JUNE–JULY 1918
Lying naked beside him, she listened to the passion trembling in the voice of the father of her baby. She didn’t move, kept her eyes shut. The questions she had asked herself, the insurmountable problems in Petrograd, had been resolved with a single gesture from a man unburdened by any constraint of prudence or pettiness.
When he learned the news, he had simply fallen to his knees.
The news… She hadn’t even told him: he had guessed it.
Something had clicked for him the minute she walked through the door to room 309, something in her smile, in her gait, or perhaps within her body. An instantaneous realization. Was that even possible?
Lockhart knew women intimately; he loved them. A glance, a presentiment, a question was all it took.
“Are you pregnant?”
She nodded.
He fell to his knees. He buried his head in the folds of her skirt, clutching her thighs, enclosing her. His mouth against her belly, he stammered thanks, a thousand incoherent words of gratitude and love.
She had never seen him as proud, as excited, as in this moment, when he was at her feet.
Once he had overcome his emotion, he whispered to her that when he had been a consul, his wife had been expecting a baby. The birth had gone badly. Their little girl had died two hours after she was born. He had held her coffin tight against him in the consular car all the way to the German cemetery here in Moscow. He often went to visit her grave. He was left disconsolate by this tragedy.
How could she have imagined that he wanted a child so much?
He confessed it to her today.
And now, in the huge bed of room number 309, they made love with a new tenderness.
“We’ll call him Pyotr,” he declared. “Like the man who built your city, Saint Petersburg.”
She smiled. “I chose the same name, but in English. In my head he’s not Pyotr but Peter… I’ve been thinking of him as Little Peter for fifteen days now.”
“If that idiot General Knox manages to get me sent back to England, you’re coming with me. We’ll settle into my grandmother’s house in Scotland. Or at the end of the world. I’ll make you into a cocoa-plantation owner in Chile.”
“But for that to happen we’d have to be married to each other, Babyboy. If there’s no ring on this finger, your comrades Lenin and Trotters won’t let me out. They’re more conventional than all our burzhui.”
“I’ll kidnap you!”
She didn’t think for a second that he might not be capable of such a thing. He’d find a way to extract her from this country.
“What about my children, though?” she whispered “Kira, Paul, and Tania? I’m not the perfect mother for them, of course, but I can’t, I won’t, lose them!”
“So you won’t lose them. I’ll be the one who stays.”
He was just as capable of this: of giving up everything and staying in Russia. He’d go all the way for her.
But she had no intention of letting him sacrifice everything for her.
Their faith in their shared fate—whatever it might be—liberated her from any fear she had for the future. This trust allowed her to bring Lockhart back to the present.
“You should see Karakhan. During the last dinner I had with him, he struck me as very suspicious. From what I understand, an incident broke out in Siberia, some kind of altercation between some Red Army officers, some Czech prisoners, and an Allied contingent.”
“That’s exactly right. The French had a bit of a brushup with the Soviets. And Karakhan had the entire Czech delegation, who were protected by diplomatic immunity, arrested in Moscow. This way the Bolsheviks have of just throwing diplomats in prison is unacceptable! I went to yell at everyone I could. I threatened to have exactly the same thing done to the representatives in London. Karakhan had never seen me anywhere near that angry, and he fell over himself trying to apologize.”
“Be careful! You’re defending the Czechs, who the Soviets consider their enemies!”
Moura’s voice, her advice in the darkness, delighted him. What did he care about Hicks’s warnings? This woman was the mother of his son; she was, absolutely had to be, the woman of his life!
Ever-suspicious Hicks would have to accept Moura’s presence here, at the Hotel Elite, and in all the places they had been when they were younger. That devil could understand passion well enough! Hadn’t he even succumbed to a Russian woman’s charms? Hicks had had his own little affair with a niece of the former mayor of Moscow, a charming divorcée by the name of Lyuba. He was madly in love with her. He had been planning to marry her and bring her back to England. So he knew better than anyone else here what importance such an encounter could hold in a man’s life.
As for Knox, he could go to hell! How dare he go around saying that Moura, this marvel of kindness and bravery, somehow presented a danger for England?
Lockhart felt a need to protect her, a desire that was as strong, as pressing as that of being supported by her.
She was instinctively reassuring. Even her body opened up with a generosity he hadn’t seen in any other woman.
She watched over him, she watched over his career, she watched over his security. She had no more ideological certainties than before. Only the conviction that she loved Russia. And the conviction that she loved him. She would accept all the consequences of those feelings.
Whatever Moura loved would be the world she protected.
