Alexei fell and hurt himself, suffering a hemorrhage in his leg. The Empress was with him day and night. Just as he was beginning to recover, a mysterious man arrived from the Bolshevik government. The first day he was very polite, taking tea with us and inquiring after Alexei. The second day he informed us that “Citizen Romanov,” as he called the Tsar, was to be taken away.
“My orders are to take the whole family, but that will have to wait until your son is well enough to travel.” He refused to say where they were taking the Tsar.
The Empress was beside herself. “I cannot leave Alexei while he is ill, and I cannot let your father go without me,” she told the girls.
The girls, seeing her misery, urged her to go with their father. “Alexei is better,” Tatiana said. “I can take care of him and of the household. You must go with Papa, but you must take one of us with you.”
Tatiana was the most sensible and capable, so she was chosen to stay behind and take over the care of Alexei and the house. Olga was not well, and Stana was thought too young, so Marie was chosen to go with her mother and father. The girls all clung to one another, for they had never before been separated.
It was a terrible moment when the Tsar, the Empress, and Marie were taken away in a koshevy. There were no seats in such a wagon. An old mattress was thrown into the wagon and covered with straw. The Tsar and the Empress went to each of their daughters, and to me, and made the sign of the cross on our foreheads, blessing us. Stana, Olga, Tatiana, and I stood hand in hand watching until the Tsar, the Empress, and Marie disappeared into cold Siberia.
Though Pierre did all he could, nothing that day would comfort Alexei. He shed so many tears, they could have filled the Neva until it overflowed.
The first letter from the Tsar and the Empress said only that they were well and not to worry. Soon after, we learned they were in the city of Ekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains. I thought anything would be better than another winter in Siberia, but Pierre appeared more worried than ever.
“I have heard bad things of that city,” he said. “The Bolsheviks have taken it over. The Tsar and the Empress will find no friends there.”
Tatiana urged us to keep busy. Dutifully we began to scratch out a kind of garden in the mud, but when the time came, none of us had the heart to plant seeds, for none of us, not even Tatiana, believed the Empress and the Tsar would return.
In the middle of May, on a day when the blue Siberian sky was filled with returning hawks, the official declared Alexei well enough to travel. Alexei and the girls, along with Pierre and a handful of staff, were told to pack and be ready to leave immediately. When the time for departure came, though Mama begged, she and I were not allowed to go with them.
“We are done with ladies-in-waiting” were the rough words of the commissar.
“I am not a lady-in-waiting,” Mama pleaded. “I am a friend.”
The commissar would not listen. I had only time to kiss Olga and Tatiana and Alexei and throw my arms around Stana. “Proshchayte,” Stana said, breaking my heart. In a moment they were gone. When we turned to retrace our steps to the governor’s house, the gates were closed to us.
“At least let us get our clothes,” Mama begged.
We were given a half hour to pack.
“Where will we go, Mamochka?” Without thinking, I had used my childhood name for Mama.
Mama stood quietly for a moment, a bewildered look on her face. She drew herself up. With one hand she reached for her suitcase; with the other she held on to my hand. “We’ll go to The Oaks.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
RETURN TO THE OAKS
Spring 1918
Every minute of our journey to St. Petersburg, first on the steamboat and then the train, was a frightening one. Mama and I were alone. There were soldiers everywhere. We wore old clothes and tried to appear as inconspicuous as possible, but people still sent suspicious looks our way. We seemed not to be escaping danger but to be hurrying toward it.
We changed trains in St. Petersburg, where the streets were crowded with revolutionaries. Wagons passed us, heaped with furniture from looted mansions. In the station people swarmed around the trains, trying to push their way into the cars. Parents with small children were camped out on the station floor. At the ticket windows people were mercilessly shoving one another. When it was finally our turn, we were told there was nothing available until the following morning, and then only two third-class tickets. Mama eagerly took them.
