Natasha's Will

by Joan Lingard

  ‘Will we ever go back, do you think, Mama?’ asked Natasha.

  ‘Who knows?’ said Eva sadly.

  They had grown closer since their flight from St Petersburg. Before the revolution, their lives had been lived much more separately, with Eva going out and about with her society friends and entertaining them in her salon, while Natasha had lived in her own rooms, tended by a nurse in her early years, and later by Lena. That old life seemed far away.

  On the eleventh of November, Leo came home to tell them that an armistice had been signed between Germany and the Allies. The Great War was at an end.

  ‘Does that mean we can move on now to Paris?’ asked Eva.

  ‘I think so.’ Leo sounded cautious. ‘They say though, that the Germans are not going to leave Latvia that easily. But, come the spring, and better weather, we must try to make it.’ In the meantime, he was going to put aside part of his wages each month for their travel to France. They would take a train. To even consider walking would be ludicrous. From Latvia they would have to go through Lithuania, then into Poland, and from there into Germany. That would still leave them a long way from Paris. But they would have to move on. They couldn’t stay there in Riga for ever, crowding out Andra in her own home.

  ‘We will go in the spring,’ Leo told her.

  She said they were welcome to stay as long as they needed to. ‘Karl would have wished it. He was fond of you, Leo. He talked often about your student days together, of the fun you used to have!’

  The days now were short and dark and the first snows of winter fell. Ice formed on the insides of the windows overnight. They were unable to heat the rooms properly. Half the children in the flat were coughing. At the hospital, a few cases of typhoid had cropped up and Natasha could no longer go with Leo. He came home even later at nights and looked grey and thin. His wife fussed over him.

  ‘You will get ill yourself, Leo. You should stay in bed and rest for a day.’

  ‘How can I?’

  One night, he didn’t come back when expected, although that was not unusual. Marie was worried and kept pulling back the curtain to look out into the night.

  ‘Something has happened to him, I know it has! I feel it.’

  ‘I expect there has been yet another emergency,’ said Eva.

  But when Leo had not returned by morning, Marie and Natasha set out for the hospital. It was snowing. With shawled heads bent, they faced the blizzard. The city, shrouded in drifting, swirling snow, had the appearance of a ghost city. Little traffic was on the streets and not even the soldiers were in evidence. By the time they reached the hospital they were wet through.

  They discovered that the reason Leo had not come home was that he had been taken ill himself and was lying in one of the ward beds. He was delirious and running a high fever. Marie and Natasha were told that they could not see him. It would not be safe for them to do so.

  ‘We fear he has contracted typhoid.’

  Leo died later that day.

  TWENTY-TWO

  THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

  ‘ “This nasty item tends to repeat itself”,’ read Duncan. ‘ “An American invention, I believe, first used in the Civil War. I pity the men who have to operate it. Alex might be the one to solve this clue.” ’

  ‘I don’t know anything about the American Civil War,’ said Alex. ‘Except that there was one. I know that the North was fighting the South, that’s about all.’

  ‘It was a bloody war,’ said Duncan. ‘But then all wars are. No one knew that better than Natasha.’

  Alex frowned. ‘Why did Natasha say that I might be the one to solve it?’

  ‘Maybe it was a book that you particularly liked?’

  Alex couldn’t think of a book involving something to do with the American Civil War.

  ‘What would they have used in the Civil War?’ wondered Duncan aloud. ‘Muskets, fifes and drums! But none of them would first have been used there.’

  They didn’t have any books set in that war, not that the clue would be intended to imply that. Alex felt a bit bamboozled because he’d been picked out specially.

  ‘Let’s think about a nasty item that tends to repeat itself,’ said his father. ‘If it’s nasty it’s probably something that can kill. Now a machine gun repeats itself.’

  Alex smiled. The Machine Gunners! When he’d brought Robert Westall’s novel home Natasha had said, ‘That’s a nasty title!’

  ‘But a good book,’ he’d replied.

