Natasha's Dream

by Mary Jane Staples

  ‘Of course. Perfection in a woman is a pleasure to a man, especially as perfection in a man is impossible.’

  ‘Oh, there are many imperfect men, yes,’ said Natasha, ‘but to meet one who is good and kind brings warmth to a woman.’ She ate her way through the pastry in unaffected enjoyment. ‘There, every crumb has gone. You will not mind if I leave the other one?’

  ‘Very wise. It might spoil your lunch.’ Mr Gibson wondered when the lingering man would make a move. The move was made then. The man entered the shop. ‘You know, Natasha, your English is faultless. Few Russians could speak it as well as you do. Count Orlov speaks it excellently, but not without an accent. You have no real accent at all. You speak English as if you grew up to the sound of it every day.’

  ‘Oh, I am just naturally good at it,’ said Natasha, looking down at her coffee.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said gently, feeling sure the question was going to cause her pain, ‘but the English lady who taught at your school – was she your mother?’

  ‘Oh, you have eyes that look into the souls of people,’ she said in distress.

  ‘No, it’s listening, not looking,’ he said, ‘and relating one thing to another. I’ve no wish to remind you of things you want to forget, but am I right about who your mother was?’

  ‘The Bolsheviks can be very clever,’ said Natasha palely. ‘They can pretend to be German and deceive people into betraying themselves. Are you a Bolshevik pretending to be a kind Englishman?’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Gibson, ‘but you, I think, are the daughter of a Russian headmaster and his English wife. That’s why you speak the language so naturally. You grew up bilingual.’

  Natasha, eyes dark with pain, stared unseeingly at her hands. ‘It hurts so much to remember things and to talk about them,’ she whispered. ‘He came after me, the commissar, and I kept running and hiding. He knew all about me, what I looked like and what my name was, so I began to tell people I was someone else. But so often people who had been kind to me would tell me to go, to run, that someone was after me and asking about me, and different names seemed to make no difference. Bolsheviks always know about names. They will say, “Ah, this man calls himself Sherpov, does he? Well, he was born Malinoff.” I think Bolsheviks would like to know the born name of everyone in the world and write them all down. Even in Poland I still had to run and hide. Someone helped me to get papers so that I could come to Germany. But even here, that man – the commissar – may still be looking for me.’

  ‘After seven years?’ said Mr Gibson, one eye on the shop.

  ‘Bolshevik commissars don’t behave like other people. They never – they never—’ Natasha groped for the right words.

  ‘They never close a file?’ suggested Mr Gibson.

  ‘Yes, that is it.’

  The man in the grey overcoat came out of the shop, strolling back the way he had come, except that after a few seconds he went into another shop.

  ‘Natasha, I think you should tell me exactly what happened on the day you lost your family and had to run for your life.’

  ‘No.’ She became agitated. ‘No, I promised to say nothing. Do you want them to kill me?’

  ‘Them?’

  ‘The – the Bolsheviks.’

  ‘Natasha, you can’t possibly be a worry to the Bolsheviks after all these years. I think you made that promise to people here, people like Count Orlov.’

  ‘No. No. Oh, the questions you ask – it is doing no good at all. It is better to—’ Natasha broke off as a boy with a club foot approached her. He wore a thick, much-darned jersey, an old peaked cap and patched trousers. He carried a wooden box with a long strap, the strap slung over his shoulder. His smile was cheerful.

  ‘Good morning, Fräulein,’ he said.

  ‘Hello, Hans.’ Natasha forgot her worries. ‘Your Excellency,’ she said to Mr Gibson, ‘this is Hans, who helped me with all my boxes and parcels.’

  ‘Good morning, Hans,’ said Mr Gibson in German, and Hans smiled.

  ‘He is a fine boy,’ said Natasha, ‘and does many things for a living. I think he is a shoe-black at the moment.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hans, and cocked an appealing eye at Mr Gibson.

  Mr Gibson nodded, turned in his chair and offered his shoes for a shine. Hans placed his box on the ground, went down on his knees and took out his cleaning materials. He attended briskly to Mr Gibson’s shoes.

