I stepped out the bedroom door and rushed down the front stair, past the family having breakfast in our front parlor, the father scratching his belly through his long underwear.
Was the commissioner right behind me?
Vibrating with anger, I ran out into the back courtyard, dawn’s first light just showing, to the apartment over the laundry to find my family. When the air met my wet face, I realized I’d been crying and wiped away the tears with both hands. She would not triumph. I would rescue my son in Paris.
I reached Bogdan’s apartment and found it empty, my family gone, the door open and floor swept clean.
In the distance, the laundry wagon waited in the far barn courtyard. Even from afar I knew it was Jarushka harnessed there. The shaggy fetlocks. The lopped ears. As I drew closer she tossed her head against the reins. I ran across the cobblestones and flung my arms about her neck and she turned with a slight neigh.
I ran to the horse barn and burrowed under layers of horse blankets into Jarushka’s tack box and pulled out the package of clothes Luba had hidden there, hurried up into the wagon seat, my rucksack by my side. I turned to see a full cart of linens neatly bundled in brown paper packages marked Sheets and Pillow Covers.
I checked back over my shoulder. It was better to escape and come back later than to be caught.
Jarushka set off with the lightest touch of the reins and I turned and watched the estate grow smaller as we headed toward the gate. Were Varinka’s comrades following me? Surely, she’d told them by now.
Perhaps my parents had already taken Luba and fled to France? Our old townhouse in Petrograd? At least I was free. I would reunite with Max in Paris. With hard work and cleverness, I could do anything.
Jarushka picked up her pace along the road toward the guardhouse, through a tunnel of trees arched across the road. In the early dawn darkness, I could barely make out the gate up ahead. Suddenly Jarushka stopped. I bid her forward and she refused.
So strange for her. What was wrong?
I again asked her to move and she walked on, slowly.
As we drew closer I saw what might have concerned her.
“Go on, girl.” What was it there on top of the fence?
As we neared the guardhouse and the trees gave way, the darkness slowly lifted and I saw the forms atop the fence. Confused, I stood, unable to take in the horror of it all.
I saw Agnessa first, her charred body impaled on two fence spikes above, still wearing the lace dress I’d last seen her in, seared to her skin, one lace-sleeved arm dangling, as if reaching to me. There was a crude sign written in Russian and tied with twine around her neck. Parasite.
Time slowed as I stepped down from the wagon and my whole body shook as I stepped to Father hanging there, his eyeglasses gone, eyes empty holes. His naked body was seared black in patches, small spots of flesh color here and there, his back arched, head thrown back and mouth open with a silent scream.
My gaze continued down the line and could barely look at my dear Luba, burned to the bone, her head hanging like a charred sunflower. My precious sister, so young, with so much promise, impaled there.
I fell to my knees in the road and retched up the little food left in me and then forced myself to stand. In the distance from the estate came a rider on horseback. I would have to escape or else join my family there on that fence. But how would they all have a proper burial?
I glanced at the approaching rider. There was no time.
Numb with the horror of it all, I stepped back up onto the wagon and urged Jarushka on, the tears on my face drying in the air as we picked up speed. I looked back. My dear family. I would have to grieve for them all later. Now it was more important to escape and live to tell of it all. To find Max and Afon.
And seek my revenge in Paris.
CHAPTER
36
Sofya
1918
It took me more than a year to make my way south from Malinov toward Ukraine in hopes of finding Afon. By December Jarushka and I were almost to Krasnodar, a town where Afon and I had spent our first year of marriage. According to his letter he and the last of his regiment were in the area. I pulled from my pocket Afon’s letter, which somehow missed the censors.
My Beloved,
Happy to say Pyotr Wrangel leads us now, more determined than ever. We continue on our way to where our first house was. Hope to rest there a while and regroup. Many good memories of that place.
Where our first house was. He meant Krasnodar of course, where we lived as a newly married couple, while Afon trained for the army.
I pictured our reunion, him picking me up as he always did, squeezing me so tight I could barely breathe. He’d request a temporary furlough and we’d travel on to Paris to find Max. I hoped the army might even provide food and extra guards for protection.
Nothing could stop the two of us together.
Throughout the whole journey Jarushka seemed to understand our mission as we’d hurried south before the commissioner could find his laundry cart missing. I had covered myself in the petroleum jelly, hoping my scent could not be followed if he sent his dogs after us, which must have given me the appearance of a dirty, greased pig. We’d evaded capture, but it was slow going since we avoided main roads for fear of meeting Bolsheviks. Half starved and waylaid by a bad storm, we’d found work in a village south of Moscow until the Red Army came too close and Jarushka and I fled.
Once we moved on, starvation was a constant threat. The baby biscuits, jerky, and powdered milk Luba had so smartly provided had run out, along with the provisions Olga had given me.
We made our way through dense virgin forest, the boughs of the pine trees like green-sleeved arms dusted with diamond-crusted snow. Father’s old Nagant proved a faithful friend for hunting game and I had two bullets left, having shot at a wild pig that morning and missed. I had foraged food for both of us: some red clover I’d found crusted with frost, an unexpected gift, full of protein and vitamins. And delicious nettles.
