The Prince of the Soviets

21. THE HOUSE OF GLORY

The news of Kitty’s illness had alarmed Nina so much that it had driven everything else clean out of her head. She was beside herself with fury at Galina. Nina was convinced that the fool of a woman had failed to keep a proper eye on Kitty.

Taking matters into her own hands, Nina managed to get ahold of rail tickets to Feodosia in two days. Now, fate had given her and Klim a chance. What they needed was to go far away and forget all their previous woes.

“He has to come to the station!” Nina kept repeating to herself. But every now and then, a sickening thought would set her heart beating wildly: What if he doesn’t come?

On the day of the last session of the Shakhty Trial, Nina was on the point of telephoning Klim several times to find out what he had decided but could not bring herself to do so.

Everywhere, it seemed, there was talk of “the verdict.” The word was on the lips of market traders and cab drivers and blared from loudspeakers on the street. To distract herself from her own gloomy thoughts, Nina went to the cinema only to find that the main feature was preceded by a newsreel on the Shakhty Trial. Eleven men had been sentenced to be shot while the others had received long sentences in labor camps. The presiding judge of the Supreme Court was shown silently pronouncing sentence while the pianist thumped out a solemn march and the cinema-goers on either side of Nina commented approvingly, “That’ll show them!”

That evening, Yefim came to check on Nina. Oscar had asked him to keep an eye on his wife while he was abroad.

“Have you heard the news about the verdict?” Yefim asked. “They let the Germans off in the end. Oscar arranged a swap—their liberty in exchange for a contract for railroad sleepers. But the Russians are of no use to anybody; neither their government nor their people.”

Nina buried her face in her hands. She felt that she too was of no earthly use to anybody.

Nina arrived at the station early and set off slowly along the empty platform to the second car. She had told Elkin that she would be arriving together with Klim and Kitty, but she no longer had any faith that her plan would work.

What would she do if Klim did not come? Should she go to Crimea alone? Oh, God, Nina thought, anything but that!

“Mommy!” she heard a child’s excited cry. “Daddy, I’ve found our Mommy!”

Kitty, dressed in a comical, frilled pink sundress, came running up to Nina and hugged her legs.

Nina was overcome by happiness and relief. Her hands shaking, she kissed Kitty, exclaiming over her and hugging her tightly. “Look how much you’ve grown!”

It was hard to believe that her daughter still recognized her after such a long absence.

“Hello,” said Klim, walking up to them.

He was carrying a small suitcase decorated with pictures of flowers cut out from postcards.

Nina looked up at him happily. “I’m so glad to see you both! Where are your things?”

“I’m not coming with you,” said Klim.

Nina’s heart froze. “But why not?”

Klim took a small folded piece of paper from his pocket and held it out to her. “I got this yesterday evening.”

It was a carbon copy of a typewritten text. Nina quickly scanned it:

“It’s a petty act of revenge by the Press Department,” said Klim with a bitter smile. “Weinstein knew I was planning to go south, so he has deliberately sent me north.”

“But you don’t have to go!” exclaimed Nina. “Why didn’t you refuse?”

“Well, for my press agency, this polar expedition is a great scoop. Usually, the Soviets don’t send foreign journalists to the north. Would you be able to look after Kitty while I’m away?”

“Of course.”

“When will you be coming back home?”

“I’ve left Reich, so there’s nothing to come back to.”

Nina had been sure Klim would be pleased to hear this news, but instead, he clutched Kitty to him as if Nina had told him she was planning to kidnap her.

“Promise you won’t take Kitty away from me!” he said.

Nina stared at him, nonplussed. “What are you talking about?”

“Anything could happen. Your Oscar would never have a little Chinese girl in the house, but you’re a free woman now. You can do whatever you please.”

Klim did not seem to realize how hurtful his words were. He had no faith in Nina’s good intentions and was asking her not to act even more contemptibly than he had come to expect.

“Promise me you won’t take Kitty,” he repeated. “I’ll come and collect her as soon as I can get away.”

Nina was on the point of losing her temper but managed to restrain herself. She took a pencil from her bag and wrote down a few lines on the back of the letter from Weinstein.

“This is Elkin’s address. If you don’t trust me, send him a telegram and ask him to keep an eye on us.”

Klim nodded and put the letter in his pocket.

They went through to the compartment, and Klim explained to Nina what she should do if Kitty became ill again. He showed her where he had packed her medicine and, most importantly of all, her pink rag horse.

Kitty clambered up onto the seat and began fiddling with the light switch on the wall. “Look! You can turn the light on. Daddy, do you remember when we went to Moscow? There wasn’t a light in the train then.”

Kitty kept turning the light switch this way and that. One second it was bright, and the next, they were plunged into gloom.