All we could get at the station restaurant was cabbage soup and tea. Though our stomachs were groaning with hunger, the look of suspicion on the faces of two guards who were watching us made us so nervous, we left half our dinner and tried to melt into the crowd. When it grew dark, we settled down on a patch of dirty floor. Next to us were a man and woman and their two small girls, who looked to be about four and five. The man stared straight ahead, lost in his own thoughts, while the exhausted-looking woman tried to manage the children, both of whom were sobbing bitterly. One little girl complained through her tears, “The bad man wouldn’t let us take our dolls.”
The woman sighed. “Forgive the girls,” she said to us. After a searching look, which must have reassured her, she continued. “They confiscated our home. We were lucky to escape with our lives.” Politely, as if we were in a drawing room instead of on the floor of a train station, she introduced herself. “I am Elizabeta Ivanova Kherna.”
As the woman spoke her name, Mama eagerly grasped her hand. “I knew your sister. I am Irina Petrovna Baronova. Your sister and I were at dancing class together.” The two women clung to each other like long-lost friends.
Elizabeta Ivanova looked carefully around and then whispered, “But you were a lady-in-waiting to the Empress.” She leaned closer. “How is the imperial family?”
Mama told what she knew and then asked what Elizabeta Ivanova was doing there.
“It has been a nightmare. The Bolsheviks looked the other way when the worst kind of hooligans burst into our home, taking everything. ‘Rob those who robbed us!’ they shouted. They got into our wine cellar and emptied the bottles down their throats. They threatened to put us on trial in our own home for exploiting the people. Andre pleaded with them.” Elizabeta Ivanova covered her face and broke into tears.
The girls began to cry harder than ever. I gathered them onto my lap and asked, “Shall I make each of you a new doll?”
Their tears ended, and they watched eagerly as I poked about in my suitcase for a linen petticoat, a silk blouse, scissors, and a needle and thread. I turned the linen into heads and bodies, embroidering smiling faces on the heads. Clumsily I fashioned the silk into dresses. By the time I had finished, it was night and the two girls were asleep, each one with her doll clasped in her arms.
Mama and the girls’ parents and I were too fearful to sleep. Mama told stories of our imprisonment at the palace and in Siberia. The Khernas told us of the Tsar’s ministers and the nobility fleeing St. Petersburg, trying to get to Finland and then to Sweden, or, as we were doing, to disappear into the countryside. Some of them had been unsuccessful, ending up imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress—or worse, in front of a firing squad. Though I said nothing, I recalled Mama’s words: “This is not France. You can be sure nothing will happen to the great families of Russia.”
When at last we parted in the morning, we were dear friends. The girls clung to me and kissed me, making me promise to come to see them.
The third-class car had filthy wooden benches. Smoke and soot blew in through the windows. There was no food. I thought of the elegance of the train that had carried us to the front to visit the Tsar—the silk curtains at the windows, the comfortable overstuffed chairs, and the delicacies served to us by uniformed footmen. How little we had known of the real Russia in those days.
Though we were crowded together in the train with hardly enough room to breathe, there were no friendly exchanges. Like a rat, suspicion nibbled at all of us. Noble families were careful to disgu
ise themselves, just as Mama and I had. In the new Russia nobility was very low indeed.
It was early evening when the train chugged to a halt at the station near our dacha. Mama and I picked up our suitcases and hurried from the train. Except for an indifferent stationmaster, the small wooden station was deserted.
Mama cautiously approached the stationmaster, a young man with bristly red hair and slits for eyes. His uniform was several sizes too large for him, so only the tips of his fingers showed at the ends of his sleeves. The Khernas had told us that the Bolsheviks had replaced all the railway personnel with their own people.
“Please, could you get us a car or a carriage?” Mama asked.
The man stared at us out of the narrow slits as if we had asked for the moon. “A car? A carriage? Where do you think you are? In St. Petersburg?”
“We need to go to The Oaks,” I explained.
