The day we met ruined me, you see. Made me. You won’t begrudge me the reliving of it now, all the better to pepper my mind with flashes of your face: false idols relayed to the real.
It was a grim soiree. I’ll set the scene: some seven years ago, one Lev Pavlovich, his face sallowed by hunger, which is endemic in the room but admitted by none. Seen as a class weakness. The party nonetheless thick with smuggled alcohol and pickled quail’s eggs, a hundred days’ rations traded up for a single ostentatious display. A sea of suits, unbespoken by time and tragedy. A sheen of masks, to pretend gaiety. Whispers of experiments performed by enemy combatants: kerosene secreted into the veins of all the comely Russian dolls, hoping to make them into ticking-tocking walking time bombs. Or maybe these rumors are mixed up with past indecencies; no one can tell heartless exaggeration from reality anymore. A man breaks down in the corner and says that the homeland is lost to them, they will never return once they pass the borders, their memories will be ghosts. They are already ghosts. All the room’s inhabitants. Partygoers shift nervously, and change the topic to something brighter.
A curfew is in effect; electricity verboten after eight P.M., so the room is reduced to candlelight, which has an admittedly charming effect. Warmth implied by the glimmer and flicker. You know how I feel about candles, Vera. Even then, you felt it too: I know, because we have the same heart.
But still. I was bored and glum. There wasn’t a single gentleman present who was fit to converse with, and every Leningrad lady was avoiding me after an unfortunate botched engagement. (Unfortunate for Lev, then. Not for this Lev. Our Lev. Now we can look back on the flagrante delicto in which he was caught with a certain affection that borders on sympathetic arousal. The girl was no match for you, but she was useful in her way.) The waiters circulated mostly wine, but I’d come upon a bottle of scotch stashed, or perhaps simply forgotten, behind a mirror in the marble hall.
Enter here: the darling imp. Her fingers light on the stem of her glass, tongue reaching out to lips to catch an errant drop. You stood by that grotesque cactus, soft body hitched and stitched into a defiant geometry. Behind you, the balcony. Below that, the Moika. How many times have I repeated this image to myself, wondered what you were thinking? Were you drawing a map of escape in your mind? Tracing lines in the carpets that hung for insulation on the walls? Had you spotted a cockroach and watched it climb into the pocket of an ex-counselor to the tsar? You wouldn’t tell me. Still haven’t. Your imagination is yet a locked box. Of course I didn’t tell you, then, how you dragged the shadow of Dina behind you, catching my eye with her lost silhouette but keeping it with your impudent own. It seemed, after all, unimportant. As I approached you I understood anew the role that Dina had played in my life: not a tragedy, but a guide. Not perfection, but a mark of my own poor imagination, which saw in her the ur.
I picked up your wrist and turned it over, watching the sweet blood run beneath your skin. You looked at me, quizzical. Mouth turned down. Hair squeezed by the black velvet ribbon that secured your requisite disguise. And then you smiled.
God Save the Motherless Child?
From the New York Register, Opinion Page, May 1928
NEW YORK, NY. Most readers will remember the daring rescue undertaken by the Committee on Futurity (commonly referred to as “The Furies”) some three years ago, when a group of orphaned Soviet children were secreted onto a passenger steamer in the hopes of bringing them to our country and offering them the best of American values. Details of the children’s liberation were popular news at the time, particularly the unlikely series of tactics supposedly employed by the Furies, which included subterfuge, scout troops, coded newspaper articles, special whistles and hand signs, and the implausibly named “Cat Burglar Escape.” But now, with the arrival of the “orphan boat” at Ellis Island safely in the past, what do we really know about the children themselves and their plans for our nation? Attempts by this newspaper to track down and interview any of the orphans were firmly stonewalled by Fury spokesman Roberts and his team.
The notion that these children may not be innocent—that they may, in fact, have been part of a plot to infiltrate our home life with spies—first emerged along with the news that the orphans were not from German and Polish ghettos as assumed, but instead from Soviet orphanages all around the USSR. Suspicions only increased during the ship’s two-week quarantine in harbor, which many hypothesized was due not to flu (as the Furies reported) but instead to the heightened political tension around the ship’s passengers. During this period, lights were frequently seen on the boat at night, and sometimes figures were spotted moving around the dock. Sources close to the Register insisted that occasionally the lights would “change color” or “move funny” in the dark, but these reports were never substantiated.
Thanks to an anonymous tip, Register reporters were on the scene when the children were finally released and sent on to their new American homes on a quiet night in December. Two hundred small figures were removed from the boat, huddled beneath coats and blankets, before being placed into waiting vans and taken to the nearest train depot. Although the crowd was told the orphans were young and sick, bystanders eager for a closer look continued to press toward the children, and flashbulbs popped regularly in the darkness. One onlooker even waved a knife in the air while declaring himself “ready to act” if necessary, and though this man was quickly subdued by authorities, there were some present who questioned whether his actions were those of a crank or a hero.
Three years later, we are still left with the same uncertainties. Was it charity to place these children with American families, or a boondoggle of the greatest order? Did they grow up to contribute productively to their households, or did they wait and watch for the moment they might undermine them? With the Furies still closely guarding their whereabouts, we’re still no closer to finding out.
Zoya
When I was one of them, the girls of the Donne School all seemed unique to me, each equipped with her own set of interests (which I knew of) and hidden talents (which I sometimes suspected), and peculiar embarrassments (which I rarely understood), not to mention a pair or two of infrequently laundered pajamas. They all had names: Jenny Hollinger, Leonora Torrance, Margaret Rathburn, Cindy Pink. Josephine Toff and Ashley Pearson, Regina Anderson and Leah Wills. It was only once I joined the staff that they became as one to me, a sea of girls washing forward out of classroom doors, dredged back into seats with the chime of a bell. Totally tidal and predictable. Utterly furious in their force.
It’s true I endured my fair share of snubbing as a student—as I’ve said, I didn’t really have friends. But it was accepted that I was supposed to be there. A little exotic, a little pathetic. Their mascot European exile with her heavy accent (embarrassing: I rid myself of this as soon as I could) and quietly ridiculous turns of phrase. Many fellow students recognized me as Margaret’s roommate, and put me under their wing for that reason, helping me pick the one good dessert from a table full of sticky canned puddings, or stopping me outside the bathroom to point out the toilet paper attached to my shoe. (It took me years to get the hang of throwing soiled tissue into the toilet instead of a wastebasket, as I’d been taught to do back home. Especially considering the dented tins placed in every stall for items of feminine hygiene; how was I supposed to know the difference? Lucky for me, none of the girls ever knew. I think I’d have been lynched, or would, at the very least, have acquired a sickening nickname.) At graduation we all wore black gowns and hugged on the lawn, creating a tableau not unlike my original dreams of the Donne School, but in reverse. Good-byes, not hellos. Dark clothing, not white. Still quite tender.