When she saw me her hard-mouthed, determined bargaining expression melted away. She would have crossed herself had she not had her arms full of potatoes. “Marinoushka, what are you doing here? This is no place for you. God in heaven!” She looked around for the Cheka, Red Guards. “Is everything all right?”

I embraced her and took the potatoes from her, explaining the situation. “God save us.” She crossed herself as we walked.

“I need to get her out of there, but she’s worried that if she leaves they’ll take the flat. I don’t think I can handle her by myself.”

She came closer, so that I could see every crosshatch of wrinkle, every hair in the mole on her bulbous nose. “If Basya tries anything with that flat, I’ll pull her legs off and bury them under a birch tree. Whose flat does she think it is, Lenin’s? She’d better not pull anything or when the Germans get here, she’ll be the one paying the piper.”


The expression on Anton’s face when the three of us entered the room on Grivtsova Alley could not have been more horrified than if the entire German army had burst in. He stared at Avdokia and Mother as if they had one eye between them, as if we were Macbeth’s crones and had come to rip off his dirty woolens and tear his flesh from his bones. “Oh, no,” he said. “No, no, no.”

I just continued with the introductions. It didn’t matter what Anton thought, not now. “Anton, this is my mother, Vera Borisovna Makarova. And this is Avdokia… Fomanovna.” I realized I’d never formally introduced Avdokia before. “This is Anton Mikhailovich Chernikov. Your host.”

My mother’s expression exactly mirrored Anton’s. But unlike our editor and universal critic, her horror lay in the scene around her, of which his unkempt surliness was only a part. To see the Poverty Artel through her eyes was to remember it the first time I saw it. The teetering stacks of books, Anton with his feet on the table, the overflowing ashtrays, the sunflower-seed shells all over the floor, the dirty clothes and crumpled pages. The pathetic little stove. The smell. I was thankful at least that the chamber pot under the divan was empty. I hoped she would take comfort in Seryozha’s watercolor painting and silhouettes, even if they were pinned to the old newspapers and handbills that served as our wallpaper.

When I was busy persuading Mother to come, I’d somehow failed to mention Anton.

She lingered at the door, clutching the handle of her little carpetbag. Avdokia stood by Mother’s elbow, her wrinkled mouth drawn so tightly that it almost disappeared below her pulpy nose. How sordid it all must appear to them, as if I’d brought them to a tavern. I dropped the bag of potatoes on the table next to Anton’s feet, hopefully sweetening the deal.

“Really, Makarova?” Anton drawled. “He’s gone for four hours and you’re already moving the family in? Even Granny over there?”

“It’s just for a few days. Until things shake out.”

He carefully, ostentatiously, removed his feet from the table and put them down on the dirty floor. “Am I suddenly running a boardinghouse for itinerant society women and their servants? Renting out corners for fifteen rubles a pop? Maybe there’s some room under the stove. Why don’t you look?”

“For God’s sake, Anton. Varvara said they’d use her as a hostage.”

He crushed out his butt on the floor under the leg of his chair. “Look, it was one thing for Kuriakin to flop here. Then one day you appear, like something the cat dragged in and forgot to eat. Did I throw you out? No. I lived with it, like the sympatichniy chelovek I am.” That was a laugh. No one in the world would accuse him of being an agreeable chap. “But this? What’s next, a priest? Maybe you want to start a cotillion. Or a charitable society.”

It had been hard enough to get her here. I wasn’t going to let Anton chase her off now. I came closer so I could keep my voice down. “Have a heart, Anton. If she ends up a hostage, or interned in some camp in the Arctic, would you feel comfortable in your soul that you chased her away?”

“Are you accusing me of having both a heart and a soul? Mercy!”

“I’ve heard quite enough,” said Mother from the doorway. “Not another moment will I remain under this roof, I assure you, monsieur. Come, Avdokia, we’ll put our counters on noir and see what becomes of us.” My mother took the old lady’s arm and turned back to the door.

But the bets would be on rouge, Mother. “Happy now?”

“Yes, I am completely comfortable, thank you.” He was the one in charge—no Genya to mitigate his pettiness. He knew he was wrong, and it made him all the nastier.

My mother put her gloved hand on my wrist. “Tu t’es trompé en tes amis.” You have miscalculated your friends. “Let’s be on our way, Avdokia.” She tried to grasp the knob but I wouldn’t move away from the door.

