The bag was only half-full but even so Paul balked when she began to gather together her meagre collection of pots and pans.
‘We can’t take those,’ he said.
‘Of course we can,’ she insisted. ‘What will we cook with?’
‘We can’t take them,’ he repeated. ‘We have to move quickly. We can’t travel decked out like a couple of tinkers.’
‘You don’t know how it is now,’ she said. ‘How will we eat?’
‘We’ll buy meals. I told you, I have money.’
‘You need food cards to eat in the communal halls. What do you think, there are still fancy restaurants where you can dine whenever you like?’
‘We have money,’ Paul said patiently. ‘If you have money you will survive.’
‘My family had money,’ she said. ‘They didn’t survive.’
28
‘Where are we going?’
Sofya had been asking him since they left the house. They had gone down the back way to avoid Fedorova and Skala only to run into Feldmann again. He had eyed Paul resentfully then said to Sofya he’d heard Korovina had died and respectfully offered his condolences. Paul supposed that since Feldmann had worked in the house for the Rostovs, he would have remembered the woman when she had been the governess. Paul doubted that Korovina would have treated the staff any better than her employers had; yet, unlike Paul, Feldmann hadn’t had to suffer being educated by the woman so perhaps his memories of her weren’t as tainted as Paul’s.
Feldmann looked pointedly at the bag.
‘Some of Madame Korovina’s clothes,’ Sofya said, surprising Paul by her glibness. ‘I am going to try to sell them. Would you be interested?’
Feldmann laughed. ‘Women’s clothes? Sorry, Sofya, they’re of no use to me.’ He hesitated, obviously wanting to say something else. ‘Do you think Fedorova will want to evict you now?’ he asked finally.
‘That’s what she’s threatened,’ Sofya said.
Feldmann glanced at Paul, then at the floor. ‘I thought… I mean, if you’ve nowhere to go, Sofya, I could find room in my apartment. Only,’ he added quickly, ‘if you’ve nowhere to go and the Poor People’s Committee approve, that is.’
‘Thank you, Igor Alekseev,’ Sofya said, and to Paul’s surprise even smiled at Feldmann. ‘I will give your offer my consideration.’
Feldmann returned her smile, glanced at Paul once more and gave him a curt nod.
They left the house through the stables.
‘Why do you encourage that man?’ Paul asked. ‘He used to work for you.’
‘Aren’t we all equal now?’
‘Why did you tell him you were selling Korovina’s clothes?’
Sofya shook her head as though she considered the question naive. ‘Fedorova will find out soon enough we’ve gone. There’s no point in telling other people.’
‘What is this Poor People’s Committee you’re obliged to register with?’
‘Them!’ Sofya said with disgust. ‘They’re the rabble who live in my house now. They give places on the Committee to the most shiftless, worthless svolotch they can find. It’s like the Poor Peasants Committees in the country villages. Drunkards, most of them. Every decision they make is based on vindictiveness and envy.’
She stood on the pavement, looking first one way and then the other. ‘Which way? Where are we going?’
‘The first thing I need is a pair of new boots,’ Paul said.
‘And where do you think you’re going to buy them? The Bolsheviks have requisitioned every pair in Petersburg for their new army.’
‘Can’t we go back to the market? Surely someone will be selling a second-hand pair? They sell everything else.’
‘Maybe,’ she said reluctantly. ‘If you can find a pair that fits. First I want to walk along the Neva once more. If we’re really going to leave Petersburg, I want to remember it in case I never see it again.’
Given what had happened, Paul thought the place would have been seared on her memory. But he didn’t try to dissuade her; if she ever came back he doubted it would be to the city she remembered.
Paul had expected to find the streets busy but they weren’t. Sofya noticed how quiet it was, too.
‘Where is everyone?’
There were a few pedestrians to be seen but little traffic. The trams seemed not to be running, either. They stood on the embankment and watched the Neva swirl sluggishly below, giving off a stench of effluent and garbage.
‘Where are the vendors?’ Sofya said. ‘Why aren’t the kiosks open?’
‘The Petropavlovka is busy,’ she said, pointing across the river at the Peter and Paul fortress. It was some distance but Paul could see lorries moving to and fro.
Sofya gazed at the Vasilevsky Ostrov and the embankment where Peter the Great’s Rostral Columns stood.
‘There are always people selling things there,’ she said. ‘They catch the people using the Birzmevo and Dvortzovi Bridges coming from the Petersburg side.’
A car turned onto the Troitsky Bridge towards them. Approaching the embankment, it slowed. A red flag flew from one of the windows.
‘Come, quickly,’ Sofya said, grabbing his hand and pulling him the other way. They hurried towards the Field of Mars and the Fontanka.
‘We’ll try the market on Ligovskaya if you want boots. That’s if anyone’s turned up this morning. They call the private traders “speculators” and round them up every so often. They haven’t raided the Nikolaevsky for a few days so it probably due for a visit from the Cheka.’
‘But they’re just ordinary people there,’ Paul said. ‘Why should ordinary people have anything to fear from the Bolsheviks?
‘There are no ordinary people anymore,’ Sofya snapped back at him. ‘There are the Bolsheviks and then there is everyone else.’
Clambering onto a half-empty tram, they rode a few streets south of the Horse Artillery Barracks, near the Protestant Hospital, then walked the rest of the way. Turning down Ligovskaya Prospékt Sofya pointed to a few traders who had set up stalls, taking their chances with the police. She found a burzhui offering a range of footwear, from cavalry boots and ladies ballroom slippers, to the felt valenkis and bark sandals the peasants wore. Paul liked the look of the shiny cavalry boots but they weren’t very practical and so tried on a pair of worn army boots. They looked as if they might already have seen service at Tannenburg and walked all the way back to Russia, but they were a fit and were comfortable enough. He left the vendor with Pinker’s old pair and was still stamping his feet into the new boots when Sofya started tugging on his arm again.
‘There’s someone I have to see before we go.’ She said.
‘Who?’
‘A friend.’
She led him along Govskaya Ligov. At the junction they turned down Zágorodni Prospékt. A school on the corner of Tchernvishov Pereulok was closed and beyond it, near the junction with Gorokhovaya and close to Tsarskoye Selo Station, Sofya pointed at a building.
‘My friend lives here,’ she said, banging her fist on the door when they reached it. The place looked derelict to Paul. A window beside the door had been roughly boarded over.
‘Her name is Irina,’ Sofya said. ‘Mikhail never liked her but if he comes back and finds I am gone he will come here. Her husband was an army officer. He was killed in the war. When the Bolsheviks took power they appropriated her house.’
‘And she lives here now?’
‘It used to be a milliner’s shop.’ She gestured at the boarded window. ‘The shop was looted and closed. The owner’s name is Madame Kausky. She has an apartment upstairs.’