Karsavina, I decided, had definitely torn some bedsheets.
In the interval, Seryozha and I remained in our seats. I hated breaking the lingering trance and Seryozha was finishing some sketches. Now Mother exclaimed, “Oh look, it’s Kolya. What a pretty girl—Kolya!”
My lover was coming up the aisle escorting a beautiful woman in a low-necked black gown, his hand on her back. I wanted to vomit. As they approached, I held my hand over my eyes as if to cut the glare of the lights. Where could I hide myself? Go away, Kolya! How could he? So much for the fox and the girl. Was this what he was doing instead of meeting with me? If I hadn’t been caught in the row, I would have run away weeping. Shamelessly he approached, broke out in a grin. Now he was greeting my parents, introducing this creature, Valentina somebody. I tried not to look, but how could I not? It was like an overturned cart, an auto wreck. And the beast winked at me! As if we were in collusion. As if this were all a great joke! As if I were so sophisticated that I would know it was still the two of us and not give a thought to the exquisite woman he stood next to. “Are you enjoying the ballet, Marina Dmitrievna?” he asked me.
The nerve! “I was,” I said.
He leaned past Seryozha and pressed a note into my hand, rolled my fist around it. A page torn from the program. Tomorrow at 4. Without fail. And a drawing of a fox in jail, its nose sticking out from the bars, tears dripping from its eyes.
8 No Gentleman
ON THE STEPS OF the school, Varvara showed us a pamphlet from her schoolbag, glancing around to see that no one was looking over our shoulders.
WHY IS YOUR HUSBAND AT THE FRONT? TO FIGHT THE TSAR’S WAR! WHY IS THERE NO FOOD IN THE CITY? IT’S DISAPPEARING INTO THE WAR! THE TSAR’S ON HIS WAY OUT. REMEMBER BLOODY SUNDAY. WE’LL FINISH WHAT WE STARTED. BREAD FOR ALL! EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL. DOWN WITH THE WAR.
“You’re going to end up in prison,” Mina said.
“They say you’re not a real revolutionary until you’ve served time,” she retorted.
It was 3:30. “I have to go. Kolya’s waiting for me,” I said. Already my eyes ached in the vicious cold, my lashes coated with ice. How could Varvara even think of standing around in this weather handing out leaflets?
“Yes, run to your lover. Go on,” Varvara sneered, wrapping her scarf around her head and neck. “When people ask where you were in January 1917, what are you going to say—I spent it in bed with Kolya Shurov?”
But there would always be more textile factories, more miserable women. I was flopping, drowning in air after Kolya’s appearance at the Mariinsky. I needed his apology, an explanation, reassurances that I was still the one.
He answered the door in the apartment on the Catherine Canal. Food and flowers crowded the table in the sitting room behind him, but I remained rooted in the entryway, my overshoes leaving a puddle on the parquet. He tried to take my coat, but I shrugged him off. I was not letting him touch me until I got a straight answer. If I let him get close, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on my fury. “Just tell me one thing. Are you sleeping with her?”
“Who?”
Such innocence. “Just don’t.”
“Oh, don’t be like that.” He returned to the divan, to the table spread with the feast, as I remained in the anteroom. “At least have a glass of wine before you cut my head off,” he said, seating himself. “And these macaroons are divine.”
Persephone ate six pomegranate seeds in hell and was doomed the moment they slid down her throat. “Tell me now.”
“Take off your coat. You’re making me sweat.”
It was terribly hot in there, it was true. But I didn’t dare. I had to resist, keep anger alive, get to the truth. “What am I to you, Kolya? Am I another name in the roll call of seducible schoolgirls? Is it me in the afternoon and Valentina in the evening and Katerina before breakfast?”
He sighed and rubbed his face with one hand.
“Is she better than me? More exciting, a woman of the world?”
He laughed. “No one’s better than you, and that’s the truth,” he said. “Valya’s—just someone I know. I’m doing some work for her. I didn’t sleep with her, I promise.”
“Do go on,” I said, and it sounded just like Mother. It just came out.
“She wants to get some things out of the country. That’s all, I swear to you.” He laid his hand over his lying heart.
“I saw you. I saw how you touched her. You have slept with her.”
“A long time ago. She was Volodya’s girl. We were just doing some business, I swear to you. She wanted an escort to the ballet, and I figured, what’s the harm? I can’t exactly take you.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? Imagine your parents. Your father. I don’t want him putting two and two together too soon… God. But listen, I have something to tell you—I didn’t want it to be like this, but I’ve been recalled. I’m leaving tonight.”
My anger ebbed with this blow. He couldn’t leave now. I needed time to sort out this Valentina thing, to forgive him. But there wouldn’t be time. And the truth was that I ached for him. My arms ached, my breasts, my body was a mass of frustration and yearning. “Swear, Kolya. Swear you didn’t sleep with her. I’ll never forgive you if you’re lying.”
He stood, held my hands, pulled me into the room. Looked deep into my eyes, his blue ones, for once, not laughing. “She’s just an old friend. I swear.”
He unbuttoned my coat, hung it on the back of a chair, knelt and pulled off my galoshes, led me to the feast.
Persephone was doomed with only six pomegranate seeds, but I ate macaroons and drank sherry wine and devoured the feast I had come for—his flesh, the red-gold fur, making love in four different ways until we lay exhausted on the mattress.
We rested our heads on the heaped pillows, listening to the wind roar outside, shaking the windows. He opened the fortochka, chilling the room. I pulled up the eiderdown. Briefly I thought of Varvara, out there on Vasilievsky Island, standing before the gates of a factory, handing out those incendiary leaflets, and felt guilty for abandoning her. I ran my fingers through the hair on his chest, traced the line down to his navel, lower, to the leonine forest of him.
“And what were you going to do for her, your friend Valentina?”
“An export job,” he said, linking my fingers with his, biting them systematically at the knuckles. “She has some things she wants sent out of the country. Actually, your father should do the same. Time to close up the bank accounts, pack up the silver, convert cash to jewelry and art. Get it out to Sweden. England, even.”
They’re smuggling the gold out in coffins. “It’s really that bad? Did you tell Father?”
“Let’s just say he wasn’t amused. He practically called me a traitor.” I could see that had hurt Kolya. He was only trying to be helpful.
“Brave of you,” I said. To advise Dmitry Makarov to prepare to abandon Russia, especially now, when he was working around the clock, writing speeches, articles, meeting with the Kadet party? Foolhardy. The Kadets had been trying to persuade the emperor to accept a constitutional monarchy, ever since the death of Rasputin. But the tsar was unable to see that it was the only way to keep his crown while allowing the country to move forward. An absolute monarch, he felt that sharing power was as bad as abdication.