Janet Fitch - The Revolution of Marina M.

“Write to the mayor. Tell him dead horses are bad for beezneez.”

He stuck his cigar between his teeth and tried pulling his boot off again. “Marina,” he said cajolingly. “Marinoushka.” Drunkenly, he held his leg up with both hands, wagged it at me. I pulled off the offending footwear and tossed it into the fireplace, watched him scramble on hands and knees for his burning sole. His soul. Who did he think I was? “What the devil’s gotten into you?” he asked, retrieving the smoldering object, brushing off the ash and embers.

“I thought you’d been shot. Anything could have happened. I hate just sitting, wondering whether you’re dead or alive.”

“Then you should be happy.” He grinned, teasing me, and touched my nose with a sooty forefinger. “So what’s the temper? I’ve been out seeing which way the wind’s blowing. Making my daily bread.” One boot on, one boot off, he poured himself a small glass of vodka, lifted it to me, and drank.

I sniffed him, his face, his collar. His hands. No trace of perfume. Nothing but cigar and vodka, maybe herring. “And you were mugged by a distillery.”

“An old friend of mine gave a little party.” He fumbled with the other boot and finally got it off. “Seems that she’d invited a poet. A great big boor spouting Bolshevik nonsense. Drunk as a cobbler.” He unbuttoned the top few buttons of his tunic as if it were choking him. “God I hate poets. They should all be long dead, leaving us their words but not their stink.” He grinned. “Especially this one, this ox, walking on her couch with his dirty boots, bellowing some dreadful love poems about some girl or other, some tramp who didn’t come home.”

Oh God, wasn’t there enough torment in this world? Genya, drunk, suffering… because of me. Kolya disgusted me, my own desire for him disgusted me, and yet—God!—this was me, not that brave, plucky girl so proud of heating water on a little stove.

“Stupid sap,” he said, staring at his cigar. “In a state like that over some little whore.”

“You bastard.” I snatched the Havana out of his mouth and tried to throw it, but he grabbed my wrist and slapped me across the face so fast I barely knew he had done it.

I held my hand to my cheek. The burn of it. The surprise.

“Oh God,” he said, realizing what he had done. “Marina.”

I began to scramble for my clothes, my woolen hose, my boots. I could hardly see through my tears.

“Stop, stop,” he took my boots from my hands, put them back on the floor. “Marina, oh God.” He sank to his knees, lay his head on my thighs, his tears soaking me. “I’m jealous, I admit it. I loved seeing him suffer. A big handsome devil like that. A Bolshevik! Oh, he’s going to go far in this new world of ours.”

How drunk was he? He was crazy! “I’m here with you, Kolya! Can’t you see that?”

“Yes, that’s just what I thought. I wanted to tell him, ‘I know where she is. She’s with me.’ Really work him up. Maybe he’d jump out the window.”

I could hardly take a breath. “But you didn’t.”

“No. Of course not. A man like that could kill you with his bare hands.” He walked to the table on his knees and poured more vodka into his glass, sat heavily on the floor. “But you’d been his. This admirable fellow, this poet… and who am I? What am I? So I went out and got drunk.”

I sat down with him and rested my forehead against his. We two impossible people, in this impossible life.

“I do love you so, Marina,” he said. He had never said that word before. It worked its way under my skin, through the cage of my ribs, under my breastplate. It buried itself inside me like a jewel sewn inside a smuggler.

The next morning, I woke to noise somewhere in the house. I had been here long enough to sense the change. Rattling, men’s voices. Kolya came in, dressed and composed, a far different man from the one he’d shown me the night before. Nowhere could I see the vulnerability, the madness. This man was sober, efficient, all business. “We’re clearing out,” he said. “You’ve got to get dressed.”

I rose, looking for my clothes. “Where are we going?”

“Not you. Me. My men.”

“What men?” What was he talking about? I was with him now. There was no way back, no second plan. “Your regiment’s gone. They’re in the Don, with the Volunteers.”

He spoke softly, apologetically. “These are my own men, Marina.”

“Why can’t you take me, then? You have to. I don’t care where we’re going. You can’t leave me again.”

He knelt on the bed, pushed me back flat onto the quilt. “Go back to your poet,” he whispered in my ear. “You’re safe with him—though God knows I hope he doesn’t drink often. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Or go back to Vera Borisovna’s. But you can’t stay here and you can’t come with me.” Making me look into his eyes, see the seriousness there.

