JANUARY 1919
“Will you stay in this desert of ugliness and meanness when the others leave, my little friend? You’ll keep me company for a little while.”
Unlike Mommy, whose misfortune had reduced her to nothing, Princess Anna Saltykova seemed more imposing than ever before.
She had been a dowager with an impressive bosom and a stentorian voice. Thinness, which had altered all her features, had transformed her into a majestic matron. And the rouge on her cheeks, the lipstick on her lips, the kohl on her eyes, all these cosmetics she made liberal use of, did not make her look any more feminine.
She had formerly been famous for the extravagance of her hats, and even now she still paraded strange headpieces that she adorned with doilies and the moth-eaten feathers of her headdresses. If not for the bearing of her head, the authority of her gestures, and something noble in her gait, in an earlier time she might easily have been mistaken for a madwoman.
Now, her willingness to maintain some semblance of decorum had made her the personification of all that was chic.
It was hard, however, to say the same of her apartment, an emptied-out, filthy skeleton. The successive raids had emptied her salons of all their objets d’art.
“Oh, it’s just a boring old little thing,” she sighed. “Nothing we haven’t all faced already.”
But in her home, all the palatial decorations had been removed, down to the smallest ornaments. In addition to the paintings, the rug, all the chimneys, the moldings, and even the locks, doorknobs, curtain rods, and rings had been carted away.
This was a catastrophe for Anna Sergeyevna, who had stashed away the last of her money and hidden the pearls she hadn’t yet sold in the curtain rods.
All of it was currently piled up at the other end of the courtyard, in the former galleries of the British embassy, which now served to warehouse all the state’s possessions. A veritable Ali Baba’s cave. All the splendors extracted from the burzhui’s homes and seized by order of the committees were stashed away there, in an immense shambles that the regime’s leading light, Maxim Gorky—yes, him—was determined to organize and inventory.
The princess loved to tell how that infamous Gorky, and the so-called connoisseurs plucked out of the proletariat, didn’t know anything about what they were looking at! Because these louts had left behind the most valuable of her antiques: a parrot that had been owned by a close confidante of Catherine II.
The bird, a plucked thing that Anna Sergeyevna claimed was 140 years old, had stopped talking. But it went on singing the hymn that the poet Derzhavin had composed in honor of the tsarina—singing to her glory. Its horrible voice could be heard all the way out in the courtyard.
It was the only possession of the Saltykovs that Gorky had refused.
Such a snub only served to increase the princess’s ire. And woe betide anyone who might praise the writer’s talent. “Oh, so you think your Gorky might be an aesthete?” She pursed her lips in disgust. “He’s an uncultured monster. I’d even say that he’s incapable of culture. They say he steals anything he likes, just for his own personal collection. He’s said to love Chinese jade and porcelain. The ugliest little trinkets, of course: he has absolutely no taste. And that’s no surprise! How could this muzhik possibly understand anything about Ming-era art?”
It was a painful topic: her late husband’s Ming vases had been the glory of the Saltykov palace.
The other spoils of the apartment, among what hadn’t been carted off already—the coal stove, the kitchen utensils—had been repurposed or sold on the black market by the eighteen people who hung their laundry to dry in the ballroom.
The room that the princess had retired to, along with the parrot, was no exception to the disorder and dilapidation of the rest. All she had was a trundle bed, a portion of a mirror, a welter of icons, and the massive birdcage, which took up nearly the entire room. The space—at the end of the hallway, far from the common rooms—did offer her the advantage of relative privacy. The way in was through a servants’ door, and she could shut herself away, far from the “whining masses.” Its proximity to the kitchen allowed her to heat up water for tea without having to go down the icy hallways.
It was there, under the painted depiction of the Virgin Mary, that the princess’s final guests gathered around a wicker suitcase that served as a bridge table.
It was still the same old four or five people.
Count Paul Benckendorff, the most respected man in the tsar’s court, served as the evening’s master of ceremonies. He had once been famous for his cheek and his appetite, and now, despite the ongoing famine, he was a hefty man who groaned endlessly about the lack of food.
Accompanying him was his wife, the unfortunate Countess Marie Benckendorff—her name oddly close to Moura’s own—whose two sons from her first marriage had just been arrested and probably shot dead.
General Mossolov, the former head of the Imperial Chancellery, was also there. He was working on a manuscript about the descendants of Nicholas II, a “capital testimony” whose first chapters were already being circulated under the table.
