“Of course,” I said, setting my glass on Mother’s kitchen table.
Nancy looked out the window at the surf pounding in the darkness. “Well, at first I thought it was a parade of some sort coming down the road in Kiev, but it was the Reds looking for us, a large rabble from town. My husband had been gone, at the front, for several weeks and our son Dreshnik, a cadet in military school, stood watch, his blue uniform pants a little too long, for I’d forgotten to hem them. At twelve, he was only allowed a child’s rifle, though it shot real bullets. I held under my skirt my mother’s icon of the Virgin Mary, covered in silver, her most prized possession.”
Nancy played with the base of her glass.
“The men came about the house looking for money and watches. They laughed at Dreshnik guarding my ten-year-old daughter Sasha and me, but when a gang of them surrounded his sister and tried to take her off to the next room he shot and grazed one of them in the neck. At first Dreshnik stood astonished his gun had worked, but the mob surrounded him and took him away, as he screamed for me. They held Sasha and me in the house until they’d taken everything of value and we found Dreshnik later. Near the train station.”
I covered Nancy’s hand with mine. “My dear.”
“They’d stripped off his uniform and hung him by the neck from a tree, and written in grease pencil on his chest: Former Person. The sight of him, so young and slim hanging there, his neck broken…Sasha cried for me to take him down. I tried but the rope was too high. We had to leave him there, for we heard the mob returning.”
Nancy took another drink.
“Sasha and I were lucky to secure passage here but halfway on the trip she grew sick and they said it was typhus. I had the choice to return to Russia and have her buried there or continue on and do it here.”
“I don’t know how you went on.”
“Is it fair my husband went to war never to return? That my boy died terrified and without me? That my daughter died in my arms in the belly of a ship? That I miss them every moment? No. But this is my life now. Every woman at the boarding house has stories similar. So I translate letters for them and help others best I can and try and accept things the way they are.”
We were silent for a long moment. How brave she was. And she was right. I was lucky Henry died in his own bed, taken naturally, with me by his side.
“How are you doing today?” I asked.
She smiled. “There was a time when I couldn’t remember my name. But today is good, thank you. You know, in Russia we have a name for a friend you make while drinking vodka.”
“ ‘Very drunk,’ as I am now?”
Nancy laughed, her eyes bright with tears. “No. ‘Sobutylnik’ is the word. You know, I have been trying to work up the courage to give you something.”
“Oh, that’s not necessary—”
She pulled from her lap a rectangular piece of wood the size of a cereal box, depicting the Virgin Mary and child painted there, covered in silver, the metal trimmed to show their faces. “This is my mother’s icon. I would like you to have it.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t, Nancy.”
“Please. You are our champion and savior and I have nothing else. If my mother were still alive I know she would be happy if you took it.”
She handed me the icon and I held it in two hands. It was surprisingly light, and I smoothed one finger down the cool silver.
“Hang it in a special place. Best if it’s an eastern wall.”
“My deepest thanks, Nancy. It is lovely and I have just the spot for it.”
* * *
—
DESPITE DRINKING MULTIPLE GLASSES of samogon with Nancy, I woke the next morning clearheaded and free. At first I took tentative steps. Perhaps this new state of deep gratitude was temporary and would fade away like smoke rings in the air?
I stood in my bedroom, folded all seven of my black, bombazine dresses, and tucked them away in a trunk, tossing in the black jet jewelry. From the closet I pulled a white silk and chiffon dress I’d never worn and slid it over my head, the silk cascading down my shoulders, slipping along my skin like water. I stepped into sturdy, outdated pearl-colored kid shoes, wound three lengths of crystal beads around my neck, and hurried out to summon the troops.
Our Russian guests were already busying themselves about the house and the balalaika quartet Nancy had organized tuned their instruments in the living room. Princess Cantacuzène, visiting for the day to help, came dressed in full princess regalia, a tasteful diamond hairpin fixed in her velvet hat. We quickly revisited our last meeting on a tram in Petrograd and she inquired after my thumb and, finding it quite recovered, went to staff the samogon table.
Would Southamptonites come?
Caroline and Betty helped Princess Yesipov to a chair across the dining room and, seeing me, rushed to my side.
Caroline ran her hand down my sleeve. “Mother, you’ve given up your black.”
I squeezed her hand. “It was about time, don’t you think?”
“You look radiant, Mrs. Ferriday,” Betty said.
“How would you two like to be in charge of the raffle? You could earn a Girl Scout badge for it.”
“Do you mean it, Mother? I can be a Scout?”
“If you stick to the task.”
I pulled her close, held her tight, and for once in so long she returned the embrace.
“Go now, before I change my mind,” I said.
The girls ran off and I pulled back the curtain on a living room window and surveyed the driveway, expecting ten more women from the boarding house. If only we could encourage the whole community to rally round the cause and provide homes. The Irving Hotel had promised jobs for all if we could accommodate them.
I stepped to the living room, where we’d rolled back the rug and paraffin-waxed the floor. I sprinkled a light dusting of cornmeal across it and took a little slide across. The perfect floor for the dancing planned for later.
