‘Should married women look as I do?’ she says, trying not to sound morose.
‘Nobody looks as you do,’ he says.
His tone suggests that he will visit her bed tonight. It would be the first time since his return from his most recent trip. She knows from the chauffeur’s whispers to Cook that Dmitry pays regular visits to the docks, when he is here in the capital. That he likes the girls well-broke, like a horse.
Not all the staff are as blinkered as the housemaids.
Tonya turns to the window. The factory is on the Vyborg side, across the Neva, but the driver seems to be taking a long way around. She blinks, refuses to admire the cityscape. It has been nearly a year and a half since she married Dmitry, over a year since he brought her to Petrograd. Still the only thing she likes about the capital is the single aloof spire of the Admiralty, the way it catches the sunlight. The Neva is not terrible, either, though it stinks of cod and seagull. And sometimes she enjoys seeing the laundry hung on lines in the yellow courtyards, hearing it flap in the wind, flap-flap-flap. She wants it to blow away. She wants all of it to blow away.
Eugene Onegin, she tells herself. Think of Eugene Onegin.
The tour is deadly dull, led by the foreman, a stubbly man called Gochkin. Tonya runs her hand over the tables, tools, machinery for which she has no name. The workers give her hard stares, but then so do Dmitry’s society friends. Tonya might come from provincial gentry, her father might be a prince, but to the old St Petersburg elite, she is lowly country stock. Her home village is so deep in the country that it is hardly considered the same country.
Young and old, the faces of the workers are slick with grime, and unsmiling. Dmitry seems not to notice. He is friendly with everyone, shaking hands, slapping shoulders. Asking after babies. Tonya knows her husband fancies himself a liberal. He feels bad that his forefathers ever owned serfs.
He does not, however, feel bad for owning her.
After the tour Tonya joins Dmitry and Gochkin on the high platform that overlooks the factory floor. The men retreat to the office of the latter and Tonya strays to the railing. She plays with the ends of her hair, picks over her sleeve for the smallest threads. This stiff-necked dress is horribly stifling. Her jewellery feels weighty. Uncomfortable and restless, she shifts her attention to a group of workers who have gathered below. Young men, laughing, talking amongst themselves.
The rail is suddenly the only thing that keeps her standing.
Tonya doesn’t know who he is. He was not present during the tour. She would have remembered if he were. He is dark-haired, lean, but they all are, no doubt subsisting on cabbage soup and kasha. And he is handsome. So handsome that she feels itchy, like lice might have burrowed into her stockings.
‘You have an audience, Andreyev,’ someone says.
‘He always has,’ remarks another.
He is the one they are calling Andreyev. He looks up, barely, and meets her gaze. His smile is knowing – no, mocking – and her heart races. Perhaps some wealthy do-gooders have barged in here recently, hoping to elevate the sorry lives of the working classes, looking for a purpose for their pampered lives, and he is mistaking her for one of them. One such couple came to call at the house, just the other day. They were horrified at what they’d witnessed in a workers’ barracks, nearly foaming at the mouth as they described cockroaches clinging to plank beds, whole families jammed into spaces unfit for livestock, and the smell, oh, the smell!
Tonya can only imagine the smell of someone like him. Of the revolting hand-rolled cigarettes that the natives of Petrograd love to smoke. Of the smog and soot of the factory pillars. Of the city streets. Of sweat.
They have looked too long at one another. She flushes. He wipes something from his eye, dirt, or just the sight of her, and turns away.
Since the start of summer Tonya has taken early, winding walks, all the way from the house on the Fontanka up to the Neva, one river to another. Dmitry usually sleeps late, and it’s a chance to be alone, unguarded, uninhibited, for no one else is about between five and six in the morning, except droshky drivers and soldiers. And a few troublemakers.
People like – him.
She is just passing the newspaper offices on Nevsky Prospekt when she sees him. Just by chance, for a remarkably sizeable crowd has formed around Andreyev: a clutch of students, in blue caps; workers with their tarred hats and unwashed heads; drivers in their signature mink stoles. Tonya is able to join the crowd at the fringes. He is the only one speaking: The old Russia shall make way for the new! And in this new world, all will participate, all will partake, even you lads, even you ladies, even you, comrade, even—
You.
He sees her now. Smiles, as yesterday, at the factory. She feels shaky, shivery. As if he is nearer than he actually is, near enough for his hands, his mouth, his body, to be all over hers.
Mama once warned her of feeling this way. Of inexplicably wanting something, someone, enough that your blood runs hot, until it bubbles. Everyone feels this when they’re young, said Mama, but it passes as quick as it comes, and Tonya only giggled, because it was unthinkable, both the bubbling of blood and such a feeling of wanting.
He is still orating to the crowd: Can you see the future that lies before you? Will you reach for it? Will you take it for yourselves?
But he is watching her still.
You will all of you live two lives, comrades! One is finished, and the other is now!
Tonya tells herself that it is easy to adore a performer, and to forget that they perform for everyone. She feels her own lips moving, saying this. But the voice she hears is his.
As the autumn cedes to winter, Anastasia Sergeyevna, Dmitry’s widowed mother, grows too weak to continue living in her dacha by Lake Ladoga. She is moved into their house on the Fontanka and decides to occupy the spare study on the ground floor, a wood-panelled, little-used space that stinks of death even with her in it. In her youth Anastasia was a popular hostess, a beloved wife, a saintly woman. At least that is what people say, the few friends who drop by, who depart with their faces drooping, like the branches on the maple trees outside.
Now she lies as still as the heavy, dark furniture of the room she has chosen for herself.
At Dmitry’s request, Tonya sits by her mother-in-law’s side for an hour every day. After the first few woefully awkward visits, she brings along Eugene Onegin, and reads aloud until the woman falls asleep. It is easy enough to do, in here. Anastasia suffers headaches behind her bad eye, and so the curtains are never drawn. The only light in the room, the only life, comes from the fireplace.
Today Tonya begins: ‘My whole life has been a pledge to this meeting with you—’
‘Have you read Pushkin before?’ interrupts Anastasia.
‘I enjoy his poetry,’ says Tonya, nervously. ‘I am particularly fond of—’
‘Olenka tells me you spend hours every day in the library. Have you always read so much?’
‘There weren’t many books in my parents’ home.’ Tonya tries to avoid looking in Anastasia’s bad eye. ‘Nothing like—’
‘Do you miss home?’
‘At times,’ says Tonya, trying not to think of Otrada; of the nearby village of Popovka; of the creek gleaming silver, the moon tossed over the trees. Of running barefoot; of breathing deep. ‘But I am happy here,’ she adds. She tucks in her skirts, turns the page, knows she’s giving away her lie with these small movements. Her mother-in-law has fallen silent again. Tonya blunders on, reading until she sees that Anastasia’s good eye has closed. The bad eye does not appear able to close, not like that. The lid has petrified in place.