The House by the Dvina (48 page)

Dilakatorsky and his two officers were arrested. The intention was to take them back to Murmansk for interrogation. They did not go very far. Their guards decided to execute them there and then. After being tortured, their bodies were thrown into the sea. The body of Dilakatorsky was later washed ashore and identified by his loyal orderly, named Walenev. Peter Dilakatorsky was a gallant and able soldier who might have lived had he remained aboard the ship and joined his wife in Norway. Instead he chose to go back to save the lives of two young men and in attempting to do so lost his own.

What happened to the others left behind? One might well ask. Soon after our departure, the house was confiscated. Father, with his few belongings, moved to live with Uncle Sanya. Marina left for Finland. In time she married, led a contented life and had a son with whom I am still in touch, although my dear cousin has long since gone.

The authorities decided to turn the house into a hostel for students but, before this plan materialised, a fire broke out in the garret and spread throughout the house. Some said the house was set on fire for the purpose of appropriating certain articles during the confusion, others blamed the ancient wiring.

The family, arriving on the scene, fought the flames in a blinding blizzard, with the assistance of the occupants and strange “helpers” who came along to see what they could loot. In the end, with the arrival of the fire brigade, the blaze was quenched but not before the solid timbers had been badly scorched.

Undeterred by any aesthetic scruples, the authorities ordered planks to be hammered over the blackened walls. Both balconies were torn off and the final structure bore no resemblance to the imposing original. All the rooms were broken up and divided. When the vandalism was completed, students moved in.

Eight years went by. During this time, Babushka and my stepgrandfather returned from exile. They were allotted a room and a half in a house where they shared the kitchen with other tenants whose homes had likewise been confiscated. The “half was part of the entrance hall where Dedushka placed his desk and attended to his patients who still flocked to him in the evenings, paying in kind. Without this, the miserable pittance he received from the hospital where he continued to work as a surgeon, would not have been sufficient for their needs.

Seryozha, his wife and two children were now living in Petrograd, where he was fortunate to become a curator in one of the museums, work for which he was ideally suited. Yura, now married, was engaged in breeding animals for their furs, which was a source of foreign exchange for the government.

Although living with his wife and little son in a single room, they found life tolerable. One day in January of 1928, on my way to visit a friend, I met a telegram boy as I came out of the gate. He handed me a telegram which brought the news of my fatherТs death. A letter arrived two weeks later. “Do not shed your tears,” Uncle Sanya wrote. “He is free from his suffering and longing. He sleeps beside our father.” My grandparents outlived him by four years. Both died within ten days of each other. They died in time. We were now in the Сthirties and for some time there were a few letters from Yura and Marga Ч followed by a strange silence.

Ten years went by. There was a second World War and my sojourn in India.

On returning to Scotland my further attempts to get in touch with my relatives were met with the same mysterious silence Ч and then through Finland and other sources I learned the truth. The reason was simple Ч

they were all dead.

I was not aware, nor was anyone else to my knowledge, that the satanic activities of the all-consuming Kremlin monster had increased tenfold and had reached every corner of Russia, including Archangel.

The first to be executed on a trumped-up charge was Mitya Danilov. All MargaТs possessions were removed. She with her three children were thrown out on to the street. In desperation she had run to Sashenka who sheltered her, but soon Marga herself was arrested and sent to one of the labour camps on the White Sea. Her two young sons perished Ч one killed, the other, aged fourteen, committed suicide. Marga, losing her reason, died and only the girl remained.

Yura, on learning that his contemporaries who fought against the Bolsheviks during the time of the Allied Intervention were being executed, and realising he was doomed, forestalled his execution by taking his own life. Never since the dawn of Russian history had there been such a time of fear, grief and horror Ч a time described by the poetess Akhmatova as “When only the dead could smile”.

Seryozha and his family living in Leningrad were spared until the advent of the Second World War when he, his wife and their young son starved to death during the blockade of the town and were buried in the common grave in the Piskarevsky cemetery. A passing lorry saved their little girl, taking her across Lake Ladoga to safety. Back in Archangel, the house on Olonetskaya Street, or what was left of it, still stands, but it is doomed to be demolished Ч the lodge, coach-house, outhouses and fences are all gone, broken up for firewood. In the garden the devastation is complete.

All trees and bushes are cut down. There is no trace of the two summer houses and jetties. The paths are overgrown and the golden flowering hedge has vanished. Only the pond remains, desolate and haunting. The whole landscape has reverted to the wasteland it was a century ago when a young woman took stock of it, planned, and in the end created a garden the like of which Archangel had never known before or since.

As for the town itself, it has advanced beyond belief. The population has increased tenfold. There are countless high rise buildings, like rows of cardboard boxes stretching to the skies. Bridges thrown across the river bear trains carrying passengers direct into the town. Imposing monuments, cinemas and theatres replace all churches. There is every convenience, hot and cold water Ч people do not go down to the river in the dead of winter to rinse their clothing or fetch water. The boulders on the shores where once the children in our street foregathered are there no more. A long stretch of golden sands has replaced them Ч a fine place for tourists if only they were allowed to go there. For Archangel is a closed city.