The days following the evening at the Winter Palace were dreary indeed for Princess Katrina Fedorcenko. Her hopes of a future with the man of her fantasies momentarily dashed, she could not even indulge pleasurably in daydreams, for there was nothing in life to look forward to. Her dark mood translated into surly and selfish behavior, of which Anna took the brunt.
Katrina flew into a rage over a wrinkle in her clothes, lukewarm chocolate, or unmanageable hair, and Anna’s existence for the next week was miserable. Anna found herself wondering if life in the kitchens under the oppressive hand of Olga Stephanovna might not be an improvement.
She tried to do all that was required of her and kept her complaints to herself, although Nina once remarked under her breath, “You’ll break your neck trying to please that one, Anna!”
As the days passed and Katrina gradually lifted from her melancholy, a new ambition seized her. She would no longer be a child, whether Dmitri himself took notice of the fact or not! She would reshape her image, her whole self and style of life. And the first place to begin was with her rooms! She would confer with a decorator. Then she would order new furnishings, new wallpaper, new paint . . . new everything! She would dismantle all the rooms, which still retained many remnants of the nursery, and turn them into a lady’s apartment.
Any one of the toys or colorfully clothed mishkas, Anna knew, would have pleased a child in Katyk for a lifetime. Her own favorite was the brown, cuddly bearbushka with her dainty basket and broom, wearing a braid-trimmed red calico dress and apron, and a black, embroidered kolkochnik with short train atop her head. She looked just like the famous old woman wanderer in the Russian folktale. Anna had admired the stuffed bear where it sat on a shelf every time she entered the room. Yet now it was fated to be thrown in a box and taken away with all the rest. Just like the bedroom of lovely blue satin and lace, it was probably never to be seen again.
On the first day of the great dismantling, Princess Katrina had jumped out of bed hours earlier than usual. Her eyes glowed eagerly as she hurriedly dressed herself.
“Today, Anna,” she said, “we are going to clean out these rooms! The workmen will be here after breakfast.”
Within two or three hours the place was bustling with activity, servants moving about as Katrina gave out orders like a general.
“Send someone to the cellar for crates,” she called out. “Then get two or three men in here to move out the large pieces of furniture. Well, hurry up, don’t just stand there!”
On altogether unrelated business Nina chanced by. The moment Katrina spotted her, she zoomed forward and began reeling off commands.
“I’m sure my mother can spare you,” insisted the princess in response after Nina had attempted to wriggle out of the young lady’s clutches. “I’d be surprised if she is even awake yet.”
Such a well-founded argument was one poor Nina could not refute. They both knew that it would be hours before the lady of the house so much as ventured from her room. Nina was therefore sent to recruit additional servants while Anna continued under Katrina’s watchful eye.
For the remainder of the morning a steady flow of servants came and went, some hauling heavy loads, others carrying cleaning gear to scour the walls and floors suddenly left bare. For the first hour, Nina could be heard grumbling under her breath about the demeaning character of such labors for “the princess’s personal maid,” though she made sure her murmurings were not heard by the princess’s daughter. Midway through the morning she managed to excuse herself in order to attend to the needs of her own mistress, and she remained as far away from Katrina as possible for the rest of the week.
Anna worked diligently without thought of complaint, even though the pace increased after Nina’s departure. Katrina did her best to press into service other servants from about the house, but with limited success. Throughout she maintained the managerial post, issuing orders and instructions from her command post atop the daybed—the last piece of her furniture to be removed.
“Don’t drop that lamp,” she cried out in one direction, jumping down the next instant to run to the other side of the room where a crate was being packed. “You can get more in there,” she said, “but get more straw—those dolls will break if you handle them roughly! No, no, no!” she cried again, this time spinning around to where two servants were beginning to roll up the rug. “Don’t take up the carpet yet—it will raise an awful dust!”
About an hour before lunch, Katrina instructed Anna to crate up several stacks of books. Two burly men Katrina had taken from their duties elsewhere on the manor grounds then picked up the solid wood bookcase and began maneuvering it out of the room. Its size and weight did not make the operation an easy one, and Katrina found the security of her perch momentarily endangered. Her commands and orders to the two men now came, therefore, with redoubled intensity and volume.
Meanwhile, as she knelt on the floor beside the empty crates and began to fill them with the books, Anna could not keep her mind on her work. There were probably only thirty or forty books stacked in front of her, nothing compared to the thousands of volumes in the mansion library of Katrina’s father. Yet Anna had never seen so many books at such close range, in the very grasp of her own fingers!