Mother fetched a newspaper and read us the headlines in town-crier fashion. “Squadron of German airships attack England. Germans conquer the Baltic Islands.”
Would Germany never tire? The thought of Merrill flying over Germany made my stomach lurch.
Caroline and Betty positioned the Paris-made dolls for sale and I displayed an exquisite jeweled sword Princess Cantacuzène lent us to open the champagne in a grand way, once used in battle by her Russian husband’s grandfather.
As we prepared the house my thoughts flashed to Sofya and Afon. Were they still alive? I had already sent more than two hundred dollars of profit from our handicraft sales, along with some of our own funds, to our contact in Paris to be distributed among the displaced Russians.
From the front vestibule Caroline shouted, “Look, Mother. A whole troop of women has arrived.”
Mother came from the kitchen. “Eliza?”
I hurried to the driveway, Mother close behind, and found women, two six-year-old girls among them, disembarking from a small, white bus.
The driver came to me. “Got twelve suitcases. Where do you want ’em?”
“Welcome,” I called to them. “Do come inside. We need every hand on deck.”
Mother came to my side. “Luggage? Today of all days, Eliza. Billy Maddox is serious about arresting them.”
“It will all work out, Mother.”
“We’ll be in handcuffs beside them, Eliza.”
I waved the women in. “Come in, everyone; leave your things in the study.”
“Join us in the dining room,” Caroline called out as she led the way, holding the two young girls by the hand.
They were a handsome group and had dressed in the best they had, most in traveling clothes, many with scuffed shoes worn down at the heels. One got the impression in better circumstances they would have dressed in silks and lace, but they still wore the expectan
t looks universal to those looking forward to a party.
“Don’t worry your English is not good enough,” I said. “Let’s show the people of Southampton what upstanding citizens they have living among them.”
“Though at least twelve persons over the zoning limit,” Mother said under her breath.
Mother’s grandfather clock struck noon and Southamptonites trickled in, looking about the house, vaguely uncomfortable until Peg made sure they had a sample of our Russian vodka in hand. How could aristocratic Princess Cantacuzène, our very own White House royalty not impress them? The Josiah Copley Thaws from Windbreak. The William Douglases from Over Dune. The Sidney Harrises from Happy Go Lucky lined up to be introduced.
Julia Marlowe and E.H. arrived, drew quite a crowd, and Julia launched into a brisk autograph business. A reporter from the New York American circulated about, lending the air of excitement the press brings to any affair.
I stepped to the front hall amid the crowd, which had separated into two distinct sides, parted as perfectly as Moses’s Red Sea. To the dining room side stood the Russian women, to the side closest the vestibule stood the Southampton guests, instinctively close to the door.
“Gather round,” I called out, hurried halfway up the stairs, and addressed the crowd.
“Thank you for coming out today to honor these good women of Russian birth, who have been forced to flee their native country. Innocent women, mothers and children, targeted by the Bolsheviks. You will have the opportunity to purchase handicrafts to benefit the displaced émigrés—”
The front door slammed and Electra Whitney and Anna Gabler walked into the foyer. They made their way to the foot of the stairs.
Electra looked up at me. “Things really have gotten out of hand here, with every sort of vagabond hanging about. The zoning laws could not be clearer: Other than servants, no more than four unrelated individuals allowed permanent residence. I hear there are more than ten living here now, but it looks like we need to revise that number up. And don’t tell me these are servants.” She looked at Nancy, next to her, and spoke slowly. “Do you understand?”
I clenched my hands. “These are quality human beings who speak better English than you do, Electra, so please watch yourself.”
“The mayor has been informed and Officer Maddox is standing by, ready to make arrests. Several of your Russians were drinking vodka at The Tavern and speaking quite loudly in Russian. How are we to know what they are saying? Our own twenty-sixth President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, insisted aliens must assimilate. I quote: ‘We have room for but one language here and that is the English language.’ And now you are peddling illegal foreign alcohol from your home? Southampton will not tolerate this.”
The guests shifted in their shoes.
Mother, watching it all from the foyer below, pushed through the crowd and climbed the stairs. The room quieted as she took her place next to me and surveyed the crowd.
“Most of you know me, but for those who don’t: My name is Caroline Woolsey Mitchell,” Mother said, in her special Woolsey combination of cool voice and warm words.
Electra raised one hand. “You don’t need to—”
“Keep your mouth shut for once, Electra, and listen.”
Those in the crowd murmured and then settled.
“I never thought I’d say this, but I know how you feel, Electra. I didn’t accept all this at first, either. My daughter had to show me the way—humbling for an old lady who thinks she knows everything. But then I got to know these women.” Mother waved a hand toward Nancy, below. “Nancy. Raised in Russia but speaks better French than I. She lost her husband to war, daughter to typhus, and saw her son brutally murdered, and now cleans the bathrooms at the club. Princess Yesipov, who takes our leftovers to those living in tenements in the city.”
Anna Gabler moved a few steps away from Electra.
“I’m not here to shame you, but to help you understand. To ask for your patience and a drop of the milk of humankindness. Yes, change is hard. Hearing Russian spoken at The Tavern may feel wrong to you, but for God’s sake rise above it, dear friends. Extend the same hand others gave your forebears. They are eager to work in any way they can.
