“I’m sure he meant to settle up,” Luba said. “I have a way to pay you now.”
Mrs. A. continued to shut the door.
“Wait,” Luba said. “Something valuable to give you.”
Mrs. A. paused.
“It is a very fine emerald necklace. The tsarina herself admired it.”
Through the door opening, Mrs. A. squinted an eye at Luba. “Let’s see it.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, but as soon as you free Sofya it will be yours.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“You have the rest of us as hostages. And my word. And you will soon have a Fabergé piece worth a fortune. Vladi is stealing anything of value from the estate. Why should he have all the reward while you toil as his servant?”
Mrs. A. craned her neck to look toward the house. “Be quick about it. And you better make it look like she’s still here.”
Luba smiled. “That won’t be hard. Vladi seldom comes up here.”
I stood, heart pounding, freedom on the other side of that door. I brushed the dust from my pants and smoothed my hair. Would the tsarina even recognize me in such a state? My whole body pulsed with something I hadn’t felt in so long. Hope.
CHAPTER
24
Eliza
1917
The following spring America finally entered the World War to fight alongside France, England, and Russia. On April 6, 1917, planes zoomed over New York City and dropped two tons of confetti, which drifted down over the rooftops and buildings and covered the streets like late spring snow. Once Julia Marlow sang The Star-Spangled Banner at the Hudson Theatre, her coat on and a black hat down over one eye, the recruitment office was deluged with men of all ages and social strata enlisting. Would Merrill enlist? I had watched the society pages for news of their wedding, with no sign of it. I brushed away thoughts of him.
America entering the war didn’t surprise me, really. After a German U-boat sank the British ocean liner Lusitania, killing 128 Americans, and the U.S. intercepted a secret telegram from Germany to Mexico proposing Mexico turn against the U.S. in exchange for the return of Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, President Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany and got his wish.
That February in Russia, yet another revolution had broken out, a major one this time, and by March the tsar had abdicated his throne. Lenin was back in Russia, heading up the Bolshevik Party, and on his second day in power abolished the free press. Seemed he was bent on liquidating Russian civil society top to bottom. Could the world get any more chaotic?
How was it impacting Sofya? I found myself waking at night, mind racing with thoughts of her. I rubbed my little telegram charm that I wore around my neck, the only cure for the terrible worry.
In desperate attempts to learn her whereabouts, I sent letters and telegrams to Alexander Palace, where the royal family lived under house arrest, but heard nothing back. If only the war would end so I could travel abroad and find her.
* * *
—
ONE LOVELY SPRING DAY Caroline and I were in the kitchen of our apartment pitting plums, the pits to be delivered to the army’s gas defense department to use in making carbon for gas masks, when Mother stepped into the kitchen.
“There’s a Russian woman here, Eliza, claiming you invited her.”
“I may have told Mr. Blandmore he could send a few over. It’s just temporary, dear.”
Mother drew herself up to her full six feet. “Without consulting me?”
“It’s my apartment—”
“I don’t like this.”
“It’s because she’s Russian, isn’t it?” Mother didn’t like the tsar’s treatment of his peasants, but she had another reason to dislike Russians. Though we seldom spoke of it, when Mother was a girl, her parents’ Russian stableman disappeared along with her favorite pony, which caused her to hold a vicious grudge.
“You were fine with the Streshnayvas—”
“Ivan was Henry’s friend.”
“She’s not an escaped convict, Mother.”
The kitchen door swung open and a hunched woman poked her head around the corner. She brought to mind a coutured pullet as she stepped in, dressed in a velvet French coat and gloves, a beaded bag looped over her forearm.
Peg followed through the door. “Sorry, Miz Ferriday. She’s a stubborn one.”
“I’m possessing ears, you know,” the woman said in a thick Russian accent.
I held out my hand. “I am Eliza Ferriday. This is my mother Caroline Woolsey Mitchell and daughter Caroline. How do you do?”
“How do I do? I do terribly. My leg has not stopped hurting since I left Russia and—”
I stood and pulled out a chair. “That was a rhetorical question, actually. In this country, we ask that as a courtesy.”
“Strange to ask question when you don’t care about answer. I am Princess Anna Yurynova Yesipov. From Kiev. You heard of Yesipovs?”
“Won’t you sit down?” I asked.
The princess looked at the chair as if it were a live snake. “In kitchen?” The princess brushed off the chair seat and sat.
“Do you know a Russian family named Streshnayva?” I asked. “They’re from Petrograd and Malinov.”
“No,” Princess Yesipov said.
“Would you inquire with the others back at the building?”
“Building?” Princess Yesipov asked. “That place is insult to buildings. Not fit for animals.”
Peg set teacups on the table. “No self-respecting person will live down there in the Bowery. Smells like a dirty chamber pot most days.”
“Thank you, Peg,” I said. “Perhaps, see about some muffins?”
Mother poured tea into our cups, the steam clouding her spectacles.
“Well, I’m thinking of ways to help,” I said. “Perhaps a party to benefit the Russian émigrés.”
Princess Yesipov sent a dismissive wave my way. “American parties? All jokes and games. Russian parties are dignified, with sad music.”