She had seen books in the priest’s library in Katyk. And a few weeks ago she had peered through the glass into a bookstore in St. Petersburg. But those books had been as unreachable to her as the sky. The old priest had lent her two or three volumes to read, but after his transfer to another parish, his successor was not given to lending to a peasant girl what few books he possessed. And the bookstore—well, Anna could no more think of buying a book than she could imagine traveling to the faraway places written about in those books!
Here was a wealth indeed, right on the floor in front of her!
Such lovely, ornate covers! Just to run her fingers across the leather spines and to feel the fine bindings sent an indescribable thrill of pleasure through Anna’s body. Slowly, handling each book with a love and care that could not have been matched had they been her own, Anna tenderly placed each in the box, making sure the edges and corners would be protected against bumps and any jarring that might occur.
Gradually the box filled, first with one pile, then with another alongside it, until Anna’s hands fell upon the largest book in all the princess’s collection. Instantly her hands stopped; she held the most beautiful Bible she had ever imagined. Tooled with ornate inlaid designs across the cover, the gilt letters read, “Holy Bible.” Her fingers traced the gold etchings as her thoughts went to the small Bible back in her room. Her mind returned to the night when her father had given it to her. The most priceless thing she had ever possessed suddenly seemed old and small and ragged by comparison. Yet even this expensive edition could never make her father’s gift less than a treasure of inestimable value.
Anna lifted the leather-bound cover, and slowly turned one page, then another. Rich illustrations and lettering captured her attention, some as lovely as any icon she had ever seen in church. Turning the pages of the volume, Anna searched for her favorite book, the Gospel of St. John. Finding it, she paused to admire the huge first letter of text, decorated with grapevines weaving around the large character, reminding her of the words in the fifteenth chapter. She turned the exquisite page, and scanned until she came to the third chapter. There she read:
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
These were the first words she had ever learned to read. How vividly she could recall poring over and over them, thinking about them day and night, trying to decipher and unlock the message of what that love of God might mean for her. And what wonder had followed when she began to grasp God’s wondrous promise!
She smiled. She could still see the light in the old priest’s eye as he had taught her the words, and had seen the young girl’s wide-eyed awe—both at being able to find meaning in the black marks on the page, and in the content of the message itself.
“What are you dawdling about, Anna?” Katrina’s words suddenly jolted Anna awake in the midst of her reflections. “Is there some problem with the books?”
“Oh, no, Princess,” replied Anna, closing the Bible quickly and placing it on top of the two piles she had already made in the crate.
“It almost appeared that you were reading it.”
“I . . . I couldn’t help myself, Miss. I’m sorry.”
A bewildered look passed over Katrina’s face, as if the very notion of reading anything, much less a Bible, were too foreign a thought for her brain to make sense of.
“Oh yes,” she said after a moment, “I recall my brother mentioning your fondness for books. It seems you are the wrong one for this job.”
“I have been very careful with your books, Princess,” said Anna.
“Oh, I have no doubt of that,” rejoined Katrina with a superior tone. “Too careful! But you are wasting precious time. See, the bookcase is gone. These books must follow it, and you are only half through.”
She turned and called out an order to a porter just returning to the room, but then glanced back to where Anna had now finished filling up the first box and was beginning the second.
“How did a peasant girl like you learn to read, anyway?” she asked.
“A priest in my village taught me.”
“My father used to be involved with the Education Ministry. I will have to tell him.”
“What will you do with these books, Princess?” asked Anna, just as Katrina was turning away to return to other matters.
“Well, that one you are holding was a gift from my father—I can’t throw it out. But I never use it. And most of the rest are so childish. I suppose I will have them stored away with everything else. The library is already filled to bursting.”
“You do not even wish to keep the Bible?”
“I shall keep it,” Katrina snapped back defensively. “But it’s a child’s Bible, and I don’t want it around any longer. There are plenty of religious books in the library should I ever fancy them. But what am I explaining myself to you for?” she added, turning away again. “Just finish packing up these books, Anna. It’s almost noon.”
Anna returned to the second crate with greater speed, daring no longer to pause over the beautiful volumes of many sizes as she stacked them inside and carefully placed straw and paper around them for protection. An illustrated edition of Aleksandr Pushkin’s fairy tales caught her eye, but even for her favorite author she knew she must not stop lest the princess scold her again. What a dreadful waste it seemed to Anna, who never could have enough books to read, to see these beautiful volumes relegated to a boxed crate to be stashed out of sight in a basement somewhere! The very thought of sending them away to an exile of dust and mold nearly brought tears to Anna’s eyes.
Twenty minutes later she watched with an inward sigh as they were carried off by a porter, thinking she would never see any of them again.