He put his hand on my shoulder. A heavy, broad hand, like a bear’s paw. All at once, I experienced a sensation of heat in my shoulder, then in my whole body. The nausea lifted. He released me and walked on. How did he do that? He stopped again and regarded me, and once more I felt the sensation of heat, of well-being, in my face, in my chest, my stomach. “I don’t think. I feel. I feel you, Marina Dmitrievna. Your energy. It’s very disruptive. The question is, what do you have to offer besides your ignorance and confusion? Tell me why we need you. Convince me.”

I was actually hot, here in the falling snow. I could see the steam rising off my coat. What was he doing to me? “I’m not planning to be a burden. I’m a good worker. I’ll do my share.”

“But the work’s all been done.” One dog trotted up, its tongue lolling, steam rising from its mouth, and he patted it, sliding its furry ear between his ungloved fingers. “We could have used you back in the spring, when we arrived. Building the smokehouse, fishing, putting in the garden. We could have used the extra hands. But now? A poor time to show up with your cup and spoon, calling us hangers-on.”

I could see that had been rude of me. I saw myself from their point of view, someone’s spoiled daughter, appearing and demanding to be fed. I couldn’t imagine they’d brought in much of a harvest, especially if they’d really grown their own rye, but certainly they’d gardened and built the smokehouse, which must be hanging with the fish they’d caught. And what did I have on my side? Inherited property, sullen, passive resistance, and the complete absence of other ideas.

He squinted against the smoke, foul as a burning carpet. “The father, can’t you go to him?”

“My father? He’s in the east, at Omsk with Kolchak. I’m not going there.”

The man sighed, gazing at me like a schoolmaster regarding the stupidest girl in the class. “No. The father… of your… inconvenience.” He dropped his eyes toward my midsection.

My what?

Again, that gaze, back at my face.

What was this man trying to insinuate?

The father.

No. That wasn’t possible. I hadn’t had a menstrual period in more than a year now. I could hang a coat on my hip bones.

Yet I’d certainly felt sick for some time.

Well, who hadn’t? The food we ate, or what substituted for food…

Though I’d been eating well enough recently… since Kolya and I had left Petrograd and turned to the largesse of the countryside.

No. It was ridiculous. Kolya was fanatically careful, nursing his supply of preservativy as if they were relics of the True Cross.

And yet—perhaps prophylactics had not been intended for such heavy use. There was no way to know how old they were.

I felt the weird sensation of a heavy liquid being poured onto my head from a great height.

“Yes, that man,” said the fakir. The dogs ran off, barking.

We watched them go. I was grateful for the distraction. “You’ve got it wrong, brother,” I said, in my most Misha voice. Hooligans didn’t get knocked up. I was a boy. A boy!

“Have I?” He breathed out a cloud of his smoke, and I had to back away. In my head, the hurricane roared. My stomach lurched and I vomited into the snow as he watched with amusement.

I’d never conceived with Genya, though I wouldn’t have minded. The last time we made love was right before he went out for the defense of Petrograd in March—I could have had his baby already. Thank God I hadn’t with Arkady, I would have known by now. No, other than the filigreed love letter he had cut on my back, it was only in my darkened spirit that he’d left his impression. But between Kolya and me, there had always been such a strong charge of nature. My body wanted Kolya, ached for him. Such a stupid beast—it didn’t know we were through. I imagined my reddest inner chamber, like a velvet-lined boudoir all prepared for this small guest.

Ukashin lifted his face, listening to the song of his dogs baying a higher, more excited note. I had to get away and think. He knew too much, noticed too much, and I had learned a few things, one of them being that men who knew things about you were people to be avoided. It was flattering to be understood but dangerous. A good man didn’t need to be intriguing. This one, drawing on his tobacco, squinting against the smoke, looked like a rug merchant waiting for a client to make up his mind. I could see him in a fez in a coffee house sucking a hookah, the patience of centuries behind him.

What if I really was pregnant? Only the single most disastrous thing that could befall me right now, being so far from Petrograd. The city at least had hospitals and a modern attitude toward women.

