Katya’s cheeks had turned white. She was freezing to death. The north wind had whipped up from the gulf, and neither of them was wearing a coat or gloves or even a scarf. Everything had been abandoned at La Gavotte. She could almost see blood congealing in Katya’s veins. She was killing Katya. All over again. She headed straight for the nearest door. It was split down the middle and patched with strips of rough planking, but she banged on it hard. After a long wait it was opened by a child, no higher than her hip.
“May we come in? Please. Pozhalusta. We’re cold.”
The boy didn’t react. His face was crusted with scabs, and one filthy finger picked at a ripe spot on his chin.
“Pozhalusta,” she said again. “Is your mother here?”
He stepped back and she thought he would swing open the door for the wheelchair to enter, but instead he pushed it shut. She banged the wood so hard that the crack widened.
“Open the door,” she shouted. “Otkroite dver.”
The door eased back just enough for one blue eye to peer up at her. “What do you want?” a girl’s voice asked.
“My sister is freezing to death out here. Please let us in.”
But she’d learned her lesson and didn’t stop there. This time she accompanied her request with a push against the door that took the child by surprise, so that she stumbled backward. Before she could recover, Valentina had the wheelchair and herself inside the dim hallway and the door firmly shut behind them. The musty reek of rat droppings loitered on the stairs.
“Thank you,” she said. “Spasibo.”
In front of her huddled three filthy urchins, two identical boys and a girl with dirty blond hair. The twin boys were nervous, their clothes torn and misshapen, trousers not meeting their ankles. The girl, younger than her brothers, was staring at the wheelchair with wide-eyed curiosity.
“Is your mother in?” Valentina asked.
The girl pointed to a door without shifting her gaze from the spokes of Katya’s chair. “Is it a bicycle?” she whispered.
One of the boys clipped her lightly around the ear. “Don’t be stupid, Liuba. It’s for cripples.”
Valentina opened the door the girl had indicated and pushed the chair into a small room that was only fractionally warmer than the air outside. A stained sheet was draped over a section of the window in an attempt to keep out the cold, turning the air gray and streaky. It smelled of damp plaster and unwashed bodies.
“I’m sorry to intrude.”
A woman was breast-feeding an infant on the end of a narrow bed. Her body was as scrawny as an old woman’s, but her eyes were still bright and young. She was wearing fingerless mittens, a brown scarf knotted around her head. She fastened the front of her dress.
“What do you want?” Her voice was tired.
“My sister and I need help. Please…” Valentina hated to ask for something from this woman who so clearly had nothing to give. “My sister is cold. She needs warmth. Some hot food.”
“My children need hot food,” the woman said sullenly, “but they don’t get any.”
Valentina took Katya’s cold hand in hers and massaged it vigorously. The woman immediately placed the infant on the bed and went over to the small black stove in the corner. She opened its metal door, a tiny wisp of flame within it, barely alive. No wonder it was so cold. Using tongs, the woman removed a heavy stone that lay inside the stove, wrapped it up in a blackened piece of toweling that lay ready for the purpose, and placed it on Katya’s lap. Katya’s hands burrowed under it.
“Can’t you put more wood on the fire?” Valentina suggested.
“No.”
“I have money.”
The three children edged closer. The girl held out a grubby palm. “We can buy firewood.”
Valentina had to trust them. She pulled two white ten-rouble notes from the purse in her pocket, even though she knew it was far too much for firewood. “Bring some food too. Hurry! Potoropites!”
All three children vanished.
“Here, take this.” The woman held out the blanket from the bed. Valentina looked at it. Probably riddled with lice.
“Spasibo.” She wrapped it around her sister’s shoulders and tucked it around her limp legs, aware of the woman’s watchful scrutiny as she did so, and for the first time in her life it occurred to her to wonder how much the wheelchair was worth. As much as this woman’s family earned in a month? In a year? She had no idea. This wretched, damp place was smaller than Valentina’s bedroom at home. Part of the ceiling was hanging down and black mold was crawling up one wall. “Thank you for helping us,” she said, genuinely grateful. “There was an attack by strikers on the restaurant we were in, and my sister and I escaped, but without our coats.”
The woman nodded her head at Katya. “Is she sick?”
“She was in an accident.”
The baby on the bed started to whimper and the woman said, “Pick her up.”
Valentina looked at the squirming bundle.
“Pick her up.” The woman’s voice was sharper this time.
“What?”
“You want my help. In exchange I want yours. A moment’s peace from the child.” She smiled, and there was a flash of youth in it. “Don’t worry, I won’t steal your sister’s chair.”
A flush burned its way up Valentina’s cheeks as she picked up the baby. It had almost no hair and little twigs for legs.
“Valentina.” It was Katya’s faint voice. “Let me hold her.”
Valentina brought the child close to the wheelchair but didn’t hand it over. “It is dirty,” she muttered. “You don’t want…” But she saw the needy look in Katya’s eyes. She deposited the child on her sister’s lap and was appalled when she leaned down and kissed the bony little head. A smile spread across Katya’s face. Wherever she had been, she was coming back.
THE AROMA OF HOT PIROZHKI CHANGED EVERYTHING. THE three children seemed to swell out into their skin before they’d even been given one of the meat pies from the greaseproof paper package. They sat on the floor, in front of the blazing logs in the stove, and watched the fire with the kind of fascination that Valentina would give to a performance of the ballet.
“Shouldn’t they wash their hands?” Valentina suggested as she placed a pie on each palm. The dirt on their fingers was blacker than the floor.
“The water pump is frozen.” The woman shrugged and took a large bite out of a slice of bread spread with black currant conserve. As she chewed on it, Valentina watched the features of her face melt with pleasure and grow astonishingly younger.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Varenka Sidorova.”
“I’m Valentina. My sister’s name is Katya.”
Katya was sipping hot tea and honey from a tin mug, and there was color in her cheeks now. The infant lay like a kitten on her lap.
“Varenka, what does your husband do?”
The woman’s eyes grew cautious. “He works in a factory.”
“Is he a Bolshevik?”
She saw the tightening of the skin under the woman’s eyes. “What do you know of Bolsheviks?”
“Was he in the march today?”
Varenka started to laugh. The children looked around at her, astonished, as though unused to the sound, but the laughter didn’t stop. It went on and on, rolling from her open mouth. Veins in her neck stood out and tears slid down her cheeks, but still the laughter filled the air. She dropped to her knees, and then the laughter stopped as abruptly as it had begun. She yanked off the headscarf, releasing a crop of chestnut curls. Valentina stared. Katya gave a small smothered gasp. One side of the woman’s head was hairless, and a wide white scar, glistening as though wet, ran from her temple right across her skull to the back of her head. She regarded the sisters with a mixture of pity and hatred.