Madame looked at me for a long moment. “I’d like to help. The poor thing plays well but we think he is ignored at home. Eats like a starving farmer at snack time. Only cereal. And the mother is never on time for four o’clock pickup. But you must understand. This is a dangerous family.”
“I promise you I will take him far from Paris. If questioned, you can honestly say you don’t know where. Who could argue with that?”
She returned to the chair behind her desk and sat. “Go to the police.”
“They do nothing,” Luba said. “And they’ve started deporting some of us back to Russia—a death sentence. Who is to help us?”
“Who is to help me? We are all on our own these days. I must ask you to leave immediately.”
I stepped toward the desk. “I was raised to be well-mannered above all else, but I am a desperate woman, madame. Please. Given time I can make you a very rich woman. I have emeralds—”
“Nothing is more important than our safety.” Madame picked up the phone. “I would hate to see you sent back to Russia.”
Luba and I started for the door.
“You’re a cruel woman,” I said, though the words somehow fell flat.
We left her there, one hand resting on the phone, and walked out of her office, further still from rescuing Max.
* * *
—
SNOW FELL AND WHIPPED our faces as Luba and I made our way to the Russian cathedral at Rue Daru to show Luba the new and improved doll factory.
“What if Varinka takes Max from Paris before we can figure out a way to get him back?” I asked.
“Something is going to help us,” Luba said. “I feel it.”
We walked along, the snow forming powdery drifts on the shuttered bookstalls. What a sight we were. Two dirty street women.
Luba kicked a stone through the snow. “This isn’t such bad news, you know, about Madame Fournier. At least we understand her concerns about Max. That’s the first step to a solution.”
We came to the Russian cathedral and both of us stopped on the path. What a majestic sight, with its golden cupolas.
“I miss Mother,” I said.
She brushed the snow off my shoulder and wrapped her arms around me. “Me, too.”
We stood holding each other as the snow fell around us, warm as one, our silver thread stronger than ever.
CHAPTER
49
Eliza
1919
The day after I found Merrill and sent him happily home with his fellow wounded fliers, I walked along Rue Saint-Honoré toward the Saint Alexandre Nevsky Cathedral. I was headed to the cathedral basement for a one o’clock appointment with Mrs. Nonna Zaronova and the Russian women who made so many beautiful things for the cause, a box of Whitman’s chocolates brought from New York clutched to my chest.
I’d already spoken to the staff at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York and they would meet Merrill upon his return and enter him into rehabilitative care to ready him to live in Bethlehem.
How good Paris looked even in winter, a layer of snow softening the hard edge war had brought. I walked a little taller knowing this enterprise helped so many Russian refugees. How exciting it had been to receive another shipment of goods from Paris, cracking the crate open in the kitchen at Gin Lane, to find the exquisite handmade dolls and lace-trimmed bedding.
You have improved the lives of over one hundred women, Mrs. Zaronova had written in her letter. The Woolsey women would have applauded.
I hurried through trim neighborhoods of townhouses, a certain satisfaction to the sameness of it all, their light facades of cut stone, mansard roofs, and black filigreed balconies.
All at once I came upon a cathedral soaring above, a lovely example of Neo-Byzantine architecture tucked away in Paris. How different it was from the surrounding architecture, as if dropped by air from Petrograd.
I stepped up and into the cathedral as a male choir dressed in white robes practiced “Gabriel Appeared,” their voices echoing in the vast nave.
“Mrs. Henry McKeen Ferriday,” I announced, my words echoing in the cathedral. “From New York. Mrs. Zaronova is expecting me.”
The choirmaster waved me outside and down a set of concrete stairs. I entered a lovely painted crypt, flooded with light and filled with tables of women, happy at their work, chatting over the clack of wooden bobbins, sewing lace and handcrafting the dolls New York had come to love so. Many of the women finished bowls of soup, the air perfumed with the scent of carrots and onions.
A large, serious-looking woman hurried toward me. “I am Mrs. Zaronova.”
She was different than I’d imagined her. Less refined and certainly more brusque. I handed her the chocolates and introduced myself.
“Your handicrafts are so welcome in America, Mrs. Zaronova. Anything Russian is so in vogue. You should see all the New York women in their beaded headdresses and their shorter skirts. New Yorkers snapped up every doll and piece of linen you sent.”
“Would you address the workers?” Mrs. Zaronova asked.
I stepped up on the closest bench. “Hello, everyone. I am Eliza Mitchell Ferriday. You may call me Eliza. I am here from New York, as a representative of the American Central Committee for Russian Relief. I want you all to know how much I appreciate your efforts and the tireless work of Mrs. Zaronova. I hope our partnership lasts for a very long time to come.”
As I stepped down from the bench, applause broke out and a white-haired woman approached me.
“I am Yara,” she said. “My English is not good but I wanted to tell you there is someone else who you need to thank for all this. A very kind Russian lady who helped us make it so much better here.” Yara leaned in. “They say she may be related to the tsar.”
All at once I felt as though a bird were trapped in my chest, flapping her wings there.
“I would very much like to see her. What is her name?”
“I’m not sure, but I think I know where you might find her.”