The bell rang.

Klim got up and hugged Kitty tightly. “Be a good girl; try not to be too much of a nuisance to Nina.”

He had said “Nina” not “Mommy” just as if she were some stranger.

The train began to move, and a succession of dreary station outbuildings slid by outside the window.

Kitty sat swinging her legs, chattering to Nina of how she had recently fallen from the porch and got “a re-e-e-ally funny cut on her leg.” She wanted very much to make an impression on her mother.

Nina nodded, looking at the tiny scar on Kitty’s brown knee.

Why hadn’t Klim left Kitty with Galina? she was wondering. Did he trust her even less than Nina? Or perhaps his lover had developed a dislike for the girl?

Nina was quite unprepared for the maternal responsibility that had suddenly fallen to her. Shameful to admit, she and Kitty had been apart from each other for so long that now, neither was sure of how to behave with the other.

They heard a group of children in the neighboring compartment begin to sing the “Internationale” in German. One-third of the railcar was taken up by foreign Young Pioneers, the children of communists from other countries who had been sent to the Soviet Union for summer camp.

Kitty began to pester Nina to take her to meet the foreign children, and when Nina refused, she had a tantrum. All of a sudden, Kitty had realized her father was no longer there, and there was nobody to indulge her every whim.

Things went from bad to worse. The food in the restaurant car was horrible, and the tea was too hot. And what was so bad about putting bread up your nose, anyway, Kitty wanted to know. And if it was so bad, why did people have nostrils? Before long, Kitty was howling, and Nina was desperate.

When the train stopped at the next station, Nina ran out onto the platform and darted about among the peasant women selling home-cooked wares. The engine stood under steam, and every time one of the couplings heaved or gave a shudder, all the passengers would dash back to the cars in a panic. Nina was terrified the train would move off before she could get back on board, taking Kitty with it.

She bought some fried chicken, some boiled potatoes, and a few small cucumbers. Kitty at last consented to eat but was sick almost immediately.

Nina rinsed the pink sundress in the sink in the toilet cubicle. I’ve completely forgotten how to look after my own daughter, she thought with desperation. What if it turns out to be a serious case of food poisoning?

But when she got back to the compartment, Kitty was bouncing on the seats as though nothing had happened.

“Let’s play fishermen!” she said to Nina. “You can be the fisherman—you cast your line and pull me out of the sea.”

She made a great show of pretending to be the biggest fish ever, then a cabdriver’s horse, a singing radio loudspeaker, then a variety of sea monsters.

“You have to faint!” she shouted excitedly. “I’m a hideous three-headed diver!”

Again and again, Nina swooned obediently back on the seat.

After it grew dark, they lay in each other’s arms while Kitty told Nina how Kapitolina would pray to her “little father God” and how she sewed cloths embroidered with cockerels.

Nina wanted very much to ask about Galina, but she did not dare. It would be too terrible to hear confirmation of what she knew anyway.

Sparks from the engine flew past the window, the wheels clattered, and from the corridor came the sound of women laughing.

“Mommy,” said Kitty, “I know a magic spell. Kapitolina taught it to me. You have to say it to the brownie—that’s the house spirit—when you’ve lost something. It goes like this: ‘Brownie, Brownie, bring my sack back to me. What was lost will now be found, in the sack, safe and sound.’ I did the spell, and I asked the brownie to bring you bac k—and look! It worked!”

Nina kissed Kitty on the top of the head. “Now we need to get Daddy back too.”

“All right,” murmured Kitty sleepily. “Only I don’t know if the brownie will be able to pick Daddy up. He’s quite heavy.”

“We’ll think of something,” promised Nina. “Perhaps we can get ahold of a crane.”

Elkin was on the platform at Feodosia to meet Nina and Kitty, tanned and bearded, his hair a brighter ginger than ever. In his faded red fez and his Russian shirt with the sleeves rolled up, he looked more like a Turkish fisherman than a Moscow engineer.

“Where is Mr. Rogov?” he asked after he had kissed Nina in greeting.

“Daddy stayed in Moscow, and Mommy and I came on our own,” said Kitty.

Elkin looked at Nina, bewildered. “What do you mean, ‘with Mommy?’ Klim told me his wife was dead.”

Nina blushed awkwardly. She should have warned Elkin about all this. And now there would be all sorts of questions and explanations.

“Klim and I used to be married,” she stammered.

“But what about Kitty? How…?”

“We adopted her.”

For a moment, Elkin was lost for words.

“Well, then, let’s go,” he said at last and, taking the suitcases, led his visitors through the station crowds.

Nina was not sure how Elkin had taken the news about her former marriage. Had he guessed that it was for Klim’s sake rather than his that Nina had been coming in to the Moscow Savannah all that winter?