  ‘There, he’s a good worker, isn’t he?’ said Natasha, glad of the diversion.

  ‘Ah, Fräulein,’ said fourteen-year-old Hans, ‘as well as cleaning shoes and carrying parcels, I can do errands, run messages, sweep snow from doorsteps and beat carpets.’ He looked up at Natasha and caught the sympathy in her eyes. It was the sympathy of a young woman who knew how one had to struggle to survive. She had been transformed since yesterday. Yesterday she had been like a scarecrow, a scarecrow come to life, and all one could have said about her was that only in her animation was she any different from all the other scarecrows of Berlin. Today, she was hardly recognizable as the person who had gone into a hundred shops yesterday, and used him as a carrier. He had not known it was her when he approached the table a few minutes ago. Only when he was close had he recognized her. She had such big eyes. People who had gone hungry did have big eyes. Hunger made them grow larger and larger. Her eyes were soft now in their sympathy, and she had a little smile for him. Something tugged at his mind, but he could not think what it was.

  He finished Mr Gibson’s shoes, and they shone. He put the cleaning things back into his box. Mr Gibson paid him generously, and in addition invited him to take away the uneaten pastry. Hans went off in delight, though not before assuring Mr Gibson and Natasha that he was always about in Unter den Linden if they ever required him to be of service. It was not until later in the day that his mind took hold of the elusive. The young woman who had been a scarecrow yesterday and a very well-dressed young lady today, had had a photograph taken when a girl. He had seen that photograph. A swarthy man with a scar had shown it to him.

  A few minutes after Hans had gone on his way, Mr Gibson called the waiter and paid the bill.

  ‘Shall we go now, Natasha?’ he said.

  ‘Has that man gone?’ asked Natasha.

  ‘I think he’s still in a shop. Never mind, let’s walk.’

  They resumed their stroll along Unter den Linden, and although Natasha was a little worried about events generally, Mr Gibson’s companionship was a comfort that was reassuring. Mr Gibson, glancing into reflecting shop windows, noted the reappearance of the man in the grey coat. He was behind them, sauntering with other pedestrians at a comfortable distance. Mr Gibson wondered whose footsteps were being dogged, his or Natasha’s.

  ‘Is he following?’ asked Natasha.

  ‘Yes. I wonder, while we were waiting on Madame Tolstoy’s doorstep, did Count Orlov telephone someone? Or speak to someone who was there with him? He took rather a long time to put his hat and coat on. He may, of course, have only been speaking to Madame Tolstoy. She was in the house, I feel.’

  ‘It is all so stupid and so unreasonable,’ said Natasha a little bitterly, ‘people acting as if it’s a disaster, not a miracle, for one of the Tsar’s daughters to have escaped being murdered.’

  ‘Yes, that’s occurred to me too,’ said Mr Gibson. ‘This afternoon I must write an account of my conversation with Count Orlov. This evening I think I’ll take you out. We’ll dine at one of the fashionable Russian restaurants, one that’s patronized by your more exalted émigrés.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Natasha.

  ‘It doesn’t appeal to you?’

  ‘It will give me bliss. No one has ever taken me out to dinner, no one.’ In her excitement, Natasha lost her worry about whether or not she and Mr Gibson were being shadowed. ‘Oh, you are a man of many kindnesses.’

  ‘At the restaurant, you can point out to me anyone whom I might find it interesting to talk to,’ said Mr Gibson.

  ‘Interesting?’

&n
bsp; ‘Anyone who knew the Grand Duchess Anastasia and has seen the woman would be interesting to me. I’m fortunate to have fallen in with you, Natasha, for you’ve obviously followed events and developments concerning the woman. It’s a very Russian thing, of course, naturally intriguing to all you émigrés.’

  ‘That is why you are going to take me out, so that I can give you information about people who might be there?’

  ‘I shall be grateful for your help,’ said Mr Gibson.

  ‘You are a terrible man, wanting to ask questions of everybody.’

