He bristled. “How do you know? People survive it. Look at Volodya. Papa’s right. I have to stop dodging these things.”

I knelt by his side, took his hands in mine. “Please, I’m begging you… this is not a fight you want to join.”

He was about to cry, this would-be officer. “Don’t say any more.” We stayed like that for a long time. I wept, I think he did, too. After a while, he stood, then I did. We kissed three times, formally, and I had to let him go.


It rained the morning we left, a real soaker. In the first-class compartment, I sat with Avdokia, her arm around me, her smell of yeast, my head on her shoulder. Out the fogged-up window, the slums of the Vyborg side rolled past, the very seedbed of the revolution. Mother, with her hands folded in her lap, occupied the forward-facing seat alongside Miss Haddon-Finch and her little Italian greyhound Tulku. He stood on her lap to look out the window, leaving his nose print on the glass. But Mother’s eyes were closed, shutting out the sorry scene rumbling by, factories and tenements, as well as the squalid one inside the compartment—namely, me.

Miss Haddon-Finch wept quietly, dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief, her spectacles fogging up. I couldn’t tell whether they’d held her responsible for my supposed “disgrace.” Was she afraid she was going to be dismissed? I hardly needed a governess anymore—but there wasn’t time for arrangements to be made, and Mother would need some adult companionship. She couldn’t exactly dine with Avdokia and her half sister, Olya, every night. Or was the Englishwoman frightened at the prospect of a long summer alone with Mother in the depths of Russia, without her Dmitry Ivanovich?

It was the one positive note—I wouldn’t have to see Father all summer. His arrogance had grown worse now that he was in the Provisional Government. I couldn’t stop thinking of Seryozha at the Bagration Military School and all that it meant. I knew what kind of boys these officer cadets would be, sharpening their cruelty on the softest in their midst. After a few months of torment, he would prefer the enemy at the front! Or the unthinkable could happen—he could become one of them and call it growing up.

And my sweet Genya—how long would he wait for me? Would he write poetry for some other girl, someone he saw on a bridge, drawn to her shape reflected in the water? I tried to remember the feel of his arms, his body, the taste of his lips, his smell of hay and fresh wood. We had never even made love. It made me cry all over again. Avdokia petted me, murmuring, “We’re in God’s hands, Marinoushka. Tishe…” Quiet now.

21 Maryino

WE SPENT THE NIGHT in the market town of Tikhvin, in a small hotel near the station, and the next day, we rode up to Maryino. The weather was dusty and hot. I was sullen, and Mother had a headache. We drank tepid water from a flask, and Miss Haddon-Finch tried to teach us a game, spying something beginning with a certain letter, but no one wanted to play. Only Avdokia was in a holiday mood, her little eyes brightening as she pointed out familiar landmarks. “I have cousins in this village, Verushka. Remember Mishka, with the wall-eye?” She was coming home.

After we’d endured hours of heat and airlessness and being thrown about, the landscape started to look familiar to me as well. Then we were passing through our village, Novinka, with its rambling cluster of izbas, its blacksmith shop, its silvery wooden church with its birch domes. Mangy dogs barked after our coach. The peasants watched us, but no one waved. We jounced out past the fields, the long strips of the peasant allotments. The oats had been cut, now wheat grew green under a bright blue sky.

The road to the estate itself brought us up a hill, and then down through a linden allée my mother’s grandfather had planted, using dynamite to assure that the roots had room to grow. They were taller than any trees in the area. Now the house appeared, dark wood with white carved moldings around the windows. This beloved place. But dill and Queen Anne’s lace and thistles crowded the yard, and one of the shutters hung crookedly.

The old steward, Grigorii, came to his feet slowly, as if he were just stretching. A sturdy, stout peasant with a long beard, he didn’t remove his cap as the coach stopped before the porch—that was new. His smile was warm but his bow was brief and even a little ironic. But roses still rambled up the side of the house in bright red bloom, pretty but unpruned, and insects buzzed like tram wires before a rain.

“We just heard you were coming,” he said to Mother. No barynya. No Vera Borisovna. She was visibly rattled and tripped alighting from the carriage. She had never become used to revolutionary treatment and certainly hadn’t expected it here.

Avdokia steadied her while upbraiding her cousin. “Where are your manners, you stupid sot? You’re still living here, stealing everything not nailed down. Have some respect.”

