The House of Special Purpose (49 page)

‘I do wonder all the same why you never speak of it,’ he said a moment later. ‘If it was such a wonderful place, I mean. Oh now, don’t look at me like that, Sophie, it’s a perfectly reasonable question that I ask.’

‘Zoya doesn’t like to talk about it,’ Sophie replied, for she had tried on more than one occasion to solicit confidences from her new friend about her past, but had finally given up.

‘Well, what about you then, Georgy?’ asked Leo. ‘Can’t you tell us a little bit about your life before you came to Paris?’

‘There’s so little to tell,’ I replied with a shrug. ‘Nineteen years of living on a farm, that’s all. It’s not the stuff of anecdotes.’

‘Well, where did you two meet then? You said you were from St Petersburg, Zoya, didn’t you?’

‘In a train compartment,’ I said. ‘The day we both left Russia for the last time. We were sitting opposite each other, there was no one else there, and we started talking. We’ve been together ever since.’

‘How romantic,’ said Sophie. ‘But tell me this. If you have two Christmas Days, then surely you must be given two sets of presents. Am I right? And I know you bought her perfume for the first Christmas Day, Georgy. So what about it, Zoya? Did Georgy give you something else today?’

Zoya looked across at me and smiled and I nodded, happy for her to tell them. She laughed then and looked at them, a wide grin spreading across her face. ‘Yes, of course he did,’ she said. ‘But didn’t you notice?’

And with that she extended her left hand to show them my gift. I wasn’t surprised that they had failed to notice it before. It must have been the smallest engagement ring in history. But it was all that I could afford. And what mattered was that she was wearing it.

We were married in the autumn of 1919, almost fifteen months after we had fled Russia, in a ceremony so lacking in grandeur that
it would have seemed almost pathetic had we not compensated for its paucity with the intensity of our love.

Brought up to revere a strict, unswerving doctrine, we wanted nothing more than the blessing of the Church to sanctify our union. However, there were no Russian Orthodox churches to be found in Paris and so I suggested marrying in a French Catholic church instead, but Zoya would not hear of it and seemed almost angry when I made the suggestion. I myself had never been particularly spiritual, although I did not question the faith in which I had been reared, but Zoya felt differently and saw rejection of our creed as a final step away from our homeland and one that she was not prepared to make.

‘But where then?’ I asked her. ‘You surely don’t believe that we should return to Russia for the ceremony? The danger alone would—’

‘Of course not,’ she said, although I knew very well that there was a part of her that longed to return to the country of our births. She felt a connection to the land and to the people that I myself had quickly shrugged off; it was an indelible part of her character. ‘But Georgy, I would not feel truly married if the proper ceremonies did not take place. Think of my father and mother, how they would feel if I rejected our traditions.’

There was no argument that could be made against this and so I began the process of trying to locate a Russian Orthodox priest in the city. The Russian community itself was small and scattered and we had never made any attempts to assimilate ourselves into it. Indeed, on one occasion when a young Russian couple entered the small bookstore where I worked as an assistant, I heard their voices immediately – the music of their language as they spoke to each other in our native tongue summoned pictures and memories that made me dizzy with longing and regret – and I was forced to excuse myself and retreat to the alley behind the shop on the pretence that I felt suddenly ill, leaving my employer, Monsieur Ferré, irritated at having to serve the couple himself. I
knew that most of my fellow émigrés lived and worked in the Neuilly district in the
dix-septième
and we avoided it deliberately, not wishing to become part of a society which could lead to potential danger for us.

I was subtle in my detective work, however, and was finally introduced to an elderly man by the name of Rakhletsky, living in a small tenement house in Les Halles, who agreed to perform the ceremony. He told me that he had been ordained a priest in Moscow during the 1870s and was a true believer, but he had fallen out with his diocese after the 1905 Revolution and relocated to France. A loyal subject of the Tsar, he had strongly opposed the revolutionary priest, Father Gapon, and had tried to dissuade him from marching on the Winter Palace that year.

‘Gapon was belligerent,’ he told me. ‘An anarchist portraying himself as the workers’ champion. He broke the conventions of the Church, marrying twice, challenging the Tsar, and still they made a hero of him.’

‘Before they turned on him and hanged him,’ I replied, a naive boy patronizing an elderly man.

