written just this spring about the blooming of the birches-and when I tried to write it down from memory, it came out all stupid and clumsy. Frustrated, I tore the paper to bits.
My sister fell asleep around nine, just as I had thought, but Dunya kept knitting away, more and more furiously, the sleeve of a sweater growing longer by the minute. I’d counted on her dropping off long ago, lulled by the churning of the boat and the soft waters we sailed, yet she didn’t. I kept staring at our traveling clock, and when it reached ten-fifteen, I could bear it no more.
“I’m going to the toilet. I’ll be right back.”
Dunya scowled at me and hesitated before nodding. Clutching a folded piece of paper with several of my poems scrawled on it, I charged out. Reaching the end of the narrow corridor, I glanced briefly over my shoulder to make sure our housekeeper wasn’t watching, then burst out a side door and onto the narrow deck. In seconds I was clambering up the steep stairs to the top deck, my breath coming short and quick.
Yet when I emerged above and quickly scanned the broad deck, it was just as I had feared-there was no sign of Sasha. Either he’d broken his promise and not come at all, or he’d been here at ten, waited a few minutes, and given up. Oh, no, I thought, squinting in the sharp bright evening light. I spun around, my dark dress flying wide. There was nothing, no one, only this riverboat and the huge blue sky overhead. My eyes began to well up…what had I expected? What sort of fool was I?
Suddenly a firm hand grabbed me by the shoulder. I gasped aloud, certain that Dunya had caught me, but when I twisted around-
“Sasha!”
Pulling me into his arms, he said nothing. It wasn’t the first time I’d been kissed-there’d been a boy who’d pecked me as crudely as a rooster-but it was the first time a kiss had burned with pleasure. I’d never felt anything like it, the rush of heat that zipped almost instantly from my lips and throughout my body, all the way down my legs. So powerful was it that I jerked away in shock.
“I…I-,” I began, my trembling fingers reaching up and touching his soft beard. “I was afraid I’d missed you.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I couldn’t get away any sooner.”
“I would have waited all night,” he said, bending forward and kissing me on the cheek.
As much as every bit of me wanted him, I wanted at the same time to run away. Maybe Dunya was right. Maybe he was after just one thing.
“Listen, Sasha, I…I can’t stay now. I have to get back,” I said, quickly forming a plan. “We arrive in Pokrovskoye in the morning, but will you come visit me later? At our home?”
“Just tell me where, just tell me when.”
“Anyone in the village can tell you where we live. Wait outside our gate at five. Papa always goes to the post office late in the afternoon. I’ll go with him, and you can greet us when we return. I’ll see that Papa invites you to join us for supper.”
“That would be a great honor.”
“And don’t forget your poetry!” I said, as I scurried off.
“Of course.”
I should have known better. I should have known his intentions were anything but honorable. Then again, how could I have guessed?
At home the following day, I rehearsed in my head how I was going to introduce Papa to Sasha and get him invited to our table. I’d never had a young man call on me. Then again, maybe the moment was lost and Sasha wouldn’t keep his word a second time.
Finally, sometime after four, Papa rose to go to the post office, and I leaped at the chance to accompany him. After he had dictated his telegrams to the clerk, we returned home, my arm looped in his. Of course, by then I was nearly faint with anticipation. In fact, I couldn’t believe it when Papa and I turned the corner past the spinster Petrovna’s little hut and there, in a cluster of six or seven people gathered by our gate to beg Papa’s blessing, stood Sasha, neatly dressed, his hair combed. Thrilled, my hand came up in a small, impulsive wave. As if in embarrassment, he glanced away.
Nearing our home, the sad group of petitioners broke into a pathetic chorus.
“Father Grigori!”
“Help me, Father!”
“Lord have mercy!”
At first I noticed no one except Sasha, of course, but then I saw one man on crutches, a woman in mourning dressed entirely in black, and, then, most terribly, a small disfigured woman, her nose ravaged and half eaten away.
“Father Grigori! Father Grigori!” she called pathetically. “Help me, please!”
Sasha, a stern look on his face, came up alongside this poor woman and helped her, pushing aside the others and nudging her to the front. When she was just steps from my father, Sasha even held back the others, keeping her approach clear and free. But rather than seeking to kiss my father’s hand or falling at his knees for his blessing, this poor woman with the hideous nose reached into the folds of her dress and pulled out a long arching knife.
“Death to the Antichrist!” she screamed as she lunged forward, plunging the blade into my father’s stomach.
Right before me I saw the long knife disappear completely into Papa, cutting him from navel to sternum, and I screamed so loudly that my own ears were deafened. My father, groaning like a wild animal, jerked back, and blood sprayed from him like a fountain. He stumbled away, and as I reached to grab him I saw a mound of pink entrails boil outward.
Again the attacker charged at Papa, her knife raised high, her voice a scream. “Death to the Antichrist!”
In the pandemonium, I searched for Sasha and saw him falling away as the other supplicants rushed forward to my father’s defense. Before the madwoman could strike again, the small crowd of people grabbed her and threw her to the ground, whereupon they immediately began to beat her, mercilessly, their hands and fists and heels and crutches raining down on her.
But still the crazy woman screamed, “I must kill him, kill him!”
And as my father collapsed on the dirt lane, blood and more gushing from him, I caught a brief glimpse of Sasha, not coming to our aid but dashing away. Dear God, I thought, he’s fleeing!
In the end, it was only the swift actions of Mama and Dunya that saved Papa’s life. Sturdy Siberian women, they rushed from our house, my mother already barking orders. Within moments she had commandeered three men to carry Papa inside, whereupon Mama and Dunya threw the dinner dishes from the long table as if they were crumbs. Papa was laid right there, where we should have been eating, and within seconds they were winding him in a wet sheet, which stemmed the flow of blood and kept his entrails from falling out. All of us, however, were convinced that Papa’s end had come. Indeed, by the time a wire had been sent to the closest doctor, who was in Tyumen, and by the time that doctor had come racing into town not by steamer but by troika, a trip that took no less than eight hours on Trakt No. 4-a horrible, bumpy road that linked us with the outer world-it was well after midnight and Papa was clinging to the last threads of life. With no other option, an emergency operation was performed right there on our dinner table under the glow of stearin candles, with my father, who refused to breathe the ether, clutching a gold cross. Fortunately for him, and for all of us as well, he fainted after the first incision.
Papa should not have survived. In fact, the doctor doubted he could. But thanks in great part to his internal strength and great physical vitality-not to mention my constant prayers-he did not pass from this world. A few days later, when he had recovered enough, we took him by telega-a cart without springs-ever so slowly to Tyumen, where Professor von Breden, who’d been sent by the Empress, reopened the wound and made a few things right. After that it took weeks and weeks of convalescing-during which time war broke out, much to Papa’s sorrow-but in time my father was back on his feet. Never, however, did he regain his magnificent strength. In fact, from then on my father lost the look of the holy, that drawn hollow-cheeked appearance of one who observes the fasts. So plagued was he from constant pain that he took to drink as never before, which not only dulled his discomfort but undoubtedly his powers. Soon my father’s appearance became bloated, even corpulent. I never spoke to anyone of
