“Papa, please eat up,” Lubochka said. “Your food will get cold.”
Klim was irritated by their chatter. He couldn’t wait to go to his room and think about how to sell the diamond earrings. Where could he find a buyer, and how much could he get for them? And how could he keep himself safe from the Cheka agents who were out to trap people selling gold and precious stones on the black market?
Suddenly, they heard the sound of footsteps in the street and a loud knock at the front door. Klim froze at the sound. It must be a search!
His first thought was how to hide the earrings. He stood up, but Lubochka stopped him. “Sit down, please. Marisha, go see who it is.”
Klim passed one of the earrings under the table to Nina. If the Cheka found one of them, perhaps they could save the other? Nina put the earring into her stocking.
Klim’s nerves were strained to breaking point. Marisha rattled the door bolts, and then he heard a deep male voice and the creak of footsteps on the floorboards.
“What’s going on in here? Some sort of party?” asked a red-faced man, appearing at the door of the dining room.
It was Petrovich, the military man who had been Klim’s partner at the card table.
“Osip!” Lubochka cried and threw her arms around the newcomer’s neck.
After dinner, Osip and Lubochka went to their room and talked for a long time. Nina tiptoed to their door several times and returned to the dining room pale and anxious. “I can’t hear a thing.”
Marisha had cleared away the dishes, and Anton Emilievich had gone to his room, but Nina, Klim, and Sablin were still sitting at the table.
Klim remembered the Russian folk tale about a little house that stood in the middle of a field. A mouse, a frog, and several other animals lived in the house, but one day, a bear stopped by, and all of the inhabitants of the little house froze in horror at the intruder. Would the bear destroy everything, or let them live happily ever after? The story ended with the bear trying to get into the little house and pulling it down.
Klim tossed the salt cellar from hand to hand. Who would have thought that Osip and Petrovich were the same person? And how on earth could Lubochka have fallen in love with such a character?
The doctor looked as though he had been slapped in the face. Klim imagined himself in Sablin’s shoes, and the very idea of being betrayed by his wife—the dearest person of all—made him feel sick. Up until now, whenever he had seen marriages and affairs come to an end, he had always thought that it was simply a part of life. But now—looking at his friend crushed with sorrow—his blood ran cold.
Finally, Lubochka stepped into the dining room. “Klim, come here, please.”
Just as she spoke, the electricity went out.
Osip’s tired face glimmered in the light of a single church candle. Lubochka stood behind him looking at Klim and smiling.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Osip said. “Lubochka tells me you’re her cousin.”
“I am,” Klim said warily.
“She also mentioned that you’re a journalist, and you’re good with people.”
“That’s about right.”
“And she tells me you’re well-traveled. Which countries have you been to?”
“Persia, China, and Argentina. And I did a tour of Europe when I was a child.”
“I hear your wife escaped arrest,” Osip said, his blue eyes piercing Klim. “Is that true?”
Klim flinched and shot a glance at Lubochka. Why had she told Osip about that?
Osip ran his hand through his close-cropped gray hair. “Lubochka told me the Cheka wanted to arrest your wife because of her brother,” he said. “The devil knows what to do with the pair of you. If your wife is innocent and we put her in jail, she’ll be a burden on the state. But if we allow her to remain at liberty, she won’t forgive us killing her brother. And she’ll try to sabotage us—”
Lubochka put her hands on Osip’s shoulders. “If you arrest people just to be on the safe side, the whole city will be in jail in no time,” she said softly. Then she turned to Klim. “Look, we have a proposition for you. There are two thousand sailors in the city, and they have nothing to do all winter. The Regional Executive Committee is going to open a special university for the sailors, but we need very special professors who can deal with—well, you know—general populace.”
“What do you want me to teach them?” Klim asked, surprised.
“We want you to keep them busy,” Lubochka said. “You can tell them about faraway countries and teach them to wash their hands before eating.”
“It’s very important work,” Osip said. “Comrade Lenin has told us it’s essential to raise the cultural level of our troops. If you agree, you’ll be given the highest category of food ration. After you’ve completed a trial period, of course.”
Klim hesitated. “So, you don’t mind if Nina and I stay here for a while?”
“What is it to me?” Osip shrugged. “This house isn’t mine anyway. It belongs to the city’s Executive Committee.”
“Just as I told you,” Lubochka said, winking at Klim.
Back in the dining room, Klim closed the door and told Nina and Sablin what had passed between himself and Osip.
“I have an idea,” he said under his breath. “I’ll suggest that Osip organize a train with a propaganda car, and as soon as the waterways become navigable in spring and the sailors go back to their ships, I’ll ask him to send the train to the frontline to help spur on the Red Army soldiers to heroic deeds. We will sign up to be propagandists. That way we’ll have a car to ourselves, and the scoundrels in the Cheka won’t dare touch us.”
Nina looked at Klim with shining eyes. “Do you think Osip will agree to help you?”
“I don’t see why not. He seems to think I have the gift of setting soldiers on the right path.”
Sablin smiled wryly. “Poor Lubochka—imagine if she knew what we were up to.”
“So what?” Nina said in a dispassionate tone. “She treats us like a peasant woman treats her chickens. She feeds us with one hand and pulls out our feathers with the other. And all just to feather her own bed.”
Sablin sighed. “Yes, I know.”
24. THE SAILORS’ UNIVERSITY
The Sailors’ University was set up in a former girls’ school on Ilinskaya Street. Anton Emilievich had also volunteered to give lectures there. Enthusiastic, disheveled, and perspiring from effort, he took turns reading his own stories and extracts from the Bolshevik political agenda to “our brothers the sailors,” who sat yawning and scratching their shaven heads.
This wasn’t the sort of audience to which Anton Emilievich was accustomed. The sailors had no use for his ironic comments or intriguing historical parallels. Propaganda had convinced them that they were the pride and strength of the revolution, and that everybody—including the generally despised lecturers—was obliged to bow down to them.
They interrupted Anton Emilievich or stood up during a lecture and announced, “I need to take a crap.” Sometimes Anton Emilievich felt like giving up altogether. These men had no respect for culture and education. They slept with their shoes on, blew their noses into their fingers, and the moment any problem arose there was an outcry: “Why are there no potatoes in our soup? You tell the kitchen staff from us that if they’re stealing our food, we’ll beat the living daylights out of them.”