Her eyes shifted away from mine just for an instant. The corners of her mouth turned up, but it wasn’t a real smile. She hugged me and then took a step back, crumpling up the paper. “I’ll get rid of this. Lottie, you don’t sound like yourself at all. I’ve never known you to jump at shadows. Theater people talk and talk and talk. You know we like the sounds of our own voices. It means nothing. The Okhrana are suspicious of everyone. I don’t want you to worry about us. You have enough of your own worries.”
She sounded so reasonable. It was true that artists and writers were always viewed with suspicion. Neither Celeste nor Kalev would do anything to jeopardize the theater. They’d worked too hard. The baron was trying to unsettle me by making insinuations. I couldn’t let him do that.
More voices came from below as a group of people clattered up the steps. A man’s voice rose over the noise, someone speaking English with an American accent.
“Him again!” Celeste pushed her hair off her face. “If you want to help, you can talk to the American.” She nodded in the direction of the stairs. “He’s just arrived in the country. I don’t even know who brought him here last week, but he’s been here almost every night since then because he says he’s ‘mad about theater.’ He doesn’t speak Russian and his French is atrocious, so he can’t talk to that many people.”
The group reached the top of the stairs and Celeste introduced everyone, but I didn’t quite catch the man’s name. He certainly looked like an American: extremely tall with a lanky build, fair-haired and already balding, though he appeared to be only a few years older than me. I don’t know why the young Americans I met would never be mistaken for Russians. I suppose it was because they smiled too much. This one was grinning away as if he’d never been happier.
We were swept back into the apartment by more new arrivals coming in behind us. I saw a few people leaving, otherwise we literally would not have found space for any more.
The American and I ended up back near the zakuski table, which at this point was nearly empty. I noticed Dmitri across the room. He was leaning down, listening to one of the actresses. She was very pretty, and whatever she was saying made Dmitri smile.
“I’m so glad I’ve met another American!” the American yelled in my ear, making me jump.
I struggled to find a way to respond to that. “How long have you been in Russia?” I asked.
“A week. It’s sure something! The people are so friendly. A fellow brought me here last week and I felt so welcome, I just had to come back. I’m mad about the theater. Did a bit of acting in college.”
“What kind of work do you do?” I thought perhaps he worked in a bank. There were scores of young men sent to work in the foreign banks in Petrograd.
“I’m a newspaperman. The St. Louis Chronicle Dispatch’s first-ever foreign correspondent.” He pointed at himself. “That’s me. Had a tricky time getting into Russia, and once I got here, I had an even worse time finding somewhere to stay, even with a cousin working at the embassy! All the foreigners who want to go home are too scared the Germans will torpedo their ships, so the hotels are jam-packed. Guess where I’m sleeping?” He grinned.
The conversation was taking a bit of an odd turn, but I decided I’d play along. “I can’t guess. Where?”
“The billiard table at the Hotel de France!” He seemed so pleased with this bit of hardship that I had to smile.
His next words were drowned out when a man across the room began to speak in a loud, deep voice. The speaker was a big, burly man a head taller than the rest of the crowd. He shook his finger at a man next to him. “You can’t stick your head in the sand!” the man bellowed in Russian.
“Not that fellow again!” The American threw up his hands. “He’ll shut down the party if he carries on. I met him here a few days ago and he wouldn’t stop yelling. He’s some sort of playwright who writes political plays.”
Political plays. That didn’t sound good. The Tamms didn’t put on political plays. I’d heard that the only theater people who did so staged them in random spots without any advertising. It was too dangerous to do it any other way.
The playwright’s voice grew louder. “We can’t wait much longer! We need peace before the country is destroyed. We must have a new government!”
“What in the devil is he saying?” the American asked.
The man continued, practically roaring, and I translated. “‘The traitoress empress should be locked up in a convent or sent away. Who knows what all she’s done to help the Germans? She’s going to let them have our country if she’s not stopped.’”
Even though I was just translating, I felt like I should not be saying the words. I couldn’t believe the man was talking in front of so many people, most of whom he probably didn’t know. Such words could get him arrested.
I looked around to find Dmitri. I didn’t see him anywhere. I didn’t see the actress, either. It was so hot, I couldn’t get enough air, and the scent of the greasy sausage plate mixed with the cigarette smoke made me queasy.
“I have to go,” I said to the man. Without waiting to see if he replied, I pushed my way through the crowd, trying to spot Hap and Miles.
I got to Hap first. “Have you seen Dmitri?”
Hap shrugged. “Not for a while. I suppose he left.”
“We need to go too. It’s getting late.” If Dmitri was still around somewhere, he could find his own way home.
Both Hap and Miles protested, but when I said they’d have to walk home in the cold if they wouldn’t go with me, they gave in. I noticed that the package Miles had been carrying was still sitting on the floor next to the piano.
“We can wait long enough for you to give Peet his present,” I said, pointing at it.
Miles mumbled something.
“What?”
“He can open it later. Let’s go.”
