“But she said she wouldn’t and then… then she came back right here and did it herself… oi, bozhe moi! She was just so afraid… afraid that if she looked pregnant the men would turn away… and… and afraid to bring a new life into this disgusting place!”
“Even if I’d gotten here sooner, I wouldn’t have been able to help her. She lost so much blood so quickly.”
As quietly as I could, I inched my way around, searching for a crack in the curtains, when all of a sudden-Gospodi!-something reached out and grabbed me by the arm. I nearly shouted out, nearly jumped right out of my skin! Looking over, I saw not a thug about to slit my throat but a smiling brat-that kid, the filthy one. Grinning, he put a finger to his lips and then tugged me the other way. I shuffled to the side, and then the urchin pointed to a hole in the curtain. Understanding, I bent over and peered into a makeshift room, and there, sure enough, was that Romanov as well as another, a woman with loose clothing and wild hair. A prostitute, it was obvious. The two of them, the sister in robes and the sister of the night, stood on either side of a plank bed, and all I could see on the bed between them was a pair of legs spread wide, the feet turned out. Clearly, someone was dead. It was only when the Romanov sister bent to the side, reaching for her basket, that I got a clear view of the bed and nearly threw up. Lying there was a naked woman, most definitely dead, the black hair between her legs absolutely soaked with the darkest blood I had ever seen. Her thighs, a yellowed sheet, and everything else were covered with this blood, too, and, worse, lying between her legs was a still bloody lump of something. What in the name of the devil had come out of her womanly parts? What had she cut away? A growth of some sort? Some kind of tumor? But no… dear God, no. In horror, I watched as this so-called Matushka leaned over, a clean white towel in hand, and carefully picked up the lifeless form, wrapping it gently in the folds. And it was then that I saw the smallest arm drop out of that lump.
“It’s a beautiful little girl, and she’s merely crossed over to a better world,” said the Romanov in the kindest of voices. “And now she will rest for eternity in the arms of God.”
The other prostitute, the living one, had turned away now, sobbing uncontrollably as the sister tenderly wrapped the towel around the aborted child. The Romanov mumbled a soft prayer over the small body and then lowered it into the willow basket and slowly drew the lid.
“Now, young woman,” said the sister to the prostitute, “you must get me some more clean towels. Oh, and a sheet or two as well. I will need some help cleaning the body, for with your permission I would like to take both mother and daughter back to my obitel for Psalter and a proper Christian burial.”
“Yes… please… take her far away from this place…!” As the prostitute rose to her feet, I turned away, stumbling backward. I wanted to run straight from that rat hole of a building, to run far away. Instead I managed just a few steps, where I yanked back a half-torn curtain and slumped into another little corner and dropped down onto a bed of planks. Some lazy slob was asleep on the top bunk, and I lowered myself onto the lower one. Bent over, my head in my hands, I stared at the floor, not moving for the next hour, maybe more. All the time I was aware but wasn’t aware of the two women working away, washing the body and then wrapping it, too, in a sheet or something, perhaps just another torn curtain. I heard the sound of rags being wrung, lots of drops falling into a pan of water. And the soft chanting of hymns being sung as well.
Sometime later, I heard Matushka say, “I’ll take the infant in the basket with me now, and I’ll pay the men out front, the ones who were playing cards, to bring the body. Now, young woman, what about you? What can I do for you?”
The prostitute mumbled, “Nothing… nothing at all.”
“Will you come to services for your friend Ludmilla?”
“Well…”
“Yes, please come tonight to my obitel on Bolshaya Ordinka. And after you’ve prayed for Ludmilla, let’s have a talk. Perhaps I can rent a sewing machine for you-the efficient kind with a foot pump. I’ve done this for others, and they’ve set themselves up in business. Perhaps that would be of interest, or perhaps one of the classes that we’ve just started for adult workers. Do you know how to read?”