“How festive,” Mother said.
“If there is an actor, he will recite a poem, maybe everyone’s favorite, ‘The Deep Grave Dug in the Deep Earth.’ ”
“Haven’t heard that since the Civil War,” Mother said.
“You haven’t seen a civil war like the one happening in Russia.”
“My Woolsey ancestors served as nurses at Gettysburg—”
“A few cannonballs? Nothing compared to what Russia is going through, Russian against Russian. Soldiers have turned on their officers.”
A shiver ran through me. Afon?
Peg placed one of Mother’s walnut muffins, the pride of her oven, in front of Princess Yesipov. The princess examined it and then began extracting the walnuts, collecting them in a triangular mound.
Mother stared at the princess as if she’d pulled a switchblade. The steward of good taste, Mother felt it better to ignore a baked good than to plumb its depths with finger and thumb.
“I’d like to ask the displaced in Paris to make dolls—lace, too—and sell them here, at bazaars, or some here at the apartment.”
Mother turned from the stove. “Not sure how the Billingtons will feel about their neighbors opening a thrift shop.”
“Of course, we’d make more money if we had something donated to sell,” I said.
Mother poured the princess more tea. “Bath salts always do well.”
Princess Yesipov tasted her tea, grimaced, and then pushed the cup away. “Bath salts?” She leaned in. “I tell you what really makes money.” She paused. “Russian vodka.”
Mother sat back in her chair. “I don’t—”
“But there is prohibition in Russia,” I said.
“Russians drink samogon. Made from home stills. From grain. Very rare here and not legal,
but like drinking nectar.”
Mother stirred her tea. “Some call alcohol ‘the devil’s friend.’ ”
The princess leaned in toward Mother. “Russian cigarettes, too. Very good. If you are serious about making money, this is how.”
Mother barely looked at the princess. “Of course we are serious.”
“Well, thank you for your help,” I said. “We look forward to having you stay with us.”
The princess gathered her bag. “We will go get my luggages. Please send your valet to assist.”
Mother set her spoon on her saucer. “We don’t keep a valet, Princess, but I suppose Peg can help you. And you are welcome for tonight, but I’m afraid we will be closing the apartment as we are on our way out to Southampton soon to our cottage on Gin Lane. The new roof is finally on.”
“Where is Southampton?” Princess Yesipov asked.
“The eastern end of Long Island,” Mother said.
Princess Yesipov leaned close to Mother. “How big is this cottage?”
Mother hesitated. “Why, twelve bedrooms.”
“So you have room.”
What to say? No one had ever invited themselves to Gin Lane before.
“Yes, you’re more than welcome—” I said.
Princess Yesipov stood. “Your mother maybe not happy with that.”
Mother brushed a speck of lint off her sleeve. “Well, the season doesn’t fully open out there until June twenty-fifth and the cottage is quite a mess. From the roof and all.”
Princess Yesipov shrugged. “It can be cleaned.”
Mother sensed defeat but fell back to her favorite default. “We’ll see.”
* * *
—
THE FOLLOWING RAINY MORNING, Peg hurried off to the lodging house in the Bowery to fetch the princess’s luggage and I stood in my bedroom amid a sea of tea-colored tissue, packing up our black silk and bombazine to go to Gin Lane.
Mother stopped by my open door, dressed like a longshoreman ready to confront a nor’easter. She wore Father’s old galoshes, her Civil War–era caped black coat and a plaid, waxed-cotton Scottish fisherman’s hat.
“I am going out to meet Auntie Eliza to go door-to-door for the St. Thomas rummage sale.”
“In this weather?”
“Farmers who wait for the right weather never plant, dear. And this is the best time to catch people at home, after all.”
Rain poured down the windows in sheets.
“Be careful out there, Mother. Can you imagine what the Bowery is like in this weather? It doesn’t seem right all those poor women stuck there.”
“Yes, it’s terribly sad to see these people come down in the world,” Mother said as she drew on her gray kid gloves. “But they were happy to benefit from the exploitation of the peasants. You reap what you sow, don’t you agree?”
“Imagine the conditions in that lodging house, Mother. Gin Lane would do those women a world of good.”
“St. Luke’s Hospital does a world of good—saves a good many beds for charity cases. Perhaps they can go back there. But, of course, we’ll do our Christian duty and find them all suitable homes.”
Mother left and I picked up and folded a black crape veil. At times, Mother still wore hers, all these years after Father had died. Perhaps I would follow her and never wear color again.
I had barely folded three more dresses when the door burst open and Peg stood at the threshold, bent at the waist.
“Good heavens, Peg. Do knock, dear.”
Peg inhaled deep breaths. “Miz Ferriday, we got to that lodging house and I had to come right back. One of those Russians is terrible sick and they say your mother needs to come quick.”
“Come where, Peg? Settle down.”
“The place in the Bowery they’re all staying. Some Russian lady named Nancy just arrived and sick as can be and they need your mother. You should see where they’re living, the poor things.”
A shiver ran through me. Could I go? I couldn’t possibly help anyone.