My nose felt about to freeze off and I massaged it with thumb and forefinger as our nurse always urged us to do when we were children to fight frostbite.
After we left Moscow we slept in a network of barns along the way, where we met fellow travelers willing to barter. Olga’s pearls proved excellent currency and the sheets and blankets in the cart provided warmth for us both and additional goods to haggle with. I even traded my lovely but impractical black maid’s coat for a hideous but warm white dog fur hat and coat, which doubled as bedding at night.
From my pocket I pulled a cashmere baby sweater of Max’s, which Luba had left in the barn with our traveling clothes, and held it to my face. It still held my son’s baby scent of talcum powder and little boy and I breathed it in. He’d worn it his first name day, when Afon gave him the little present he’d wrapped himself.
How eager Afon had been to share a book he’d cherished in his own childhood. Trees Every Child Should Know. A charming book written in English, its green cover worn with use.
“Your papa read this as a boy,” Afon said, showing Max the pages. “Larch and birch are my favorites.”
What a good father. How happy Max would be to see him again.
I lifted the rose plant from under my coat. Though no longer blooming, the leaves were green and producing enough chlorophyll to live and even thrive, bearing two buds. During overcast days, I rode with the stem against my skin, the thorns pricking me with every jolt of the wagon, forcing me awake and aware. In bright sun, I opened my coat just long enough to provide the plant with energy. At night, it lay warm, next to me, the little burlap bag tied around its roots at my belly.
I opened the pouches I’d made from a pillowcase and spread dinner out on my lap: Mushrooms. Nettle leaves. Frozen wild plums.
I’d taken Cook’s food for granted. The pigeon and baby eggplant sent in from Paris, mu
ch of which went uneaten, sent to the pigs. The baby carrots and tender haricot vert just like the ones I grew in the garden of our first house as a married couple. Afon and me newly married in Krasnodar, living in the guest house of a charming estate.
Darkness comes early in the forest, so it was still afternoon when we followed tracks in the light snow and stopped at a house and barn. The house was dark and the barn had no sign of livestock. If the tracks were an indication, there’d been many visitors to this place. I wasn’t the only one forced to travel south fleeing the new government.
Stepping down from the cart, I cocked my gun at my side, opened the barn door. It was a small barn with a low ceiling and just enough hay on the floor to afford a night’s sleep. We would have a private room for the night.
Jarushka nuzzled my neck as I unhitched her from the wagon and offered her a favorite dessert, a chilly pool of birch sap, which she licked from my palm.
I led her into the barn, tin pot under one arm, a few pieces of dry kindling inside, and smoothed a wool blanket over her. In the hay I created my bed, sat and arranged my dinner.
I’d found a surprising array of edible winter plants in the woods: velvet shank mushrooms and Russian olives and plums still frozen on their branches. I said a silent thanks for my foraging class at Brillantmont, one we’d all laughed about at the time. Why would we ever want to eat wild plants?
Jarushka stood and dozed, though I tried to persuade her to bed down in the hay with me, perhaps somehow knowing we were not safe that night.
I cracked off two icicles from the eave outside and set them in my tin pot. I’d stolen that pot from a farm where we’d stayed. How far I’d fallen, now a thief.
Once I arranged the kindling into a teepee and started the fire with Luba’s cotton balls, I warmed the icicles for drinking water. I drank first and then set the pot down for Jarushka to finish.
My head hit the rucksack and I fell asleep in no time.
Afon came to me as I slept. We were living in our new home in Krasnodar and walked through our glorious back garden, overflowing with foxglove and narcissus. Afon stood next to me on the bridge, leaning on the rail, with his hands in the pockets of his army breeches, his skin suntanned. He teased me, saying hunting and drinking were superior pursuits to botany and books.
“I think you’re more in love with your plants than you are with me,” he said, his smile wide.
“I would only trade you for a pink Lady’s Slipper orchid.”
He pressed the full strength of his leg against my hip and brushed the hair back from my cheek. “Now that we’re married you can’t be rid of me.” He kissed my neck and—
The low moan of the barn door opening tore me from my dream. I sat up in the darkness, heart racing, and Jarushka stirred. I felt for Father’s gun, cold next to me on the hay. Could the intruder see me there on the floor?
“Good girl,” a man’s voice said.
In the darkness the moonlight caught his hand smoothing down Jarushka’s flank. He stepped to the wall. Feeling for her bridle? He forced the bit on her and tried to pull her out. She refused, of course.
As he worked to persuade her, the sun must have breached the horizon for it filled the barn with the first light of day. The man wore a long coat, dirty felt boots, and a week’s growth of beard.
“Walk on, nag,” he said.
I stood, legs shaking. “Leave her and go,” I said, trying to sound tough.
He turned.
“You Red Army?” I asked.
“Do I look idealistic to you? Just on my way to France.”
“Any news of the tsar’s family?” In my travels I’d heard bits and pieces about the tsar’s execution at Yekaterinburg the previous summer but little of the family’s fate.
He snorted a laugh. “There’s a new rumor every day. But let’s face it, they all died.”
My thoughts went to Olga and her sisters sewing at Alexander Palace.