* * *
—
I FOLLOWED YARA, who turned out to be a very fast walker, across the street to a Russian restaurant. We entered, waving the cigarette smoke from our faces, and I took in the place, packed with people, very much like restaurants I’d seen in Petrograd. My favorite color, bright cherry red, was everywhere in that room. The tables and chairs were painted with it in a charming folk way with leaves and gay flowers. Red tablecloths, heavy red draperies on the windows. On the walls, painted black tole trays made very nice art pieces and shelves on the walls held every sort of knickknack. Russian nesting dolls. Lacquered papier-mâché bowls. Commemorative eggs with pictures of the tsar’s daughters. I looked closer at the one of Olga, poor, lovely girl. Had it only been four years ago I’d met her in Petrograd?
We forged our way through the crowd to the hostess desk, raising our voices over the din of patrons at the tables talking loud Russian. A waitress squeezed by us carrying some sort of fried pies that smelled like lamb. A stooped woman holding an ear trumpet came to us and said something.
“She wants to know if we want anything to eat,” Yara said to me.
“Some bread would be heavenly,” I said. “Cheese?”
The woman held her trumpet to her ear as Yara translated. No wonder the poor woman had lost her hearing in that place.
Then, from the little Russian I understood, I think Yara asked the woman, “Is the lady who makes the soup here?”
The woman looked at me for a long moment and then disappeared through a red curtain into the back of the place.
I leaned on the hostess desk. “Where is she going?”
Yara shrugged.
We surveyed the tables, many filled with men and women arguing and laughing. Did any of them know Sofya? I considered making an announcement. In my bad Russian they would likely just talk right over me.
I felt a tap on my shoulder and a voice came from behind me, in English. “Excuse me, madame, but we have no bread and cheese today, only butterscotch crisps.”
I turned and there stood a woman, so thin, dressed in cotton trousers and a man’s shirt, a gray, canvas apron over it all.
She held out one hand to me. “Eliza.”
It took me a moment to recognize her, but her voice did it. “Eliza.”
I took both her hands in mine. Could it be? “Sofya?”
She nodded as tears welled in her eyes. “Careful, I may have every disease.”
I cradled her dirty, beautiful, tear-streaked face in my hands. “I’d risk cholera to be with you again, darling. I’ve been so terribly worried, you don’t know.” I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close. “At last.”
I felt the bones of her rib cage as she convulsed against me with silent sobs.
“There, there. Everything will be better now.” I smoothed one hand down the back of her head. “What happened to your hair, darling?”
She pulled away from me and dried her eyes with the back of her hand. “I sold it.”
“Well, I like it very much. Every chic woman in New York has a bob.” I pulled my handkerchief from under my cuff and handed it to her.
She dried her eyes. “You’re always the one with the handkerchief, Eliza.”
Luba came forward, now blond, which suited her well. How grown up she’d become.
I pulled them both to me, held them tight. “I’m not letting you out of my sight, darlings. We have so much to talk about. Yara tells me that you helped make the doll factory what it is today.”
I turned, but Yara was gone.
“Just a little,” Sofya said.
“Please, no modesty,” Luba said. “Sofya transformed that place. It was a sweatshop.”
I pulled them both to a corner. “You must come to the apartment immediately. Madame Solange can make you—”
“Soon, but we need to help Max,” Sofya said. “He’s been taken.”
A bitter chill went through me, the loud talk fell away and I heard only her. “He isn’t here with you?”
“A peasant girl I trusted took him when bandits broke into the estate and she has him here in Paris. Varinka. She won’t give him up.”
“Dear God. But you’re his mother.”
Sofya and Luba gathered me closer.
“We went to get Max at school,” Sofya said. “But Madame Fournier, the headmistress, refuses to give him to us. Says the man Max is living with may be a Cheka agent—the Red secret police—and threatened her. She’s terrified, poor woman.”
“What school?”
“L’Ecole Cygne Royal.” Sofya handed me a school letter.
Just seeing Max’s first name in print brought tears to my eyes. “I know the school, of course.” It was one of the most exclusive crèches in Paris.
“Can you help me get him from there? We must arrive before Varinka takes him home at four. These people, Taras and Varinka, are dangerous. Taras helped attack our family, he and Vladi, who stabbed you on the tram.”
I reached out for Sofya’s hand. “Oh no, my dear—”
“I think Taras is only here to kill nobility fleeing Russia. I must try again to get Max. Maybe you can persuade her?”
“Perhaps we can go to the police.”
“The police will do nothing, Eliza. Did you get the bracelet?”
“Here.” I held out my wrist.
“On folded paper inside are account numbers from banks all over Europe and their passcodes. Father left them with us for safekeeping.”
I clasped one hand over the bracelet. “Heavenly day.”
“The money from those accounts could be of tremendous help to the Whites.”
“Perhaps it can buy us some help with the school,” I said. “Maybe I could contact some official with influence.” I’d left New York with a long list of Mother’s acquaintances whom she’d asked me to check in with, including a former Russian officer.
Sofya leaned in. “My thought exactly.”
