Leningrad, October 1937
MARIA LAY AWAKE ALL NIGHT, HUGGING A SWEATER of Peter’s. She could smell him in the wool, and see the indentation of his head on the pillow next to hers. How was it possible that a person so good and true could simply be gone? What would she tell the children when they woke in the morning? Katya would never forgive herself and the little ones wouldn’t understand. How could anyone understand?
She tortured herself imagining his final moments. Did he know he was about to be executed? Did he think of her at the end? She wondered if it had been a firing squad, and if they put a sack over his head so he couldn’t see who fired the fatal shot. Or was he gassed? She had heard the NKVD had vans in which they gassed people. She prayed that however he was killed, it had been swift and efficient, unlike the bungling, bloodthirsty executioners who had slaughtered her family. Once she had his body, she would be able to tell from the expression on his face.
The first light of dawn came through the window: a new day that Peter would not see. She murmured the words of the traditional panikhida for him but they stuck in her throat. He hadn’t believed in God. Did that mean he wouldn’t go to heaven? That she wouldn’t meet him again on the other side?
She heard the children wakening, Mikhail calling to Yelena. Now was the moment when she must end their childhoods.
Five minutes, she decided. Let them have five more minutes of happiness. Then she would tell them.
* * *
Stepan helped Maria to comfort his siblings, cuddling Yelena on his lap, answering the endless questions as best he could. “Why is he dead? Why did it happen? When can we see him again?” He had purple shadows beneath his eyes, and Maria could tell he hadn’t slept either.
When Irina heard that Stepan was going to Bolshoi Dom to collect their father’s body, she insisted on going with him.
How brave she is, Maria thought. None of them should be alone. She had lost her great love, the center of her world, and they had lost their father. The combined loss was unfathomable, like the deepest, widest ocean.
While they were gone, Katya could not stop weeping, but the younger two began to play dominoes. It didn’t seem real to them. Only the passage of time, the days and nights when he didn’t come back, would make it sink in.
Maria watched out the window, wondering how they would bring him. Would he be in an ambulance? A funeral car? Could she risk finding a priest to conduct an illegal funeral ceremony?
A couple of hours later, she was still watching when Stepan and Irina turned into the street on foot, heads down, not talking. What did that mean? Was Peter being sent later?
She rushed out to meet them on the stairs. Raisa’s door closed quickly when she heard their voices.
“Where is he?” she demanded, looking them up and down.
Irina’s eyes were red and puffy. Stepan was carrying the brown bag Maria had packed for Peter. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mama. We can’t have his body. He was buried straightaway, in a communal grave.” A sob caught in his throat. “They said that’s the way it always happens. They couldn’t even tell us which cemetery.”
Maria covered her face with her hands. That was it. She would never see him again. She turned, went back to her room, and crawled into bed, pulling the covers over her head.
The pain of losing her family had been unbearable, but this? She knew that as long as she lived she would never recover.
* * *
Grief flattened Maria, making it impossible for her to get out of bed. She yearned for sleep, because when she was awake the thoughts were too harrowing to endure. Over and over she tried to imagine Peter’s last moments, his final thoughts, the realization that he would never see his children growing up. Had he been tortured? Was that why she wasn’t allowed to see his body? It was her fault; hers alone.
In the next room Stepan and Irina were caring for their siblings: she could hear the flare of a match as Stepan lit the fire, the clatter of dishes as Irina served a meal. She was their mother; she should be doing that, but she couldn’t.
“Your boss at the factory has agreed you can have two weeks off,” Stepan reported that evening. He must have been to see him. “You need a rest.”
She didn’t reply. It was too hard to find words, and her throat had closed so that even if she found them, they wouldn’t come out.
On the second day, Raisa came to the door. Maria heard Irina talking to her and, after some hesitation, deciding to let her in.
Raisa hovered in the doorway to Maria’s bedroom, and Maria could tell she was crying: that woman with ice in her heart was finally shedding a tear.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I never dreamed this would happen. Peter was a wonderful man. I feel awful. Will you ever forgive me?”
Her voice droned on but Maria couldn’t raise her head from the pillow. She simply didn’t have the energy. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, Raisa had left and the room was empty.
