He knocked on the door.
“Who is it?”
The sound of her voice nearly brought tears to his eyes. “A visitor,” he said gruffly, and he opened the door.
She was standing by the fireplace holding a pan. She dropped the pan, spilling milk, and her hands went to her mouth. She let out a small scream.
“It’s only me,” said Grigori.
On the floor beside her sat a little boy with a tin spoon in his hand. He appeared to have just stopped banging on an empty can. He stared at Grigori for a startled moment, then began to cry.
Katerina picked him up. “Don’t cry, Volodya,” she said, rocking him. “No need to be afraid.” He quieted. Katerina said: “This is your daddy.”
Grigori was not sure he wanted Vladimir to think he was his father, but this was not the moment to argue. He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. He put his arms around them, kissed the child, then kissed Katerina’s forehead.
He stood back and looked at them. She was no longer the fresh-faced kid he had rescued from the unwelcome attentions of Police Captain Pinsky. She was thinner and had a tired, strained look.
Strangely, the child did not look much like Lev. There was no sign of Lev’s good looks, nor his winning smile. If anything, Vladimir had the intense blue-eyed gaze that Grigori saw when he looked in a mirror.
Grigori smiled. “He’s beautiful.”
Katerina said: “What happened to your ear?”
Grigori touched what remained of his right ear. “I lost most of it at the battle of Tannenberg.”
“And your tooth?”
“I displeased an officer. But he’s dead now, so I got the better of him in the end.”
“You’re not so handsome.”
She had never said he was handsome before. “They’re minor wounds. I’m lucky to be alive.”
He looked around his old room. It was subtly different. On the mantelpiece over the fireplace, where Grigori and Lev had kept pipes, tobacco in a jar, matches, and spills, Katerina had put a pottery vase, a doll, and a color postcard of Mary Pickford. There was a curtain at the window. It was made of scraps, like a quilt, but Grigori had never had any curtain. He also noticed the smell, or lack of it, and realized the place used to have a thick atmosphere of tobacco smoke, boiling cabbage, and unwashed men. Now it smelled fresh.
Katerina mopped up the spilled milk. “I’ve thrown away Volodya’s supper,” she said. “I don’t know what I’ll feed him. There’s no milk in my breasts.”
“Don’t worry.” From his sack Grigori took a length of sausage, a cabbage, and a tin of jam. Katerina stared in disbelief. “From the barracks kitchen,” he explained.
She opened the jam and fed some to Vladimir on a spoon. He ate it and said: “More?”
Katerina ate a spoonful herself, then gave the child more. “This is like a fairy tale,” she said. “All this food! I won’t have to sleep outside the bakery.”
Grigori frowned. “What do you mean?”
She swallowed more jam. “There’s never enough bread. As soon as the bakery opens in the morning it’s all sold. The only way to get bread is to queue up. And if you don’t join the queue before midnight, they’ll be sold out before you get to the head of the line.”
“My God.” He hated the thought of her sleeping on the pavement. “What about Volodya?”
“One of the other girls listens for him while I’m out. He sleeps all night now anyway.”
No wonder the shopkeeper’s wife had been willing to have sex with Grigori for a loaf. He had probably overpaid her. “How do you manage?”
“I get twelve rubles a week at the factory.”
He was puzzled. “But that’s double what you were earning when I left!”
“But the rent for this room used to be four rubles a week-now it’s eight. That leaves me four rubles for everything else. And a sack of potatoes used to be one ruble, but now it’s seven.”
“Seven rubles for a sack of potatoes!” Grigori was appalled. “How do people live?”
“Everyone is hungry. Children fall ill and die. Old people just fade away. It gets worse every day, and no one does anything.”
Grigori felt heartsick. While he was suffering in the army, he had consoled himself with the thought that Katerina and the baby were better off, with a warm place to sleep and enough money for food. He had been fooling himself. It filled him with rage to think of her leaving Vladimir here while she slept outside the bakery.
They sat at the table and Grigori sliced the sausage with his knife. “Some tea would be nice,” he said.
Katerina smiled. “I haven’t had tea for a year.”
“I’ll bring some from the barracks.”
Katerina ate the sausage. Grigori could see that she had to restrain herself from gobbling it. He picked up Vladimir and fed him more jam. The boy was still a bit young for sausage.
An easy contentment crept over Grigori. While at the front he had daydreamed this scene: the little room, the table with food, the baby, Katerina. Now it had come true. “This should not be so hard to find,” he said ruminatively.
“What do you mean?”
“You and I are fit and strong and we work hard. All I want is this: a room, something to eat, rest at the end of the day. It should be ours every day.”
“We’ve been betrayed by German-supporters at the royal court,” she said.
“Really? How so?”
“Well, you know the tsaritsa is a German.”
“Yes.” The tsar’s wife had been born Princess Alix of Hesse and Rhine in the German empire.
“And Sturmer is obviously a German.”
Grigori shrugged. Prime Minister Sturmer had been born in Russia, as far as Grigori knew. Many Russians had German names, and vice versa: inhabitants of the two countries had been crisscrossing the border for centuries.
“And Rasputin is pro-German.”
“Is he?” Grigori suspected the mad monk was mainly interested in mesmerizing women at court and gaining influence and power.
“They’re all in it together. Sturmer has been paid by the Germans to starve the peasantry. The tsar telephones his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm and tells him where our troops are going to be next. Rasputin wants us to surrender. And the tsaritsa and her lady-in-waiting Anna Vyrubova both sleep with Rasputin at the same time.”
Grigori had heard most of these rumors. He did not believe the court was pro-German. They were just stupid and incompetent. But a lot of soldiers believed such stories, and to judge by Katerina some civilians did too. It was the task of the Bolsheviks to explain the true reasons why Russians were losing the war and starving to death.
But not tonight. Vladimir yawned, so Grigori stood up and began to rock him, walking up and down, while Katerina talked. She told him about life at the factory, the other tenants in the house, and people he knew. Captain Pinsky was now a lieutenant with the secret police, ferreting out dangerous liberals and democrats. There were thousands of orphaned children on the streets, living by theft and prostitution or dying of starvation and cold. Konstantin, Grigori’s closest friend at the Putilov works, was now a member of the Petrograd Bolshevik Committee. The Vyalov family were the only people getting richer: no matter how bad the shortages were, they could always sell you vodka, caviar, cigarettes, and chocolate. Grigori studied her wide mouth and full lips. It was a joy to watch her talk. She had a determined chin and bold blue eyes, yet to him she always looked vulnerable.
Vladimir fell asleep, lulled by Grigori’s rocking and Katerina’s voice. Grigori carefully put him down in a bed Katerina had improvised in a corner. It was just a sack filled with rags and covered by a blanket, but he curled up on it comfortably and put his thumb in his mouth.
A church clock struck nine, and Katerina said: “What time do you have to be back?”
“At ten,” Grigori said. “I’d better go.”
“Not just yet.” She put her arms around his neck and kissed him.
It was a sweet moment. Her lips on his were soft and mobile. He closed his eyes for a second and inhaled the scent of her skin. Then he pulled away. “This is wrong,” he said.