  He found the book quite quickly.

  ‘ “Well done, Alex! The next tale is a revolutionary one and capital in more ways than one.” ’

  TWENTY-THREE

  RIGA AND PARIS, 1919 JOURNEYING ON

  They were all devastated by Leo’s death. His wife had gone into hysterics when she had heard the news.

  ‘We are doomed,’ she had cried. ‘We cannot survive without him!’

  Neither Natasha nor her mother could answer, for the same thought was in their minds. How could they manage without Leo? He had been their leader and their rock. They had looked to him at every turn. It was he who had always known what to do, where to go. It was he who had taken all the decisions. It was he who had earned the money to keep them alive.

  Temperatures outside stood below zero and the burial had to be delayed for several days until the cold, hard ground thawed sufficiently to allow the grave diggers to do their work. They were days of misery during which the women moaned and sobbed and the child Kyril clung to Natasha and for once was silent himself. She went about in a state of shock, taking her young cousin with her when she went out into the town to search for food or fuel.

  Andra helped her make arrangements for the funeral. They found a Russian Orthodox priest who was willing to conduct a ceremony at the graveside. He came in his hat and cassock with a heavy crucifix hanging against his black chest. The wind ruffled his long white beard. The women stood beside the open grave while the priest swung an incense burner and intoned the last rites of the Orthodox church.

  The wind was bitter that day and the soles of their shoes were thin. Going home, Eva felt that the chill had entered her bones. When she reached the apartment she lay down in the bed she shared with Natasha to try to get warm, but she continued to shiver and her teeth chattered uncontrollably. In the night, she developed a high temperature, alarming Natasha, who rose and applied a sponge wrung out in cold water to her mother’s forehead. But no matter how many times she chilled the sponge, she found that her mother’s forehead remained blistering hot to her cold hand.

  She couldn’t have typhoid, she couldn’t! Please God, Natasha prayed, please don’t let her die! She prayed in front of her mother’s ikon, a small, beautiful painting on wood of the Virgin in blue and gold. Each member of the family had brought their own special ikons with them. They had taken Leo’s to the cemetery and left it there to keep guard over his grave and hoped that no one would have the temerity to steal it. Stealing was rife in the city.

  At first light, Natasha decided to go to the hospital to seek help. She asked Andra to sit with her mother until she returned and then she set out. They must help her at the hospital. Surely they must. Leo had given his life to the patients. She ran most of the way, taking care not to slip on the icy pavements. She passed a woman in a long faded evening dress carrying a saucepan. Her face was emaciated and her hair hung down in rats’ tails over her bare shoulders. She looked into Natasha’s face with unseeing eyes and asked in a toneless voice, ‘Have you any food?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Natasha and hastened on.

  At the hospital, she spoke to a nurse who she had often helped on the wards.

  ‘I wish I could help you, Natasha. But there isn’t much we can do. We can’t take her in here. The place is full to overflowing, you know that yourself. Give your mother sips of water with a little salt and a little sugar, keep her warm and hope that she will sweat out the fever. That is the best advice I can give you. And to pray!’

  ‘You would
n’t have a spare blanket you could let me have?’

  ‘I don’t really have any spare, but I’ll give you one. Your uncle was a good man and a kind doctor. There are not so many like him. May the Good Lord be with him!’

  Natasha burst into tears. It was the first time that she had cried. The nurse took her in her arms and comforted her and before she left, gave her a small amount of sugar in a bag and some bread and an egg. ‘You eat the egg and bread yourself, dear. You must look after yourself and keep your strength up.’

  On the way back, Natasha’s legs felt as if they were filled with sand. She stood for a moment outside the apartment. She wanted to sit down on the pavement and howl. Instead, she took a deep breath and climbed the stairs. Their room smelt like a sick room. Her mother had turned delirious and was raving and tossing in the bed. Andra was there in the room, but fearing that she might become infected herself she was not sitting too close to the bed.

  ‘I have to think of the children,’ she said apologetically.

