She will sleep when she gets there. She only has to make it there. She tells herself on every corner to go one block further. One by one. She has no idea what time it is, only that it’s darker now, that the moon has slipped behind streaks of grey clouds. Rain begins to fall as Tonya turns into Valentin’s courtyard. She exhales through her teeth. The stairs leading down are the most difficult. The streets have torn holes into her slippers.
She knocks on his door. No answer.
‘Valentin?’ she calls out, feebly.
The rain shows no sign of slowing. There’s a tide rolling in that will bring up everything from the depths, Valentin used to say. And it will drag down all that has ever lived on the surface. Thunder rolls, rumbles overhead. She can feel another rivulet of blood on her inner thigh.
The door opens halfway.
‘What are you doing here?’ Valentin asks. He sounds not at all pleased.
There is rain in her eyes, on her lips. ‘I’ve come to speak with you,’ she babbles.
‘Why?’
Tonya can’t begin to explain everything that has happened since they last saw one another, everything that has happened only tonight, and yet she must. He will understand, of course. She steps towards him, but he steps back, away. ‘That night in February,’ she says. ‘I wanted to—’
‘Don’t,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t matter any more.’
The rain pummels everything around them, punctuates his words. Her throat closes hard. She doesn’t want to talk any more, only wants to be near him, to kiss him, to never let go.
He hasn’t invited her in. She is soaked. Nearly wilted.
‘It does matter,’ she insists. ‘I have to tell you – I have to explain—’
The door opens wider. Standing there, hair sweaty-damp, arms and shoulders bare, a sheet pulled over the rest of her body, is Viktoria Katenina. Viktoria doesn’t venture as far as Valentin, perhaps to remain sheltered from the rain, and her smile is syrupy, dripping down her face.
‘Oh,’ Tonya says dumbly. ‘Oh.’
‘How can you leave her standing here, Valya?’ Viktoria chastises. ‘Tonya, you look like a drowned rat! You must come inside and get warm. I’ll go put something on.’
‘No,’ Tonya says, ‘thank you,’ and it is all she manages. She shakes her head as Viktoria offers again, keeps shaking her head so that her wet hair falls in her face and she can’t see through it well enough to tell if Valentin is even still there, or if he has already gone inside. She backs away, up the cellar steps, turns and compels herself to keep going. The same way she came, one foot in front of the other. Now the rain falls hard as bullets. If he calls for her, says her name, if he says anything, she’ll turn around, but he doesn’t.
Valentin Andreyev, the great Bolshevik orator, silent at last.
Everything she was going to tell him, Tonya tells herself instead, on the lonely journey back to the house on the Fontanka. That she misses him. That she thinks of him every day. That they might have had a baby, in their lifetime. But they were never going to have their lifetime. Or else it has already passed.
In the days that follow, Tonya prepares to depart for Otrada. She sells, barters as much of Dmitry’s precious collections as she can. She uses the income to pay the servants advance wages, and then she tells them to gather their things and go. She gives no explanation for their master’s absence. There’s no need. She’s read the papers now. All of Petrograd is in such disarray that people often pack up and depart in the middle of the night. The wealthy have left in droves.
The Countess Burzinova and her daughter Akulina come to call shortly before Tonya is set to leave. Tonya has nothing to offer her final pair of guests. This very morning she ate her last slices of rye, soaked in sunflower oil and thickened with water. She may not eat again until she is back in her village.
‘Where is your husband?’ asks Natalya sharply, with a glance to both ends of the Blue Salon, as if he might be hiding in the corner.
‘Gone,’ says Tonya. ‘Dmitry left overnight, a week ago.’
‘Gone?’ the other woman repeats.
Tonya nods. Natalya’s presence is both abrupt and yet entirely predictable, for the Countess never fails to turn up when Tonya is least prepared to receive her. She focuses, steadfastly, on the waves painted into the wallpaper. It is meant to look like the sea. People are supposed to be able to submerge themselves in it. She does feel a little like she is underwater.
‘He did not say where?’ Natalya asks.
‘I woke up and my door was unlocked. I heard from the servants that he’d gone. They didn’t know any more than that.’
‘This beggars belief.’ Natalya’s voice is like a horsewhip. ‘Dmitry wouldn’t leave without telling me. We discuss all his travel plans. Let me talk to the servants myself, then, and see if I can’t scare it out of them. Where are they? Or have they all run off too?’
‘I had to dismiss them—’
‘Dismiss them!’
This conversation is slipping from Tonya’s grasp. She is fumbling for words, mishandling what she does say. She looks over at Akulina, who sits with her arms crossed, looking churlish. Tonya breathes in, draws herself up, for the things that once underlaid her world, that seemed like laws of nature – the Tsar, Imperial Russia, Mama, her marriage – have proven man-made and destructible. One by one they have come crashing to her feet. Everything that has ever stood may be torn down this summer.
Even the Countess Burzinova.
‘You’ve been indisposed, darling,’ says Natalya, ‘but did Dmitry share with you anything of the trouble at the factory? The strikes, the violence?’
‘I know some,’ says Tonya.
‘The foreman has been run out of town. The union is up in arms. Many have joined the Red Guards.’ Natalya’s fingers knead her silver necklace like dough. ‘It’s happening everywhere, but it’s worst in the Vyborg. My sense, Tonya, is that something has happened to Dmitry. Because he would not leave like this. He would not. He is meticulous in his methods.’
‘I don’t understand—’
‘His workers,’ is the lash of a reply. ‘They might have kidnapped him.’
‘You think they would … hurt him?’
Natalya’s eyes have narrowed into pinpoints. ‘Or perhaps just one worker, with his own reasons.’
Tonya hides her trembling hands in her lap.
‘If it was Valentin Andreyev, if he’s dared to lay a finger on your husband,’ says Natalya, with sudden tranquillity, ‘he will suffer for it. If anyone has hurt Dmitry, I will repay.’
‘Valentin would not kill for me,’ Tonya says in a whisper, ‘if that is what you mean. He might kill for his principle. But not for me.’
‘You leave it to me, darling. I have my ways for getting at the truth. In the meantime, what’s to become of you? Come and live with me. Look at you. You’re already thin as paper.’
‘I’m leaving for Otrada,’ says Tonya.
‘Where on earth is that?’ says Natalya, with distaste.
‘My family’s home. In Tula.’
‘And how will I reach you there, if I need to?’
There are no telegraph machines at Otrada. The post is inconsistent at best. Most people fetch newspapers from the nearest selo, or the much larger town of Kalasy. Tonya retrieves one of the atlases, tears out a map of Tula province, and indicates the village of Popovka. Natalya takes it, but Tonya doubts the Countess will ever think of her again, after today. Natalya offers some money and Tonya accepts even though money is mostly useless now, with inflation, and she escorts her guests out to the foyer. She sees Natalya staring at the cabinets where the ceramics and porcelains used to stand.
Everything is empty now, Tonya wants to say. Just like her womb.
Petrograd has changed from what Tonya remembers. Scarlet banners and ribbons hang out of every window, strung across all the rooftops. Breadlines wind around whole city blocks. Many who wait have brought footstools to rest upon. The streets are covered in sewage, and at all the corners, prostitutes advertise openly. They might be younger than her, but they walk like old women.