Downstairs, Hugo dozed in his chair, not stirring at all as we slipped through the front door, trying not to let in any more of the frigid air than necessary.
When we got outside, I noticed a man across the street standing in a doorway. I couldn’t make out his features but I could see the glowing tip of his cigarette. I wanted to bolt back inside. I turned away, not wanting the man to see my face, and then I noticed that, as usual, Hap didn’t have on a hat. Standing under the streetlamp in front of the theater, his red hair was practically a beacon, and when he and Miles began talking about the party in English, their voices carried in the quiet night air.
“Find us a ride,” I said to Hap in Russian so he’d stop talking, even though I was sure that if the man was there to watch us, he would have already noticed everything about us that stood out.
I pretended to listen to Miles while we waited, and nearly pushed them both in the sleigh when it drew up, glad Hap had managed to find something big enough for all three of us.
We pulled away and I resisted the urge to turn around, though my shoulders tightened as if I could feel the man still watching us.
“Lottie, you aren’t listening,” Miles said.
“What?”
“I said, how are you going to answer Elder Red?” Miles’s voice was raspy. It always was after he spent any length of time in a smoky room.
“What?” I asked again. Elder Red was what the boys called our grandmother, our father’s mother. I didn’t understand why Miles was asking about her at that particular moment. When we received our infrequent letters, I responded, though her letters were a litany of complaints. She’d hated my mother, and I was never sure she even wanted us as grandchildren.
Miles coughed, but got it under control fairly easily. “Didn’t you get a letter too? Elder Red said she was writing to you in the one she sent to us. Ours was full of fire and brimstone, even more than usual.”
Hap threw his fur onto Miles. “Here, I don’t need this. It’s not that cold. Charlotte, we decided you’re going to have to be the one to write her back and tell her we aren’t coming.”
“Wait. She wants us to c
ome visit her?” The few times we had seen her, she could barely contain her irritation at our existence. She never came to accept that her son had married a young actress he’d met on a business trip to France instead of marrying someone from an approved “good” family, and had then had the audacity to produce three grandchildren without impeccable pedigrees.
“No, she wants us to come live in America,” Miles said. “Our letter was full of dire predictions about our futures if we stayed here. You’ll tell her no, of course, but find a way where she won’t cut us out of the will.”
“Start over,” I said. “You must be leaving out some parts.”
“We’re not,” Hap said, repeating Miles’s version of the letter.
The sleigh pulled up in front of the house and Hap jumped out. “Don’t just sit there,” he said. “Pay the man.”
I followed them inside and they threw off their coats and their felt boots and were racing upstairs in the time it took me to unbutton my own coat.
“Has the tutor come home yet?” I asked Osip, trying to keep my voice casual. I had more than my grandmother’s letter to worry about.
“No, he’s not back. You have a letter. I’m sorry I forgot to give it to you earlier.” Osip went over to a hall table and brought me an envelope that had been lying on a tray.
“Thank you. Good night, Osip,” I said as I went upstairs. The letter felt heavy in my hand. A familiar pang of pain hit my right temple, one that happened every time I faced a letter of hers. Once in my room I decided just to get it over with, so I ripped the envelope open.
My grandmother’s handwriting was tiny and precise.
Dear Charlotte,
I don’t wish to be so blunt, but I see no other choice. Your desire to be present as your half sisters grow up is admirable, but there are others who can oversee their upbringing. You only have a few years as an eligible young woman, and you shouldn’t waste them in such a foreign place.
I was shocked to hear of your plans to go to medical school. What kind of influences are you under to come up with such a scheme? You will doom yourself to a life of toil, and no man will want to marry a doctor. It is beyond absurd. Nursing is fine for young women in time of war, and again, admirable, but it is not meant as a career for the women of this family. If your father were alive, I’m sure he would not approve.
I must insist you make plans for your immediate removal from Russia. I allowed you to stay in the aftermath of your mother’s death because I thought you needed time in a familiar place to deal with your grief. But it’s been over a year now, and it’s time for you three to move on with the rest of your lives.
I fear you will resist this, so I am going to have to make this an ultimatum in the hopes you will come to realize that what I am doing is for your own good. Come back to the United States or I will remove you and your brothers from my will. I’m sure your mother wasted the rather substantial fortune that your father left her, but I don’t want to see my grandchildren suffer from her poor decisions. Come back to the United States and we will make suitable arrangements for your and your brothers’ education. If you want to go to an appropriate women’s college, that can be arranged.
Think over this letter carefully before you respond. I know you have inherited your mother’s stubbornness. You must work to overcome that.
Your affectionate grandmother,
Elizabeth Mason
I threw the letter down, my head throbbing so much I could barely see. I didn’t care about her money. I could support myself as a doctor. I certainly wasn’t going to go back to the United States so that a grandmother I didn’t know could control my life.
I would tell her I wasn’t coming but I would not speak for my brothers. They were going to have to do that themselves.
I went to the window and looked out. No sign of Dmitri. I stayed there for a long time until the cold drove me to my bed.
