Temerity snuggled into him. He’s so warm.
Curls tickled Kostya’s face as he kissed the top of Temerity’s head. —Nightingales sing louder in the cities.
— Why?
Kostya kissed her again. —So they might be heard.
FERTILITY RITES
Friday 23 July
Examining Kostya’s shoulder, Efim used the word narkomania.
In the bathroom, where the shower ran, the stall empty, Temerity pressed an ear to the door and eavesdropped.
Efim said it again. —Narkomania, but not the morphine.
— Then to what am I addicted, Comrade Doctor?
— Deceit. Something’s wrong with that woman, and yet you keep her here, when it’s dangerous for us all.
— It’s nothing. Once Balakirev gets back in town, I can…
— Even self-deceit. You grope for it as a drunkard for the bottle, or a child scared of monsters for his blanket.
— It is not deceit!
Kostya took a breath.
It’s hope. I can’t be addicted to hope.
Efim shook his head. —You’ll kill us all. As sure as if you pulled the trigger yourself.
— Efim, wait.
Temerity placed her hand beneath the shower stream to break up the flow of water and convince the men she stood under it, unable to hear them.
Kostya emerged from Efim’s room and stood near the bathroom door, by the telephone.
Temerity got the rest of her body beneath the stream and managed not to cry out as the water blasted cold, then hot.
Kostya returned to his bedroom. —It’s fine. She can’t hear us.
The piece of soap melted as water hit it. Temerity hurried to finish, and she recalled her Aunt Min standing beside her as she soaked in a bath in 1933. Min had returned from managing the West family business interests in Darjeeling to coach and chaperone motherless Temerity through her debut and first social season. Temerity dismissed the entire exercise as a cattle market, mere theatre. Min agreed, then called it very necessary theatre, prattling on about white dresses and dance cards, calendars and rubber petticoats, the precise placement of ostrich feathers in one’s hair, and the deferent elegance of the curtsy due to the king.
— Min, why?
— Because one must curtsy to the king.
— I know, but—
Min passed her niece a towel. —Come out, dear, you’re pruning.
— Screw for survival, is that it? Marry some dolt of an aristocrat who’s got money in the bank yet nothing in his head?
— An aristocrat with money in the bank? They’re all skint, dear.
— Fine, fine, money tied up in the estate, and then nothing in his head.
— Surely one of these young men has some intelligence.
— None on my dance card. Min, I don’t want to be the wife of Lord Gormless. I don’t want to be a society hostess. I’ll die.
Min helped blot Temerity’s hair. —Die of boredom, yes, I shouldn’t wonder, and all those languages you speak shall wither on the vine, drop to the soil, and rot, unnoticed.
— Min!
— Temmy, my dear, you know how your father serves king and country. Have you given much thought to how I do so?
— What?
Min peeked over Temerity’s shoulder and met her niece’s gaze in the mirror. —It needn’t be the cattle market.
Only later, travelling through India for several months with Min, did Temerity discard the last of her contempt. Min had fooled her, as she fooled many people. Lady Minerva West, the avid photographer who now owned and used, at great expense, both a movie and a still camera and plenty of colour film, Min the sweet older lady who charmed others and got them to open up by speaking to them in their own language, Min who supplied long and detailed reconnaissance reports, photographs, and movies to the Secret Intelligence Service. No dotty memsahib here.
When Temerity admitted her mistake, Min only smiled. —I told your father you’d travel well, and that it might knock some sense into you. Now, remember what I said about making your mind like a steamer trunk, many compartments. No matter what you must pretend to be, so long as you remember your duty and your best self, you’ll do fine.
Travel well. The phrase signalled more than grace under seasickness. On a rope bridge in Darjeeling, Temerity stared down between slats at the chasm below, aware of menstrual blood flowing into the gauze tampon Min had taught her to roll. Nothing to it, really. One bled, and one lived, all in the same moment. Temerity had reminded herself of that bridge during her last period at the end of May, as she arrived in Moscow, miserable with cramps.
May.
Breasts aching, Temerity traced lines on her left shoulder to mirror Kostya’s scars. Min’s voice: Remember your duty and your best self. Her own voice, on the Bilbao docks: Don’t let them forget their Spanish names. Her fingers traced shorter lines on her shoulder now, letters of the Latin alphabet, her initials: TTW, TTW, TTW.
CHILD OF THE STRUGGLE
Saturday 24 July
A large and suffocating sound, yet disciplined and contained: swish-slap, swish-slap, swish-slap. Frowning, Kostya strode around a corner. He knew he should recognize the noise, but it seemed off, even eerie, lighter than it should be. Then he saw why. Row on row on row of attractive and muscular young women dressed in navy blue shorts and white blouses marched past, their thin white shoes hitting the street in unison. The women all wore their hair in the same style, cut near the top of the ears, parted on the left. Brunettes, blondes, and redheads, hair straight, wavy, curly, upturned faces intent on some distant ideal, seemed to blend into one Soviet woman.
A practice march then, a rehearsal for a parade. He must wait. Even if possessed of the necessary rudeness to try, one could never cut across such a phalanx.
The women marched on, perhaps a hundred of them, in perfect formation, smiling, quiet.
Kostya waited another moment after the end of the parade passed, then crossed the street to a large house repurposed into Home of the Child of the Struggle Moscow Number Two Supplemental Number Three. The building looked even more dilapidated than it had the last time Kostya saw it, as though no one had so much as lifted a hammer for repair work because permits lay hidden on a bureaucrat’s desk.
Over a year and a half since his last visit. He considered Efim’s words: I just don’t picture NKVD officers doing that sort of thing.
He knocked on the front door, and a woman in her early twenties let him in.
Kostya took off his cap and gave the woman a light bow to signal courtesy and, he hoped, the fact he’d not come to arrest her. —Thank you, comrade. I noticed the old sign on the lawn is gone.
Her voice wobbled. —What sign was that, Comrade Officer?
— The one identifying this building. Has the name changed?
— No, we just…no longer have a sign. We burnt it. In February. For firewood, I mean. But it wasn’t my idea. I protested. With vigour. It was noted.
— I see.
— Vigour.
— Of course, of course.
She took a breath. —How can I help you today, Comrade Officer?
— I used to visit regularly starting in ’33, before your time, once a week to tell stories to the boys, read to them. How a Little Old Woman Obtained Ink, that book was a great favourite.
— I did not work here in ’33.
— Yes, that’s fine. One of the boys—
The woman clasped her hands together before her waist. —I was still in school. Please.