Irina brought food on a tray but she couldn’t swallow more than a couple of mouthfuls of soup. At night she slept with her arms around Peter’s pillow and her head resting on his old sweater. In the early hours Yelena crept in to share the bed with her. No one asked her; she just slipped between the sheets, with her six-year-old’s firm body and steady breathing.
During the next days the children took turns to sit with Maria. Katya was withdrawn. Mikhail was sulky. Stepan was tired. Irina tried to hide her grief but her voice sounded fake and strained. Yelena was the easiest to be with because she gave hugs without trying to talk. All the children were in pain and Maria knew she should be comforting them. She could hear Peter’s voice in her head telling her she must be strong, but her body simply wouldn’t do it. It was as if she had been run over by a massive truck and none of her muscles worked anymore. Nothing worked except for her imagination, which played ghastly images in her head, like a never-ending horror film.
* * *
Two weeks passed and Maria forced herself to get up and dress for work. It was terrifying to consider getting out of bed, never mind going out into the world, but she was hoping that if she worked, they would be allowed to keep their apartment. The thought of moving was too much for her.
“I could leave the Institute and take a job at the factory,” Stepan offered. “You shouldn’t have to work. Not now.”
“No,” Maria insisted. “Your father was so proud that you were a student. You have to continue, for his sake.”
It was agonizing walking into the factory and picking up her tools. She couldn’t bear listening to the words of condolence and watching the pity on her fellow workers’ faces. She didn’t want to cry in front of them; crying was too personal, too painful. It was better to be alone with her grief. All she could manage was to put one foot in front of the other and keep busy.
At home, the older children helped with all the jobs Peter used to do. When the winter storms arrived and the windows rattled in their frames, Stepan found his father’s tools and nailed insulation around the edges. He took charge of cleaning the grate and tending the fire, while Irina went to line up for food after she finished school, then helped with the cooking. They were a functioning team, but the heart had gone.
At least no notifications were received asking them to move, although they had only been given the apartment because Peter was a shock worker; perhaps someone had taken pity on them. Maria came straight home after work each day, and refused to answer the door, to see friends, or to help anyone who came to consult her missing persons’ register. Irina took over that role, noting down the addresses of the few who stopped by and passing on details of possible matches.
One Sunday in March, when the hours of daylight were starting to lengthen, Stepan tried to persuade Maria to come on what had been a traditional family outing.
“Remember how Papa used to love watching the ice on the Fontanka cracking? Let’s go and stand on the Panteleimon Bridge. We can light candles for him.”
Maria hesitated at first. It didn’t seem fair to go without Peter, but the children were keen. Yelena tugged on her skirt, crying, “Please, Mama, please.”
Maria pulled on her snow boots and warm coat, made sure the little ones were wrapped up warmly, then held Yelena and Mikhail’s hands as they trudged to the bridge through streets with gray slush heaped in the gutters.
Fracture lines had formed across the inches-thick ice on the river, and in one section, geometrical chunks were breaking away: parallelograms, triangles, trapezoids. Underneath, the water was dark and impenetrable. Maria leaned on the elegant gilt railing and took the candle Irina handed her. Everywhere there were memories. Peter used to entertain them by imitating the otherworldly cracking sounds the ice made with a strange gurgling noise in his throat. Maria remembered teasing him that he sounded more like a duck.
She fixed her eyes on a spot where there was a hole in the ice, just below the bridge. If she climbed onto the railing and jumped quickly, she would disappear before they could stop her. It was an enticing thought, but she knew she wouldn’t do it. Instead she put her arm around Katya and murmured a panikhida. The children gathered around, listening to the unfamiliar words, gazing at her face. She shivered when she thought that if it hadn’t been for them, there was no question that she would have taken her own life and followed Peter to the grave.
* * *
When they got back to the apartment, there was a letter slipped under the door with Maria’s name on it. She opened it and saw it was a handwritten note; the signature read Yuri Koshelev. Annushka’s husband.
I’m sorry I was not able to help your husband, it said, and extend my deepest condolences. There is another matter on which I need to speak with you urgently. I will call on you very soon.
Maria was baffled by this, and alarmed. Was she about to be arrested and he had come to warn her? She had refused to admit to “lack of vigilance,” as her older children had done, even though she knew Peter would have urged her to. Should she pack her bags and flee? She did not have the energy. Whatever happened next, she would just have to endure. Even if it led to her death.