The Family Frying Pan

by Bryce Courtenay

  I would write long letters to the children describing the land of Egypt and life in the royal palace of Cleopatra. There were stories of expeditions on the royal barge down the Nile, each full of adventures and excitement, all of which were seen from a cat’s viewpoint, of course.

  I told them that a cat in Egypt had almost the same status as a priest and that life was pretty cushy. That because I was the only ginger cat in Egypt I was considered to be the most beautiful cat in the whole world. My best friend, naturally, was Princess Nefertiti and I told them about the exotic life of a royal princess, and I included all the things I wanted my own little daughters to learn. I wrote that Nefertiti and I were inseparable and that Cleopatra even required me to be seated on her lap during royal occasions, and how I wore a collar of emeralds and rubies. The most special of these occasions was when the diplomatic corps were presented to the queen. I added that Papa was always the one singled out by Cleopatra. He was her absolutely favourite diplomat and confidant, greatly honoured because, of course, I was Russian and wondrously beautiful, and the two of us were bringing great honour to Mother Russia in Egyptian diplomatic circles.

  The letters went on and on, telling of plots and conspiracies in the royal court and how I, Cleopatra’s Cat, friend, seeker after the truth, brilliant spy, could travel silently and unseen over the rooftops. And under a starry midnight sky venture into the palaces of the foreign diplomats and hear of the plots and intrigues and the salacious gossip of the foreigners.

  The important information I would, of course, take to Uri and the juicy bits of gossip directly to the queen herself. Increasingly, the queen came to depend on the Russian diplomat Uri Shebaldin to inform her of any danger to her throne while at the same time she revelled in the bedchamber gossip I supplied, often using it to taunt to the point of despair or to disconcert a pompous foreigner.

  The two girls grew terribly anxious when several of Cleopatra’s Cat’s letters related how diplomats from other countries began to bring the Queen of Egypt and her daughter Nefertiti cats as gifts. Siamese and Persian cats and Manx cats with no tails; Tibetan cats with brilliant blue eyes and Bengal felines that looked like tiny leopards. Cats of every description, temperament, colour and consistency of fur. Cats with almond eyes black as Mesopotamian olives, cats with pink noses, and some dark as midnight with sharply pointed ears and collars of South Sea pearls, all proffered in an attempt to win the queen’s favour. But to no avail, Cleopatra’s Cat won every contest with her agility, beauty and intelligence and remained the topmost cat in Egypt.

  The adventures of Cleopatra’s Cat and the Queen of Egypt grew more and more extravagant as I invented a new life for Uri, who through his knowledge of surgery had saved many an important Egyptian personage. I added that he was loved by the peasants who tilled the fields and sailed the graceful dhows on the Nile because he never spared himself and would operate on a camel driver or goat herd as readily as a prince or temple priest.

  I even utilised the principal reason for our tragedy and wrote a letter from Cleopatra’s Cat telling how Uri had saved the life of Princess Nefertiti when she had burst her appendix. Naturally I invented a happy ending when Cleopatra’s Cat told the girls how their father was showered with fresh honours by the queen, and was the envy of all the foreign countries for saving the life of the beautiful princess.

  There was even a story of how the British Ambassador had swallowed a fish bone at a diplomatic dinner and was in danger of choking to death and how Uri had opened his throat on the spot with a meat skewer and removed the lethal bone. For this life-saving act a grateful British government had given him the title of Sir Uri Shebaldin, Surgeon to the Queen of Egypt. From that moment on each of the letters from Cleopatra’s Cat ended with the words: Another Cat-astrophe avoided by Sir Uri Shebaldin, Surgeon to the Queen of Egypt, the purr-fect physician!

  But little girls grow bigger every day and soon the five years Uri had promised them he would be away would be up. I had not received a word from my husband from the day of his departure. I had written to him every week enclosing both a copy of Cleopatra’s Cat’s letter from Egypt and our reply, telling him of our little lives in St Petersburg and how we missed and loved him with all our hearts.

