“Daria will do it for me.”
“Your worshipping shadow. Your slave.”
Olga was sarcastic about Daria, and, I thought, jealous, for she had no devoted servant of her own to follow her everywhere. At the mention of Daria I realized, for the first time that day, that she had not been at my side or within easy reach ever since the previous afternoon’s operation. I had not heard her dog bark or little five-year-old Iskra prattle on for some hours. It was unlike Daria to stay away like that.
I found the crisp white apron and changed into it. Then, thanking Olga, I went back into the ward, to the boy’s bedside. To Michael’s bedside.
I leaned over him.
“Pretty girl,” he murmured in Russian, then added some words in a language I didn’t understand. Then he winced, and I felt his forehead. He was hot.
I fretted over him for the next three hours, while he tossed uneasily in the narrow bed and I kept trying to find a doctor who was free to examine him.
There were fewer and fewer doctors available. Not only in our hospital, but in all the hospitals in or near the capital. Many had volunteered to go into the field with the regiments when the war began, and a number of those had been killed along with the men they tended. According to Constantin, whose work at the ministry involved training and recruiting physicians for the army, it was becoming harder and harder to find qualified men—and a sprinkling of women—who had both the skill and the stamina to treat the wounded, to work long hours in overcrowded wards where the screams of men in pain clashed jarringly with the scratchy sound of gramophone records.
Finally a harried-looking doctor responded to my pleas and came over to Michael’s bedside. He felt his forehead, then turned down the blanket and peeled away the bandages from his chest. There was inflammation, and a yellowish liquid oozing from the wound that I had not noticed before.
“Purulence,” was all the doctor said. “He’ll not last the night.”
Purulence was a terrible word, a death sentence. It meant infection.
“Oh no, you must be wrong. He had a good night last night, following his operation. He had no fever and no trouble breathing.”
The doctor shrugged. “You can see for yourself. You can smell for yourself. There’s rot in the wound.”
“Then we must treat it.”
“We have nothing to treat it with, except iodine.” (We kept iodine for the treatment of gonorrhea, which many of our patients had.)
“Then we will use iodine.”
He shrugged. “If you must. But I would save it for the men who have a chance. This one doesn’t. You might as well pull the blanket up over his head now.”
Anger welled up in me as I watched the doctor walk away. How dare he consign this lovely boy to death?
Just then I caught sight of a patient who had died being laid on a stretcher, a shroud over his body, a candle being lit and placed beside his head. Those caring for the corpse paused to cross themselves and bow their heads, then lifted the stretcher and went out to where the death carts waited.
No, I said aloud. No, this boy, this Michael that I care about—he will not die. Not if I can prevent it. And I went out to fetch the iodine.
Thirty-four
Returning with the iodine, I swabbed it over Michael’s chest wound and on his forehead, the strong scent of the brown liquid overpowering the stink of his infected wounds.
“Now then,” I said as I finished, doing my best to sound as confident as possible. “That ought to help a lot.”
I kept him as comfortable as I could, straightening the sheet beneath his body and turning his pillow over so that it would be cool under his head.
It was when I lifted his pillow that I saw the dagger.
It was a long, straight sharp-pointed steel dagger, the handle carved with silver and set with two gleaming blue jewels. There was writing carved into the handle in a script I couldn’t read.
I turned the pillow and put it back under Michael’s head, covering the sharp blade.
I heard the matron’s quick, efficient step and tried to look busy as she passed Michael’s bed.
“Wash that one,” she said in passing, sniffing the air. “Now.”
After many months of nursing I had become used to washing men’s naked bodies, or parts of their bodies. At first I had been embarrassed, having only seen Constantin naked and my brother when he was ill and the physicians were packing him in ice in an effort to bring down his fever. I tried to look on this task of body-washing as another in a series of necessary chores, like washing the drinking glasses or disinfecting a bed after a man had died in it.
But as I gathered the towels, soap and bowl of warm water I needed to wash Michael, I felt a tingle of excitement. My breath came faster, and as I ran my soapy hands over his shoulders and broad chest with its curling dark hair (avoiding the wound) I could feel my heart beating faster as well. He was slim, muscular, lithe of limb and well proportioned. His body, I saw, was as beautiful as his face, the skin smooth and unlined, and of a ripe golden-brown color.
I allowed my eyes to wander down his torso, to his navel, and below to where his strong loins began. I tried to avert my eyes, but could not help but admire what I saw. He looked like the statue of Apollo in the gardens at Tsarskoe Selo, his male organs virile and well formed, his legs lean and as shapely as any athlete’s. My hands trembling, I went on washing him—neglecting no part. It was the most sensuous experience I had yet known, and I confess that I lingered over his belly and taut buttocks. When I finished, and began dressing him again, I was intensely embarrassed to discover Daria standing behind me, watching me.
“I saw you with him yesterday,” she said. “When they first brought him in. And later on, when you were tending to him. I knew. I could tell.”
“Tell what?” I asked, but my tone betrayed me. For of course I knew what it was that she could tell.
“That the two of you have—started to join.”
“I don’t even know him.”
