by Terri Dixon
Part XX
What good is sitting all alone in your room?
- Liza Minnelli
There was something about Russian tea. I couldn’t explain it, and I still can’t. I didn’t like tea, but the tea in Russia tasted different to me. I didn’t know if it was the atmosphere, or if it was actually the tea. It seemed odd that I was thinking about tea with everything else that was going on around me, but there it was in my head. I figured that maybe it was a natural distraction. Maybe my brain couldn’t handle any more and it was changing gears to protect itself from melting down. I didn’t know, but I knew that my stress levels were way too high. I knew that I should call my mom too, but I didn’t want to be even more stressed. That’s what would happen if she started yelling at me.
Tish waited for all of us to drink some tea, and then she led us to the rooms that she was letting us use for the night. The bedrooms were all on the second floor of the dacha. I still thought that it was odd to call such a palatial mansion a dacha. We followed Tish up the elaborate winding staircase and down the upstairs hall. She stopped first to tell Dr. Zemecki which one was his room, then Tania’s, then mine. I presumed that the bedrooms that Peter and Tish occupied on a regular basis were further down the hall.
Tish opened the door to the room that she had assigned to me. “I think that you will like this room,” she said. She motioned for me to enter the room.
I walked into the room. It reminded me of my grandma’s house. It was what I identified as quintessential Russian. The bed was old looking and carved wood. The mantle over the fireplace was also carved wood. The carving was of cherubs playing instruments. I thought that the piece meant something, whether it be legend or religious, but I didn’t know what. There were black lace curtains on the windows which gave the room an old world feeling. There was velvet upholstered furniture all over the room. There was a painting over the bed that I presumed was Catherine the Great. It looked somewhat like the pictures that I had seen in my textbook. She did look much younger than the pictures I had seen, but it was obviously the Tsarina.
“How do you like it?” Tish asked me.
“I love it. Is that her?” I asked about the painting.
“Yes, it is. It was a painting that was supposed to be placed in a museum, but my husband, God rest his soul, said that he could not risk it being destroyed by the regime. Kostov and his thugs do not always respect historical artifacts. My husband already had it, so he kept it.”
“Well, I’m glad that he kept it,” I said. “It’s lovely. I can’t thank you enough for helping me. This has all been extremely overwhelming, and I wouldn’t have a clue what to do on my own. I never dreamed that I would be fearing for my life by coming here. I guess my mom was right. I should have passed on the trip.”
“It has been a few generations since we had a Romanov in Russia,” Tish said. “I think that it is good that you have come. I believe that the Romanovs belong to Russia, and Russia to them. I know that is considered an old way of thinking, but I cannot help it. It is the way I was raised.”
“What is your family’s background?” I asked her.
“We are descended from Cossacks,” she replied. “My ancestors were loyal to the Tsars. Did your grandmother tell you about them?”
“She mentioned it, but she didn’t tell me about that kind of stuff,” I explained. “I don’t know why. She talked all about the Soviets, but she didn’t talk about Tsars. Maybe she couldn’t figure out what to tell me under the circumstances.”
“Sometimes it is difficult to tell our children the things that we actually should,” Tish said. “Looking back, there are a thousand things that I would have liked to have said to my son. Missed opportunities. What is the American expression? Do not cry over poured milk?”
“Don’t cry over spilt milk,” I corrected her.
“Spilt milk," she said with a sigh. "There are towels in the closet in your bathroom. There is soap and shampoo in there as well. There are extra blankets in the closet in the bedroom if you get cold. Try to get some sleep. You will have a busy day tomorrow.”
“Thank you Tish,” I said as she started to walk out the door.
“You are welcome,” she replied.
I took a lot of time pondering the way in which I refer to Tish. She's been a difficult relationship for me. I decided immediately that I couldn't call her Mrs. Zinkov, and I couldn't call her grandma or Grandma Elizabeth or Grandma Tish. I couldn't see her fitting her name, Elizabeth. Tish was what Dr. Zemecki called her, so I went with that. It seemed to fit her personality. I could tell from the moment I met her that she was like an onion, as my grandma would have said. There were a lot of layers in that woman's personality. I was kind of sad that I wouldn't have time to get to know them all. There was a warm heart in there somewhere. I wished that I had time to find it.
