. It plashed with a satisfying splat, the dry new snow bursting against the glass and the wood. It was getting colder, but I would not leave. I wondered what time it was, but the sky was still a uniform yellow-gray.

In a little while, a lovely doe-eyed girl with a finely drawn face and motley coat came out, and, holding her head high, she marched up to me and put something on the stump. Steaming—a potato. She gave me a single strong look, as if to say, Don’t lose hope, then marched back to the house, slim and straight as a birch tree. I cradled the potato in my frozen hands, let it warm me, pressed it to my face. I had a friend here. And a potato. I was rich indeed.

I waited until the potato had cooled before I ate it. The snow built up on my sleeves. I didn’t brush it off, in hopes it would stir greater pity. I fed the chicken little bits of grain from my sack, its head peeping out the V of my coat. My ears were freezing under the poor cap, but I didn’t want to wrap my head in the scarf. I wanted them to see me, this poor boy they were leaving out in the snow. I wanted to pluck their hearts. I’d already won one of them over—how difficult could the rest be?

The front door banged back, and in the opening stood a tiny, bowlegged figure in a blue head scarf. “Merciful Virgin, you’re alive! Marinoushka!” She broke into a tottering half run, holding the railing, sidestepping down the porch stairs, running to me, clutching at me, kissing my hands in their dirty gloves, holding my face, crushing me to her. The chicken clawed at my stomach. I pulled it out, set it free. How I had missed her! And when I lifted her, how heavy she was for such a tiny woman—she weighed as much as a barrel of wheat. “Avdokia, you’re so fat!”

She laughed as she wept, touching my short hair. “You look just like blessed Seryozha,” she said, “may he rest in peace. Oh, my child. Look at you. Oh, sweet lovey. I can’t believe… we thought… we were sure…”

They must have thought I was dead. Murdered. How awful. I hadn’t thought about them, what they might have been going through. I had only thought of my own torment. I felt like Theseus, who, upon coming home from Crete, had forgotten to change his sails from black to white, causing his father’s suicide. The hell they must have lived, all these months. As I had when I heard of Seryozha’s fate. “Shh. I’m here now. It’s all right. It’s going to be all right. And you’re here. You’re safe!” I twirled her around, her chubby hunched little body. “What’s going on around here? The boss told me to clear off, but I’m not going to.”

She petted me, kissed me again. “Yes, well, since when did you listen to anyone?”

“How is Mother?” I asked.

“Ai… don’t ask,” she said. “Let’s get you inside. Have something to eat.” She wiped her eyes on her apron. “And catch that chicken! We’re not above eating. Even on the astral plane, you should see them put it away.”

I lunged for the chicken, but it ran from me. Right up to Avdokia, who caught it. We walked to the chicken coop and she tossed my pullet in—the only white one—the others eyeing it with suspicion.


Warmth. That’s what I noticed when we entered through the kitchen. How warm it was! The fine young woman, my savior, ground flour in a mill clamped onto the table. Something boiled on the stove in an enormous cauldron. Cabbage. The girl smiled shyly with her eyes but said nothing. The cabinets still showed their painted birds. We left our wet boots by the door, donned felt slippers, and retreated into Lyuda’s and Olya’s old room behind the kitchen.

The bright painted bed that they’d shared, mother and daughter, was gone. The room held only a crude cot covered with a quilt made from the same rags the young people had been wearing. But the stove! Even this room was merry with heat. Avdokia’s shawl hung on a peg, and in the red corner hung a hand-colored print—a cheap reproduction of the Virgin of Tikhvin. Home. I was home.

I sat on the bed. The wildly varied quilt was made of velvet and charmeuse and wool. Dark colors, city colors, interlaced with squares of vivid cloth that would have done well at a village fair. Avdokia lowered herself down next to me, slow and heavy, stiff with age. The rigors of the previous year had left their mark on her ancient body, despite her well-fed look. “How’s Mother?” I asked.

A great shuddering sigh went through her.

A torn space opened inside me. “Alive?”

“Oh, yes, yes, she’s alive, God bless us,” Avdokia said, yet her hesitation was confusing. “Oh, how can I begin to tell you, Marinoushka, what our lives have come to?” She gazed down at our interlocked fingers, mine hard, weathered but strong and young, straight-fingered, hers twisted as the roots of an old olive tree. “It’s such a long story, my pet, my dove.” She tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. “A strange story, stranger than I can say.”