and opened the doors wider. What a relief to have him gone. My stomach grumbled. How to get food?
As it grew dark thousands of people filled the square, sailors lit fires and sang military songs. A thrill ran through me as sounds came from the direction of the shops on Nevsky Prospekt: young people’s voices laughing and singing, and the shifting grind of the motor trucks passing below, their running boards filled with what sounded like drunken men shouting Russian songs.
I closed the doors, stepped to the bathroom, turned on the tap, and let the water run over my fingers into the big white tub. Such a wonderful thing, warm water from the tap.
As the water ran, I wandered the room and stopped at the ravaged trunk, such a sad sight. Perhaps that princess should have been more concerned about the people.
I eased the lacey underthings back in their little drawers and pulled a French magazine from one drawer. La Vie Parisienne. The cover showed a woman lifting her skirt high enough to show her shoes, four other pairs scattered around her. I stood and flipped through the pages, past pictures of half-naked girls wearing the newest hats and dresses. A store called Superior Lingerie showed pictures of stockings and “Corsets for even the curviest girls.”
I stopped at one article titled “Do You Know How to Kiss?”
The article showed pictures of a couple embracing, the captions calling out the right and wrong ways to kiss. The right way was standing just the right distance apart, but not too close. The woman must lift her chin, close her eyes, and turn her head all in that order. I tried it, lifting my chin.
I tossed the magazine back in the trunk. For all Taras’s romantic interest in me we’d never kissed mouth to mouth and I would die unkissed.
I checked the other compartments. A silver kokoshnik studded with gems lay in the bottom of one. I lifted it out of the drawer and ran one finger down the peaked crown, heavy with the kind of paste gems Mamka often sewed with. I rushed to the lavatory, looked in the mirror, and placed it on my head. It was just like one I’d seen the tsar’s daughters wear.
A black thought struck me. Would it bring bad luck to wear the clothing of a dead person?
Soon there came a great commotion in the hallway. I stayed very still and barely breathed.
“Let us in, by order of the Red Army. We have come to check for guns.”
I ran to the bedroom and froze there next to the great piano, fingers laced at my chest, my heart thumping against them. Taras said not to let them in. But could they break down the door?
“We know you are in there,” called one. “If we have to break the door down we will show no mercy.”
Should I hide in the armoire? Under the bed? I felt my pocket for the key, cold and heavy there.
I stepped to the door and placed one hand on the cold wood. “Go away.” Did I sound strong?
“We’re not leaving until we check this room.” Something hard hit the outside of the door.
“There are sick in here. Typhus.”
Their answer was another slam at the door. Then another. The wood splintered at the edges.
“Stop!” I called out. I tried to put the key in the keyhole but my hands shook so.
“This is the last warning,” a woman’s voice called from the hallway.
I finally unlocked the door and six or seven men and one woman rushed in, all dressed in the kind of drab clothes we’d seen on the street. All stank of sweet wine.
The woman came toward me. “Your travel papers?”
“I have none. I came from Malinov on official party business.”
The men laughed and the woman stepped closer. “Party business? You in your bourgeois dress and jewels.”
“The headpiece came from the princess’s trunk.”
“Good story,” one of the men said. He grabbed my backside and I jumped away from him.
“You’ll have to come outside with us while we check the room,” the woman said.
A little man wearing a white sailor’s shirt stained about the neck with splotches of red wine pulled my arms behind me. He whispered in my ear, “I may just take one for myself tonight.”
“Taras Pushkinsky. You may know him. He works for the party. I have rights as a citizen.”
The woman stepped to the piano and ran the back of her hand down the keys. “No papers, no rights.”
Suddenly the ruffians