“I didn’t think I’d survive that,” Mother sighed, tipping back her champagne flute. “‘Hey, Prince, you forgot your pants!’”

“I thought it very democratic,” said Mr. Sibley, the British second secretary, taking blini from Basya’s platter. “I’ve always supported audience participation in ballet.”

I refused to laugh along with the rest of them. Those soldiers didn’t have chandeliers and dining rooms waiting for them. Those workers weren’t drinking champagne and sneering at anyone, they were curled up on thin mattresses, trying to snatch a little sleep before their shifts in the morning.

Seryozha pressed his hands to his cheek, fluttering his eyelashes, and nodded over toward Miss Haddon-Finch, who was doing her best to flirt with the attaché. She looked almost pretty tonight, with high collar and cameo pin, as she tried to engage him in conversation. But his answers were short, perfunctory. Instead, he set out to flatter me, the daughter of the household and presumably a more useful connection. “That dress is lovely, Miss Makarova. The blue sets off your hair. It’s like a painting.”

How I hated a snob. “But it’s not blue. It’s green. A beautiful Irish green.”

Seryozha snickered. Even Miss Haddon-Finch smiled. Mother glanced at me with twitchy-tailed irritation. Stop it.

Getting nowhere with me, the attaché turned his attention to Father, and the two of them reminisced about Oxford. Sibley, too, was an Oxford man, and Father launched into recollections of the year we spent at Christ Church while he was lecturing on international trade law. Seryozha mimed falling asleep in his plate. He ate a potato and asked to be excused. “Sorry—homework,” he said. I prepared to follow suit, but before I had a chance, Mother shook her head. Don’t even think it.

Square-jawed Mrs. Sibley, congenitally cheerful, brought up the newly completed Trans-Siberian Railway, which took travelers all the way from Petrograd to Vladivostok. “What an adventure, don’t you think?”

“Two weeks on a train, to end up in Vladivostok?” My mother laughed. “What could be better?” She’d returned to her witty self.

The Englishwoman turned to Father. “Dmitry Ivanovich, surely you would be interested in seeing the vast hinterlands of your country.”

Father smiled, amused at the very idea. “I’m afraid I’m in rare agreement with my wife.” He tapped the lip of his flute to signal Basya to pour more champagne. “However, the Trans-Siberian’s more than a mere outing, Mrs. Sibley. It’s our hope for the future. Siberia holds eighty percent of our wealth—our grain, our ore. Alas, the rail system’s a shambles. Without it we can’t get the raw materials to the factories, food to the front. I don’t have to mince words with you, Sibley. We have everything we need to push the Germans back to Berlin but workable rail stock.” He shook his head before taking a bite of Vaula’s golden trout.

Sibley sprinkled caviar on a blin with a small bone spoon. “I do hope you’ll persuade Miliukov of the urgency. It won’t be difficult to secure our help.”

I bet not. The British would sell their own mothers to keep Russia in the war. The British had declared their support for the Provisional Government within hours of the abdication. They didn’t care who was running things as long as the Russians kept throwing bodies into the machine.

“This new coalition—what’s the feeling about the commitment?” asked Sibley. “The SRs especially.”

“La guerre, toujours la guerre.” My mother traced a plume in the air, as if she could clear the war talk from their minds with the impatient gesture. It was spoiling the effervescence. “We’re educated people. Surely we can talk about—the weather?”

“It’s not our war,” I blurted out.

Father turned on me as if blackbirds had flown out of my mouth.

Now I was in for it, but I couldn’t stop myself. “We had no say in it. The people want peace. They’re demanding it. It’s why they toppled the tsar.”

Miss Haddon-Finch flushed, red creeping up her ears. “Men serving in other countries are depending on Russia,” she said tremulously. It wasn’t like her to express a strong opinion on politics in our house, but I’d forgotten about her brother, fighting in France.

Mother said to Mrs. Sibley, “Our eldest, you know, is with Brusilov, at the Southwestern Front. Cavalry.”

“And his men favor a fight to victory,” Father said, his eyes leveling at me. “It’s only our local untrained reserves who talk about retreat. Where are you getting your ideas, Marina?”

As if I hadn’t seen the banners, hadn’t noticed the queues.

