I imagined Seryozha, cowering in his room, sick with shame at having informed on me. And Mother, too, nowhere in sight. I’m sure there had been a terrible fight. Father began to call me names—old-fashioned names, trollop, jade—trying to make me cry, his voice louder and louder.

I wanted to hurt him back. “What is it that you object to most? That I’m not virginal or that he’s not one of us?”

Suddenly he was himself again, Dmitry Makarov, the lawyer. “I thought you said you hadn’t done anything with him.”

“Oh, so now you believe me.”

“There have been others?” His complexion was ashen.

I had no apologies, no argument to make. This was my life. Someone so out of touch had no right to dictate its shape or content.

“I’m not your father,” he said. “Women like you are fatherless.”

The father I knew could never say this to me, never. Waves of nausea flooded over me. I was too shocked to weep. “Is it all right if I go now?”

“Go. It disgusts me to look at you. Stay in your room until I decide what in the world’s to be done with you.”

I went. How clean it was, the freshly made bed. It smelled good and light streamed in through the lace curtains. I washed, then sat at my vanity. Slut. Jade. Trollop. Those words, coming from my own father’s lips. What did they even mean? I looked in the mirror. I looked… pugnacious. Was I a slut? I certainly liked being handled by men. Sex, the life of the senses, it was very strong in my nature. I didn’t want to hurt my father, but women like me always hurt their fathers, because we couldn’t stay little girls. Funny, when I really had been sleeping with someone, he’d never known it.

Avdokia woke me in the afternoon, coming in with soup and a cucumber salad, cold chicken on a tray. “It’s the big worker boy who hangs around, isn’t it?” she whispered. “I’ve never seen Dmitry Ivanovich in such a state. He went off to the foreign office on an hour of sleep, poor man. I hope you’ve learned your lesson.”

“And what lesson is that?” I said, clearing off the desk so she could lower the tray. “We tried to save a boy’s life, a pickpocket being beaten by a mob. Papa’s jumping to conclusions.”

“A pickpocket.” She shook her head, sighed, sighed again, as if there were no more oxygen in Petrograd, as if it had been raised to Himalayan heights and she had to labor to fill her lungs. “May the Holy Theotokos have mercy.”

“We sat with him all night. He was young. It was terrible. His head was as big as a watermelon.”

“Eat some soup, sweetheart.” I took a hot mouthful to placate her, but eating was the last thing on my mind. I could still see the crowd’s savage glee, the boy’s battered head, the way he hung limp in Genya’s arms. My father’s face. I might never eat again.

“Dmitry Ivanovich is a changed man since joining the government,” my nanny said, hanging up my clothes. “You can’t waltz around like it doesn’t matter anymore. He’s been working so hard, he’s got so much on his mind. Oh, why did you have to go off last night? They were having a nice party here. That boy—it’s not going to go well.”

When I tried to go out to the toilet, I found the door of my room had been locked. So it had come to this. He didn’t know what to do with me, so he’d locked me up until he could formulate his plans. I couldn’t bring myself to pound on the walls. It was hardly the Crosses. I used the chamber pot, sat down to write. After a while, I heard knocking on the wall from the nursery next door. Seryozha. Fais dodo… trying to apologize. I didn’t knock back.


That evening I heard my father and mother quarreling: Reputation. Your daughter. That hooligan. Part of me wanted to announce that I’d sacrificed my precious virginity not to that hooligan but to Kolya Shurov, trusted family friend. Would he like that better? What was worse, my class treachery? Or that I’d ruined his perception of me as a pure vessel, inert and worthy to be passed along to an approved husband? Either way, I’d proved to be a stony field, an intractable horse, useless for the task assigned it.

Avdokia came and went with food and the chamber pot, her eyes red from weeping. “Pray, Marinoushka. Pray for forgiveness.”


On the fourth day of my comfortable imprisonment, Miss Haddon-Finch let herself in. “I’m here to help you pack,” she said briskly, no nonsense. “We’re leaving. For Maryino.”

The country? We never went this early. “It’s only June.”

“It’s been decided.” She opened my wardrobe, began taking out summer clothes, piling them on the bed. “This has all been very hard on your mother, not to mention Dmitry Ivanovich. They’ve decided it will be better if we got away for a while. We could all use a little peace and quiet.”