Feodosia was hot, dusty, and marvelously beautiful, and Nina gradually recovered from her feelings of embarrassment. She gazed at the Tatar women in their brightly colored rags, at men with great black mustaches carrying enormous wooden pallets on their heads, and at the jovial traders selling shrimps that they poured, like sunflower seeds, into cones of newspaper.

“This rattletrap here is our ride to Koktebel,” said Elkin, indicating an open-top car parked nearby in the shade with odd headlights and a battered chassis but an expensive oriental rug covering the back seat. “It’s the car used by the local Party executive committee. I’ve arranged everything.”

The chauffeur, a swarthy young man in a tattered vest with a pair of large motor goggles strung around his neck, stared at Nina and Kitty with interest.

“Shall I start her up?” he asked.

“Yes, get her going!” ordered Elkin, helping the ladies into the car with a great show of chivalry.

Soon, they were racing through the streets, scattering chickens and stray dogs.

Elkin, turning around in his seat to speak to Nina, described how he had managed to restore an abandoned blacksmith’s forge in Koktebel and turn it into a workshop.

The local authorities left him alone, even though they had been instructed to “crack down” on private business. Elkin was the only handyman in the whole district, and people brought all sorts of things for him to repair—from prerevolutionary generators to railings for burial plots in cemeteries. The executive committee car was also his own handiwork, cobbled together from the parts of three other cars.

“The only problem here is that people are very poor,” said Elkin, holding on to his fez, which kept threatening to blow away. “Sometimes, they’ll bring me a donkey to be shod, and they’ll pay me with a piece of sheep’s cheese wrapped in a cloth. But I need money to pay my taxes. It would be good if Klim could give me the money he owes me for Mashka as soon as possible.”

“He’ll be coming here soon,” replied Nina

“If he doesn’t have time, he can wire me the money,” said Elkin quickly. It seemed that now he was not keen for Klim to come to Koktebel.

They left town and drove through yellow hills that looked like the folds of a velvet shawl. Surrounded by all this bright, untouched beauty, Nina found it hard to believe that the gloomy city of Moscow still existed somewhere—together with Oscar Reich and the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate.

Soon, they caught a glimpse of the sea, sparkling turquoise between the hills.

“That’s where we’re heading,” said Elkin, pointing to a cliff that looked like an enormous slice of halva.

In five minutes, the car stopped at a small stone wall. Two shaggy dogs came hurtling out of the yard and set up a deafening bark.

Elkin jumped out onto the road. “That’s enough, you damn pests! This is Softie, and this is Oink,” he said, introducing the dogs to the ladies. “Welcome to the House of Glory!”

“Why Glory?” asked Kitty

“It’s a joke on my aunt’s Bulgarian name, Gloria.”

Nina and Kitty thanked the chauffeur and walked up the path to a curious lopsided building with a large terrace and a number of little balconies on which washing had been hung out to dry. There were apricot trees growing in the yard and an enormous kiln next to the wall of the sort used for firing pottery. Beside it was a whole array of ceramic pots painted to look like faces with handles in the form of ears.

On the porch stood a large elderly woman with dark eyebrows, dressed in a long threadbare smock decorated with brightly colored embroidery. Her pointed slippers had upturned toes, and she wore a colorful shawl wrapped around her head like a turban. She was smoking a long pipe mounted in rough silver from which came clouds of a sweet, fragrant smoke.

“So, you’ve brought them, have you?” she boomed down to Elkin. “All the holidaymakers are down at the beach. Go and call them for dinner.”

A large shadow fluttered behind the hostess, and a white cockatoo settled on her shoulder and began to shriek, to Kitty’s great delight: “Glory, Glory, Glory! Two rubles a bed!”

“Come on—let’s get you settled in,” said the old woman as she gestured for Nina and Kitty to follow her.

Inside, the house resembled some luxurious dacha that had not been refurbished for twenty years. The walls were hung with bookshelves, homemade cloth dolls, plates, and the same pots with painted faces. The windows were wide open, and from far away came the sound of waves and children’s laughter.

Gloria led her guests to a small room that had only a chair, a chest, and a bed covered with a brightly covered blanket.

“This is great!” shouted Kitty excitedly and threw herself sprawling onto the bed.

Nina looked out of the window. Down below rose up rocky outcrops of the cliff washed by a dazzling sea glittering in the sun.

Gloria explained that she did not have a bathroom. The holidaymakers bathed in the sea, all water had to be drawn from a well, and the lavatory was a wooden hut in the yard between the house and the cliff. There was no lock on the door but a railroad sign at the path, announcing “Track Closed” or “Track Open.”

Nina paid for a month in advance, and Gloria tucked the money in behind the wide belt of her pants.