Chapter Eight
WHEN I WOKE, I jumped up and went back to the window. There was no one standing outside. I didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad sign. It could have meant the secret police had already decided that since we’d been at the Tamms’, we were definitely on the list as agitators.
I needed to know when Dmitri had gotten home. Had he left the party with the actress? Where had they gone? I ran through some possibilities in my head until I realized how ridiculous those thoughts were. I should have been far more worried that Dmitri had gone somewhere to report the presence of potential anti-czarists at the party. The Horse Guard, after all, was one of the most loyal of the czar’s regiments. It was time to get more information about Dmitri Antonovich.
When I went downstairs, I heard Osip and Archer arguing in the dining room.
“You are a lazy good-for-nothing!” Archer said in a loud voice. “You should have been done polishing the silver yesterday. You’re ruining the whole schedule.”
“I was busy polishing the brass,” Osip said in an equally loud voice. “There are not enough people to do all the work here anymore. I don’t want to do a maid’s job. Vladislav says we should only have to work eight hours a day and be paid enough so we can drink champagne just like the rich.”
Archer’s voice grew louder. “Vladislav doesn’t know how to do a decent day’s work. He’s lucky he has a job. You’re lucky you have a job.” Osip began to protest, but Archer cut him off and kept talking. “You’d be out on the streets without this. You may still be out on the streets if I decide you’re more trouble than you are worth.”
“Just you wait!” Osip shouted. “Revolution is coming—then we’ll all have apartments of our own and all the food we want to eat.”
Archer laughed. “You fool! No one is going to just give you an apartment.”
“You wait.” I heard Osip stomping away.
I didn’t think Archer would actually fire Osip. He’d have to hire someone else, and he was very particular about who worked in the house. Although there were certainly plenty of men needing work, Archer wouldn’t hire anyone who didn’t fit his idea of the perfect servant. He did give too many tasks to Osip, but since my stepfather left Archer in complete control of running the house, it was one area neither my mother nor I had ever tried to intervene in.
I knocked on the door to the library and then went in. It smelled so strongly of cigars I wanted to open all the windows and let the room air out. Without my mother around to protest, Papa smoked far too many cigars. He sat at his desk, writing in his usual slow and careful way, a cigar sitting in an ashtray next to him.
“Good morning. How is the writing going?” I asked, praying he would not confuse me with my mother again.
He looked up. “Lottie! I suppose you are off to the hospital? I’m happy to report that the writing is going very, very well. I’ve finished the war with Turkey.” He didn’t slur any of his words and he seemed like his old self.
“Wonderful!” I said as I pulled up a chair.
For a moment he seemed a bit taken aback by my enthusiasm, and then he smiled. “It’s a most interesting time period. It seems like it all happened just yesterday, though most people would consider 1878 a long time ago.”
1878. That meant Papa had almost forty more years to cover in the memoir. At least he’d have something to occupy him for a long time.
“1878, you say? You would have been about Dmitri Antonovich’s age then, wouldn’t you?” I asked. “Is Dmitri related to Prince Shulga?” Not the smoothest transition, but my stepfather loved talking about family connections almost as much as he loved talking about battles.
My ploy worked. “A cousin by marriage,” Papa said. “Dmitri Antonovich is the great-nephew of the prince’s brother-in-law, Count Lieven.”
I tried to untangle the meaning of that while Papa continued to talk.
“The boy has a sad history. His parents and siblings died of cholera in the 1910 epidemic.”
My throat tightened. Dmitri had lost his entire family. I’d heard about the cholera epidemic. That was a year before
we’d come to Russia, but people still talked about it because so many had died. I’d never heard of anyone who’d lost their whole family. That would be like being plunged into a bottomless pit. I didn’t even want to think of the horror of it. How had he survived?
I realized my stepfather was still speaking. “And then, after the count’s own grandson died, Dmitri Antonovich became his heir, so the count arranged for the boy to take his grandson’s place in the Horse Guard. The family has always had someone serving in that regiment.”
I forced myself to focus on what my stepfather was saying. It explained why Dmitri’s university career had been cut short, but it didn’t explain everything. “Why does he want to tutor? I’d think he’d recover much faster at home. Or he could be working in a staff position for his regiment. Don’t they find desk jobs for injured soldiers?”
“I don’t know. Something about a problem with the officer in charge of the regimental office who has a grudge against the count.”
Archer’s voice from the doorway startled me. “Baron Eristov is here to see you, General.”
My heart skipped a beat. The baron had never come to the house before, as far as I knew.
Before my stepfather could respond, loud voices came from upstairs. “I want to go first!” Hap shouted.
“I’m already here!” Stepan shouted back. I hurried out the door to tell them not to yell, but as I came into the hall I heard glass breaking. I saw the baron by the door, and then a motion made me glance up. Hap dropped something made of rope over the railing on the upper landing. It hit the floor along with the sound of more glass breaking. He swore. Stepan leaned so far over the railing I thought he might fall.
“What are you doing?” I tried not to shriek. I don’t know when I’d taken up shrieking as a means of communication, but I found myself resorting to it all too often.
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