The Midwife of St. Petersburg (10 page)

“There are risks and dangers, but is nothing worth taking a stand for?” Sergei continued. “Be tolerant and do not feel strongly about any cause, lest you get criticism from an opponent. Right, Ilya?”

“No, that’s not right. Some things are worth standing up for,” Ilya said, stopping on the dusty wagon road, facing Sergei. “And others only divert our energy and waste us. In my opinion, the meeting tonight is not worth the risk of facing the Okhrana, and I don’t think you should allow Karena to go. I have but one life. I want to make sure it is spent on a worthy cause.”

Sergei’s sun-bronzed face turned thoughtful, and he clasped Ilya’s shoulder. “You’re right. You must not become involved. Grandmother Jilinsky needs you; so does my father. We all need you in the family.” He grinned now. “If you don’t manage the peasants, then I must. You must take over as manager of the wheat lands, so I can go to New York and train to be a journalist.”

Ilya smiled. “I doubt if I’ll live to see the day when your father lets you become a journalist, least of all in New York. You’d better be content to become the lawyer he wants in the family.”

“I’ll join the army before I take up the boredom of being a lawyer in Russia.” Sergei turned to Karena, spreading his hands. “Well, Sister, the choice is yours. Will you come to the meeting or walk back to the manor with Ilya? If you go home, perhaps I can arrange for you to meet Ivanna and Lenski some other time.”

Karena turned to Ilya. Her eyes pleaded with his to avoid a struggle.

“I asked Sergei to let me come with him tonight,” she admitted, attempting to strengthen her earlier explanation. “Ivanna attends the Imperial College of Medicine in St. Petersburg. I want very much to talk with her.”

At the mention of the medical school, Ilya seemed to understand. After a moment of silence, he shrugged his shoulders.

“It is not for me to tell you.” He glanced from her to Sergei, then turned and began walking away.

Her gaze followed him, a solitary figure taking a shortcut through the
gently rippling wheat, soon becoming a distant silhouette. He was on his way to the bungalow where he lived with Grandmother Jilinsky and, more recently, Uncle Matvey.

Karena was aware that if she chose to do so, she could follow Ilya to the bungalow where a wholesome supper cooked by Grandmother Jilinsky waited. Afterward, she could enjoy an evening on the front porch with Uncle Matvey. She could even now make the decision to forget the college of medicine and settle into a married life of raising children, growing wheat, and overseeing the peasants. It would be a good life, and though Ilya did not stir the passion that Alex had during their brief encounter, she had a quiet affection for him. But she could not make that decision now. Another love was wooing her heart—medicine, midwifery, and spending her years serving others.
Perhaps I shall never marry
.

Sergei, noticing her contemplation, flipped her golden braid. “Stop worrying, Sister. He will get over his feelings. He is more reasonable than most. He’s upset because you did not do as he wanted.” He sobered, and his dark eyes took on a thoughtful glint as he looked toward the horizon.

“Besides, Sister,” he continued in a quiet voice, “Ilya’s right about the war coming. Did you hear about the assassination?”

“Oh no, not the czar—”

“No, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, a few weeks ago. There will be war now for certain. Already, thousands of German soldiers are massed along the borders of Poland. It could be days or hours, but soon, someone will fire the first shot, and the war will begin. You know what that means for us?” She knew, and the thought ravaged her soul. Young men full of bright ideas, hopes, and dreams would be blown to pieces.

“Ilya will find himself conscripted. Most of the young peasants will be called up. Ilya was right about the czar’s soldiers riding this way en route to Poland. And you can be sure they will take many peasants with them. I, being gentry, will not be conscripted, but eventually, I will be called to
uniform too.” He looked at her, troubled. “This is not the time to think of marriage with Ilya—or anyone else.”

Sergei understood her heart well; he always had.

“Come, or we may be late,” he said. “Ivanna should be there by now.” Lenski’s talk would be held on the grassy square at the college from which Sergei and Karena had graduated several years earlier and where Natalia was in her final year—the college where Professor Chertkov had taught before his arrest. The professor and five other revolutionaries had been brought to the Peter and Paul prison fortress in St. Petersburg for trial. The verdict—a death sentence—was handed down weeks ago, but the dark news had arrived in Kiev yesterday with Lenski. News of tonight’s meeting to protest Professor Chertkov’s death sentence had gone out by way of the Bolshevik underground.