“You know his body. And I believe you have begun to see into one another’s hearts.” It was the first time I had ever heard her speak that way. I remembered that she had been in love, that her fiancé had been killed by my father’s Cossacks. There was a depth of feeling behind her previously flinty exterior.
“You see a great deal.”
“I came for your apron. I know you need me to wash and iron it.”
I took off my dirty apron and handed it to Daria. She was rummaging in a pocket of her skirt.
“I’ve brought a plaster for his chest. My grandmother taught me how to make it. It is mostly herbs—some catnip, some hyssop, some herbs grown only in Siberia. It is an old remedy for healing wounds.”
“Thank you Daria.”
She smiled—another rarity!—and went away.
I applied iodine and Daria’s plaster to Michael’s chest wound, calculating that two helpful remedies had to be better than one. Then I covered him with the blanket, touched his face lightly with my fingertips and went about my other duties.
In going from bed to bed I crossed paths with Olga, who looked me up and down.
“Hmm,” she said. “You don’t really look any different.”
“And why should I?”
“Because of your romance.”
“There is no romance. Only a patient I care about.”
“Care for.”
“Care about.”
“Dear me,” she said in her most syrupy voice, “what will Constantin say?”
I didn’t reply.
“Oh, and Niuta wants to know where you have been. Why you weren’t with us for supper last night. Or has it been two nights?”
“One of the patients who had an operation had to be watched. I volunteered.”
“Daria says he is very handsome.”
“He is very ill.”
“He doesn’t have the typhus, does he? I’ve been seeing more and more cases in the past two days. If he gets the rash, you’ll know he has
it. Don’t go near him. You don’t want to die because of one handsome boy.” She started to walk on past me, then turned. “By the way, I met a handsome boy too. And his name is Victor.” She emphasized the “V.”
I started to say something tart but stopped myself. I was feeling expansive, generous.
“Good luck with him, Oliushka.”
The day wore on, and every time I returned to Michael’s bedside he looked worse. His cheeks were flushed and hot, he tossed uneasily, and when I changed his bandage, the skin around his wound was swollen and very red, with pus leaking from it. I saw no signs of the dreaded red rash that was the mark of typhus, however and that, at least, was positive.
I wrapped him in cold towels and reapplied the iodine and Daria’s herbal plaster. On an impulse I took the dagger and put the handle into his open hand. At once his fingers closed over it, and a faint sound came from his lips.
“What did you say?”
“They fear us,” he murmured in a hoarse whisper. “Russians fear us.” Then he opened his hand, letting the dagger fall onto the blanket. I put it back under his pillow.
When midnight came and Michael was no better I sent a messenger to the palace to ask for the icon of St. Simon Verkhoturie, the powerful icon Father Gregory had sent to my father years earlier. If Michael was beyond human help, as the doctor thought, at least he was not beyond divine help. The icon could work its wonders.
After waiting an hour or more I was surprised to see mama come into the ward, dressed all in black as she always was in those wartime days, her hair arranged very simply, a clear sign that she had come in haste on learning of my request for the icon.
I was surprised to see her, because she had once again become withdrawn and was living the life of a semi-invalid.
In the first months of the war, from August 1914 when it began until Christmastime, mama had been volunteering in the wards just as Olga and I and Marie were doing and we had often worked together, or at least near one another. But then, with the coming of winter, her energy faltered and she suffered with her migraines and with pains in her leg that worsened her limp. The demanding care of the wounded was not possible for her, even occasionally, nor were her other pursuits of money-raising and the organization of clinics. She mourned the war dead in the solitude of her mauve sitting room—to excess, I thought—and her one concern became to support papa and convince him to take over the command of the Russian army, which he did, despite his dislike of all public duties and his lack of experience of command.
But here she was, limping on her sore leg and looking as if she hadn’t been sleeping well.
“Where is the icon, mama? This patient is dying.”
“I sent the icon to your father at his command post in Mogilev. But I brought you a stick Our Friend brought from the Holy Land.”
She held out an ordinary-looking piece of wood, about two feet long, with a few small twigs branching out from it. It was quite dead.
“An old stick? What good is that?”
“It carries his blessing.”
“It may carry his blessing, but he certainly did not find it in the Holy Land. He was never anywhere near the Holy Land. The police know that for certain.”
“Many lies are told about him. You will see that this is no ordinary stick. Touch the patient where the pain is, and observe the stick. It carries Our Friend’s power.” And having delivered her holy object, she left.
I didn’t want anything to do with Father Gregory or his stick. I threw it on the floor, resisting an urge to stomp on it and smash it. But later, hearing Michael’s increasingly labored breathing, all my instincts telling me that he could not last much longer, I remembered how Father Gregory cured my Artipo, how he knew in some uncanny fashion that Constantin’s eye hurt him and that he needed new glasses, how he had stopped my brother’s bleeding many times and eased my parents’ anxieties again and again. What was it that he had said to me and Constantin the day we visited his apartment? That he was flawed but that the power that flowed through him was of great force nonetheless?
I bent down and picked up the stick and placed it on Michael’s chest.
