The Lost Daughter

by Gill Paul

Maria rose and stood behind his chair to massage him. He carried such heavy weights during the day that his shoulders were often tight and painful by bedtime. She rubbed the mass of bunched-up muscle and bent to kiss the back of his neck, then looped her arms around him from behind and kissed the top of his head, breathing in deeply. He never smelled rank, even after hours of hard physical work, but had a faintly musky scent she loved. Whenever she felt anxious, all it took to calm her down was to breathe in his smell.

  * * *

  Most days Maria took her children to stand in lines for their rations, armed with the appropriate coupons. There was an office for bread, one for meat, one for vegetables, and sometimes she stood in a line with other wives not even knowing what she was lining up for. Some goods disappeared entirely—it was impossible to get soap anymore—but they were better fed than in the countryside. She’d had no idea how to cook at first, but Peter taught her to rustle up soups and stews with cheap cuts of meat, bulked out with potatoes, carrots, and cabbage. She picked up cooking tips from the women in the food lines or those who shared their communal kitchen, and soon she could turn buckwheat flour, milk, and eggs into tasty pancakes, and make jam from the autumn’s crop of berries.

  “Didn’t your mother teach you to cook?” her neighbor asked, and Maria replied, “No, she wasn’t very domestic.”

  Stepan and Irina developed reserves of patience and learned to entertain themselves as she chatted to the women she met in the endless lines. Many had also lost parents and siblings during the war. When questioned, Maria said her parents had died and she had become separated from her sister. Everyone was in the same boat, it seemed.

  There was a woman she particularly liked, by the name of Annushka, who spoke with great sadness of an older brother who had been conscripted into the Red Army in 1918 and had never returned.

  “I wish at least I knew the truth. If he is dead, I could visit his grave and have a priest say a panikhida. Not knowing is the worst of all worlds.”

  She was a tall woman with a long, sharp nose and a high, rounded forehead that made her look intellectual. Maria knew she was married and got the impression the marriage was unhappy, because she never mentioned her husband although she doted on her little son.

  “Tell me about your brother,” Maria said, knowing how much comfort she herself took from talking to Peter about her lost family, describing their traits and relaying memories of events from childhood years.

  Annushka smiled. “He’s tall, like me, with the family dome of a forehead.” She touched two fingers to her own. “And he is as gentle as they come. He has a particular fondness for dogs, and wherever we went he used to stop to pet any dog we encountered. If one looked hungry he would feed it his own lunch . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “What is his name?” Maria asked, careful to use the present tense. She was very sensitive to the use of tense when talking about her own family.

  “Fedor Ivanov Lipovsky. If you ever come across him—not that there’s any reason why you should—then please tell him I live in the Bolshaya Apartments, number fifty-seven.”

  When she got home that evening, Maria opened a notebook and wrote down the address, not thinking anything of it except that she would like to be better friends with Annushka and perhaps they might visit each other’s homes one day.

  * * *

  One autumn day, when the fluffy poplar seeds known as putch were piled in gutters and low sun glinted off the golden domes of churches, Maria decided to take her children by tram to the Winter Palace on the banks of the Neva. They did not care for architecture but she knew they would enjoy watching the boats plying up- and downriver. As they stood on the bank, chattering and pointing, she turned to look at the grandeur of the peppermint-green–painted palace where her father used to deal with affairs of state before the war, and where she had sometimes been allowed to attend dances with her elder sisters. She could remember every detail of the white lace dress she had worn, the pearl necklace her mother had lent her, the white bow she had tied across the top of her head, and the Frenchman she met one evening who had bowed and said, “This one is the true beauty of the four”—meaning the four sisters. She had blushed and stammered, unable to reply, but hugged the compliment to herself like a secret treasure.

  There was a soldier standing on guard outside the palace who looked somehow familiar, and she took the children’s hands to wander a little closer. He seemed wary as she approached.

