The train began to move, and a succession of dreary station outbuildings slid by outside the window.
Kitty sat swinging her legs, chattering to Nina of how she had recently fallen from the porch and got “a re-e-e-ally funny cut on her leg.” She wanted very much to make an impression on her mother.
Nina nodded, looking at the tiny scar on Kitty’s brown knee.
Why hadn’t Klim left Kitty with Galina? she was wondering. Did he trust her even less than Nina? Or perhaps his lover had developed a dislike for the girl?
Nina was quite unprepared for the maternal responsibility that had suddenly fallen to her. Shameful to admit, she and Kitty had been apart from each other for so long that now, neither was sure of how to behave with the other.
They heard a group of children in the neighboring compartment begin to sing the “Internationale” in German. One-third of the railcar was taken up by foreign Young Pioneers, the children of communists from other countries who had been sent to the Soviet Union for summer camp.
Kitty began to pester Nina to take her to meet the foreign children, and when Nina refused, she had a tantrum. All of a sudden, Kitty had realized her father was no longer there, and there was nobody to indulge her every whim.
Things went from bad to worse. The food in the restaurant car was horrible, and the tea was too hot. And what was so bad about putting bread up your nose, anyway, Kitty wanted to know. And if it was so bad, why did people have nostrils? Before long, Kitty was howling, and Nina was desperate.
When the train stopped at the next station, Nina ran out onto the platform and darted about among the peasant women selling home-cooked wares. The engine stood under steam, and every time one of the couplings heaved or gave a shudder, all the passengers would dash back to the cars in a panic. Nina was terrified the train would move off before she could get back on board, taking Kitty with it.
She bought some fried chicken, some boiled potatoes, and a few small cucumbers. Kitty at last consented to eat but was sick almost immediately.
Nina rinsed the pink sundress in the sink in the toilet cubicle. I’ve completely forgotten how to look after my own daughter, she thought with desperation. What if it turns out to be a serious case of food poisoning?
But when she got back to the compartment, Kitty was bouncing on the seats as though nothing had happened.
“Let’s play fishermen!” she said to Nina. “You can be the fisherman—you cast your line and pull me out of the sea.”
She made a great show of pretending to be the biggest fish ever, then a cabdriver’s horse, a singing radio loudspeaker, then a variety of sea monsters.
“You have to faint!” she shouted excitedly. “I’m a hideous three-headed diver!”
Again and again, Nina swooned obediently back on the seat.
After it grew dark, they lay in each other’s arms while Kitty told Nina how Kapitolina would pray to her “little father God” and how she sewed cloths embroidered with cockerels.
Nina wanted very much to ask about Galina, but she did not dare. It would be too terrible to hear confirmation of what she knew anyway.
Sparks from the engine flew past the window, the wheels clattered, and from the corridor came the sound of women laughing.
“Mommy,” said Kitty, “I know a magic spell. Kapitolina taught it to me. You have to say it to the brownie—that’s the house spirit—when you’ve lost something. It goes like this: ‘Brownie, Brownie, bring my sack back to me. What was lost will now be found, in the sack, safe and sound.’ I did the spell, and I asked the brownie to bring you bac k—and look! It worked!”
Nina kissed Kitty on the top of the head. “Now we need to get Daddy back too.”
“All right,” murmured Kitty sleepily. “Only I don’t know if the brownie will be able to pick Daddy up. He’s quite heavy.”
“We’ll think of something,” promised Nina. “Perhaps we can get ahold of a crane.”
Elkin was on the platform at Feodosia to meet Nina and Kitty, tanned and bearded, his hair a brighter ginger than ever. In his faded red fez and his Russian shirt with the sleeves rolled up, he looked more like a Turkish fisherman than a Moscow engineer.
“Where is Mr. Rogov?” he asked after he had kissed Nina in greeting.
“Daddy stayed in Moscow, and Mommy and I came on our own,” said Kitty.
Elkin looked at Nina, bewildered. “What do you mean, ‘with Mommy?’ Klim told me his wife was dead.”
Nina blushed awkwardly. She should have warned Elkin about all this. And now there would be all sorts of questions and explanations.
“Klim and I used to be married,” she stammered.
“But what about Kitty? How…?”
“We adopted her.”
For a moment, Elkin was lost for words.
“Well, then, let’s go,” he said at last and, taking the suitcases, led his visitors through the station crowds.
Nina was not sure how Elkin had taken the news about her former marriage. Had he guessed that it was for Klim’s sake rather than his that Nina had been coming in to the Moscow Savannah all that winter?
Feodosia was hot, dusty, and marvelously beautiful, and Nina gradually recovered from her feelings of embarrassment. She gazed at the Tatar women in their brightly colored rags, at men with great black mustaches carrying enormous wooden pallets on their heads, and at the jovial traders selling shrimps that they poured, like sunflower seeds, into cones of newspaper.
“This rattletrap here is our ride to Koktebel,” said Elkin, indicating an open-top car parked nearby in the shade with odd headlights and a battered chassis but an expensive oriental rug covering the back seat. “It’s the car used by the local Party executive committee. I’ve arranged everything.”
The chauffeur, a swarthy young man in a tattered vest with a pair of large motor goggles strung around his neck, stared at Nina and Kitty with interest.
“Shall I start her up?” he asked.
“Yes, get her going!” ordered Elkin, helping the ladies into the car with a great show of chivalry.
Soon, they were racing through the streets, scattering chickens and stray dogs.
Elkin, turning around in his seat to speak to Nina, described how he had managed to restore an abandoned blacksmith’s forge in Koktebel and turn it into a workshop.
The local authorities left him alone, even though they had been instructed to “crack down” on private business. Elkin was the only handyman in the whole district, and people brought all sorts of things for him to repair—from prerevolutionary generators to railings for burial plots in cemeteries. The executive committee car was also his own handiwork, cobbled together from the parts of three other cars.
“The only problem here is that people are very poor,” said Elkin, holding on to his fez, which kept threatening to blow away. “Sometimes, they’ll bring me a donkey to be shod, and they’ll pay me with a piece of sheep’s cheese wrapped in a cloth. But I need money to pay my taxes. It would be good if Klim could give me the money he owes me for Mashka as soon as possible.”
“He’ll be coming here soon,” replied Nina
“If he doesn’t have time, he can wire me the money,” said Elkin quickly. It seemed that now he was not keen for Klim to come to Koktebel.
They left town and drove through yellow hills that looked like the folds of a velvet shawl. Surrounded by all this bright, untouched beauty, Nina found it hard to believe that the gloomy city of Moscow still existed somewhere—together with Oscar Reich and the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate.
Soon, they caught a glimpse of the sea, sparkling turquoise between the hills.
“That’s where we’re heading,” said Elkin, pointing to a cliff that looked like an enormous slice of halva.