My father cursed.
Two sets of headlights had broken away from the road. They bounced across the ground as the vehicle drew closer, winding around the path that led through our fields. It was not a car, I realised, but an army truck. I felt my father tense beside me. His elbow dug into my ribs as he spun the wheel and sent the lorry bouncing onto the side of the road. The brakes squealed.
‘Out!’ He leaned past me and threw open the door. ‘Get to the forest now. Run!’
My legs were frozen.
The oncoming lights were dazzling. Tyres scraped on gravel as the truck closed the distance between us.
‘Erich?’ Mama’s voice quivered.
Papa grunted. ‘I’ll join you afterwards. Jakob!’ he barked.
Jakob shook himself then grasped my arm, forcing feeling back into my limbs. My feet thumped onto the earth. With Mama between us, we tore towards the forest. Mama stumbled; Jakob grabbed her coat and dragged her to her feet. He helped her when we reached the first fence, holding the wire apart so she could scramble through. Mud sucked at our shoes and caught at the edge of my skirt. Mama’s breathing was loud in my ears, sobs escaping her lips.
Behind us, doors slammed. I heard men’s voices, speaking guttural Russian. They grew fainter as we moved towards the edge of the forest, still ahead of us. The darkness there was thick, impenetrable.
We reached the last field, where the apple trees were spaced in rows, and flung ourselves against their sheltering trunks, Mama behind one, Jakob and I behind another.
When I peered around the tree I saw Papa on his knees between three men. They were shouting at him, their words echoing across the fields. Liar! Traitor!
One of the men reached into his pocket and produced a pistol. Almost casually, he aimed it and fired.
Papa crumpled. From the tree on my right, my mother’s scream rose up, shattering the night air. Blood seemed to flood every chamber of my heart at once. I thought my chest might burst. I heard a voice cry out. It was my voice.
‘Papa!’
I started to move. If I could reach him, I could help. I could save him.
Jakob’s hands gripped my shoulders tightly. I tried to fight him off. It was useless. I heard him whisper, but his words could not penetrate the thick fog of shock in my mind. What was he saying?
No.
I stopped struggling.
For a moment, everything was still. Then Mama was gone. She was running, slipping and sliding between the fence wires, heedless of the mud and the waiting men.
I felt Jakob tense behind me, ready to race after her. My own legs were burning, aching to run. But neither of us moved. Jakob’s grip relaxed slightly. His arm slipped to my middle, his hand searching in the dark until it found mine.
Helplessly, we watched Mama fall to her knees. She was sobbing, cradling my father’s head.
One of the soldiers shouted at her to get up, but my mother didn’t seem to hear him. He shouted again and then, as if losing patience, he raised the gun again and fired. Mama slumped forward.
I screamed, unable to contain the sound that burst from my mouth.
The men turned, and with them a torch beam bounced across the ground, illuminating the grass, the mud, the fences we had scrambled through.
Jakob and I turned as one and tore our way across the last field. The torch beam zigzagged across our path. Men yelled behind us. A shot exploded into a nearby tree. I heard Jakob grunt, saw him stumble and then right himself.
Together, we staggered to the edge of the field and through the last fence.
Footsteps squelched through the mud behind us.
I looked back. Figures were running through the field, closing in.
Jakob seized my hand and dragged me into the trees. In seconds, the light from the torch had vanished. The darkness of the forest had swallowed us whole.
Cornflower Stitch
Lydia
‘Olga.’
My nursemaid paused and looked back at me from the little path leading to the Partorg’s townhouse. The late afternoon sun threaded her white hair with silver. Tired rings circled her eyes but she seemed happy enough, pleased to have reached our destination at last. The Partorg’s residence stood behind her, a charming two-storey building with whitewashed walls rising above a sea of foaming flowerbeds.
She gripped her suitcase between her hands. I heard the car drive off. The residential street beyond the iron gates was quiet, almost deserted. People hurried past without glancing up, their heads bowed.
‘Olga.’
‘What is it Lydochka?’