I counted the months since the October celebration—November, December, January… July. A summer baby, if this was true and not some game he was playing. I glanced again at the broad shoulders in the shaggy coat. But I knew he was right. I could feel it. Bozhe moi. I was frankly terrified. What did I know about children? Didn’t every woman want a child? Just as Russia was about to be torn apart like an old dress, what could I hope for here—to give birth in a bathhouse? Or roll in herbs in hopes of a miscarriage? In Petrograd I could have an abortion in a modern mothers’ hospital. Unless a certain thief found me first. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about my future.

An abortion… was that what I wanted?

Yet how could I have a baby? I couldn’t even diaper Faina’s brat. Any child with me as a mother would be in sorry shape indeed. And with Kolya Shurov, that womanizer, as a father? My own mother hadn’t had a shred of maternal instinct, but at least she had a responsible husband and the comforts of home, the protection of money, servants, food on the table. A child of mine would be tossed into this world with nothing, dragged behind me like a goat behind a cart.

Somewhere in the aspens, we heard the bay of the dogs. He threw the cigarette into the snow. “They’re onto a deer. Get your gun.”

I’d forgotten Kolya’s gun. How on earth did he know? No time to wonder. I pulled my glove off with my teeth, dropped it to the snow. The headman placed his warm hand on my shoulder as my bare fingers found the butt, the trigger. In a great crash, a young stag bounded out of the brush, leaping ten feet or more as the dogs bounded after it. “Shoot it.”

Smoothly, with shocking grace, I extended the weapon, closed one eye, sighted ahead of the leaping deer.

“Now,” he said.

The blast echoed. The stag dropped to its knees, then over onto its side in the snow, and was still. It was nothing short of a miracle. I’d killed it with a pistol I’d never fired, at forty feet. It was impossible, yet it had happened.

Amazed, I gazed at the pistol in my hand, but it was as plain and heavy and dumb as ever. The bull-necked man let go of my shoulder. Suddenly I was cold again.

The rest of the scene unfolded in slowed-down time. The dogs catching up with the beast. The master calling them off. Their wavering in the snow halfway between the stag and where we stood. On second call, they came racing toward us, tails all awag. “You see?” As if we had been having an argument and the deer was the proof of his point. “It’s better when you don’t think so much,” he said. “Let doubt fall away, let confusion fall away. This is the true path. Davai. Let’s see what you brought for our table.”

We walked out into the snow toward the fallen creature. It lay there, real as a rug, one leg doubled under itself, its dainty cloven hooves, its rack of antlers, three points on each, its soft brown eye turning glassy. A second eye just above the first one showed where the bullet entered.

“You can give life, you can take it.” He handed me the hilt of a deadly looking knife, its blade slightly curved.

I watched myself, under his instruction, slitting open the body of the stag I had killed, beginning at the genitals and slicing all the way to the throat. “Don’t nick the organs,” he said. “Steady…”

I placed my fingers inside. Hot. Wet. I guided the knife carefully, keeping the point away from the guts. The belly steamed in the frost, and with the steam rose a strong smell that should have been disgusting but wasn’t. This was us—the heat, the beast’s life, locked into this meat. My life and this life I might possibly be carrying. Fresh blood stained the snow bright red.

“Lung.” He pointed. “Heart. Liver. Kidney.” The white lung, the red heart, purplish liver, blue kidney, the heavy red coils of the intestine. The machinery of the body. It was clean and intricate, and the man kept his hand on my shoulder, pointing out what needed to be done. I cut the membranes, scooped out pounds of slick, warm animal guts, laid them out in the snow. I was careful to pinch off the bladder, to get the entire intestinal tract. The dogs crept closer, on their stomachs, whining, until they were within ten feet of the steaming mass, but he stopped them with a single gesture, one blunt finger pointing. Then he knelt and took the bloody knife himself, sliced off a strip of the liver and held it out on the blade. “For the hunter.”

Raw? He expected me to eat it raw? I had avoided squeamishness so far, but this piece of bloody meat?

“This is your kill. Life and death. Eat.”

He was waiting. I took it into my mouth. Hot flesh. I chewed. It was milder than I expected, even a little sweet, easy to eat. I was hungry. The protein sat better than I would have imagined, and I felt the vigor of the deer entering my own blood. He ate a piece himself, then cut two more and threw them to the dogs.