“We’re an afterthought, the tail of the fox, not the feet, the head, the mouth, as if we didn’t have the same rights as men. But I’m not here to argue with you, though there’s no shortage of reasons to. I’m here to see Father Gapon, I need to give him a personal message.”

“Are you going to march tomorrow?”

“Clementine! If you march, don’t make any trouble. You had the nerve to call him an ‘infiltrator,’ don’t you remember?”

“That was her? I sure remember!”

“Get out of here!”

“Down with the anarchists!”

“Anarchist!”

“Calm down, Father Gapon has been called much worse things than a government agent.”

“I need to speak with him in person,” Clementine repeats, unperturbed by this reception.

“About what? Why don’t you tell us what it’s about?”

“I’m not going to discuss it with you. Only with him. You won’t listen to what I have to say because I’m a woman.”

Aleksandra is listening but doesn’t understand. She knows a lot about Father Gapon, but she has no idea what they’re talking about. And what is this about Clementine being an “anarchist”? She’s never heard that word. Is it the opposite of a socialist revolutionary? Or a democratic Marxist? A Menshevik? Or a Bolshevik? Her brother Vladimir throws these words around, and they’ve filled her head, like pilings for a bridge she doesn’t know how to build.

“Stop arguing,” Volodin interrupts. “They told me where Father Gapon is, let’s go.”

They head toward the river, to the flood-prone, low-lying land known as the Haven, where the laborers who man the mills, the furnaces, and the factories live in miserable, haphazard shanties without any public utilities. They cross the Haven, which could be a play area for children but instead is a trash heap where social outcasts live.

Thousands have gathered in the church of the Holy Mother of Pardon: men, women, children. Father Gapon is speaking animatedly at the podium.

“Will the police and the army dare to stop us?”

“They won’t dare!” the congregation replies, voices raised.

“Comrades, is it better to die for our cause than to continue living as we have done to this day?”

“We’ll give our lives!”

“Do you swear to die for our cause?”

“We swear!”

“If you swear, raise your hand.”

Thousands of hands shoot into the air.

“Comrades, what if those who swear today lose heart and don’t join us tomorrow?”

“We curse them! We curse them!”

Father Gapon begins to read the petition they’ll deliver to the tsar at the Winter Palace tomorrow. He pauses after each sentence, and the congregation repeats after him—by now, they all know it by heart:

“We have come to see you, Father, seeking justice and protection.”

The crowd repeats after him.