  “Pray forgive me if I am wrong,” she said to him, “but are you by any chance Fedor Ivanov Lipovsky?”

  “Who wants to know?” he demanded.

  “You will think me touched, perhaps, but I am a friend of a woman called Annushka who has lost her brother, and you seem to me remarkably similar.”

  He stared, openmouthed. “You know my sister?”

  She gave a broad smile. “I was sure it was you. Annushka will be overjoyed to see you again.” She gave the address, which had lodged in her memory. “Bolshaya Apartments, number fifty-seven.”

  “Did you recognize me from the family forehead?” he asked. “We can’t be the only people to have these.”

  Maria shook her head. “Not just the forehead. I like drawing and . . .” She had been about to say that she enjoyed taking photographs, which would instantly have marked her out as a kulak, but stopped herself just in time. “I suppose I have a memory for faces,” she finished. “I’m glad I could be of use.”

  Next time she saw Annushka in the bread line, her friend threw her arms around her and almost cried with gratitude. “I will always be in your debt,” she said. “Thank you a million, million times.”

  * * *

  Maria would have thought no more of this chance reunion, but Annushka told some friends about her miraculous eye for faces and she was approached by two other women who had lost family members. They gave her slips of paper with their addresses and asked her to memorize their features just in case she encountered their missing relatives. Maria made quick sketches of each on the back of their papers and promised to keep her eyes peeled, but cautioned them not to have high expectations. Even if their relatives were in the city, it had a population of over a million and new suburbs were springing up every month.

  A woman by the name of Raisa came with her husband to stay in the kommunalka where Maria and Peter lived. It soon became apparent that she was a gossip who loved nothing better than standing in the hallway discussing the affairs of other neighbors in a way that made Maria uneasy. She did not care to know if the couple on the first floor argued most nights; and when the people on the third floor lost a baby, she would rather respect their privacy and let them mourn in peace. At the same time she did not wish to alienate Raisa, fearing that she herself might become the subject of her gossip, so she listened and changed the subject as soon as it was possible to do so without causing offense. One day she told Raisa of her success in reuniting Annushka and her brother.

  “You should go to the block on Tulskaya Ulitsa, just by the bridge,” Raisa told her. “My husband and I used to live there and it was full to the brim of displaced people searching for their families, poor things. I think the authorities put them there as a temporary measure in the hope that they will find relatives and not need rehousing after all.”

  As soon as she mentioned it, the idea took root in Maria’s mind: if she heard of such a place, Tatiana might go there to search for her. It was silly, she knew, and she decided not to tell Peter, but to Raisa she said, “I’d love to help if I can. Perhaps you and I could go together and you could introduce me to some of your old neighbors.”

  Raisa liked the thought of any venture that let her snoop on other people’s lives, so one day in the spring of 1924, just after the snow had melted, they went together to the block in question, Stepan and Irina in tow. Raisa knocked on doors, introducing Maria and explaining that she had a talent for reuniting families. Maria had brought a notebook in which she took down their current addresses and drew quick sketches to act as a
n aide-mémoire. Although she knew it was almost certainly futile, she peered through doorways hoping to catch a glimpse of Tatiana, but with no luck.

  One woman brought a boy of around six to her door. “I have not seen his father since 1918,” she said, “but he is the spitting image of this little one. Will you look for him on your travels and ask him to bring me money to raise his son?”

  As Maria took down their details, she kept glancing at the woman. There was something about her greenish-hazel eyes that seemed familiar. “Do you by any chance have a sister called Nadezdha?” she asked.

  The woman’s eyes widened. “How do you know her? When last I heard, she was in Moscow.”

  “Not anymore.” Maria smiled, copying out the address of one of the women she had promised to help. It turned out to be her second successful reunion, and she was proud of that.

  When she finally told Peter about her unofficial missing-persons bureau, he was concerned. “Maybe it is not a good idea to draw attention to yourself in this way. The more new people you meet, the more likely you are to be recognized as a Romanov.”

