“I love you so much, Nikolai.” And as she said it, instinctively she touched her locket. It was there, safely at her neck, beneath her sweater.
“I'll see you soon,” he promised for a last time, kissed her quickly, and then hurried down the last gangplank, as she went to the rail and watched him leap to the dock and stand there, watching her.
“I love you!” she shouted. “Be careful!!” She waved at him and he waved back, mouthing “I love you” at her. And moments later, the big ship began to move slowly from the dock as she felt her heart pound, and wondered why she had been stupid enough to let him convince her to leave without him. Everything about it felt wrong to her, but she knew she had to be brave now, for his sake. They had been through so much together, she could do just a little more, let him finish his work here, give his last to the Imperial family, and then join her in Vermont, to begin their life together as man and wife.
She waved to him until she could barely see him anymore. He was still standing there, waving at her, tall and proud and strong, the man who had won her heart two years before, and whom she knew she would love forever.
“I love you, Nikolai,” she whispered into the wind, and then stood there for a long time, with tears running down her cheeks, thinking of him and holding her locket. She wasn't even sure why she was crying. He was right. They had so much to look forward to, so much to be thankful for, so much waiting for them in Vermont. It was all beginning. She had no reason to cry, except that in a place in her heart she was desperately afraid that she had just seen him for the last time. But there was no reason to think that. It was foolish, she told herself, as she looked up at the sky and saw the last gulls flying past. She could not lose him now. It could not happen. And with a sigh, and a last glance at her homeland, thinking of him, she walked slowly down to her cabin. She could not lose Nikolai, she told herself. No matter what happened to them, she would always love him, there was no way they could lose each other now.
Epilogue
The answers, as they always are, were right in my backyard. I had the letters translated, and they were all love letters from Nikolai Obrajen-sky to my grandmother. They covered a span of time, and told a story that touched my heart, almost as much as it had touched hers for a lifetime. The letters explained it all very clearly.
The rest I learned from two of her friends, neighbors, when I went back to Vermont the following summer to see the house, and spend a week there with my children and my husband.
I found the Czarina's gowns in a trunk in the attic, and never knew they had been there. They were still in the same trunk she had brought them in, they were all faded, and the ermine was yellow, and more than sixty years past their time, they looked like costumes. I was surprised I had never found them in my childhood forays, but the trunk was old and battered, and hidden in a corner of the attic. His trunks were there as well still, two of them, neatly labeled DR. NIKOLAI OBRAJENSKY. She had never had the heart to unpack them once she arrived in Vermont.
The programs from the ballet had new meaning for me now, the photographs of her with the other dancers. And the toe shoes seemed somehow sacred. I had never realized how important they were to her. I knew she had danced, but had somehow never understood what she had given of herself to do that. I tried to explain it to my children, and their eyes grew wide when I told them the story. And when I showed Katie the toe shoes, and told her they'd been Granny Dan's, she leaned over and kissed them. It would have made my grandmother smile to see that.
And just as she had feared when she set sail in September 1917, she never saw Nikolai again. He went to Tobolsk, in Siberia, with the Imperial family, as he'd promised to, and got trapped there. After that, he was no longer allowed to leave, and remained under house arrest with them. His devotion to them had ultimately cost him his freedom, and in July 1 g 18, he was executed with them. A brief letter from a name I didn't recognize informed her of it four weeks later. I can only imagine what reading that letter must have done to her. And I sobbed all these years later, when I read the translation. She must have felt as though she would die without him.
But before he had died, his last letter had warned her that there was talk of an execution. Cruel as it may have seemed at the time, he had tried to prepare her. He sounded surprisingly cheerful actually, and strong, and had told her that she must go on, that she must find happiness in her new life, and remember him, and their love, with joy and not sorrow. He told her he had been married to her in his heart since they'd met, and she had given him the happiest years of his life, and his only regret was not leaving with her. She must have known that day, that she would never see him again. And yet, destiny could not be altered. Neither his, nor hers. She was destined for another life, with all of us, in a place so far from the life she had shared with him. And he was not destined to be with her.
Her father and remaining brother were killed at the end of the war. And Madame Markova died of pneumonia two years after my grandmother last saw her. She lost them all, one by one, irrevocably, lost everything, a life, a country, a career, a handful of precious people … the man she loved, her family, and the dancing she had loved so much before that.
Yet there had never been anything tragic about her, nothing sad, or sorrowing, or mournful. She must have missed them terribly, especially Nikolai. Her heart must have ached from time to time, and yet she never told me. She was simply Granny Dan, with her funny hats, and roller skates, her sparkling eyes, and delicious cookies. How could we have been so foolish? How could we have thought that that was all of her, when there was so much more? How could I have believed that the little woman in the frayed black dresses was the same person she once had been? Why do we think that old people have always been old? Why could I not imagine her in the red velvet gown trimmed with ermine, or dancing Swan Lake for the Czar in her toe shoes? And why did she never tell me? She had kept all her secrets to herself.
She lived with Nikolai's cousin for eleven months, waiting for Nikolai, and another month until she knew he had been executed. As Nikolai had promised, his cousin was kind to her. A quiet man, with his own memories, his own regrets, his own losses. She must have been like a ray of sunshine to him. He was twenty-five years older than she. Forty-seven when she arrived at twenty-two. She must have seemed like a child to him. And he must have always known how much Nikolai meant to her. Five months after Nikolai died, sixteen months after she had come to Vermont, she married Nikolai's cousin, my grandfather, Viktor Obrajensky. And to this day, I don't really know if she ever loved him. I assume she did. They must have been friends. He was always kind to her, although he said very little, and she spoke of him with tenderness and admiration. But I couldn't help wondering now if she had loved my grandfather as she had loved his cousin. I somehow doubt it, though in her own way, I think she loved him. Nikolai had been the passion in her life, the dreams of her youth, so soon ended.
So much I never knew … so many dreams I never could have imagined. She was indeed a mystery. I have the pieces now … the trunk … the shoes … the locket … and the letters … but she kept the rest with her, the memories, the victories, the people she loved so much. My only regret is how little I knew about her when I was with her, how ignorant of her past.
Granny Dan, the woman she was to me, will live on in my heart forever. The woman she was before that belonged to other people. They took her with them, and she kept them close to her, in her heart, in her spirit, in letters and a locket. She must have loved him still to take the letters to the nursing home with her, and the locket with his picture. She must have read the letters even then, or perhaps after so many years of reading them, she knew them by heart.