  Natasha nodded. ‘Of course.’ She did not even dare to think that she might be the next one to fall ill. She was aware that it was a possibility, but felt calm about it. What could she do? It was too late now. She had been sleeping close to her mother and she had to tend her, to sponge her head, to hold the cup to her lips. Her aunt, like Andra, was keeping her distance and making sure that Kyril, too, stayed on the other side of the room.

  For three days and two nights Eva tossed in delirium and on the third night the fever broke. Natasha dried her with towels and helped her to take small sips of water. Suddenly the patient became still and quiet, and opening her eyes, recognized her daughter. Natasha burst into tears for the second time.

  Her mother recovered slowly. After a week she was able to get out of bed and stand, but only for a few minutes. She was exceedingly weak.

  ‘What are we to do?’ moaned Marie. ‘We can’t stay here for ever. Leo would have known what to do.’ It was her constant cry.

  ‘We shall go to Paris,’ said Natasha. ‘When Mama is strong enough.’

  ‘Paris? How can we go to Paris? Do you know how far it is?’

  ‘We shall have to go by train.’

  ‘And how are we to do that? It costs money to go by train.’

  ‘Uncle Leo had some money left.’

  ‘Not enough to pay four fares. And we’re having to use some of the money to buy food.’

  Natasha realized that no matter what she proposed, her aunt would always have a negative response. She resolved to keep her counsel and to try to devise a way for them to get to France. She looked again at an atlas. It was a daunting prospect, the idea of travelling such a distance. But her uncle had thought they could do it. Thinking of him stiffened her resolve. She began to plan ahead. In the meantime, her mother had to recover her strength and the winter to pass. It was impossible to consider setting out anywhere while the weather was so severe.

  Natasha reached her thirteenth birthday.

  ‘Happy birthday, my love,’ said her mother, giving her a hug. ‘I’m sorry I have no presents to give you. Maybe next year!’

  ‘Next year we shall be in Paris.’

  ‘Paris.’ Eva sounded wistful. ‘Paris and St Petersburg — my two favourite cities! Your father and I went to Paris for our honeymoon. We took a boat trip down the Seine by moonlight. I am glad I had such a happy time then.’

  ‘You’ll have happy times again, Mama. In Paris.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see.’

  So her mother did not believe her either.

  Natasha went one morning to a narrow street in the medieval old town. She had noticed a shop there, a jeweller’s, had looked in the window and studied the articles for sale spread out on a dusty velvet cloth. There had not been many. Opening the door, she remembered going into a similar shop in St Petersburg with her mother. This one was low-ceilinged and had a musty smell.

  The man behind the counter looked up from the watch he was working on and peered at her through round-rimmed spectacles. ‘Yes, young lady?’ He spoke in German. It was the language of most traders in the city. The street signs were all in German, which made Latvians like Andra angry. She wanted Latvian to be the main language and said that one day it would be. She wanted her country to be independent.

  ‘You buy jewellery?’ asked Natasha. She had learned enough German, as she had Latvian, to be able to converse simply.

  ‘Why, young lady? Do you have something that might interest me?’

  She laid her amethyst necklace on the counter. He named a ridiculously low price.

  ‘That is too little,’ she said and lifted it up, making as if to leave.

  ‘Wait!’ He named another sum, which still she refused.

  ‘You are a very determined young lady.’ Eventually he paid her, perhaps not what the necklace was worth, but enough to cover their fares to Paris and to have a little over. She tucked the money away, under their mattress.

  The days lengthened and the frosts receded. Eva now felt strong enough to walk in the park and take a little air. She leant on her daughter’s arm. Gradually the stark trees began to show signs of life; a few pale-green buds announced the coming of spring.

  ‘It’s time for us to go,’ said Natasha.

  ‘Go where?’ asked her aunt.

  ‘To Paris. Where else?’

  ‘On foot?’

