Authors: Mary Nichols
‘Please sit down,’ Svetlana said. ‘Grigori will be here soon. He’s the head of the Petrovsk Land Department. How long is it since you lived here?’
‘I was four when we left in 1920,’ Lydia told her, perching herself on a sofa. Nikolay went over to the window and stood looking out at the tangled garden.
‘That was a bad time, but there have been worse times since.’
‘How long have you lived here?’ Lydia asked her.
‘Since 1922, the end of the Civil War, soon after I married Grigori. He got promotion and was sent here and we took over this house. Ah, here he is.’ She looked up as the door opened and her husband came in. He was a big, broad man, dressed in a neat grey suit, though his shirt was collarless. ‘Grigori, we have visitors from England. This is Nikolay Nikolayevich Andropov and his wife, Lydia.’
Lydia stood up and Nikolay turned from the window to
greet him. They shook hands. ‘All the way from England, eh?’ he said. ‘You are a long way from home.’
‘On the contrary,’ Kolya said. ‘We are home. My wife is the daughter of Mikhail Mikhailovich Kirilov. This was his
dacha
. She has come back to search for her parents.’
Grigori sank into a chair and stared up at them. He looked shocked and his ruddy face turned pale. ‘The count’s daughter,’ he said, at last.
‘Yes, did you know him?’
‘He was my cousin. On my mother’s side, you understand, but it is not a relationship I boast about.’
‘No, you wouldn’t,’ Kolya said, with a wry smile. ‘But do you know what happened to the count?’
‘Why, in God’s name, did you come back, Lydia Mikhailovna?’ he said, angrily, ignoring Kolya’s question. ‘You are risking your life and ours as well.’
‘Lydia is a good Communist, as I am,’ Kolya said. ‘We have nothing to fear.’
Grigori laughed, though there was no humour in it. ‘The very fact that you have lived in the West is enough to condemn you – and us by association. Go back, Lydia Andropova, go back where you belong.’
‘Not until I find out what happened to my parents,’ she said.
‘I told Pyotr Simenov what happened to them when he came asking questions. Did he not tell you? He said he would.’
‘He said they had been executed for trying to take jewels out of the country.’
‘So they were, and for being counter-revolutionaries. They were shot by a firing squad.’
‘Do you know how they came to be arrested? When?
Where were they at the time? Are you sure they were shot and not just imprisoned? Was there a trial? Did no one defend them?’
‘Questions, questions, questions,’ he said irritably. ‘What difference does it make?’
‘I need to know for my peace of mind. I should like to see their graves and say a prayer for them.’
‘Prayers!’ he mocked. ‘There is no religion in Russia now.’
‘Perhaps not officially. I expect people still say their prayers privately. And that is beside the point. Will you help us?’
‘The count and countess were denounced and arrested by the Cheka. They were tried by the People’s Court and found guilty. The death sentence was carried out the next day.’ It was said flatly, as if he were bored with it all.
‘Who denounced them?’
He shrugged. ‘It makes no difference. It was done.’
‘Where were they buried?’
‘Where they were executed in the Cherkassy Forest. I doubt the grave is marked.’
‘But you do know where it is?’
‘Roughly. I couldn’t be exact. If you think I’ll take you there, you are mistaken, Lydia Andropova. I haven’t the time for such sentiment. The harvest is about to begin and I am responsible for meeting the grain quotas, so I shall be very busy. I suggest you go back where you came from.’
‘We’d like to stay awhile,’ Kolya put in. ‘You can put us up for a few days, can’t you? My wife has been looking forward to this visit for years. You’d not deny her that, would you?’
Both Grigori and his wife looked at Lydia. There were
tears running down her face. She did not seem aware of them. Kolya took his handkerchief and wiped them away. ‘Don’t cry, sweetheart. Grigori Stefanovich will let us stay a few days, I’m sure.’ He looked at Grigori. ‘Can I have a word with you in private?’
The big man shrugged. ‘Very well. We’ll go next door.’
Kolya followed him from the room, leaving Lydia and Svetlana facing each other. ‘Tell me what life is like in England,’ Svetlana said.
