The Midwife of St. Petersburg (30 page)

K
arena awakened from a fevered sleep with the whistle shrieking and the train slowing for its approach to another station stop. Her muscles were cramped, and she tried to stretch and could not. Her eyelids fluttered open, and she remembered; they’d been forced to ride third class, jammed into one of the filthy boxcars with so many peasants that she could neither move nor breathe comfortably. Madame Yeva, suffering from fever and nausea, had fainted, awakening in and out of a nightmarish sleep.

“Karena!”

“I’m here, Mother,” she whispered in her ear. “Don’t draw attention, don’t say a word. There are so many people in here that no one notices us. We’re packed into a tight, darkened corner, but we’re all right. Don’t be afraid.”

Yeva’s eyes closed again, and she appeared to sleep despite the noise becoming a part of their existence.

Karena’s arm was growing numb from where her mother’s head rested against her shoulder. They had been in this cramped position for hours, but try as she might, she could barely move. Neither could any of the
peasants around her. Karena marveled at how they bore it all. She herself was in a weakened physical condition, and it was only worry over her mother’s unexpected illness that maintained her determination.

Somehow, through the struggle, Karena had kept them both together even while undergoing harassment and insults by the Imperial train inspectors who had boarded at the second stop out of Kiev. The stop was a major interchange, and passengers needed to produce their identity papers. As soon as the inspectors learned that Madame Yeva and Karena were classified as Polish Jews, they were ordered from their third-class seats and put into this noisy boxcar. She and her mother looked so terrible after the rainstorm and from their injuries, the inspectors scorned them.
Thank God!

Karena’s skin tingled from lack of circulation, and she was sure fleas and lice had invaded her garments. She had a little water that she kept for her mother, and no permission was granted to get off at the various stops. They were told that the decent people of the towns and villages had no wish to mingle with Jews and dirty peasants. Yeva’s illness kept her from arguing, and Karena continued to whisper that they must remain as unnoticed as they could. Horrendous crimes were known to take place in the boxcars, and the police did not trouble themselves over injustices to the Jews. Karena occasionally kept her hand near her coat pocket where she had hidden Papa Josef’s Russian Nagant revolver.

The long hours rumbled by in semidarkness. She heard the groans of the packed peasants and Jews, heard from different corners of the boxcar the tubercular cough that she recognized. Her compassion reached beyond herself and Yeva to the wretched human beings jammed into the boxcar. Even so, she cringed when she heard their phlegm-filled coughing. She recalled Psalm 91:6: “Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness.” When the train began to slow, Karena wondered if she could still support herself and her mother.

After coming to a shuddering halt, the door of the boxcar was opened from the outside, and sharp voices demanded they get out and be on their way.

“Where are we now?” Madame Yeva murmured in a scratchy voice barely audible above the din.

“St. Petersburg. Here, Mother, lift your fur hood. It’s snowing outside. Oh—
fresh
air! I shall never complain of the cold again.”

“St. Petersburg!” Yeva’s dazed eyes widened, and she shook with chills that came and subsided. She shook her head in protest. “We must not go to your Uncle Matvey. It will put him at risk, Karena. What about—”

Karena squeezed her hand, affirming a calmness she did not in the least feel. “We’ve no choice. You’re too ill, and we’re in desperate need of help.”

“I’m—I will be all right again soon …”

“Uncle Matvey is expecting us, and you must see a doctor soon.” She added reluctantly to strengthen her argument, “And we’re out of money.”

“Out of money … so soon … What about our savings?” she rasped.

Karena blandly informed her that it had been stolen. By whom, when, and where, Karena couldn’t tell her. She suspected it had been taken by the Imperial inspectors, but even if she could prove it, who would care?

“We can’t think about it now,” Karena soothed, seeing Yeva’s agitation. “There is nothing to be done about the injustice, Mother. We must leave it with God. I will find work. Believe me, it will grieve and upset Uncle Matvey if he learns that you were ill and that I didn’t bring you to his apartment.”

Someone must have fallen trying to step down from the boxcar because there came a woman’s scream followed by shouting, and everyone began to push and shove.

Karena gasped for fresh air. She and her mother clung together in the rush to get out, then—a loud explosion.

Alex was quickly out of the station and onto the steps. Below, on the concourse, a coach was smoking. Its doors had been blown off, and one of the horses was down.
Whose coach?

Several policemen ran to the coach and reached inside. The situation could not have been worse. Alex’s fears were confirmed: the target of the blast was Count Kalinsky, the official whom Gennady was responsible for escorting safely to the train.

Alex paused in the snow.

Several soldiers had joined the police. Alex thought of Gennady, who would be joining the elite guards back at the Winter Palace to assume the duty of guarding the count during his ride to the train. He would learn that the count had grown impatient and left early in his coach. Soon the news would follow about his assassination.

Gennady could be held accountable for dereliction of duty.

Passengers departing a train from Kiev added to the confusion. The revolutionaries who had thrown the dynamite were now lost in the throng.

Alex headed toward the coach, shouldering his way through the soldiers surrounding it.

What was that shattering blast?
Karena waited until the boxcar was mostly empty, and then, with an arm around her mother, she led them slowly forward. Karena thought she had enough coins to hire a droshky.

