Dreams Of My Russian Summers

could – through the magic of its sounds – snatch from the dark and tumultuous waters a fantastical city that was slowly returning to life.

And from being a lady with obscure, non-Russian origins, Charlotte was transformed that evening into a messenger from an Atlantis, engulfed by time.

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Neuilly-sur-Seine was composed of a dozen log cabins. Real izbas, with roofs covered in slender laths, silvered by the rigors of winter, with windows set in prettily carved wooden frames and hedges with washing hung out to dry on them. Young women carried full pails on yokes that spilled a few drops on the dust of the main street. Men loaded heavy sacks of corn onto a wagon. A slow herd streamed idly toward the cowshed. We heard the heavy sound of their bells and the hoarse crowing of a cock. The agreeable smell of a wood fire – the smell of supper almost ready – hung in the air.

For our grandmother had indeed said to us one day, when speaking of her birthplace, 'Oh! At that time Neuilly was just a village…'

She had said it in French, but we only knew Russian villages. And a village in Russia is inevitably a ring of izbas; indeed the very word in Russian, derevnya, comes from derevo – a tree, wood. The confusion persisted, despite the clarifications that Charlotte's stories would later bring. At the name ' Neuilly ' we had immediate visions of the village with its wooden houses, its herd, and its cockerel. And when, the following summer, Charlotte spoke to us for the first time about a certain Marcel Proust – 'By the way, we used to see him playing tennis at Neuilly, on the boulevard Bineau' – we pictured the dandy with big languorous eyes (she had shown us his photo) there among the izbas!

Beneath the fragile patina of our French words Russian reality often showed through. The president of the Republic was bound to have something Stalinesque about him in the portrait sketched by our imagination. Neuilly was peopled with kolkhozniks. And the slow emergence of Paris from the waters evoked a very Russian emotion – that of fleeting relief after one more historic cataclysm; the joy of having finished a war, of having survived murderous repressions. We wandered along its streets, which were still wet, covered with sand and mud. The inhabitants were piling furniture and clothes outside their doors to let them dry – as Russians do, after a winter they had been beginning to think would never end.

And then, when Paris was resplendent once more in the fresh spring air, whose scent we guessed intuitively, there was a fairy-tale train, drawn by a garlanded engine slowing down and coming to a halt at the gates of the city, before the pavilion at Ranelagh station.

A young man wearing a simple military tunic stepped down from the railway carriage, walking on the purple cloth spread at his feet. He was accompanied by a woman, also very young, in a white dress with a feather boa. An older man, in formal attire, with a magnificent mustache and a fine blue ribbon on his breast, emerged from an impressive gathering grouped under the portico of the pavilion and advanced toward the couple. The gentle breeze caressed the orchids and the amaranths that decorated the pillars and stirred the feather on the young woman's white velvet hat. The two men shook hands.

The master of Atlantis resurgent, President Felix Faure, was welcoming the tsar of all the Russias, Nicholas II, and his wife.

It was the imperial couple, escorted by the elite of the Republic, who were our guides through Paris… Several years later we learned the true chronology of this glorious visit. Nicholas and Alexandra had not come in the spring of 1910, after the flood, but in October 1896, that is to say well before the rebirth of our French Atlantis. But this real sequence hardly mattered. For us only the chronology of our grandmother's long stories counted: one day, in their legendary time, Paris arose from the waters; the sun shone, and at once we heard the still distant cry of the imperial train. This sequence of events seemed just as legitimate to us as the appearance of Proust among the peasants of Neuilly.

Charlotte's narrow balcony hovered in the aromatic breeze of the plain, at the outer limit of a sleeping town, cut off from the world by the eternal silence of the steppes. Each evening resembled an alchemist's legendary vessel, in which an astonishing transmutation of the past took place. To us the elements of this magic were no less mysterious than the components of the philosophers' stone. Charlotte unfolded an old newspaper, brought it close to her lamp with its turquoise shade, and proclaimed for us the menu for the banquet given in honor of the Russian sovereigns when they arrived at Cherbourg:

Soup

Bisque of shrimps

Cassolettes Pompadour

Loire trout braised in Sauternes

Fillet of salt lamb with cepes

Vine quails a la Lucullus

Poulardes du Mans Cambaceres

Sorbets in Muscat de Lunel

Punch a la romaine

Roast bartavels and ortolans, garnished with truffles

Pate de joie gras of Nancy

Salad

Asparagus spears with sauce mousseline

Ice cream 'Success'

Dessert

How could we decipher these cabbalistic formulae? 'Bartavels and ortolans!' 'Vine quails a la Lucullus '! Our grandmother, under-standingly, tried to find equivalents, citing the very rudimentary produce that was still to be found in Saranza's shops. Enthralled, we savored these imaginary dishes, enhanced by the misty chill of the ocean (Cherbourg!), but already it was time to set off again in pursuit of the tsar.

Like him, entering the Elysee Palace, we were startled by the spectacle of all the black suits that fell motionless at his approach – just think, more than two hundred senators and three hundred deputies! (Who, according to our own chronology, had only a few days previously been traveling to their session by boat…) Our grandmother's voice, which was always calm and a little dreamy, became tinged at that moment with a slight dramatic tremor: 'You see, two worlds found themselves face to face. (Look at this photo. It's a pity the newspaper has been folded for so long…) Yes, the tsar, an absolute monarch, and the representatives of the French people! The representatives of democracy…'

The profound import of the confrontation was lost on us. But we could now make out, among five hundred pairs of eyes focused on the tsar, those who, without outward hostility, held back from the general enthusiasm. And who felt free to do so just because of this mysterious 'democracy.' This casual attitude filled us with consternation. We inspected the ranks of the black suits to discover potential troublemakers. The president should have identified them and expelled them by pushing them off the steps of Elysee!

The following evening our grandmother's lamp was lit on the balcony once more. In her hands we saw some newspaper pages she had just extracted from the Siberian suitcase. She spoke. The balcony slowly detached itself from the wall and hovered, plunging into the scented shadows of the steppe.

… Nicholas was seated at the table of honor, which was trimmed with magnificent garlands of medeola. At one moment he was listening now to some gracious remark from Madame Faure, seated on his right, at the next to the velvety baritone of the president, speaking to the empress. The reflections from the glasses and the glittering array of silver dazzled the guests… At the dessert the president stood up, raised his glass, and declared, 'The presence of Your Majesty among us, acclaimed by a whole people, has sealed the bonds that unite our two countries in harmonious endeavor and in a mutual confidence in their