When she smiled, Olga’s teeth were revealed, the yellow stains on them clear as tidemarks drawn in the sand. The stains were relics of the years after the revolution, when she had struggled to find food and her body had suffered from malnourishment and lack of vitamins. She had told me those stories of horror, woven among her fairy tales. Stories of a city that had been starving. A country in the grip of famine. Children screaming on the streets, bellies bloated from hunger. No wonder Olga now ate everything set before her. She knew what true hunger was.
I almost changed my mind, then. She was everything to me and I to her. She had known so much pain in her lifetime; the death of her husband and my mother. Famine and disease. The purges of the last ten years, when many of our neighbours had been, wrongfully or otherwise, arrested or killed. How could I force her to acknowledge the truth, to relive the past when she already had suffered so much?
‘I need to speak to you.’ I watched her smile slip. ‘I think it’s best we talk now, before we go inside.’
‘Is it about your Papochka?’ she said. ‘Why is he sending us home so soon? I had hoped to stay a little longer, not only to speak with him but also to honour your mother’s memory by seeing a little of the country she loved. I remember the stories she told me about—’
‘It’s about my father, yes,’ I interrupted. ‘My – my real father.’
Olga’s eyes widened in surprise. We stood looking at each other. Bees hummed in the rose bushes nearby, lifting off the fragrant blooms as they felt the vibration of my footsteps beside them. Their scent was warm, enveloping. It was so pleasant to stand in the afternoon sun. I wished I could go on standing there, that I was indeed coming to live in my new home. Instead it would be another holding pen until I was sent back. I wished I could unlearn the things I had discovered; about my past, about Olga. About my parentage. Lydia Stalina.
I said the name out loud, heard Olga’s breath draw in sharply.
That was who I really was. The daughter of a murderer and a tyrant.
I watched Olga’s face slowly deflating. She dropped her suitcase to the ground and lifted her hands to cover her mouth. She began to cry. Tears splashed over her hands and dropped off her chin. My arms tingled with the need to comfort her, to hold her as she had held me all those times in my childhood. But I let her cry. I was callous and cruel. I was my father’s daughter, even if nobody else knew the secret but two men who had made a business transaction and an old woman protecting the secrets of her dead friend.
‘Who told you?’ she said at last, brushing away her tears with the heels of her palms.
‘Captain Volkov did.’ I could feel the sun beating upon my back through my shirt. ‘He had to. Stalin has ordered us back.’
‘I hoped he would leave us alone.’ She drew up her trembling chin. ‘I hoped he would let you go. That he’d be glad to be rid of the . . . responsibility. I should have known he would not give you up easily. He controlled your mother, too. Everything she wore and read, the people she saw. His spies were everywhere. And Captain Volkov, as you saw, has a will which is as weak as a kitten. He had no power to say no. The only place we were safe was in her boudoir. Just the three of us. When you were practising your Estonian and your mother could speak freely about her past. Her family. But your father found a way to ruin that too, in the end. That was why she killed herself. She couldn’t stand it any longer, the threats and his endless taunts.
The shame.’
She began to cry again. Emotion overwhelmed me. I reached for her hand. It was slippery from her tears. I covered it with my own.
‘I know why you lied,’ I said softly.
Olga sniffed hard. She looked away. ‘I did it only to protect you. I could not bear to see you disgraced, shut out.’
‘I know.’ I squeezed her fingers. She looked up at me, eyes slanted against the sunshine.
‘I’m thankful you kept her shawl,’ she said. ‘She would have wanted you to have it. I would have saved it, if I had the chance.’
‘There was a little book of poems, too.’ I lifted my case. ‘I kept them. And a photograph.’
Olga’s mouth worked. ‘I’m so glad. I was too upset. I could not rouse myself. By the time I got to her rooms, there was nothing to be had except a few of her coats and a letter written in Estonian. I kept the letter to give to you but I could not read it, then I lost it . . . Everything else she owned was taken off and burned. Stalin did not even give her things away. He had them all thrown on a fire. Your mother’s treasures. Her beautiful clothes. Her books.’
