The Midwife of St. Petersburg (13 page)

T
he next morning, Karena awoke late, with the hot sun blaring through her window. She rushed to dress for family breakfast, the scattered crocheted rag rugs sliding beneath her thin-soled black slippers on the hardwood floor, her heart already racing over what the day might hold.

After returning to her room last night, she had lain awake for what seemed like hours, hoping to hear Sergei coming home. But finally she had drifted off sometime after one o’clock.

She poured water from a white enamel pitcher into a bowl and washed, then chose a pale blue blouse with puffed sleeves and ribbons at the wrists and a gathered full peasant skirt of the same blue with added weavings of red and black.

Her long, thick, naturally wavy hair was the color of pale gold. She pinned her braids around another section of her hair that she had brushed back into a fashionable, swirled knot at the back of her neck. She had learned the intricate design from Tatiana. Thinking of her cousin caused her mind to travel the well-worn path back to Kazan … and Colonel Kronstadt—Alex. For so brief a time in his company, she recalled him too well. Tatiana had hardly mentioned him in her last letter. Instead, she wrote of her spiritual growth—due, of course, to Rasputin.

Karena rebuked herself. How could she be thinking of Kazan when she was not even certain whether Sergei came home last night?

She came down the steps and entered the dining room. Its heavy wooden furniture was bright in the morning sun pouring through the pastel green curtains. Her family members sat around the large square table with a white cotton tablecloth that had been meticulously ironed by Aunt Marta. Relief flowed through her when she saw Sergei in his chair at the left hand of Papa Josef. As her gaze met Sergei’s, his brown eyes confirmed that no one suspected. They were safe.

Even so, neither he nor Papa Josef wore a pleasant expression. There must have been yet another dispute over Sergei’s return to the university.

It is enough for Papa that he is a schoolmaster at the college and a respected Russian who swears allegiance to the Romanov family
, Karena thought. She was sure it grieved him that Sergei flirted openly with the Bolsheviks. If Papa learned about last night, it would surely make him ill. He adored Sergei more than any of his children and wanted the best education for him. Even so, Sergei did not appear to appreciate his father’s dedication to his success.

“Karena, you are late to take your chair this morning,” Madame Yeva stated, as precise as ever. Karena could hardly think of a time when she had seen her mother otherwise.

“Everyone is seated, as you can see,” Yeva continued. “You must not keep your papa waiting. You know what a busy man he is at the college.”

“Sorry, Papa. I slept so soundly this morning.” She took her seat.

Josef Peshkov was not muscled and tanned like his son but rather was of medium height with slightly hunched shoulders and a worried disposition. When troubled, he tended to pace and smoke cigarettes, to the dismay of his elder sister Marta. Surprisingly, Madame Yeva rarely complained of anything her husband did.

Even though her usual appetite was lacking, Karena accepted a heavy slice of brown bread. She didn’t want to draw a comment from Aunt
Marta, who derived satisfaction based on the amount of food consumed by her family. Karena wondered how she and her mother could remain so slim when she could outeat her sister Natalia, who tended to be heavy.

Karena spooned eggs and cheese on her plate, along with fried red cabbage and onions. She remembered the time that Tatiana had put a hand to her stomach and turned pale when Natalia asked for fried red cabbage and onions for breakfast. This morning, Karena sympathized with her cousin.

Sergei wore a dark scowl and ate too fast, his fork scraping loudly against his plate.

“Sergei, please,” Madame Yeva said gently.

“Lenski visited London this summer,” Sergei told her, then looked at his father.

Why is he bringing up Lenski?
Karena tried to catch his eye with a glower.
Lenski is the last person he should be discussing now
.

“England is not backward politically like Russia,” Sergei grumbled.

“Russia is not backward.” Josef held his cup toward his sister Marta to refill with coffee.

“Not backward?” Sergei leaned forward in his chair laughing. “Come, Papa! In England, the poor are no longer bound to the landowners. The people who used to be serfs now
own
land. Did you hear me, Papa? They can buy and
own
land. Peasants are free. They have rights. They are no longer chattel.”

“Peasants can own land in Russia ever since Czar Alexander gave them the right in 1860,” Josef countered.