“What about Dr. Forbes?”
“He’s sick, himself.”
“Well, get Dr. Ferguson.”
“No other doctor will set foot there. It’s bad, Miz Ferriday. She’s coughing something awful, just like…” Peg’s gaze drifted to the carpet.
“You can say it, Peg.”
“Where’s your mother? I’ll go find her.”
I went to the window and saw small streams flooding the street below. Mother could be anywhere by now.
I stepped to the front hall, gathered my gloves, and Peg followed.
“I’ll come,” I said.
Peg raised an eyebrow. “You? I mean…”
“We’ll never find Mother in time. Get my umbrella and Mother’s black bag. And a canteen of cold water. Leave word for her in case she returns, but I am perfectly capable.”
“Well—”
“Peg. I won’t hear another word.” I stepped into my galoshes. “I’m better than nothing.”
* * *
—
PEG AND I HURRIED toward the lodging house on Rivington Street, second thoughts about my mission of mercy flooding my head. I clutched Mother’s leather bag to my chest and looked up at the old brick place, which seemed about to fall over, chevrons of rain pouring off the roof, windowpanes missing or stuffed with newspapers.
Should I have waited for Mother? I’d done nothing but impede Henry’s recovery, after all.
“Hurry,” Peg said. “Through the back. Up to the attic.”
I followed Peg along the side of the building, our shoes slippery on wooden planks, which floated atop a putrefying sludge of what looked like human waste and garbage. We made our way through a forest of wet, gray underclothes and shirts on clotheslines, past barefooted children playing in the mud among heaps of trash and broken bottles.
From above came the sound of a window opening.
“Careful,” Peg called back to me as a slurry of garbage rained down on the plank before me.
We stepped through the back door and up steep stairs, the railing long gone. As we ascended, the stench hit me like a wall, of unwashed chamber pots and rancid meat.
The sound of terrible, distant coughing met us as we arrived on the third-floor attic landing and my own breath grew short. Peg was right.
It was just like Henry.
I followed her down a dark hallway to a windowless kitchen in which a gray stew pot steamed on a black iron stove, a rug below it so dirty and worn into the wood, as if being slowly digested by the floor. A tin basin on the stove caught a rivulet falling from the ceiling, which hit hot metal with a little hiss. Mounds of old overcoats, skirts, and stockings lay about the little room, topped by a coverlet here and there.
“The women sleep here?”
Peg turned as she walked. “Most of the mattresses were stolen.”
We followed the hacking cough into a smaller, low-ceilinged room, no bigger than Mother’s luggage closet at Gin Lane. An eyebrow window sat high on one wall, providing weak light, and rain seeped in through the eave encouraging speckled, black patches of mold on the wall. In the opposite corner sat a shelf with pictures of saints, their stretched faces pale in the candle glow.
Against the windowed wall lay a light-haired woman on a thin, blue-striped mattress, piled high with coverlets and heavy overcoats of all kinds. Several women huddled around the mattress, and two knelt in the corner at prayer.
I placed the back of my hand to the woman’s forehead. “How long has she been this hot?”
Our patient looked up at me, face flushed.
Where had I seen that face? Those aquamarine eyes? The Immigration Bureau detention room that day.
A woman in the corner raised her hand. “She’s been this way two hours or so.”
“She shiver
ed so bad, we covered her,” said another.
“Please, everyone must leave,” I said.
How many times had I seen Mother clear the room before she performed one of her medical miracles? I glanced at the girl on the mattress. This was our Russian Nancy? Such an American name.
The women hurried out and I crouched near Nancy’s head. What to do?
Peg came to my side. “Well?”
Another terrible cough wracked the girl.
I froze. Was it pneumonia? I pulled a coat back to examine Nancy’s face. The bluish lips. Just like Henry.
I stripped off my own coat and rolled up my shirtsleeves. “Take everything off her, Peg.”
Peg hesitated. “But she’s cold—”
“You must take off the coats and I’ll open that window. She needs air in her lungs.”
Peg pulled the coats off the girl as I stood on the chair and opened the eyebrow window a crack.
“Let’s sit her up, take off that wet shirt, and tap her back.”
Peg and I patted the girl’s back and then Peg fetched hot water in a basin and laid it next to the mattress.
“Wait for the water to cool,” I said. “Must be tepid. A cold bath sets the fever.”
Soon I ripped a piece of my sleeve, dipped it in the cooling water, and ran it down Nancy’s cheek and neck.
We repeated our system of back patting, bathing her in tepid water, and fanning clean air about her face; and before long the pink color started to come back to her lips.
Nancy mumbled something in Russian.
“Maybe she’s thirsty,” Peg said.
I held the canteen to her lips and she drank.
As the sun set and the room darkened, her terrible coughing lessened and we watched Nancy’s chest move up and down, her breathing leveling off.
I opened Mother’s black bag, pulled out a thermometer and slid it under Nancy’s arm. As I waited for the silver ribbon of mercury to climb I tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. What a lovely young woman. Why had she come so far from her home? She wore a wedding ring. Where was her husband? Maybe she knew something about Sofya?
Lost Roses Page 20