The room was clean and tidy, and smelled of Katerina. Grigori came here most Sundays. They had a routine: they went out in the morning, then came home and made lunch, with food Grigori brought from the barracks when he could get any. Afterward, while Vladimir had his nap, they made love. On Sundays when there was enough to eat, Grigori was blissfully happy in this room.
Vladimir’s yelling became a droning discontented grizzle. With the child in his arms, Grigori went to look for the landlady, who was supposed to be watching Vladimir. He found her in the laundry, a low-built extension at the back of the house, running wet bedsheets through a mangle. She was a woman of about fifty with gray hair tied up in a scarf. She had been plump back in 1914 when Grigori left to go in the army, but now her throat was scraggy and her jowls hung loose. Even landladies were hungry these days.
She looked startled and guilty when she saw him. Grigori said: “Didn’t you hear the child crying?”
“I can’t rock him all day,” she said defensively, and went on turning the handle of the wringer.
“Perhaps he’s hungry.”
“He’s had his milk,” she said quickly. Her response was suspiciously rapid, and Grigori guessed she had drunk the milk herself. He wanted to strangle her.
In the cold air of the unheated laundry he felt Vladimir’s soft baby skin radiating heat. “I think he’s got a fever,” he said. “Didn’t you notice his temperature?”
“Am I a doctor, now, too?”
Vladimir stopped crying and fell into a state of lassitude that Grigori found more worrying. He was normally an alert, busy child, curious and mildly destructive, but now he lay still in Grigori’s arms, his face flushed, his eyes staring.
Grigori put him back on his bed in the corner of Katerina’s room. He took a jug from Katerina’s shelf, left the house, and hurried to the next street, where there was a general store. He bought some milk, a little sugar in a twist of paper, and an apple.
When he got back Vladimir was the same.
He warmed the milk, dissolved the sugar in it, and broke a crust of stale bread into the mixture, then fed morsels of soaked bread to Vladimir. He recalled his mother giving this to baby Lev when he was sick. Vladimir ate as if he was hungry and thirsty.
When all the bread and milk were gone, Grigori took out the apple. With his pocketknife he cut it into segments and peeled a slice. He ate the peel himself and offered the rest to Vladimir, saying: “Some for me, some for you.” In the past the boy had been amused by this procedure, but now he was indifferent, and let the apple fall from his mouth.
There was no doctor nearby, and anyway Grigori could not afford the fee, but there was a midwife a few streets away. She was Magda, the pretty wife of Grigori’s old friend Konstantin, the secretary of the Putilov Bolshevik Committee. Grigori and Konstantin played chess whenever they got the chance-Grigori usually won.
Grigori put a clean diaper on Vladimir, then wrapped him in the blanket from Katerina’s bed, leaving only his eyes and nose visible. They went out into the cold.
Konstantin and Magda lived in a two-room apartment with Magda’s aunt, who watched their three small children. Grigori was afraid Magda would be out delivering a baby, but he was in luck and she was at home.
Magda was knowledgeable and kindhearted, though a bit brisk. She felt Vladimir’s forehead and said: “He has an infection.”
“How bad?”
“Does he cough?”
“No.”
“What are his stools like?”
“Runny.”
She took off Vladimir’s clothes and said: “I suppose Katerina’s breasts have no milk.”
“How did you know that?” Grigori said in surprise.
“It’s common. A woman cannot feed a baby unless she herself is fed. Nothing comes from nothing. That’s why the child is so thin.”
Grigori did not know Vladimir was thin.
Magda poked Vladimir’s belly and made him cry. “Inflammation of the bowels,” she said.
“Will he be all right?”
“Probably. Children get infections all the time. They usually survive.”
“What can we do?”
“Bathe his forehead with tepid water to bring down his temperature. Give him plenty to drink, all he wants. Don’t worry about whether he eats. Feed Katerina, so that she can nurse him. Mother’s milk is what he needs.”
Grigori took Vladimir home. He bought more milk on the way, and warmed it up on the fire. He gave it to Vladimir on a teaspoon, and the boy drank it all. Then he warmed a pan of water and bathed Vladimir’s face with a rag. It seemed to work: the child lost the flushed, staring look and began to breathe normally.
Grigori was feeling less anxious when Katerina came home at half past seven. She looked tired and cold. She had bought a cabbage and a few grams of pork fat, and Grigori put them in a saucepan to make stew while she rested. He told her about Vladimir’s fever, the negligent landlady, and Magda’s prescription. “What can I do?” Katerina said with weary despair. “I have to go to the factory. There is no one else to watch Volodya.”
Grigori fed the child with the broth from the stew, then put him down to sleep. When Grigori and Katerina had eaten they lay on the bed together. “Don’t let me sleep too long,” Katerina said. “I have to join the bread queue.”
“I’ll go for you,” Grigori said. “You rest.” He would be late back to the barracks, but he could probably get away with that: the officers were too fearful of mutiny, these days, to make a fuss about minor transgressions.
Katerina took him at his word, and fell into a deep sleep.
When he heard the church clock strike two, he put on his boots and greatcoat. Vladimir seemed to be sleeping normally. Grigori left the house and walked to the bakery. To his surprise there was already a long queue, and he realized he had left it a bit late. There were about a hundred people in line, muffled up, stamping their feet in the snow. Some had brought chairs or stools. An enterprising young man with a brazier was selling porridge, washing the bowls in the snow when they were done with. A dozen more people joined the queue behind Grigori.
They gossiped and grumbled while they waited. Two women ahead of Grigori argued about who was to blame for the bread shortage: one said Germans at court, the other Jews hoarding flour. “Who rules?” Grigori said to them. “If a streetcar overturns, you blame the driver, because he was in charge. The Jews don’t rule us. The Germans don’t rule us. It’s the tsar and the nobility.” This was the Bolshevik message.
“Who would rule, if there was no tsar?” said the younger woman skeptically. She was wearing a yellow felt hat.
“I think we should rule ourselves,” said Grigori. “As they do in France and America.”
“I don’t know,” said the older woman. “It can’t go on like this.”
The shop opened at five. A minute later the news came down the line that customers were rationed to one loaf per person. “All night, just for one loaf!” said the woman in the yellow hat.
It took another hour to shuffle to the head of the queue. The baker’s wife was admitting customers one at a time. The older of the two women ahead of Grigori went in, then the baker’s wife said: “That’s all. No more bread.”
The woman in the yellow hat said: “No, please! Just one more!”
The baker’s wife wore a stony expression. Perhaps this had happened before. “If he had more flour, he’d bake more bread,” she said. “It’s all gone, do you hear me? I can’t sell you bread if I haven’t got any.”
The last customer came out of the shop with her loaf under her coat and hurried away.
The woman in the yellow hat began to cry.
The baker’s wife slammed the door.
Grigori turned and walked away.
Spring came to Petrograd on Thursday, March 8, but the Russian empire clung obstinately to the calendar of