These three survivors—the three pillars of the circle—braved the potholes in the streets, the climbs up dark stairwells, the groping descents from floor to floor every week. And they braved the constant risk of being assaulted, in one of those all-too-common attacks against the burzhui in which the bandits left the victim without a stitch of clothing amid the wreckage. They confronted all these difficulties devotedly in order to appear, if not elegantly, at least diligently at the princess’s “Wednesdays,” to trade the latest news with her and to play cards together.
The other players came and went, depending on what tragedies might have befallen their families recently. But nothing was more important than the “big day” at the residence of Anna Sergeyevna, nothing apart from force majeure.
With empty stomachs and emptier minds, their thoughts fixated on what they would be eating that night, the size of the oat ration that would serve as their dinner and the price of the tiny potato they couldn’t have, they went on playing cards at all costs.
They had known each other for eons, so they bickered with one another often and accused one another of not paying attention.
Then they gossiped and came back again and again to the privileges they had once enjoyed and that now belonged to the people of the future.
Their exchanges could be summed up as a litany of everything they missed. And idle, increasingly bitter talk about how their new masters conducted themselves. Despite their efforts to sound detached when discussing their misfortunes, what one might say and what another might say amounted to yet another stone added to their Golgotha. And their evenings together always turned to the latest indictments.
The great subject, the one that always seized everyone’s attention, that offered both premises for discussion and consensus on answers, remained this horrible Maxim Gorky: the princess’s bête noire, who was apparently both a close friend of the police commissioners and their loudest critic. A paradox. The man’s ambiguity allowed them to talk about the regime without directly discussing Lenin’s decrees ordering their extermination; without enumerating Yakov Peters’s cruelties as he tortured their nearest and dearest; and without detailing the tortures that Grigory Zinoviev, the new tyrant of Petrograd, had exacted in thoroughly exploiting their city. In short, it was a way to criticize the Bolsheviks, through the literature they had all loved so much.
“The other day,” thundered the stout Paul Benckendorff, “my doctor, who is also his doctor, told me that when he went to Gorky’s home to ask him to intercede on behalf of my son-in-law, he was unlucky enough to come upon him as he was eating lunch. On the master’s table were meat dumplings, fresh cucumbers, cranberry sauce. Would you believe what he granted my doctor? Oh, you can imagine! Not only did Gorky refuse to lift a finger to help Sasha, but he granted his dear doctor the mere privilege of seeing him eat!”
The truth was that hunger was getting the better of their sense of humor. In this icy room where the wind gusted, it was impossible for them to keep up their grand tradition of wry conversation that they had always practiced here by the fireside. They might still try to maintain the appearance of dignity, but they had already given up when it came to the art of conversation.
Every other week, Anna Sergeyevna invited a member of the younger generation: usually their common favorite, the wife of dear Djon Benckendorff, her cousin by marriage and her host’s relative.
Moura, their wonderful Moura, livened up the rote gatherings with her good humor and her indomitable energy. Because of the close-knit quarters and the wide difference in generations, she called them all “my aunt” and “my uncle.” They loved her. She, Moura, their wonderful Moura, was the one they asked to sell their last rags on the black market. She was the one who got their ration cards checked at the commissariats. She was the one who struggled with the chekists down the street at the Shpalernaya prison and got the latest news about those who had vanished from their lives. She was the one who protected them and did them a thousand favors.
Over time, she became indispensable to them.
Some of them insisted that Moura, their wonderful Moura, was hardly the innocent lady she seemed to be. That within other circles she was notorious, that her reputation was rather questionable, that all the local gossips were saying…
Those who cast aspersions were immediately silenced by the princess. And should any of them keep on criticizing her dear little friend, she showed them the door right away. Nobody dared say a word against her kin. Nobody apart from herself had any right to besmirch the Benckendorff family.
Not as the lady of the house, but as the girl of the house, Moura helped her receive them all.
She came and went down the icy hallway, her dog, Garry, nipping at her heels. She opened the door, escorted Aunt Marie or Uncle Paul down to the room at the end, offered them a box that served as a chair, gave them a shawl, served them some tea, and distracted them with a hundred little anecdotes that she had heard God only knows where. And on top of that, she was a peerless bridge player, which only raised the stakes and increased the others’ pleasure.
The entirety of this regular ceremony took two hours. When the lady of the house started to get tired and announced that her “Wednesday” was drawing to a close, it was Moura who took care of leading all the visitors to the door. The hostess brandished a bit of broken English at those moments: “No sticky departure, please.” No overstaying their welcome.