“In America, they call that sort of ownership nothing but
sharecropping
. The peasants can’t do anything more than grow their food on the land. In America, there is liberty to buy, sell, and travel. And you know what? Lenski says that Jews do not have to carry cards to show to policemen. Jews are free in New York. Lenski says they can ride the train, and they need not walk off the sidewalk in the gutter.”

Karena looked over at him, her fork in midair. “Jews can live in the finest areas of St. Petersburg if they bribe the right officials. And if someone important throws his mantle around you, you’re safe enough.”

Madame Yeva looked across the table at her.

“Who told you about bribing them?” Papa Josef asked Karena uneasily.

“Uncle Matvey. Tatiana says the same. Her letter tells of life in St. Petersburg. She even wrote that the czar will change the official name of the city to Petrograd.”

“She ought to know,” Sergei said wryly, “about bribing people, I mean. Uncle Viktor bribes everyone. A wise general is he.”

Josef lifted a hand in his direction to stop the family slander. “America,” he went on, “is another world, Sergei. Forget America. Forget England. You are Russian. Once you become a lawyer, you can buy land in St. Petersburg. General Viktor knows a man who will sell to you. I wish you were marrying the man’s daughter, Sonja. She will be very rich one day.”

“As for Jews in Russia,” Sergei persisted, ignoring his father’s words, “the czar may deny it to the British government, but he has a deliberate policy of persecution. When his chief man, Stolypin, was assassinated, did not the czar silently approve the pogrom against the Jews, even though the hysterical cry that Jews were to blame proved a lie?”

Karena remembered because the assassination had taken place at the opera house in Kiev with the czar and his daughters in attendance.

Sergei frowned. “Come, Papa, you know what I am saying. Czar Nicholas treats Jews and peasants worse than animals. At least his horses eat oats, and a veterinarian treats their ills.” Sergei pointed his hunk of bread toward Karena. “Karena knows this as well. The czar’s horses are treated with better medicine than the Russian peasants on the streets of St. Petersburg.”

“Sergei, you forget your manners,” groaned Aunt Marta. “Your bread drips butter on my tablecloth. One would think we had never taught your son how to behave, Josef.”

No one paid Aunt Marta any attention, and Sergei took a big bite of his bread.

Karena, indignant, carried on. “In Moscow, they’ll bring a peasant woman to have her baby at the medical school, then discharge both mother and baby in the dead of winter. Their grave is the snow.”

Sergei waved his bread in Madame Yeva’s direction. “Mother could tell us what the czar thinks of peasant women—especially
Jewish
peasant women.”

Karena looked across the table at her mother. Yeva had told her these facts and many more, but again, Josef held up his hand.

“Do you think I am a schoolmaster for nothing, my son? I know of such matters. And your mother knew these things before I met her—” Josef stopped, color coming to his protruding cheekbones. He smiled gently. “Ah, those were the days, Yeva, when we were young, were they not?”

Karena looked at her mother. Yeva’s eyes were on her cup of tea. She stirred slowly, deliberately. Her mouth was tight. “Yes, so long ago, Josef. One hardly remembers.”

Josef cleared his throat. “Marta, is there more tea?”

“Of course, Josef, a full pot. Here, Natalia, pass this to your papa.”

Karena nibbled her bread and considered Sergei’s words. Karena had seen Jews and peasants treated like scavenging dogs by soldiers and the gendarmes. In certain instances, Jews were forced to ride in a train’s baggage car, along with the unwashed peasants and wanderers. She’d heard people were packed so tightly they sometimes suffocated. And when the train pulled into a station at short stops, they were forbidden to get out to buy food or relieve themselves. Sergei had told her the Jews could not get off in any of the towns because “the good gentry did not wish for their offensive presence.”

“Enough of this talk,” Josef said. “Things are not so bad as you say.”

“Not on our land,” Sergei countered. “But many landowners flog the peasants just as the Imperial Navy flogs their sailors.”

“That was years ago.”

“They still do it, Papa. Little has changed since Czar Alexander’s reforms. You are one of the few landowners who treat your peasants as humans. What Mama does with her medical skills here in the village is unheard of elsewhere in Russia. Lenski says anyone can murder a Jew and it is called an accident!”