He hugged her tighter. She whispered:
“And from what I’ve heard, Karakhan is ready to use every means he possibly can to get rid of the Allies in Vologda.”
He loved when she talked about danger in bed.
She wove together adventure, politics, and love, yoking their two fates to the forward march of history as well as to sensual pleasure.
And this, too, he loved.
Petrograd
July 7, 1918
Baby, my Babyboy,
I’m mad with worry. Cromie has just told me that Count Mirbach, the German ambassador you hate, has been murdered in cold blood.
Nobody here has any doubt that you’re the one who ordered the crime. Everyone’s saying that the murderer lived in the Hotel Elite. That he’d made his way up the ranks of the Cheka, but in reality he’s one of the revolutionaries opposed to the infamous peace that Lenin signed. And that he killed Mirbach to provoke Germany’s fury… To start up the war between the kaiser’s armies and Russia’s all over again.
Mirbach’s death will have grave consequences! The Germans can’t just sit by and let themselves be killed en masse in Russia without a fight. They’re calling for the heads of various Bolsheviks. The Cheka police are at the top of the list, and they’ll clear their names by pointing their fingers at the Allies. That is—at you!
.… You’ve worked so hard against the signing of the armistice treaty. So hard against Karakhan and Trotsky, to keep the fighting going.
Don’t you think the time has come to get out of this hornet’s nest and escape the country? Don’t you remember the fate that awaited the Czech delegation rotting in prison? You are in danger, Babyboy. Please, please, think about getting ready to leave. If you don’t fear for your safety, at least think of what this means for me. I wouldn’t urge you to leave if I thought you could still be useful to Russia. But I don’t think that. And Mirbach’s assassination will only make matters even more unnecessarily risky for you. No matter how I look at your position, I can’t find an angle that will allow me to get some sleep.
Shpalernaya Street
Evening of July 7, 1918
I’m returning to this letter I began this morning. I was interrupted by the doctor’s visit. The news about my mother isn’t good. But I don’t want to make you sad. So here I am, so close to you again.
In your message yesterday, you asked me what my intentions were. My plans haven’t changed.
You who know me so well, you cannot even imagine just how much the action I’m going to take against my husband upsets me. I detest the idea, believe me.
Compounding the indignity of what I’m going to do is the horror I feel at just how soon you’ll be leaving: you’ll probably have to leave Russia before I see you again.
And compounding that—the pain of losing you for a long time—is my disgust at the prospect of slipping back into the ruts of the past.
I’ll have to return to the life I led in years past, the settings of years past, the people of years past, the world of years past, even though I’m no longer the same woman. When the best of myself, my soul, my heart, my body, belongs to you. When my future, my fate is yours.
I love you, Babyboy. More than life. And God knows how I love life! I will be faithful to you through all the difficulties that await us. You must believe me. You absolutely must.
I can’t delay my departure for Estonia much longer. The man who will take me over the border and drive me to Reval keeps saying that he has to leave tomorrow. He has Swiss nationality, and without him I’ll never be able to reach Yendel. Even with the Russian permit that Karakhan secured for me. Even with the permit of the German general on the other side, my husband’s guest, who’s occupying our house.
Love and courage: I’ll remember your motto every day, Babyboy, until we see each other again.
Until then, I’ll have to play this nine-month-long pantomime with Djon. I know you can’t bear the thought that he’d touch me.
I’ll be honest with you, and I’ll tell you what I’ve already said: I love my children, and the prospect of losing them tears me asunder.
I might not have the “maternal instinct” that society expects of me. But I love my children! Putting them into such a situation and not being able to see them anymore is unbearable to me. I’m trying to find the way—if not the easiest or best one, then the least painful one—to leave them… without abandoning them.
This is how I would like to act toward all the beings who bear upon our love. I’m thinking of my mother and my husband.
Trying not to make my nearest and dearest suffer too much still doesn’t change the decision I’ve made to live with you. I’ve never wondered, not for a single second: “Would it be wiser to cut myself off from him? Would it be better to go back to the life I’ve always led?” It’s impossible! Going back would mean abandoning light, giving up water, forgoing air. It would mean saying no to life.
Stop tormenting yourself, my love. You can’t imagine everything you embody in my eyes. I’m still able to bear anything, to brave all risks, to be with you. You have no reason to fear losing me, Babyboy. No reason to be jealous. No reason to think that one day I might regret this decision to follow you.
But I shouldn’t neglect the details that affect others, especially my children. I need to do things correctly.
