Эльвира Барякина - Russian Treasures

The woman was sitting sideways to Fomin with her legs crossed. Her folded overcoat, felt hat, and a small bag were on a chair next to her.

It was Nina, Fomin realized. She looked older, and her face had become thinner and her chin sharper.

“Duck in sweet and sour sauce,” Vadik murmured.

Fomin waved him away and walked over to Nina. “What a coincidence!”

She looked at him, started. “Oh… is it you?” She seemed pleased to see him.

Fomin held her hand in his coarse paw. “Good God, Nina—I never thought— How long is it since we last saw each another?”

“A little more than a year.” She smiled, and Fomin’s heart melted. “I thought you were dead. Your name was on a list of people who had been executed.”

“I’m fine,” he said. “How are you managing?”

Nina looked down, pulled her hand away, and hid it under the table.

She’s been through the mill by the looks of things, thought Fomin.

“Is Zhora dead?” he asked.

Nina nodded. “Everybody is dead: Elena, her parents—Sofia Karlovna and I are the only ones left.”

Fomin crossed himself. “May they rest in peace.”

He found out that Nina and the old countess had just arrived from Rostov, and that they had nowhere to go. Sofia Karlovna had gone to the French mission to negotiate their departure. Meanwhile, Nina was waiting for her in Makhno Café.

“Did you say that your mother-in-law is well-connected in Paris?” Fomin asked.

It would be nice to get to France with the help of the old countess, avoiding quarantine camps and the humiliating process of registering as a refugee.

“Where are you going to stay while you’re in town?” he asked next.

Nina shrugged. “I don’t know. We’ve heard the hotels are full.”

“Why don’t you come stay with me?”

“How much are you asking for a room?”

Fomin laughed. “Nina, what’s wrong with you? Keep your money for yourself. The prices here are outrageous. An apple at Privoz Market costs fifty rubles.”

Nina was shocked. “Why so expensive? We came here by train and saw plenty of gardens around the town.”

“Nobody goes there for fear of the Greens.”

“Who are the Greens?”

“Partisans. Or rather, gangs of deserters evading the draft. They’re fighting everybody—the Whites and the Reds—and sometimes they come into the town from the mountains and kill the guards. So, you’d better get your papers ready if you want to go outside. Otherwise, you’re at risk of being taken off to counterintelligence on suspicion of being a supporter of the partisans. If you have money, you can pay your way out, but if not, the guards will flog you—and that’s the best that will happen.”

Nina grew pale. “But we don’t have any documents yet. Sofia Karlovna is hoping to get them from the French.”

“I strongly recommend you come to stay with me then. You’ll be safe in my house—I have reliable bodyguards.”

Nina looked him coldly up and down, and Fomin suddenly realized that she didn’t want him to get too close.

“What happened to that Argentine?” he asked bluntly. “Did he come back from Petrograd?”

“Yes. And then I married him.”

“Really? And where is he now?”

“He was killed two months ago.”

Sofia Karlovna returned excited and told them that she had met Colonel Guyomard and Colonel Corbeil, and both of them were very nice and friendly. They had promised the old countess to do everything possible to help her and her daughter-in-law get to France.

Fomin listened without taking his eyes off Nina.

She was somebody else’s fortune now, he thought, out of his reach because of his age, his post in the White administration, and his military duties. She would go abroad, and he would die here in Novorossiysk from a Red Army bullet or perhaps from a broken heart.

It seemed he was doomed to have his feelings unrequited—both by his motherland and by the woman he loved.

1

The sun beat down on Klim’s eyelids, unbearably bright. He felt as dry and scorched as a dead leaf, his body no more than an outline and a handful of dried-out veins.

He was aware of a terrible weakness and a tugging pain in his chest every time he took a breath. And what was that buzzing sound? Was it the sound of cicadas, or was it inside his head?

Suddenly, there was a roar like thunder, and a hot wind fanned his cheeks.

Klim opened his eyes and saw an armored train racing along the embankment in a cloud of dust, black smoke, and sparks. The rattling cars flashed by, and then all was quiet again, although the earth kept trembling as though beaten.

Klim tried to sit up but felt such excruciating pain that he fell back. Catching his breath, he tried again, this time more carefully. His tunic was covered with half-clotted blood. It was terrifying even to take a look at the gaping wound in his chest. Has Osip wounded me fatally? Will I recover, or am I done for? It took some time for Klim to realize that his lung had been spared, and the bullet to his chest had only damaged the flesh.

He had a vague, delirious recollection of the events of the previous night. He remembered jumping out through the open car door, his body angled to the side perhaps a split second before Osip had fired the gun. After that, Klim had hit the ground, and, it seemed, he had concussed himself. That was why he felt so sick.

Nina? Klim choked and clutched his forehead. Oh, God! He had left her behind; she was still on the train.

2

Klim bandaged his wound clumsily with a strip torn from his tunic and dragged himself along the railroad tracks barefoot and leaning on a stick that he had found lying on the ground. There wasn’t a soul around, just hunchbacked slopes, dry grass, and trees. He had no food and no water to drink or to bathe his wound. Without medicine, it wouldn’t be long before his wound became infected.

Several times, Klim stumbled and fell and lay there motionless feeling nothing but his own pulse. If only someone would come! Whites or Reds, he didn’t care. Just give me some water, and you can finish me off.

