“Alek’s a Bolshevik, isn’t he?” I asked caustically. To Mama’s horror, Sergei still saw Alek socially, believing his friend shouldn’t be blamed for my father’s death. “He must be delighted.”
Sergei shrugged. “It’s one thing to preach revolution. Running a country is another matter. Who knows how long the Bolsheviks can hold on?”
We soon learned that the truly ruthless are not easily displaced.
Within a few days, proclamations from Lenin were posted all over the city, declaring that those who lived off the work of others were parasites with no place in the new Communist state. The usual class-warfare slogans, I assumed, but we soon learned that they were more than political posturing. Sergei had spent months organizing the paperwork for Papa’s estate; now, he told us in blank-eyed shock, there was no estate. We couldn’t withdraw money from the bank, because the government had confiscated all of our accounts. A few weeks later, near the end of the year, we received a notice that our house was being turned into a dormitory for nurses who would be working in the city’s new health clinics. All our possessions were now considered property of the state.
“Everything?” Mama asked in horrified wonder, and I could only shrug. The following day, we watched as our family’s treasures, collected over generations, were taken away. Paintings and candlesticks and crystal and blankets—all gathered in heaps and carried out the front door. Mama’s tiaras and Papa’s fur hat. Vasily’s toy soldiers and the dolls Sergei had bought me in Paris. Mama and I were told we could each pack one small bag of personal items, though the dour man in charge didn’t explain what that meant, and we were too cowed to ask. Under the watchful eye of a guard with a gun, I crammed what I could into the satchel I usually used for my schoolbooks: two dresses, some undergarments, a brush, and my drawing pencils. My sketchbook was too big to fit, and when I struggled to cram it in partway, the man grabbed it from my hands, flipped through it, and carelessly ripped up the pages. He stared at me as the tattered pieces fell around our shoes, daring me to cry. I stared back, dry-eyed.
I convinced Mama to pack only her most practical housedresses, made of the heaviest, most durable fabrics. She followed my instructions sluggishly, her muscles slowed by misery. The guard laughed when she pulled open a drawer bursting with creamy, lace-trimmed nightclothes and brassieres, and Mama’s face crumpled with shame. I was the one who pulled out what she needed and rolled the pieces tight, as if it were perfectly normal for an unshaven stranger to stare at my mother’s most intimate possessions. I also convinced Mama to change her silk shoes for boots.
The guard motioned toward the stairs. “Go on.”
Go where? The guard either didn’t know or didn’t care; we were no longer his problem. Mama and I hovered at the top landing, watching the hollowing-out of our home. Unlike the terrible night at Priyalko, there was no aura of violence or vengeance. It was an efficient looting, men passing in and out in brisk, organized formation. Everyone knew their place, except us.
“What do we do?” Mama asked me, as if I’d planned for such a calamity. The notice of confiscation had only arrived the day before, and neither of us had imagined we’d be turned out so quickly.
Mentally, I ran through the names of people who’d take us in. Sergei would, of course, but he lived in a single room over his office. My cousin Maria’s family, the only other Shulkins who lived in Petrograd, had gone south, to the Black Sea resort of Yalta, where the Moscow Shulkins were planning to join them. Mama had friends and I had friends, but they were probably losing their homes, too. With growing unease, I realized everyone we knew fit the Bolsheviks’ definition of a parasite.
It was a late afternoon in January, bitingly cold and already dark. The thought of being quite literally turned out onto the street, with no money and no food, gave me the courage to approach the man in charge.
“Excuse me, sir.”
The man turned, his face twisted into a scowl. Immediately, I realized my error. “Comrade.”
He gave me a slight nod, allowing me to continue. Not a cruel man, just overworked and distracted.
“Please allow us to stay a day or two more. We’ll go as soon as we find another place to live.”
“Only workers are entitled to housing.”
“Then we’ll work.”
The man stared at me, assessing my sincerity. I stared back, determined to prove I wasn’t as spoiled as he might assume.
“Wait in the kitchen with the others,” he ordered.
The “others,” Mama and I discovered, were what remained of our staff: Olga, the cook, and Old Ivan, the butler. We’d lost servants in a steady trickle through the late summer and fall, as the old order gradually crumbled. But I’d never expected nearly all of them to desert us. Olga made tea, and Mama persuaded Old Ivan to sit down with us: “Why stand on ceremony now?” At least these two are loyal, I thought, before wondering if they were simply too old to be tempted by the promise of change. We drank from plain staff cups; all Mama’s fine porcelain had been packed up and taken away.
It was well into the evening when we finally were informed of our fate. Mama and I could stay in one of the servants’ rooms on the top floor, in exchange for cleaning the house and preparing it for the nurses’ arrival. Once the dormitory was open, Olga and Old Ivan would stay on to help run it, and Mama and I would be left to fend for ourselves.
Mama didn’t say anything as we shuffled upstairs and into what had once been Anna’s room. There were two iron-framed beds topped with thin blankets. It was so cold that I kept my coat on as I unpacked our bags. Our possessions only half filled the small dresser. Mama sat and watched my meager attempt to look busy.
“Nadia . . .”
Her voice faded, as if she didn’t have the strength to produce another sound. She looked almost weightless, a feather at the mercy of the wind. I would have to be her shelter. Protect her from the forces threatening to blow her away.
“I’ll find us a place to live,” I told her. “I promise.”
Mama’s head dipped in the barest suggestion of a nod.
“For now, we’ll work hard and keep quiet. We mustn’t give them any reason to distrust us.”
Mama did her best the following morning. She wrapped her hair in a kerchief, like a peasant wife, and filled bucket after bucket with water at the kitchen sink. Though it must have shattered her heart to scrub the same floors she’d once flitted across in a rustle of silk, she kept to her task with grim-faced concentration. We moved the mops clumsily at first, quickly drenching the hems of our skirts, but within a few hours we’d developed a method. Wipe in a thick, straight line across one edge of the room, then work our way back on a parallel path underneath. Look down at the streaks of water rather than up at the empty walls.
At midday, Olga shrugged when I asked what there was to eat. “All the food is gone. Ivan and I got ration cards, to eat at a canteen.”
I sought out the man who’d allowed us to stay and approached him as obsequiously as a serf appealing to the tsar.
“Comrade, my mother and I did not receive food ration cards.”
“Rations are for workers.”
“My mother and I are working,” I protested. “You’ve seen us cleaning the floors, all morning.”