The Russian Tapestry

by Banafsheh Serov

  Heading north-west, Alexei followed the railway tracks. He walked all night without stopping. By mid-morning the next day, he emerged from the woods and began his journey across a plain dotted with the occasional tree. Away from the shelter of the woods, the wind was harsher, blasting icy snow against his skin. The exertion of dragging his feet through the snow made his lungs burn and he had to pause every now and then to rest.

  In a satchel he carried under his coat was a crust of bread and some pork fat saved from the previous night’s dinner. He removed the small bundle and, taking the ration of pork fat, bit off a chunk. Chewing slowly, he wrapped the rest up again and replaced it in the bag.

  He had lost track of how long he had been walking. Stopping to rest his head against a birch tree, his eyes drifted to the branches above him. Prisms of light reflected through icicles hanging from the limbs. The bright colours seemed out of place in the frozen white expanse and, in his fatigue and desperation, Alexei thought he discerned a divine message. Bringing his palms together, he knelt before the grey, watery sky.

  ‘Dear Lord.’ He paused, not sure how to continue. ‘I have not been a faithful subject, but if you can hear my prayer, take pity on my soul and lead me to safety.’

  Kneeling in the snow, his eyes looked to the skies, waiting for a sign his prayer had been heard. When no sign came, he rose stiffly to his feet and, with one last look at the pale sky, resumed his journey west.

  It was dark when he came across a line of abandoned carriages, and he thought he detected shadowy figures darting between them like scurrying rats. Approaching one, Alexei listened for movement and, hearing nothing, slid open the door. Hungry and weary, he huddled in a corner, pulling his coat tightly around him. His fingers wrapped around the handle of his dagger, he fell asleep.

  It felt like only a few minutes had passed before his eyes flew open. He listened, heart thumping in his chest. Somewhere in the distance, a lone wolf howled and had its call returned by others. Then he heard it again, the sound that had woken him: a soft hollow moan.

  Alexei’s fingers tightened around the dagger.

  As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he made out the shape of a man lying curled on the floor in a corner of the carriage.

  His dagger held against his thigh, Alexei rose silently and moved towards the figure. The floor of the carriage creaked and the man turned his head slightly.

  Alexei held his breath.

  The figure remained curled in a foetal position, barely moving.

  ‘Water.’

  Alexei froze by the outline of a soldier in a Red Army uniform.

  ‘Water,’ the soldier whimpered, as if sensing the other man’s presence.

  Alexei reached for his canteen and brought it close to the soldier’s lips, but even as he did he saw a veil draw over the eyes and they became lifeless.

  Alexei walked for days, through storms and blizzards, careful to hide at the first glimpse of another traveller. At night he took refuge in abandoned carriages or deserted villages, where he scavenged for food.

  He was no longer conscious of time passing. He fell asleep to the sound of wolves baying at the moon, not caring any more how close they might be. Days blended into night as he grew weaker, and yet he willed his legs to take him forward. He focused only on getting to the west, to Latvia and his family: to freedom and survival.

  49

  Narva, November 1918

  When the Germans evacuated Narva, the bells in town rang all day. The Kulbas family and their staff woke that morning to find the soldiers gone and the house ransacked, presumably in a manic last-minute effort to find anything of value.

  In town, the streets were lined with people celebrating.

  ‘Praise the Lord, they are gone,’ a woman said, embracing Marie then her mother. ‘That coward, the Kaiser, has abdicated, fleeing to Holland. Germany has lost the war!’

  ‘Mama!’ Marie grabbed her mother’s hand. ‘Did you hear? The Germans have lost.’

  ‘I … I’m …’ Her mother looked at the faces around her in confusion.

  ‘Marie.’ Anna waved them over from across the street. Marie and her mother crossed to her, stepping around people drinking and carousing.

  ‘Oh, Marie.’ Anna was beaming. ‘It’s over, the war is over.’ She stopped, looking at Marie’s face curiously. ‘What’s the matter? Aren’t you pleased?’