And so, for now, I need to preserve appearances, play this ridiculous pantomime, with all the consequences that entails.
I’ve gone through all this in my head again and again, and I don’t see any other solution.
We’re both of us married. You have to leave Russia. And the world is at war.
Pretending to reconcile with my husband and maintain our entente for nine months: that’s the only way to spare Paul and Tania, and to spare our little Peter.
Deep down, your love has made me a man. Isn’t that strange? By that I mean that I now know who I am… what I want. And I also know how to get it. My determination is absolute. Yes, sir!
So I’m leaving tomorrow. Think of me, Babyboy, because I’m afraid. If I’m arrested at the border, I’ll have to go back, I’ll head to Moscow, I’ll fly to you! I’ll have tried. And I’ll have failed. And I’ll be the happiest woman in the world.
Enough for today. Good night, my love.
Know that I will always be with you, that I will write to you, that I will join you again,
Yours forever.
Moura
She felt Djon’s heavy hand weighing on her neck. The time for respect was gone. He no longer held his arm out to her, whether to go down the street or up the hallway leading to their bedroom.
The redbrick house that Moura had loved so dearly, with its crenellated tower, its mullioned windows, and its terraces, brought her no comfort.
As July 1918 was winding toward its end, everything seemed to have settled into order. The park was blossoming. The peasants were working the land. The harvest season was approaching. The children, under Micky’s watchful eye, were learning how to swim. And the elder Madame von Benckendorff received her four sons and their families at the fishermen’s cabin on the edge of the lake every afternoon for the tea ceremony around the samovar.
From the tennis courts just past the communal spaces there could be heard the muted noise of balls being struck and young men yelling at each other over a match. Through the trees, the silhouettes of players in white outfits could be seen. But instead of the English words out and play, they were yelling in German: Aufschlag, Einstand. And on the lake’s pontoon, instead of Cunard, Garstin, and Cromie there were groups of Prussians, their chests bare in the sun.
Yendel now served as the base for the staff of the German officers occupying Estonia. Their general looked forward to the honors their hostess might bestow upon them: that Moura would receive them according to their rank and play some small piano recitals for them.
She felt ill suited to the role she needed to play. She was Russian. And the Germans were occupying her land. She belonged to the other camp. That of Lockhart and Hicks, who had been fighting against the advent of the kaiser’s hordes, the enemies of England, the invaders… the Krauts, who were at the root of so many evils. They were, in her eyes, responsible for the greatest massacre in history.
Here, in Estonia, they lorded over the land. Their ambition, their arrogance, and their brutality were all calculated to bring the locals to their knees.
Djon, who accepted their laws and was collaborating with them, had let himself be sidelined by the hatred he felt toward the Bolsheviks. She didn’t consider him weak so much as blind. He acted like a lord, but in fact he was serving them.
As for her, she avoided talking to them whenever possible. When Djon invited her to sing lieder for them in the moonlight and play Wagner on the salon gramophone, she did so with visible unwillingness. The revulsion she felt, however, was nothing compared to the disgust that rose up in her throat when she carried out her other wifely obligations.
Djon was wholly unaware of Moura’s betrayal and the immensity of her failings as his wife. He was wholly unaware that she was cheating on him with a British agent and that she had been spending more time in a hotel in Moscow than in Petrograd with her sick mother, as she had claimed to justify her absence from Yendel. He was wholly unaware that she was associating with the regime’s dignitaries. That she was dining with Lord Karakhan, one of Lenin’s ministers.
As for imagining that Moura’s arrival in Estonia was only thanks to the protection of a Party dignitary: that was inconceivable! The idea that she would never have been able to cross the border without Karakhan’s approval didn’t cross his mind.
No, Djon had no idea whatsoever that she was lying to him about everything. And yet their political arguments had lowered her in his estimation; he deemed her guilty, he condemned her. Guilty, in his eyes, of being insensitive to the unhappiness of other people, of their friends, all their nearest and dearest. Guilty of indifference to the future of their families and the survival of their children… She was monstrous in her coldness, such a monster that she barked with the wolves and spat in her soup. Contemptible.
The result, then, was that he treated her like a courtesan and wanted her more than ever.
Djon’s leaden touch on his wife’s neck at all hours of the day was only a prelude to his other gestures at all hours of the night.
Under the weight of this palm, Moura jumped and stiffened. She had to learn how to calm her nerves, all the same. Hadn’t she undertaken this trip to Yendel specifically for this: to carry out her marital obligations?
She had to acknowledge that she had overestimated her abilities.