After having locked the service door behind them all, Moura returned to the sanctuary, where the princess was waiting for her.
Like a latter-day Madame Récamier, Anna Sergeyevna had lain down, surrounded entirely by her pillows. With her Roman nose and her feather-adorned hair, she bore a striking resemblance to her parrot, which, in its cage above her head, was marking time with its crooning song in honor of Catherine the Great.
Their final ritual was their one-on-one conversations. The princess loved nothing so much as this moment when she had “the younger generation” to herself, and she allowed herself, as the two looked at each other, a welter of small indiscretions. Her favorite subject remained love. But she broached it carefully, setting out from the words that had wrapped up the conversation the previous visitors had left off.
“That said, your mother is right: we’ve gone well past the limits of what can be borne. Just last year, we still believed there might be a limit to all this horror. But there isn’t! And even so, we should still be pinching ourselves at our luck. We haven’t reached the point where we’re eating leather. It will come. There are so many pairs of gloves I love. I could gulp down my butter-soft morning gloves or my plum-colored peccary evening gloves. And then my long white dance gloves. It’s a shame that all my silverware was stolen: I can imagine twirling them tight around one of my forks, as if I were enjoying some spaghetti… But let’s come back to talking about your mother. She shouldn’t be putting on these airs: what does she think she’s doing, talking about emigrating at her age? She would do best to follow my example: to stay calm. What in heaven could she possibly do in Finland when she’s sick and penniless? In any case, the two of us will both be dead come this spring. And it’s far better to die in one’s home. You, however…” The princess furrowed her brows here. “You’re nothing more than skin and bones at this point.” She was looking at her, at those prominent cheekbones, those feverish eyes. “You’re headed for trouble! Indeed, my little girl…”
As she sensed more uncomfortable questions coming, Moura hastened to cut the conversation short. “But, my aunt, I’m doing perfectly well! And I so love gossiping in French with you.”
“Oh, don’t take that ridiculous tone with me. I know quite well that you’d be far happier talking in English with someone else.”
She did not reply.
“Am I right in thinking that this is the first time you’ve fallen in love?”
Still no answer.
“How old is he, then?”
“Thirty-one years old.”
“And you?”
“In two months, I’ll be twenty-six.”
“Oh, you’re nothing more than a kitten! You have your whole life ahead of you to relive this experience. But I must offer one piece of advice: next time, don’t let your lover leave for distant lands without another man ready at home.”
Moura tried to smile:
“I didn’t really have any choice.”
“And how long has this little affair been going on?” The princess didn’t give her any time to answer. “It hasn’t even been a year, if I understand correctly. Do you want to know what I think?”
She was silent again.
“He’ll write to you less and less. Until he stops writing to you completely.”
Moura picked up her metal tumbler full of tea and tried to sip a little bit. But it was no use. She set the cup down with a shudder. She trembled so much that the goblet’s metal clanged against the pot that served as a samovar.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I love you. And seeing you in such a state is so depressing. Please, Moura, please stop trying to play Madame Butterfly. Stop waiting for him. Stop gnawing at yourself. Stop wringing yourself dry with all this to-ing and fro-ing across town to see if you’ve gotten any letters that were never sent in the first place.”
“But he’s writing them and sending them.”
“You’re thinking like a lady’s maid! Listen to me, my darling. Do your best to look at this whole story with a bit of distance. You’re carrying out an affair with an ambitious diplomat who’s already married… Are we in agreement on those facts? He’s an adventurer. A man who’s dead set on changing the course of history in a country that isn’t his own… Are we still in agreement so far?… Who has fallen in love with a native woman, the prettiest one, the smartest one, and the best-positioned one: a mistress who has assisted him in all his projects and who has gotten him out of bad situations over and over. And at this point, circumstances have forced him to return back home. Not as a man who’s triumphed… but a man who’s lost.”
“He didn’t go back as a man who’s lost! He’s settling his affairs in London.”