Right away I thought I saw some color come into his pale face. He fluttered his eyelids a little. At first I assumed I must be mistaken, that the slight changes I thought I detected in him were only tricks of the dim light—or illusions, the wished-for result of my fervent hope for his recovery. But the longer I watched, the more I was convinced that there was indeed a change, that Michael’s forehead was not as hot as it had been and that his rasping breaths were coming more easily.
Keeping the stick in place on his chest, I lay down beside Michael and, yielding to my weariness, went to sleep.
When I awoke at dawn, something remarkable had happened. On one of the twigs a white bud had appeared. By midmorning the bud had opened. It was a small white flower that gave forth a heavy sweet scent, a scent so strong that it overcame the reek of the iodine and the stink of the infection, indeed it seemed to fill the entire ward with its perfume.
And a few hours later, when I changed Michael’s bandage, I saw that the wound on his chest was no longer inflamed, or weeping the awful yellowish ichor. There was no stench of inflammation—only the delicious scent from the white flower, and with it, a growing certainty in my heart that this boy I cared about so much would soon be well.
Thirty-five
Two weeks later Michael was well enough to get out of bed, and a month later, around the time of my birthday, he was fit enough to go with me out into the small hospital garden and sit on a bench beside me in the spring sunshine.
He turned his face to the sun and shut his eyes, breathing deeply, a smile on his face. Then he kissed me, a long, lingering kiss that left me dizzy and all but breathless. He had kissed me before, in the ward, but never with such passion. This was the first time we had ever been alone together, without the constant near presence of other patients, doctors, nurses, and orderlies. Without the incessant drama of pain and illness, agony and death.
“I could never do that with the matron always around,” he said.
“She doesn’t come out here,” I answered, and pulled him toward me again.
The feel of his mouth on mine, the smell of him, his familiar touch, the look in his dear dark eyes when at last our mouths parted and we caught our breath—a breath that had almost become one single breath—was far beyond my power to describe. I was completely enraptured. Had I found out, in that heady, enchanted afternoon, that he didn’t love me I think I would have died. So completely open was I to all that he could give me, all that I felt for him.
Is there anything sweeter than first love? Not honey, not a ripe peach, not even the Swiss nut chocolate that the clever Sedynov was able to buy for me through his contacts in the ministry of defense.
I had been infatuated with Adalbert, I had known excitement with Constantin, but I loved Michael. Loved him, body, heart and soul. Loved him, as I then thought, as no woman had ever loved before, or ever would again. Such are the precious dreams of early youth, dreams that deny all common sense and refuse to see the dross of life in all its murk and ugliness. Having spent so many months amid the stark, cruel human wreckage of war, I was eager to enter a realm of unalloyed joy, a realm Michael opened to me with his kisses and his passion.
There was a lull in the war in that summer of 1915, a lull in the flow of wounded men. I found my duties growing lighter, which allowed me to spend parts of many afternoons with Michael, sitting in the hospital garden and, as he healed, walking on the palace grounds or along the riverbank. As we walked, hand in hand, we talked.
He told me of his life in Daghestan, high in the Caucasus Mountains, where the constant winds shriek along the cliff faces and villages cling to the jagged peaks, their stone houses centuries old.
“My father’s house had been lived in by his clan for nine generations. Since long before the Russians came and conquered us. One of my ancestors invaded the neighboring kingdom of Imereti
a in the seventh century and became king there.
“Warmaking was all we knew in my village. I was born in the saddle, my father liked to say, with a dagger in my hand.”
“What are the words written on your dagger?”
“They mean, ‘I am thy everpresent strength.’ That dagger belonged to my great-grandmother Lalako. She was a renowned warrior who took many heads. She wore them hanging from her waist-belt, to frighten her enemies.
“My father and my uncles were brave warriors too, but my father took pity on my mother because so many of her babies died and we moved to Tiflis, and changed our name from Gamkrelidze to Gradov, to sound more Russian. My great-grandmother was dead by then. If she had known, she would have turned over in her grave.”
“So you are a Georgian.”
“My grandmother would say we were of the Ghalghaaj people. But yes, living in Tiflis, my family is Georgian.” He smiled and took my cheeks between his two hands and kissed me.
“Now, my Tania, what of you, and your family? I have seen people bow to you, and call you grand duchess. But you are not like the proud, heartless highborn Russians I have seen in the spas of Georgia, in Kisslovodsk and Piatigorsk. Haughty women who look on us southerners as if we were vermin.”
“I am the daughter of the tsar.”
“So we are both descended from kings.” He laughed. “Only your family is a little richer and more powerful.”
I confided in him. He listened patiently while I talked on about papa and his difficulties as commander of our army and about mama and her disordered state of mind, and her many troubles.
“And you, sweet Tania. What are your troubles?”
“I have none—since I met you.”
One afternoon I took Michael to the stables at Tsarskoe Selo to show him our horses. As always, Nikandr was there, the burly Cossack who had married Niuta soon after the war began and looked on his sister-in-law Daria and his niece Iskra with special tenderness.
The Tsarina's Daughter (Reading Group Gold) Page 19