Deathless

Finally, the horse with red ears fell to his knees in a stony pass smeared with ice, where no flower or tree showed itself. A humble hut stood in a circle of sharp rocks, protected on all sides. One of the windows glowed with firelight; horse-breath steamed from one age-blackened barn. A small iron door stood ajar, as though daring, rather than inviting them. Marya’s fingers throbbed with cold. She helped Ivan, who was coughing hoarsely, his skin flushed and fevered, across the threshold.

The single room of the house lay around them, its hard earthen floor dotted with studs of ice, its candles all tallow, thick and long as arms. And in the center of the compact floor sat a great egg, its shining steel shell studded with iron bolts. Atop the egg sat a slim, gentle young woman, her blush quicker than shadows passing. She peered over a pair of glasses at a basket of keys in her lap, and sorted them, the iron from the copper from the brass, for smelting.

Marya’s heart sang in delight. She had hoped, she had hoped, after the others.

“Anna!” she cried out. “How is this possible? How can you have come to hide here, so high in the mountains? It is your sister, Masha!” And Marya wept, her tears warm and free and glad.

The woman looked up, and her face shone, all pale and bright. She filled like a pail of water with the sight of her sister. Tucking a ring of keys under one slender arm, she leapt down from her egg and kissed Marya all over her face before turning to Ivan and kissing him coldly on the cheeks. “Marya! Oh, my dearest sister!” she exclaimed. “So much time has passed! Look at you, grown as a wolf! Ah! When did we grow so serious?”

Marya longed for Anna to seize her up and dance with her, as she used to when they were young together in the house on Gorokhovaya Street.

“Anyushka, are you happy? Are you well?”

“Oh, very well! And with my second daughter on the way!” She patted the steel egg fondly. “A wife and her husband must be in complete agreement.” She winked. “But then, you always knew he was a bird, didn’t you? And you didn’t tell me. Traitorous girl. But what of yourself? Are you happy? Are you well?”

“I am tired,” said Marya Morevna. “Anya, this is Ivan Nikolayevich. He is not a bird.”

Ivan bowed to Marya’s third-oldest sister.

Anna angrily pushed her glasses up onto her nose. “Oh, I know who he is. Think lieutenants do not inform on each other, do you? Gossip is like ration cards in these parts. Just look at my sister, disloyal, a criminal, at her age! I’ll have you know I have lived with virtue since Zhulan took my conscience, and I’ve two upright little chicks to show for it!”

“So few!” Ivan whistled.

Anna slitted her plain eyes at him. “Haven’t you heard? It is wicked to have more than your neighbors possess.” She grinned. “We must all do our parts for the Party.”

“Of course,” said Ivan.

“Tfu!” Anna spat. “That’s what you know, both of you.” But she turned her elegant back to him and embraced Marya Morevna once more. “But you must stay the night, refresh your poor horse—what an earnest beast! But your prisoner looks sick. He would throw up anything you fed him. You are my sister. What belongs to me belongs to you, even if you are an exile. We are family. But you mustn’t tell anyone I harbored you.”

And so Anna led them outside, through the silver ice to a little bathhouse, hardly bigger than one of Olga’s closets. A man in a threadbare grey coat exited the banya with a puff of steam. His head was a lean shrike’s, and he would not look at Marya as he passed her by. Anna smiled at him, her face lighting like an oil lamp, took his wing and walked back towards the house, croaking and cawing to him in the strident, ordered language of the incorruptible.

Marya Morevna refused to let Ivan speak. This time she made her will iron, flexing it, testing it. Ivan submitted to her, and there was gratitude in his submission. You are spoiled, she thought. All that rich food and you have kept it all in your belly, enjoyed every bite. But you are sick now, and must yield. She seated him in the bathhouse. On a little paint-scraped table rested a mug of vodka.

Marya stood very still. She felt as though she were two women: one old and one young; one innocent and one knowing, strange, keen. Marya undressed Ivan Nikolayevich, and her hands seemed to move twice for each motion, to unbutton his shirt now, and to unbutton her own then. His eyes rolled and his red brow sweated. He nearly called out her name, but remembered to be silent, and she kissed him for it. Marya Morevna rubbed his skin with her long, hard fingers. Her golden boy nearly fell asleep sitting up, calmed by her hands and her soft, sad little singing, melodies half-remembered, about biting wolves and uncareful girls. Soon both sweat and tears rolled down Marya’s face, and she wished Koschei were with her to show her how to tend to this sick human, the care of whose body was now inexplicably hers. But gone is gone. There could be no more Koschei. Only Marya remained.

“Drink, Ivanushka.” She clucked gently, like a mother, and put the mug to his lips. “Your lungs want vodka.” Obediently, he drank, and coughed, and drank once more.

Marya Morevna sank his clammy feet in her sister’s shallow tub. She held a handful of water to his nose and ordered him to breathe it in. Ivan spluttered, and gagged, but did it anyway, so accustomed was he now to her voice, her command. Finally, she made him stand. She reached into the foggy corner of the banya, knowing with all of her marrow that a long white birch branch would rest there.

But Ivan had drifted away into his fever, and slept curled on the floor of the banya like a hound.

Marya let go of the birch branch slowly. She watched him in the dark without a sound.

* * *

When the dawn roused the humble hut’s household to work, Marya and Ivan Nikolayevich found Anna once more atop her steel egg, sorting keys like an engine, too fast to see.

“Masha, my own, my littlest sister,” the shrike’s wife called down. “Take this with you.”

She tossed a key to Marya, with brass teeth. It glowed dimly in her hand, catching the sun.

“It is the key to our old house, on Gorokhovaya Street. But of course it is Dzerzhinskaya Street now. One of us should still live there. One of us should be young again.” Anna climbed down the grey side of her egg and held out her arms to her sister. When Marya stepped into them, Anna pressed her face to her sister’s breast, took up her hand, and began to dance with her, a gentle, slow circle around the little hut. Marya laughed despite herself, as she always had. She remembered, as if through a glass, having laughed like that, a lifetime ago. She kissed Anna’s forehead with passion.

“When our mother died,” Anna said, “the Housing Ministry sent the keys to me. I was the only one they could find. We keep our registrations current.” Then Anna kissed Marya on both cheeks. She smelled like iron and strength, and Marya Morevna held her tight.

PART 4 There Are No Firebirds in Leningrad

And always in the frigid, prewar air,

The lascivious, menacing darkness

There lived a kind of future clanging …

But then, you could hear it only softly, muffled,

It could scarcely cloud the soul

And it drowned in the snowdrifts along the Neva.

As in a mirror of appalling night,

A man thrashes like a devil

And does not want to recognize himself,

Along the legendary embankment

The real—not the calendar—

Twentieth Century draws close.

—ANNA AKHMATOVA