Impulsively, I jumped up and lifted the sash.
Smoke and coal dust filled the compartment, speckling the air with tiny black dots. I gagged, pressing the back of my hand to my mouth. Pine trees scraped past, scattering fir needles onto the compartment floor. The fresh scent of them rose up, zesty and intoxicating. It was the scent of my freedom.
‘Bozhe moi! My God!’ With a hand tented across her face to shield her eyes, Olga shoved me aside and slammed the sash shut. She turned, her face red, her expression aghast. ‘What were you thinking?’
I straightened up, willing my chest to stop hitching as the air cleared, one hand still pressed to my mouth. ‘It was… hot.’
In her haste, Olga had knocked my suitcase to the ground, spilling Joachim’s book along with my mother’s shawl. Olga saw it and her eyes narrowed. Bending down, she plucked at a corner of the lace. Her mouth fell open.
‘This was your mother’s,’ she said. ‘How on earth did you find it?’
‘I – I stole it from her bedroom. The day her things were taken away.’
Olga peered closely at it. ‘Extraordinary! I thought it was lost!’
I moistened my lips. ‘I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want you to get into trouble.’
Olga was rubbing the lace between her fingers. ‘She loved this shawl. You know, she made it herself. A woman taught her.’
‘She told me.’
‘I envied such talent. Me, I will never be one to sit around and knit. Eating, perhaps, I can do. Cooking a little. Stories, certainly. But knitting? I have not the patience. Here,’ she held it out, strung between her hands. ‘You should wear it.’
Her fingers brushed my neck as she wound the lace around my throat. Now that the air had cleared, I caught the scent of dust in the shawl, like the lingering whiff from old books or parchment and the faint sweet scent of biscuits from the tin. Reaching up, I adjusted it, so that the fringes hung down my back in a triangle, the way my mother had shown me when I was a child.
When I stepped back, one hand against the wall to steady myself as the train swayed, it was to find Olga’s eyes glistening with tears.
‘Your eyes are so much like hers,’ she said. Then seeming to remember herself, she rubbed her nose with the heel of her hand and turned to her own large suitcase. ‘Well. If we are confessing to things we were not supposed to keep…’ She rummaged through the contents, emerging a moment later with a huge bearskin coat bundled in her arms. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘I saved it for you!’ It gleamed in the swaying sunlight from the window, the edges of it trailing on the ground. I recognised it at once, and my stomach lurched. It had never occurred to me that Olga would keep something so awful. Now I understood why she had grumbled about dragging her bulging suitcase with her.
‘Olga, please… no.’ I bent to pick up Joachim’s book. Its cover was wrinkled, the pages dog-eared. Joachim’s fingers had folded them. I imagined him lying on his bed, the book propped up in his hands, surrounded by the sounds of the other tenants in his block laughing and arguing. What would he be hearing now? The screech of train wheels? The voices of men and women sobbing for the lives they had left behind? With trembling hands, I placed the book carefully back in the bottom of my case. I would have to trust that wherever he was, Joachim would want me to seek safety. He would not want his sacrifice to be in vain.
‘You must wear it.’ Olga’s face startled me as she appeared around the side of the coat. ‘You promised you would listen. Do you think I want your father to know how I have neglected my duties?’
I threw her her an exasperated look.
‘It’s spring! It’s warm.’
‘The air is changeable.’ Olga glared at me. ‘Your mother might send a demon to punish me. She will know I have failed to take care of you. How I have undone the promise I made to her the day you were born and I held you in my arms for the first time. Your mother was weak from childbirth. She bled so much she thought she might not survive. Of course, she did, but she made me promise then that I would care for you if she was gone.’ Olga stared solemnly off into the middle distance. ‘Olga Andreyevna Konstantinova, she said, do you promise to protect my child, Lydia Volkova; to stay with her, no matter where she might be sent; to do everything in your power to keep her safe from illness and violence, from the vile intentions of men who would corrupt her with evil words and deeds?’
Her voice had grown louder with every word. Now it boomed around the small compartment, audible over the clatter of train wheels. She lifted her hand, fist curled, a fiery glint in her eyes. For a woman of sixty-five and of diminutive height, she was an impressive figure.
Bundling up the coat, she sank onto the seat. ‘I suppose I should not complain. I’ve been lucky. You have grown into a beautiful woman. Your mother would be proud. The end is the crown to any work.’ Pressing her lips together, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes.
My heart gave a sharp, guilty twist.
I had promised her I would listen.
I took the coat from her hands. The fur strands clung to my skin as I lifted the coat and shrugged it on. The heavy folds swallowed up the silky fabric of the pleated black skirt I had pulled on this morning and the cream-coloured blouse with pearl buttons and scalloped collar. It fell in swathes to puddle around my feet. Slipping one arm into a sleeve, I felt the weight of it against my shoulder. The satin lining slithered against the bare skin at my wrist.
Thoughts buzzed like flies in my head, looping around and around in disconnected circles. I remembered the warm afternoon at the dacha in Zubalovo when my uncle, smiling triumphantly, had emerged from an afternoon’s hunting with my father, dragging the body of the brown bear he had shot, vowing to have it made into a coat for my mother. I remembered seeing my mother wear the coat for the first time, her frown as she examined her reflection in the long mirror that hung over the takhta in her room.
Had she felt it too, the suffocating weight of the coat, the claustrophobic crush of the fur that seemed to constrict movement, squeezing tighter with every breath?
Sweat beaded my forehead. I reached up to brush it away.
Outside in the train corridor, the conductor called out, informing passengers that the next stop would be made within the hour to allow passengers to disembark, and that a short time after that, we would arrive at our destination in Tartu.
‘Not far to go now.’ Olga creaked an eyelid open. ‘Ah. I see you’ve come to your senses.’ A satisfied smile played over her lips. ‘You see? It is cool. Best to be prepared for the change in climate. Estonia.’ She gave a small shudder. ‘Why your uncle sent your father here is anyone’s guess. So far from Moscow. So very far from home. Still, your mother always spoke of it with such fondness.’
I resumed my seat beside her, tucking the coat around me so the ends didn’t drag, as meek as the child she insisted I still was. The spiky ends of the fur pricked against my neck. I could not help but imagine it a collar, growing tighter the further away from Uncle we drew.
Peacock Tails
Kati
I smiled as I crossed the courtyard to Aunt Juudit’s apartment block. It was not yet ten in the morning, but her gramophone was working overtime, cranking out ‘L’Internationale’, the loud orchestral tune that had been chosen by Lenin, before his death, to celebrate the grandeur and might of the Communist party. The origin of the song itself was French but the Russians had adopted it as their anthem. They had even expanded it from four stanzas to six, the better to capture its spirit of revolution. Stalin, Lenin’s successor, was said to love it so much that it was often referred to as ‘Stalin’s Song’.