  ‘Not everybody,’ said Mr Gibson. ‘Now, I think I’ll put you in a taxi. Tell the driver to take you to that house where you were given a corner in which to sleep. Is there a back way out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then leave the house that way, and immediately.’

  ‘I’m to do this because you think I’m being followed?’ said Natasha, feeling there were eyes on her back.

  ‘It’s a way of finding out if you are. Get another taxi after you’ve left the house, and have the driver bring you back to my apartment. Make sure you’re not seen. The point is, if you’re being watched, someone has discovered you’re no longer using that house for sleeping. Don’t let them find out you’re now living at my apartment. You have money, I think, to pay for the taxis.’

  ‘Yes, all that was left over from yesterday,’ said Natasha. ‘But taxis are very extravagant. You must be very rich, Your Excellency.’

  ‘I’m not rich, and I’m not Your Excellency, you delicious girl. I simply have money for expenses. You’ll do what I’ve said, won’t you?’

  ‘Oh, with much obedience,’ said Natasha, a little dizzy at suddenly being called delicious. There were so many things about Mr Gibson that made her want to be a help to him, despite her fears.

  ‘Let’s get you a taxi,’ he said.

  He hailed one, saw Natasha into it and received a slightly emotional smile from her as he gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. He watched the taxi move off. He stood there, casually searching his coat pockets. He fished out a pipe and put it between his lips. From out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed another taxi. It was slowing up. It stopped forty yards away. The man in the grey coat materialized, stepped quickly into the taxi and pulled the door to. The driver moved off in the same direction as Natasha’s taxi. Mr Gibson worried about her for a few moments, then thought about her assets. She had courage, endurance and resolution. She had spent years eluding some Bolshevik commissar. She would slip the man in the grey coat. Why was he tailing her? And why had the commissar gone after her? If she was telling the truth, he had pursued her for years. And why had Count Orlov looked at her as if he was in incurable dislike of her? She really ought to be more confiding.

  Chapter Seven

  Natasha was not sure she was being followed until her taxi had cleared the major shopping and residential areas. It was when the driver was making his way through the sparser traffic of the old quarters that she became aware of another taxi. It seemed to emerge from the pot-pourri of vehicles peeling and swinging away at junctions to stay on the same course as her own. It perturbed her. Did they not trust her to keep her mouth shut? Count Orlov had looked as if he suspected she had told Mr Gibson everything.

  It was all so bewildering and frightening. She had thought, in going to them with startling information about the sick woman, that they would be delighted to have their uncertainties resolved. But they had not been in the least delighted. They listened in almost complete silence. She said she would willingly risk what Bolshevik agents might do, she would make a written statement if only someone would help her find work in another city or town. They looked at her as if she had become demented. Count Orlov, reputed to be more disdainful of the common man than even the aristocrats of old Bourbon France, gave her a glance quite chilling. He told her the kindest thing he and his friends could do was to assume she was the victim of her overworked imagination. He said they would have her committed to an asylum if she repeated such a story to anyone else. As for finding work in another city, she was not to leave Berlin. She protested and became angry. The telling of her story had been a painful and tormenting ordeal, and she was not in the mood to play a quiet mouse. Count Orlov said if she did not want to meet with an accident, she must refrain from being insolent and must keep her mouth shut. Her story was an impossibility, a lie, and could not be repeated without doing immense harm to the cause of the Romanovs. Had she ever told it to other people?

  No, she had not. It might have brought the Bolsheviks to her.

  If you don’t wish to spend the rest of your life in an asylum, Count Orlov had said, or meet with an accident, keep the fantasy to yourself. Do you hear?

  And because of the look in his eyes, and the chilling silence of the other people in the room, she had promised to say nothing to anybody. She knew why they did not want her to leave Berlin. If she did, she might carry her story to France or some other country where they could not lay their hands on her. She was frightened, and she was also terribly confused. She found it quite incredible that they did not want to make use of the truth.

  She supposed their attitude was something to do with the fact that at that point the Supreme Monarchist Council had lost interest in the unhappy claimant and become inexplicably indifferent to her.

