“I thought you were going to get married to Uncle Klim,” sobbed Tata. “I didn’t want to get in your way.”
“You silly thing,” said Galina. “We never spoke about that, did we?”
“I’m glad you’ve realized what a rotten capitalist he is. We need to fight his sort! And we have to get Kitty away from him. How do you think we can do it? Why don’t we write to the authorities and ask to be allowed to adopt her?”
Tata was incorrigible.
What on earth shall I do now? Galina wondered. She would have to sacrifice either her own life or that of her child. If she sent Tata back to the school, the cruel Pioneers would make her life a misery. On the other hand, if she let her daughter stay in Moscow, she could forget about having any personal relationship.
There was a knock at the door.
“Galina!” came the voice of Mitrofanych. “Some work for you. This letter came from the Nizhny Novgorod archive today.” And he thrust a large, battered envelope under the door.
Galina went to the bathroom and lit the boiler but did not run a bath. She sat on the floor under the hot pipe, which was hung with drying clothes, and pored through the documents from the archive, sobbing bitterly.
The man she loved more than her life had been lying to her all along. Born into the family of a public procurator, he was a member of the nobility and heir to a large fortune. In 1917, he had come to Nizhny Novgorod, and at that time, he had been an Argentinian citizen, not an American. There was a document to prove it from the police station where he had registered his arrival. In 1919, he had worked on a paper called the Nizhny Novgorod Commune—among the documents was a record of his union fees payment.
And here was a certificate of marriage to Nina Vasilievna Kupina dated December 1918. They had been married in the Church of St. George, and that was why Klim had mourned the loss of it.
There was another document showing that at the height of the White Army offensive, Comrade Rogov had left for the front, heading up a team of Red political agitators. Then the trail went cold.
This could only mean one thing. Klim had gone over to the Whites, emigrated, and then came back to the USSR to look for his wife, but she had turned him down. That explained the events of Christmas Eve and everything that had happened after.
Now, it was clear that Kitty was Klim and Nina’s adoptive daughter.
Galina’s first thought was to run to Alov and hand him Klim’s head on a platter. The papers in her hands were enough to doom Mr. Rogov even if he had had no connection with any White Army organizations.
The image of Ibrahim cheerfully hosing down the blood-stained Black Maria floated into Galina’s mind.
Alov would be delighted, she thought. He would probably give her a voucher for a couple of pounds of jam or a length of good cloth, and Tata would be happy.
Galina got to her feet, opened the door in the side of the boiler, and began to thrust papers into the burning coals. The flames leaped up, and the smell of burning paper hit her in the face.
Her neighbor, Natasha, knocked on the door. “What are you doing in there? The whole corridor stinks of smoke!”
“Just a minute… just a minute,” Galina kept repeating in a daze.
She did not care if Klim was a member of the White Army conspirators. He could be a terrorist for all she cared. She could not live without him.
It seems I’m in a real quandary now. I can’t dismiss Galina, or she will end up on the streets, literally. She will be thrown out of the OGPU house for failing to do her job properly, and if she comes to live with me on Chistye Prudy, I will end up on the streets myself because it will be the only way to get away from her meddling.
She has taken to looking at me in a new way as if she was afraid of something, and each time, I remember Seibert saying just before he left, “Watch out for Galina!”
What did he mean? Was he hinting that unrequited love can turn a woman into a monster? The same could be said of men too. I know from my own experience.
I’m trying to make sure Galina spends as little time with my daughter as possible. God forbid Kitty should blurt out something to her about my trip to Crimea!
Fortunately for me, a new library has opened near my house with lots of activities for children. Kapitolina takes Kitty there, and she can play with other kids a little.
Of course, the library isn’t offering anything even remotely resembling a proper education. The teachers keep asking Kitty, quite seriously, to tell everyone how she has been oppressed by evil imperialists. They have also taught her a poem by a certain Agniya Barto, “Li, the Little Chinese Boy”:
Kitty happily reads out this doggerel to a delighted audience, and I have decided to overlook their patronizing racism. So long as Kitty’s happy, that’s all that mattered.
Magda, Friedrich, and I have been thinking how we can buy some time for our Germans. I have put up a huge sign over the entrance to the Church of St. Michael, “School for the Study of the Lenin’s Works.” There are quite a few books of his writings left over from Elkin’s shop, and I have given them to our refugees. Now, if one of the boys on sentry duty signals that a stranger is approaching, the Germans grab books and try to look studious.
So far, they have not been evicted—nobody dares to close the Lenin school. But all our cleverness has not solved the basic problem that the refugees have nothing to live on.
Seibert sent me an indignant letter, and I can’t quite face showing it to Father Thomas just yet. Apparently, the government in Berlin has refused to take in any Russian Germans. In Europe, everyone fears Bolsheviks like the plague, and nobody cares to find out whether refugees from the USSR are communists or poverty-stricken peasants. It’s far simpler to refuse them all a visa.
I have signed up for driving lessons in the old Catherine Institute for Noble Maidens, which is now the Red Army Club.
The kind old lady in the reception turned out to be a graduate of the school. Recognizing immediately that I was a “gentleman,” she took me on a tour of the recently refurbished classrooms.
The Red Army has done very well for itself indeed. It’s quite something: precious parquet floors and marble staircases. Apart from this, there is an ancient park behind the building with ponds and bicycle tracks.
In the club, efforts were being made on all sides to raise the cultural level of soldiers and commanders of the Red Army and the members of their families. From the classrooms, we could hear the sounds of choirs singing, accordion music, and the hum of fretsaws. Muffled shots came from the cellar where they were holding military training classes, and in the lecture hall, a gray-haired professor was giving a lecture on “Chemical Warfare and How to Combat It.”
I have already made a mental list of the courses I will sign up for when I have finished my driving lessons. I would far rather build birdhouses or dance Russian dances than have to look at Galina’s crushed expression.
28. THE DRIVING LESSONS
All day, Klim had been traveling around the Moscow markets, conducting research for an article about the economic situation in the capital.
He got talking to a peasant who was selling horses’ tails for making soft furnishings.