“And however did this hero go back home, if not with his tail between his legs? He wasn’t able to stop the Brest-Litovsk treaty from being signed; in fact, he created a major diplomatic crisis. It wasn’t just a failure. It was a disaster! Believe me, at this moment he’s far more concerned with shoring up his reputation in England than with setting up any kind of reunion in Sweden. And while he might very much have a broken heart, which I do believe is the case—he was terribly sad to have to leave you—he’s already letting himself focus on far more practical considerations. He’s suffering from being away from you, yes: he’s a sincere boy. But he’s forging onward, he’s rebuilding a life for himself. He’s settling his affairs, as you say. Let me ask you one question. Doesn’t your relationship—a unique one, of course, with him—sound so much like another one? That of a young British plantation owner who got married to a Muslim princess in Malaysia? Who loved her madly? Who wooed her, who stole her away, who lived with her, who fell sick? A young British man who came back to London, having been exiled by the Bolsheviks? I’m sorry, by malaria… Now let me ask you another question, my little friend: what happened to the Malaysian princess after that? After he left, did he ever give another thought to the future she had ahead of her?”
“I understand what you’re trying to tell me, my aunt.”
“I’m not trying. I’m telling you. Sentimental men like your dear Lockhart are the worst! He’s gone back to, or he’s going to go back to, married life. And you really should do the same, as well. Do your best to go back to your husband. And don’t tell me that it’s impossible to abandon your mother here. For her and for me, it’s all over. Get a visa for Estonia from those savages. I’ve been told they’re satisfied with your work. They’ll happily send you on to Yendel.”
After Moura came out of the Saltykov palace, she went back up the embankment, running along the banks of the Neva. Evening had fallen. The moonlight on the river’s ice floes was enough to light her way. Her shawl was wrapped around her head, and her chin was buried in her bosom as she sank into the night’s darkness. Nothing set her apart from a woman of the people. Except for the presence of Garry, who, stretching the leash to its limit, immediately marked her as a bourgeois woman walking her dog.
She was alert to the least noise as she rushed along. It was possible she was being followed, that she might be attacked at any moment. Even arrested. It is forbidden to go out after 8:00 p.m. She had only a few minutes left until the curfew. Already, there were no passersby. And not a single light in any of the windows. So much the better. If the electricity had been working in any of the buildings, there was no question of what it would have meant: the Cheka police were busy doing a search of the premises.
In general, those events took place around midnight. The victims, caught by surprise in their sleep, would panic and tell the truth more quickly. The night made them far more vulnerable. It made it possible to make them disappear without any witnesses. But there were no real rules. It could be anytime, it could be anywhere.
The methods, however, stayed constant. The policemen circled the neighborhood, surrounded the house, fanned out across the floors, broke down the doors with pounding fists. They entered the apartments in groups of four or five men, holding revolvers in their hands, ready with insults on the tips of their tongues, keeping their eyes open for any goods they could fence on the black market, banknotes, gold, jewelry, and old clothes. Among them, there were often children: in general, they were the best bloodhounds for seeking out what had been stashed away… The most audacious ones would climb on top of the armoires and the stoves, the most meticulous ones would take keen interest in the contents of the chests of drawers and take great offense at the burzhui presuming to hang on to anything at all.
Most of the time, the chekists weren’t looking for something specific or somebody in particular. But they still had to be careful: a list of telephone numbers could become a list of guilty people. They always landed on someone. A suspect, ten suspects. By chance… The vans were always waiting outside.
From a distance, Moura could immediately see what was going on at number 8 on her street. She started running.
As she reached the entryway, the trucks were starting their engines, bearing away their load of men and women who would never see the light of day ever again. She climbed the steps as quickly as she could.
She opened the first door. There was nobody there. An unruly mess faced her. Which was to be expected after this sort of visit. The final things in the salon had vanished. A second door. “Mommy?” she asked in English. She heard no response. In English again: “Where are you?” She was screaming now, in the language of all her emotions: “… Are you here?”
The room was empty. All the rooms were empty. Every single one. All she had left was the nursery.
Mommy was there, sitting on the floor, her look crazed, holding one of Tania’s stuffed giraffes in her hands.
Moura’s relief at seeing her mother alive was so great that she couldn’t say anything. She simply got down to pick her up. But to no avail. The old lady refused to move.
So Moura busied herself with picking up the baby clothes and toys that had been flung everywhere around her mother.
As before, when she had returned to Lockhart’s place in Moscow, she collected all these belongings methodically, putting each thing away in the drawer where it belonged. She was inexhaustible as she arranged the dozens of slippers in pairs. She smoothed out the vests, spread out the bibs, put away the undergarments, folded the tiny dresses that she had once dressed her children in.
And all of a sudden, as she came across a block beside her mother, she collapsed.
Hunched over upon herself, her face buried in Paul’s navy-blue clothes, she stayed put for the rest of the night. She was inconsolable. She cried and cried.
It felt as if Moura would never be able to stop crying.