“There are many of us,” Sergei admitted. “I don’t believe in their use of violence, assassination, and murder, but I see no other hope to end autocratic rule over the Russian people than to organize in opposition to the Romanovs.”

“But you could go to the gallows. You must keep talking to Uncle Matvey. He supports more authority for the Duma to enact laws.”

“A parliament, yes, but what happens?” he scoffed. “When the Duma meets, their criticism of Rasputin enrages the czarina. She becomes hysterical over the threat to her ‘darling Rasputin’ and insists the czar disband the Duma and send them home—as though they were children.”

Karena kept silent and followed Sergei to the familiar stand of chestnut trees, planted as a windbreak beside the dusty road to town. He’d hidden one of the horses here so that Papa Josef wouldn’t hear him riding away from the manor house after dinner. She had waited for him to leave by the kitchen door as planned, and she followed a short time later, undetected by the other members of the family.

As they came to the stand of trees, Sergei untied the horse, mounted, and helped Karena up behind him, her arms around his waist.

“Professor Chertkov was arrested on lies,” Sergei told her as they rode off in the moonlight. “Even the Bolshevik leaders say Chertkov wasn’t one of them. It was a false charge, all because the professor openly stated support for a few human rights for the factory workers on strike in St. Petersburg. It seems incriminating books were planted in his desk, and copies of Lenin’s little newspaper
Iskra
were found in a box. It was all a blatant trap. I think it was the rat, Grinevich.”

Karena knew how Sergei detested the chief gendarme. He insisted Grinevich had personally hounded him since youth because of his refusal to quietly accept the man’s corrupt authority.

“You weren’t here when Professor Chertkov was arrested,” Sergei continued. “There was a riot on the green. Grinevich ordered his police to beat several students as well as a hapless old man named Pavel who wandered into the demonstration and had nothing to do with the trouble. Pavel died from a concussion. Did the czar send someone to look into it? No. Pavel was only an uneducated peasant.

“There was no justice for Professor Chertkov; he’s dead. Lenski says he was taken out of Peter and Paul with five other revolutionaries and hanged.”

He looked at her over his shoulder, his face hard. In the moonlight, his eyes radiated frustration. The intensity of his emotions worried her. He’d always been volatile and impulsive. Where could his indignation lead but to trouble?

Yet she understood his anger. Professor Chertkov was a gentle man, one of her favorite instructors. His death was nothing less than murder, she decided. From the philosophy of his teaching, she was certain he had not been a Bolshevik.

They reached the college grounds, and Sergei concealed the horse by a shallow creek under a stand of trees. He hurried toward the college square and across the grass to the meeting. Karena followed, her thoughts now on Ivanna. Would there be a letter tonight from Dr. Lenski?

Sergei paused on the grass until she caught up.

“What if someone notices we’ve gathered tonight? They might alert the police.”

He shook his head with impatience. “We have a man watching Grinevich’s house. Should he leave and start in this direction, we will be notified. Students gather on the green for picnics all the time. Stop worrying. We must not show ourselves cowards in the face of tyranny.”

When they arrived, the meeting was under way on the far side of the campus. The late summer’s night air was warm. The leaves on the linden trees lining one section of the green shuddered, as if tired from the long, demanding heat wave. Two torches burned, but Sergei insisted that the firelight and the gathering were not cause for alarm. Even so, Karena remained uneasy. He wouldn’t hesitate to err on the side of recklessness.

Petrov Lenski looked to be in his late twenties, a medium-sized man with a square build, and when he turned toward the crowd, his face glowed from the torches. He stood on a makeshift platform of stacked harvest crates, and his voice carried venom as he cursed the autocracy for the unfair arrest and death sentence carried out against Chertkov. While Karena was familiar with the views of revolutionary groups, hearing the arguments for revolution in public caused her to shudder.
Must he speak so loudly?
It seemed the entire town could hear.

“Where is Ivanna?” Her voice broke with low urgency.