  Now with the girls demanding their father’s return I wrote a desperate letter from Cleopatra’s Cat saying that so many Egyptian people had been saved from certain death by the miracle of Uri’s surgery that Queen Cleopatra had begged Tsar Nicholas to let him stay a while longer. The cat wrote that she was personally bitterly disappointed by the Tsar’s agreement that Uri could remain at the Court of Egypt to serve the interests of Mother Russia for a further two years.

  I was playing for time, but, of course, the game was up. Tanya and Anna had put pressure on me precisely so that I would come clean. In fact, for some time they had been going along with the letters, having decided that it would please me to continue the fantasy long after they had suspected the truth. They understood that I needed to write the Cleopatra’s Cat letters to maintain my own courage.

  But as we say, ‘Now is as good as a poke with a stick.’ We had just completed breakfast one morning when Tanya looked up and said, ‘Mama, Papa isn’t coming back, is he?’

  Before I could reply Anna piped in. ‘He’s been sent to Siberia, hasn’t he?’

  While I had been expecting this moment, after all Tanya was nearly thirteen and Anna past her eleventh birthday, it nevertheless came as a shock. The letters from Cleopatra’s Cat, albeit from my own pen, had become such an intrinsic part of our lives that I had somehow never given up the hope that Uri was still alive and would some day return to us. One morning we would look up at the sound of the doorbell and when we opened the door there he would be. A little thinner perhaps, with grey streaks in his hair, but that old familiar grin, his big surgeon’s hands dangling at his sides, and perched on his shoulder would be a big ginger cat.

  Now, confronted by my moment of truth, I looked out of the window onto the street, not knowing what to say to my two lovely daughters. Through my tears I could see the postman coming down the street and, not wishing to have Tanya and Anna see me crying, I said, ‘Quick, both of you, there’s the postman, run and see if there isn’t a letter for us from Egypt.’

  ‘Oh, Mama!’ Tanya cried. ‘I am so sorry to have hurt you!’ But she went with Anna to the door and then outside to meet the postman. My eyes were filled with tears so I couldn’t see them standing outside the window, nor even the postman as he handed them a letter. Tanya came back into the parlour followed by Anna and both stood silently by my side as I sobbed. Then Tanya pulled a chair out from the dining-room table and Anna took me by the hand. They guided me into the chair so that I sat with my elbows on the table and my face covered by my hands. I simply couldn’t stop sobbing and I didn’t quite know why. After all, I had always known this moment must come.

  ‘Mama, there is a letter,’ I heard Tanya saying, but it was as though her voice came to me in a fog. I then realised that she had been repeating this statement for some time. Then I felt her shaking my shoulder. ‘Mama, there is a letter, I think from Siberia.’

  Sophia Shebaldin glances up at us. ‘I swear it on my mother’s grave, the letter arrived the very morning, just like I said, the very morning the girls finally demanded to know about their father.’

  Sophia Shebaldin looks as though she’s about to stop the story right there, for she strokes the front of her dress.

  ‘Please do not stop now!’ Mr Mendelsohn begs. ‘Aletter from your husband? It is good news? He is coming back maybe, yes?’

  Sophia Shebaldin smiles.

  The letter was only a few words.

  Make a great feast, Cleopatra’s Cat is returning home. The letter is in the bottom of the cage.

  What followed was a date and the time the Trans-Siberian train came into the grand station at St Petersburg.

  It was such a tiny note, but it told us everything we needed to know. Uri had received my letters, he was a
live and he was coming home. What was meant by the words The letter is in the bottom of the cage was impossible to tell. Though it didn’t seem to matter now that we knew he was alive.

  I grabbed the two girls and we danced and hugged and kissed and lay on the carpet, holding hands and giggling. It was the greatest day of our lives. ‘A feast!’ I said, jumping up. ‘Invitations must be sent, cooks engaged, new uniforms made for the maids, spring cleaning to be done! We will call it the Feast of Cleopatra’s Cat!’ The girls both clapped their hands and laughed at this grand notion, after all it was Cleopatra’s Cat who had saved us from despair and kept our hopes alive.

