The Jewel of St Petersburg

Twenty-three

SNOW FELL IN CURLING WHITE SHEETS, BILLOWING FORWARD in sudden bursts of violent energy, then retreating like an army gathering its troops before the next attack. The roofs and roads glittered white and the city that had been created out of a dingy swamp so many years ago by Peter the Great looked as graceful and elegant as one of the tsar’s own swans.

Arkin did not notice its beauty. It was the dark police uniforms that held his attention. They were gathering in twos and threes on street corners, their eyes watchful as wolves. He hadn’t expected them yet. They had moved fast, which surprised him, and they were nervous. The Raspov apprentices were on the march, stomping through the streets, noisy and rowdy as boisterous dogs let off the leash, chanting the slogans he had taught them, shouting and waving their handmade banners.

“Give us justice!”

“United we fight! United we win!”

“We demand a fair wage!”

“Victory for the workers!”

Again and again their united voices shouted out the words that were dearest to their hearts, “Give us bread! Khleb!”

Scrawny skeletons, that was all they were, a jumble of skin and bones inside coats too thin to keep out the Russian winter. So young and yet so resigned to their fate. It angered his heart. It had taken all his persuasive powers to convince them that they could change the terrible conditions in their foundry if they worked together. Flat white faces had stared back at him at first with helpless, hopeless eyes.

The person who helped him put fire inside their hungry bellies was Karl, the engine driver’s young son who’d collected the crate from the train with him. Only sixteen and already he understood.

“Comrades, things can change,” Arkin had told them. He was standing on a box in the icy yard of the foundry, and he could feel their excitement mingling with the snow that blew in their faces. “You can change them. You workers are the ones with the real power-if only you have the courage to wield it.”

“Brothers,” young Karl had shouted out, “listen to our comrade. We are treated worse than rats by our masters. Yesterday Pashin lost half his hand, last week Grigoriev lost the skin on his neck. Who will be next?”

“The hours are too long,” Arkin declared. “Mistakes are made.”

“No safety at work,” Karl added.

“No right to complain.”

“No water. It’s hot as hell in there.”

“Do your masters care?” Arkin punched a hole in the white air with his fist.

“No,” the young voices shouted back.

“So let’s teach them to care,” Karl yelled.

That was when they started to march. Ivan Sidorov had stood at the foundry gates, eyeing him with respect. He looked a very different figure when he wasn’t drunk and sprawled over a table, a man Arkin could use. Sidorov was the one who’d gathered the apprentices together for him in the yard. They exchanged a look, that was all. It was enough.

WORD SPREAD FAST. As THEY SWUNG PAST THE SHOE FACTORY on Strechka Ulitsa a string of young boys burst out, still in their leather aprons, and hurled themselves into the Raspov crowd. Apprentices from the Tarasov toolmaking factory swelled their numbers to well over three hundred, marching shoulder to shoulder and shouting their slogans. Behind them strode Sergeyev, his arm still in a sling.

“Good work,” he commented to Arkin.

He nodded a greeting. “How’s your wife?”

“Concerned about how today will turn out.”

“Tell her we are rolling a stone downhill, gathering speed. Nothing can stop it.”

Sergeyev clenched his fist in agreement, but he looked tense and tired.

“Go home,” Arkin urged. “Your arm is clearly bad today, my friend. These apprentices hardly need us now that they can scent victory.”

“Hah! They are blind to the battles ahead.”

“This is just a skirmish, Sergeyev. It’s a beginning. Let them have their day of glory.” He studied him with concern. “You go home. Tend to your wife.”

To his surprise, Sergeyev clapped him on the shoulder, gripping it hard. “Good luck, udachi, comrade.” He peeled back from the line of marchers and was gone. Instantly the place at Arkin’s side was taken by the lanky figure of Karl, a grin on his young face.

THEY FLOODED INTO THE RAILWAY SIDINGS, AN OPENING windswept soulless place where rail carriages were shunted to die. Boots stamped on the ice-packed earth. Arkin listened to them and felt his blood quicken. It was the sound of the feet of Russia on the march. Not even the tsar on the imperial throne would dare to slaughter these innocents. He felt hope, hot and liquid, surge through his gut at the thought of the future for Russians.

“Arkin, good man, you’ve fired up their young minds.”

It was Father Morozov. He grasped Arkin’s hand. Snowflakes had settled in a halo on the priest’s tall black hat, diamond sharp, at odds with his shabby coat.