  Maria shook her head. “No one would recognize me now.” Although only twenty-four years old, she had the red-veined cheeks of a countrywoman from the winter nights spent sleeping in barns, and a few tiny lines scored the corners of her eyes; her hands were cracked and calloused, and her hair was short and invariably worn beneath a headscarf. “My only worry is that if Tatiana does pass me in the street, she will no longer know me. I could no more pass for a grand duchess than . . .”

  She paused, searching for an apt way to complete her simile. Peter grabbed her and gave her a lingering kiss on the lips. When he broke away, he said, “To me you are still the breathtakingly beautiful girl on the landing in Ekaterinburg whose eyes filled with tears when I told her my father had died in the war. I have never forgotten that moment, and for the rest of my life I never will.”

  Chapter 25

  Leningrad, 1925

  FOR OVER FOUR YEARS MARIA HAD FOLLOWED SVETLANA’S advice on avoiding pregnancies, but as the time approached for Irina to start her education, with Stepan already attending the school nearby, she began to yearn for another baby. When she went for groceries, she couldn’t help gazing longingly at the tiny newborns strapped to their mothers’ chests, or the older ones beaming gummy grins from perambulators.

  “Could we afford another baby?” she asked Peter one night. “Just one more . . .” She slid an arm over his chest and raised herself on an elbow to look him in the eye. “I know we are lucky to have a boy and a girl already, but I can’t stop thinking . . .”

  He smiled indulgently. “Of course,” he said. “If you want another, of course we can.”

  Katya was born in December, and came out of the womb so pretty that she took Maria’s breath away: the darkest blue eyes, golden curls, a pert nose, and elegant fingers that she curved in the air like a fine lady drinking tea from her best china.

  “I can’t decide who she looks like,” Maria sighed. “Perhaps she has an air of Tatiana about her.”

  “Perhaps,” Peter agreed, “but she is also the image of my sister.” He looked sad for a moment. “I will write to my mother to tell her of the newcomer to our family and ask one of our factory drivers to post it in Moscow. It is common knowledge that mail deliveries are more reliable from there, so I hope he will not question why.”

  He could not risk giving a return address; even seven years after the execution of the royal family, it seemed likely that the Cheka would still be looking for the missing Romanov daughter.

  * * *

  For those in cities who had jobs, the mid-1920s were a time of relative prosperity. There was free health care and education for workers, and while their accommodation was cramped and wages not lavish, there was enough spare cash for Maria and Peter to take their three young children on vacation in June 1926. Peter did not know the area, so Maria suggested they go to the town of Peterhof on the Gulf of Finland; in the old days her family used to spend the months of May and June there at a grand palace on the water’s edge.

  They caught a train to Peterhof and booked into a room in a shabby hotel with threadbare carpets and a smell of drains. The children slept in one narrow bed, parents in another, and they ate picnics of pot cheese, baked milk, and black bread for their meals, since they could not afford to go to one of the cafés or restaurants that had sprung up all over town since the government’s relaxation of rules regarding private enterprise. They spent the days exploring the green parks and tree-fringed coast of the Gulf. While Maria sat on the pebbly shore with six-month-old Katya, Peter played games with the elder two and taught them new skills that delighted them.

  “Pucker your lips as if you are going to kiss me, young Stepan,” he challenged. “Now blow.” Stepan made a breathy squeaking sound and Peter clapped him on the back. “That’s my man! Before the end of this week I will have you whistling like a song thrush.”

  Stepan soon learned to make tuneful noises but Irina could not manage, so instead Peter taught her to make a squawking sound by blowing through a blade of grass into which he had cut a slit with his thumbnail.

  “Like a frog’s fart,” he told her. “That’s what my father used to say.”

  “Listen, Mama! A frog’s fart!” Irina cried, and repeated it all afternoon, overjoyed to have a trick of her own.

