Into southern Russia along with us poured Romanovs, boyars, banking families, oil magnates, theater artists—all of Peter it seemed had emptied itself into Kiev in the Ukraine or into the Crimea or here into the Caucasus. Kislovodsk, or Sour Waters, was a spa town, one of three famous spa towns, Kislovodsk, Yessentuki, and Pyatigorsk, strung along the Olkhovka and Beresvka rivers, all known for their healing mineral springs and fashionable baths. Kislovodsk sat in a valley north of the great Caucasus Mountains, and Georgia, where Sergei had lived as a boy, lay on the other side of those mountains to the south, closer to Turkey and Persia, in the Asiatic region of Russia, and it was here I came to breathe in the cherry blossoms, almond blossoms, and oleander that perfumed Sergei’s childhood, to see the gold-domed churches elbowed by minarets and the mosaics of Arabia. Though the Mikhailovichi might not have been Armenian or Persian or Chechen or Abkhaz, and though they might not have worn chokha, those long, skirted coats of the Georgians with the pouches for bullets, for twenty years they had inhaled the woolly fragrance of that place and so they were, as the Romanovs had always sniffed, not quite Petersburgers. So much the better for them.
Andrei met our train in Kislovodsk, wearing a papakha, which, when removed, exposed the dome of his half-bald head; we kissed cheek to cheek. He was clean-shaven, so when I stepped back I had a good view of the weak chin I had not seen for half a year, longer. I had not missed it, or him. At the open-air restaurant he took us for dinner, I remember we sat at a table beneath a grape arbor, the big, flat grape leaves making a patchwork over us, Andrei talking, my son and I silent. I watched Vova slowly, uncertainly, unfold his linen napkin in his lap—did he not remember how to perform this nicety? Andrei placed his jeweled cigarette lighter on the table and ordered us a few local dishes, khachapuri—cheese pies—and shashlik—lamb kebobs. While we ate, Andrei smoking between courses, a small band played, and then, unexpectedly, a boy a few years younger than Vova rose from his table and began to dance and I recognized his dance—the lezginka, a Caucasian dance my brother Josef had taught me years ago for a performance at Krasnoye Selo. Who would have thought I would see an example of it here, performed on its native ground, by a boy who was not one of the tsar’s dancers? The boy imitated an eagle, making big flapping motions with his arms while taking small, quick, light steps, birdlike steps, and then he dropped to his knees and lifted himself quickly up again, like a bird taking flight. At the end of his performance, we and all the other diners toasted him with our vodka and cognac, To your health. But I toasted also the spirit of this place, where people were not too broken to dance.
We spent that first night in rooms Andrei had found for us, and when Vova had gone to sleep, Andrei reached for my hand. I withdrew it, and Andrei lowered his eyes. He understood. I am certain, though, he believed it was because he had no funds to keep us, being entirely dependent upon his mother, but that was not why I withdrew my hand. Since when had he not been dependent upon his mother? That I could abide, for wasn’t I myself dependent on the fortunes of the Romanovs? No, perhaps it was just that the opportunist in me no longer enjoyed her own reflection. Or perhaps it was that I no longer wished to kiss at this pale copy of the tsar. Or perhaps it was simply that Mathilde Felixovna Kschessinska had at long last fallen in love. So the next day I dug into the big reticule of jewels I had brought with me, among them the diadem of cabochon sapphires Andrei had Fabergé make for me long ago for the ballet La Fille du Pharoan, the emerald and diamond bracelet the tsar had given me while first courting me in 1891, the various-sized yellow diamonds from the number Sergei put in a little casket for my twentieth tribute in 1911, the walnut-sized diamonds from the tsar’s necklace, the one with which Nicholas had marked our consummation in 1892. I used first the jewel I liked the least—the great cabochon sapphire from the serpent brooch given me by the tsar and the empress for my tenth-anniversary tribute, and with it I rented the Beliaievsky villa—two and a half stories tall, white, with a green tile roof, the property rested on a tuft of a hill. From my windows I could hear all day long the muezzin chanting from a nearby minaret, calling the faithful to prayer. It was not my mansion on Kronversky Prospekt, but it had a pale charm, and there Vova and I lived together, for Andrei, of course, lived with his mother, who remained obstinately oblivious to the great social changes the revolution had wrought. I was to comport myself, as usual, out of her sight. Even in her reduced circumstances here, Miechen wielded her power. Her son Boris and his British diplomat friend had disguised themselves as workers and made two trips to Peter to smuggle out the jewels and rubles she had stashed in her secret bedroom safe at the Vladimir Palace. The men walked the treasure here in their boots, and some of it Miechen, big-bosomed and stout, squatted over here in Kislovodsk. The rest of it Miechen had couriered to the safe-deposit box of a British bank. One of Miechen’s tiaras is worn today by the English queen, Elizabeth II, did you know, bought on the cheap by George V’s consort, Queen Mary, at the great fire sale of Romanov jewels in the 1920s. But when Sergei asked the British ambassador, George Buchanan, for help in doing the same with the jewels I had left behind, the ambassador flat out refused—perhaps he was among the diplomats who watched in disbelief as the coal trucks unloaded their cache at my house, not theirs, on that cold day ten months before in Peter. If only Sergei had not mentioned my name!
