The House by the Dvina (8 page)

In the courtyard, beside the steps of the house, a troika was waiting. A group of children and villagers had gathered to say farewells to the bridal couple and Feodosiya. Nothing like this romance had ever happened before in their village. That Anna was not only free but was married to a “Barin” Ч a gentleman, and was now a “Barynya” herself, a lady who would have her own house and servants, own carriages and horses Ч was nothing short of a miracle. That would be something to talk about for years and pass on to their children. They left as the sun was rolling to the west.

The horses ran briskly through the village then turned and took the road to the north.

Many romantic songs and tales have been written about troikas, their drivers and their journeys across the length and breadth of mother Russia.

Romantic they may have been, but on long journeys they were devoid of all comfort. Yet throughout their hazardous journey, cramped in their carriage, tormented by dust and the merciless rays of the sun, or drenched in torrential rain, our travellers seem to have remained cheerfully happy, bearing all discomforts with inherent patience.

Deeply hidden, however, was the anxiety about their future. It increased as they drew nearer to the north. How would EugeneТs parents treat their peasant daughter-in-law so suddenly thrust upon them? Being deeply religious, their faith sustained them. “God did not mean us to travel so far for nothing,” Feodosiya reasoned, sensing her daughterТs anxiety.

Eugene also had misgivings. He feared his proud mother and pinned all hopes on his more tolerant father.

EugeneТs parents knew nothing until the day when the cook, hurrying from the market, brought the news that Eugene had been seen in the outskirts of Archangel and should be arriving at any moment. They ran out on to the porch and stood eagerly awaiting the arrival of their beloved son. The troika with great style flew through the gates, turned and drew up beside the porch. Eugene got out and ran up the steps to his welcoming parents.

Anna and her mother remained standing beside the horses, confused and timid, not daring to go any further.

In the first few seconds of their happy reunion Margaretha did not appear to notice the two women, or perhaps did not consider them worthy of any attention beyond enquiring casually who these peasants were. The moment Eugene dreaded had arrived. “Mamushka,” he said, using the endearing ending, “this is my wife and her mother. I beg you,” he continued humbly, “to give us your blessing.” MargarethaТs face turned scarlet, then deathly pale. She staggered and would have fallen if Eugene had not caught her. He and his father helped her to reach her bedroom where she collapsed on the bed.

When she recovered she forgot her habitual dignity and could not contain her hysterical rage. She could never accept, she told Eugene bitterly, a primitive peasant as a daughter-in-law. He, her son, had betrayed not only her and his father but everything that they stood for. She would never be able to face her friends and relatives again. This terrible condemnation was far worse than Eugene had imagined. It poured like a torrent of angry waters upon his defenceless head. In the end, collecting herself, in a voice that was cold and distant and more wounding than her towering rage, she told him to take his peasant wife and her mother anywhere he liked.

They were never to cross the threshold of her house. That went for him as well. She completely disowned him.

Eugene ran out of the house and down the steps. The troika was still standing. Anna and Feodosiya were also waiting. Their heads bowed, dejected and utterly humiliated, they had stood throughout this terrible scene Ditterly regretting they had ever left their beloved Kaluga.

At this point EugeneТs faith in his father was justified. Ivan hurried after his son. It was Ivan who found a temporary place where they could stay until such time as they could find a permanent home, and it was Ivan who shortly after bought a house for them in a place called Maimaksa, not far from the mouth of the river and near their place of business, where all the timber industry was concentrated.

There they spent their married life and raised their family. Their youngest child, a daughter, was born in 1857, and she proved to be more gifted than all the others. They named her Evgeniya, after her father. She was my grandmother.

“Strange are the ways of God.” How often I heard this old saying quoted in Russia! Gradually Margaretha drew closer to Anna. Slowly also came the realisation that there was more to her daughter-in-law than met the eye.

In the years that followed a close friendship developed between the two women.

What Margaretha never realised, nor for that matter Eugene nor anyone else, was that from Kaluga there came an influx of fresh blood from a young, healthy peasant girl, which was essential for the health of future generations in a close-knit society, especially amongst those of foreign origin where a great deal of intermarriage took place between close relatives, who, like Royalty, preferred to marry within their own tight circle. It was as if someone had flung open a window and allowed a cool fresh wind to clear away the stale air from a room that had been closed for too long.

