Meeting Saint Olga

The light was dying, turning the bright St. Petersburg day into a brief eerie twilight where breath frosted in the air like plumes of smoke. People hurried home, citizens terrified of their city after dark. Only those with nowhere to go lingered, watching as the slender sheen of respectability fled the city along with the daytime shoppers.

Among those remaining a pair, clasped tightly together, moved with steady determination. They were anxious to escape the keen eyes of those who inhabited the darkness, not exactly afraid but wise in their caution. It had been a hard day, harder than most, and they were exhausted.

‘It was the only way,’ Bohdana insisted. She did not raise her voice since it was not wise to let on that a disagreement was underway. Any sign of a fracture in their unity would be seized upon as weakness. ‘If we had stayed I’d have had to go eventually.’

‘That was probably years off yet, Agnessa is not a harsh woman just unlucky,’ Akim replied but Bohdana looked unconvinced. ‘It’s done,’ he shrugged, ‘we left there and they won’t take us back in now, our beds were probably full the same night.’

‘She’s a whore,’ Bohdana replied bitterly.

‘Yes, but she is never waiting in line for stale food at the shelters where there is not enough or taking a bed in a shelter where they treat us like criminals.’

‘It is better on the outside,’ Bohdana agreed quietly. ‘We can move on, I’m not so tired now.’ Akim put his arm around his friends’ waist and she looped an arm over his shoulders, she hardly weighed anything when she struggled to walk. ‘I am so cold,’ she complained.

‘You feel alright to me,’ Akim told her despite the fact that her skin was burning with unhealthy heat. She was seized by shuddering which shook her body and her teeth chattered viciously in the quiet night.

‘We’re late,’ she said as if he had not spoken. ‘We shouldn’t be out this late.’

‘Almost there,’ Akim whispered back. She didn’t answer except to grunt in discomfort. She was leaning all of her slight weight on him and gripping his wrist desperately. Her gasping breaths smelled sweet and stale at the same time and her mouth hung open to draw the frozen air.

‘Are you hungry?’ Akim asked but she was beyond answering, she gave her head a tiny shake and Akim put aside the heavy hunger in his own belly. Ordinarily they would have stopped in the market place and searched the trash for anything edible which was too far gone for the vendors sell. Stale bread was usually the best they found but it was better than nothing on a day when the shelters had run out of food before a third of those gathered had received their tiny share.

They turned up a side street towards the ruined church of St. Olga, patron saint of Russia; even she had fallen on hard times and lay ruined and useless in the abandoned suburb. No one came to pray anymore, very few came at all.

The church was enormous, a fragile shell of its former beauty. The roof was largely gone; only skeletal rafters remained, spiking into the dark sky like accusing fingers reaching for the heavens. Against the crumbling walls ivy gripped the stonework, trying to pry the building apart. They slipped into the shadows and risked a brief rest.

‘Shurik will be watching the front,’ Akim told Bohdana knowing she wasn’t listening. ‘We’ll go in the side way.’ All he could hear was his friend’s hoarse breathing and the wind whistling through the gap in a broken stained glass window somewhere above his head.

They went five more steps and then, where another huge climbing ivy vine sought to break its way into the structure, they slid into the darkness and vanished.

The passage through the stonework was tight and difficult with Bohdana unable to carry her own weight. Pushing her in front of him Akim scraped his numb hands on the walls, drawing bright blood as he shoved and carried her through.

The church was ruined but, in a few places, inner walls had withstood the trials of time and war and weather. In the darkest corner there was a crumbling staircase too brittle to hold the weight of an adult but the two children climbed the remaining steps on hands and knees and crawled into a tiny space created by the junction between walls and roofed by part of a balcony overhead.

An adult could not have lain in the space nor knelt in it but Akim could kneel without banging his head. He laid Bohdana down next to him and shuffled the few scraps of bedding around and over her. Her fever was running high, worse than it had been before; he was overwhelmed by frustration and unable to help her.

Akim leant back against the wall of their shelter and pulled down the flap of fabric and cardboard which covered the front opening. On the worst nights the walls were covered with ice and any bare skin was left bruised purple by the cold. He left a gap to look out of and licked the coppery blood from his stinging knuckles. His whole body sang with tiredness.

The night was clear, the sliver of a new moon hung in the sky, and the air was alive with the energy of ice and bitterly cold. Some snow had already fallen and lay like dust on the tops of the crumbling walls.

Bohdana was shuffling in her sleep, trying to speak but making no sense. Akim took her hand in his and rubbed tenderly at the hard callous on her index finger. She wore the scars of two years living on the street and Akim felt guilty for every one of them, each mark was a failure in his attempts to protect her.

‘Hei!’ the voice from below made both of them jump. Akim had not seen anyone approaching, a word soothed Bohdana back to sleep. ‘Hei, Akim! It is Kostya!’

