“A healthy, beautiful boy,” my grandmother muttered again, but I was not impressed.
“If he was so healthy and beautiful, then why did you let your husband send him away?” I said.
She laughed a frightening laugh. “Silly girl,” she said, even putting a hand on my shoulder. “Going to that orphanage was the best thing that ever happened to your father.”
I pulled away from her. She was talking utter nonsense, and there was no use in trying to reason with a madwoman. Perhaps I should have felt sorry for her, but how I hated her then! Spouting those lies when she couldn’t even bother to speak at Papa’s grave, when she was the one who sent him to the orphanage, a place where he became so selfless that he died over a stranger. Though I had not paid her much attention as of late, in that moment, I became utterly convinced that everything that had gone wrong in the mountains was my idiot grandmother’s fault: Papa’s death, our hunger, Licky’s demise, Polya and Bogdan’s long embrace, the dead villagers, Hitler invading Russia, and all the injustice in the wild, cruel world.
My grandmother’s extreme eccentricity had tipped toward downright insanity by the time summer arrived. I reminded myself that my father had been her son, after all, no matter how poorly she had treated him. Even though she did not care for him much when he was alive, his death must have meant something to her, something I could not understand as daughter instead of mother. After I berated her about talking to my father directly, she turned to the other dead.
“Shura,” she would tell her sister, “your hat is all wrong for the occasion, all wrong!” Or, “Husband Dimitrev, why so much red caviar and so little black, people will think we’re slipping!” And to her first husband: “Arkady, I need my back rubbed, and soon!” Once, I even heard her talking to Emperor Nikolai. “You are a dignified leader,” she had said. “Not without your flaws, of course, but so much more civilized than Comrade Lenin!” Sometimes, she would wander out in the middle of the night to Papa’s linden tree to have these conversations, until my sister escorted her home. These were disturbing developments, yes, but with all of us barreling forward after Papa left us, who had time to notice?
The only time any of us truly paid attention to my grandmother was one morning when she woke up to find that her necklace was gone.
Her cries knocked me out of a dream about my father I could not quite grasp, and I woke up thoroughly perturbed.
“Where is it? Where is it?”
My grandmother stood upright beside her bed like a soldier. Sunlight was streaking in through the window of our tiny room. It was a Sunday, the only day when everyone was allowed to sleep in, when even Uncle Konstantin afforded himself a bit of rest. Or we all would have been allowed to sleep in, anyhow, if my grandmother did not fill the apartment with her hideous cries.
“Where is it?” she said again. “Who has it? Where did it go?”
It took me a moment to understand what she was raving about. At first, I thought she was referring to her boa, but the black thing was in a heap on the ground below her like a vanquished cobra. But she was pawing at her neck, which was bare: the necklace, the ruby necklace given to her by her mother, a supposed gift from the wife of Alexander III, was nowhere to be found. She ransacked our bedroom and then pounded on all our doors until everyone was reluctantly awake.
Aunt Tamara was first to respond. “Calm down, Antonina Nikolaevna,” she muttered, still groggy, as we all convened in Mama’s big room. “It must be here somewhere. If we all search, we shall find it in no time at all….”
Misha and I dutifully searched the ground on our knees, while Polya and Bogdan combed through the furniture. Since Bogdan’s declaration, he hardly looked at me, but I did not believe it was because he felt rejected. He probably forgot all about it and had moved on to my sister for good. Mama searched every cabinet and drawer. Aunt Tamara and Uncle Konstantin searched the other rooms, the bathroom, and the hallways, as if the necklace could have ended up there.
Once we had all given up on finding the necklace, we returned to the main apartment, where Polya settled next to my grandmother and stroked her back. My grandmother looked truly crazed. Her face was as pale as death and her temples were soaked with sweat.
“We’ll find it,” Polya said. “You probably just set it down and forgot where you put it….”
“Impossible. Everyone here knows I never take the damn thing off.”
“Maybe it slipped off, Antonina Nikolaevna. If it’s not in the apartment, then the boys can search the perimeter,” Aunt Tamara said.
I saw my grandmother’s stony eyes settling on Aunt Tamara. It was a logical conclusion. Not only was she her sworn enemy, but she was also the most likely of us to long for such luxury.
“I know it was you,” my grandmother said, grabbing Aunt Tamara by the collar. “Tell me, what will my necklace get you at the market? My life’s inheritance for a handful of potatoes? Is that all I’m worth to you?” she said, shaking her with a mad fury.
“Please,” said Uncle Konstantin, pulling the women apart. “Do not cause a scene.”
“It’s all right, Babushka,” Polya said. “We don’t steal from each other here.”
“Of course we do. We do anything to survive. That is why…” Baba Tonya said, her lip trembling, “that is why we took your precious cat. This is no different.”
It seemed quite different to me, but Polya burst into sobs regardless. Mama and Bogdan comforted her before I had a chance to consider doing it. Instead, I kept searching the floor in vain. It was a relief Papa was not here to see what had become of us all—this ugly cacophony. Then again, if he were still around, we might not have fallen apart.
“I know she took it! I know she took it! Shura told me in my dreams last night,” said my grandmother, returning her boa to her neck. But Baba was probably bluffing: she never spoke of her dreams. It was considered bad luck to report them, because they might come true.
Baba shook Polya off and marched toward Mama. “But maybe it was you, eh? You never liked me, you little prig.”
Mama stepped away from her and began to sweep, as if this would solve the problem. Though she was far from her industrious self, she had returned to work, and had enough strength to ignore my grandmother then. Thankfully, my grandmother did not linger on my mother for long and turned her vitriol to me.
“You don’t like your grandmother much either, do you, Larissa?” she said, grabbing me by the collar. “Are you the one who slipped it off my neck, nimble one?”
Before I could protest, a wild laugh escaped Mama’s lips, the first I had heard from her since Papa died. Everyone else stopped what they were doing and stared. Aunt Tamara dropped a bowl that did not break. Mama laughed again and again. The maniacal glee in her eyes chilled me to the bone.
“What use?” Mama cried. “Tell me, old woman, what use would any of us have for your dumb rubies now? They can’t bring him back. They can’t save us. Your necklace!” she said again, throwing back her head and cackling wildly.
“Please,” said my grandmother, her voice heavy with desperation. “It is the oldest thing in my family—in our family. An heirloom. Not to mention its price. We all need it, don’t you see?” Her eyes were wild as she looked for others to accuse, but Misha and his searching-the-ground father were the picture of innocence, and Bogdan seemed far too involved in caring for Polya to bother with stealing.
Baba had lost the energy for her campaign and did not accuse anyone after that. As she lowered herself to the ground, into Polya’s arms, I felt a pang of pity for her. I knew she did not see her jewels as just another piece of finery. I understood it, her desire to maintain her connection to her long-gone mother—and perhaps, in some twisted way, she saw it as a way of maintaining the thread between her and my father, a genetic lifeline. She put a hand beneath her boa and continued her raving quietly. “It is irreplaceable. It is beyond value,” she kept saying, until Mama gave her some valerian root and returned her to bed.