“You think they’re being interfered with sexually?” Piatakova half-asked, half-stated.
“I don’t know. The manager and his cronies have had the run of the place at night, and most of the girls seem frightened to death. I’m hoping you can get at least some of them to open up.”
“How many are there?” Zenzinova asked.
“About sixty, but I’m hoping you won’t need to question more than a few to get an idea of what’s been going on.”
The two women looked at each other. “Then we’d better get started,” Piatakova said in her strangely accented but otherwise perfect Russian.
All work was stopped, and the girls brought together in what had presumably once been the ballroom. Two smaller rooms on the same floor were found for interviews and the first two girls delivered to their questioners by the clearly frightened staff.
It was almost four hours later when the two Zhenotdel women found Komarov in the manager’s office. They both looked devastated.
“They work every hour God gives,” Comrade Piatakova told him. “Apart, that is, from a short spell in the yard once or twice a week. The rest of the time they’re either working or locked up in the dormitory.” She raised her green eyes and gave him a look he could have done without. “Or, as you suspected, warming the manager’s bed. It’s sometimes just him, sometimes a few of his friends as well. They take their pick after the girls finish their suppers.”
“Are any of them pregnant?” Komarov asked, knowing it was the wrong response the moment he said it.
“Probably not,” Piatakova told him. “I doubt that most of the girls have ever had a period, and given the state of their health, I don’t expect the older ones are menstruating either.”
“How many did you talk to?”
“I talked to four and Fanya to five.”
“Well, they’ll all need to be questioned eventually, but first I must find people to look after them.”
“Women, I hope.”
“Of course. If you think of any suitable people, or of homes you can vouch for, I’d be grateful to hear. I know Comrade Kollontai was working to set up several such places in the early months of the revolution.”
“I’ll ask,” Piatakova said. She got to her feet. “I assume your men will drive us back to Vozdvizhenka Street.”
“Of course. And thank you.”
She hesitated in the doorway, obviously trying to put a thought into words. “This speaks so badly of us,” she said eventually.
“I couldn’t agree more,” he said simply.
He listened to the car drive off. A year ago he would have had the staff taken out to the yard and shot. Everyone would have been delighted—the children seeing their abusers receive their comeuppance, his men doing what they were good at, the bureaucrats in Moscow spared all that tiresome paperwork that went with trials. But now…
Things were supposed to be changing. The death penalty had been abolished, in theory if not quite in practice. And if they were ever to get the revolution back on its rightful course, then wrongdoing had to be exposed, not simply punished with a bullet in the back of the neck. The manager would certainly get one, but only after everyone in Moscow knew what for.
That was the easy part, he thought. What kind of future lay in wait for these girls?
He went back to the manager’s office, where the woman who’d welcomed him six hours before was weeping in a corner.
“Where are the records?” he asked her.
“What records?” she managed to ask.
“The names of the girls. Their ages. Where they came from.”
“He never kept any records,” she said.
Komarov sighed. Even in the bad old days, they’d tattooed numbers on orphans’ knuckles. “I’ll send someone out here in the morning,” he told the woman. “You’ll be here to show her around. And then you leave.”
“But—”
“Either that or join your boss in prison.”
“But I didn’t touch anyone.”
Komarov just looked at her.
“You people think you own the world,” she said, covering her mouth when she realized she’d said it aloud.
And what a world to own, Komarov thought.
Caitlin Piatakova glanced at the clock on the wall, and saw she had only an hour before the Orgbureau appointment. The last three had flown by: since the midday arrival of the twenty-four women from Turkestan the Zhenotdel offices had been a whirlwind of color, noise, and enthusiasm. A sense of liberation was catching, Caitlin thought, and more than a little intoxicating to Muscovites, who had almost forgotten how to feel so positive. And as far as she and Fanya were concerned, the arrival of the women had certainly provided a much-needed lift of the spirits after yesterday’s hours at the refuge for waifs and strays.
These women had literally left their men—their husbands, fathers, and brothers—two thousand miles behind them. And, for the moment at least, they all seemed exhilarated by the freedom that distance had given them. Days like this, Caitlin thought, were what she lived for. The long hours, the endless petty obstruction, the knowing smirks and outright insults—all that men could throw at them—days like this made it all worthwhile.
They had spent the afternoon discussing the programs and material that the Muslim women would take back with them, and the Zhenotdel workers had initially feared that their visitors might prove overoptimistic about the pace of possible change. But they needn’t have worried—the latter were fully aware that changing male minds in a highly traditional Muslim culture would take time and tact. As Rahima, one of the unofficial leaders of the women, put it: “If we look too happy, they will be suspicious.”
Rahima was only eighteen, but seemed a lot older, with a fund of common sense that provided ballast for her bubbly enthusiasm. She had married at fourteen, and her husband was one of the few Uzbeks prominent in the Turkestan Communist Party. He had allowed his wife to make the trip out of political duty, but she knew only too well that he found the whole business profoundly upsetting. “I will need to work on him day and night,” she said. “And his mother, who keeps pouring poison into his ears.”
Caitlin glanced at the clock—it really was time to leave. She checked that the relevant notes were in her bag, told Fanya she was off, and reluctantly left all the noise and happiness behind her.
Outside on Vozdvizhenka Street, a pale sun was struggling with a cold breeze. The Orgbureau offices were about a mile away, and with no tram in sight, she decided she might as well walk. The streets were virtually empty, and as she strode along, she rehearsed the arguments she would put to the committee. The issue in question was the setting up of Zhenotdel offices in a long list of provincial cities and towns, and the properties that the organization had carefully chosen to house them. There was no obvious reason why the proposals in Caitlin’s bag should prove contentious, provided that they were considered on merit. But it was far from certain that this would be the case. Her friend and boss, Alexandra Kollontai, had already annoyed the party leadership by strongly supporting the Workers’ Opposition faction, and the leaders might well choose to punish her by punishing the women’s organization that she headed.
It was so frustrating, Caitlin thought. She loved Kollontai like a sister—a much older one who often seemed younger—and Caitlin could hardly fault her friend for sticking to her principles. But they had achieved so much over the last three years—women delegates and apprentices at every level, propaganda work among the peasants and now the Muslims, making Russia the first country in the world to legalize abortion… Only yesterday evening a woman from Petrograd had told Caitlin that 90 percent of people were now eating in communal kitchens. Not eating very much, she had added with a laugh, but communally. The link between cooking and domestic slavery was finally being broken!