A sense of inexorable horror was bearing down on Klim: What has happened to my wife? Those beasts might rape or mutilate her. Osip, please don’t touch her… please… please!

Klim prayed silently and pointlessly as he stumbled along. He knew he had seen Nina for the last time, and no one would be able to tell him where to look for her.

At first, Klim felt he was losing his hearing—he could no longer hear the birds or the snap of twigs under his feet. Then came visions: gray huts floating above the horizon and a large bed on the path with its bedposts adorned with round metal knobs that gleamed in the sunset. Two boys dressed in rags were sitting on top of it.

Klim wanted to talk to them, but they disappeared in the thick shimmering air. He staggered to the bed—what a convenient mirage!—and lay down on it.

That’s it, he thought. I’ll just lie here. I’m not going anywhere.

3

Klim was woken by two thin menacing boys—one with a kitchen knife and other with a scythe and dressed in an adult’s shirt with a hood that made him look like a miniature Grim Reaper.

“Get off!” they yelled. “This is our bed.”

Two girls approached, timid and wary. They circled Klim at a safe distance for some time, unsure what to do. In the end, they brought him water.

“Are there any adults in the village?” Klim asked, catching his breath as he spoke.

“No,” said the younger of the two girls, whose head was shaven. “The Reds mobilized all the men and took all food away, so the women have gone too. There’s nothing to eat. We live in the mansion over there on top of the hill.”

“Shut up, Leech!” ordered the older girl.

Klim agreed to get off the bed in exchange for a potato.

As soon as he got down, the boys lifted the bed up by its legs.

“Where are you taking it?” asked Klim.

“To the mansion,” one of the boys said. “There’s a wounded pilot there. A foreigner. It’s for him. We hope he’ll take us up in his plane when he gets better.”

Klim spent the night in an empty hut and the next morning trudged up the hill to the mansion.

Clearly, the house had been used as a military base. It had been looted and badly damaged. The ceiling in the hall was peppered with gunshot, the parquet floor was broken, all of the larger pieces of furniture had been cut up, and torn books and photographs littered the floor. Only the antique tapestries remained intact. No one had bothered with them because the cloth they were made of was so worn that it was no use for making clothes.

Klim didn’t hear the girl they called Leech approach him.

“Come on,” she said. “I’ll take you to the pilot. He’s in the main bedroom with the pink wallpaper and stained-glass windows.”

Klim’s head was spinning from hunger and fatigue.

“How do you find food?” he asked the girl.

Leech shrugged her bony shoulders. “We look for cigarette butts along the railroad. Passengers throw them out the windows, and we pick them up, take out what’s left of the tobacco, and exchange it for potatoes.”

“And is that it?”

The girl stood on one leg to scratch her calf with her foot. “We go into the big village and beg too. Sometimes we get a slap, but sometimes we get bread.”

4

Lieutenant Eddie Moss had been assigned to deliver a package to British military observers with the Kornilov Shock Regiment. On his way back, his plane had been shot down by machine-gun fire from a Red armored train. The pilot had been shot dead, and Eddie had survived only because the plane fell into trees. He had fallen out of the cockpit and so escaped being burned alive. Only his legs and his right arm had been covered with deep burns.

The gang of homeless children had found Eddie and dragged him into the ransacked mansion. The oldest of them was no more than twelve years old, yet they had fed Eddie and helped change his bandages. He didn’t speak Russian and had to explain himself using gestures and drawings. But he had little talent for arts and had to use his left hand, so, often the children couldn’t understand what he wanted.

Eddie was desperate to get back to his own side. He struggled for more than an hour drawing in his notebook, trying to ask the children in pictures if they had seen another plane of the same kind as his. He was sure that his fellow soldiers must be out searching for him.

But the children had not understood and thought Eddie was telling them he was uncomfortable on the floor, asking them to find him a bed. So, they had brought one for him—albeit without a mattress—happy to be helping a wounded aviator.

They had mistaken him for a pilot and were fascinated by the fact that Eddie had so recently been up in the sky. The boys kept bringing him charred pieces of the wreckage of the plane that they had found in the forest. They would run around the ruined house with their arms outstretched, pretending to be fighter planes.

Eddie was in despair. I’m missing in action, he thought. Nobody knows where I am, and I can’t get out of here by myself. His legs and right arm were in such agony that there were times when he would have welcomed a bullet to the head. But one day, a miracle happened—a man came into Eddie’s room and, speaking with a strong Russian accent, asked him in English, “How did you get here?”

5

On November 11, 1918, London had learned about victory in the Great War. That afternoon, cables came into news agencies announcing that Germany had surrendered. The city was celebrating with a joyful chorus of factory sirens, ships’ whistles, and car horns. Parishioners gathered in churches to give prayers of thanks, all of the pubs were full, and people danced in the streets, drunk and happy.

Eddie Moss was in a cab riding along Pall Mall. He was ready to weep at the thought that he was young and still alive, there was the bright moon in the sky, and the blackout blinds had been taken off the windows. Not so long ago, German zeppelins had bombed London and killed more than seven hundred people.

Eddie stopped his cab at the Royal Automobile Club. On the marble steps, gentlemen with their overcoats unbuttoned were bawling out “The Mademoiselle from Armentières.”

Eddie entered the bar.