Lydia smiled wanly and obeyed. England seemed a world away and unreachable, and already she regretted leaving it. She wondered what her father would make of the letter she had sent him. He would be heartbroken and Mama angry. She had been wicked to come away in that hole-and-corner way, after all they had done for her. Now, when it was too late, she realised she should never have listened to Kolya. Alex’s father had been right and her parents were dead.
‘After the bandits shot my brother, I was all alone in the world. My brother and nurse were dead and my parents had disappeared. I was only four and so shocked I could not speak. I was taken to England by an English diplomat who adopted me. He has been very good to me …’ She choked on the words. ‘I was brought up like an English child: school, university, a job …’
‘What job did you do?’
‘Translating Russian into English.’
‘You speak Russian with an accent.’
‘Do I?’ she queried. ‘I suppose it’s because I have not needed to speak it at home.’
‘But you say this is home,’ Svetlana pointed out.
‘It was, but everything has changed. I don’t recognise the Russia I knew.’
‘That is not surprising, is it? You were no more than a baby when you left. And life is different now.’
‘I know, but some memories are very vivid. They come to me in a series of unconnected pictures. What I wanted to try and do was put them together and make sense of them. Do you think anyone in the village would remember me?’
‘Some of the old
babushkas
might, those who didn’t die in the famine. It killed a lot of people.’
‘But the fields are full of grain.’
‘That is needed to fulfil our quota; we are allowed very little of it, though Grigori is luckier than most because of his position, and those who work in the tractor factory are kept fed.’ It was said flatly, in a manner of acceptance.
‘Oh.’ She had read about the Ukrainian people going hungry, but the Russian papers were very cagey about how extensive the famine had been. ‘I have money to buy food, we won’t be a burden on you. As soon as Kolya has arranged for us to go to Cherkassy, we will leave.’
The men came back. Kolya was smiling broadly. ‘We can have a room in the attic which is not occupied,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to find some furniture, but there might be something useful in the part of the house that’s uninhabitable.’
‘How did the house come to be like that?’ Lydia asked.
‘It was done in the Civil War,’ Grigori said. ‘There was fierce fighting hereabouts. Come, let me show you the room.’
They followed him through the house. Every room they passed seemed to be occupied, though the occupants were absent, presumably at their work. ‘How many people live here?’ Lydia asked as they climbed the stairs. There was no carpet on the treads as there once had been.
‘Twenty families in all,’ Grigori told them. ‘Some are
allocated one room, some with big families have two. It is big enough to house more if need be. If we are sent extra workers for the harvest, they will have to be housed. In that case you will have to move out.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I thank you.’
The room was one at the top of the house which had once been the bedroom of a servant. It had a small iron bedstead without a mattress, and a cupboard. There was room for little else but they scavenged a small table and two chairs from an empty room and bought a mattress, bedlinen, a few pans and some crockery from the
Insnab
, a shop stocking foreign goods for which Grigori, because of his privileged position, had coupons to use.
‘I don’t know what we’re doing here,’ Lydia said to Kolya after they had arranged everything and were sitting on the two chairs which had once been part of a set of Queen Anne dining chairs. ‘We have achieved nothing. I want to go home.’
‘Home?’ he queried. ‘This is home now.’
‘Kolya, you can’t mean that,’ she said, looking at him in dismay. He was smoking a cigarette he had rolled himself from makhorka, a rough, strong-smelling tobacco, and appeared completely unruffled. ‘We only came to find out what happened to my parents and we’ve done that. We could go to Cherkassy to try and find their graves and then go home.’
‘I have no intention of going back to England,’ he said. ‘I’ve work to do here.’
‘Work? What work?’
‘Never you mind.’
‘You mean you are involved with the kulak uprising?’
He tapped his nose. ‘Shsh. Walls have ears.’
‘Kolya, that’s madness, you’ll be arrested and shot. Give it up, take me home. I cannot go alone. I’d never get past all the checks.’
‘Then you had better resign yourself to staying here until I choose to move.’ His voice had a hard edge to it she had never noticed before. He was suddenly not the
fun-loving
, affectionate Kolya he had been and she realised, with a great jolt that sent her heart into her shoes, that she had made a terrible mistake marrying him. He did not care for her; all his loving words were so much hot air to get her to come with him, though why he needed her she did not know.
‘When will that be?’
‘When I am given orders to go elsewhere.’