‘At least you can remember her.’ My heart felt heavy. ‘I sometimes worry I’m starting to forget.’
Olga lifted her head. ‘I will never forget her. Never. She saved me. I only hope you can forgive me, in time.’
‘Will you tell me about her?’ I said. ‘How could she bring herself to be with him?’
Olga sucked air in through her nose. ‘Yes, Lida. Yes. I will tell you everything. Nobody else knows the truth. Your Mama trusted only me. But first, let us eat and rest. I feel so hungry I could eat all these flowers.’ She waved her hand at the nodding roses and row of cornflowers and sprays of white blossoms lining the path.
Questions burned inside me. I was on the verge of begging Olga not to wait, demanding that she tell me everything. But she was tired and old. There would be time enough for us to talk of Mama later. I let Olga walk ahead and ring the bell beside the door. Through the large front window, I glimpsed glossy timber furniture and damask curtains pulled back. More colourful flowerbeds were banked up against the panes. It was a beautiful place, with the sky beginning to move towards dusk and the fragrance rising up from the blooms. I almost wished I could stay there on the warm flagstones, surrounded by bright cornflowers, steeped in memories of walking through the Apothecary Gardens with Mamochka and Olga outside the Kremlin.
I could recall as if it were only this morning the way Mama had held my hand, her bracelets jingling, our shoes making small puffs in the dust as we wandered along the avenue of linden trees towards the greenhouse. Olga had been idling behind, content to watch us walk ahead.
‘Lydochka!’ Mama’s hand had slipped away. I watched her shift her pale braid back over one shoulder as she crouched beside the path. ‘See here,’ she had said, pointing between the trucks to a patch of blue flowers shooting up amid the grass. Their vivid blue stood out against the green, the colour shifting like a kingfisher’s wings. ‘Estonia is full of cornflowers,’ she said, smiling so that her cheeks dimpled. ‘I asked the gardener to plant these here to remind me of home. You know the story of the cornflower?’ Reaching out, she had plucked a spiky blue blossom from its stem and tucked it behind my ear, weaving the soft coils of my hair deftly into a braid like her own. ‘When Queen Louise of Prussia was fleeing Napoleon’s forces, she hid her children in a field of cornflowers. She kept them quiet by weaving wreaths for them. Can you imagine the fear in her heart, the terror, knowing that at any moment they might be caught and dragged back?’
I had shaken my head then. Now I could imagine how that might feel, being taken against your will, forced to live an existence subservient to a man’s will.
At least Olga would be beside me.
The door of the townhouse opened to reveal a young woman in a black housecoat. A white lace shawl was settled across her shoulders. The sight of it jolted me – it was just like the one I wore. Mamochka’s shawl.
‘You’re the captain’s girl,’ she said, glancing at me quickly and then looking shyly away. ‘I’m the housekeeper. Your father sent word to expect you.’ She drew back the door and stood aside, her back pressed against the wall. Although her face was thin and pinched, she could hardly be older than me. The shapeless housecoat ballooned around her but even its formless shape could not disguise the round swell of her belly.
As if she had noticed my gaze, her hand drifted towards her stomach and she rested her palm on the protrusion; an unmistakable gesture of protection.
I felt a sudden affinity towards her. How desperately must she need to work, to be so close to her time and yet be here.
‘Lydia Volkova,’ I said. ‘And this is Olga Andreyevna.’
She shot us a quick, frightened glance, her hand still cupping her belly. ‘I know. I’m Etti,’ she added, clasping my outstretched hand. Her fingers were callused, ridged by small bumps that had obviously burst and healed. She withdrew her hand quickly.
‘You look too young to be a housekeeper,’ I said.
The girl gave an embarrassed shrug. Leaning over, she took the suitcase from Olga’s hand. ‘I was just a maid until last month. There was another woman here, Tiina Tamm. But she’s gone now, so it’s left to me.’ She began to lug Olga’s suitcase up the hallway towards the stairs. ‘Thankfully the Partorg doesn’t use this residence often. It is used more for guests or special visitors. The bedrooms are upstairs. I have made the beds up for you already and drawn a bath. I imagine you must be exhausted after your travels.’