“The people have no idea what they want,” Father continued. “Remember the signs? On one side they said, ‘Down with the war,’ and on the other ‘Down with the German woman.’” The guests all chuckled. “They just don’t know what’s involved. We have alliances, as Miss Haddon-Finch so kindly pointed out.” The Englishwoman blushed, pleased to be noticed by Dmitry Ivanovich, in whom she placed much more store than in any wet-lipped attaché.

I suddenly saw my father through the eyes of the Ericssons, through the eyes of the women at the pump. The arrogance of him, when it was the courage of those people that had brought him into power. “How can you say you know what the people need if you’re not listening to them? They can’t fight anymore. They need the war to end.”

“Marina, that’s enough,” Mother said.

Father’s fury was apparent in the tightness of his mouth, the way he looked away as he sipped his champagne.

But he would hear me out. “What about our soldiers—fighting without guns, without boots? What about our own hungry workers? They didn’t agree to those alliances. But they pay the price.”

Mother arched her neck in a slow, resigned circle, her eyes closed. All she cared about was that I was ruining her party.

“Everyone’s suffering, Miss Makarova,” the British diplomat replied gently. “France has been a battlefield for three years.”

Father picked up his napkin ring and dropped it gently on the tablecloth, tapping it, something he did when he was concentrating. “If Russia pulls out, millions will die. You want that on your conscience?”

I heard in my voice that horrible tremolo it got when I felt passionate about something. “You’ve seen the queues.” I addressed the second secretary. “The people work all day and queue all night. There’s no bread. No fuel. Boys drilling on Liteiny are barely Seryozha’s age. How much longer can you expect us to hold out?”

“It’s complex,” said Mr. Sibley. “Is this what young people are thinking?”

“Russia will not abandon its allies,” Father said firmly. “A commitment’s a commitment. And I’ve seen your marks for German, my dear. They’ve never been that good.” In Russian he added, “One more word and you’ll take your meal in the kitchen. You’re being insufferable.”

I collected my plate, my knife and fork, and stood with what gravity I could still muster. “I’m afraid you must excuse me then.”

In the kitchen, the servants looked up from their tea—Vaula cutting a cake, Basya with her feet up, waiting to clear and bring out dessert, Avdokia mending my nightshirt. Clearly I’d interrupted a juicy bit of gossip, probably about us.

“I’ve been exiled,” I said and put down my plate among them.

“At least it was a short walk,” said Basya. Avdokia frowned. Vaula tried not to laugh.

18 Cirque Moderne

SUCH FREEDOM, TO WALK alone in the evening with friends, unhampered by parental rules, participating in the serious discussions that had become daily life in the city. Everywhere people were arguing, voicing opinions, joining committees, trying out lines of reasoning, flexing political muscle. We were talking about the war as we drifted across the Field of Mars in the enchanted, unearthly northern spring twilight. “The Germans will bring back the tsar,” said Pavlik. “They’ll reverse everything we’ve achieved.”

In the half-light, it was still bright enough to see the color of the girls’ spring coats. Also the heavy length of Pavlik’s eyelashes. The trees smelled fresh and the square glowed, the long yellow buildings dizzying in perspective, an uninterrupted pattern of columns and windows. Seryozha lagged behind, thinking his own private thoughts. Here on these broad parade grounds, we’d sent Kolya and Volodya off to war. Here we’d buried 184 martyrs of the revolution just two months ago, a solemn day. I would never forget the sight of those coffins next to their resting places, imagining the student in one of them. And our parents walking in procession with members of the Provisional Government, everyone singing “You Fell Victim” until your heart would burst.

“That’s a spurious argument and you’re a capitalist dupe, Pavlik, like all the Defensists,” Varvara called over her shoulder. “If we stop the war, the German workers will win their soldiers over, just like we did, and the kaiser will fall. We have to stop the shooting, and bring them over to the revolution.”

I wasn’t really in the mood to argue tonight. The beauty of the evening made me think of my fox, my real lover. If he were here, we wouldn’t be talking about the war, wasting the spring twilight. We’d stroll in the fragrant air, our footsteps matching, and stop to kiss on the bridge over the Winter Canal. We’d be in bed before the hour was out. What I would give just to press my forehead to his, drink in the honey smell of his skin once more.

“What do you think of this new Bolshevik?” asked a girl from our school, Alla, trailing behind us. Recently, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin had returned from exile, and his April Theses had just run in the Bolshevik newspaper Rabochy Put’. “They say he’s against the Republic.”