“Only tea for me,” she said, wishing he would shower his attentions elsewhere.
“Because of the child in your belly?” Kezia looked at him in surprise and he shrugged. “Haven’t you heard I can read minds?”
“And see the future,” she added, wanting to see his reaction.
He smiled without humor. “Yes, I’m a very lucky man.”
As he downed his drink, she continued her appraisal. Was he truly a seer or just a drunk, sex-crazed farmer? She wasn’t sure what to make of him. He seemed quite mad.
When his hand moved to her leg and slid up her skirt, Kezia was too shocked to react at first.
“I think we have many things to talk about, you and I,” he whispered.
She grabbed his hand to stop him and their fingers locked. A shudder passed through her before she could wrench her hand from his, and she stood up, almost overturning the chair.
He chuckled. “Most women do not run away from me,” he said, touching her arm.
Kezia pulled away, about to be sick. “Excuse me, I must go.”
All eyes were on them, with a dozen women ready to take her place. As Kezia rushed toward the door, Rasputin called after her, “Many good blessings on the health of your daughter!”
He raised the vodka glass.
Kezia did not question how he knew the baby was a girl. She turned and nodded to him in acknowledgment, but she could not offer him a similar blessing. For when their hands had touched, she caught a glimpse of Rasputin’s future. He would be murdered in ten years’ time, his body brutally defiled by the family he was drinking with today.
Kezia could tell by the way his eyes surveyed the room that Rasputin knew it too.
***
When Kezia’s daughter, Galina, came into the world, the years of her life were measured not by the inches her body grew but by the violent changes happening around her.
When Galina was eight, Russia possessed the largest army in the world and went to war with Germany. When she was ten, Rasputin—who had made his way into the private circle of the tsar—was murdered, just as Kezia had portended.
Rasputin too had foreseen his future. He had told the tsar that if he died, and if Russia went to war with Germany, there would be “grief and no light… the war would bring an ocean of tears and there would be no counting them.”
By the time Galina reached eleven, the First War ended, leading to the country’s great revolution. Imperial Russia collapsed and gave rise to Communism and the Soviet Union. The new leadership wiped out the old regime. They had the tsar and tsarina, their five children, and their physician all killed in the same room.
Sergei quit the theater, fearful that any involvement in political art would bring their family unwelcome notice. Anything that was not propaganda went underground. Plays that contained social commentary were no longer performed in the glittering halls of established theaters but by candlelight in the basements of private homes. At Kezia’s urging Sergei joined the Communist Party. She had seen what would happen to those who didn’t.
Fashion became an important symbol in the Communist era, and Galina embraced this new idea of materialism for the working class. She wanted to design clothes. She found work apprenticing with a popular designer who was fixated on creating the attire of the future. The government wanted to promote new fashions distinct from Western styles to show a better life was possible under Communism.
Kezia didn’t know what to think of the strange, minimalist garments her daughter now wore. She was relieved when Galina married and she convinced the young couple to live in the family apartment so they could all stay together. To Kezia, nothing was as important.
***
There was an old folk saying in Russia: if you speak against the wolf, then speak against him well. Two years into the birth of the Soviet Union, a new leader emerged. He was a wolf named Stalin and no one could speak against him. His rise to power was accompanied by a storm that upended every sense of normal life.
First he stole the farms and shipped 15 million peasants to prisons across the Taiga. Their rights would not be recognized. The only record of their suffering was written in the sky by the steam from the trains as they were taken away. A famine unlike any seen before decimated the country. Compassion became unthinkable.
Galina’s daughter, Nadenka, came into the world three years after Stalin rose to power. Kezia lovingly called her granddaughter Nettie, and soon everyone else did too.
Nettie was a solemn, thoughtful girl who grew up listening to her grandmother tell the fortunes of those who quietly came to seek her counsel. With Communism, any occult or esoteric practice had become a part of the underground culture, hidden yet still alive.
Nettie would often frown when she listened to a card reading, as if Kezia had said the wrong thing. Kezia would catch the criticism in her granddaughter’s eyes and tease, “So the egg thinks it’s smarter than the chicken?”
Then they would share a secret smile. Kezia knew Nettie had the sight, perhaps even more than she did.
Kezia still studied her grandmother’s diary, and Marina had taken care to note Simza’s knowledge of the body. According to Simza, the body was a portent of the future, and Kezia became concerned about Nettie’s moles. The marks either signified great prosperity or adversity, and Kezia felt certain the two large moles on the back of Nettie’s neck implied the latter. Kezia would often examine the moles and shake her head. “These signal not one, but two misfortunes. And these…” She would turn her focus to the moles beneath Nettie’s shoulder blades. “You will have a hard life, my child, and face many disappointments.”