The journey between Petrograd and Reval had probably worn her out. She shouldn’t think about it anymore. The tension, the walks, and the searches that the Russian, German, and Estonian soldiers had all carried out weren’t much compared to her daily life.
Mentally, she went back over the interrogations… Worse than all that was the disgust she felt today for her husband.
She had discovered that she was incapable of bearing contact with Djon.
When sundown came—and everything that followed—her heart broke and her fears won out.
As for the rest, it was an abyss of absence.
Even though she had been so eagerly looking forward to hugging Paul and Tania tight, she couldn’t feel anything but embarrassment when she looked at them. Not a whit of pleasure. Just this: the feeling of her guilt toward them. And this feeling took shape within her, a gulf, a sadness, a fear.
She knew, as she hugged them, that she was planning to leave them. In nine months, in a year, she would go. She would follow Lockhart.
But even so, empathy remained. Her behavior made her feel bad.
Despite everything she said, everything she did, however, she wasn’t able to express anything.
Her passion for Lockhart and little Peter had more or less cut her off from all her other affections.
She hated herself. She forced herself to playact.
It was only sheer luck that Paul and Tania were still too young to be aware of her detachment. And to suffer from it. But Kira, her sweet Kira, was now nine years old. In her dark eyes, Moura could sense her expectation, her need, her worry. And Moura couldn’t answer it.
She was unable to give Kira anything. Unable to give anything to anybody.
Worst of all were the direct questions.
When Kira asked her, looking right into her eyes:
“You won’t leave, will you? You’re going to stay with us here in Yendel, right?”
When Paul, playing hide-and-seek in her skirt, had mimicked her:
“You’re my mommy and you’re going to stay with me!”
She had blushed with shame and stayed silent.
“Where do you want me to go, my darlings?” She could have smiled at them and sworn to them that she would remain a constant presence at the family estate. She could have explained that her obligations might perhaps bring her back to Mommy in Petrograd… but that she’d be back the week after, forever.
Inventing pretexts to gain time had never been a problem for her.
But with them: it was impossible! Something in her revolted at the thought of telling them made-up stories. In front of her children, anguish strangled her voice to the point that she couldn’t get out anything more than broken words, as if she had run too far and was wholly out of breath.
What did she know of their future together? She had tried, but to no avail: she couldn’t imagine anything! She had made a terrible mistake coming here. She had barely arrived, and now she wanted to flee this house.
She couldn’t wait nine months. She couldn’t even wait one. As soon as she could, she would go join Lockhart in Moscow, in London, anywhere. Djon’s subservience to the Germans, as well as his brutality in bed, had been the last straw for her. The tenderness he showed Paul and Tania, his patience with the three children, had made him a completely unfamiliar man to her, and in a way, this had been her liberation. He was a wonderful father. And she, an incapable mother.
She left Kira and the little ones, telling their governess to take them for the afternoon.
Strictly to Micky, she added a sentence that was utterly unlike her: she asked her to care for them should anything happen to her someday. It was a request that she knew was superfluous, but all the same it was reassuring.
Thank goodness Micky would watch over them. Thank heavens Micky would stand guard and protect her children! She was the pillar, the heart of the Benckendorff family in its entirety: the haven for all her Marydear’s nearest and dearest.
Between the two women, there was no question of confession, nor of outpouring or confidences. Moura kept her silence. Micky didn’t ask. She simply furrowed her brows to see Mary so unhappy with herself.
When Micky saw her in the morning, pale and ghostly in front of the breakfast she was unable to swallow, she understood that Mary had just come out of a nightmarish evening. And that her relationship with Djon was the reason.
But not the only one.
She knew there was something else. Someone.
Micky sensed the presence of an affair, a passion.
Moura was quite aware of this realization. But she didn’t worry, she didn’t fear any judgment. She was grateful for this intuition. The presentiment that Micky had of Lockhart’s existence was the only complicity that could in any way fill the void of her loneliness at Yendel.
Yendel
July 20, 1918
Babyboy,
I’ve done all I can, I’ve tried my best, but I just can’t get over the despair I feel at not seeing you again.
How can I explain what I felt as I crossed the boundary line under German escort? The shame of having gone over to the occupier’s side. An officer asked me: “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” I looked at him as if I didn’t understand. He asked me: “Russkaya?” I almost yelled my answer at him: “Da.”
Here, we speak only German. It’s even worse than I imagined. I feel like I’ve dirtied myself by coming to Yendel. I’m morally cut off from you. Morally cut off from your country and from Russia. I’m trampling all over my dignity, I have no more respect for myself.