He took off his cap, scratched his head, then embarrassed at having taken orders from this old woman, put it on again defiantly.

To gain time Mother removed her gloves, her hat, touched her shining silver hair with an unsteady hand. “Where are the others?” she asked.

“Oh, they’re around. Except for the young ones. Army took seven of ’em.” It was a small village, no more than fifty souls. Seven young men was a huge loss. “Yegor got killed last August.” He hocked, as if to spit, then thought twice when he caught Avdokia’s fierce eye. I remembered Yegor, a rock thrower who kicked the cows. But now he was dead.

“How awful,” Mother said. “Such terrible times. Our Volodya’s stationed on the Southwestern Front.”

“Officer, no doubt,” Grigorii said.

“Yes, he’s grown into a fine young man,” she said stiffly. “And Annoushka? How is your wife?”

“She’s fine, praise be to God,” Grigorii said. “She’ll get herself elected to the zemstvo soon enough.” Unlikely—the zemstvo was an all-male peasant organization led by landowners like us. But he was letting us know that things had changed. Putting us on notice.

“Yes, that’s good.” Mother brushed her forehead, as if trying to whisk away a fly. But the fly was the new era. The moment went on and on. What was he hoping, that she’d pick up her own bags?

Grigorii finally hoisted her trunks into the house. I’d have called it a draw.


Mother settled into Grandmère’s old boudoir. Miss Haddon-Finch was put into my childhood room, which had also been Mother’s. I took Grandfather’s old study at the head of the stairs. Avdokia went in with her half sister, Olya, and Olya’s daughter, Lyuda, behind the kitchen. Lyuda, my age or maybe a year older, unpacked my things. She handled them slowly, fingering my clothing, smoothing the cottons, the silks, as if she were shopping.

Over the following weeks, Avdokia treated me as if I were recovering from a horrible shock—which I supposed I was. She made me lie down with cold compresses of water steeped in lavender, sent me out to pick strawberries, blackberries, rowan berries, chamomile. I knew everyone thought me angry and peevish, but I didn’t care. I was helpless and useless and saw no point in being stoic about it. I plunged into my trunkful of books, played lackluster rounds of cards with Miss Haddon-Finch, who invited me to call her Ginevra, and wrote dozens of letters to Genya, which Avdokia refused to mail.

Dearest

I write these letters

Send them into the abyss.

How long can I endure

Mother, nanny, peasant cousins, village gossip.

Too many women in the soup.

Death by fire would be quicker.

The river mocks me, flowing on.

The birds fly west.

I try to join them but

My waxen wings won’t hold.

In the kitchen, the Revolution’s arrived.

The peasants set their place at the table.

But where is the Revolution

To spring me from this green prison?

I slashed at the heads of shoulder-high weeds with a walking stick I’d found in the hall and cursed my father for his stupidity, my brother for his passivity, and the entire country for its idiocy. Ginevra trailed behind me, her skirts caught in the weeds as I made my way down to the river. The water was wide and slow, light skittering across the surface like gold coins. I took off my shoes and stockings and climbed out onto a large old birch that had fallen almost horizontally out over the water. “Be careful, Marina!” she called out to me. “I can’t swim!” When I was a child I could walk the entire length of this trunk, imagining I was a world-renowned aerialist, the Great Esmerelda. The crowd marveled at my grace and daring. Below me, water grass waved under the surface of the river, hiding pike and perch where I had once imagined tiny mermaids and orphans played. I could almost feel the warmth of the water. Blue dragonflies flitted. I stripped out of my light dress.

“What are you doing? Marina! Someone will see you!” Her voice rose as I took off my slip and my corselette. “Come down immediately!” I dropped my bloomers, and plunged into the green water.

This was what I’d forgotten—the sweet embrace of the river, the feel of it slipping over my naked flesh. Even its murky taste was wonderfully familiar. I turned over in the current, my red hair dark and streaming over my shoulders like a rusalka, the river spirit.

I could hear Ginevra, but I was lost to her. Above me floated boughs of birches and elms, dark proud spruces. Fat trout patrolled the deep hole at the riverbank’s edge. All my rage to return to the city dissolved, and I was just a fish swimming among the water weeds. Suddenly I heard giggles. Some little boys fishing on the opposite bank jeered, throwing pebbles, my nudity exciting and confusing to them. Let them look and imagine what they might have for themselves one day.