He made no comment.
“Prime Minister Stolypin has denounced them,” she added. “For trying to destroy Russia’s economy. They’ve managed to shut down our mines and stop our trains running.”
He still made no comment.
“I can’t see them,” Katya complained. “The police are in the way.”
“Look, there are the tops of their placards,” Valentina pointed out. He could hear the unease in her voice.
Wait. Just wait. You will see more than you want.
Ahead lay the backs of policemen, a solid wall of them from one side of the street to the other.
“Do you think there will be trouble?” Valentina was so close behind him he could feel her breath warm on his collar. He pictured her hands, white and nervous, and the hairs rising on the back of her neck. “Why are these men on strike, Arkin?”
Didnt she know? How could she not know?
“They are demanding a fair wage, Miss Valentina. The police are advancing on them now.”
Slowly, relentlessly. Advancing on them. He could make out batons in their hands. Or were they guns? The chanting of the marchers drew closer, and instantly a sense of real danger sparked in the street. It crackled in the air and people started to run, slipping on ice, skidding on snow. Arkin felt his pulse kick into life.
“Arkin.” It was Miss Valentina’s voice. “Get us out of here. Do whatever you have to, but get us away from here.”
“I can’t. We’re trapped in traffic.”
“Arkin,” Valentina ordered, “please drive us out. Now.”
He felt the muscle tighten at the corner of his jaw, and his maroon gloves curled around the rim of the steering wheel. “I cannot drive the car anywhere at the moment,” he said evenly, looking straight ahead through the windshield. “We are stuck.”
“Arkin, listen to me. I have seen what Bolsheviks can do. I’m not going to sit here with my sister like a helpless calf and wait for them to do it again.”
He heard it then, the whisper of fear. He swiveled around in his seat and looked her full in the face. For a moment their gaze held, until at last he looked down. “I understand, Miss Valentina.”
“Please do something.”
“There’s no need to be afraid of them,” he lied. “The marchers only want better pay and working conditions. No one is going to harm you. Or Miss Katya.”
She lifted her hands as if she would shake him. “Then take out the wheelchair,” she ordered. “I’ll push it up the street myself.”
“No need for that.”
Abruptly he swung down hard right on the steering. He shouldered the back of the carriage in front with the Turicum’s fender, forcing it out at an angle. Ahead of them a horse whinnied, but now the heavy car’s wheels were free and Arkin could maneuver it up onto the curb of the pavement and into the open.
“I’ll get you out of here.”
Five
WHICH ONES SHALL WE CHOOSE?” “You can have the meringue, it’s your favorite.”
“What about the chocolate one?”
“No, you can’t have that,” Katya laughed. “I want it.”
With a delighted smile Katya circled her fork over the silver tiers of the cake stand in the middle of the table.
“I shall choose first,” she announced.
Valentina wanted to act as if nothing had happened. She wanted her sister to enjoy herself, that was why she’d brought her here-and it had been a long time since she’d seen Katya so bright and animated. But Valentina’s cake fork felt like lead in her fingers.
Arkin had been as good as his word. He’d barged the car along the sidewalks, indifferent to the shouts from the pedestrians who scattered at the approach of the big blue motor. He found a route out of there, just as he’d promised. They drove to another restaurant, La Gavotte, with no further comment on what had passed, and Valentina selected a table against the rear wall, near the door to the kitchens. As far from the front of the establishment as it was possible to be.
Around her everything went on as normal, the waitresses bobbing about in black frocks with frilly white aprons and frivolous twists of white lace in their hair. All so courteous. All so polite. No anger here. No shouts. The customers were smiling and smartly dressed, bathed in the healthy glow cast by the pink glass wall lamps, picking at patisseries, sipping hot chocolate. Laughing. Talking.
Valentina was stunned by her own fragility. No one else seemed frightened, and certainly no other customers appeared ready to bring up their lunch over the pristine white tablecloth. Everyone else was breathing normally. Was it she who was foolish, or was it them?
“Valentina.”
“Yes?”
“Are you all right?” Katya was peering at her closely.
“Yes.”
There was a space between them that felt fragile. Breakable. Valentina refused to touch it.
Katya deliberately changed the subject. “The new car is good, don’t you think?”
“Yes.”
“And Arkin was excellent.”
“He drives well.”
Valentina cast a wary glance at the wide arched windows that looked out onto the road through net curtains. Something in her chest gave a slippery shudder.
“Can you hear something?” she asked. “I thought I heard…”
Katya’s hand wrapped itself around Valentina’s and they lay on the cloth together, Katya’s fingers like fine strands of delicate porcelain, whereas Valentina’s were more robust, a strong pad of muscle on each finger. All those piano scales.
“It’s all right to be frightened sometimes,” Katya said, “after what you went through in the forest.”
Valentina looked back at the net curtains. “You weren’t frightened today.”
“That’s because my life is so dull, I am too stupid to know when I should be afraid and when I should not. You have more sense.”
“Katya,” Valentina asked softly, “do you think-”
That was the moment when the barrage of bricks hurtled through the windows, when tiny raindrops of glass sliced like diamonds through powdered cheeks. When one arrow-shaped shard lodged in a woman’s neck, that was the moment the screaming began.
VALENTINA WAS RUNNING. SLIPPING AND SLIDING ON THE snow but still running. Her legs didn’t know how to stop. The wheels of the chair screeched and skidded.
“Valentina, don’t!” An icy hand seized hers. “Please stop. Please.”
It was Katya. Begging her. With an effort her legs stumbled to a halt, but her fingers still gripped the handles of the wheelchair as though they had become a part of it, stiff and rigid, welded to the metal. The scream of the woman with the glass in her neck echoed in Valentina’s mind. She dragged air into her lungs and felt it peel away her flesh, it was so cold.
“Valentina, we’ll freeze to death.”
Katya had twisted around in her wheelchair, her ungloved hand pulling at Valentina’s sleeve. Her blue eyes were panicked.
Valentina looked around, momentarily baffled to find herself in a narrow dirty street where household slops had frozen into treacherous yellow mounds on the pavement. A drainpipe, covered in snow, was lying like a corpse in the gutter and windows were blanked out with cardboard. Paint peeled, walls cracked. A man was watching them, his beard and his dog as ragged as his clothes.
Oh God, what had she done?
The moment the bricks hit the window, she’d had only one thought. To get Katya out of there. Out. Away. Safe.
Her hands had seized the wheelchair with her sister in it and had propelled her straight through the door into the restaurant kitchen, then out the back of the building into an untidy courtyard. From there her feet had started running. Out. Away. Safe. The words hurtled around in her head. She’d darted down streets she’d never seen before, as if she knew instinctively she would be safer here among the destitute and the forgotten than among her own kind, where bombs and bricks had become the tools of speech.