I looked around the room again after she left. On the bed was an extremely thick down comforter. I would find out down the road a piece that they were very popular in all of —not just in . I had one on my small bed at the university too. I’d already learned to love it. It was the warmest blanket on Earth. Given the fact that I felt that I was sitting in the coldest place on Earth, it seemed fitting and necessary.
The room was littered with various collected antiques. Tish had spent a lot of time traveling. I could tell from the items that were in curios and on shelves. I saw that she had a Wieliczka Lamp, made from the orange colored salt deposits from the mine in . She also had a Navajo Blanket that looked authentic. I thought that maybe this woman had been to the U. S. I saw a piece of rock in a case. It looked like cement. I wondered about that one. I walked over to where it was on the shelf, and noticed that there was a small metal plate with words on it. It was a piece of the Berlin Wall. Over the elaborate fireplace that was opposite my bed, there were a set of what looked like Samurai Swords. It was overwhelming. There were so many things from so many places that I could go on talking about that room for days. I decided that Tish had visited most of the known world. She even had a picture on the wall of her and a very handsome gentleman about half her age that was labeled “Vostok Station, Antarctica." I walked around the bedroom, exhausted but unable to sleep. I had too much adrenaline rushing through my body to lie down and rest. Besides, there were too many fascinating things in that room to ignore. I walked from cabinet to cabinet and piece to piece. That room was a bizarre cross between an old room full of mementos and a museum.
Catherine the Great sat staring down at me from the wall behind the bed. She was wearing her royal robes, and sitting in the most dignified pose that I’d ever seen. I wondered what had possessed Tish’s husband to keep it. She didn’t seem interested in anything that related to the Tsars, but there was the painting. She must have kept it simply because it was her husband’s and a historical relic of the country. From the way she referred to the President, she may have kept it to keep him from having it. I felt as though the picture was watching me. It was eerie, and I wasn’t sure that I would ever fall asleep in that room.
She was so young in the painting, and she was in her royal robes, so she must have been in power at that time. How was she able to rule a country like when she was still so young? Was all of this really happening? Was the ring real? Was I the legendary last Romanov? There was nothing that I could do, even if I was the heir. I was stuck in , in the country, in the middle of a snowstorm, in January.
I decided that it was cold enough that I needed to climb under that wonderful comforter and see if I could get a nap in before the nightmare continued. I saw a photo album on the table next to the bed. I climbed in, pulled the covers up and reached for the album out of pure curiosity. I would have taken a book out of the bookcase, but the photo album was irresistible. I realized that I was more interested in Peter and his family that I had originally thought. I opened the photo album. I could tell immediately that it was fami
ly pictures, mostly of Tish and Peter. I flipped through the Christmas photos, the birthday photos, the graduation pictures and so on. I wondered how long Peter's parents had been gone. I wondered if Peter had been raised by his grandmother from a young age, because I noticed that there weren’t any pictures of him with a parent. I wondered if they fought or if she had simply filed other pictures away because his parents were dead. I knew that in some cultures people removed all reminders of deceased family members or covered their pictures on the walls. I wondered if that was why there were no pictures of his parents. Why I was so curious I had no idea. I felt the need to find out more about the guy. He interested me for some reason. He wasn’t my type. I liked pretty boys, with broad shoulders and big biceps. I’d never looked twice at a stringy geek. Peter was different. He was more than the run of the mill geek. He seemed to be as heroic as he was academic. It was a strange combination of traits that I’d only heard in descriptions of kings and presidents.
I found myself wandering off into the land of what if. What if I was really Russian royalty? What if I was welcomed by the people here to come and rule them? What if I could have a fabulous life here in , and I was throwing it all away by running home? What if I could change the country and make it a great land for all the people to live in? Yeah, right. What if Communism had worked? What if cars ran on urine? What if is a dangerous thought to have.
I was staring out the window next to my bed at the falling snow, when I heard a knock at the door. “What now?” I thought as I padded across the room in my socks and the nightshirt that I’d found in the wardrobe.
I was surprised to see Peter on the other side of the door. “Hi,” I said.
The Ring of the Queen
Part XXI
I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
-Mae West
