‘I’m sure she would have wanted Sofya to have the cross,’ Paul said.
The woman turned to him.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Sofya.
‘Sofya, is it?’ Fedorova said to Paul. ‘You’re a quick worker.’
‘It isn’t important,’ Sofya said.
‘Did she leave a will?’ Fedorova asked.
Sofya shook her head.
‘State property then. You wish to make a claim?’
Sofya shook her head again.
Fedorova looked around the room, her eyes falling on the food they had bought at the market.
‘Where did you buy that?’ she asked Sofya.
‘I bought it,’ Paul said. In the market by Nikolaevsky Station.’
‘Well, if I were you I’d take it with you when you leave.’ Then she said to Sofya, ‘You’ll have to go in the morning as well. We need the room. Petersburg is filling by the day and rooms are in short supply. When the carpenters have finished dividing up the ballroom they’re coming up here to work on the attics. Skala can put several families up here.’
‘You’ll throw her out of her own family’s house?’ Paul said.
Fedorova turned her gaze on him again. ‘And why not, comrade? Who are you to care? You’re very free with your opinions, you and your fine lah-di-dah accent. Tell me, what did you do before you were in the army?’
‘I was a teacher,’ Paul replied, saying the first thing that came to mind.
‘What kind of teacher?’
‘Languages. French and English.’
Her nose wrinkled. ‘Our old allies, eh? Who now think they’re going to defeat the Revolution. Well, we don’t need foreign languages now, do we comrade? Especially not theirs. We all speak Russian now and you’ll do well not to forget it.’
‘Of course not,’ he said.
She eyed him suspiciously. ‘I took you for a simpleton before. Just where was it you worked? In the south where this brother of yours lived?’
‘Here, in Petersburg,’ he said. Adding, as if it might give him some credibility, ‘Until I was exiled.’
‘Exiled?’ Fedorova hooted. ‘And why would they trouble to exile you?’
‘Writing political pamphlets,’ he replied, praying he wasn’t digging a hole for himself.
‘And where did they send you?’
He tried to think of one of the eastern Siberian cities he had seen on his mother’s map. ‘Novosibirsk,’ he told her. ‘Before they put me in the army, that is.’
‘A conscript?’
‘What else?’
‘What unit?’
He wracked his brain to remember the name of any Russian units he might have heard of but couldn’t. She was waiting.
‘I don’t belong to the Little Father’s units anymore,’ he told her.
She laughed again. ‘Deserted?’
‘Medical discharge,’ he said, finding that an admission of desertion was too much to confess. He pulled his hair aside to show her one of his scars. ‘I get fits sometimes,’ he added, in the hope of scaring her.
She didn’t blink. ‘No more teaching for you then,’ she said. ‘They won’t want you scaring the little kiddies, will they?’ Then she pursed her lips and seemed to relent. ‘Maybe I can speak to Skala. For one of our brave pamphleteers. He might know of a factory that needs men. He’s a Party man, he has connections. Factory work isn’t beneath you, I suppose?’
‘Not at all, comrade,’ he said quickly. ‘And a bed for the night?’
‘A bed?’ she repeated. ‘You need to register with this building’s Committee of the Poor for a bed.’ Then her eyes fell on the body of the governess and a malicious glint appeared in them. ‘There’s a bed,’ she said. ‘It’s spare now, if you don’t mind sharing the room with a corpse and the ghost, that is.’ She turned to Sofya and asked sarcastically, ‘What do you say, my lady? Do you object to sharing a room with an exiled teacher who has fits?’ She laughed at the prospect. ‘A fine pair you’ll make. But don’t forget,’ she said, pointing at Sofya. ‘You’re out in the morning just as soon as they fetch the body. And you, teacher, you’ll have to register with Skala.’
27
Paul slept on the floor. It was warm enough in the house that he needed no blanket. He had heated some water on the stove and washed as best he could at the sink by candlelight, conscious of Sofya’s presence. He discarded his old clothes and laid out the ones he had bought in the market for the morning. Sofya watched him while he went through this ritual, but if she was amused at the trouble he took over second-hand clothes she didn’t show it.
‘You had better pack whatever you want to take with you,’ he told her.
‘Take where?’
‘Fedorova said you’ll have to leave in the morning. Unless you have a friend you can stay with you’ll have to come with me.’
‘Go with you? Why should I leave? This is my brother’s house now. How will he know where I am when he returns?’
Paul was tempted to ask why she was so convinced Mikhail would come back for her when he hadn’t bothered himself about her when he had left. But Paul sensed she was in a sullen mood. She had been like it as a child, stubborn and, if unable to get her way, inclined to sulk.
‘Skala will make trouble for you if you stay,’ he said. ‘Can’t you leave a message with someone? A friend of Mikhail’s? Or someone he’d go to if you weren’t here? Fedorova, if there’s no one else.’
‘That cow,’ said Sofya.
‘Very probably,’ Paul said. ‘But things are different now. If you want to survive you’ll have to adapt. Things may never be what they once were.’
‘Easy for you,’ she retorted bitterly. ‘You haven’t had to watch while the svolotch of Petersburg have robbed us blind and no army to protect us!’
‘They may be scum,’ he said, ‘but they’re running the city now.’
She glared at him by the dim light of the candle.
‘Turn around,’ she said. ‘I want to get undressed.’
Paul turned his face to the wall.
‘And you needn’t think you’ll get any help from Skala,’ she went on behind him over the sound of rustling material. ‘He won’t swallow that story of yours about being a teacher for a minute. He may be a pig but he’s not stupid.’
‘I won’t give him the chance to swallow it,’ Paul said to the wall. ‘We’ll leave as soon as it’s light.’
Skala. He assumed the name was a pseudonym. They were fond of their pseudonyms, these Bolsheviks — Lenin, Kamenev and the rest… What did ‘Skala’ mean? It was a rock, as he remembered — a large rock. Hard as rock, the implication would be. Well, he wasn’t planning to stay around long enough to find out.
He heard Sofya moving and assumed she had finished. He turned around. She was naked, her back to him, and he saw her thin arms and taught buttocks, her slender legs…
‘Pasha!’ She quickly pulled her night-dress over her head.
‘I’m sorry, Sofya…’ he stammered. He turned to the wall again, his face flushing but still aware that she had used his diminutive. She had called him Pasha as she had used to as a girl.
He settled himself into a corner by the wall on a cushion. Sofya extinguished the candle and climbed onto her cot. The room was dark. He lit a cigarette and smoked, listening to Sofya’s breathing and the silence that had come over the house below.
After a while, sensing she was still awake, he asked:
‘Sofya? What was it like when the Revolution came?’
She didn’t answer immediately then said:
‘When do you mean? When the Bolsheviks took control?’