I turned away and extracted the wad of Kolya’s rubles from my underwear. “Here.” I held it out to my mother. “Something to tide you over until I can get into the study.” A fat sheaf. There must have been a thousand rubles there.

“We don’t need your filthy money,” she said. “We’ll do fine. Dmitry Ivanovich takes care of us. Now please leave. I’m not well. I have to lie down. Avdokia?”

I freed a narrow slice from the sheaf of bills and slipped the rest to Avdokia, who tucked it in her apron. What would we do without her sweet presence running through our lives, grounding our unrealistic family? Romantics, idealists, dangerous fools. At least Avdokia was there to tincture us with a measure of common sense.

“Come, Marinoushka,” she said, pulling me away by the sleeve. “Leave now. Come back another day.” At the door, she whispered, “You don’t know what she’s been through. First you, then Seryozhenka, God rest his soul. And your father, wanted by the Cheka. The searches! And Basya, that devil. They came from the Soviet and dragged my poor Verushka off to clean the cesspit at the lower school—and who do you think reported her? That chicken-legged witch! She’s on the domkom now, fluffing herself up like a peacock. She has it out for us. Be careful.”

The last shall be first. Basya, our put-upon maid, now on the all-powerful house committee, had evidently ratted Mother out to the district soviet as a nonworking bourgeois, subject to the new labor conscription levied on the Formers. I’d seen them under the supervision of the Red Guards ineffectually shoveling snow in their once-elegant shoes.

“I tried to get them to take me instead, but they wouldn’t, the beasts. She didn’t come back until eight that night.” Tears welled in the droop of her eyelid. “After that she wouldn’t speak for days. A son just in the grave, and now this!” She waved her hand in the direction of the salon and the sound of people arguing. “It’s enough to drive anyone to murder.”

“Stop talking to her,” my mother called out. “She’s with them now.”

“She doesn’t mean it,” Avdokia murmured in my ear, helping me put my shawl over my cropped hair. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.” She turned back into the room. “You know it’s not her fault, Verushka. It’s the revolution.”

“They’ve stolen her soul. Look at her.” Her eyes filled with dread, as if the experience of cleaning the cesspit had branded them forever with a vision of hell. “They’ve all lost their souls, can’t you see? There are no people, only things. Nothing inside but dust.”

Perhaps I had indeed lost my soul. But I could only wish there was nothing inside me but dust as I gathered myself for the trudge back to the Poverty Artel and the reception I was likely to meet there.

35 My Disgrace

I HAD NO CHOICE but to return to Grivtsova Alley, through the uncleared snowy streets and the frosty fog. Home to unbearable pain and disgrace. I felt more alone than I had on that night in October when Father sent me packing. On the tram, I rehearsed in my mind things I could say, but I only got as far as Genya, forgive me. When I got off at the bridge over the Catherine Canal, I slipped on a patch of ice and fell hard onto my knees. The metaphor wasn’t lost on me.

Wet and bruised, I mounted the stairs to the Poverty Artel. Groping my way in the dimness, I came upon a man lying on the stairs, the stench of alcohol and urine rising from him. “Girl, girlie.” He grabbed for my leg. “How’s about a kiss?”

“Get off, you stinking drunk.” I kicked myself free of him.

He laughed and began to sing as I continued my climb:

Create, O Lord, create for me,

For me a pretty young beauty…

Our splintered door had lost its number. I steeled myself and used my key, said a prayer, and opened it quickly. Only Anton was there, editing in the light from the window. I quietly closed the door and headed for the divan, crunching across the detritus of sunflower seeds that had built up in my absence.

“Decided to creep home, did you?” he said.

I sat on the edge of the divan. Much as I’d dreaded facing Genya, now I wished to God he was here and not Anton so I could get on with my execution. What was I going to tell him? I thought I’d never see him again. It had never occurred to me that I would have to face the damage I’d done to his good, sweet heart. I had expected to disappear into the magical rabbit hole with Kolya Shurov and end up in some crazy folk song. But now I’d come back here like a shipwrecked sailor, half drowned in my wet clothes, wave-battered on the very same beach from which I’d departed four days ago.

“We were just getting used to your absence. It was wonderful. Like getting rid of a cold sore. And suddenly it’s back.”