“This is my young comrade, Karl, from the Raspov foundry. He has already proved he is one of us, valuable to the cause.”

The priest held out his hand in welcome. The boy took it, dipped his head over the gloved fingers, and pressed them to his lips. “Father,” he murmured with respect.

The simple gesture annoyed Arkin intensely, but he gave no sign. Didn’t they realize? That was exactly the kind of automatic subservience the Bolsheviks were trying to eradicate. There was no place for religion in the future of Russia, where all would be equal. No obeisance, no knee bending. Not even to God.

“Are they coming?” Arkin asked urgently.

Morozov smiled. “Da.”

“When?”

“They’re on their way now.”

“Good. They’ve kept their promise.”

Karl looked from one to the other. “Who? Who’s coming?”

“The rail workers,” Arkin informed him. “This depot has gone on strike in support of the apprentices.”

“It’s starting,” Karl said quietly. “Isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

The boy straightened his back and puffed out his bony chest. “Comrade Arkin, Comrade Father, I am proud to be a part of this great-”

“They’re here!” a voice in the crowd cried out. “The rail workers are here!”

Immediately the air filled with eager shouts, and a phalanx of about a hundred or more men in navy caps and work jackets crowded into the sidings, fists punching the air.

“Father,” Arkin murmured under his breath, “give thanks to your God from me.”

The priest closed his eyes and smiled. One of the rail workers, a big burly man with a voice to match, climbed up on a rusting flatbed and launched into a rallying speech that swept the apprentices into a frenzy of excitement. Not even the icy curtain of snow could chill the heat that roared through their veins or the anger that built into something as hard and sharp as the Admiralty spire. Arkin was satisfied with his morning’s work.

“Horses coming,” an apprentice near the back called out.

They’d sent in the army. The apprentices and rail workers were slow to react, but Arkin leapt up onto the steps of a decrepit carriage. “Get ready. Troops are coming.”

From under jackets and coats, iron bars suddenly appeared. The sound of hooves grew louder, clattering over cobbles, until the veil of snow seemed to part like the Red Sea to reveal the platoon of scarlet uniforms on horseback, capes flying out behind. They halted and spread out in a long line, blocking access, leaving no chance of escape.

Panic started. It flickered from boy to boy, quick gasps and nervous shouts, but they took their lead from the railway workmen. They regarded the sabers with wide eyes as each soldier held his sword out in front of him, its blade flat to the sky. Snow settled on them as if to soften the threat.

“Disperse immediately!”

The order came from the captain at the head of the line. He sat astride a magnificent stallion that was eager to charge, its forefoot scraping at the dirt, raking through the trampled snow. The rider fixed his gaze on the rail worker on the flatbed.

“Disperse immediately!” he ordered again.

Arkin moved. He threaded his way through the apprentices and emerged at the front of them, nearest the soldiers.

“The boys are doing no harm.” He spoke calmly.

The captain glanced at him, and something in what he saw made him stop and look again.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“A comrade of the apprentices. Captain,” he said sharply, “do not provoke trouble here today. We do not want bloodshed.”

The captain’s mouth curved at one side, revealing a satisfied smile. “Don’t we?”

“No. These young boys are-”

“-dangerous.”

“No. They are voicing their dissatisfaction and demanding to be listened to.”

“We want justice,” Karl insisted at his side. He was clutching an iron bar with his two fists.

“Then, young troublemaker, justice you shall have.”

With no warning the captain stretched forward and flicked his saber through the air. A faint whistle, that was all. Arkin was fast, but not quite fast enough. He yanked his young friend back on his heels, so that the saber strike intended to open up the boy’s pale throat just caught his nose and split one side of his nostril. Crimson spurted down his chin.

The railway workers surged forward. Angry words were hurled at the horsemen. Tempers flared. Metal bars and tools were brandished until the demonstration was on the edge of violence. It was to avoid exactly such violence that Arkin had involved the apprentices in the first place, but now he dragged Karl back from the front line. He inspected the boy’s face. He was holding a hand to his nose, blood twining around his fingers, but his eyes were on fire. Fury, not fear, was making his arm shake in Arkin’s grip.

“Get behind the railway workers,” Arkin ordered. “Prepare the apprentices to give support.”

