Эльвира Барякина - Russian Treasures

Still, maybe it was a good idea to kill time in the land of the Soviets because then perhaps everything would be over as soon as possible.

Nina had no real cause to complain. She worked in the best “public catering point” in the city. The canteen boasted gilded chairs stolen from a theater and dining tables confiscated from merchants’ houses. And while the spoons might have been made of wood and the tablecloths of newspaper, the tableware bore the monograms of princely families.

While the standard fare in other catering establishments was salted herring, in Lubochka’s canteen, the cook’s handwritten menu boasted “pilaf with beef” or “lingonberry dessert with shugar.” But even this menu had been drawn up for the ordinary customers and didn’t tell the full story. Lubochka also had dried fruit, rice, and flour from Tashkent, canned fish from the Baltic states, and even caviar and sturgeon from the Lower Volga region. She had plenty of food, but not for everyone.

There were always street children crowded around the entrance to the canteen. As soon as a visitor walked up to the door, they rushed forward shouting, “Mister! Ma’am! A spoonful, please!”

Trying not to look at their dirty faces, Nina stamped the snow from her felt boots—a gift from Lubochka—and went to the kitchen. She had to bring in firewood, light the oven, and heat a whole tank of water before the first guests appeared.

The canteen opened at twelve, and the kitchen filled with the sound of clattering dishes and running feet. Sometimes Lubochka came to the kitchen to announce that they needed “first-class service.” That meant that somebody important had arrived.

“How are you?” Lubochka asked Nina.

Nina, breathless with exertion, wiped her wet hands on her apron and tucked a stray lock of her hair under her kerchief. “I’m fine.”

Lubochka cast an eye over the piles of clean dishes. “Good for you. But do me a favor, don’t stack the cups like that. They could break.”

“I won’t.”

Nina and Klim had no right to hate Lubochka, but they hated her nonetheless. As they saw it, it was only thanks to her and her kind that the Bolsheviks were able to remain in power.

Countless Lubochkas had filled the state offices and institutions, feathering their nests in the process. Now, they were ready to fight tooth and nail to keep their jobs, which meant defending the Soviet state.

Of course, there was resistance but mainly in the form of petty sabotage and widespread theft. It gave Nina great satisfaction to steal millet from the canteen pantry and feed it to her hen, Speckle. This hen was the object of pride and constant concern because it laid golden eggs—golden because every one of them fetched eighty rubles at the market.

Nina was terrified at the thought that Lubochka’s cat might catch Speckle. She would often jump up in the night to check whether the hen was all right.

Klim had named the cat Kaiser because of its bellicose whiskers and recent misfortune. Like the former German emperor, it had lost its territory and was now forced to live at the mercy of strangers.

“If that cat of yours eats Speckle, I’ll give it short shrift,” Nina threatened.

“Oh, come on!” Klim laughed. “A hen is nothing compared to a cat. Cats are princes of the animal kingdom. After all, they’re cousins to the king of beasts. Personally, I feel a sense of kinship with Kaiser. Perhaps you could call it class solidarity.”

Kaiser had grown fond of Klim too. The cat slept on his lap and let him scratch it behind the ears.

3

In order to escape from the land of the Soviets, Sablin, Klim, and Nina had to get to the frontline, and to do that, they needed the following documents:

1) passports

2) certificates of exemption from military service for the men

3) letters of assignment from work

4) passes from the Regional Executive Committee

5) permits to buy railroad tickets

6) railroad tickets

7) permits from the Cheka

Soviet bureaucrats who issued travel papers made a fortune in bribes. Sometimes they would be caught and executed. But then new officials would step into their shoes, and everything would go on as before. All that happened was that the bribes increased.

Money was scarce. Sablin, Klim, and Nina were all earning next to nothing. The shapeless lump of silver that was all that remained of the satyr couldn’t cover more than a tenth of their travel costs, and Sablin had nothing to his name but an amber cigarette case missing one corner. Things looked particularly bleak regarding the third item on the list—the letters from their workplaces—since neither the local newspaper nor the hospital ever sent staff to the frontline. As for Nina, her profession involved no travel whatsoever.

4

Sometimes Sablin’s acquaintances would bring news of a successful escape from the land of the Soviets. Excited, he would permit himself cautious questions: “Where is the frontline, and how did they get across it?” But no one could tell if these rumors were even true because no one ever came back from the other side of the frontline.

It was so hard for Sablin to tell himself that he would be leaving Lubochka forever in the spring. He kept questioning his decision, wondering if perhaps he ought to stay, clinging to what remained of his former domestic happiness.

“I’m sorry,” he told Klim, “but I really don’t think I can leave the hospital. People here are so hungry that they’re eating God knows what, poisoning themselves. And we don’t have even emetics, so—”

“Let your patients read our newspaper,” Klim said. “Listen, you have to get out of here. Otherwise, you’ll lose your mind.”

“You must start afresh,” Nina told Sablin. “You won’t find new love as long as you’re still carrying a torch for Lubochka. I know what I’m talking about.”

Sablin frowned. He didn’t like to discuss such things, particularly not with a woman.

He kept thinking of how Lubochka had nursed him back to health when she had found him dying. In the past, she had complained that Sablin didn’t love her enough. He had been at a loss when he had heard this unfair accusation. For Sablin, love meant family, and family meant respect, cooperation, friendship, and loyalty. Lubochka had had all of these things. What more did she want?