He looked at me for a moment with curiosity, and something that was almost sympathy. Shaking his head, he pointed at the road. “In that direction.”
Mama and I picked up our bags and started out, stumbling under our burdens, for the road was nothing more than wagon ruts. I turned around once and saw the stationmaster standing there staring after us, a pitying look on his face. As the sun began to sink, it took with it the last warmth. Afraid of finding ourselves alone on the road when darkness fell, we hurried on.
At last there were the familiar landmarks: the plank bridge and then the apple orchard whose trees were covered not with the small green apples of summer, but with spring blossoms. The peasant’s cottage was deserted, and no flock of honking geese ran to attack us. We seemed to be alone in the world. It was nearly dark when we made out The Oaks in the distance.
Mama stopped, puzzled, “Katya, where are the oak trees?”
They had disappeared, but worse was to come. At first we thought it a trick of the fading light, but as we drew closer, we saw that the house was a topless shell. A fire had raged through the rooms, leaving a blackened hull. The roof was gone. In the heat of the fire the glass had shattered. The empty window frames looked blindly out at us. The whole desolate ruin appeared to reproach us, as if our carelessness had destroyed it.
Mama and I held on to each other, too shocked to shed tears. Through all the frightening and miserable journey, when we were so tired we could hardly move, we had managed to think of The Oaks as a refuge. Now a giant hand had swept The Oaks away, and with it our last hope. We were too exhausted to move.
As we stood there, a man supporting himself on a cane came hobbling toward us. He stared at us for a moment as if we were figures from some picture that had suddenly come to life. “I know you,” he said in a rough voice. “But why have you come back? There is nothing here for you now.”
There was something familiar about the man and the angry look he gave us. It was Stepan.
“You were in the army,” I said.
“Yes. I left a bit of my foot and all of my youth there.” His tone was bitter.
“And Nina?” I asked.
A fleeting smile hurried over his face, quickly disappearing as if it were not at home there. “We are married,” he answered shortly.
Mama seemed puzzled and impatient with our conversation. She asked, “What happened to The Oaks? Who did this?”
“Your peasants, Madame.” There was an unpleasant note of satisfaction in his voice. “They came for Vitya and Grishka, but your estate manager and his wife had already fled, probably with all your silver. When the peasants could not find them, they burned the house. They took their revenge where they could find it.”
“But I never meant the peasants harm,” Mama said. “How could they do such a thing to me?”
“It was not done to you,” Stepan said, relenting a little, “but to Vitya. You only had the misfortune—or carelessness—to employ him.” As he looked from us to our small suitcases, all the anger appeared to leave Stepan. “Where will you stay?” he asked.
When I shook my head, he said to Mama, “For now you must come and stay with Nina and me. I have not forgotten that your daughter was once kind to us.”
I bent to pick up our suitcases. Mama followed slowly along behind us as if she were sleepwalking. Only once did she say anything. “Tell me,” she asked, “what has become of the great oak trees?”
“The peasants came and cut them down,” Stepan said. “They needed wood to keep from freezing. It was a cold winter”—he paused—“yet the heat of their anger should have been enough to warm them.”
He led us to the small wooden hut, with its thatched roof. I recalled the hut from the evening I had given Stepan Nina’s message. Here and there large patches of thatch were missing. A few scrawny chickens scurried about, and a swaybacked horse stood tethered to a fence post.
Stepan paused and looked around at us. Half apologetically, half tongue in cheek, he said, “I’m afraid this is not what you are used to.”
“We are grateful to have any place to sleep,” I said. “Last night our bed was the floor of the train station.”
For the first time a look of real pity stole grudgingly over Stepan’s face, as if all this time he had been fighting against it. “We will do what we can to make you comfortable,” he said.
I half expected to see his mother on the chair in front of the cottage, her apron thrown over her face. As if he could read my mind, he said bitterly, “My mother died in the winter. Before I got back from the war.”