The boy disappeared. Snow fell heavily in dense white veils and voices grew louder. The Hussars’ attack, when it came, was lightning fast. The horses sprang forward, sabers scything right and left, silent and brutal. Screams rang out in high-pitched voices, and the snow on the ground turned crimson as feet skidded under hooves. Metal bars crashed down on the troops, crushing bones and twisting heels out of stirrups until uniforms vanished under a mass of workmen’s boots. Yet the sabers continued to strike with expert skill, again and again, laying bare a back, slashing open a cheek, a throat. Charge, regroup, charge. Even the snow in the air turned scarlet as the horses wheeled in formation up and down the railway siding.

Arkin snatched Sergeyev’s small pistol from under his coat. Six times he took precise aim, six times slamming a bullet into a scarlet chest. The strikers fought back with fury. Horses crashed to their knees. Helmets fell to the ground. Arkin threw himself into the battle, dodging blades, parrying blows, all the time working his way nearer to the tall blond captain on the devil-black stallion.

Arkin found Karl’s body. His young eyes were wide open, staring up at the falling snow, but glazed and lifeless. Flakes settled in his lashes and melted on the warm eyeballs like tears. Arkin broke the neck of the soldier standing over him with his saber still dripping on the snow and dropped to his knees beside the boy. He closed the young eyes. Nothing was sacred in this world. Not even the innocents. He snatched up the saber and with a roar of rage went to work on the scarlet uniforms.

THE WOMEN WORKED HARDEST. VALENTINA QUICKLY became aware of that fact. In St. Isabella’s Hospital the women worked hardest and were paid the least, yet they didn’t complain. They just treated the male nurses with a deference Valentina felt they didn’t deserve and the doctors like gods incarnate.

She worked hard and spoke little. She didn’t mind that she spent most of her time in the sluice room scrubbing things and sterilizing equipment. That was a good part, the instruments. She handled them with respect, finding unexpected pleasure in their fine steel edges and baffling shapes. She liked the way each one had a specific purpose: a clamp, a probe, a syringe, and many that she could only guess at. Each day she and her fellow novice nurses were given an hour of instruction in which she focused her mind with the same intensity as when she learned a new piece for the piano. During her time in the wards, she asked clear questions and paid close attention to the answers.

“You’re a good listener,” one of the patients told her.

St. Isabella’s was a hospital for the poor. It had been set up more than one hundred years earlier at the insistence of Catherine the Great, but there were never enough beds and never enough wards. An unending stream of the sick and the dying stumbled through its doors, but many were turned away with no hope of finding treatment elsewhere. But Valentina was learning to lock things out of her head. Like the man this morning lying on the steps outside, dead as a dog. People with money didn’t use hospitals. They were places you went to die. Doctors would come to the houses of respectable people, numerous times a day if necessary, and treat patients in their own bed. They even performed minor operations there. Only for a major operation did a wealthy patient enter a hospital.

Valentina plunged her hands deep into soapy water and started scrubbing a speculum, but after a minute she lifted her hands and inspected them. Red and raw, with hairline cracks around the knuckles. She felt a ripple of shame. A nurse’s hands, not a pianist’s hands. She hated herself for caring.

A door swung open behind her. “Ah, there you are. We need you.”

Valentina turned, suds dripping to the floor. It was young Darya Spachyeva, the nurse she met the day she came for her interview, the one with black hair and the swear words. Her wide smile was missing today.

“Do you know,” Valentina asked, “that you have blood all down your neck?”

“You have to come,” the girl said. “Quickly.”

THE AIR LAY THICK AND HEAVY. WALKING INTO THE MEN’S ward was like wrapping her face in a stale blanket. Blood and fear and a deep raw anger packed the room so full that there was little space for anything else. Bodies lay everywhere: on beds, on mattresses on the floor, on thin blankets, on bare boards. Too many, far too many.

“What happened?” Valentina demanded.

“The Hussars.”

“An attack?”

“Well, they weren’t playing with their nice shiny sabers for nothing.”

Valentina could see their smooth unlined cheeks. Young men with dreams that had been shredded. Blood streamed from their heads; gaping wounds yawned open on their shoulders. They had fought, on foot, against men on horseback.

“Chyort!” Valentina swore.

Captain Chernov had kept his promise.

“Darya”-her pulse was thudding in her ears-“where do I start?”

NURSE IVANOVA, TAKE THESE. BE QUICK.”

Medsestra Gordanskaya thrust a pair of shears into Valentina’s hand and moved with calm efficiency to the other side of the ward, where Darya was struggling to prevent a man with a bandage over his eyes from crawling toward the door. Valentina laid a gentle hand on the patient in front of her. He was lying facedown.

