“But I have to warn him!”
“Just look at you, you’ve caught death’s chill! Look at how you’re shaking! And your lips…they’re absolutely blue!”
It was only then, as Dunya stripped me and I began to thaw, that I started to comprehend the fear in her words. As my frozen shoes were ripped from my feet, my toes began to throb with pain. Next, my cloak and dress were pulled off and thrown aside, and I began to shake and shiver all the more. Warmth burned away cold, and my head began to throb, and I felt suddenly, oddly, weak, even sick to my stomach. Where had I been? How had I gotten home?
Suddenly I realized I was standing there in nothing but my underlinens. All around me were little piles of soggy clothing, and Dunya was pressing something burning hot into my hands. It was a tall thin glass nestled in a metal standard. Steam was billowing into my face and burning my nostrils. I stared at the glass-where had it come from?-then up at her.
“Drink it down, my little one,” coaxed Dunya. “Drink it all the way down. It’s good black tea from the Caucasus. Lots of sugar, too, and a big slice of leemoan. It’s nice and healthy and will warm you from the inside out. Drink this down while I heat you some milk. That’s what you need next, hot milk to ward off a chill. Da, da, da, a cup of fresh hot milk loaded with rich dark honey. I’ve been hiding a jar of birch-forest honey from back home just for something like this. Now drink up, drink to the bottom!”
But I was not only swaying, I was trembling so much I could barely hold the glass.
“Here, dorogaya maya,” my dear, cooed Dunya, holding the glass to my lips, “let me help you.”
I took in a bit of hot tea, fresh from the samovar, and it burned like liquid hell all the way down. “Oi!”
“Good, that’s good, Maria. Just drink it down. Oh, if only we were home, I’d throw you in a hot banya this very second!” she said. “I’d throw you in and then march right after you and thrash you with a bundle of fresh birch branches-that would draw the cold right out of you, for sure! So what am I going to do here in the city? Hmm… Perhaps I’ll get out my cups. Yes, that would work. We’ve got to get the chill out of you right away.”
“Nyet,” I pleaded, almost in tears.
I hated being cupped. I hated lying naked on my stomach, perfectly still, as Dunya heated her thin glass cups and placed them one by one in a thoughtful pattern up and down my spine and across my shoulders. The big purplish welts they left were horrible. Even having my back massaged with sweet butter afterward did little to help the discomfort. Whether it either prevented or cured bronchitis and pneumonia, I didn’t know. But both Mama and Dunya were convinced it was the only way to draw cold and congestion out of one’s body, the only sure way to get the blood properly flowing in the lungs.
“Please, just a hot bath, that’s all I want. Please, you don’t understand-I can’t waste any time. I have to find Papa!”
“You’re not going anywhere, child!” she commanded, as sternly as a wardeness at the Fortress of Peter and Paul.
“But-”
“Be quiet and drink your tea!”
I sipped as fast as I could, but it burned my tongue.
And then Dunya was screaming, calling out to my sister. “Varya! Varya, draw your sister a bath! Now! At once! And make it good and hot! I want clouds of steam, do you hear? Big, huge clouds like in a real banya, yes? Clouds and clouds of steam for her to breathe in and melt away the chill!”
Off in the distance I heard my sister’s lazy steps, hesitant, even reticent. A few moments later she poked her curious head around the corner.
“Oi!” she gasped upon seeing me, her eyes opening as large as fifty-kopeck pieces.
I must have looked awful, half naked, shivering and dripping.
“Go on, Varya, do it!” shrieked Dunya. “A hot bath for your elder sister-now!”
Varya disappeared as fast as a terrified mouse, Dunya wrapped her large warm body around me like a living blanket and started rubbing my back in firm, quick strokes, and I took several more sips.
“That’s it, dorogaya maya. Drink up, Maria. I’m going to get you in a hot bath, and then I’m going to heat you some sweet fresh milk with forest honey gathered not too far from your very own home, just past the fields where your brother and mother work. You know the place-yes?-where the birch trees are so thick and the bees so busy? Now, don’t you worry, child, everything’s going to be all right.”
No, it wasn’t. No, it wouldn’t be. She couldn’t see what I saw, all the terrible possibilities. They could be killing Papa at this very moment. They could be turning him inside out or dragging him behind one of their fancy motorcars.
“Dunya, you don’t understand-”
“I understand everything.”
“No, you don’t. I have to find Papa right away. I have to warn him. He’s in terrible danger.”
“Oi, such dark days we’re living through.”
“But-”
“My child, you’re not going anywhere until you’ve sat for an hour in hot water, do you understand? One full hour, am I clear? And after that you should go to bed for the rest of the day. Yes, that’s the best plan, bed and soup. Lots of hot fresh cod soup. And rest. Don’t worry, I’ll bring you your favorite poetry books, and you can lie in bed and read. If we follow that course, I’m sure you’ll be fine tomorrow and the day after, and then you’ll be in an open field.”
I should never have come home, I realized. I was practically shackled, trapped here for at least a day, if not two. The greatest of storms was about to roll across Mother Russia, and it would strike only one place to do any real damage: my father. He was the lightning rod, and I saw that as never before, that that was his role in the events of our country. Those who wanted revolution not only knew it but wanted the lightning to strike him so everything would explode. Others, such as the Romanovs, upon whose House my father was so wildly dancing, were terrified that this lightning would in fact strike him. Perhaps I’d finally eaten enough fish to see what Papa did, for the storm roiling on the horizon was all too clear. I also saw the River Neva rushing with blood. I saw the bodies floating in its turgid waters-my father’s, I feared, among the many. But was I not wiser than he was? Shouldn’t all of us, Papa included, leave before these things actually transpired? Might not the storm then whoosh harmlessly past?
Leaving a sloppy wet trail of spilt tea behind, I was trundled down the hall to the washroom. Dunya and Varya peeled away the last of my underlinens and forced me, baptismal-like, into the burning water and right under its placid steaming skin. With all their force they held me like that, beneath its surface, until finally I screamed a mass of bubbles. As limp as a piece of soiled clothing beaten against the rocks in our river, I was finally yanked back up.
“I’m going to heat some milk,” snapped Dunya to my sister. “Don’t let her move from that tub!”
When our housekeeper was gone, I glanced up at my younger sister, who leaned against the wall, her arms folded tightly, her bottom lip pinched in her teeth. I’d always been the stronger one, and I wanted to shout at her to stop staring at my pale, watery body, to leave me alone, better yet, to help me escape. But when I looked up at her, all I could do was burst into one long painful sob.
Whenever the bath water began to cool even slightly, Dunya made it scalding again. Even worse, she made me drink not one but two hot cups of painfully sweet milk, thickened with so much dark forest honey that it was nearly the color of the fancy bonbons made in the palace confectionary.
An hour later I was, as promised, finally liberated. Whereas before I was faint because of the cold, now I was light-headed because of the heat. As Dunya wrapped me tightly in towels, I leaned on my sister for support.
As our housekeeper fashioned a towel around my head, she said reassuringly, “That’s it, child. Everything’s going to be fine. I’m sure we’ve driven out most of the danger. Now, Varya, you help your big sister to bed. And make sure she’s covered and nice and warm, agreed?”
Varya, relishing the opportunity to lord over me, nodded her head eagerly. “Konyechno.”
“And Maria, you’ll stay there in bed, won’t you, while I run down the block for some more fish? Promise me, yes?”
Defeated, I could do nothing more than nod.
“You don’t need yesterday’s soup with yesterday’s fish. You must have something fresh and cooked only once. You see, the fish will be stronger, and that in turn will make you stronger too. Now put on your tapochki,” she said,