Sergei glanced about the group on the green. He shoved his hands in his pockets. Karena read a shadow of disappointment that flicked across his face. “I don’t see her yet.”

“Sergei! You are certain she is coming?”

“How can I be certain of anything?” he hissed.

“You usually are.” She smiled wryly.

“She was supposed to be here. I’ve no reason to trick you.”

Karena, however, knew he was always trying to talk her into joining his revolutionary friends.

“In his letter, Lenski said Ivanna was coming with him from St. Petersburg. Maybe she’s just late—you know women. She may have decided to remain at the house where they’re staying, with a headache or something. We’ll just need to wait and ask Lenski after his talk.”

Karena swallowed a lump of disappointment. She was not interested in Lenski’s harangue against the czar. Perhaps Ivanna had not come to Kiev after all. Her plans might have changed.

Despite her deflated mood, Karena surveyed the crowd hoping to see a woman whom Sergei earlier described as having auburn hair and a sophisticated demeanor. If Ivanna were here, though, she should have noticed Sergei and joined him.

Karena looked at her brother. His broad, handsome face, tanned by long days in the family wheat fields, glistened with perspiration. His gaze was fixed on Lenski, whose rhetoric boiled with volcanic intensity.

Worried, she began looking about to see who was here and whether they posed any danger. She discovered the usual people she’d gone to school with, plus a few strangers, probably from the more populous districts of Kiev. The throng contained mostly men, though at least a dozen women were scattered among them, many Karena’s age. Many of these women would soon be leaving the farming village to work in the large factories of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

The young men stood with their arms folded across sweat-stained
bushka
shirts, nodding in agreement with Lenski. Several older men from the Odessa region were scowling; one formed a calloused fist and smashed it against his other palm. Sometimes they looked at one another in agreement as a babble of voices broke out in anger.

“That’s right,” Sergei called out.

“Yes, yes,” another shouted.

Karena grew more uncomfortable, though no one appeared to notice her, their attention riveted on the speaker. She tried to think of something else and noticed the young woman, Anna.

Anna lived with her brother and his wife in a peasant bungalow on Peshkov land and worked with the other women in the fields. Did her brother know she was here alone at the protest? It was a well-known secret that Sergei had been seeing Anna all summer, despite his more serious interest in Ivanna. Anna did not appear to notice Karena, or was it that she had eyes only for Sergei?

Karena did not recall Anna ever displaying interest in revolutionary ideas, but perhaps she came tonight with the hope of impressing Sergei with her new show of intellectualism.

Karena worried about Anna. She was well into her pregnancy, and though Sergei denied he was the father, Karena was not convinced. Papa Josef did not know, but Madame Yeva did, though no decision as yet had been made concerning Anna’s future or the child’s.

As she looked back toward Lenski, Karena’s gaze tumbled upon a man standing in the shadows on the outer edge of the crowd. Had he been watching her? She did not recognize him; the hat tipped low on his forehead obscured his face.

He turned away, reaching inside his battered bushka. He took out a cigarette, turned his shoulder toward her, and struck a match, cupping it in his hand.

Karena looked around. Lenski’s verbal blows grew muffled and distant as her mind took shelter from the raw and harsh and focused on the awe-inspiring expanse of night sky. For a curious moment, the full moon appeared to be suspended above the cross on the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Andrew across the street. It captured her emotions and, for a reason she could not explain, suggested rest and peace, yet both were out of her reach. Sadness drenched her soul as she recalled holy days spent with her family at that church. She’d found little there that revealed God.

Karena checked to see if the stranger was still there. He was. She noticed something vaguely curious about the way he stood. It seemed he might be a soldier, but that could hardly be—unless he dared to show up
at a meeting such as this. Of course, he could not show up here in uniform. He’d be placed before a firing squad. Unless he was supposed to be here—but that was silly. Her imagination was running away with her. Sergei had sworn the authorities knew nothing of this meeting, so there could not be any soldiers here.

He turned his head in her direction again; she looked away.

Is he one of the friends who came with Lenski from St. Petersburg?

Just then, another latecomer walked up from the street. He looked older, sober faced, with a mustache and short beard—