I folded the paperwork and slipped it in my handbag. “Well then, I’ll do my best. I know someone who might help. Will ask him to appeal to the school to release Max to us. He can offer Madame protection, certainly.”
“I’m sorry to draw you into all this, Eliza.”
“I do love doing the impossible. We’ve got a whole army of Russian émigrés staying out in Southampton.”
“Of course you do.”
She smiled and for the first time I saw the old Sofya.
“Luba can wait for us at my apartment and you and I will visit Mother’s friend and then the school.”
“We must hurry. Soon as Varinka knows I’m here she will leave town with Max and we’ll never find him.”
* * *
—
SOFYA AND I TAXIED to the Place Vendôme in eleven minutes flat and entered the grand lobby of the Ritz with just enough time to talk to General Yakofnavich and then make it to school to fetch Max. The lovely old place had survived Germany’s bombs nicely and changed little since my parents took me to tea there weekly during our August stays in Paris.
The lobby stood as usual, the reception area, with its ten-foot-high ceilings and eighteenth-century furnishings, doing everything it could not to look like a reception area. Our footsteps echoed on the marble floor as we stepped to a lovely, leather-topped Louis Seize desk. Behind it sat the concierge—Charles, according to his name tag, who spoke at length to someone on the telephone while wearing the vigorously bored countenance Parisian hotels encourage in their concierges.
“Name?”
“Eliza Ferriday and Sofya Streshnayva Stepanov. Visiting from New York.”
“Your business?”
I paused. How to phrase: We need to deliver bank passcodes critical to saving the Russian White Army in exchange for help releasing my noble godson from a Cheka assassin?
“I need to speak with General Yakofnavich. Important diplomatic information concerning the Streshnayva family. It’s most urgent, Charles.”
“On hold,” he said. He covered the receiver with one hand. “The general has a food taster. Can you imagine? It’s like a novel.”
Was it my first-name familiarity that opened his spigot of gossip?
He leaned across the desk. “The general is a mean one. Someone’s mad they lost the war. Even his two bodyguards fear him. Big ones, those two. They don’t worry about having their food tasted. One ate a whole salmon, head and all.”
I checked the wall clock. 3:30.
“Please, monsieur. We’re terribly late.”
Charles hung up the phone and waved in the general direction of the elevator.
“Fifth floor. Room fifty-two. Be prepared to do battle, ladies.”
I held Sofya’s hand as the elevator ascended and I practically vibrated with excitement. Perhaps I missed my calling and should have been a spy, or at least an ambassador.
A servant answered the hotel room door and ushered us into a fabulous suite, the type the Ritz was known for, with high ceilings, thick moldings, and a bed festooned with a tasteful print. Two onyx pillars tall and fat enough to hold up the Parthenon helped divide the bedroom from the sitting room, where a painted vanity and mirror sat. An elegant man stood near the window, flanked by bodyguards.
He stepped toward me dressed more like a Parisian gentleman than Russian soldier in what appeared to be a bespoke suit, his mustache fanned out like bird wings. Could Mother have known this man in another life? Would he help us?
I offered my hand to General Yakofnavich and introduced Sofya. He shook both our hands, then folded his arms across his chest and scowled at me.
“What brings you here, Mrs. Ferriday? I’m a busy man.” He spoke good French with the trace of
a Russian accent.
“I have a pressing matter to discuss regarding my friend Sofya here.” My gaze went to the two bodyguards, both making my six-foot height feel small.
“My mother, Caroline Woolsey Mitchell, gave me your name and said—”
“Carry Woolsey?” His gaze drifted out the window and he smiled. “Such a fine woman. Handsome.”
Mother may have claimed fuzzy memories of her connection to the general, but apparently, he remembered her well.
The General lit a cigarette. “And Mr. Mitchell?”
“My father? Gone for years now, sir.”
He nodded at that. “Never remarried? Such a waste. She could row a boat, Carry Woolsey.”
I shifted in my shoes. “General, I’m here to give you information. Coded passwords, actually.”
He smiled. “That’s a good one. Where did you get these passwords?”
“They were given to Sofya by her father, Ivan Streshnayva.”
He hung his cigarette on the edge of a crystal ashtray, the size and shape of a small iceberg. “From the Ministry? Murdered on his estate, poor Ivan, like so many. Horrible.”
Sofya stepped forward. “He gave them to me well before that.”
“You have them now?”
“In a safe place,” I said. “But we need something first.”
The general glanced toward his bodyguards. “Money, of course.”
“We need your help with a sensitive issue,” Sofya said. “A Cheka agent kidnapped my son Max. Stole him in Russia and brought him here to Paris.”
“You understand I can barely leave this hotel even with my security detail.”
“Of course. Max attends L’Ecole Cygne Royal, where the headmistress refuses to give the child up since this agent has threatened her life. Can you help us, General?”
“Perhaps I can make some calls. Offer what help I can to Madame. Station a police guard at the school.”
“The agent lives at 24 Rue de Serene,” Sofya said.
“The police commissioner clearly needs to pay him a visit. One less Cheka agent is good for me, certainly. No promises, though, I’m afraid.”
Lost Roses Page 39