“I can’t go anywhere. There is nowhere else. Please.” I pressed my face into his tunic, my tears streaming into the wool of his jacket. “You have to take me.”

He held me at arm’s length. “It’s too dangerous. But I swear to you I’ll be back, no matter what.” He wanted me to agree, but I wouldn’t. “I adore you, Marina.” Kissing my hands, my neck. “Ever since you were a bratty little girl—you threw a snowball at me at a sledding party. In the Tauride Gardens, remember?”

He’d been talking to Klavdia Rozanova, with her perfect blond braids and her ermine muff. I’d been trying to knock that snotty look off her stupid face. My aim was just bad.

He crushed me against him, my face buried into the fragrance of his chest, his clothing. “I’ll be back. I swear I will be. Look.” He fished something out of his pocket. A box, its velvet an ancient, rusty black. I wouldn’t touch it, so he set it between us on the bed. Pushed it toward me. Against a dark blue satin lining—a bit pilled—lay a jeweled stickpin, a yellow stone surrounded by diamonds, the kind of thing a wealthy dandy might have worn in a silk lapel in the 1830s.

“If you ever need money, take this to the market on Kamenny Island. Ask for Arkady.” He pinned it onto my camisole. “Don’t take less then ten thousand. It’s a canary diamond. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s topaz.”

I hit him. In the chest, on the arms. “You liar! You were lying all the time. You knew you were going to do this!” Even when he was saying I love you last night he’d been intending to leave. “You bastard!”

He gathered me in and held me tight, too tight to hit him, and into my ear, he whispered, “Don’t… we’re in a hurry.” He let me go and I rolled away from him.

Standing, straightening his uniform, he put a wad of notes on the table. “Hide that and get dressed.”

I wasn’t going to do anything he said ever again. “No.” How could he just scrape me off like mud on his boots?

“Do it. We’re about to have visitors—in black leather jackets.” He picked up my dress and shoes and handed them to me. His tone told me he was very serious. Weeping, I struggled into my things. I wasn’t going to be arrested for his speculation. I downed the last of the wine in a gulp—I wasn’t going to leave that for the Chekists—and bundled the rest of the food into my bag, the precious sugar, the ham.

He led me down the hall, down an icy back stairway, through service rooms, and out into the courtyard where men were covering three sledges with tarps. Seven big furry black horses stamped in their traces, two pairs and a troika. It was a shock to be out in daylight in the yard of a house where I’d just spent three days without ever seeing its exterior. The men worked quickly, grimly, without comment, rifles strapped on their backs, beards coated with frost. Kolya kissed me one last time, my darling traitor. I would not let go—he had to pry me away. I watched helplessly as he climbed onto the last cart, the collar of his heavy coat turned up, and signaled the men to drive out. He waved back at me once, an ironic salute, his kiss still bruising my lips as the small convoy disappeared onto Galernaya Street, the ghost of his embrace still around me.

SOME INSECTS LIVE OUT their lifetimes in just a few hours. Once, I thought that was terribly sad. But now I could see how brilliant those hours might be, how radiant, how intense, flashing and beautiful. Each precious second might contain the riches of months, compressed within tiny hearts and wings, before time tore them to pieces. I felt as though I had just lived out my few hours, that the rest of my life would contain just the papery remnants of those three days in the winter of 1918.

I leaned on the embankment on the Neva side in the gray morning, feeling brave one minute, sobbing the next, trying to figure out which window had been ours. Two old women emerged from the house next door. A princess, perhaps, and her lady companion or her sister, leaning on each other in their dark coats and decrepitude. They gave me a hard stare as they passed by. A worker girl, I could see them thinking. Or a lookout, preparing to signal some gang to come and rob their house in their absence. Perhaps they could smell my wildness. Had these women experienced three such days in their lives? Or even an hour?

I watched them, wiping my tears and wishing I had a handkerchief, when the roar of automobiles reverberated in the silence. It was either soldiers or the Cheka—no one else had gasoline. Here they came, two big cars sliding around the corner. I began to walk, the noise and danger pushing me away. I could hear their commotion as they ground to a stop before the yellow mansion I’d left not ten minutes ago. Our bed would still be warm. Part of me was relieved. He hadn’t been lying, not about that. I tried not to watch over my shoulder as leather-clad figures piled out, unholstering their Mauser machine pistols, breaking into the house.