  That first encounter with Count Orlov had been over two years ago. To have run into him again at Madame Tolstoy’s house and remark his unchanged attitude, was to be aware he had not forgotten her, or her story. His disdain for human beings was as frightening as the pitilessness of that Bolshevik commissar. Mr Gibson did not realize that his questions would not be suffered lightly.

  Natasha, her taxi crossing the bridge towards the seedy sector, saw she was still being followed. Her situation had changed. Yes, it had. She had appeared in company with a very cool and self-assured gentleman from England, who represented an anonymous figure for whom even Count Orlov had respect. The count suspected King George of England, the late Tsar’s cousin. He had rather intimated that. Mr Gibson had not committed himself. He did not need to, perhaps, in Count Orlov’s eyes. He had appeared, and she had been with him and introduced as his colleague. That had made her less of a vulnerable figure. Or a more dangerous one?

  Natasha winced. She longed with all her heart for peace and security, for just a little happiness.

  The taxi pulled up outside an old tenement block. She alighted, paid the driver and went into the grimy-looking house adjacent the block. She did not immediately make for the rear exit. She stood in the passage, in the shadows. The other taxi passed. It did not stop. She ventured to the door and watched it moving down the dingy street. It kept going, it did not stop at all, and she knew Mr Gibson was right in his guess that they had been watching her and discovered she was no longer using this place. They would think now that they had been mistaken. They would think she still slept here, but that she had a close friend in Mr Gibson. They would think, of course, that it was the kind of very close friendship in which she received new clothes for favours given. That thought made her colour up.

  ‘Well?’ said Mr Gibson, when she arrived back at the apartment.

  ‘Yes, I was followed,’ she said, and described what had happened and how she had seen the taxi go on its way after she had entered the house. ‘The man obviously wanted to find out if I had moved or not.’

  ‘And now he thinks you haven’t. Now he thinks he knows where to lay his hands on you at night.’ Mr Gibson helped her off with her coat, revealing the new mid-blue costume worn with a pale-blue blouse. If she was thin, it did not prevent her looking elegant. ‘Natasha, you are quite the young lady of fashion.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘But I really would like to know why these people think you’re dangerous. They do think that, don’t they? Why? And who exactly are they?’

  ‘Oh, people who don’t like others interesting themselves in the lady at the clinic. You can see now they don’t like the int
erest you are showing and the questions you are asking. I think they’re after me because they want me to tell them all I know about you.’

  ‘That’s a non-starter,’ said Mr Gibson. ‘They were after you before we met.’

  ‘You are sure someone really did try to throw me over the bridge that night?’ she said anxiously.

  ‘Quite sure. It might have been kinder not to tell you, perhaps. Ignorance can be a particularly carefree kind of bliss.’

  ‘Oh, people are infamous,’ she breathed. The problems posed by the lady in the clinic would not go away. Without asking for adherents, only for relatives to acknowledge her, she was gathering stronger support. And so Count Orlov thought he could not rely on her, Natasha Petrovna, to hold her tongue. He was quite capable of arranging for someone to drown her. She must let him know she had said nothing, nothing.

  ‘I think you should tell me your full story,’ said Mr Gibson.

  ‘No.’ She was agitated but resolute. ‘It would put you in danger too. Mr Gibson, the money you have let me keep, if you would permit me, I could use it to leave Berlin and go to France, perhaps, or Austria. It would be enough to pay my train fare and to keep me for a few weeks while I looked for work. I’m sure I could get work in France. Oh, I will help you meet people here first, so that you could ask your questions, and I know that in your company I’ll be safe. All I would like, when you go back to England, is that you first see me safely aboard a train.’

  ‘My dear young lady,’ said Mr Gibson gently, ‘I mean to get you out of harm’s way in some fashion or another. I don’t intend to leave you to the wolves. You’ve had too many bad years. You’re overdue for a new existence, one of peace and quiet.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, thank you,’ she said in trusting earnestness, and was tempted to ask if he could possibly take her to England with him. But such a request would not be fair to him. ‘I could perhaps work in a school somewhere, I could teach Russian or German. My mother—’ She stopped, and he saw the familiar shadows of the past darken her eyes.