of more horrors every day. In July, they reported that the Romanovs were killed – the poor girls, the little boy. I didn’t tell the old ladies. By force of will, I shut my mind to all of it and concentrated on the house. Nikita worked with me, room by room. He was good at cleaning; as a child, he told me, he had helped his mother who always had a new baby to nurse.
Together we scrubbed and polished the floors and stored all but a few essential pieces of furniture and household equipment in the stables. We took down the heavy, swagged, fringed curtains and packed them in cloth dotted with camphor. Day by day, more sunlight poured into the house – even into poor Mrs Kobelev’s room. We flung open the doors and windows and the lush summer seemed to rush indoors. Like an old beast led out after the winter, the house pulled itself upright and pricked up its ears. The years dropped away from it. The lack of the Kobelevs themselves was like a stitch in my side, a constant, anxious ache – but at the same time exhilaration bubbled in me, just below the surface. I hardly slept, I worked like a dog, I didn’t recognise the wild-eyed, exultant girl I saw in the mirror, biting her lip to stop herself from laughing out loud.
I spent my evenings playing canasta with the old ladies, my ears pricked for the sound of the front door closing behind Slavkin. Then I excused myself and went to bed, waiting, shivering with excitement, under the covers for the door to open quietly and Nikita’s long silhouette to approach. Every evening I was sure he wouldn’t come, sure that I didn’t deserve so much happiness. Every evening he appeared, and silently, passionately, we embraced. Sometimes he was too hasty – I remember crying out – although later he was always tender, stroking my cheek. Afterwards we would lie in my bed and drink Armenian brandy. Nikita would talk, his long face animated and glowing like an El Greco, imagining a new way of living. Together we planned a commune – a place where a group of us could live together, and be moulded and changed by communal living, its problems and its rewards, into real Revolutionaries, people capable of building Communism.
‘But the Kobelevs, what would they think?’
‘Well, the alternative is Prig and his louts – they will be back any day now to give these rooms away to whomever they choose.’
‘You’re right.’
‘We’ll invite Marina and Vera, and others – this way we can choose suitable participants rather than have to take Prig’s people.’
Nikita was not the only one to have this idea – ideological communes were springing up all over Moscow. They were a rational response to the life we found ourselves living, with such scarce resources and such high hopes.
So we invited Fyodor Kuzmin, a student friend of Pasha’s, to join us, and Volodya, the yardman’s son, when he returned from the army. Marina and Vera Getler, neighbours and old family friends, agreed as well. Together we wrote a Manifesto. We renamed various rooms: Mr Kobelev’s study became our communal meeting room; the hall became a ‘Red Corner’ with political reading material. For the first time in my life, I felt that I was engaged in a mighty, vitally important task. I had never been so happy. Fyodor took some photos of us on the steps of the house – Nikita and I, standing close together, beaming straight at the camera.
I often find myself staring at those photos now. It’s hard to make sense of what became of those two smooth-skinned children – the girl now a bent, wrinkly old woman, while across the Soviet world, from hoardings and murals, book covers and film posters, the boy smiles on unchanged.
*
One evening towards the end of August Nikita and I heard a muted knocking and voices at the front door. We leant out of the window into the warm summer night. Two figures were waiting in the street; we could hardly make them out in the twilight.
‘Who’s there?’ Nikita called
Together we scrubbed and polished the floors and stored all but a few essential pieces of furniture and household equipment in the stables. We took down the heavy, swagged, fringed curtains and packed them in cloth dotted with camphor. Day by day, more sunlight poured into the house – even into poor Mrs Kobelev’s room. We flung open the doors and windows and the lush summer seemed to rush indoors. Like an old beast led out after the winter, the house pulled itself upright and pricked up its ears. The years dropped away from it. The lack of the Kobelevs themselves was like a stitch in my side, a constant, anxious ache – but at the same time exhilaration bubbled in me, just below the surface. I hardly slept, I worked like a dog, I didn’t recognise the wild-eyed, exultant girl I saw in the mirror, biting her lip to stop herself from laughing out loud.
I spent my evenings playing canasta with the old ladies, my ears pricked for the sound of the front door closing behind Slavkin. Then I excused myself and went to bed, waiting, shivering with excitement, under the covers for the door to open quietly and Nikita’s long silhouette to approach. Every evening I was sure he wouldn’t come, sure that I didn’t deserve so much happiness. Every evening he appeared, and silently, passionately, we embraced. Sometimes he was too hasty – I remember crying out – although later he was always tender, stroking my cheek. Afterwards we would lie in my bed and drink Armenian brandy. Nikita would talk, his long face animated and glowing like an El Greco, imagining a new way of living. Together we planned a commune – a place where a group of us could live together, and be moulded and changed by communal living, its problems and its rewards, into real Revolutionaries, people capable of building Communism.
‘But the Kobelevs, what would they think?’
‘Well, the alternative is Prig and his louts – they will be back any day now to give these rooms away to whomever they choose.’
‘You’re right.’
‘We’ll invite Marina and Vera, and others – this way we can choose suitable participants rather than have to take Prig’s people.’
Nikita was not the only one to have this idea – ideological communes were springing up all over Moscow. They were a rational response to the life we found ourselves living, with such scarce resources and such high hopes.
So we invited Fyodor Kuzmin, a student friend of Pasha’s, to join us, and Volodya, the yardman’s son, when he returned from the army. Marina and Vera Getler, neighbours and old family friends, agreed as well. Together we wrote a Manifesto. We renamed various rooms: Mr Kobelev’s study became our communal meeting room; the hall became a ‘Red Corner’ with political reading material. For the first time in my life, I felt that I was engaged in a mighty, vitally important task. I had never been so happy. Fyodor took some photos of us on the steps of the house – Nikita and I, standing close together, beaming straight at the camera.
I often find myself staring at those photos now. It’s hard to make sense of what became of those two smooth-skinned children – the girl now a bent, wrinkly old woman, while across the Soviet world, from hoardings and murals, book covers and film posters, the boy smiles on unchanged.
*
One evening towards the end of August Nikita and I heard a muted knocking and voices at the front door. We leant out of the window into the warm summer night. Two figures were waiting in the street; we could hardly make them out in the twilight.
‘Who’s there?’ Nikita called
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