“Hello, I’m Sanitarka Ivanova.”

She kept her voice firm and reassuring. With the shears she snipped through the material of his jacket from its hem right up to its collar, then the same with his shirt. Two long parallel cuts ran down his back like scarlet tram tracks. She bathed them with antiseptic, but as fast as she mopped up the blood, more flowed onto his white flesh. It needed stitches. All the time she worked, she talked to him. His frightened eyes, as he tilted his head to one side, kept darting up at her.

“The doctor will be here any moment,” she assured him. “A few stitches, that’s all you’ll need.” She placed a dressing pad on the wound and pressed hard to stem the flow. “You’ll soon be back at work.”

“They were waiting for us. Determined to finish us off this time.”

“Were you marching?”

“Nyet. No, just gathering in our factory yard. Me and the other apprentices.”

“The soldiers attacked you in the factory yard?”

“No.” His eyes fluttered closed and opened again, small fragmented movements, and a smear of vomit slid from his mouth. “We went down to the railway sidings to have talks with the rail workers. Their foreman was…” He started to sob, raw animal sounds.

“Hush, you’re safe here.” She touched his hair on the back of his head and it was stiff and matted with blood. She stroked his cheek. His neck.

“Nurse,” he whispered, eyes closed, “I can’t move my arms.”

BISTRO! QUICKLY!”

A doctor in a white coat summoned her. All day it had continued, the young men dragged in on carts, on shoulders, on makeshift stretchers. Valentina steeled herself to the moans and the tears. She learned to hold a man’s hand against her own throat because the strong pulse there somehow gave them something to hang on to. She learned not to say Hush. She let them talk or cry or shout. Whatever gave them respite. She wrote brief notes for them to their loved ones, held water to their bruised lips, and bound so many reels of bandage that the gauzy white strips seemed to become extensions of her own skin, skimming over arms and legs and heads. Holding their young bodies together.

“Bistro!”

“Yes, Doktor?”

“One grain of morphine here.”

“Yes, Doktor.”

A young boy, dark as a gypsy and not much older than Katya, was lying on his back in a bed with his thin arms crossed over his chest. His skin was slick with sweat. He smiled at Valentina while his lips continued to form his prayers. She measured out two drops of the painkiller from a vial into a small glass and held his head while he sipped the liquid. His pupils were pinpoint specks.

“Spasibo.” The word was so faint it was barely there. “Do svidania. Good-bye.”

“He was crushed,” the doctor murmured. “By their horses.”

“Is there a priest?” Valentina asked quickly.

“He’s in the next ward.” He exhaled an exhausted sigh. “His services have been much in demand today.” He raised his head and looked properly for the first time at the young nurse at his side.

“Valentina! My dear girl, I had no idea it was you. Your uniforms turn you all into-”

“I know, Dr. Fedorin. We nurses all look the same.”

“Hardly.” He brushed the back of his wrist across his eyes. “You and Medsestra Gordanskaya are scarcely the same species.”

She smiled, and it was such a relief to untie the knots in the muscles of her face that she almost slipped an arm around his neck, the way she’d seen his daughter do when she was pleased with him.

“You should take a rest, Doktor.”

He shook his head. “This wasn’t exactly the kind of nursing I had in mind for you when I recommended you to St. Isabella’s.” For a moment Dr. Fedorin took his eyes off the wounded in the ward and studied Valentina’s face. She wondered what he saw there. “A baptism of fire,” he said quietly.

The boy on the bed lifted one hand and carved the sign of the cross in the air. “A baptism of blood,” he corrected, eyes on Valentina.

“I’ll find you the priest,” she said, then squeezed the boy’s hand and vanished.

BUT THERE WAS NO PRIEST IN THE NEXT WARD. SHE BROKE the rules. Picked up her skirts and raced down one of the corridors, searching for a figure in black. She refused to let the boy die without the comfort of absolution. You need to be tough, Jens had told her. To deal with the blood and the wounds.

A hand fell on her shoulder, so heavy she felt her bones sag, and she jumped away, startled.

“Child, don’t be frightened.”

She stopped running and regarded the man who seemed to have appeared in the corridor from nowhere. He looked like a priest of some kind. He was an impressive broad-shouldered figure, imposing in a plain black tunic. And yet there was something about him that made her want to step away. His eyes were large and round, a striking pale blue and set deep in their sockets. They didn’t blink, just stared at her. They seemed to burn. She could find no other word for it. They fixed on her and burned right into the coils of her mind till she longed to look away, but couldn’t.

