convent?”
“It’s beautiful-the vines on the walls, the verbena along the paths. It’s all so warm and welcoming that I feel as if I’ve stepped back into the romantic thirteenth century.”
“That is just what I wanted my convent to be, one of those busy, useful medieval types. Such convents were wonderfully efficient aids to civilization in the Middle Ages, and I don’t think they should have been allowed to disappear. Russia needs them, certainly now more than ever-yes, we need the kind of convent that fills the space between the austere, enclosed orders and the life of the outside world. Here in my community we make a point of trying to understand what is happening around us. My sisters read the newspapers, we keep track of events, and we receive and consult with people in active life. We are Marys, but we are Marthas as well, and we are most hopeful of building up a strong, new Russia.”
Mrs. Dorr took out a small notebook and wrote something down, and said, “Well, things are looking quite well in your country. Of course, the entire world knows of your riotous and bloody events of a few years ago, and, quite frankly, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I arrived last week.”
“As one of our noted politicians recently said, just ten more years of steady, hard work and Russia will be saved. You see, the Russian people are good and kind at heart, but they are mostly children-big, ignorant, impulsive children. If only they would realize they must obey their leaders-only then will we emerge into a wonderful nation. Everyone is trying so hard, and I pray daily for the Emperor.” The bells of our church chimed the hour softly, and I paused to cross myself. “Now tell me about those wonderful public schools of yours-I hear there is quite a model system being established in your city of Gary.”
“Yes, in Gary, Indiana, actually. What has begun there is something called the Gary Plan, or platoon schools, which is a system of dividing schools into separate platoons, so to speak, for more efficient use.”
The American plan for education was all most interesting, and for nearly three quarters of an hour I listened as this very able woman explained the plan for improving the lot of each and every child via stimulating education. The standard curriculums were being expanded upon, explained Mrs. Dorr, and schooling during the summer months had even been added. Most interestingly and strangely, educational services were even being made available to the adult worker, which I had never heard of before. As I listened I couldn’t help admiring what the Americans were doing-making education more natural and based upon the child, and more democratic too. Mrs. Dorr told me it was an exceedingly expensive program, but it had proved so popular that it was being accepted as far away as New York.
“ America is simply stupendous,” I finally exclaimed. “How I regret that I never went there. Of course, I never shall now. But, to be perfectly frank, to me the United States stands for order and efficiency of the best kind, the kind of order only a free people can create, the kind I pray may be built someday here in Russia. Truly, it is wonderful, and I can scarcely help envying you sinfully.”
“May I quote you, Your Highness?”
“Yes, by all means. Think of America-a great, young, hurrying nation that can still find time to study all these frightful problems of poverty and disease, and to grapple with them as well. I hope you will go on doing that, and still find more and more ways of helping children, you must never let go of that. Too, I am entranced by the way you are trying to bring education and beauty into the lives of your workers. After all, how can you expect workmen to have beauty in their souls if they toil all day in hot, hideous factories or on remote farms? The poverty of our peasants and the poor working conditions of our workers are for us a great, great problem that we must quickly resolve.”
We talked more about the Gary schools, which I was eager to see here in Russia, and about American women and their welfare work, especially for the tubercular and anemic. It was my belief, I remarked to my visitor, that if a country were to thrive, women would have to play a role equally important and equally prominent as that of men. I’d always had a special devotion to Jeanne d’Arc, I explained, and believed she had been inspired by God, just as so many other women had been called by God to do great things.
“In America,” said Mrs. Dorr, “we would say you are a good feminist-and to me that is the greatest compliment. I can’t tell you how much I admire your convent for its beauty and even more for the ease with which you are reaching out to those in need. Everyone seems so happy and content here.”
“I’m so glad that you like my little obitel,” I said as I rose to my feet. “Please come again and see all that I hope to accomplish in the years ahead. We have great plans to help a great many.”
“Thank you, Your Highness, I would love to return. Your convent is one of the brightest stars in the new Russia, and one that it can least afford to lose. I wish you all the best success.”
Yes, all that my lovely adopted homeland needed was a few more years of peace and hard work. We were so close. Our industries were flourishing, our scientists had become known throughout the world, and our crops were so bountiful that we had left our famine years behind and become Europe ’s bread-basket. Indeed, we were such a rich country, wealthy in oil and gold and diamonds, and finally we were on the verge of being able to exploit all of this for the good of the entire Motherland. Even our writers and painters and musicians-such as Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Repin and Kandinsky, Chaikovsky and Rachmaninoff-were becoming known around the world. If only we could keep moving forward, not leaving the poor behind but embracing them and bringing them along and raising them up.
Perhaps we didn’t even need ten years, perhaps only another five. In any case, we were never to find out because the peace and harmony that we so desperately needed was shattered by the outbreak in August, 1914, of that hideous war: the Great War. Within so short a time millions of our people were killed as war engulfed the whole of my beloved country, gushing over all like a waterfall of flame and leaving everyone, victor and vanquished alike, horribly maimed.
Chapter 32 PAVEL
When the war broke out, well, that was when I thought the Revolution was absolutely lost forever and ever. On all the streets there were crowds waving flags and singing “God Save the Tsar!” and everywhere there was this joy, this sense of pride and love for the Motherland. I couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe that the oppressed would feel such passion for the Tsar and his lying ministers who had done nothing but walk all over them for centuries and centuries. Why, even the lowliest of workers were tripping over themselves as they rushed to enlist in the Tsar’s army. How was this possible? How could they not see what my Bolshevik leaders did, that this stupid business was simply a war of kings and empires, namely German, English, Austrian, and Russian? Sure, it was nothing but a stupid imperialistic affair spurred on by the capitalist warmongers who would make big profits from the sale of guns. And who was going to do the actual fighting? The nobles themselves, those princes and counts who for centuries had bought and sold us pathetic serfs? The rich factory owners who would grow fat and rich from the sale of their guns and bullets? Absolutely not! No, it was the poor and downtrodden who would be out there on the front lines, massacred one after another, their bodies crushed into the mud.
The last of my leaders were so discouraged that they had all left by the time war broke out. They said that new guy, Lenin, was in Switzerland and that that writer, the famous one, Gorky, was off sunning himself in Italy. But not me. I had nowhere to go, no one to see, so I just disappeared into my own country, sleeping in haystacks or train stations, stealing food from here, there, and what did I do when I needed a ruble or two? Why, that was easy, I just robbed someone, the old babushkas were the easiest, the donation pots in the churches a cinch, too. Actually, I never went hungry because fortunately it was a great sin to refuse bread to a beggar. And I begged a lot.
Oddly, one fall day in 1915 I found myself outside her white walls.
I didn’t know quite why I decided to walk halfway across the city, let alone how I had got back to Moscow in the first place, but suddenly there I was, staring at the thick vines creeping up the walls of the Marfo-Marinski Obitel. Yes, just standing there, my belly empty, admiring how the leaves on the vines were so yellow and orange and red. So pretty. But sure, these colors meant it would be winter before too long, and I wondered if maybe the sisters would feed me here today, or at least offer me a cup of tea with nice sugar. That was what I really wanted, hot tea and a sugar cube I could hold in my teeth as I drank.
I certainly never expected to see her, but I had been skulking about outside the women’s monastery for, who knew, an hour, maybe more, when not the large carriage gates but the small brown side gate suddenly swung