  ‘Of course,’ Marie said with a laugh, though in truth she wasn’t sure how she felt. She couldn’t help but think of all that had been lost, how much had changed. The time before the war seemed as removed as an alien world. She thought back to how she was then; so young, so full of hope and optimism. She saw her reflection in a shop window, noticed for the first time the new lines around her eyes and the slightly deeper ones at the corners of her lips. She no longer recognised in the reflection the girl she had been. She turned back to the people celebrating in the square. Her gaze drifted to the clock tower as it chimed the hour. She smiled. Nikolai always set his watch to the clock’s chime. At the thought of him, a faint vibration trembled her heart. She missed him, and Pyotr. And what of Alexei? She wondered where he was now, whether he was safe, if he had survived the war or if he, too, was lost to her. She squeezed her eyes to hold back the tears.

  Her mother, as if sensing something of her daughter’s thoughts, rubbed her back affectionately. ‘The war has left us with heavy hearts,’ she said gravely. ‘But it is over now, and we must look to the future.’

  Red Army soldiers arrived soon after the Germans had left, rolling through the town gates in their hundreds. Initially, the residents of Narva were happy to welcome their liberators. Gathering what little food they had, they took it to the town centre to feed them. The hospitals and makeshift infirmaries set up to receive the soldiers quickly became overcrowded. In between applying bandages and serving food, Marie sat with the soldiers, asking about their experiences, their homes and the families they had left behind. Some spoke frankly about their longing to return home. Others stared back at her with empty eyes that seemed uncomprehending.

  ‘We were dispensible,’ one man told her. Sitting slightly apart from the other soldiers, he had a bandaged arm. ‘We lost so many men, we barely had time to bury or count them, let alone remember them. Lenin is right to call it an imperialist war. None of our commanders cared whether we lived or died. The war’s only purpose was to fatten bourgeois wallets at the cost of the peasants’ lives.’

  ‘Surely you don’t believe that,’ Marie said, taken aback by the remark. ‘Plenty of nobility and merchants also volunteered and lost their lives defending –’

  ‘The nobility barely noticed the war, sitting with full stomachs in their fine warm palaces,’ the soldier said bitterly. ‘That’s the way it has always been in Russia. That’s why we had a revolution. Ordinary Russians proved to oppressed people everywhere that they have the power to bring about change. It will only be a matter of time before the wealthy around the globe feel the sting of the peasant’s knife.’

  Marie paled. ‘You have no understanding of what you say.’ Standing abruptly, she buttoned up her coat. ‘I wish you a speedy recovery, soldier.’

  ‘That’s an expensive coat, comrade.’ The soldier sneered.

  ‘Good day to you.’ She gave him a cold look.

  ‘The Bolsheviks will win,’ the soldier called after her. ‘Mark my words.’

  ‘I don’t think the Russians will turn out to be the liberators we had hoped for,’ Marie confided to her father.

  Herman Kulbas, sorting through the books in the library, didn’t even look up. ‘I’m missing several volumes. I do hope the Germans didn’t use them to build fires. Some of those with the Italian bindings are irreplaceable.’

  ‘Papa, did you hear what I said?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘I said I don’t think the Russians are going to be the liberators we were hoping for.’

  ‘I heard you the first time, Marie,’ her father replied evenly. ‘It was naïve of you
to think otherwise.’

  ‘What do you think will become of us, Papa?’

  Looking up from his books at last, Herman Kulbas’s face was grave. ‘I’m not sure, Marie. They have already taken the factory. All we have left is this house. Let us hope they don’t take that too.’ He smiled sadly.

  ‘I can’t imagine living anywhere else.’ Marie’s voice was close to breaking. ‘This is my childhood home, where Nikolai and I spent our summers from school. All my happiest memories are tied to these walls, these grounds. I could not bear to think we might lose it.’

  ‘No need to worry yourself yet.’ He patted her knee. ‘We will manage. Somehow.’

  Latvia, November

  To the Latvian police who arrested Alexei, he seemed little more than a wild man. Having traded his warm coat at a nearby village for food and a night’s accommodation, he wore only a grimy blanket, black with dirt, over his Red Army uniform. His bushy beard was streaked with grey. When the Latvians saw his uniform, they mistook him for a Bolshevik and threw him in jail, laughing at his claim to be a commander in the imperial army.