Yeva spilled her tea. Josef frowned. “You are upsetting your mother, Sergei.”

“I am sorry, Mother. But you know these things.”

“Yes, I know them, Sergei. But such talk does not make for a pleasant breakfast,” Madame Yeva said quietly.

“Murder is never a pleasant topic, whatever the time of day. And it doesn’t matter who commits it, either. Murder was committed by Policeman Grinevich. They hanged Professor Chertkov just three weeks ago.”

Karena tightened her fingers on her napkin. If Papa Josef asked him how he knew … To her relief, he merely scowled and shook his head.

“Professor Chertkov was a decent man.”

Aunt Marta winced. Karena looked at Natalia. She sat very still, her brown eyes large and watchful as she ate. She’d hardly spoken this morning.
She’s most likely worried about her own Jewish roots and the persecution that might yet come
.

Karena looked at her plate, setting her fork down. She would choke if she ate another bite.

“If you wish to keep speaking this way, you will bring us all down to the grave,” Josef stated.

Sergei leaned toward him, an affectionate hand on his shoulder. “Ah, come, Papa. You are a member of the local zemstvo. We have a right to discuss political matters with you. It is your duty to bring our complaints before Czar Nicholas.” He grinned.

As a land manager, Josef had been chosen by his community to deal with problems of local or provincial administration. Once a year, such
men appeared in St. Petersburg, where the Duma was held, and they would send their complaints to the czar. “Our complaints might just as well have been ferried off on the wings of pigeons to who knows where,” members of the zemstvos bemoaned.

Czar Nicholas was an autocrat and refused to acknowledge complaints. Indeed, a complaint could be considered outright rebellion, deserving of imprisonment. Although the czar had in a time of revolution permitted a Duma to form, he’d done so with great reluctance and then ignored the body. The Duma could not make laws or change an injustice, and it became merely a platform to protest the czar and czarina. When members became too critical of the autocracy or of Rasputin, Czar Nicholas often closed it down and sent the delegates home, infuriating the Duma members even more.

“Seriously, Papa, I don’t agree with the Bolsheviks on many issues, and I don’t accept their tactics, but what are we to do when the czar is deaf and dumb to making reasonable changes in Russia? Who has answers to our problems, except the revolutionary leaders?”

“Uncle Matvey says the socialists have no real answers,” Karena spoke up. “Their changes are all merely external. It’s men’s hearts that need a revolution. Uncle Matvey’s beginning to think there really is a Messiah who will be born and save Israel.”

Sergei groaned. “He doesn’t believe that. I’ve talked with him. It’s all that study he’s doing on the ‘Zionist movement’ of Theodor Herzl. Uncle Matvey discusses the idea of a savior out of intellectual curiosity, that’s all. If we are to be saved, we must have a revolution.”

Josef’s fist came down on the table and rattled the glasses and plates. “Silence!”

There was silence.

A minute later, when Josef was calm again he said, “I will remind you, my son, that there is little I can do about all your complaints. While the
czar has permitted the Duma and the zemstvo to exist, he has granted us no authority and will not meet with us.”

“You see?” Sergei crowed. “My very point, Papa. We’re nothing but his puppets.”

Karena watched her father with sympathy. Sergei constantly argued politics, but Papa Josef remained a stalwart defender of the royal family. She admired her father for having tried early on to make social changes. He’d joined with the other zemstvo members outside the Winter Palace when Nicholas Romanov became czar after the end of the repressive regime of his father. The zemstvo representatives were mostly from cultivated families, members of the nobility, landlords, and those who had made money as speculators and entrepreneurs.

The zemstvos had carried a petition asking Czar Nicholas to grant Russia a constitution. Nicholas utterly refused. But while disappointed, the zemstvos, unlike the Bolsheviks and other radical parties, did not desire to end the House of Romanov, nor did they want war with the autocracy. They preferred a peaceful path to freedom, in stages.

Papa Josef sighed and looked at his son. “You lack patience, Sergei. Eventually the zemstvo will tackle more general problems, like taxation, the infrastructure, and so on, and will engage in politics. Now it is not possible. Czar Nicholas considers such reforms detrimental to the cause he believes has been entrusted to him.”