Why didn’t she believe him? Why did she think he had been lying to her all along? As a member of a subversive organisation, he was in constant danger, but he was far too complacent. Either he was a fool or there was something else going on, and she did not think he was a fool. ‘Kolya, just what are you up to?’ she asked. ‘What did you tell Grigori Stefanovich? He changed his mind about letting us stay after you spoke to him.’
‘None of your business.’
‘But I am your wife. Surely I should know.’
‘Better you don’t.’ He stubbed out his cigarette in a saucer. ‘Go and see to some food for us. I’m starving.’
She took some of the potatoes, cucumber, mushrooms and sauerkraut they had bought and made her way down to the kitchen. The other women had gone and the kitchen was empty. Thankful for that, she set about cooking.
She was in the middle of it when the outside door opened and a huge man with a shock of white hair and a white
beard came in carrying a pile of logs. He dropped them in a basket beside the hearth and turned towards her. ‘You’re new here.’
She smiled, a little wanly because she had been crying. ‘Yes and no. This used to be my home, years ago, before the Revolution.’
He stared. ‘Lydia Mikhailovna. Is it you?’
‘Yes.’ She brightened to think someone knew her. ‘Did you know me then?’
‘Did I know you! Why I used to carry you on my shoulders. I took you to Simferopol that time …’
‘Ivan Ivanovich!’ His hair, which had been so black, was now white, and he was thinner than he used to be, but he was still the Ivan she had known, her saviour in the dark days of the Civil War. She ran to him and grasped both his hands. ‘Oh, how good it is to see you. How are you? And Sima and the little ones?’
‘All dead,’ he said. ‘They died in the famine. I earn my bread doing odd jobs and maintenance round the house. It’s not the same, not the same at all.’ And he shook his big head and sighed. ‘What are you doing here? Did you go to England?’
‘Yes. I am Lydia Andropova now.’ She turned from him to take the pan off the stove and sat at the table to tell him all that had happened to her.
‘You should not have come,’ he said when she finished. ‘If the authorities get to hear of it, you will be arrested.’
‘My husband has proper papers for us. Did you know my parents were arrested and executed?’
‘Yes. I’m sorry. It was on the day I took you to Simferopol. They were on their way to join you as arranged. They never knew about Andrei and Tonya.’
‘I’m glad of that. I was told they were denounced. Do you know who could have done that?’
‘I didn’t,’ he said sharply. ‘I would never have betrayed them.’
‘Of course not. Who else knew?’
‘Grigori Stefanovich. They went to visit him that day. They hoped he would give them travel documents.’
She was shocked. ‘You think it might be him? Why would he do such a thing? He is family.’
‘People betray their grandmothers nowadays. One boy betrayed his own father and was subsequently murdered by his grandfather for doing it. The boy is revered as a hero and the grandfather paid with his life.’
‘But what motive would Grigori have for doing that?’
‘He knew about the jewels sewn in their clothes.’ He gave a bark of a laugh. ‘I’ll wager only one or two ever reached the authorities.’ He stopped suddenly. ‘Do not trust him, Lidushka. Do not trust anyone. Get out of here, it’s not safe.’
‘I can’t. My husband won’t leave.’
‘Then I pity you.’ The sound of footsteps came to them and he hurriedly turned to leave. ‘I live in the woodman’s hut in the forest,’ he murmured. ‘Come to me if you are in trouble. I will do what I can to help, but it will be little enough.’ And he was gone.
She returned to her cooking, as Kolya came into the room. ‘I wondered where you’d got to. You’ve been a long time.’
She was about to tell him about meeting Ivan but changed her mind. If he could be secretive, so could she. ‘I’m not used to this stove. It’s ready now. Do you want to eat it down here or up in our room?’
‘Down here. Then I have some business with Grigori Stefanovich.’
‘I think I’ll write to my parents and tell them what’s happened.’
‘If you must,’ he said. ‘But be careful what you say. Everything is censored nowadays. I’ll see that it’s posted.’
They ate in silence and then he went off to find Grigori and she returned to their room to write her letter. She was dreadfully sorry about the way she had left, she wrote, and begged their forgiveness. She did not know how to describe Kirilhor without finding fault with the regime, but put as bright a view on it as she could. She hoped soon to come home. When it was done she took it downstairs, looking for Kolya.