  Maria rolled her eyes at the coarse language.

  Next Peter tried to teach them to skim stones across the surface of the water, but it proved too tricky for little hands. Instead they counted the number of bounces when he threw them, and cheered when he reached eight with an especially smooth pebble.

  Maria loved to watch them together. The children were usually asleep when Peter got home from the factory, so this time was important. She wanted them to get to know their father’s easygoing temperament and to absorb his wisdom. While she was an anxious personality—she wasn’t sure if she had always been that way or if the execution of her family had caused it—Peter never panicked in the face of problems, but pondered calmly until he found a solution. He was less gregarious than her but he saw the best in everyone he met and was always willing to do a favor, so he was well liked by his neighbors and coworkers.

  “Shall we catch some fish?” he asked, and sent the children scurrying in the bushes to find long, straight twigs with which to fashion fishing rods.

  “What will you use for line and hooks?” Maria called, and he produced a roll of fishing line and some hooks from his jacket pocket with a wink. Trust him to think ahead.

  The three of them sat on a rock, each dangling a rod over the water, waiting patiently. Maria got up to stroll along the water’s edge, soothing Katya to sleep with a gentle bouncing motion that came as second nature now. It seemed incredible that she had not known how to feed, change, or soothe a baby before Stepan came along, and she hoped he had not suffered from her early mistakes. He was still the serious one of her children. Olga, her eldest sister, had also been serious. Maybe it was the fate of the firstborn.

  “Mama, look!” Stepan called. Dangling on the end of his line was a wriggling silver fish, not three inches in length. He was crestfallen when Peter explained that they must throw it back because it was too small to eat.

  “We only kill what we can eat,” he explained. “If you respect nature, it will give you what you need.”

  Is that true? Maria wondered, then she looked at the babe in her arms, who had drifted off to sleep so easily. What she had needed after her family was brutally murdered was the love of a good man and a new family to care for, and she had been given both. Whether you believed they had been the gift of nature or of God was a moot point.

  She wandered out to a headland and squinted up the coast. It was a perfect day, of the type she remembered from her childhood: warmth in the sun and freshness in the breeze, with a bright blue sky above. Toward the horizon she could see the jetty where they used to moor the royal yacht, the Shtandart, and through the trees
she thought she could make out the glint of the golden cascade of fountains that led up to the Peterhof palace. Had her father still been Tsar, she might have visited there and let her children play in the park with their nanny, but that cosseted life had no appeal for her now. When she thought back through the men she’d had crushes on, the few foreign princes her parents considered for her spouse, she knew that although Peter was neither aristocratic nor royal, she could not have found a better husband anywhere in the world.

  * * *

  The Peterhof vacation was romantic, and a few weeks after their return, Maria found she was pregnant again. Although her fourth pregnancy, this was the first in which she had experienced sickness. She had a constant debilitating nausea that lasted all day, dry-retching when she had not eaten a morsel or drunk a drop of water, and it was difficult to find any foods that she could keep down. Peter brought an herb called black horehound, which he stewed in boiling water to make a tea that offered some relief, but when the sickness continued beyond her third month of pregnancy, he called a doctor to their apartment.

  The doctor examined Maria and listened to the baby’s heartbeat through a stethoscope, pronouncing himself satisfied that it was strong. He told her to nibble a dry biscuit first thing on awakening, to avoid rich foods, and to keep sipping water so she did not dehydrate.

  “What was the date of your last menstrual flow?” he asked, looping the stethoscope around his neck.

  “It was in May,” Maria told him. “The twentieth or twenty-first.”

  He took a chart from his medical case and consulted it. “In that case your child is due around the twenty-fourth of February next year,” he told her.

  She nodded. “Yes, but my babies can be early. My eldest was born on the third of April but I only conceived him in September.”

  “He must have been small at birth.” The doctor frowned.

  “No.” She shook her head. “He was the same size as the others. I think he just grew faster in the womb.”