But she forgot to lock the door. I shoved past her and marched down to the dining room, where they were eating breakfast. Mother was still in her dressing gown, Father ready for work at the foreign office. Seryozha, also up and dressed, tried not to look at me.

“What if I won’t go?” I said.

“Are you moving in with your hooligan?” Father asked, sipping his coffee. “Is he ready to support you?”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Did he have to be so extreme? Move in with Genya in that squalid room of his or break it off with him? Out of sheer defiance, I wanted to say yes, I’ll move in with him. But that was going too far, even for me. I had to think. Did I really want to move in with Genya? Even if I tried it for the summer, what would I do about university? I possessed no money of my own. Father had me in a corner. He wanted me to see that I had no choice but do what he said. To recognize my position. In other words, surrender.

“I’d prefer to stay here,” I said.

“But you love Maryino,” Mother said in her filmy morning coat. “We all could use some time to reflect—”

“The answer is no, you cannot stay here,” Father interrupted her. “You’ll go with the household or you’ll find some other accommodation. You can’t come and go, doing what you like with whomever you like, and come back here. It’s not a bordello.”

There was no point in arguing that a bordello was the very opposite of the freedom he described. “I could live with the Katzevs,” I said. “Surely Sofia Yakovlevna would let me.”

“Forcing them to house and feed you for months at a time? They’re not wealthy people, Marina. For someone who claims to be so sensitive to the plight of the common man, you’re embarrassingly self-involved. The Katzevs have children of their own to think about. Consider the example you’re setting for the younger ones. No, you pride yourself on being an adult, but you’re still thinking like a child. Now, you’ll pack, and tomorrow you’ll accompany your mother to the countryside.”

Yes. I saw there was no other way. “At least let me say goodbye.” I had to tell Genya how it stood with us, that I wanted him, but I had to go.

“There’s the telephone. Be my guest,” Father said, gesturing to the hall.

Mother sighed, stirred her tea. Seryozha twisted in his seat, his face red and blotchy, guilty as a dog who’d eaten your shoes.

“You know he doesn’t have one,” I said. “Let me see him once more, and I’ll go.”

“Write him a note and I will mail it for you.” Buttering his toast.

I couldn’t very well say I didn’t know Genya’s address. So I wrote a hurried note, telling him that my father was sending me into exile in the country for the summer but I would be home by fall. I’ll wear Saturn’s ring, and I’ll think of you. I addressed it to Gennady Kuriakin, Grivtsova Alley, east-side courtyard, second floor, room 8. I’d have to pay Basya to deliver it. The idea of Father intercepting it was too grim to imagine. And what if he decided to confront Genya face-to-face? Hideous. I hated to let Basya know such intimate details of my life, but it was better than Genya’s never knowing.

While I packed, Seryozha slipped into my room. He was crying. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t know what to say. They were so worried—”

“You could have said I was at Mina’s.”

“They called Mina’s.”

I sighed, folded nightgowns. “Well, I guess we’ve got a long summer ahead of us.”

“You maybe. Not me.” He ran his hand over the eyelet lace of my summer bedspread. “I’m going to Moscow. I’m leaving in five days.”

I stopped folding.

“For Bagration Military School.”

I clutched the ruched cotton of my nightgown. “He can’t do that.” My brother pretended to count the bands on my bedpost with his thumbnail. I grabbed him, turned him around, tried to force him to look me in the eye, but he wouldn’t. “You can’t. You’ve got to tell him right now you won’t go.”

“But I want to go.” He twisted away from me. “I need to. I need to start my own life.”

I held my hands to my mouth, as if something were about to fall out. My heart maybe. “Seryozha, you’ve heard them talking at the Cirque Moderne. You know what’s happening out there. Don’t get on the wrong side of this!”

“It’s already been decided,” he said. My little brother. It was just what Miss Haddon-Finch had said. But somebody had decided—it wasn’t Fate. It could still be undone.

“No.” I batted the neat piles of clothes off the bed onto the floor. “Let’s run for it. We can go, right now.”

“Don’t be stupid,” he said, sitting down at my vanity. “What are we going to do, sell newspapers?”

“Maybe Solomon Moiseivich would give you a job. Apprentice you. You can’t let him do this. You’re not cut out to be a soldier.” The idea made me dizzy with terror.