Fall of Giants

One bitterly cold day early in March Grigori got an afternoon pass and decided to go and see Vladimir, who would be with the landlady while Katerina was at work. He put on his army greatcoat and set off through icy streets. On Nevsky Prospekt he caught the eye of a child beggar, a girl of about nine, standing on a corner in an arctic wind. Something about her bothered him, and he frowned as he walked past. A minute later he realized what had struck him. She had given him a look of sexual invitation. He was so shocked that he stopped in his tracks. How could she be a whore at that age? He turned around, intending to question her, but she was gone.

He walked on with a troubled mind. He knew, of course, that there were men who wanted sex with children: he had learned that when he and little Lev sought help from a priest, all those years ago. But somehow the picture of that nine-year-old pathetically imitating a come-hither smile wrenched at his heart. It made him want to weep for his country. We are turning our children into prostitutes, he thought: can it possibly get any worse?

He was in a grim mood when he reached his old lodgings. As soon as he entered the house he heard Vladimir bawling. He went up to Katerina’s room and found the child alone, his face red and contorted with crying. He picked him up and rocked him.

The room was clean and tidy, and smelled of Katerina. Grigori came here most Sundays. They had a routine: they went out in the morning, then came home and made lunch, with food Grigori brought from the barracks when he could get any. Afterward, while Vladimir had his nap, they made love. On Sundays when there was enough to eat, Grigori was blissfully happy in this room.

Vladimir’s yelling became a droning discontented grizzle. With the child in his arms, Grigori went to look for the landlady, who was supposed to be watching Vladimir. He found her in the laundry, a low-built extension at the back of the house, running wet bedsheets through a mangle. She was a woman of about fifty with gray hair tied up in a scarf. She had been plump back in 1914 when Grigori left to go in the army, but now her throat was scraggy and her jowls hung loose. Even landladies were hungry these days.

She looked startled and guilty when she saw him. Grigori said: “Didn’t you hear the child crying?”

“I can’t rock him all day,” she said defensively, and went on turning the handle of the wringer.

“Perhaps he’s hungry.”

“He’s had his milk,” she said quickly. Her response was suspiciously rapid, and Grigori guessed she had drunk the milk herself. He wanted to strangle her.

In the cold air of the unheated laundry he felt Vladimir’s soft baby skin radiating heat. “I think he’s got a fever,” he said. “Didn’t you notice his temperature?”

“Am I a doctor, now, too?”

Vladimir stopped crying and fell into a state of lassitude that Grigori found more worrying. He was normally an alert, busy child, curious and mildly destructive, but now he lay still in Grigori’s arms, his face flushed, his eyes staring.

Grigori put him back on his bed in the corner of Katerina’s room. He took a jug from Katerina’s shelf, left the house, and hurried to the next street, where there was a general store. He bought some milk, a little sugar in a twist of paper, and an apple.

When he got back Vladimir was the same.

He warmed the milk, dissolved the sugar in it, and broke a crust of stale bread into the mixture, then fed morsels of soaked bread to Vladimir. He recalled his mother giving this to baby Lev when he was sick. Vladimir ate as if he was hungry and thirsty.

When all the bread and milk were gone, Grigori took out the apple. With his pocketknife he cut it into segments and peeled a slice. He ate the peel himself and offered the rest to Vladimir, saying: “Some for me, some for you.” In the past the boy had been amused by this procedure, but now he was indifferent, and let the apple fall from his mouth.

There was no doctor nearby, and anyway Grigori could not afford the fee, but there was a midwife a few streets away. She was Magda, the pretty wife of Grigori’s old friend Konstantin, the secretary of the Putilov Bolshevik Committee. Grigori and Konstantin played chess whenever they got the chance-Grigori usually won.

Grigori put a clean diaper on Vladimir, then wrapped him in the blanket from Katerina’s bed, leaving only his eyes and nose visible. They went out into the cold.

Konstantin and Magda lived in a two-room apartment with Magda’s aunt, who watched their three small children. Grigori was afraid Magda would be out delivering a baby, but he was in luck and she was at home.

Magda was knowledgeable and kindhearted, though a bit brisk. She felt Vladimir’s forehead and said: “He has an infection.”

“How bad?”

“Does he cough?”

“No.”

“What are his stools like?”

“Runny.”

She took off Vladimir’s clothes and said: “I suppose Katerina’s breasts have no milk.”

“How did you know that?” Grigori said in surprise.