“I am Sofya Streshnayva. My father worked for the Ministry.”
“In Petrograd? Hold on.”
She stepped through a door and came back with a gentleman dressed in a white apron holding a glass, wiping it with a striped cloth.
“Dr. Abushkin?”
“Sofya.” He came around the bar and kissed me on both cheeks. “What a happy surprise. I cannot talk long. I need to get back to my duties.” He leaned in. “I am a very important part of this operation—dishwasher. It’s terrible getting jobs here. To continue as a physician they want me to go back to medical school. Start all over. Countess Pechesky is a washroom attendant now, dressed in her old gown, passing hand towels to the same women who once curtsied to her.”
I smiled. “You’re still the same.”
“Just sitting on my suitcases here, waiting to go back as soon as this whole mess is ironed out. I heard about your family.” He wrapped his arms around me and kissed the top of my head.
How good his arms felt. For all his old-fashioned thinking, he was still the man who’d birthed me.
“To think such fine people died that way. Thank God your mother was not here to witness.”
“It’s like medicine to see this place.”
“Just don’t breathe.”
“I was across the street and in the crypt—”
“Be careful.” He leaned in. “Checka guards are infiltrating such places.”
Could I trust the doctor with the news of my son? No matter how well intentioned he was, a word to the wrong person would no doubt spread like disease here in this community.
“Don’t tell people your name so freely, Sofya. You must stay aware at all times. As a woman you are more prone to spilling secrets. They could be in this room right now.”
“Men spill secrets as often as women, Doctor. I can take care of myself.”
“Take it seriously. They are using all tricks to lure aristocrats out of the safety of the community. To be kidnapped and sent back to hard labor or worse. A count was poisoned here, right there at that table.”
“I will be careful. In the meantime can you spare some food for the women across the street? They’re starving—children with bowed legs.”
“Rickets. There is so little food now in Paris—farmers want a fortune for a cabbage. But as dishwasher, I can save scraps and see about some soup.”
All at once a rousing piano chorus began, as it so often did in Russia, and the doctor nodded toward the pianist. “Your cousin.”
The breath caught in my throat. “Karina?” I craned my neck above the crowd to see her back to me at the piano bench.
“I will send some pirozhki out for you two,” he said as he hurried off to the kitchen.
I could barely stop smiling as I drew closer and saw Karina dressed in a white satin gown and playing the upright piano; atop it was a glass jar with a few coins at the bottom. She played the Tarantella finale of Brahms’s first piano concerto, his greatest compositional triumph. It was one of the first I’d watched her learn as a child, as she sat on a stack of encyclopedias at the Dowager Empress Marie’s.
Water filled my eyes. How did she end up here in a room of émigrés without the basic manners to listen to such greatness? How good it would be to see my cousin, have a friend with whom to talk over everything.
I waited for the song to end and touched her arm, trembling a bit with the anticipation of her reaction upon seeing me. “Good to hear you play again, Karina.”
She stood, clapped her hands in front of her, kissed me on both cheeks and held me tight. “I prayed I would see you here.”
We moved to a small table and a waiter set two pirozhki and a bottle of vodka with glasses down between us. The scent of the little buns, their brown, egg-washed tops toasted dark, made me realize how hungry I was.
“I heard about your family, Sofya. It hurts every time I think of it.”
“They are with God now.” It was a pat statement but was at least something to say to help others feel better about such a horrible tragedy. “But Max is still alive and I think I know where he’s living.”
“Here in Paris? Just go take him.”
“It’s not that easy. I haven’t seen him there.”
“Why not visit the schools in that area? Talk to the headmistresses and inquire.”
“You’re a genius, Karina.” Why had I not thought of that?
“Let me help.