“Qu’en penses-tu?” she concluded in her calligraphic handwriting, whose French variant was more angular and decisive.
Their letters spent a long time being shaken around in tarpaulin mail sacks in postal carriages, and the correspondence lagged two or three months behind life. Three months later Medea received a reply. It was one of the longest letters Elena wrote, and it was written in the schoolgirl handwriting so similar to Medea’s own.
She thanked her for the letter and wrote that she had shed many tears recollecting those terrible years when it had seemed that everything was lost. Further, Elena confessed that she herself had experienced a similar mystical encounter on the eve of the family’s hasty evacuation on the night of November 17, 1918.
Three days before that, Mama suffered a stroke. She looked terrible, much worse than when you saw her three weeks later when we reached Theodosia. Her face was blue, one eye was staring up behind the eyelid, we were expecting her to die at any minute. There was shooting throughout the city, and at the port the military-headquarters staff and the civilian population were embarking at a furious pace. As you know, Papa was a member of the Crimean government, and it was quite impossible for him to remain behind. Arsik was suffering one of his endless angina attacks and Anait, who had always been so full of joy and happiness, just couldn’t stop crying. Father was spending all his time in the town, returning for just a few minutes, laying his hand on Mama’s head and going off again. I told you all this before except, perhaps, for the most important thing.
That evening I put Arsik and Anait to bed, lay down next to Mama, and immediately drifted off. The rooms were all connecting, in enfilade, and I mention this advisedly because it is relevant. Suddenly, in my sleep, I heard someone coming in. “Father,” I thought, and didn’t realize straight away that whoever it was had come in through the right-hand door, from inside the apartment, whereas the entrance from the street was to the left. I meant to get up, to get tea for Father, but I felt fettered, I couldn’t move at all. Father, as you will remember, was not tall, yet the person standing by the door was a big man and, as it seemed to me, wearing a dressing gown. I could only vaguely make out an old man whose face was very white and seemed to be shining. I was scared but also, can you believe it, very curious. I realized this was someone close, a relative, and immediately someone seemed to say aloud to me, “Shinararyan.” Mama had told me about one amazing branch of her ancestors who built Armenian churches. He somehow glided over to me and said quite clearly, in a singsong voice, “Let them all leave, but you, maid, stay behind. You will go to Theodosia. You have nothing to fear.”
And then I noticed that he wasn’t a complete person but only the upper part, and below was just mist, as if the specter hadn’t had time to form completely.
And that is how everything turned out. We parted in early morning, weeping absolute buckets. They left on the last steamer, and Mama and I stayed behind. Twenty-four hours later the city was taken by the Reds. In those dreadful days, when people were being murdered and shot by firing squads, nobody touched us. Yusim, the carter of the late princess in whose palace we were living all that time, first took Mama and me away to a suburb to his relatives, and a week later he put us in a phaeton and took us away from there. We were two weeks on the road to Theodosia, and you know everything about that journey. I had the feeling as I was traveling back to you that I was coming home, but my heart stopped when we saw that the gates of your house were boarded up. I didn’t guess at first that you had started using the side entrance.
Neither Mama nor Papa have ever appeared to me even in a dream—probably because I sleep too soundly: you simply wouldn’t get through to me. What a joy you have been given, Medea, receiving such a live greeting from your parents. Don’t be disturbed, don’t trouble yourself with questions of why or wherefore. We’ll never guess the answer ourselves anyway. Do you remember reading me your favorite passage from St. Paul about seeing through a glass darkly? Everything will become clear with time, or outside of time. In my childhood, in Tbilisi, the Lord lived in our house alongside us, the angels walked in our rooms, but here in Asia everything is different. He is far away from me, and the church here feels empty. But it is a sin to complain. All is well. Natasha has been ill but is almost completely recovered now; she’s just coughing a bit still. Fyodor has gone off on an expedition for a week. I have some exciting news: I’m going to have another baby, very soon now. There is nothing I so dream of as your coming to see us. Perhaps you could just pack the boys’ things and come in the spring?
CHAPTER 3
Medea always got up early, but this morning it was Artyom who was first out of bed. The sun was not yet bright, the morning rather pale with patches of shining mist, and cool. A few minutes later, roused by the noise of his son washing under the tap, Georgii emerged. This time Medea was the last to rise.
Taciturn by nature, Medea was particularly short on conversation in the mornings. Everyone knew this and saved up their questions for her until evening. This morning too she gave only a nod and went off to the toilet, and from there to the kitchen to light the Primus stove. There was no water left, so she brought out an empty bucket and put it at Georgii’s feet. It was one of the customs of the house that nobody could go to the well after sundown. Out of respect for Medea this and other inexplicable laws were strictly observed by all visitors, and the more inexplicable the law, the more force it had.
Georgii went off down to the well. It was a deep stone reservoir constructed by the Tatars at the end of the last century. Precious water brought from elsewhere was kept in it, and it had constantly to be refilled. Just now the level was low, and Georgii, pulling up the bucket, took a long, close look at it. The water was murky and the hardness in it could even be seen. For him, born in Central Asia, the water shortage in the Crimea was nothing out of the ordinary.
“I’ll need to put down an artesian borehole,” he thought for the second time in two days, climbing back to the house up an awkwardly stepped path which seemed to have been designed to suit the gait of a woman carrying a pitcher on her head.
Medea put the kettle on and went outside, the hem of her faded black skirt sweeping the clay floor of the kitchen. Georgii sat down on the bench and looked at the neat bundles of herbs hanging from a beam in the ceiling. Tatar copper pots and pans stood on the high shelves, and in the corners enormous cauldrons were piled on top of each other. A copper kungan pitcher crowned the pyramid. All these items were cruder and simpler than the familiar Uzbek ones sold in the Tashkent bazaar, but Georgii, who had a keen and slightly ascetic eye, preferred these poor relations to the others with all their lavish craftwork and garrulous Asiatic ornamentation.
“Dad, how about the seaside?” Artyom butted in.
“Hardly,” he retorted, concealing his irritation. His son was well versed in the nuances of his father’s speech and understood that there was no prospect of going to the sea.
His natural inclination was to whine and keep pestering his father, but the sensitivity of his nature took in the wonder of the morning stillness and he kept quiet.
While the water was heating on the stove, Medea made her bed, putting away the pillows and blankets in a chest at the foot of the bed, and murmured a short morning injunction to herself in the long-familiar words of a prayer which, however worn-out it might be, did in some unfathomable way help her in what she was asking for: to accept the new day with its toil, its disappointments, other people’s empty talk, and her own weariness toward evening; to live through to the evening joyfully, without losing her temper with anyone and without taking umbrage. She had known since childhood that she had a bad habit of taking offense, and had been fighting it for so long she failed to notice that it was already many years since she had last taken offense at anyone. Only one old hurt from many years back still rankled, hanging over her like a dark shadow. “Am I really going to take it to my grave?” she wondered before moving on.