“But, Matushka, I’m not worthy of such kindness. I’m just a woman of the night and… and I’m not good enough for… for…”
“Nonsense. God’s image may become unclear, but, my child, it can never be entirely wiped away. Please, just come see me.” The princess nun then said, “As for the young boy who led me here, to whom does he belong?”
“Little Arkasha? He belongs to everyone… and yet, as far as I know, to no one.”
“Just as I feared. Hopefully he’s still waiting somewhere for me.”
Listening through the curtains, I heard the creaking of the willow basket, the swoosh of long clothing, and then gentle steps. Moving on the other side of the curtains, I saw her, too, or rather the essence of her, for as the Romanov nun moved along, the tattered fabric walls of all the corner rooms swirled and swayed as if a spirit from another world were passing. A moment later, another set of steps moved quickly after her.
“Matushka, wait!” called the young woman.
She stopped right in front of the corner where I sat, only an old piece of hanging material separating us, and said, “Yes, what is it, my child?”
“I just wanted to tell you not to pay the men out front until they get there-you know, until they bring Ludmilla all the way to you. Otherwise, they’ll just take your money and do nothing.”
“Oh, I’m not worried about that,” she said with a soft laugh.
“Do not fear, they’ll not fail me.”
And in this Matushka was absolutely right. Without a moment of hesitation, she went right up to the three card players and paid them generously in advance to carry the body of the dead whore up to her obitel. She then proceeded onto the street, looked for and found the urchin Arkasha, and when I peered out the door of the Petrov slum the last I saw of this Romanov was her flowing gray robe as she walked away, carrying the basket with the swaddled dead baby in one hand and, with the other, holding on to the boy’s dirty paw.
Not bad, I thought, for while that day this Matushka had fished two dead souls out of the Khitrovka, that of Luska and her stillborn child, this strange sister had also managed to take with her a live fledgling, young Arkasha. She led him straight out of this hellhole and to her home for beggar boys, perhaps saving his life. And as for the drunken card players-such unruly comrades-they didn’t disappoint Matushka, either, for not even thirty minutes later they gathered up the dead whore Luska and carted her off on their shoulders, delivering her, just as promised and paid for, to the Marfo-Marinski Obitel.
All this I know because I helped too. At first the card players wouldn’t let me, all three shouted “Nyet!” and told me to be off. But I told them I didn’t want any of their money, and though at first they grumped and threatened me, in time they let me lend a hand. Holding Luska by her right leg, I helped the three comrades carry the corpse away from that pathetic house and all the way up the Bolshaya Ordinka and eventually right through the brown wooden gate of the obitel.
And though I didn’t take a kopeck for my work, in the end, after we delivered the body behind the white walls and into the chapel, I did get paid, though not in rubles. Upon the orders of Matushka herself, the young novices of the monastery led us into the dining hall and fed us all a large hot bowl of meat borscht with some fresh black bread and heaps of butter, plus two cups of good, strong caravan tea. They even gave me two cubes of sugar, and sitting there like a squirrel getting ready for winter, I drank my tea with one cube of sugar packed into each of my cheeks.
It was a heavenly moment shattered by something quite like a bolt of lightning.
“Do I by chance know you?” asked a voice. “Have I seen you somewhere before?”
I turned sideways and looked up. None other than Matushka herself was staring down upon me, her beautiful face, framed by the wimple of her order, more than just puzzled. On her lips rested a smile as fragile as a fine teacup, while in her eyes I could clearly see some kind of demon-either that of pain or dark anger, just which I couldn’t tell.
Panicking, I didn’t know what to say, but in the end I did what Russian peasants have always been so good at, and I shook my head, and muttered, “Nyet, nyet.”
But she didn’t believe me, I understood that by the way she continued to stare harshly upon me. I could almost hear her thinking: Who is this man, what kind of prickly thorn has he been in my path of life?
“Well,” she said, “enjoy your tea… and come back to see us again.”
But she wasn’t as good at lying as me, her voice was just too flat and her eyes too tight.