The Winter Thief Read Online Free PDF

chair, then dried her hair with a dirty underskirt. She opened the iron stove. Chunks of coal lay on top of kindling, ready for her to light. Silently thanking Gabriel, she wondered if he would come home tonight. She heard a commotion in the street. She peered out the grimy window, noting a strange brightness to the air, but could see nothing through the storm. After a few minutes, the sounds receded. Who knew what strange things happened at night in a city like this? Better to stay close to the fire and wait for Gabriel. She sat down next to the stove and examined her wool gown for signs of wear, fingering the embroidered sleeve that betrayed her family’s wealth.
    She smoked a cigarette and threw the stub on the floor. Bored and hungry, she went to the cupboard and took out the remains of last night’s meal. If only Apollo had come to Istanbul with them as planned, she would have had company now. Her dear friend Apollo Grigorian, whose words poured like brilliant water over his listeners, soothing and inspiring them. He gave the revolution a charmed life, as if it had already happened in their minds and there was no longer any need to fret. Most of all, Vera remembered that he had held her hand when she felt homesick, and had healed her without saying a word. She knew that Apollo’s absence weighed on Gabriel, who had counted on his help for the project he was carrying out in Istanbul. With a stab of anxiety, she wondered whether something had befallen her friend, but then scolded herself. Messages were lost and carts overturned. She knew that Apollo would pick up the spilled apples and move on.
    Vera wrapped herself in a quilt and sat back down beside the stove. She would go home to Moscow, she decided. Gabriel didn’t want her here, and she was a failure at being a socialist, a revolutionary, a wife, and, she added for good measure, a daughter. She smoked another cigarette and threw the butt into the stove, then lay down on the quilt. She kept the lamp turned low in case Gabriel should return. She thought about the beaded velvet gown her parents had given her last Christmas. She could almost feel the softness of it on her fingertips. Her baby sister, Tatiana, would be wearing it now. She remembered the weight of Tatiana’s heavy black hair in her hands as she plaited it and the smell of geraniums wintering on the windowsill.
    She was asleep when Gabriel slipped through the door and shut it quickly behind him. Gabriel Arti was a tall man with slightly rounded shoulders and a pleasant, undistinguished face with a mustache and clipped beard. He pulled off his wool cap, releasing a shock of sandy hair, and tickled her cheek with it until she woke.
    “Where were you this afternoon?” he asked, dropping his coat in the corner.
    “I went to see that publisher.”
    “God damn it.” Gabriel squatted down beside her, extending his hands to the fire. They were scraped and bleeding. “I told you not to go.”
    She got up and went to a ceramic jar in the corner of the room. “Let me heat some water to wash your hands.” She dipped a copper bowl in the water and set it to heat on top of the stove.
    “Well, did he agree? Was the fact that you put us in danger balanced by the publication of some tract that only five people will ever read?”
    “I wasn’t followed,” she insisted. “It was snowing. Why are you being like this?”
    “What difference would snow make, except to make it impossible for you to see whoever was following you?”
    “That’s unfair. I have a mission too, and you have no right to keep me locked up here.” She lit another cigarette. “Where were you? You never tell me where you go. Why do I have to report to you?” She threw the cigarette to the floor.
    Someone spoke in the street, a snatch of sound, then stopped suddenly. Gabriel rose to his feet so quickly he knocked the water from the stove. He put out the lamp and peered cautiously out the window. “Get your coat on.”
    “Why? I told you