  ‘I have tickets for the train from Riga to Vilnius.’ Vilnius was the capital of Lithuania, the third Baltic state that lay to the south of Latvia. ‘And money to take us on from there.’ Natasha told them that she had sold her necklace. Her mother lamented, but only briefly.

  ‘And where are we to go when we get to Paris?’ asked Marie.

  ‘I’m not sure. Uncle Leo knew some people there, didn’t he?’

  ‘But we don’t know where they live. There, we might have to sleep on the pavement; here, we have a roof over our heads.’

  Leo had left no address book; it had not been something he could have brought on the journey, for fear it would fall into the wrong hands.

  ‘Don’t come if you don’t want to then!’ said Natasha, her temper rising. She left the room before she would say anything else. At times her aunt made her want to stamp her foot.

  Marie, of course, did go with them. What else could she have done? In the early morning, she trudged along to the station behind them, looking sullen. Kyril took Natasha’s free hand. In the other, she carried the bundle that contained all her worldly possessions. They had been sad to say goodbye to Andra; she had been so good to them.

  The station was full of German soldiers. They piled on to the Vilnius train when it came in, leaving no room for other passengers. The family had to wait in the station until the middle of the afternoon when they finally managed to board a train. In Vilnius, they slept in the station overnight, waiting for yet another train, which would take them on into Poland.

  And so their journey continued, in fits and starts, through Poland and Germany. Most of Europe seemed to be in a state of upheaval after the war. Stations were crowded, trains broke down. Everywhere to be seen were defeated soldiers, some walking with glazed eyes, trying to keep their heads up, others wounded, limping, using crutches to aid their progress with empty trouser legs pinned up, heads bandaged, arms trussed into slings.

  Finally, the travellers crossed the border into France and on a fine spring day, when the blossom was out along the banks of the river Seine, they arrived in Paris.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  A CAPITAL TALE

  Alex read the clue out again. ‘ “The next tale is a revolutionary one and capital in more ways than one.” ’

  ‘Capital could mean an excellent tale,’ said Duncan. ‘On the other hand, it could refer to a capital city. And then there’s the revolution.’

  ‘St Petersburg?’ said Alex. ‘It had a revolution. There must have been revolutions in half the capitals in the world?’

  ‘Indeed. And some of them quite recent! In the Baltic States and oth
er Eastern European countries, for a start.’

  ‘Wasn’t there a famous one in Paris a long time ago?’

  Duncan nodded. ‘At the end of the eighteenth century. That was when they threw out the monarchy and became a republic.’

  ‘And the old women sat knitting at the guillotine watching people getting their heads chopped off?’ Alex became excited. ‘Hey, didn’t Dickens write a book about that?’

  ‘He certainly did. It was called A Tale of Two Cities.’

  ‘That fits!’ Alex jumped up. ‘Capital in more ways than one.’

  ‘Two capitals! Paris and London.’

  Alex ran to the bookshelves and ran his finger along the one holding the works of Charles Dickens. He pulled out the book he was looking for and swiftly rifled through it.

  ‘Got it!’ He extracted the paper.

  ‘The next clue is the last one,’ Natasha had written, ‘and I am making it easy since you have done well coming this far. You will find it in a receptacle filled with pleasure.’

  ‘ “A receptacle filled with pleasure”,’ repeated Duncan.

  ‘I suppose you could say a lot of books are filled with pleasure.’ Alex frowned. ‘Natasha might have given us a bit more of a clue. She said it was going to be easy.’

  ‘You don’t think she’d make it too easy, do you? Let’s think about “a receptacle”. What do you make of that?’

  ‘Something to put something in.’

  ‘Exactly. What about a box?’

  ‘A Box of Delights!’ said Alex. ‘Who wrote that? I can’t remember.’

  ‘John Masefield.’

  ‘I remember Natasha reading it to us when we were quite small. I remember her saying she liked the word “delights”.’

  ‘Go on then, take a look!’

  Alex found the book without any trouble. He took it down and gave it a gentle shake. Nothing floated out. He flicked through the pages, frowning as he got closer to the end.