The hard-boiled egg would always get stuck somewhere in Liza’s chest and they would have to pummel her hard on the back to dislodge it.
The housekeeper, who on that day always smelt of vanilla, would come to wish them a happy Easter.
And she would tell them the story of how, twenty years ago, the mistress of a certain house had made a baba[3] using beaten egg white, and how the baba had “fallen in the oven”. And the mistress had strung herself up from the shame of it.
Liza knew this story, but she could never work out which of the two women had strung herself up and which had fallen into the oven: the baba or the mistress? She imagined a huge blazing oven, like the “fiery furnace” in the holy pictures into which the three youths were thrown.[4] And she imagined a great fat baba—the mistress—falling into the oven. In short, she couldn’t make head nor tail of it, but it was clearly something horrid, even though the housekeeper told the story cheerfully, with relish.
The housekeeper would also always reminisce about a certain August Ivanovich, a gentleman she had once worked for.
“Would you believe it—a German and all, but such a religious man he was! All through Holy Week he wouldn’t take a bite of meat. ‘It will taste all the better when I break my fast on Easter morning,’ he used to say. A German and all, but he would never sit down to Easter breakfast without ham on the table—not for all the world. That’s how religious he was!”
In the evening Liza remembered something very important, went along to her elder sister and said, “Last year, you told me you were already a growing girl, and I was still a child. But this year I fasted for Lent, so that means I’m a growing girl now too.”
Her sister turned away, annoyed, and muttered, “You may be a growing girl, but I’m a young lady. Anyway, you should be in the nursery. Go away, or I’ll tell Mademoiselle.”
Liza pondered these words bitterly. She would never catch up with Masha. In four years’ time she herself might be a young lady, but by then, Masha would already be an old maid. She would never catch up with her.[5]
The church is crowded and stuffy. Candles splutter quietly in the hands of the worshippers. A pale blue blanket of incense smoke is spread out high in the dome. Down below—the gold of the icons, black figures and the flames of the candles. All around—black, candlelight and gold.
Liza is tired. She breaks off pieces of melted wax, rolls them into pellets and sticks them back onto the candle, noting how much of the Gospel the priest has read. The priest is reading well, clearly enough for Liza to hear him even though she is standing a long way back.
Liza listens to the familiar phrases but cannot concentrate. She is distracted by the old woman in front of her, who keeps turning round malevolently and piercing Liza with a cold stare, with a yellow-ringed eye like the eye of a fish. The old woman is afraid that Liza will singe her fox-fur collar.
Liza is also distracted by all kinds of other thoughts. She is thinking of her friend: fair, curly-headed Zina. Zina is like a bee—all honey and gold. Her bronze hair grows in tight curls. One summer, at the dacha, Zina had been sitting holding a little lapdog, and a woman coming past had said, “Humph, just look at that… poodle!” And in all seriousness Zina had asked, “Was she talking about me, or Kadochka?” Zina is silly, and so like a bee that Liza calls her Zuzu.
What is the priest reading about now? “And the second time the cock crew.”[6] How had it all happened? Night. A fire in the courtyard of the high priest. It must have been cold. People were keeping warm next to the fire. And Peter was sitting with them. Liza loved Peter; for her he always had a special place among the apostles. She loved him because he was the most passionate of them. She didn’t like to think that Peter had denied Christ. When they had asked him if he had been with Jesus of Nazareth, and he had not admitted it, it was only because he didn’t want to be driven away. After all, he had followed Christ into the high priest’s courtyard—he had not been afraid then.
Liza thinks of how Peter wept and of how he walked away “the second time the cock crew”, and her heart aches, and, in her soul, she walks side by side with Peter, past the guards, past the terrible, cruel soldiers, past the high priest’s servants, who look on with malevolent suspicion, and out through the gate and into the black, grief-stricken night.
And so the night goes on. From the square outside Pontius Pilate’s house comes the hubbub of the crowd. And just then a voice, loud and forceful as fate itself, cries out, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” And it seems as if the flames of the candles shiver, and an evil black breath spreads through the church: “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” And from age to age it has been passed down, that evil cry. What can we do, how can we make amends, how can we silence that cry, so that we no longer need hear it?
Liza feels her hands grow cold; she feels her whole body transfixed in a sort of ecstasy of sadness, with tears running down her cheeks. “What is it? Why am I crying? What’s the matter with me?”
“Perhaps I should tell Zuzu,” she thinks. “But how can I make Zuzu understand? Will Zuzu be able to understand how the whole church fell silent, how the flames of the candles shivered, and how that loud, terrible voice called out, ‘Crucify Him! Crucify Him!’? I won’t be able to tell her all that. If I don’t tell it well, Zuzu won’t understand anything. But if she does understand, if she feels what I feel, how wonderful, how glorious that would be. It would be something quite new. I think somehow we would start to live our whole lives differently. Dear Lord, help me be able to tell it!”
Easter Sunday was always jolly. A great many visitors would come to wish them a happy Easter. Liza had put on a spring dress made to a pattern of her own choosing. And she had chosen it because the caption beneath it in the fashion magazine read: “A dress for the young lady of thirteen”. Not for a little girl, or for a growing girl, but for a young lady.
Zuzu came round for breakfast. She was looking pleased, as if she were full of secrets. “Let’s go to your room. Quick. I have so much to tell you,” she whispered.
The news really was extraordinary: a cadet! A divine cadet! And not a young boy, he was sixteen already. He could sing “Tell her that my fiery soul…”[7] Zuzu hadn’t heard him, but Vera Yaroslavtseva had told her he sang very well. And he was in love with Zuzu. He had seen her at the skating rink and on Palm Sunday at Vera Yaroslavtseva’s. He had seen Liza, too.
“Yes, he’s seen you. I don’t know where. But he said you were a magnificent woman.”
“Did he really?” Liza gasped. “Did he really say that? And what does he look like?”
“I don’t know for sure. When we went for a walk on Palm Sunday there were two cadets walking behind us, and I don’t know which of the two he was. But I think he was the darker one, because the other one was ever so fair and round, not the sort to have strong feelings.”
“And you think he’s in love with me, too?”
“Probably. Anyway, what of it? It’s even more fun if he’s in love with both of us!”
“Don’t you think that’s immoral? It feels a little strange to me.”
The bee-like Zuzu, all curls and honey, pursed her rosy lips mockingly.
“Well, I’m amazed at you, truly I am. The Queen of Sheba had all the peoples of the world in love with her—and here you are, afraid of just one cadet. That’s plain silly.”
4
A reference to the biblical story of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon: when Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refused to worship him, he had them thrown into a fiery furnace.
6
A reference to Peter’s denial of Christ. During the Last Supper Jesus predicted that, before the cock crowed the following morning, Peter would deny all knowledge of him. Liza is attending the Holy Thursday service “The Twelve Gospels of the Passion of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ”—a reading of twelve passages from the Gospels relating the betrayal, arrest, trial and crucifixion of Jesus. The service also includes a procession that re-enacts Christ carrying his cross to Golgotha.