  You can imagine the excitement when the train pulled in. I had bought a new outfit for each of us. Tanya and Anna both wore pale-blue taffeta dresses with grown-up mutton-leg sleeves, matching blue ribbons in their hair and the new single-strap English-style button across patent-leather shoes. I wore a chocolate-brown grosgrain costume that fitted tightly round the waist with a flare at the top of the hips, and a tapered skirt that boldly showed a snatch of ankle above red shoes with an outrageously high six-centimetre heel, the latest in Paris fashion. All of this was set off by a beautiful hat decorated with scarlet and blue French ribbon and a peacock feather that seemed to brush the summer sky.

  We looked frantically for Uri, not knowing what to expect. Would he be thin as a rake, aged, with his hair prematurely white, and perhaps even dressed in rags? Would he be using a walking stick? But I didn’t care how he came back to us, I simply wanted his big surgeon’s hands to be wrapped around me, our little family together again.

  But soon the platform was empty, the other passengers had all left and the porters had taken their barrows piled high with bags so that only the two girls and myself were left standing on the platform. The engine hissed intermittently, its shhhh of steam not subtracting, but somehow adding to the silence and the desolation of the empty train platform.

  Then an official in a smart uniform and cap stepped off the train carrying a clipboard. He looked up briefly in our direction and then commenced to walk purposefully towards us. ‘Mrs Shebaldin?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Follow me, please.’ Without a further word of explanation he turned and walked towards the furthest end of the train.

  Of course! I suddenly thought. Uri is ill, why didn’t I think of that! Relief flooded through me.

  ‘What is it, Mama?’ Tanya asked, sensing my anxiety and then my sudden relief. Anna grabbed my hand, saying nothing, suddenly she was a little girl again.

  ‘I don’t know, darling,’ I replied. ‘Perhaps your papa is not well?’

  We stopped at last at the very end carriage. It was different to the other carriages and was without windows, but with ventilation slits that sat high up on its blank sides. The official produced a set of keys and unlocked the carriage door. It was a heavy door and he had to force it open with his shoulder.

  ‘He is in there, madam.’ He pointed into the dark interior of the carriage and then turned and looked down the platform. ‘Have you not made arrangements to have him removed?’ Then he shrugged and pushed the clipboard under my nose. ‘Sign here, please. There are two items, a sealed lead coffin and one live cat in a large bird cage.’

  Slow tears run down Sophia Shebaldin’s face and I see that Anya and Tamara are both weeping softly and that Mr Mendelsohn is also sniffing. I must admit a big lump is also sitting in my throat and I can barely see the frying pan bubbling away on the fire.

  ‘There was a letter in a false bottom of Cleopatra’s Cat’s cage,’ Sophia says slowly. ‘A wonderful long letter, it was from a fellow prisoner and I have it here with me.’

  She reaches into the bodice of her dress and brings out a small linen bag. Her long, hard fingers work at the knot which ties the end and Sophia Shebaldin removes the letter. There is a full moon that night and now she looks up, the light from the moon softening her small, sharp features. Then she begins to read.

  Dear Madam Shebaldin,

  I am writing to you as a friend and great admirer of the late and truly great surgeon Uri Shebaldin. Or should I say Sir Uri Shebaldin, Surgeon to the Queen of Egypt? Uri died this morning in the company of five thousand men who loved him and will mourn him every day that remains of their short and precarious lives.

  Allow me to explain, madam. Life in a Gulag is measured by the extent to which a man will struggle to survive, whether that is at the expense of another is of no importance. Feeling and compassion are luxuries reserved for those who are free, here survival is the only purpose and a measure of a man’s worth. How to stay alive is the singular thought and destroys any concept of decency or morality. A man who would think otherwise would not last a month in this place. That is, any other man but your husband.

  I was in the cattle truck with him when he first produced the tiny ginger kitten from his pocket and held it up. There was, I recall, a great deal of laughter at the tiny creature held aloft and one of the prisoners shouted, ‘It is not even sufficient for a poor man’s breakfast!’ Uri laughed along with all of us, but then he said, ‘If it survives, comrades, then we all survive! This cat will be our talisman! A cat has nine lives and we are going to need every one of them if we are ever to return from Siberia to our homes!’