“Are you here for your health?” she asked, looking into Nina’s eyes.

“No,” answered Nina. “It’s Kitty who’s ill.”

“Your little girl is healthier than all of us put together,” said Gloria. “But you look more dead than alive.”

“Communications on the left flank are out!” the cockatoo squawked. “Run out a line, damn you!”

The old woman shook her head and shuffled downstairs.

Nina was amazed. Was it really so obvious how broken she felt inside?

The other guests had all been coming to the House of Glory for years, and Nina felt at home with them immediately.

Nobody there asked what you did for a living, observed Bolshevik rituals, or showed any curiosity about what was going on in the wider world. For these people, the most important news was that somebody had caught an enormous fish, and the worst fear was that there might be a gale that would interfere with the day’s swimming.

There was something delightful about the simplicity and modesty of this life with its lack of worldly cares. At dawn, all the holidaymakers would go to the beach, to the green-blue sea. Nina would stretch a sheet between two rocks and put an old counterpane down on the pebbles to make a comfortable tent.

She and Kitty would sit in this shelter, staring at some wispy cloud in the sky and trying to think what it looked like. They would swim or lie on their stomachs, searching for semi-precious stones in the shingle—orange carnelians, translucent chalcedony, and red jasper.

The guests would all gather on the terrace for lunch around the enormous table scarred with knife cuts. They would pour out the semi-precious stones they had found on the beach, and an avid session of swapping, trading, buying, and selling would begin.

“The field kitchen is here, lads!” the cockatoo would shriek, flying onto the terrace.

Gloria would sweep the stone bartering chips to one side and set the table with enamel bowls, flatbread and mustard, and a large copper pot full of a mess they called “soldier’s joy.”

Elkin also ate at the House of Glory—his workshop was only a two-minute bicycle ride away. He would bring the holidaymakers little gifts and immediately set about mending something in his aunt’s ramshackle house.

He made a swing for Kitty and presented Nina with a small figurine of a giraffe carved from a shell.

“This is to bring you luck,” he told her, smiling. “You can put it on a lace and hang it around your neck.”

Nina was both touched and embarrassed that Elkin was trying to court her. She predicted that one day he would try to have a serious talk with her, alone, and was already worrying about it. How could she turn down such a good man, break his heart, when he had already gone through so much? But what else could she do? While she felt the warmest affection and the utmost respect for him, she did not and could never feel any passion for him.

After dinner, everybody would rest, and then they would laze on the beach again. Toward evening, Elkin would gather all the guests around a bonfire. They would sing to the guitar, drink strong homemade wine, and make up detective stories.

“A quite unheard-of crime has taken place in the House of Glory,” announced Elkin menacingly. “Somebody has run off with the sign ‘Track Free,’ putting our freedom in grave jeopardy. But we will flush out the criminal. We need to think about who had a motive for this crime. Confess to your weaknesses!”

Obediently, each of them owned up: one guest had a habit of flicking at his teeth with his fingernails, another liked to gnaw chicken bones and suck out the marrow, yet another wrote terrible love stories. Nina admitted that she liked to balance on fallen logs.

“Let’s take a note of that,” said Elkin. “Our young friend Nina is looking for balance in her life. I think we have a chief suspect. She is the only one of us who needs to be told which way to go.”

Then, the missing sign was found in the dogs’ kennel, and to general laughter, Elkin wrestled it away from Oink, who had already chewed it half to pieces.

The night air was full of the sound of the cicadas, and now and again, a bird chirruped in one of the apricot trees.

Huddling under a colorful blanket, Nina gazed at the fire and relived the day’s most vivid memories: the green line of the surf, the little crabs scuttling away from her shadow, and the water in the rock pools so crystal clear that she could see every grain of sand below.

Opposite Nina sat a young couple from Kiev—fair-haired Alyosha and round-faced Ira. They had recently been married and had come to Koktebel for their honeymoon. It was always a pleasure to see them walking around hand in hand, completely absorbed with one another, young and happy with dazzling white smiles.

But I’ll never be like them, thought Nina sadly.

Klim had sent her a cable informing her that he was already in Arkhangelsk. The rescue of the Italian expedition had become the latest big news story, and the Soviet government had announced that all news of the polar explorers would be conveyed free of charge. Klim and Nina were brazenly taking advantage of this to send one another free telegrams.

“How are you getting on in the search for Nobile?” Nina had written. “We are fine. We are swimming and sunbathing.”

Klim had answered in a similar tone: “The pilot Chukhnovsky has spotted some people stranded on an ice floe. Do you have enough food? Is Kitty well?”

There was not a trace of affection in these messages. Once, Nina had written to him, “Please come soon! We miss you!” But Klim had just ignored her appeal.