know.”
Yakov tapped his cigarette in an ashtray. “Because Andrev is a born survivor, that’s why. The kind this revolution needs.”
“Now it seems his luck’s run out.”
“We’ll see. I take it he hasn’t asked to see me yet?”
“No, he’s still in the sick bay.”
Yakov stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. “You may go. Find my brother, Stanislas, and send him here.”
“Yes, comrade.”
The man left and Zoba said, “Good luck convincing the captain. Something tells me you’re going to need it.”
Yakov’s face was solemn as he opened a desk drawer and removed a wooden frame containing an old photograph. It was an image healways cherished: of his mother and Stanislas, Uri, and his father, all of them together, taken in a St. Petersburg studio. He showed Zoba.
“The day it was taken, my mother was growing steadily worse with TB. Uri’s father took us all by carriage to a fair in St. Petersburg. I think he thought it would cheer up my mother and give Stanislas and me a happy memory with her. He had our photograph taken—so we’d always have it to cherish. Uri’s father was that sort. A good and thoughtful man.”
Zoba rubbed his hands together as he prepared to step out into the cold night. “I hope his son makes the right decision, Leonid.” He left.
Yakov consulted his pocket watch: 8:05. He opened the top button of his uniform tunic, poured a vodka into a shot glass, knocked it back in one swallow, and slapped the glass on his desk.
He looked again at the images in the photograph. “Come on, Uri, get sense. You don’t need to be a martyr.”
It was bitterly cold outside, a blustery gale tossing snow flurries against the windows. The snow fell thicker and thicker. Yakov stood staring out at the swirling flakes as if hypnotized. It was on a cold winter’s night like this that he and Uri Andrev first met. A night of birth and near-death, in which their lives were forever intertwined.
Yakov closed his eyes tightly. How could he ever forget the slums of the Black Quarter, the anguished screams and drunken cries that echoed like church bells in his mind? He recalled the despair of his childhood, the filthy stench of poverty that never left his nostrils. And in an instant his memories flooded back …
12
With its glorious Winter Palace, broad boulevards, and leafy parks, St. Petersburg was one of the most beautiful cities on earth, the Paris of the north.
But there was another St. Petersburg, a squalid capital of filthy backstreets, crime, and poverty, where hundreds of thousands of working families were crammed into crumbling tenements owned by rich landlords.
It was into this world that Leonid Yakov was born, in the harsh, dangerous district known as the Black Quarter. His father worked as a deckhand out of St. Petersburg docks, a cruel, bearded man whose breath always stank of alcohol.
Yakov loved his mother. She was a proud, strikingly handsome woman who found work as a cleaner in the houses and gentlemen’s clubs of St. Petersburg’s wealthy. It was backbreaking labor that often lasted from dawn until dusk and paid a pittance, and then she came home to kneel and scrub their own lodgings, determined to keep her family scrupulously clean despite the squalor all around them.
Every night she would read to Leonid, from a children’s book or from the newspaper. She always kept books by her bedside: Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, even Karl Marx. Big, thick, well-thumbed books and a worn dictionary that she studied every day. Yakov never forgot that.
And he never forgot the haunted look in his mother’s eyes. A look that he in time realized was a mixture of exhaustion, hunger, and later the gnawing tuberculosis that ravaged her body with fits of coughing. One in five children died in Russia from hunger, neglect, or disease, and Yakov had already lost his young sister, Katerina, to TB in the harsh winter of 1901.
He recalled the sunny day in February he helped his mother carry the
Yakov tapped his cigarette in an ashtray. “Because Andrev is a born survivor, that’s why. The kind this revolution needs.”
“Now it seems his luck’s run out.”
“We’ll see. I take it he hasn’t asked to see me yet?”
“No, he’s still in the sick bay.”
Yakov stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. “You may go. Find my brother, Stanislas, and send him here.”
“Yes, comrade.”
The man left and Zoba said, “Good luck convincing the captain. Something tells me you’re going to need it.”
Yakov’s face was solemn as he opened a desk drawer and removed a wooden frame containing an old photograph. It was an image healways cherished: of his mother and Stanislas, Uri, and his father, all of them together, taken in a St. Petersburg studio. He showed Zoba.
“The day it was taken, my mother was growing steadily worse with TB. Uri’s father took us all by carriage to a fair in St. Petersburg. I think he thought it would cheer up my mother and give Stanislas and me a happy memory with her. He had our photograph taken—so we’d always have it to cherish. Uri’s father was that sort. A good and thoughtful man.”
Zoba rubbed his hands together as he prepared to step out into the cold night. “I hope his son makes the right decision, Leonid.” He left.
Yakov consulted his pocket watch: 8:05. He opened the top button of his uniform tunic, poured a vodka into a shot glass, knocked it back in one swallow, and slapped the glass on his desk.
He looked again at the images in the photograph. “Come on, Uri, get sense. You don’t need to be a martyr.”
It was bitterly cold outside, a blustery gale tossing snow flurries against the windows. The snow fell thicker and thicker. Yakov stood staring out at the swirling flakes as if hypnotized. It was on a cold winter’s night like this that he and Uri Andrev first met. A night of birth and near-death, in which their lives were forever intertwined.
Yakov closed his eyes tightly. How could he ever forget the slums of the Black Quarter, the anguished screams and drunken cries that echoed like church bells in his mind? He recalled the despair of his childhood, the filthy stench of poverty that never left his nostrils. And in an instant his memories flooded back …
12
With its glorious Winter Palace, broad boulevards, and leafy parks, St. Petersburg was one of the most beautiful cities on earth, the Paris of the north.
But there was another St. Petersburg, a squalid capital of filthy backstreets, crime, and poverty, where hundreds of thousands of working families were crammed into crumbling tenements owned by rich landlords.
It was into this world that Leonid Yakov was born, in the harsh, dangerous district known as the Black Quarter. His father worked as a deckhand out of St. Petersburg docks, a cruel, bearded man whose breath always stank of alcohol.
Yakov loved his mother. She was a proud, strikingly handsome woman who found work as a cleaner in the houses and gentlemen’s clubs of St. Petersburg’s wealthy. It was backbreaking labor that often lasted from dawn until dusk and paid a pittance, and then she came home to kneel and scrub their own lodgings, determined to keep her family scrupulously clean despite the squalor all around them.
Every night she would read to Leonid, from a children’s book or from the newspaper. She always kept books by her bedside: Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, even Karl Marx. Big, thick, well-thumbed books and a worn dictionary that she studied every day. Yakov never forgot that.
And he never forgot the haunted look in his mother’s eyes. A look that he in time realized was a mixture of exhaustion, hunger, and later the gnawing tuberculosis that ravaged her body with fits of coughing. One in five children died in Russia from hunger, neglect, or disease, and Yakov had already lost his young sister, Katerina, to TB in the harsh winter of 1901.
He recalled the sunny day in February he helped his mother carry the
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