‘Yes, before that,’ he admitted. ‘But how many innocent people died because of him on Bloody Sunday? A thousand? Twice that amount? Four times?’ He shook his head, appearing half regretful and half furious. ‘I could not stay after that. He would have ordered me to be killed for my disobedience. It has always astonished me, Georgy Daniilovich, that those who are most repulsed by autocratic or dictatorial rule are among the first to eliminate their enemies once they take on the mantle of power themselves.’

‘Father Gapon never achieved any power,’ I pointed out.

‘But Lenin did,’ he replied, smiling at me. ‘Just another Tsar, don’t you think?’

I did not take his political views to Zoya, although she would have agreed with them, because I thought it wrong to bring such memories to our wedding day. I wanted simply to present Father
Rakhletsky as just another exile, forced out of his home by the advance of the Kaiser’s forces. It had taken me this long to find the man, I did not want any problems that might postpone our marriage any longer than necessary.

The ceremony took place in Sophie and Leo’s flat on a warm Saturday evening in October. Our friends had generously offered the use of their home for the service and acted as witnesses on the day. Father Rakhletsky spent an hour alone in the small apartment earlier in the afternoon, consecrating their living room as a holy place, a procedure he said was ‘highly unorthodox but extremely pleasurable’, a turn of phrase which amused me.

It saddened me that I could not provide a more elaborate wedding day for my bride, but it was all that we could do to remain on the right side of poverty. Our jobs did not pay very much money, enough to cover our rent and to feed ourselves, that was all. Zoya ensured that we both saved a few francs every week in case an emergency presented itself and we were forced to flee Paris, but still we could afford very little in the way of luxury. Between them, Zoya and Sophie made her wedding gown in the dressmaker’s shop after trade ended each day; Leo and I wore our best shirts and trousers. On the day, I thought we had put together a charming display, despite our limited means.

Father Rakhletsky had not met Zoya before the ceremony, and when she entered the living room on my arm that evening her face was covered by a simple veil that masked her beauty and charm. He beamed happily at us, as if we were his children, or a favoured nephew and niece, and his joy at performing one more wedding in his life was easy to see. Sophie and Leo stood on either side of us, delighted to be part of this unusual experience. I believe it struck them as terribly modern and unconventional to be getting married in such a way and in such a place. Romantic too, perhaps.

We exchanged simple rings and then I took Zoya’s left hand in my right as we accepted lighted candles in our free hands, holding
them aloft while the priest recited the incantations over our heads. When he gave the signal, Sophie and Leo reached across to the tables on either side of them and took the small, simple crowns which Zoya had created from a combination of foil and felt, and placed them simultaneously atop our heads.

‘The servants of God, Georgy Daniilovich Jachmenev and Zoya Fedorovna Danichenko,’ sang the priest, holding his hands a few inches above our heads, ‘are crowned in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’ I felt a great happiness enter my body when he spoke those words and clutched Zoya’s hand in my own; I could scarcely believe that our lives were finally being joined together.

After this, the Gospel was read and we drank from the common cup, promising to share everything in our lives from that moment on, our joys as well as our sorrows, our triumphs alongside our burdens. When we had completed our pledges, Father Rakhletsky led us around the table, upon which was placed the Gospel and the cross, to symbolize the word of God and our redemption. We walked together in a circle for the first time as a married couple and then stood before the priest once again while he recited the final blessing, imploring me to be magnified as Abraham, to be blessed as Isaac, to multiply as Jacob had, to walk in peace and work in righteousness, then beseeching Zoya to be magnified as Sarah, glad as Rebecca, to multiply as Rachel had, to rejoice in her new husband and to fulfil the conditions of the law, for so it is well pleasing unto God.

And with that, the ceremony ended and our married life began.

Sophie and Leo burst into spontaneous applause, and Father Rakhletsky appeared surprised by their informality but not disturbed by it. He congratulated us both, shaking my hand heartily and reaching forward to offer my bride a kiss just as she lifted her veil.

He stopped at that moment, pulled short and reeled back, a sudden and unexpected movement which made me think that he
had suffered some sort of seizure or heart attack. He muttered a phrase under his breath – I did not hear it – and hesitated for so long that Sophie, Leo and I could only stare at him as if he had gone entirely mad. His eyes were locked with Zoya’s and, rather than looking away in confusion or embarrassment, she held his gaze, lifting her chin and offering him not her cheek to kiss, but her hand. A moment later, he returned to the present, took the hand hastily, kissed it, and backed away from us both without ever actually turning his back on us. His face betrayed his confusion, his astonishment and his utter disbelief.

