“Who’s Fyodor Stepanych?” asked Nina
Shilo laughed. “He’s in charge of this center of corrective labor—prison, that is. I’ve been in here two weeks. It’s not bad.”
“You’ve been in here?” asked Nina in shock. “Do you mean to say you’re a prisoner?”
“That’s right. It’s fine so long as they give you a sentence without solitary confinement, taking into account your ‘low cultural level and difficult material circumstances.’ Fyodor Stepanych sends us out to make money, and we share it with him.”
“Doesn’t anyone run away?”
“We’d have to be fools to run away from here. Just you try finding a room to yourself outside with free food! They even take us to the bathhouse on Fridays, and the children even hold concerts for us to help reform us quicker.”
Nina gave a nervous laugh, despite herself. Well, she would have to live in a corrective workhouse for the time being. At least Alov would be unlikely to find her here.
Shilo walked onto the porch of a low one-story building and opened the door with a squeak. “In you come. Make yourself at home.”
The dark room smelled of candle wax and dust. Nina looked around. The room with its barred window was empty except for a pot-bellied stove, a bundle of firewood, and a trestle bed covered with a blanket.
“It’s a good place here,” Shilo said, spreading her greatcoat on the floor in front of the stove. “The angels often come and visit me in this room. I sit here with them at the window. We have a smoke, and they take all my sins away. It’s better than stain remover, I tell you.”
“Please,” asked Nina, “couldn’t you give me back my money? Everything I had was in that purse.”
“All right. But I get your coat. Deal?” Shilo tossed Nina her purse. “And I’ll find you another. Don’t you worry.”
“Are you going to steal one?”
Shilo did not answer. She reached under the mattress and took out a hunk of bread and a battered flask.
“Here,” she said, handing Nina the bread. “This is for you. And this is for me.”
She took a swig from the flask, and Nina caught an acrid whiff of home-brewed vodka.
“I like you, you know,” said Shilo a moment later. “It’s not even the coat. It’s just something about you.”
“What about me?” Nina asked.
“You’re like me, you see,” said Shilo. “Before they threw me out the window.”
Nina chewed away at the bread, feeling that nothing would surprise her any more.
They were awoken the next morning by a loud male voice. “So, who’s this then?”
Nina, who had slept on the greatcoat on the floor, sat up with a start to see a small, gray-haired Chinese man with a sheepskin coat over his shoulders.
“Hello, Fyodor Stepanych,” Shilo greeted the man cheerfully. “I’ve brought you a seamstress. Just look at what she can do!”
She handed the man Nina’s velvet coat. He examined it critically.
“Who taught you to sew?” he asked Nina.
“My parents were tailors,” she explained.
“Listen, boss. Take her on, why don’t you?” pleaded Shilo. “She can live here. She don’t have a place to go anyway—her husband’s been arrested for profiteering.”
Fyodor Stepanych scratched his chin thoughtfully. “I’ll need to give her a job and see how she manages. If you show you can do it,” he told Nina, “we’ll take you on. You can run courses in cutting and sewing. Let’s go!”
Nina could hardly believe her luck. If they let her stay here and paid her for her work, she would be able to raise the money for a ticket to Vladivostok.
Shilo gave her a blanket to keep her warm. Nina wrapped herself up in it and set off after Fyodor Stepanych.
In the daytime, the monastery did not look at all sinister. Nina saw brick walls with whitewash crumbling off in places, bare bushes, and puddles. It was clean and tidy, and the paths bore the traces of having been swept by a broom. There were no skulls anywhere to be seen.
In front of the ancient cathedral, a row of women stood performing exercises, supervised by a prison guard with a loudhailer. As she shouted out the order, they all raised their arms.
“Up on your toes!” she boomed. “Now breathe out!”
The prisoners obligingly breathed out small clouds of steam.
“I’ve introduced morning exercises to keep them fit,” Fyodor Stepanych said. “All our women here are victims of capitalism. Thieves and prostitutes, you know, and I reform them through labor. Nobody here is idle.”
With his captive women, he was like an estate owner with two hundred serfs. Some he used as groundskeepers and domestic staff, but most had been set to work making funeral wreaths and foot wrappings for Red Army soldiers.
Fyodor Stepanych made no secret of the fact that he sent the most accomplished pickpockets out to ply their trade.
“They only steal from the Nepmen,” he said. “And their number’s up soon, anyway.”
Nina knew already that “Nepmen” was the name for entrepreneurs who had been given permission to engage in manufacturing and trade since 1921. The NEP, or New Economic Policy, had been introduced to restore the economy to its prewar level. After this, the idea was that the class of Nepmen was to be “liquidated,” and the country would begin to build a truly socialist society in which all the means of production belonged to the state, and private enterprise would be forbidden by law.
Fyodor Stepanych took Nina to the vestry, which was in an outbuilding next to the church. Here, in a cold room smelling of mice, was a table with a sewing machine and some old trunks, black with age, on which were piles of church vestments.
“Here is your workstation,” said Fyodor Stepanych. He handed Nina a purple cassock. “I’d like you to make a couple of skirts out of this. I think there should be enough material.”
Nina looked at him, bewildered. “But that’s sacrilege—”
“The priests don’t need any of this stuff anymore,” said Fyodor Stepanych with a wave of his hand. “They’ve all been sent to the Solovki labor camp long ago—to speed them on their way to the Kingdom of Heaven.”
He began to lay out cassocks, surplices, and albs on the table.
“We’ll use the velvet for skirts,” he said, “the brocade for belts and collars, and we can use the winter robes to make coats for the proletarian women. You can sleep here on the trunks. I’ll give you a couple of logs a day to keep you from freezing.”
4. BARON BREMER’S TREASURE
Nina made an excellent job of the sewing task she had been set, but Fyodor Stepanych told her she would not be getting paid for her work.
“Can’t you already sit by a warm stove and eat in our canteen?” he said. “What more do you want?”
Nina realized that she had fallen into a trap. Shilo had still not brought her the promised coat, and now the weather had turned so cold that Nina could not even put her nose outside, let alone go to the market and buy herself something warm.
“I’ve been put in prison without a trial!” she protested.
Fyodor Stepanych only laughed. “But you’re free to go. Nobody’s keeping you here.”
He was only too happy to have a seamstress who could handle expensive material and would work for him free of charge. Nina’s handiwork provided outfits for the prostitutes, bringing in a good profit for Fyodor Stepanych.
He watched Nina like a hawk to make sure that she did not help herself to offcuts and came in from time to time to count the leftover scraps of material. If he was in a good mood, he would sit for a while in the vestry, reminiscing about his youth.