pan of water. And the soft chanting of hymns being sung as well.
Sometime later, I heard Matushka say, “I’ll take the infant in the basket with me now, and I’ll pay the men out front, the ones who were playing cards, to bring the body. Now, young woman, what about you? What can I do for you?”
The prostitute mumbled, “Nothing… nothing at all.”
“Will you come to services for your friend Ludmilla?”
“Well…”
“Yes, please come tonight to my obitel on Bolshaya Ordinka. And after you’ve prayed for Ludmilla, let’s have a talk. Perhaps I can rent a sewing machine for you-the efficient kind with a foot pump. I’ve done this for others, and they’ve set themselves up in business. Perhaps that would be of interest, or perhaps one of the classes that we’ve just started for adult workers. Do you know how to read?”
“But, Matushka, I’m not worthy of such kindness. I’m just a woman of the night and… and I’m not good enough for… for…”
“Nonsense. God’s image may become unclear, but, my child, it can never be entirely wiped away. Please, just come see me.” The princess nun then said, “As for the young boy who led me here, to whom does he belong?”
“Little Arkasha? He belongs to everyone… and yet, as far as I know, to no one.”
“Just as I feared. Hopefully he’s still waiting somewhere for me.”
Listening through the curtains, I heard the creaking of the willow basket, the swoosh of long clothing, and then gentle steps. Moving on the other side of the curtains, I saw her, too, or rather the essence of her, for as the Romanov nun moved along, the tattered fabric walls of all the corner rooms swirled and swayed as if a spirit from another world were passing. A moment later, another set of steps moved quickly after her.
“Matushka, wait!” called the young woman.
She stopped right in front of the corner where I sat, only an old piece of hanging material separating us, and said, “Yes, what is it, my child?”
“I just wanted to tell you not to pay the men out front until they get there-you know, until they bring Ludmilla all the way to you. Otherwise, they’ll just take your money and do nothing.”
“Oh, I’m not worried about that,” she said with a soft laugh.
“Do not fear, they’ll not fail me.”
And in this Matushka was absolutely right. Without a moment of hesitation, she went right up to the three card players and paid them generously in advance to carry the body of the dead whore up to her obitel. She then proceeded onto the street, looked for and found the urchin Arkasha, and when I peered out the door of the Petrov slum the last I saw of this Romanov was her flowing gray robe as she walked away, carrying the basket with the swaddled dead baby in one hand and, with the other, holding on to the boy’s dirty paw.
Not bad, I thought, for while that day this Matushka had fished two dead souls out of the Khitrovka, that of Luska and her stillborn child, this strange sister had also managed to take with her a live fledgling, young Arkasha. She led him straight out of this hellhole and to her home for beggar boys, perhaps saving his life. And as for the drunken card players-such unruly comrades-they didn’t disappoint Matushka, either, for not even thirty minutes later they gathered up the dead whore Luska and carted her off on their shoulders, delivering her, just as promised and paid for, to the Marfo-Marinski Obitel.
All this I know because I helped too. At first the card players wouldn’t let me, all three shouted “Nyet!” and told me to be off. But I told them I didn’t want any of their money, and though at first they grumped and threatened me, in time they let me lend a hand. Holding Luska by her right leg, I helped the three comrades carry the corpse away from that pathetic house and all the way up the Bolshaya Ordinka and eventually right through the brown wooden gate of the obitel.
And though I didn’t take a kopeck for my work, in the end, after we delivered the body behind the white walls and into the chapel, I did get paid, though not in rubles. Upon the orders of Matushka herself, the young novices of the monastery led us into the dining hall and fed us all a large hot bowl of meat borscht with some fresh black bread and heaps of butter, plus two cups of good, strong caravan tea. They even gave me two cubes of sugar, and sitting there like a squirrel getting ready for winter, I drank my tea with one cube of sugar packed into each of my cheeks.
It was a heavenly moment shattered by something quite like a bolt of lightning.
“Do I by chance know you?” asked a voice. “Have I seen you somewhere before?”
I turned sideways and looked up. None other than Matushka herself was staring down upon me, her beautiful face, framed by the wimple of her order, more than just puzzled. On her lips rested a smile as fragile as a fine teacup, while in her eyes I could clearly see some kind of demon-either that of pain or dark anger, just which I couldn’t tell.
Panicking, I didn’t know what to say, but in the end I did what Russian peasants have always been so good at, and I shook my head, and muttered, “Nyet, nyet.”
But she didn’t believe me, I understood that by the way she continued to stare harshly upon me. I could almost hear her thinking: Who is this man, what kind of prickly thorn has he been in my path of life?
“Well,” she said, “enjoy your tea… and come back to see us again.”
But she wasn’t as good at lying as me, her voice was just too flat and her eyes too tight.
Chapter 33 ELLA
Our initial, glorious victories were, so tragically, only short-lived, and what we all expected to be a short war soon appeared otherwise. Our Second Army was all but wiped out in the Battle of Tannenberg-100,000 taken prisoner, 35,000 killed or maimed, with only 10,000 escaping-and it was even worse for the First. Lord, I think 125,000 of our men were slaughtered out there in Prussia. Really, we could not continue for long with losses like that, so it was no wonder that I heard grumblings when I walked beyond our walls. Less and less I was greeted with smiles and more and more with wicked words, for the poor, tired souls were angry at everything German, including me simply because of my ancestry.
“Hessian witch!” the nasty few would mutter behind my back, though in truth it did not hurt.
As incredible and ridiculous as it seemed even then, there were rumors about that I was sending gold to my native lands-yes, supposedly I was hoarding Siberian gold right there at my obitel and sending it by the nugget via secret courier to Germany to help in the war efforts against my beloved Russia! What tittle-tattle, what evil tongues! What no one knew was my intense dislike of the Prussians, who’d all but overrun my native Darmstadt, or, for that matter, that I’d never been fond of my own cousin, the Kaiser Wilhelm, who had once so strongly sought my hand in marriage. And these dark stories weren’t just the work of German spies, who were so intent on damaging the morale on the home front. Incredibly, it was also the work of those foolish revolutionaries, who came secretly flooding back into Russia, intent on undermining dear Nicky and Alicky, revolutionaries who were more determined than ever to wipe away our God-given monarchy. Black rumors swelled like great waves, passing from one tongue to the next, one claiming that Nicky was being drugged by Alicky, another that Alicky had a direct telegraph line from her boudoir all the way to Cousin Willy in Berlin. Of course, the worst of the worst was being said in and about that foolish man, Rasputin, who had become such a stain on the Throne. For the life of me I could not understand Alicky’s dependence on him, and I prayed night and day for her deliverance from him.
Sadly, all these untrue stories worked like dark magic. Our people were hungry, our people were tired, and unrest amongst all the classes was frothed up as easily as a pair of eggs. Just several weeks earlier an anti- German riot had erupted in Moscow with German homes and shops looted and destroyed. Even the police did not bother to interfere.
Of course, none of this was helped by a matter that did worry me-that our military hospitals were not being filled up by our own Russian wounded but by prisoners, both German and Austrian. Muscovites didn’t like that at all, even though the military hospitals were far less comfortable than the Red Cross or private ones. Nevertheless, the tongues said I only looked after Germans and even took them endless sweets and rubles. Such untruths. Yes, I did visit the wounded prisoners, for a soul is a soul no matter from what country, but I did no more than pray for them. Unfortunately, all this dark talk was put on my back even though I, perhaps more Russian than many