The door opened, and Nina, taking the two steps in one leap, ran to embrace us. If Stepan was still resentful, Nina was all sympathy. She threw her arms about us and began to cry as if The Oaks were as much her loss as ours. “It was a terrible crime, Madame,” she said to Mama. To me she said, “Oh, Miss, believe me, I tried to stop them, but they wouldn’t listen. Such a waste. Everything gone. That little chair with the delicate legs and the sofa all covered in a pattern of roses. They even carried away the pictures on the walls. There was one of a garden by moonlight. When I dusted, I always lingered over that picture. I longed to step right into it and—”
Stepan interrupted her. “Now, Nina, these women are tired and probably hungry. There will be time for talk later.”
Nina apologized. “Yes, yes, what can I have been thinking?”
She led us inside. Half the room was taken up with a large stove, and arranged on and around the stove were wide wooden shelves. The floor was covered with fragrant pine boughs. The ceilings in the house were black with soot from the stove and so low that Stepan moved about with a continual stoop. An icon was hung in one corner, and a candle flickered before it. A table of rough boards and some chairs were the only furniture in the room.
“I would like to make cherry dumplings for you,” Nina said. “I make very good cherry dumplings.” She looked helplessly at her husband. “But I have no white flour and no butter, and it’s months too soon for cherries.” At that she began to cry. “We have nothing suitable to offer you, but praise to God you are alive. Terrible things have happened here. Not just at The Oaks. Baron Nogin was lucky to escape with his life. The Bolsheviks took over his farm, and he had to flee to the Crimea.”
“But why the Baron?” I asked. “He was always so good to his peasants.”
“Once you begin to hate,” Stepan said, “there is no stopping.”
A smile brightened Nina’s face. “Now sit down and just see what I have to make your tea.” Nina settled Mama onto one of the wooden chairs, and I dropped beside her.
Nina pushed aside a pine bough. Beneath the bough was a trap door. She reached in and brought out a bundle wrapped in rags. When the rags were stripped away, a handsome brass samovar was revealed, shining in all its golden glory. I recognized it at once.
“When they came to burn The Oaks,” Nina said, “I carried it away in an old basket. Once a week I polish it with vinegar and salt just as I used to.” She filled the samovar with water and lit the coals in the burner. From behind the woodpile she produced a small container and measured out
a frugal spoonful of tea into a pot, which she filled with the samovar’s boiling water.
While we sipped the tea, we told our story. At each mention of the Tsar’s name Nina crossed herself.
“A saint,” she whispered.
“How can you utter such nonsense?” Stepan said. “The Tsar was a fool to get us into the war. It’s only by God’s mercy I wasn’t killed along with the three million other Russians the Tsar sent to their deaths.”
“Stepan!” Nina was shocked. “How can you say such things in front of the Countess?”
“All the same, I say them, and there are no more countesses. Three fourths of the men of our village were killed in the war. All the animals were stolen to feed the army. Only a broken-down horse is left to us, and we have to pull the straw from our roof to feed the poor beast.”
Nina was indignant. “Stepan, that is enough. The Countess is a guest in our house.” She turned to us. “You must be starving.” She began to search the small cupboard, accompanying her search with groans. “No sugar, no lard. Wait. I know where the old hen is hiding her eggs.” She bustled out and in a few moments was back, carrying two eggs in her apron. We had cabbage soup, and though Mama and I protested, we each had a lovely poached egg.
Nina arranged quilts on the shelves around the stove, and each of us curled up on our own warm shelf. I thought of The Oaks, a shadowy ruin, empty and desolate out there in the darkness. Where would we live? It was too dangerous to go back to St. Petersburg, where anyone connected to the Tsar was imprisoned or worse. And where was Misha? No hour passed without my wondering whether he was alive or dead.
Before I could sort out all the problems, the weariness from the journey, and from all that had happened since, spread over me like the sheltering wings of a great dark bird. I fell fast asleep, comforted by the warmth of the stove and Stepan’s soft snores.
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