  ‘You are nothing but a Bolshevik pig,’ the Latvian captain spat at him.

  ‘The Bolsheviks threatened to kill my family if I did not join them,’ Alexei pleaded. ‘My wife and daughters will testify to it.’

  Reluctantly, the captain agreed to contact Emily, who had moved to Tallinn following Estonia’s liberation. They received a telegram the next day informing them of her forwarding address.

  A few days later, they received a second telegram from Tallinn.

  I testify to my husband Alexei Serov’s identity STOP Not possible for me to travel at present STOP I will pay for all his expenses STOP.

  A third telegram from a Countess Golytsyn, claiming to be a close friend of Emily, provided further confirmation of his identity.

  Alexei was released from his freezing cell. Weak and exhausted, his legs could not bear his weight and he collapsed on taking his first step. As he lost consciousness, he heard a distant voice say, ‘Take him to the hospital.’

  Alexei remembered little of his first days in the infirmary. Burning with fever and struggling to breathe, he slept fitfully and often woke from his dreams covered in sweat and panting for air.

  ‘Pneumonia.’ He heard the word uttered but his confused mind could not be sure if it was referring to his own state.

  Even as Alexei’s fever began to subside, his lungs continued to burn. Nurses placed warm towels on his chest and propped him up with pillows but still he struggled to breathe.

  Emily finally joined him in late February. Released into her care, he was still too weak to travel, so she rented an apartment and hired a private physician to visit him daily.

  ‘Just as soon as the Germans left, the Red Army moved in.’ Sitting close to his bed, Emily spoke in a low voice, a light tremor betraying her otherwise calm demeanour. ‘They took the food the Germans had hoarded in the sheds, leaving us without any provisions to see us through winter.

  ‘Almost immediately the local Bolsheviks announced new laws. Many were denounced.’ Her teary eyes shone in the light. ‘And lost their lives.’ She blew her nose delicately into her handkerchief. ‘We started hearing rumours of fighting between the Estonian troops backed by the White Army, and the Reds. The Whites pushed the Bolsheviks back across the border. That’s when I received the telegram you were in Latvia.’

  ‘Have you any news of Grigory?’

  ‘Yes, he made it to Tallinn, bringing with him photos and a few of your possessions, including your remaining medals and the Luger.’ Emily lowered her head. ‘He said he wanted to return to Uglich to bring back some of the gold rubles he had buried. That’s when …’ She stopped and bit down on her lip.

  Alexei placed a hand over hers and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

  ‘I tried to stop him but he wouldn’t listen.’ Lifting her face, she met Alexei’s eyes. ‘He was loyal to you till the end.’ Her eyes were full of tears as she continued, ‘It was another month before I finally heard what became of him. They found his body not far from the house with bullet wounds to the back.’

  50

  Tallinn, March 1919

  Marie’s dark curls were swept off her face in a carefully arranged coiffure.

  ‘Thank you, Anna. I’ll manage the rest.’

  Hearing the door close behind Anna, Marie was glad to be alone finally. The family was invited to Countess Golytsyn’s house that night for a dinner to celebrate the liberation of Estonia in February.

  Following their defeat by the combined Estonian and White armies, the Red Army immediately launched fresh attacks in an effort to recapture Narva. Although they failed to take back the city, a great number of the residents were left homeless after the heavy bombardment.

  Pauline Kulbas, her nerves frayed by the continuous fighting, took to her bed. Fearing another attack, Monsieur Kulbas had decided the family should move west, away from the fighting, and made urgent plans for their relocation to the capital, Tallinn.

  Marie stared at her reflection. It had broken her heart to leave Narva. To leave their home. In Tallinn, she was a stranger, a refugee. The handsome apartments her father had secured on Toompea Hill, with views of the medieval town centre, did little to lift her spirits. By day, she managed to mask her unhappiness, but at night, alone in her room, she gave in to despair.

