While I am away, Afrikan is keeping an eye on Kitty, who has already decided she wants to be a yard keeper when she grows up. Now her favorite game is sweeping the floor, muttering in a deep voice, “The Russian people have gone to the dogs. New this, new that—you mark my words, the only thing that comes of new boots is aching feet.”
Kitty has also become friendly with Snapper. The two of them share an interest in hunting out the boot grease, which Afrikan hides. It is made with bacon fat. Snapper can sniff it out, Kitty gets it out, and they both have a treat.
I have been around all the kindergartens in the area and found out a number of shocking things: The nursery teacher in the Golden Fish makes the children stay out in the freezing cold on purpose so that they get sick. The less children she has to look after every day, the less work for her. The nanny in the Rowan Tree tells the children she can take her eyes out and put them up on a high shelf so that they can see everything that is going on. The thought of these eyes, separated from their owner, is enough to induce nervous hiccups in the children.
In the third kindergarten, a good one, there are no free places, and in the fourth, they refused to take Kitty because she was a foreigner. Apparently, the director was afraid my daughter was some tiny spy who might force her to disclose important strategic information about her high chairs and bibs.
I advertised for a helper: a responsible woman who spoke fluent English with teacher training, typing skills, and excellent references, good with children, and a good knowledge of Moscow in case I had to send her off on some errand. I also stipulated that she should be able to cook and clean and take on the running of a household.
It soon became apparent that angels of this sort are simply not to be found. Even if they did exist, they would hardly be tempted by the modest salary I was offering of thirty rubles and the tiny storeroom in which I hoped to install my new helper.
Seibert told me that in any case, I would not be allowed to hire outside help—apparently, you need special permission to do so.
“The Soviet authorities want to know what goes on in the houses of foreigners,” Seibert said. “So, they’ll send you from pillar to post for all sorts of official documents. And then, when they’ve finally weakened your morale, they’ll plant an OGPU agent in your house.”
“What about your Lieschen,” I asked, remembering his maid. “Does she work for the OGPU too?”
“Naturally,” said Seibert. “But she’s very fond of me, all the same.”
Afrikan appeared at the entrance to Klim’s room accompanied by a dark-browed girl in a peasant coat and a paisley headscarf.
“I’ve brought someone to see you, sir,” he said.
The girl held a rolled mattress under her arm, a knapsack on her back, and from her elbow hung a string of ring-shaped rolls.
“Hello, mister prince, sir,” said the girl, bowing from the waist.
Klim looked quizzically at Afrikan. “And who might this be?”
“A serving girl for you, that’s who,” he said. “Her name is Kapitolina. She’s a fool of a girl, I grant you, but you’ll find she’s a hard worker. And she’s got a certificate.”
The certificate was a “Certification of the Right to Operate a Stove and Boiler,” and it stated that Comrade Kapitolina Ignatevna Kozlova was “trained in the rules of operation of heating appliances and in safety procedures.”
“She can watch the little one,” said Afrikan, “and cook you breakfast. And she’s handy with a needle too. She’s my own niece, from Biruylevo village—I can vouch for her. She came to the city to earn money for her dowry, but mind you don’t pay her anything—it’s against the law unless you get permission. Instead, just get her a nice piece of cloth the next time you’re at that cooperative of yours. And if anyone comes from the Labor Inspectorate, you can tell them she’s visiting me and helping you out.”
Klim looked the blushing serving girl up and down. “Do you know Moscow well?” he asked her.
“I do indeed!” she exclaimed. “It’s the best city on earth. This is the third time I’ve been. There’s so much to see!”
“Can you read and write?”
Kapitolina hung her head, her brow furrowed.
Afrikan took Klim aside. “Look at her!” he whispered, gesturing toward Kapitolina’s generous buttocks. “Time was, you’d have had to keep a fine girl like that under lock and key. But now there are no men in the village to speak of—half of them dead in the war, and nothing left but the scrapings of the pot: old men, drunks, and cripples. Without a dowry, no decent man will take a wife.”
“Is your niece good with children?” asked Klim.
“She has five younger brothers and looked after the lot of them, and not one of them died.”
“Uncle Afrikan tells me you’ll let me live in the storeroom,” said Kapitolina. “If that’s true, I’ll do anything you like: I’ll wash your dishes with my tears, whatever you say.”
“I think that would be going a little too far,” said Klim, and he asked her to make a start on the washing right way. Kitty hadn’t a single clean pair of stockings left.
It could hardly be said that things began to run smoothly with Kapitolina’s arrival in the house, but life took on added interest.
Kapitolina brought her possessions with her from the village—a huge metal-bound chest and a large icon so soot-blackened that the image of the saint it depicted was all but invisible.
“Who’s that?” asked Kitty.
“That’s my little god,” Kapitolina said affectionately. That same evening, she taught Kitty to kneel before the icon and prostrate herself before it, which Kitty enjoyed hugely.
On top of the chest Kapitolina laid a mattress that had been stuffed with old banknotes—worthless since the currency reform. During the war, her father had earned a pile of money selling straw at inflated prices, and he had hidden it all in the mattress, intending it to serve as a dowry for his daughter.
“Well, at least I can sleep like a millionaire,” she said, plumping up her treasured mattress.
From the trunk, she produced embroidery frames, knitting needles, crochet hooks, and balls of yarn and thread. Soon, the apartment began to fill up with decorative cloths and ornamental towels.
“It’s prettier like this,” she said, spreading a cloth embroidered with roosters over the typewriter.
Klim kept taking away the cloth, but the following day, there it would be again in the same place.
Kapitolina had firm ideas about domestic economy. “You should eat the stale bread before you start on the fresh,” she lectured Klim.
“But if I do that, the fresh bread will have gone stale by the time I eat it,” he objected. “Am I supposed to live on dry rusks?”
Kapitolina’s cheeks reddened with indignation. “Fine then! Let the bread rot and the house burn, and let’s all go to the devil!” she cried.
Klim did not back down, so Kapitolina would eat up the stale bread herself to not let good food go to waste. She did nothing by halves: if she was making soup, she would boil up a whole vat full of it; if she started on the washing, she would set all the linen to soak at once, not leaving a single dry sheet for the night.
“You great dolt!” Afrikan scolded her. “You donkey!”
Kapitolina would sometimes roar with laughter. At other times, she would snap back, “Stop your yelling! You’re not living in the Tsarist regime now!”
One day, hearing Snapper barking and Kitty squealing, Klim went into the kitchen to see what was going on.
“Get rid of this fool of a girl!” Afrikan demanded. “She’s just burned a pound of your coffee.”