Midnight in St. Petersburg Read Free Page B

filled the little towns of the south, the shtetl s, with their wailing music and strange clothes, the ones behind the revolutionary movements, or the monstrous ones drawn, hunchbacked and grinning, who were said to bake matzos with the blood of murdered Russian children. (Not that this was likely. Everyone knew that; everyone with an education and some common sense, anyway. But still, there was the Kiev man they’d arrested a few months back – Mendel Beilis, his name was – on precisely that charge: the arrest that had started all the pogrom talk that was resurfacing now. So you couldn’t help but wonder, a bit.)
    â€˜ I don’t drink children’s blood or steal chalices from churches, if that’s what you mean,’ she said tartly.
    â€˜No…’ the peasant replied. His voice was calm, absorbing her flash of defensive anger without seeming to notice. ‘Of course not. You’re just a person, getting on with your life.’
    Inna bit her lip.
    He went on, sidestepping the oncoming Number One tram without a second glance: ‘I know a man, Simanovich. He’s a jeweller in Kiev. They’re always on to him, the police: making out he’s a loan shark and a gambler. Evil-minded nonsense. He’s a dignified man. Loves his people. Tries to help them: he’s got several of his Jews papers to stay up here, for instance; and why not, if they like the city, why not? They’re people like anyone else. Simanovich should be rewarded, not tormented.’
    She’d underestimated him, Inna thought, touched. He might be an unlettered peasant, but his goodness shone through. She liked his gentle garrulousness, too: that unhurried way of following a thought right through.
    â€˜â€¦ But there’s so much hatred now. Maybe it’s just because of that man who’s been killed. Stolypin: the Prime Minister, the Chief Policeman.’ The peasant paused, then continued in a stronger voice. ‘Yes, the Chief Policeman … Because the police are people like everyone else. They take their style from the top. And him, Stolypin, they called him a reformer, but he was a cruel man too. No good for any of us. His days were numbered…’
    He muttered something inaudible. Then, shaking his head, as if regretting his harshness, he made the sign of the cross, and said, rather reluctantly, ‘Well, God be with him.’
    Inna nodded, keeping her face still. She didn’t want to tell him that she’d actually been in the theatre when Stolypin was shot, because in truth she didn’t have much to tell. She almost wished she had seen more than a stir in the crowd when the two shots rang out, and then the hysterics on all sides, women fainting in chairs and people pushing for the doors as word passed through the hall like fire of who it was who’d been attacked.
    â€˜So you know Kiev? Were you there for the Tsar’s visit?’ It surprised her, now she came to think of it. What would take a Siberian peasant so far from home? Come to that, what was he doing here, in the capital?
    He turned his gaze on her, slowing down as he felt towards his answer. His eyes were vague. Then the deep lines around them crinkled, and he laughed.
    â€˜Why, I’ve been to Kiev many a time,’ he said. ‘This time in a train, like a gentleman, but oh, in the pilgrim days of my past, many’s the time I’ve walked all the way from Siberia on my own two legs … rejoicing in God’s sunlight, or shivering under His snows. I’m not a young man, and sometimes I feel I’ve walked every inch of the empire on these two legs.’
    He was shaking his head at the memory of his travels. Then he stopped walking, as if a more important thought had just struck him. He pointed at a side street – another gulch of cobbles between grey cliffs of apartment blocks. ‘That’s where I live now. Nikolayevskaya Street, House Seventy. I won’t