The House by the Dvina (33 page)

it was she who taught me all the songs. In the end all the promises and plans by Ukropov came to nothing for the Bolsheviks confiscated his business and house. Kapochka eventually left for Petrograd to live with her sister. Two decades later, during the Second World War, both perished in the siege of what is now known as Leningrad and were buried with other countless thousands in an unknown grave. One day, returning home from school, I found Mother upset and weeping. In the morning a telegram from Scotland had arrived, sent by Grandpa, saying that Grandma was seriously ill and asking Mother to come to Scotland. After great difficulty in trying to contact various sources, help came from high places. A berth was found in one of the British ships preparing for a return trip to England.

In early October, as the river was beginning to show signs of freezing, Ghermosha and I, with Babushka and Marina, went to the landing stage to see our mother off. The day was grey and a bitter wind was blowing.

Ghermosha, like myself, was most unhappy. As the ship was not due to leave until the cover of darkness, we had to say our goodbyes and stand watching our mother, tears streaming down her face, climbing up the gangway. At the top she turned and waved before disappearing inside. During our drive back to the house, Babushka tried to cheer us up by saying that Mother would probably return on an icebreaker in time for Christmas, but that was not to be. Late in the evening we kept watching at the windows and were eventually rewarded by seeing the dark shadow of the ship gliding past our house, before vanishing behind the island of Solombala.

As there was now no Mother or Kapochka, Father engaged “Osa” to help Babushka in taking care of us. This pleased Osa immensely, as it enabled her still to continue her work as a midwife, have a comfortable room and increase her income. Her duties were to be quite simple Ч seeing that we were tidy, and doing necessary mending and a little sewing, such as fixing daily the white bands on my school dress, a task I eventually did myself.

Osa did nothing whatsoever. She smoked incessantly, stealing my fatherТs cigarettes, and as for darning our stockings, which were now scarce, she used the expedient of dropping them down the chute of the toilet, to the great astonishment of the men who came in the early spring to remove all refuse.

Meanwhile, Mother had arrived safely in Scotland after a stormy crossing.

Grandma, who had succumbed badly to the prevalent epidemic of “Spanish influenza”, was now slowly recovering, but all MotherТs enquiries about an icebreaker were fruitless and became even more so after Christmas, with the now raging civil war and other hazards.

By the end of October, Russia was virtually out of war. The great orator Kerensky fled in disguise, leaving the young cadets and the brave womenТs army to defend the Winter Palace. It was a futile attempt. The defenders were arrested and the Bolshevik government, led by Lenin, took over.

In November Seryozha returned from the front. The war for him was over. He had been carried with the flood of men rushing back to the land they were promised, pillaging the estates on their way and murdering the owners. He had witnessed frightening scenes and was heard to remark later with a cynicism foreign to his nature, “Our gentle peasant is hard to beat when he embarks on his sadistic tricks.” Seryozha had walked for days on end, travelled on trains crowded with lice-ridden soldiers. Typhus was rampant.

In every station the sick and dying were unceremoniously thrown out.

Eventually, on reaching Vologda, he found the same chaos. After pushing and fighting, he succeeded in scrambling into the train bound for Archangel. He was lucky. Many were left behind. Others travelled clinging to the roofs, from which some of them, overcome by cold or carelessness, fell off or were killed by overhanging bridges. Exhausted, Seryozha slept in the corner of the corridor and did not waken until the train reached Issakagorka. From there he walked, crossing the icebound river and at last entered the gates of his beloved home.

Seryozha was back Ч but where was the young boy of high ideals and fervent patriotism? In his place now stood a man in a tattered uniform, filthy and unkempt. The hollow-eyed, ravaged face bore the stamp of extreme suffering. The old zinc rocking bath was brought down from the garret. The women were chased out of the kitchen. Yura lovingly cleaned and scrubbed his brother. Seryozha had not eaten for days and after his first meal slept the whole day and night.

Christmas was approaching. Although the means with which to celebrate it were more scarce than ever, we were still in a position to offer up a Christmas dinner to our friends. The last of the sheep was slaughtered Ч

there at least would be roast mutton on the table with a blueberry tart, made from last yearТs jam, which had been carefully treasured in the larder. Meanwhile, as the days went by, Ghermosha and I still clung to the hope that Mother might return in time for Christmas. We wrote little notes which I donТt think ever reached her. Yet, long years after, in going over MotherТs belongings following her death, I came across one letter I had written soon after she had arrived in Scotland. It was the only one.