“Anton, I’m talking to you. Just tell me this, how do you live with yourself every day?”

“You should know—you’re always here, aren’t you?” He wiped his gaze away to the window, as if the most interesting sight in the world were outside the dirty panes, gilded elephants loping by in midair, bearing howdahs of Turkish clowns. He was waiting for them to leave, for us all to go, so that he would not have to recognize what a beast he was being. But this was no joke, no matter of preference. Even now the Cheka might be searching from flat to flat in the Liteiny district for the possible—the likely—fifth column. Makarov would be a name high on the list.

Anton had been spoiling for this fight for a long time, and with Genya gone, he wasn’t the only one who could speak plainly. “Listen, Anton. I fell in love with your friend. Is that a sin? Is it a capital offense? Someone loves him. And now you’re going to punish me? Is that what this is all about?”

My mother was whiter than her own white hair. She took my mittened hand in her gloved ones. “For the love of God,” she whispered hoarsely. “Not one more word. Death itself would be better.”

“No, it wouldn’t, Mother. Death would not be better than this.” I snatched my hand from hers. I knew she didn’t like it but this was my life now, this life that people were living, on top of each other, arguing, saying the cruelest things right out loud. You had to have the hide of a buffalo. I was trying to do the right thing. Why did everyone have to be so difficult? “Anton, could you please just let them stay? I thought you were a mutualist. I thought you believed in spontaneous organization.”

Anton heaved himself up and skulked to his side of the room, pacing between his cot and the table, his arms folded tight across his chest. His black brow thundered over his long nose, his jaw set. Mother tried the door again, but I wouldn’t let her open it. What would he say? “Anton?”

Finally, he flung himself back into his chair. “Oh for Christ’s sake,” he said. “Just keep them quiet and out of my hair.”

My mother drew herself up in her glossy black coat. “I don’t intend to host a party, monsieur.”

I quickly showed Mother and my old nanny to our corner, the divan and the bookshelf. They could have the divan, and I would sleep on the chairs. I stripped the linens off the divan, shaking them out and folding them neatly so that Vera Borisovna could sit down without soiling her spirit with the unmentionable activity the quilts and blankets embodied. I could see the unspoken words written on her forehead: Is this where you sleep with him? You and he, like beasts?

I did my best to play host, pointing to our books, to Seryozha’s art works, to the zinc water bucket by the stove, our few sticks of wood, our old iron primus, which had been outfitted to burn just about anything. It was like giving someone a tour of the inside of a drawer. And over here are the pencils, and that’s our eraser. Mother plumped the pillows and Avdokia fished Our Lady of Tikhvin out of her bag, placing it on the bookshelf and positioning an oil lamp before it. I ignored Anton’s stare. Are you joking?

After studying Seryozha’s painting and his silhouettes for a time, Mother seated herself gingerly, folding her hands in her lap, as if she could stay like that, frightened and stubborn and straight-backed, until it was safe go home. I threw some wood scraps in the primus to boil water for barley tea.

At the table, Anton importantly riffled the pages of his French dictionary, filling the air with the sound of autumn leaves blown in a strong wind. He mumbled, “Les Chabins chantent des airs à mourir / Aux Chabines marronnes.” He slammed the dictionary closed. “What the hell are Chabins? ‘The somethings sing their songs of death to their maroon something women.’ Apollinaire you whore’s son, you big fat turd.” He threw himself onto his cot. “I have a headache.” The springs groaned. He began to play with his revolver, spinning the cylinder, opening it, looking in at the bullets in the chambers. I was used to this but I knew he was trying to terrify my mother. I didn’t think the gun even worked. He liked to tell us that he’d played Russian roulette with it. He imagined himself a Verlaine.

“Mulatto,” Vera Borisovna said suddenly, her voice clear and still as a stone dropped in clear water. “Chabin. It’s when one of the great-grandparents is a black. Like Pushkin.” We all turned to stare at her. “One-eighth’s part. And marronnes means ‘chestnut.’”

Anton propped himself up on one elbow. “Really?”

“Although ‘maroon’ is picturesque. You might prefer it.” She stopped. Then a slow smile trickled across her pale face. “Also it’s ‘dying.’ Not ‘death.’ Les Chabins chantent des airs à mourir.” Her beautiful accent. “The mulattos sing songs of dying to their chestnut—maroon—women.”