  What did the future hold for her? All the girlish interests she had before the war, belonged to a carefree former life, one full of hope, before Pyotr and Nikolai were lost to her. She no longer cared about attending balls, dinners or the ballet. But if she was truthful, there was more to the source of her pain. Her most bitter and recurrent memories were of the autumn days in Tsarskoe Selo, and Alexei. She knew, even if he had survived the war, she had lost him when she had fled from him. She would give anything to bring back that time, to explain her feelings. The intensity of their kiss had frightened her and, confused by the depths of her emotions, she had run. Her shoulders slumped. These are the best years of my life, she thought sadly, and they’re slipping by, completely useless. And all because I have been too cowardly.

  A knock on the door broke her reverie.

  ‘Marie?’ Pauline Kulbas pushed the door open. ‘Why, child, you are still not ready. The car is waiting outside.’

  Pauline Kulbas was dressed in a simple evening dress with her hair arranged in a loose knot at the nape of her neck. Since arriving in Tallinn, she had regained some weight and her skin now had a healthier glow. But even as she tried to hide the evidence of her suffering behind a painted smile, the strain showed in the deep lines around her mouth.

  ‘I’m almost ready, Mama.’ Picking up her powder puff, Marie applied powder to her face.

  Pauline Kulbas placed a small jewellery box by Marie’s elbow. Inside, wrapped in a silk cloth, lay a necklace of jade and a matching brooch.

  Smiling at her daughter, she warmed the cool stones in her palm before stepping behind Marie and fastening the necklace around her neck.

  ‘The stones bring out the green in your eyes.’ Straightening, she studied her daughter’s reflection in the mirror.

  ‘What is it, Marie?’ Her mother’s expression was worried. ‘You’re as pale as a ghost.’

  Marie tried to put on a cheerful smile, overwhelmed by the darkness that had taken hold of her. She faltered and her face crumpled.

  ‘Oh, Mama, I wish I knew what was wrong with me. I can’t seem to shake this unhappiness that has settled over me.’

  ‘Oh, child,’ Pauline touched her daughter’s hand ‘You must put your faith in our Lord to give you the strength you need.’ Lifting her chin with the tips of her fingers, she turned Marie’s face to her.

  Marie dropped her head to hide her tears. ‘Pyotr is not coming back.’

  ‘Have faith, Marie.’ Pauline Kulbas kissed the top of her daughter’s head. ‘The Lord works in mysterious ways.’

  In Countess Golytsyn’s drawing room, a cluster of men
, including Marie’s father, had gathered around an American general. Sent to help the White Army, the American officers had become a fashionable addition to dinner parties. Marie walked past the group to join her mother beside their hostess.

  ‘The Red Army forced him to join by threatening to kill his family,’ Countess Golytsyn was telling her audience. ‘What could he do? He had no choice. After all, look what those animals did to our poor Tsar and his family.’

  The women shook their heads and crossed themselves.

  ‘Who are you discussing, Mama?’ Marie whispered in her mother’s ear.

  ‘Countess Golytsyn is telling us about a general who escaped the Reds.’

  ‘His wife and three daughters made it to Latvia dressed as peasants and eventually made their way to Tallinn. It is a miracle they arrived here unharmed.’ Countess Golytsyn fanned herself lazily with her delicate silk fan.

  ‘Major General Serov’s wife has been a dear friend of mine since we were girls,’ the countess continued. ‘Poor Emily has been through a harrowing journey with no one to help her.’

  Marie had only been half listening to Countess Golytsyn’s story, but at the mention of Alexei’s name, she stiffened. Next to her, her mother gave her a questioning look.

  ‘Do you know the Serovs?’ Pauline Kulbas whispered.

  ‘Not really.’ Marie blushed. ‘I met the general at the officers’ hospital.’

  ‘Twice before he had tried to escape the Reds and was captured,’ Countess Golytsyn was saying. ‘He walked for days through knee-deep snow. He was exhausted and starving when he reached the Latvian border. It was unfortunate he was still wearing his Red Army uniform. The authorities in Latvia took one look at him and threw him into jail.’

  The women gasped.

  ‘The poor man,’ said one. ‘How did he secure his release?’

  Countess Golytsyn, looking pleased with the effect her story was having on her audience, smiled. ‘Emily came to me, desperate for help. I felt it my duty to send a telegram to the authorities vouching for the general.’