Although she must have had difficulty in making out my scribbling, never having quite mastered the written word in Russian, she had treasured it throughout the long decades. On the yellow pages, the uneven writing with a few corrections and careless inkspots, is faded Ч “Dear Mama, I am writing this in the nursery. Ghermosha, Tolya Mammontov, Vera and Volodya are playing cards beside me. They are laughing, shouting Ч my ears are ringing. Mama, Osa is very bad to us. The large pot of jam you left especially for us, she herself has finished. She gave us only little spoonfuls and ate saucerfuls herself and when we asked for more called us gluttons. It is unjust. We have hardly any stockings left, as she will not darn even the smallest hole, but drops the stockings in the toilet.

Babushka caught her and was very angry. They say at school that we are going to be taught English, in which case I should get nothing less than СfivesТ. Ghermosha and I are planning to give everyone presents for Christmas with the money we have saved. There isnТt very much to buy. In your drawer I have found a new box of pretty handkerchiefs and that should help us. We will give Marga, Marina and Tyotya Peeka two each. I hope Grandma is well. Give Grandpa and Grandma our love. Mama, please find an icebreaker and come back soon. Ч Your loving daughter, Ena (Jenya).”

No icebreaker brought Mother for Christmas and it was impossible for her to come through Finland on account of the troubles. Children are known to be resilient. Swallowing our disappointment, we found consolation in a special scheme of our own. This year, for once, all those who would arrive on Christmas Eve would receive a gift from us. The fact that shops had ceased functioning did not deter us. There was still one we knew which sold stationery and a few small items. A few weeks before Christmas, during the short hours of daylight, we embarked for the centre of the town, dragging our sledge. To take a tramcar of course would have been easier, but we imagined, it being the Christmas season, the sledge was more appropriate. We spent long hours in the shop, carefully working out our money to the few useless articles for sale. A shop-soiled book on flowers was bought for Babushka Ч it was more than we could afford, but Babushka was worth it. Three prints were eagerly snatched up before anyone else could buy them. Two were identical, depicting a dead Japanese soldier on the field of battle, and one the fall of Port Arthur. The identical prints did not bother us unduly; they could always be hung in different rooms we reasoned. They were meant for Dedushka, Seryozha and Yura. Why we should have thought that they would be delighted to be reminded of the disastrous Japanese war is difficult to imagine. There were pens and pencils, little coloured boxes and notebooks and finally a roll of crimson crinkled paper for wrapping up the presents, paid for with our last kopecks. The moon was high when we turned homewards, trailing the sledge between the sparkling snowdrifts. We hid the sledge under the bed. The following day we spent exciting hours wrapping up the parcels and arranging them inside the sledge, now decorated with cottonwool and tinsel.

On Christmas Eve the yearly gathering took place. After dinner, when everyone gathered in the ballroom, Ghermosha and I dragged our sledge up to the Christmas tree. Everyone appeared to be delighted with our gifts, although the pictures of the dead Japanese were never seen hanging in any room. This Christmas, one of the last, offered all the hospitality and joy Babushka could muster, but it was like a fire bursting into a bright flame before dying away.

1918

“Great and terrible was the year that followed the second revolution. It abounded with sunshine in the summer months, with snow in winter. Two stars brighter than all others shone from the heavens Ч the shepherdТs star Ч the evening Venus and the red vibrant Mars.”

These are the opening words of the great and almost forgotten novel of the Russian civil war, Byelaya Gvardiya (The White Guards) by Mikhail Bulgakov. Many accounts, novels, have been written about the civil war, some competent, others biased and inaccurate, but even out of the best of them, written after patient research, it is difficult for the average person to grasp the whole aspect of a civil war, the like of which the world has never known before.