Sergei sent me daily letters, though they appeared irregularly, sometimes in batches of threes, with tales of his adventures in Petersburg—he had stashed my remaining furniture at Meltzer’s (as if that shop were some impregnable fortress). Kerensky had recently arrested his new commander in chief of the army, General Kornilov, suspecting him of being a counterrevolutionary. The infantry had begun killing their officers of whom they suspected the same. Many soldiers had deserted to help for the harvest and with the guns they took with them they were now helping the peasants not only harvest the crops but seize the land and kill the squires. The Bolsheviks had somehow managed to increase their share of representation in the city Duma elections. The dapper Trotsky had been released from jail. And out of the continuing governmental chaos the joke on the streets was, What is the difference between Russia today and at the end of last year?, and the answer was, Then we had Alexandra Fedorovna and now we have Alexander Fedorovich—Kerensky. I’ve told you Russians love wordplay. Sergei did not think Kerensky would last much longer: people were saying he was a Jew or that he dressed in women’s clothing or that he was addicted to morphine and cocaine. Though nobody liked Kerensky, nobody was prepared to get rid of him either—the feeling was that if the Bolsheviks did seize power they would soon enough ruin the country and the people would call for the return of the tsar, or if not that, perhaps the Germans would invade Peter and bring order with their tanks and machine guns, and I thought how long have the borzhui been pining for that? They’d been hoping a zeppelin might smash Petersburg to bits since that song of 1916!
After reading those letters, I dislodged the diamonds from a brooch given me in 1896 by Sergei’s father and the grand dukes Vladimir, Alexei, and Pavel Alexandrovich and used them for tuition for Vova at the local school, for what likelihood was there that we would return to Peter anytime soon? But Vova did not work hard at his studies, made certain by all the dreaming he overheard at our teas and card parties and dinners—Do you remember? and When will things be again as before?—that we would be back to Peter and to his real studies with his former tutors by Easter, and though he didn’t say this, perhaps he hoped also to be back in the bosom of the imperial family, as well. He spoke of them sometimes, wistfully, of how while working in the kitchen garden they had gleefully pelted one another with clods of dirt and Anastasia had drawn the word darling on his forehead with one muddy finger or of the riddles they had one evening made up, written down on slips of paper, and passed to one another to solve. Yes, Vova skipped his classes, spent his afternoons running wild through the hilly streets with some companions from the school as undisciplined as he, and when Vova did finally come in for dinner, he refused to do any schoolwork—not that he had brought home his books. He resented Andrei’s regular appearance each afternoon at our tea table, Andrei having been released by his mother for a few hours’ furlough. Who is he? Vova would say. He’s not my father, and so he would not listen to Andrei’s admonitions, nor would he sit with us, but, instead, stood hunched over his plate to eat his biscuit. Or worse, he took his plate to the kitchen, preferring the company of my plump, red-haired cook, sitting at her table, his long legs shoved beneath it, his coat torn, and his hair standing on end from his adventures up and down Vokzalnaya Avenue. At night he would come into my room to read over Sergei’s letters and only then would he ask for whatever news of the tsar and Alexei I had gleaned at tea from Andrei—who had heard it thirdhand from the tsar’s letters to his sisters or his mother, who then told friends who told friends who told the news to Miechen. Andrei knew only, I told Vova, that the family were in Tobolsk, several hundred miles east of the Urals, that the children had built a snow mountain in the yard, that the family chopped firewood for exercise by day and at night they embroidered or read aloud or played bezique—that it was as it had been before at Tsarskoye, except much farther east. Vova took all this in soberly and said, If I were there I would have a purpose, here there is nothing for me—and then he would stand, his long shape a rebuke. I know this day comes to all mothers, when one’s son steps away from the circle of her arms, but that knowledge made his actions no less painful. I consoled myself with the notion that when we returned to Peter or Sergei joined us here, then all would really be as before. In each letter to Sergei I begged him to join us, but he seemed determined to wait until the Provisional Government’s assembly in late October, which would decide how Russia would be governed, in which he and his brother Nicholas hoped to have a hand.