The following day, Klim and Nina went to the train station to find out if there were any railroad tickets for sale, although they had no idea where they might go. Where did the land of the Soviets begin and end? What was going on in the rest of the world? All the international headlines on the newsstands were about strikes and anti-government demonstrations. “World revolution is coming!” they claimed.
As Klim had feared, it proved impossible to buy a rail ticket without a permit from the Cheka.
He spoke to the bagmen and found that it was still possible to get into one of the boxcars without a ticket if you were quick and cunning. But typhoid spread by lice was rife inside the heated boxcars. The bugs would crawl from one person to another, and all of the train’s passengers might end up getting infected. The only safe way to travel was in the cars reserved for the Bolshevik officials.
Had Klim been alone, he would have tried jumping on a train, but he didn’t want to put Nina at risk. If there was a crush to get on, her stitches might burst open, and there would be no one to provide her with medical care.
They decided to cut up the satyr and sell the pieces of silver one by one to make it last. Klim spent all of the money he had earned from his propaganda work on a hacksaw, cut off the satyr’s beard, and sold it to a jeweler trading in precious metals (evidently under the patronage either of the police or the Cheka).
They had to sort out a place to live and find a source of income urgently, but it was almost impossible to find a room to rent. Nina had no documents and, therefore, couldn’t get an official registration permit—and without this, she was liable to be arrested on the spot.
Nina was amazed at Klim’s ability to adapt to any circumstance. He found a rusty flatiron, took off the handle, and made it into a tiny hotplate that they could use to cook food by heating it from beneath by burning old theater posters and wood chips.
Klim had the vital ability to laugh at misfortune rather than complain about it. What did it matter if they had no spoons or forks? Real gauchos ate with their knives.
“If you eat with a fork,” Klim told Nina with a wink, “then you’ll need a plate. Before you know it, you’ll be wanting tables and chairs, and your problems will never end. You can’t carry all that with you when you’re out on the pampas. A gaucho should be as free as the wind.”
They made a tent out of the theater curtain—luckily, there were needles, thread, and scissors in Klim’s toiletry bag. One day, he found a potted palm tree in a bucket that somebody had thrown out, and he brought it back to the theater. Once they had cleaned up the bucket, they had something to carry water in, and they kept the palm tree for decoration.
Klim sat beneath it and told Nina stories about his adventures in faraway countries.
She liked to admire the fine shape of his hairline, which pleasingly circumscribed his high forehead. She liked the way his stubble grew too, forming handsome curves at his cheeks with a narrow strip under his lower lip.
“Kiss me,” Nina said.
Klim recoiled in feigned horror. “Don’t you know, ma’am, that kissing is a source of infection? I read that on a notice at the Babushkin Hospital.”
He kissed her anyway, and quickly becoming dizzy with passion, he held her tightly to him.
“Easy… easy… it’s too early now,” he whispered.
Reluctantly she obeyed, delighted that although she was thin and only wearing a faded, second-hand dress, Klim still found her desirable.
“Thank you,” she whispered—spasibo.
He laughed. “According to the new regulations, you should now say ‘merci’ instead of ‘spasibo’ because in old Russian, spasibo means ‘God save you,’ and it would appear there is no longer a God—at least not in this country.”
Klim didn’t allow Nina to leave the theater. The danger that she might run into a patrol was too great. Every now and then, military units marched along the bank of the Oka River a stone’s throw away from the theater. Besides, it was likely that criminals and street children were hiding in the ruins of the fair. Klim shuddered to think what they might do if they saw a woman out walking alone.
“I’ll see to everything,” Klim promised Nina. “Your job is to get better as soon as possible.”
But it was hard for Nina to spend all day by herself. Every morning, Klim covered his face with an improvised flu mask and went to look for food while Nina wandered around the theater or made up and performed her own plays on the stage. By turns, she pretended to be an unfortunate heroine and played the roles of her suitors and oppressors. Sometimes she imagined herself dancing the tango with Klim. Sometimes she shed bitter tears thinking of her family.
If someone had told her a year ago that soon she would be a homeless pauper living in a ruin, she would never have believed them. How long was this all going to last?
One day, Klim told Nina that he would have to be out all that night. “Trust me, sweetheart. It’s something I have to do. Please don’t ask me why.”
She panicked and flared up in anger. “Have you gone out of your mind, leaving me alone all night?” she shouted. “What if—”
He winced as though her words had physically wounded him.
“I’m sorry, but I have to go now. Be careful and take care of yourself.”
Nina had a terrible night. First, she sobbed, imagining that Klim would never come back and she would be left all alone. Then she remembered what she had said to him in her fit of anger. He’ll never forgive me, she thought. In a moment of weakness, she screamed and wailed like a desperate child, her cries echoing all around the theater. She stopped as suddenly as she had started, shocked at the sound of her own voice in the silence.
As he had promised, Klim came back in the morning, tired and smelling of tobacco smoke. He crawled into the tent and took Nina in his arms. The sun was shining through the old theater curtain and bathed everything inside with a reddish light.
Nina stroked Klim’s hair. “Where have you been? Why don’t you want to tell me? Are you mixed up in something bad?”
“I’ve brought us some bread,” he said without opening his eyes.
“So, you won’t tell me?”
Klim took a deep breath. “I’ve been gambling. I know how you feel about it, but we’ve got to treat it as if it’s a new job. I’m sorry, but I can’t think of any other way of surviving.”
Nina viewed gambling with horror as a kind of incurable disease. Her father had been an addictive gambler and quite capable of blowing the family’s entire savings in a single night, forcing Nina’s mother to borrow money to feed the children.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Nina said to Klim. Her heart sank at the thought that he might gamble away the money from the satyr at the card table.
Now, Klim slept during the day. Nina took his binoculars and went upstairs. From the top floor, she could look out over the grounds of the fair, the Oka River, and the opposite bank. In the distance, the military trucks would drive by, their sides daubed with propaganda slogans:
We welcome the donation of mattresses to the hospitals.
Tailors! Lend your services to make uniforms for the Red Army!
One day, Nina saw a banner demanding that the town’s citizens surrender their binoculars.
You won’t be getting these, thought Nina. She needed her binoculars to watch what was going on at her house on Crest Hill on the other side of the river.
Klim had tried to find out what had happened to Sofia Karlovna but without success. He had found out, however, that the Bolsheviks had converted Nina’s mansion into a telephone exchange and telegraph station. They had cut down the trees in the orchard and put up radio masts all around the house. Everything Nina had once had was now lost—her books, her paintings, and even a reminder of the beauty that had once surrounded her.