He could find only one explanation, the vilest and unbearable: she had been disappointed in him as a lover. He had asked her if this was true, terrified at what she might say, but Lubochka had only thrown her hands up, “Lord, how vulgar you are! It wasn’t about that.”

But what was it then?

Sablin tried to figure out how Klim had made Nina fall in love with him. Obviously, it wasn’t about his money—she hadn’t cared much for him when he had been rich. Perhaps his secret was his charisma. Sablin had never had this quality.

There was no point in cursing his fate. Some people have a talent for dancing, and some don’t. Some lucky souls are easygoing while others are born pedantic and boring. Sablin accepted his shortcomings in the same way that he had accepted his limp.

He spent evenings playing against Klim and staking his amber cigarette case as a bet. If they played cards, Klim usually won, but if they played chess, Sablin would beat him every time.

“What a stupid game this is!” Klim said angrily after Sablin had beaten him yet again. “In my opinion, there should be a special chess piece that both players are fighting over—a dragon, for instance. What’s the point in just knocking out all your opponents’ pieces? I need something to fight for.”

That was Sablin’s problem in real life: he had nothing to fight for.

Klim and Nina’s room was next to Sablin’s, and hearing the muffled sounds of their passion at night, he would feel sickened and angered. He wanted to bang on the thin wall with his fist and yell, “You’re not alone here, damn you!”

In the morning, Nina came out of her room still sleepy with a blissful, distracted expression, and Sablin could barely restrain himself from asking, “So, what do you plan to do if you get pregnant?”

Then Lubochka appeared in the corridor as solicitous as a gardener tending her plants. “Sablin, have you taken your medicine? Don’t forget, please. And put your gloves on when you go outside, or your hands will get cold.”

Imagine that we did manage to escape, thought Sablin. After traveling for weeks on a lice-ridden train in constant danger of being robbed or killed, imagine that they got as far as the frontline and survived the shelling and the raids. When everything was over, would he regret his decision? Would he go out of his mind with longing for Lubochka, for Nizhny Novgorod, for his job? There, on the other side of the frontline, Sablin couldn’t just walk into a hospital and say, “Take me on as a surgeon.”

What would happen to him there? How could he find a place for himself? And what use would he be to anyone there anyway as lame, shy, and unsociable as he was?

1

There was no point getting up before nine o’clock. It was still dark, and there was no electricity in the mornings.

With his hard-earned pay from his work on the Nizhny Novgorod Commune, Klim could afford half his breakfast: carrot tea and a piece of bread cut from a frozen loaf he had bought two weeks earlier for a hundred rubles. The other half—a slice of lemon, butter, and cheese—came courtesy of his generous cousin.

Lubochka smiled at his hesitation. “Are you ashamed to be taking gifts from me? Look at it this way—perhaps God is fond of you and using an intermediary to make sure you have lemon for your tea.”

“God must have a dubious sense of humor,” Klim said. “If He really wanted to send me provisions, He should have sent Admiral Kolchak with his White Army. After all, to judge by the Red propaganda posters, the admiral has seized all the food in Russia, including champagne and sausages.”

“At the moment, your Admiral Kolchak is stuck somewhere near the Ural Mountains,” Lubochka said as she poured herself a cup of tea. “He wouldn’t be able to get to Nizhny Novgorod in time for dinner, let alone breakfast.”

Klim left the house at eleven.

Perhaps it was true that everyone else in the world was descended from monkeys, he thought, or from Adam and Eve, but the Soviets must have had hamsters for ancestors. They were all constantly on the lookout for food and squirreling it away—if not into cheek pouches, then into bags and knapsacks.

Klim himself was no exception. There was a very good vegetarian canteen on the way to his newspaper office, and he usually dropped in when he could. The prices there might have been outrageous, but it was the only establishment in Nizhny Novgorod where you could eat without a union card or a special pass.

Unfortunately, the canteen was closed because it had been burglarized the previous night.

Klim decided to go to the Journalists’ House.

But he was out of luck. When he got there, he found an enormous queue of desperately hungry people, most of whom looked as though they could never have even read a newspaper article, let alone written one.

“Our oven isn’t working,” announced the cook, appearing on the porch. “It’ll be at least an hour before it’s fixed.”

There was nothing for it but to go into work.

It was awfully cold in the editorial office. Klim’s colleagues were already busy warming up homemade ink with their breath.

“Klim, you’re late,” said Zotov, a young man with a somewhat vague job description who always kept a watchful eye on his coworkers and informed his superiors about everything that went on. Anton Emilievich—who had a good nose for useful people—held him in high regard.

Zotov pulled a red pencil from his pocket and walked over to a large cardboard sign on the wall. On one side of the sign was the slogan, “Praise to honest workers.” Below was a list of all those who came into work before Zotov and left after he did. The other side proclaimed, “Shame on idlers and loafers.” Naturally, Klim Rogov’s was the first name on this list.

Zotov put yet another big black cross next to Klim’s name and announced that all of the editorial staff had to sign up for a volunteer workday.

“Where are you sending us this time?” Klim asked. “To a sweets factory?”

The office girls laughed. “You wish! We’re being sent to unload freight cars.”