Not long after Eugene and his young wife settled down in their house, EugeneТs sister, Amelia Louise, married a young timber merchant, Franz Scholts. The name, of course, is of German origin. The family may have come from Riga, a port which had many connections in the timber trade with Archangel. This union must have pleased the great matriarch Margaretha.

She may now have consoled herself with the thought that what she had lost in her son she regained in her daughter. Although there was not even the faintest trace of blue blood coursing through the veins of her son-in-law, he had something of far greater importance, namely money. The Scholts family had been in the timber trade for generations and had gradually acquired considerable wealth. They belonged to that group of merchants who had the necessary qualities to achieve this affluence. They were shrewd, hardheaded and industrious. Archangel and the vast surrounding district had always been a land which offered opportunities to everyone, including the peasant, in trading and many branches of business.

In this great expanse of forests, rivers and marshes, there had never been any serfs, or souls as they were named, who could be sold, bartered and gambled away over a gaming table. The dreaded words of “to the stable”, the place where the peasant was sent by the landowner to be whipped by the knout for some real or imagined misdemeanour, were never heard in this part of Russia. Poor or rich, the peasant was free.

The north, in spite of many hardships, was unique in this respect.The woods abounded in game and animals, the skins of which were in great demand. The peasant fished in the river and the rich White Sea and sold his produce in the market. The people in our parts were referred to as the “Bielomori”, meaning those of the White Sea, or, in a more derogative term, the “Treskoyedi” Ч the “Cod-eaters”. Certainly this was the land of the famous fish pies. In this great province too could be found the true Russian Slavs, with all their ancient customs and manner of speech, for there had never been any contact with the Tartars who, in the 13th century, like an evil black cloud of locusts, overran the holy land of Russia but never advanced as far as the distant north.

Amelia and Franz also settled in the Maimaksa region near all the sawmills. Amelia, a tall, well-built young woman like the other members of the family, was very devoted to her brother. They had always been a united family, and now, living within reach of each other, there was a constant coming and going between the two houses. Their numerous children grew up side by side. Eugene and Anna had four sons and three daughters. Amelia and Franz were likewise blessed by a large family of sons and daughters.

Every christening, every birthday, every nameday, not only of all the children, but of parents, grannies, great-grannies, aunts and uncles, was an excuse for a party and a gathering of all the relations.

Anna became completely accepted by the family. She was especially popular with all the children. I remember an old great-aunt recalling the times when they were children; how they loved nothing better than when Tyotya Annushka Ч Aunty Annushka, as they called her, would dance and sing to them and join in all the games that she herself played as a child in her distant village. “She was always so gay and young,” I recall the old lady saying, “just as if she was one of us children and loved being with us.”

Her mother, Babushka Feodosiya, was also a great magnet to us all. She was a gifted story-teller and would gather us close around her knees and in her Kaluga accent and lilting voice, full of mystery and suspense, would begin her tale how in a certain kingdom, on a hill high above a fast-flowing river, there lived a wise Tsar who had a beautiful daughter.

Gradually the story would unfold and we children listened spellbound, afraid to miss a word, as she carried us far, far away on her magic carpet over forests and rivers, seas and mountains, to all these wonderful magic places of strange happenings, good and bad, but where at all times there were happy endings.

One decade followed the other and the children were now young men and women. “The old grow older and the young blossom out” Ч so goes the old Russian saying. The noisy fancy dress parties became sophisticated masque balls. The little sledges on which the children used to slide down the ice chute in the back yard to the accompaniment of shrill laughter and screaming, were now replaced by the large sledge and horses galloping along the moonlit river during the Shrove carnival to some distant friends in the town.

Evgeniya, or Yenya, as the family called her, had reached her seventeenth birthday. She was tall and slender. Escaping tendrils of dark chestnut hair framed her round face with the high cheekbones inherited from her mother. From her mother also came the sweet expression radiating warmth and the joy of living.