“We shall soon have you in a warm bed, my matushka. With something hot to drink, you will be able to rest. Lean on me. We will walk slowly.” Outside, there were banks of snow where workers had pushed it aside to keep the tracks clear. A haze hung low over all, like a drab mantle,
but even so, it was appealing after two days of being crammed into the dark, foul boxcar. Karena climbed down and then reached back to help Yeva into the slush.

They were standing on the ground near the St. Petersburg station. This was not the arrival Karena had dreamed of. Dizzy and weak, she gritted her teeth as she guided her mother. A rush of cold wind and a sprinkle of snowflakes fell across her face. At least the flakes were fresh. They took a moment to breathe the clean air before walking. Ahead there was a slanted roof covering a raised wooden platform with benches, then the concourse and some steep steps leading into the station proper.

Something was wrong. Beside the normal rush of porters and attendants of the wealthier travelers, she saw several police guards on horseback and others on foot, all headed in one direction. Some soldiers clustered together with guns, pointing and shouting with stern faces.

Soldiers!
Her heart began to pound.
Are they looking toward us?

“Imperial guards,” Karena whispered hoarsely to her mother. “They are searching for someone. Look, over there—in the concourse—there’s a crowd. Something has happened—oh!—that coach, and a horse is down. Oh, how horrible! There is blood in the snow!”
The explosion!

“Keep walking,” Yeva said weakly. “They have no reason to suspect us.”

The cold wind prodded them along. Karena’s long, black skirt over leather boots rustled beneath the fur coat with its hood pulled down over her forehead to conceal her bruised face.

They could hear soldiers asking an older man questions. The man shouted as though deaf. “I was standing right over here when a young man runs into me and knocks me aside. Next, that coach comes around the corner, and when it pulls aside, he opens the door and tosses in fireworks. The explosion took me off my feet. There was a woman, too. Don’t know where she went. They both ran. Who was blown up?”

An assassination. Karena wondered which official had been murdered.
She watched soldiers approach the damaged coach. One of them shot the injured horse in the head. The sight brought home the deadly consequences of a sin-tainted world. A newborn’s first conscious response at birth was a wail, and innocent creatures suffered. It seemed an apt picture of the groaning creation still held in the grip of Satan’s rebellion against God.

An armed Imperial officer ran toward the coach from the direction of the departing trains. He came nearer. Her breath caught in her throat.

It cannot be him. Not here, not now
.

His hair was dark, and she remembered those grayish green eyes studying her when he had questioned her in Uncle Matvey’s little office. It was Alex.

What if he learns about Leonovich? Could he already know? And now, this man murdered in the coach!

She watched as Alex turned his head, seeming to take in the area with a sweeping glance until his gaze connected firmly with hers. Her stomach flipped. Despite the danger, she experienced the same heated emotional assault she felt each time they met.

Colonel Kronstadt’s alert gaze flashed to Madame Yeva, looked for someone else who might be with them, then swerved back to Karena again.

“It’s Colonel Kronstadt,” Karena hissed to her mother. “He’s seen us.”

Madame Yeva turned her head to look back.

“Come quickly, but don’t run.”

Karena tightened her hold on her mother’s arm, moving her toward the milling crowd. Fear darted through her and must have brought strength to Madame Yeva, for her steps quickened.

Flee! Escape!

S
urely it could not be
her
, but it was. Alex had recognized her when their eyes met. Her face seemed bruised. He frowned. What had happened? He intended to find out.

Shouldering his way through the crowd, Alex moved steadily in the direction of Miss Karena Peshkova and her mother, who were ahead in the throng. Was their presence a coincidence after the terrorist bombing of a czarist autocrat?

He could easily overtake them if he ran, but he held himself back. If he bolted after them now, the police would notice and blow their whistles. Anything could happen if the girl and her mother took off running and the police drew their weapons.

Alex made the cool decision to slow his steps. After all, he knew where to find her in St. Petersburg when he was ready. He was to make a call on Professor Menkin to ask further questions on Grinevich and return his manuscript. Alex was certain she and her mother were making their way to Professor Menkin’s apartment now.

He continued following, but they were not in sight. He went to a raised platform farther ahead and peered into the throngs of people, many
in the same kinds of fur coats and hats. Toward the square where droshkies waited, he saw two women boarding, the younger helping the older inside as though she were weak. He was certain it was the Peshkova women.

He hastened down the steps just as the droshky left the train station. He could have ordered the soldiers and police to stop its escape. As it rounded a corner, he saw a passenger turn and look back. It was Karena.

Alex stood, hands on hips, looking after her. In another minute they were out of sight.

It was reported that a woman was seen with the terrorist who hurled the dynamite that murdered Count Kalinsky
.

Alex frowned as he stared after the droshky.
It could not have been Karena Peshkova
. So far, he had not reported the information he had on her to the Okhrana. If he reported seeing her at the Bolshevik meeting the night Grinevich was killed and that she had denied it, his own eyewitness account would bring her arrest. The czarist blade, however, was double edged, for if it was discovered that he had held back all he knew from his superior.