She gripped her suitcase between her hands. I heard the car drive off. The residential street beyond the iron gates was quiet, almost deserted. People hurried past without glancing up, their heads bowed.
‘Olga.’
‘What is it Lydochka?’
When she smiled, Olga’s teeth were revealed, the yellow stains on them clear as tidemarks drawn in the sand. The stains were relics of the years after the revolution, when she had struggled to find food and her body had suffered from malnourishment and lack of vitamins. She had told me those stories of horror, woven among her fairy tales. Stories of a city that had been starving. A country in the grip of famine. Children screaming on the streets, bellies bloated from hunger. No wonder Olga now ate everything set before her. She knew what true hunger was.
I almost changed my mind, then. She was everything to me and I to her. She had known so much pain in her lifetime; the death of her husband and my mother. Famine and disease. The purges of the last ten years, when many of our neighbours had been, wrongfully or otherwise, arrested or killed. How could I force her to acknowledge the truth, to relive the past when she already had suffered so much?
‘I need to speak to you.’ I watched her smile slip. ‘I think it’s best we talk now, before we go inside.’
‘Is it about your Papochka?’ she said. ‘Why is he sending us home so soon? I had hoped to stay a little longer, not only to speak with him but also to honour your mother’s memory by seeing a little of the country she loved. I remember the stories she told me about—’
‘It’s about my father, yes,’ I interrupted. ‘My – my real father.’
Olga’s eyes widened in surprise. We stood looking at each other. Bees hummed in the rose bushes nearby, lifting off the fragrant blooms as they felt the vibration of my footsteps beside them. Their scent was warm, enveloping. It was so pleasant to stand in the afternoon sun. I wished I could go on standing there, that I was indeed coming to live in my new home. Instead it would be another holding pen until I was sent back. I wished I could unlearn the things I had discovered; about my past, about Olga. About my parentage. Lydia Stalina.
I said the name out loud, heard Olga’s breath draw in sharply.
That was who I really was. The daughter of a murderer and a tyrant.
I watched Olga’s face slowly deflating. She dropped her suitcase to the ground and lifted her hands to cover her mouth. She began to cry. Tears splashed over her hands and dropped off her chin. My arms tingled with the need to comfort her, to hold her as she had held me all those times in my childhood. But I let her cry. I was callous and cruel. I was my father’s daughter, even if nobody else knew the secret but two men who had made a business transaction and an old woman protecting the secrets of her dead friend.
‘Who told you?’ she said at last, brushing away her tears with the heels of her palms.
‘Captain Volkov did.’ I could feel the sun beating upon my back through my shirt. ‘He had to. Stalin has ordered us back.’
‘I hoped he would leave us alone.’ She drew up her trembling chin. ‘I hoped he would let you go. That he’d be glad to be rid of the… responsibility. I should have known he would not give you up easily. He controlled your mother, too. Everything she wore and read, the people she saw. His spies were everywhere. And Captain Volkov, as you saw, has a will which is as weak as a kitten. He had no power to say no. The only place we were safe was in her boudoir. Just the three of us. When you were practising your Estonian and your mother could speak freely about her past. Her family. But your father found a way to ruin that too, in the end. That was why she killed herself. She couldn’t stand it any longer, the threats and his endless taunts. The shame.’
She began to cry again. Emotion overwhelmed me. I reached for her hand. It was slippery from her tears. I covered it with my own.
‘I know why you lied,’ I said softly.
Olga sniffed hard. She looked away. ‘I did it only to protect you. I could not bear to see you disgraced, shut out.’
‘I know.’ I squeezed her fingers. She looked up at me, eyes slanted against the sunshine.
‘I’m thankful you kept her shawl,’ she said. ‘She would have wanted you to have it. I would have saved it, if I had the chance.’
‘There was a little book of poems, too.’ I lifted my case. ‘I kept them. And a photograph.’
Olga’s mouth worked. ‘I’m so glad. I was too upset. I could not rouse myself. By the time I got to her rooms, there was nothing to be had except a few of her coats and a letter written in Estonian. I kept the letter to give to you but I could not read it, then I lost it… Everything else she owned was taken off and burned. Stalin did not even give her things away. He had them all thrown on a fire. Your mother’s treasures. Her beautiful clothes. Her books.’
‘At least you can remember her.’ My heart felt heavy. ‘I sometimes worry I’m starting to forget.’
Olga lifted her head. ‘I will never forget her. Never. She saved me. I only hope you can forgive me, in time.’
‘Will you tell me about her?’ I said. ‘How could she bring herself to be with him?’
Olga sucked air in through her nose. ‘Yes, Lida. Yes. I will tell you everything. Nobody else knows the truth. Your Mama trusted only me. But first, let us eat and rest. I feel so hungry I could eat all these flowers.’ She waved her hand at the nodding roses and row of cornflowers and sprays of white blossoms lining the path.
Questions burned inside me. I was on the verge of begging Olga not to wait, demanding that she tell me everything. But she was tired and old. There would be time enough for us to talk of Mama later. I let Olga walk ahead and ring the bell beside the door. Through the large front window, I glimpsed glossy timber furniture and damask curtains pulled back. More colourful flowerbeds were banked up against the panes. It was a beautiful place, with the sky beginning to move towards dusk and the fragrance rising up from the blooms. I almost wished I could stay there on the warm flagstones, surrounded by bright cornflowers, steeped in memories of walking through the Apothecary Gardens with Mamochka and Olga outside the Kremlin.
I could recall as if it were only this morning the way Mama had held my hand, her bracelets jingling, our shoes making small puffs in the dust as we wandered along the avenue of linden trees towards the greenhouse. Olga had been idling behind, content to watch us walk ahead.
‘Lydochka!’ Mama’s hand had slipped away. I watched her shift her pale braid back over one shoulder as she crouched beside the path. ‘See here,’ she had said, pointing between the trucks to a patch of blue flowers shooting up amid the grass. Their vivid blue stood out against the green, the colour shifting like a kingfisher’s wings. ‘Estonia is full of cornflowers,’ she said, smiling so that her cheeks dimpled. ‘I asked the gardener to plant these here to remind me of home. You know the story of the cornflower?’ Reaching out, she had plucked a spiky blue blossom from its stem and tucked it behind my ear, weaving the soft coils of my hair deftly into a braid like her own. ‘When Queen Louise of Prussia was fleeing Napoleon’s forces, she hid her children in a field of cornflowers. She kept them quiet by weaving wreaths for them. Can you imagine the fear in her heart, the terror, knowing that at any moment they might be caught and dragged back?’
I had shaken my head then. Now I could imagine how that might feel, being taken against your will, forced to live an existence subservient to a man’s will.
At least Olga would be beside me.
The door of the townhouse opened to reveal a young woman in a black housecoat. A white lace shawl was settled across her shoulders. The sight of it jolted me – it was just like the one I wore. Mamochka’s shawl.