  Men are superstitious creatures and from that moment the little ginger kitten became very important to all of us. Somehow we kept it alive on the long journey to Siberia and when we arrived at the Gulag we took turns to protect the kitten from becoming a tasty morsel for a starving prisoner who was not in our group.

  Starvation here in the slave camps is one’s only constant companion. A small slice of black bread and a dish of hot water with perhaps a rotten slice of carrot and a lump of potato no bigger than your thumb is all we get from the authorities, the rest we must find for ourselves. We all carry a small forage tin on our belts and as we work we look for things to eat, a few fat grubs under a piece of bark or some small plant root, or edible leaf. Sometimes, if we are lucky, a wild mushroom, though very little grows here in the tundra.

  When it rains, things are better, this is the time when the earthworms come to the surface and a man can gather a dozen or more in his tin if he is lucky. They are very good to eat. (To a starving man, any protein is a gift from God!) But, no matter how hungry we were, if our cat passed by, any of us would give her a share of our worms. Cleopatra’s Cat was not only loved but also most useful. In the dry weather she could locate where there were worms under the soil and many a man was saved from starvation by her remarkable nose. When she killed a rat we would give her the head and the tail and the rest would go into the pot. Any prisoner supposing he would turn the cat into a meal would himself have been instantly killed.

  Cleopatra’s Cat became the sign to us that survival in the salt mines was possible, and that we would someday go home again. But it was not only the cat that kept our hopes up, it was also the letters the cat wrote and your replies. They were smuggled in from the hospital and, after Surgeon Shebaldin had read them, they were passed from hand to hand and read aloud to those who could not read. Your little family became at once all our families and we took to thinking of ourselves as ‘the Egyptians’ and you gave us something to hope for.

  You see, madam, Uri Shebaldin was everything Cleopatra’s Cat said he was in her letters from Egypt. He was a diplomat with the authorities, often saving a prisoner from a terrible beating or even death at the hands of a guard or camp official. Moreover, his scalpel worked ceaselessly in the little cottage hospital.

  For instance, on the very first night we arrived, he saved the life of the son of the camp commandant by removing a brain tumour. In the past five years his remarkable surgeon’s hands have saved hundreds of lives.

  Sir Uri Shebaldin, Surgeon to the Queen of Egypt, has performed some of the most remarkable new operations in Russia and all in the small, inadequate hospital in the nearby town. I am forbidden to give you its name though I know you know it because of the letters.
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br />   For the sake of his colleagues at the Academy of Medicine in St Petersburg I shall enumerate some of these medical breakthroughs. I too am a doctor, but of a much lower order, a medic, a pill pusher, no more. Uri’s post-operative notes are included with this letter for the benefit of students and teachers at the academy. He developed techniques for removing gastric and duodenal ulcers and performed what he termed gastroenterostomies (notes attached). With a high degree of success, he removed cancers from the large bowel and the rectum and developed a method whereby he operated on cancer of the rectum through the area between the anus and the genitals.

  You must excuse my language, Madam Shebaldin, but you are a medical family and I know will take no exception to this terminology. Finally, Uri Shebaldin became the absolute master of the appendicectomy, saving countless lives with this one operative procedure alone.

  Uri died after a typhoid epidemic in the slave camps, where he worked incessantly to save others’ lives. His dying wish was that we should try to return Cleopatra’s Cat to little Anna and Tanya, and that you should know the good you have brought to thousands of condemned men. But for your letters they would have thought their lives hopeless and died long before completing their sentences. Despair is the true epidemic of Siberia. Now many believe they will return to their homes, and some already have.

  I must confess that several of the men asked that you not be told of your husband’s death as they have become addicted to the letters from Egypt. But decency and a love of Surgeon Shebaldin prevailed, not a simple occurrence in a place where both these commodities are almost unknown. Your husband asked as his dying wish that, if Cleopatra’s Cat should come home, you hold a great feast for her and, at the same time, light a candle in his memory. He also fervently desires that you should marry again and be happy.