Despite having promised to stay and dine with us after the ceremony, he gathered his belongings quickly and left, with only a few final words for Zoya, offered in the privacy of the hallway outside the flat.

‘What a curious man,’ said Sophie as we ate in some style an hour later, washing the food down with an extraordinarily good bottle of wine which our friends had provided.

‘I think it must have been a long time since he had seen anyone quite so beautiful as your Russian bride,’ said Leo, at his most charming and flirtatious, his neck-tie undone and hanging loosely around his open collar. ‘He looked at you, Zoya, as if he was sorry that he hadn’t married you himself.’

‘I thought he looked like he had seen a ghost,’ added Sophie.

I turned to my wife and she caught my eye for a moment before shaking her head slightly and returning to the conversation. I could not wait until we were alone, but not for the reason that you might imagine. I wanted to know what had been said between the priest and Zoya in the hallway before he left.

Leo and Sophie’s second gift to us was the use of their flat as a honeymoon residence, three nights of togetherness while they relocated to mine and Zoya’s former rooms for the duration of our stay. It was thoughtful of them, for we were to move into our own flat shortly, but it was not due to be ready until the middle
of that week and of course we did not wish to be separated from each other so soon after our marriage.

‘He knew you,’ I said to Zoya after Leo and Sophie left us that evening.

‘He knew me,’ she replied, nodding her head.

‘Will he speak of it?’

‘To no one,’ she said. ‘I am sure of it. He is a loyalist, a true believer.’

‘And you believed him?’

‘I did.’

I nodded, having no choice but to rely on her judgement. It was a curious moment of panic and had not gone unnoticed by any of us, but it was over now, we were a married couple. I took Zoya by the hand and led her to the bedroom.

Afterwards, wrapping my body around hers as we attempted to sleep, unaccustomed to the warmth and slickness of two naked forms entwined in rough blankets, I closed my eyes and ran my fingers along her legs, her perfect spine, the length of her body, saying nothing, ignoring the way she wept in my arms, trying to control her own shaking as she considered the day and the wedding and the memories of those who had not been present to help us celebrate.

The Ipatiev House

U
P CLOSE
, the Ipatiev house did not seem particularly intimidating.

I stared at it from my hiding place, a few feet into the tightly packed woodland that bordered the merchant’s home, and tried to imagine what was taking place within its walls. A cluster of larch trees provided a convenient place for me to observe the house while remaining hidden from view; their overhanging branches and dense forestation offered some protection from the cold, although I regretted not being in possession of a heavier coat or the thick woollen gloves given to me by Count Charnetsky on my first days in St Petersburg. Before me was a small, grassy area where I could lie down and rest when my legs became too weary, and, further along again, several feet of thick hedgerow which led to a gravel driveway that ran parallel to the front of the house.

Somewhere over there, I told myself, the Imperial Family were gathered as prisoners of the Bolshevik government; somewhere over there was Anastasia.

A dozen soldiers came and went throughout the afternoon, leaning against the walls as they smoked and talked and laughed in friendly groups. A football, of all things, appeared for half an hour and they stripped to their shirtsleeves and tried to score goals against each other, the gate acting as one set of posts, the opposite wall as another. Almost all of them were young men in their mid-twenties, although the soldier in charge, who appeared from time to time to spoil their game, was a man in his fifties, of small, muscular stature, with narrow eyes and an aggressive
demeanour. They were Bolsheviks, of course; their uniforms attested to that. But they went about their duties in a casual manner, as if the exalted status of their prisoners was a fact to which they were deliberately indifferent. Times had changed considerably since the abdication of the Tsar. Over the course of my eighteen-month odyssey from the railway carriage in Pskov to the house of special purpose in Yekaterinburg, I had grown to realize that people no longer treated the Imperial Family with the respect and deference that had always been their due. If anything, people competed with each other to offer the most obscene insult, publicly condemning the man they once considered to have been appointed to his throne by God. Of course, none of them had ever come face to face with the Tsar; if they had, they might have felt differently towards him.