The Lieutenant’s Lover. Harry Bingham
‘Is this where the meeting is?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘Inside. It’s been going two hours already.’
‘Those logs…?’
‘… are red logs. For the Petrograd Soviet.’
The soldier might have meant his answer, or he might just be getting ready to haggle. Tonya thrust her hand in her pocket and brought out a lump of sugar as big as her fist. It was damp, grey and sticky, but good currency all the same.
‘I’ve got sugar.’
The soldier shook his head. ‘The logs belong to Comrade Lenin. You need to ask him.’
Tonya stuffed her sugar away, unbothered by the rejection. In this strange new world, money was no longer reliable. In a city where food and fuel were desperately short, Tonya now always carried something with her, in case she came across a good opportunity to trade. Most times she failed, sometimes she got lucky. It was just a question of being always ready to try.
She went on into the building. Down in the basement, there was a meeting of the Borough Housing Commission. At the front of the room, there was a kind of podium, planks stretched across wooden egg crates. The podium was dominated by a speaker, hatless and wearing an unbuttoned leather jerkin. The man caught sight of Tonya as she entered. She knew he’d seen her, because his eyes fixed on her, but there was no change in his voice or posture. His presence commanded the room. He was strikingly good-looking with dark curly hair, worn shorthand a lean, handsome, intelligent face. The only bad feature he possessed was a nose that had been badly broken. Though still narrow, it bent sharply where it had been struck.
The man, Rodyon Leonidovich Kornikov, was Tonya’s cousin and a rising star in the new Bolshevik administration. He fixed his eyes on her, then directed his glance deliberately across the room, before bringing it back to her. He never stopped speaking for a second. His sentences came out perfectly, without mistake or hesitation. Tonya looked over to where the man had indicated. Pavel was there, his eyes shining unhealthily, his coat unbuttoned like the man on the platform. Tonya pushed her way across to him.
‘Pavel! You’ll freeze.’
The boy, a fourteen-year-old, began buttoning up almost as soon as he saw his sister; and he let her adjust his hat and scarf. But he still kept his eyes on the platform where Rodyon was winding up.
Tonya turned her attention from Pavel to her cousin. Rodyon spoke of the necessity of establishing revolutionary principles ‘from the first winter on; from the worst slum outwards’. The broken nose in his perfect face served to draw attention to his handsomeness, adding something mesmerising to his features. He finished speaking, to a scattering of applause.
Pavel turned to his sister.
‘Wasn’t he good? When I’m older—’
‘When you’re older you can go out on your own. Right now, you need to stay warm.’
Pavel shrugged. His eyes still shone as though fevered. Rodyon barged through the crowd towards them, stopping in front of Tonya.
‘Comrade!’
‘Rodya! It’s all very well for you to march about like you don’t feel the cold. You should think about Pavel. He copies you.’
‘He will be a good citizen one day. Enthusiastic.’
‘If he doesn’t catch his death first.’
Rodyon smiled. He had perfect teeth, white and even.
‘Well, comrade,’ he said to Pavel. ‘Your sister’s right. You should stay warm too.’
The boy nodded.
‘Are you all right for things? Food and everything?’
‘We don’t have any wood. We’ll have nothing at all to burn by the end of the week.’
‘You have your allocation of course?’
‘If it comes. Last time there was nothing.’
‘That can’t be helped. You can’t rebuild a house without knocking down a wall or two.’
‘They’re not walls. They’re your precious comrade citizens.’
Rodyon smiled. He was an important man, the Housing Commissar of the Petrograd Soviet.
‘I can’t help you. Everyone’s in the same situation.’
Tonya shrugged. She hadn’t actually asked for help, but didn’t say so.
‘But if you want… Uncle Kiryl is still a thief, I suppose?’
Tonya nodded. Her father, Kiryl, worked on the railway and stole coal. An accomplice threw shovelfuls off the train as it entered the station. Kiryl collected the bits up in a sack and sold it on the black market. ‘He only gets vodka and tobacco. He wouldn’t even think of bringing the coal home.’
‘But still, you have things to trade.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then come with me on my tour of inspection tomorrow. You never know what you’ll find in these places once owned by the bourgeois.’
‘Thank you.’
He shook his head. ‘No thanks and no favours. When we have things running properly, you won’t be short of logs.’
He held Tonya’s eyes one last time. Rodyon was a long-time Bolshevik, with two spells in prison to his credit. His nose had been broken in a brawl with police and he was rising fast under the new regime. He had also, for the last two years, been paying careful court to Tonya. He had been constant and, in his way, generous, but Tonya never quite knew whether he was sincere. She wasn’t sure if she was his only girl, or if Rodyon would ever lose his heart to a woman. He seemed too self-possessed for that, too important.
She felt suddenly uncomfortable with him and looked away. But logs were logs, and if Rodyon could help her get some, then she would certainly do as he suggested.
‘Till tomorrow then,’ she said.
3
Misha made changes.
He made them fast, over the tears and protests of his mother and the servants. He began with the barricade at the mouth of the corridor.
‘It has to come down. Now. You think the red militias will be stopped by a chaise longue and a couple of armchairs? Nonsense. It has to come down. Vitaly, come here. I want you to dismantle this thing. That horrible old wardrobe is no good for anything. We can use it for firewood. Those other pieces you can share out among the others.
‘Next the windows. They’re hopeless. They need fixing properly. We don’t have any putty, of course. But how do you make putty? It’s chalk and oil, isn’t it? Linseed oil. I saw chalk in Yevgeny’s room. We’ll use that. Seraphima, do you know where we can get linseed oil? If we can’t get the oil, ordinary flax seeds will do. We can press them for oil. And in the meantime, curtains.
Do we have any fabric? No? Then use the hanging in mother’s room—’
‘The tapestry, Misha! No! It’s French, you know. Your grandmother—’
‘It’s thick and it’s heavy. It’ll do. Use the carpet too if you have to.’
And on it went.
The fireplaces were useless, so Misha stole some empty oil cans and turned them into stoves. He dismissed the servants. He exchanged the ebony chest for a sackful of millet flour, which would see them through winter. He made an inventory of their remaining valuables and concealed them beneath the floorboards.
But problems remained.
Firewood was the worst. They had terribly little, and decent firewood