I’m not sure I can weather the storm, even to protect our baby.
I feel lost.
All I can think about is you. I wonder how you are. I pray to heaven to let me see you again before you go. I’m unhappy and pathetic.
Moura
Five hundred miles away, Lockhart felt exactly the same way. His memoir is crystal clear:
The next few days were the most miserable of my whole stay in Russia.
Moura had left Moscow some ten days before in order to visit her home in Estonia… I could not communicate with her. It seemed any odds on my having to leave Russia without seeing her again…
Lockhart decided that Knox’s arrogance and idiocy were making him a public danger. But he held out hope that Knox was getting ready for the Russian forces to set out, rather than underestimating the Bolsheviks simply because he hated them.
Trotsky had reorganized the Red Army, which knew the land, unlike Lockhart’s side. Only a formidable arsenal and the rapid deployment of numerous contingents would give his people an advantage. Lockhart doubted that Knox had any idea what he was doing. In fact, he feared the worst for the British soldiers with such a leader.
There was no question in Lockhart’s mind that Karakhan would have him arrested for the smallest reason, and he knew he needed to leave Russia. But he refused to do so before seeing Moura one last time. He waited for her to call.
But there was nothing but silence.
He phoned her residence in Petrograd with no luck. On his first phone call, he reached her mother, who immediately hung up on him.
Each day that summer seemed to Moura to be yet more oppressive, yet more hostile. The dust on the roads, the wasps’ buzzing on the terrace, the crickets’ chirping in the fields. She was suffocating. Only her desire to flee and return to Moscow kept her going.
She impatiently walked to the fence around the park. She waited there, in the sun, staring at the train station, waiting for any noise from outside, imagining stupid things, dreaming that Lockhart would somehow appear with his suitcase at the corner of the street.
She saw the peasants looking for shade during the noontime break and heading toward the forest in small groups. A few of them, older ones, were lying down at the edges. But the youngest ones went deep into the woods.
She knew what they were going to do there.
She noticed a boy just then following a girl. Her gaze was alert as she watched the couple disappear amid the trunks. They made their way forward, one behind the other, the girl always ahead. Their path toward a thicket off to the side, their slow progress, so seemingly calm, reminded her of the trek she always made up the stairs toward room 309 at the Hotel Elite.
They had disappeared. What did it matter? She knew that right that second, the girl would be slowing down.
She’s stopped. There it is… She turns around… She looks at him… He approaches… His face is red, his look is serious, cruel, just like every other man full of desire, every man driven mad with love. He’s going to catch her. He’s going to push her down. He’s going to turn her over in the grass…
She herself was standing up, unmoving, so overwhelmed by her memories of Lockhart’s embraces that she felt her nipples tensing beneath her shirt.
… They’re lying down in the shade. She’s resting her hand on his neck… This almost childish neck that belongs to Lockhart. She feels the prickle of his close-shaven hair growing back thick beneath her fingers. She feels Lockhart’s palm under her back, stroking her gently, slowly. He holds her close. She feels her breast being crushed under his torso. Her belly against his. Her knees against his. Her face a little lower than his, she presses her head into the hollow of his shoulder. She touches her lips to the beating artery.
When the boy and the girl, their lips reddened with kisses, came back out of the woods to return to the fields, she ran away from the fence in a rush. She abandoned the sun and slipped past the closed shutters of her bedroom, feeling as if she’d just been cut off from everything that life had to offer. Of everything that fate could still give her. Deprived of what mattered, of the miracle of the perfect union that Lockhart had helped her discover. It wasn’t just a matter of sensuality. Pleasure, to her, was simply a sign of miracles.
It was at that exact moment that Djon chose to enter, put his hand on her neck, and bend her over.
Yendel
July 20, 1918
Babyboy,
I’m so close to collapsing. I can’t write anymore. I think I’m falling.
The only thing I know is that I love you.
Your Moura
For four days and nights I never slept. For hours on end I sat in my room playing patience and badgering the unfortunate Hicks with idiotic questions. There was nothing we could do, and in my despair my self-control left me and I abandoned myself to the gloomiest depression.
Then on the afternoon of July 28th my telephone rang. I picked up the receiver. Moura herself was speaking. She had arrived in St. Petersburg after six days of terrible adventure, during which she had crossed the no-man’s land between Estonia and Russia on foot. She was leaving that night for Moscow.
The reaction was wonderful. Nothing now mattered.
If only I could see Moura again, I felt that I could face any crisis, any unpleasantness the future might have in store for me.