“I need a priest,” she said quickly.

“Child,” his voice was deep, his words measured. In the cold corridor they resonated with conviction. “Child, the whole of mankind needs a priest to show them the pathway to God. I see you are troubled. Let him cleanse you.”

She almost laughed out loud. This strange man was anything but clean. She dragged her eyes from his and focused instead on his long straggly beard, which was filthy and matted with spilled food. His tunic was stained and his hands thick with grime. Worst of all, he stank. The only clean thing about him was the jeweled crucifix that gleamed on a chain around his neck.

“Maybe you should ask God to cleanse yourself first,” she suggested. “But come quickly, please. You’re needed in-”

He reached for her. Huge dirty hands. He clamped one on each side of her head and fixed his powerful gaze on hers. “You’re the one in need, malishka, little one. I can bring you the peace you crave. In the Lord’s name.”

He lowered his head as though to give her the kiss of Christ on her forehead, but at the last moment he ducked down and placed the kiss on her lips. Shock and distaste shook Valentina as his mouth, huge and cavernous, swallowed hers. She lashed out. Her hand struck his cheek, the sound of the slap muted by his wiry beard, and all the hardship of the day poured into her anger.

“You are no man of God. You are an impostor, a disgusting, lecherous-”

He laughed, a delighted rumble of pleasure, as though the words she poured on him were words of praise. She was tempted to slap him again but couldn’t bear to touch him. She scrubbed at her mouth with her hand and kept a safe distance from him.

“You’re needed by a boy who is dying,” she told him.

“He doesn’t need me. You are the one who needs me.”

“You are not a real priest, are you?”

“I am just a poor starets. With humility I offer myself to souls in suffering, souls like yours. Souls who don’t know how to find their way.”

“My soul is my own affair,” she said. “You are not a starets, not a holy man. This boy needs a proper priest.” His pale eyes held hers and she felt her tongue grow heavy in her mouth, her mind start to drift. With an effort of will she forced herself to turn away from the dark figure and hurry back down the corridor. She struggled to make herself dismiss him from her head.

“Nurse,” he called after her in a deep voice. “Malishka, we shall meet again, you and I, and when we do you will offer me a kiss in exchange for your soul.”

VALENTINA FOUND A PRIEST AT LAST, A REAL PRIEST. HE was dressed in a hand-woven cassock that was frayed at the hem, with a prayer stole around his neck, and wearing a tall black hat that had seen better days. At first sight she took him for a peasant priest who must have traveled to the hospital from an outlying village when he heard of the carnage, but when he responded to her shout, raising his head from intoning prayers over a wounded man, she recognized him at once. He was the priest she’d met with Arkin, the one she’d stumbled across when the chauffeur was unloading sacks of potatoes into a church.

“Father, I need your help.”

“What is it, Nurse?”

“A young man is dying.”

His reaction was not what she expected because, though he walked with an outward calm at her side when she led him to the other ward, his boots kicked out at the frayed hem ahead of him in a gesture of fury.

“Father, do you know what happened?”

“The apprentices work in terrible conditions.” His words were controlled, even if his feet were not. “They held a meeting after one of them lost a limb in a machine, but there are always police spies everywhere.” He shook his head and raised the Bible in his hand so that it was fixed in front of his eyes as he hurried along the corridor. “May the Lord God have mercy on the souls of those soldiers, because I can find none in my heart for them. I would damn the lot of them to hellfire for all eternity.” He shook the Bible fiercely as though his fingers could provoke an answer from its black cover. “The apprentices are little more than children.”

“But they joined forces with the rail workers, I was told.”

“Yes.”

“So that must mean it was well organized.”

As she pushed open the swinging doors the priest stopped, and she was forced to look back at him.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“Just a nurse. Trying to help save the lives of your apprentices.”

Just a nurse. Simple words. They seemed to calm him.

His eyes became gentler, and he moved forward again. “Of course, I am distressed. What I saw today when the sabers slashed down, no man should see.” He clutched his Bible to his chest like armor.

She put out her hand and touched the cross embossed on its surface. “You were there?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me, Father Morozov, was Viktor Arkin there too?”

The bones of his face slackened. “Who are you?”

“Was he hurt?”

A shake of his head, so slight it was barely a movement.

“Tell him,” she said, “to remove the box he has hidden at the back of the garage. Before the Okhrana come for him.”