From all that I have read and what I heard, and from my own youthful experience of over sixty years ago, I only see this civil war as a special creation devised by Satan himself. Here we have people of the same culture, speaking the same language and the same religious beliefs, ingrained from childhood, busily engaged in destroying their own land. In every corner of this great expanse battles are raging, the frontiers are fluid, horses are galloping forward and rushing back, men are attacking and retreating, towns, villages taken and retaken, savage reprisals, flames, smoke darkening the skies and helpless women and children trailing through blackened villages, dying on the dusty roads under the blazing heat of summer or below winter snows of the frozen steppes. All of that came later. In the beginning, after the taking of the Winter Palace and Petrograd had fallen, Lenin, having decided to take over the whole of Russia, sent instructions to that effect to all the provinces. They were backed by an army of experienced leaders, commissars and agitators. The takeover of Archangel, in December 1917, could be described as a bloodless affair and by January 1918 the Bolsheviks were in complete control. After the town was taken, many of our supplies, brought over by the Allies, were sent on to the south so that life for the inhabitants became more difficult. The atmosphere was uneasy. Some people were arrested and rumours floated around that all industries would be nationalised, and private property confiscated with no redress. It was also noticed that people who had previously been friendly and even servile now became insolent.

One day Vassily came to the house to complain that Vakhonin, still living in the lodge, was conducting a little private business of his own by stealing the precious firewood and selling it to someone in the adjoining courtyard by the simple device of breaking a plank in the woodshed and pushing the logs through the hole. Babushka, highly indignant, went to the lodge to investigate the matter. Vakhonin made no attempt even to deny the charge. “You bloodsucking bourgeois have had it good too long,” he said and, shutting the door in her face, added the old proverb, “There is going to be a holiday in our street.” What could Babushka do but retreat? From that day Irisha stopped coming to the house to help with the laundry and when meeting any of us face to face would turn away. Irisha was obviously ashamed but at the same time frightened of her Bolshevik husband. There were a few more similar incidents that had to be suffered in silence, but all of these, as the Russian saying goes, “Were as yet only the little flowers, the berries were still to come.”

Meanwhile, although there was grave concern over Russia abandoning the war, which enabled Germany to transfer her forces to fight on the Western front, relations between the Allies and the Bolsheviks were maintained in the hope that an alliance could be formed to continue the war on the Eastern front. Military assistance was offered by the Allies, but was categorically refused. LeninТs trump card was “Peace” Ч peace at any cost, and he had no intention of resuming hostilities and endangering his own cause.

During this period, when Russia and Germany were conducting their peace negotiations, ships of the Royal Navy, which had been previously engaged in escorting the supply ships to Archangel and Murmansk, were now stationed in Murmansk. Due to the proximity of the Gulf Stream the port remained open, unlike Archangel which was frozen. In February, Germany, tired of RussiaТs procrastinations over the signing of the peace treaty, unexpectedly launched an attack which forced the surprised Bolshevik leaders to resume their approaches. Germany promptly responded and in early March the treaty was concluded in Brest Litovsk. To describe this treaty as shameful is a rich understatement. Russia was reduced to the size she was three centuries earlier and in handing this vast territory on a plate to the Germans, one-third of the population went with it.

To the Allies this disaster left only one option, and the only hope for the war to be continued by the Russians. They simply had to join the forces who opposed the Bolsheviks and get rid of them. They were in a position to do so.

During that eventful year, our family life continued much the same. One evening as we sat as usual around the samovar, Marga announced that she was leaving the hospital to accept a post offered to her in the gymnasium as a class mistress in the junior department. Marga had nursed the sick and wounded from the beginning of the war, but recently seemed tired and despondent. Two years earlier she had met a young officer, Viktor Telyatin. They fell in love and planned to marry, but Viktor was called away to the front and during the first revolution a letter came saying Viktor was missing, presumed killed. From the time Marga joined our school she and I set off together every morning. Gradually, perhaps on account of being back in the cheerful throng of young people, she returned to her old self. Now that I was older, we often got together on some ploy. Once, both of us being hungry and searching the house for something we could eat, we came across some corn. Deciding to experiment, we roasted it and ground it, added milk and drank it. We were delighted with the result, as it proved to be very satisfying and we imagined tasted just as good as coffee. We were easily pleased during these hungry days. We talked a lot about the activities in the school. The school held a special attraction for me now. It was not, of course, the lessons: a play was being produced.