I lay down, wishing I could be as drunk as the man on the staircase, singing and pissing in my pants. I kicked off my boots and pulled the quilt up over me, coat, scarf, and all. “I missed you, too, Anton.”

He leaned over from his cot and opened the door of the little stove, poking at its sad contents, letting the room fill with smoke until my eyes stung. I knew he wanted me to shout at him so he could abuse me more, but I had no strength for it. I turned to the wall. I could hear him rattling around, slamming the stove door, pulling back a chair. “The trouble with you is that you think his genius is going to rub off on you like paint. But poetry doesn’t transfer that way.”

A portly old gent with a grand set of moustaches gazed out from a tattered advertisement, appraising me with utter condescension. I would tell Genya everything, and throw myself on his mercy. I could sleep on the chairs. Move in with one of the girls from the Okno group. He could beat me. There was no point in trying to anticipate it.

“He doesn’t love you.” The creak of the chair, the crunch of shells. “He just thinks he does. If you cleared out, he’d get over you in a week.” He was back on his feet, prowling.

I ran my fingertips over the newspapers and announcements that served as our wallpaper: society fashion circa 1904 and portraits of captains of industry peered out from between the Bolshevik proclamations that Genya and the boys stuck there. To the Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants: The Provisional Government Is Deposed… how excited we’d been that day, almost a year ago now. Soldiers, Workers, Clerical Employees! The Destiny of the Revolution and Democratic Peace Is in Your Hands! That “clerical employees” had made us howl. For weeks afterward, every time soldiers, peasants, and workers were mentioned, we had to add: and clerical employees. I touched the paper, trying to hold on to the echo of Genya’s laughter.

The soviets must remain a revolver pointed at the head of the government to force the calling of the Constituent Assembly… gone, gone. All the missed opportunities. While on the other side of the wall, Marfa Petrovna scolded one of her children: “Give it to Anya. See how you like that!” followed by high-pitched shrieks.

I could hear the tapping rain of sunflower-seed shells. “You think you’re some kind of new woman,” Anton informed me. “But you’re just a cheap trinket with your romantic nights, your sentimental notions of the ‘suffering Russian people.’” He finally settled back in his chair, propped himself against the table with a corduroy knee. “Why do you have to torture him? Like a fly laying her eggs in a raw wound. How women love to see a man suffer. It makes him sing so beautifully. Sing, Genya, sing!”

I saw myself as Anton must see me—as La Belle Dame sans Merci, the villainess of a kinofilm melodrama, a figure from Poe. “And here I thought you were a futurist,” I retorted. “All you’re missing is the amontillado.”

“There won’t be people like you in the future.” I heard the skritch of a match, smelled the stink of his makhorka. “I know where you’ve been. I can smell you from here.”

Guiltily, I drew the quilt tighter around me. How could he smell anything through that tobacco? He was just trying to unnerve me. I could go to the banya, but my going would confirm his suspicions.

“Mina told him everything,” he said.

Of course she did. Maybe she’d tried to make love to him herself. She was good with my old lovers.

“You could leave right now. I wouldn’t say anything. He’d never know you’d been here. And we could all get on with our lives.”

From outside, in the hall, we could hear the drunk singing, “A fig tree stands on top of the hill / Right at the very top. / Create, O Lord, create for me, / For me a pretty young beauty…”

More smoke. The clang of the stove. “You should have heard Genya talk when you first met. ‘This girl Marina, wait till you meet her. She’s a genius, an angel.’” He took a drag. “Well, I never met a woman who was either. This doesn’t surprise me at all. Only that you’d have the nerve to come back.”

A genius, an angel. It was a knife in my breast, right under the diamond stickpin.

I sat up and opened my notebook, began to write, intending to let a decent period go by before I ran off to the banya for a wash. But before I could go, we both heard Genya’s heavy footsteps on the stairs, heavier than usual. I waited the way a horse waits with its broken leg. Anton watched the door. It banged back, bringing a fresh burst of icy air, and he staggered in. Green eyes fogged over, skin pale, unshaved, the wide mouth that loved to laugh stripped of its mirth. This was what I dreaded more than a beating, more than anything.