It was noticed that Aleksandr, AmeliaТs son, was very friendly with Yenya and appeared to single her out from all his friends and cousins. At parties and dances it was with Yenya that Aleksandr danced most of the night. During the great festivities of the Shrove carnival it was found that somehow Yenya and Aleksandr always contrived to sit side by side in the same sledge. Aleksandr often called at the house on the slightest pretext and stayed on for the evening.

There used to be in those days a special fancy dress ball held annually in aid of some charity. One year it was decided that all the guests would go to the ball as characters from PushkinТs works. Yenya, who had a fine artistic sense and a pair of clever hands, with great ingenuity created the dresses for her sister Ludmilla and herself. Ludmilla chose to go as the sinister “Peekovaya Dama” or “The Queen of Spades”. From then on she was nicknamed “Peekovaya Dama”, later shortened to “Peeka” and as she grew older to Tyotya Peeka or Aunty Peeka. As a child I never knew her as anything else and was surprised to discover one day that her name was not Peeka, but Ludmilla.

Yenya had gone to the ball as the “Water Nymph” from the opera of the same title. I remember Tyotya Peeka describing the event. “My dress was very beautiful,” she said. “So many people admired me and hinted that I might be the one to win the prize. You can imagine my disappointment when the judges called out YenyaТs name instead of mine. Yet,” she continued without any rancour, “I had to admit she looked lovely. It was such a simple dress Ч green and blue chiffon intermingling together just like the waters of a river and her long hair hanging loose and unadorned. Our mamushka,” she went on, “was rather angry as Yenya had insisted on dancing around on her bare feet, explaining that no water nymph ever wore shoes.

That was a very daring thing to do in our days. They carried her shoulder-high round the ballroom at the end of the dance,” she concluded a little wistfully.

Shortly after the ball, Yenya and Aleksandr approached their parents to ask for their consent to be married. The Russian Orthodox Church does not approve of marriages between cousins but somehow this obstacle was overcome. Yenya, eighteen, and Aleksandr, a few years her senior, were married. They were my grandparents.

During the first two years of their married life, Yenya and Aleksandr lived close to their parents. Later, after the birth of their daughter, Olga, Aleksandr bought the house in Olonetskaya Street. It was thought at the time by all the relatives that Yenya was too young and lacking in experience to take charge of a house which required so many alterations and where the surrounding ground was nothing more than a wilderness. They were mistaken. Yenya was a visionary who had the gift of knowing exactly how any project she undertook should look when it was finished. Blessed with an artistic sense and boundless energy, she also had the tenacity to overcome what at times seemed an impossible obstacle. Yet, when confronted with what she believed to be the decree of fate she accepted it with the spiritual endurance of her people.

One day in the early summer, when the house and courtyard were completed, she and Aleksandr explored what was described as a garden, separated from the courtyard by a broken wooden fence. Inside there were no signs of any paths or of anything remotely resembling a garden. Cattle from the adjacent neighbourhood ambled around in perfect freedom and peaceful contentment. A few stunted saplings struggled for existence. A small pond was choked by green slime and weeds. Against the boundary wall was a row of lime trees masking the gaping holes which allowed free access to all animals and to those who on occasions used the pond for the disposal of unwanted kittens and suchlike unpleasant activities. Beside the pond was a mound of excavated earth and rubble.

It was a dismal scene, brightened only on the east side of the grounds by a long avenue of slender young birches leading to a banya, or bath-house, almost hidden by nettles and wild elderberry bushes in the north-east corner of the wall. The avenue also served to screen the vegetable garden running from the north to the south.

“What can we do with this place?” Aleksandr had asked Yenya, looking helplessly around him. She did not answer at first. Then, “We shall have a garden,” she said with quiet determination. “A garden the like of which Archangel has never had before. We shall enlarge the pond and raise the mound. It will be a small hill and on top we shall build a fine summer house. There,” she added, “on this field will be lawns and flower beds, rare trees and bushes. I promise you,” she went on earnestly, “if you will allow me, we and our future children shall have a beautiful garden. A rare garden that will be a great heritage which they will also pass on to their children.”