‘That’s kind of you, but unnecessary.’ I drew in a breath, thinking of the letter I must write to Stalin; to my real father. What would I say to him? What could I say? I would have to be contrite, apologetic, when all I wanted to do was ask him how he had let me believe for so many years that I was the daughter of another man. I wondered if he would accept me, now that I knew the truth. Or would he shun me, as Olga suggested, refusing to admit it? It seemed more likely I would become another of the Kremlin’s dark secrets, like the men and women who had been wrongfully accused.
I imagined the letter I would write.
Dear Stalin.
Dear liar.
You do not deserve an apology. I have learnt the truth. I know you were the reason Mama killed herself. I know about the trials and executions carried out in your name. I know what happened to Joachim and why you had him arrested, your efforts to control everything. You are the worst kind of man. I’m ashamed I spent so many hours trying to please you, worrying that you would be angry with me for disturbing you, thinking that I was dear to you when in fact, it was the opposite. If you cared about me at all, if you felt bad about your role in Mama’s death, you would have accepted my happiness. You would have set me free. Instead, you have made me hate you. I will never be your daughter, not in name and not in my soul. Those things belong to me now. They are mine alone.
Of course, I couldn’t write that.
To do so would be suicide. I would have to be meek and simpering and subservient. I could never reveal my parentage. It would be dangerous. I remembered how Stalin had paraded his legitimate children before world leaders like Winston Churchill, pretending that he was a true family man.
I knew the truth now, but my tongue was sealed.
It would be better to get the distasteful ordeal over with as soon as possible.
When we reached the stairs, I watched Etti struggle for a moment, trying to manoeuvre the suitcase onto the lowest step. Unable to still myself, I moved forward to help. Mama had always instilled in me a respect for servants. Treat them as if they were your family, she had once said, and although I imagined she had been referring more to Olga, who was indeed like a mother, the words had stayed with me. Besides, was it not the principal teaching of communism, for everyone to be equal?
‘Here. You can’t lift that,’ I said. ‘Not in your condition. Please, don’t protest.’
She fell silent. Her fingers brushed mine as she released the
suitcase into my free hand.
‘Up here?’
Etti nodded. Ignoring the resistant ache in my muscles, I heaved Olga’s suitcase and my own up to the next floor. A moment later, I heard Olga mount the stairs behind me, grudgingly praising all the lovely things in the rooms downstairs.
At the top of the landing, Etti paused to lean against the timber wainscot that ran along the wall and catch her breath. Her skin was mottled pink.
Olga peered at her down the bridge of her nose.
‘You are close to your time,’ she observed, reaching out without permission to run her hand over Etti’s belly, splaying out her fingers. I thought Etti might protest but the Estonian woman said nothing.
‘It is a girl,’ Olga declared, tossing back her head. ‘I am certain. You see? The stomach is round and soft like a big ball of dough ready for kneading. If it was a boy, it would be a different shape, more narrow.’
‘A baguette?’ I suggested.
‘Perhaps.’
Etti blinked in astonishment at the informality of our conversation and then she smiled hesitantly.
‘Superstitions,’ she said. ‘It seems they are everywhere. Let me show you to your rooms.’
The second-floor landing led into a corridor and a number of bedrooms. Two of the doors were open, revealing double beds covered by knitted bedspreads. A narrow bathroom, cleverly concealed to look more like a linen closet, was sandwiched between them. The scent of rose soap floated towards me on a cloud of steam. I was all too aware of my own odour and suddenly I could think of nothing I wanted more than to submerge myself beneath the surface of the water.
The letter to Stalin could wait.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ I said, setting Olga’s suitcase in the doorway of the first bedroom. ‘I will bathe. Thank you, Etti. It was very kind of you. I don’t know how many days I will be here.’ I bit down on my disappointment. I couldn’t tell her I would be staying only one night; she would want to know why. ‘But I’m glad my father appointed you the housekeeper until Tiina’s return.’
Lace Weaver Page 16