‘Hei, Kostya,’ Akim slithered down the ruined staircase and landed at the older man’s feet. Kostya was a true man of the streets; he had been sleeping rough in St. Petersburg even during the years of unrest.

‘How is my lamb?’ Kostya asked, he rubbed his grey beard and pulled the fabric which swathed his head lower over his bushy eyebrows. ‘Is she better?’

‘No, she is worse than this morning,’ Akim replied. ‘She is fevered and delirious.’

‘God save us,’ Kostya muttered. He shrugged off his thick coat revealing a tatty suit worn over a shaggy woollen jumper. ‘Take this and keep her warm,’ Akim took the coat which was heavy and warm from Kostya’s body. ‘Agnessa knows a doctor and we will persuade him come tomorrow.’

‘Why would he help us?’ Akim asked.

‘The doctor has a wife,’ Kostya replied with a wink and a grin. ‘There is often a way to get what we need, my little friend. Why don’t you go to Shurik? He would let you sleep in the cellar with the rest tonight.’

‘I don’t want him accusing us as soon as one of his kids coughs,’ Akim shrugged. ‘You know what Shurik is like about his family.’ Shurik lived in the crypt of the church, the man, his wife and six children. Shurik kept watch of the entrance and loudly threatened Akim with a mighty hiding whenever he ventured near.

‘He lives on the streets like the rest of us, we are all his family,’ Kostya replied. ‘But I can understand not wanting to own him anything. He always calls in his debts.’

‘I don’t like owing,’ Akim said heavily.

‘You don’t owe me a thing, Akim. Sleep well.’

Back in the shelter Akim laid the massive coat over Bohdana and watched as her tremors subsided under its warm weight. She slept peacefully for a while but when she opened her eyes she could not focus on him.

‘Where are we?’ she asked distractedly. ‘I can’t see the stars.’

‘We are at St. Olga’s, lamb’ he told her, puzzled. ‘We haven’t slept at the railway station for months.’

‘Oh,’ she seemed disappointed. ‘I liked being able to see the stars at night. It’s too quiet here.’

‘It was too noisy there,’ Akim reminded her. ‘There were so many children sleeping on the roofs, it wasn’t safe and the trains kept us awake. Don’t you remember?’

‘Mmm,’ Bohdana agreed drowsily. ‘I remember the trains and I remember Agnessa in her red dress calling out to men as they passed and going with them when they beckoned. Please don’t let me end up like Agnessa,’ she pleaded desperately. Tears had somehow sprung in her eyes and Akim wiped them away with his sleeve.

‘I won’t,’ he promised, though in truth he worried about how they would survive. They were both growing fast and the tiny amounts of food they scavenged or stole were not enough to sustain them. Bohdana was dangerously frail; she coughed all the time but would not take more than her share. He tried to imagine letting Bohdana go with a customer into the hotel and himself sitting on the park bench across the square, pretending to read the paper, as Kostya did, and secretly watching to make sure she came out again. ‘I won’t let that happen,’ he said again but she had already gone back to sleep.

The future was Akim’s greatest concern; Bohdana accused him of being distracted and once had talked of running away to spare him the burden that she must be. It frustrated him when she insisted on standing back with the adults and letting the youngest children get fed first, in his eyes she was close to being as vulnerable as they were but she was too proud to admit it. Her plight was a common sight on the streets, hollowing eyes and fevered skin which gradually eroded the strength of even the strongest man and forced him to his knees.

Agnessa and her doctor client were a small hope; a tiny light in the gathering darkness. Akim barely dared wish for it since Bohdana would be angry to owe a debt to a prostitute but better that than the increasing pain which would surely come.

The night changed as Akim waited. He watched more snow fall, a gentle sight in contrast with the viciousness of Bohdana’s struggle, she was breathing rapidly and noisily and occasionally tried to shrug the coverings off. Akim tended her patiently, pulling the blankets back over her and wrapping her up tightly. He told her stories, the tales she had liked when they had first met in the orphanage. Stories where her parents came back and rescued them both and where they all lived together in a big house with a bath, hot running water and a kitchen full of food. Eventually he fancied that the sound of his voice reached her, she smiled in her sleep and rolled over to face the wall.

It was the early hours of the morning by the time they came; the moon had vanished behind a veil of clouds and a thin line of light was forming in the East. Akim was awake and watchful, unwilling to let his eyes close even for a moment. He became aware of them as they crossed the ruined nave where priests once stood exalting god in his glorious heaven.

Akim slid down to the ground in front of Kostya and Agnessa who had come alone. There was no sign of the doctor who was to have been their only hope.

‘Here,’ Akim hefted Kostya’s weighty coat and when the surprised man didn’t take it he let it drop it in the dirt and snow. ‘Bohdana doesn’t need this any more.’