Antonina had not permitted any of her husband’s antique furniture in her study. Everything was from the Stalin era. The massive objects even bore small metal tags in their intimate folds, attesting to their origins at the state distribution center. The writer had also died on the leather government-issue divan.
After her mother died, Olga promptly removed the mattress from the divan, and Kostya took it to the dump. She threw away the medicine bottles and paraphernalia. All that was left was the smell.
Valentina Naumovna entered her sister’s room and was surprised at how uninhabited it looked, though she kept her surprise to herself. There were three official portraits on the walclass="underline" a large one of Lenin with a log, and two smaller ones, of Stalin and Dzerzhinsky. She sat on the edge of the leather divan and placed her briefcase neatly across her lap.
Mama had the very same briefcase, Olga noted. Her aunt was shorter than her mother, but she had the same long nose and desiccated appearance. She was dressed in a similar fashion—a worn-out sweater over a gray blouse, and a skirt covered in cat hair.
I should give her Mama’s clothes—her fur, her raincoat, Olga thought.
“Olga, I really don’t know whether your mother would approve of this … most likely she wouldn’t. But I’ve decided to give you the family photographs I’ve managed to save.”
Well, that’s a solemn beginning … oh, and shoes, too. The fur-lined boots Mama brought back from Yugoslavia fifteen years ago—I can’t forget to give her those.
Meanwhile, Valentina fiddled with the lock on the briefcase, and then extracted from an envelope a diminutive packet wrapped in newsprint.
“This is, so to speak, our family archive—everything that has survived.” She carefully unfolded each layer of the newsprint, one after the other, until the photographs were visible. Then she stood up and laid out one cardboard-framed picture from a pre-Revolutionary photography studio and two faded amateur photos.
“I’ve written on the back, very lightly in pencil, who they are, and when…” She gently smoothed over the photograph glued to the cardboard. The other photos had rolled up into a tube, and she pressed them flat. “If I don’t give them to you and Kostya now, there will be no successors to remember our forebears.”
Forebears? Successors? What is she talking about? Mama told me that she had been orphaned when she was little. She didn’t know her relatives; the ones she could remember had all either perished or simply died off.
“This was our father, Naum Ignatievich, with our mother. Your grandfather and grandmother, that is.” Her gnarled old woman’s finger tapped the edge of the photograph. In an armchair sat a priest with a mane of hair down to his shoulders and beard almost to his waist. He had black eyebrows that looked almost as though they had been pasted on. Behind his chair stood a pretty woman in a dark headscarf, tied simply, in the style of the common folk, and wearing a fine silk frock, decorated around the collar with what looked like beadwork. Next to the father were three boys, and with the mother, two little tykes. She held one toddler in her arms. The second was holding the hand of a dark-eyed young girl with a stern, matronly expression on her face.
“Our mother, Tatiana Anisimovna—her maiden name was Kamyshina—was also from a clerical family. Her father was the inspector of the Nizhegorodsky Seminary. All of us, from the very beginning, were in the Church—grandfathers, great-grandfathers, uncles.”
“Mama never told me…” Olga whispered, her voice faltering.
“That’s why. They were all priests,” her aunt said, nodding, still pointing at the sepia cardboard picture. “My father, Naum Ignatievich, looked like his mother, Praskovya. She had dark eyes and black hair. She was of Greek origin, also from a line of priests. After Praskovya, the line was ruined and the Greek strain of black hair and eyes appeared.”
“Mama told me nothing about this.”
“Of course she didn’t. She couldn’t. She was afraid. I’ll tell you everything I know. When Antonina was little, she always helped around the house. She was a good girl. At first she was the only girl among five brothers. There were three older boys and two younger ones. She took care of the younger ones. Andrei and Panteleimon both took after our mother, with their light hair. And they both died in the same year, in exile. She was ten years older than me—I was born in 1915. I wasn’t born yet when this picture was taken. But I remember how your mother would feed me and dress me when I was little. She was very good, very kind,” her aunt repeated several times.
Valentina smoothed over the formal portrait. The amateur photographs had rolled up into a tube again.
“In 1920, our father, Naum Ignatievich, who was a priest at the church in Kosmodemyansk, was sent into exile.” She let her finger rest on the girl with the stern face, whose hand was placed on the shoulder of the small child. “I don’t really remember my parents. Most of what I know, Aunt Katya has told me. I saw my father for the last time in 1925, when he returned from exile. By that time Mama had already died. Aunt Katya took me to see him.”
“Who is Aunt Katya?” Olga looked at her mother’s sister and realized suddenly that she was not at all dowdy and shabby. She was quiet and calm, and her diction was very correct, even impeccable.
“Aunt Katya, Mama’s sister, Ekaterina Anisimovna Kamyshina, took me in as a small child, after our parents were sent into exile. Pyotr and Seraphim were already big lads; they renounced the old ways immediately, and weren’t exiled. Nikolai went with Father. By that time he had already finished seminary and was serving as deacon in a small settlement on the Volga. He’s wearing a cassock in the photograph; he was still studying. He was ordained, became a priest, then disappeared in the labor camps. I don’t know what year it was, I don’t know anything more about him. Katya had lost touch with him. The two younger boys, Andrei and Panteleimon, went into exile with our parents. Both of them died.”
“And Mama?” Olga had already guessed what she was about to hear.
“Antonina followed her brothers’ example. She left home at fifteen. Pyotr and Seraphim had already left for Astrakhan before her. They all renounced their father the priest when they were there. They put a notice in the newspaper saying that now Lenin was their father, and the Party was their mother.”
The girl in the leather jacket looked out on them from her frame, confirming that this was true.
“What became of Grandfather?”
“Five years in exile in the Arkhangelsk region; after that he returned to Kosmodemyansk. In 1928 they sent him to prison, and then released him one more time. In 1934, he disappeared for good. Katya was never able to trace his whereabouts. Katya and I went to see your mother in 1937. We begged her on bended knee to intervene, to help find out where he was. But Antonina said that there was nothing to find out.”
There was a polite knock at the door, which stood ajar, and Ari Lvovich poked his head in to say good-bye. In the living room, everyone was talking quietly at the table. With Zoya, the neighbor, Tamara discussed the mysterious illness that had abandoned Olga and had migrated to Antonina Naumovna. Zoya asked Kostya about Ilya. Despite being on very friendly terms with the neighbor, whenever the subject of her ex-husband was broached, Olga pretended that she hadn’t heard the question.
Olga thanked the funeral director. He nodded deferentially. When he was already by the door, tipping his lush fur hat, he bowed with aristocratic aplomb and said in a dignified manner:
“At your service, Olga Afanasievna. Always at your service.”
Brainless idiot. As though his services are in such high demand, she thought. While she was walking down the hall, she was bracing herself to hear more of what she could already anticipate: exile, arrest, persecution, execution.