The man stepped closer. “The children had sewn their diamonds and jewels into their vests so they lived through the shooting. Bayonets had to finish them, the little dog, too.”
I blinked away tears but they froze on my eyelashes. “Enough.”
“Bet you don’t know the Reds signed a peace treaty with Germany, either.”
“Of course I know.” The Bolsheviks were now even more entrenched as the legitimate government.
He squinted at me. “Oh, you’re a woman. Any jewels on you? I know you all carry them. Close to your skin.”
I stepped back, grabbed my rucksack and held it close. What if he got the bracelet with the codes? “I have a gun.”
“Let’s see it.” He stepped closer. “Once you get yourself a bath we might have some fun.” He rubbed the front of his coat. “It’s been a while.”
I waved my gun at him, the wood handle slippery in my grasp. “I’m warning you.”
“I have a gun, too, but you know as well as I do there are no bullets to be had from here to Moscow. Even the soldiers don’t have them.”
“Come no closer.”
He extended one hand. “Let’s go on together. My friends are right behind me. We’ll all take that cart of yours. Four can survive better than one in this world. Fight off the wolves.”
He was right about that, though Jarushka and I had become experts at outrunning the cunning beasts and I’d killed one the night we found no barn to rest in. It would be harder once I ran out of bullets.
“My husband is a cavalry officer.” My hand shook. Could I even fire upon a fellow human?
“Could be your late husband, now. I hear Reds are killing White officers all over.”
All at once my breath seemed cut off. Afon? “There’s a new rumor every day.”
He stepped closer and the light from the window shone on the dark wool of his coat, a uniform overcoat I knew so well, of the army.
“You’re right. Probably all made up. But, he’s not here, is he? Must be staying warm with a new ladylove himself. You know soldiers.” He smiled. “Cocks hard at all times.”
“I’d rather sleep with a pig than a deserter.”
His smile faded. “I’m not stupid enough to end up as one of the glorious dead.”
“You’re a coward.”
He lunged at me and I fired. Jarushka screamed and skittered as the bullet grazed the man’s hand. How hasty and stupid that shot.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, clutching his palm.
He lunged toward me again.
I took a deep breath and fired once more, this time taking careful aim at his chest.
My whole body went cold as the man fell back on the barn floor and I stood, barely breathing, two fingers to my lips.
Crows cackled outside and the scent of gunpowder hung in the air. Was he dead? I stood there, strangely numb, and watched the blood pool out from under him and seep into the hay like a dark nest. I knelt by his side and placed my hand on his chest, where my fingers met sticky blood. Felt his neck. No pulse. He was already cooling, there in the cold morning air.
Had I really killed someone? The worst sin there was. He might have killed me if I hadn’t acted and who would save Max?
Trying to step around the blood, I unbuttoned his coat, pulled the gun from the waistband of his trousers and checked the chamber. He was right about not having bullets. I pocketed the gun, searched his coat pockets, and found a handful of white-paper-wrapped sugar cubes. I considered taking his boots, but they were much too big and my stomach lurched at the thought of touching him again.
Should I say a prayer? Why? God had stopped listening to me long ago.
I led Jarushka out into the bright morning, and we were soon on our way. Still vibrating with the aftershocks of the encounter, I brushed away thoughts of the man’s cooling body. Who would make that grim discovery? Had he been right about the White
officers captured? I would have to soldier on for Max no matter what.
As we rode, enjoying the morning sun, I felt the sugar cubes in my pocket and sat a little straighter in my seat. Now not only a thief, but a cold-blooded killer as well.
* * *
—
TWO WEEKS AFTER I killed the man in the barn, Jarushka and I came to the outskirts of Krasnodar. Though a bitter wind greeted us, I urged my horse along, we were home.
I could feel Afon’s presence there as we rode past the magnificent St. Catherine’s Cathedral with its golden dome and seven altars. I urged Jarushka down side roads in case Red Army soldiers were in town. Were Mr. and Mrs. Zaitz still running their apothecary?
We passed the bridge Afon and I had stood on as newlyweds and approached Main Street. We rode by many new shops and restaurants and shuttered storefronts as well, but my whole body warmed when I saw the old pharmacy still there, wedged between newer shops. The green-and-white sign hung out front as it always had: Zaitz Apothecary.
I entered and found the place unchanged, the glass apothecary jars lined up behind the counter with mortar and pestles of all sizes. The old cash register sat on the counter, still polished bright. An upright piano on the far wall. A table holding a green blotter stood in the middle of the room, with all the necessities of correspondence.
I stepped to the counter and found Mr. Zaitz pouring powder through a funnel into a glass bottle. Would he remember me? It had been over five years and my appearance had changed markedly. They would remember Afon, certainly. Though we’d left shortly after it happened, Afon had helped them through a massive pogrom, when railway men and sailors and even some fellow merchants terrorized the Jewish families in town. Afon had called down his fellow teachers and his best cadets from the academy to guard the Zaitzes’ home and store to prevent looting or worse.
“Mr. Zaitz?”
“I’m almost ready with it,” he said without looking up.
Lost Roses Page 29