“As a young boy, President Roosevelt’s own grandfather, newly arrived from Holland, once rode a pig through the streets of New York after church, which carried him full speed through the enraged congregation. How did his fellow Americans feel he was assimilating?”
Mother waved a hand in Archie Somerdyke’s direction.
“Archie, people talked when your grandmother wore her Dutch cap to church each Sunday. Said she wasn’t trying hard enough to fit in. Priscilla, your father refused to speak a word of English when he first came, only pointed his cane at what he wanted at Hildreth’s. My own English great-grandfather called America ‘the colonies’ until the day he died. Electra, you’re right, these Russian women are not our kind. They’re our salvation. For if we stick to just ‘our kind’ we’ll simply exist in this insular, petty world. A world that may be safe and predictable but with the life wrung out of it. Hang on to your grudges, if you must. Stoke your fear. Call in the authorities. But I will support these good people to my dying day, and if the police drag them out of here, I swear to the Almighty, they will have to take me, too.”
Mother finished and the crowd stood silent, her last words hanging in the air, and then, all at once, the crowd erupted with heartfelt applause, which echoed through the hall.
Emma Baker pulled her husband by the hand and walked to join the Russian side. “You’ll have to arrest us, too.”
“We’ll take four émigrés at The Clovers,” Dudley Olcott said.
Mother and I smiled and waved to those who called out.
Chester Griswold raised one arm. “I can fit four at Crosswaves.”
Electra took her leave in a huff and her Pink and Greens crossed the great divide to the vodka table.
Soon, all our Russian visitors had new accommodations and Mother and Princess Cantacuzène brandished their three cigar box cash registers bulging with bills. What a sum we’d have to send over to help the women here and in Paris. Now all I had to do was find Sofya.
CHAPTER
34
Varinka
1917
Radimir stood in the hotel room doorway, his hand outstretched, a sweet-sad smile on his lips. How lucky I was to have such a handsome young man be so kind.
He held out his hand farther. “Don’t be afraid.”
It would be wonderful to go with him. To run through the darkened streets and get lost in the crowds. I felt the smooth burn next to my eye. Taras’s next punishment would be worse.
“Come with me. I’m meeting friends.”
I glanced at the clock on the mantel. Six P.M. What if I only went for a short while? Taras would never know.
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Well, do you have something else to wear? Anything dark-colored, that hides your figure.”
He blushed a bit after saying that.
I smiled. “I think there are some things in that trunk.”
I rifled through the drawers and found some thick, brownish-green ladies’ hunting clothes. Radimir stepped into Taras’s room and turned his back while I dressed. Such a kind action, something Taras would never do.
We made it to the street and the crowds surrounded us. Radimir pulled a gun from inside his jacket and held my elbow tight. “Stay close, Varinka. We are not going far. Just to Literaturnoe Kafe. We must walk. The trams have stopped.”
We fought our way along Nevsky Prospekt, jostled and knocked by the great sea of people. A well-dressed couple hurried by, looking anxious as a rabble of men with liquor bottles in their hands laughed and called after them. “Run, former people!”
We passed a soldier in uniform, lying on the sidewalk, a pool of dark blood under
his head. The crowd around the man celebrated, shooting rifles into the air. I tried to stop and look, but Radimir rushed me along the darkened sidewalk.
We soon entered a restaurant with low ceilings, the scent of roast chicken and cigarette smoke thick in the air. It was very loud in there, packed with people pushing to get to the bar. Radimir pulled me by the hand to the back of the place and stopped at a couple who stood kissing, locked in a tight embrace.
“Varinka, these are my friends Dina and Erik. And apparently, they like each other very much.”
The two released each other and Dina shook my hand. “Good to meet you, comrade.” Dina made me think of a lion, her hair loose and full around her face. She dressed in pants and a jacket like Radimir’s, but with the opposite figure of mine. What had the magazine called it? Curvy.
“When they are not kissing they both work for the newspaper The People.”
“We are looking for staff at the paper if you are interested,” Dina said.
“Oh, me? I’m just visiting. From Malinov. Need to get back—”
Erik poured a glass of vodka. “How did you have the bad fortune to meet our Radimir?”
I drew my hair down across the burn on my face. “He helped me. At the hotel.”
Radimir put his arm around my shoulders. “A group of creeps. Looking for weapons—about to spirit her away.”
“Some take things too far,” Dina said. She touched my hand. “We’re glad you’re safe. Just don’t make eye contact on the street.”
“Why worry?” Erik asked. He nodded toward Radimir. “The commissioner here is issued bullets.”
“Commissioner?” I asked.
“Since the Bolsheviks took power there are already hundreds of new committees,” Dina said. “Too many for my taste. But a commissioner is the person who heads one.”
Erik pulled me close. “In Radi’s case he was the most brilliant one at the museum so they made him Commissioner of Art and Historic Objects of the People. And, at not yet twenty, chosen over more senior men. Feel free to genuflect.”
Lost Roses Page 27