Lenin's Harem Read online

‘Lucky?’

  ‘They could be among the house staff, the faces that smile at breakfast everyday.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Anything is possible, Wiktor.’ He nodded toward the tree. ‘That warning was hung over the road for our outbound guests to see. They want their threats to spread, to send word to the better classes. This isn’t some drunken hooligan, there’s intelligence at play, Brother.’

  ‘Father will find out who did this. He’s…’

  ‘I doubt that.’ Otomars stabbed the effigy, sending white sparks into the morning air. ‘You think our father is really suited to the task?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  My brother leaned forward, using the pole to balance himself. The fire’s glow reflecting off his round face and wide forehead, flame light flickering with his thoughts. He gazed long upon Father, on Jazeps, letting the stinging smoke tear his eyes.

  ‘Father expects ghosts to protect us, Wiktor. Men long buried in their graves.’

  ‘Ghosts…’

  ‘As real to him as any of us.’

  Father’s voice interrupted, echoing toward us from the road. ‘Boys, how’s it burning? Nearly finished?‘

  ‘Almost, Father.’ A final whisper to Otomars: ‘Ghosts?’

  ‘Yes,’ he grunted, digging half-heartedly through the ash again, eyeing our approaching parent. ‘And they won’t be enough, I promise you.’

  *****

  ‘Recognize this, Wiktor?’

  Anne pounded away on the century-old Viennese piano; abusing the family heirloom no one else dared touch. ‘Well?’

  ‘Edvard Grieg. Piano concerto in A minor, first movement.’

  ‘Excellent. How about this?’ My sister’s long fingers danced over the ancient keyboard, natural keys black, accidentals white, it didn’t matter. Green, pink or purple, she’d know them by heart. ‘Not much of a challenge, I’d say.’

  Elbow on knee, chin perched on fist, I sat on the bench next to Anne. With my back to the piano, I took in every note, tried to discern every precious musical detail…

  And strained to read the music sheets’ titles warped and backwards in the polished skin of the vase nearby. ‘Brahms’ Concerto No. 2, final movement in…in B-flat, major, I think.’

  ‘Very good, Wiktor. Let’s try one more.’ Anne shuffled through the sheets looking for the perfect solo to stump me, any excuse to show off her latest mastery. A ballerina grown too tall, our seventeen year old sister had transferred her grandest artistic pretensions to this relic instrument fourteen months and sixteen centimeters ago. Forever perched on this padded bench, a siren in the family parlor, she now played daily throughout the year. Entertaining the passing world through summer’s opened windows, notes descending with harvest leaves, serenading friends and suitors in the cozy privacy of winter. Always sitting, slightly slumped, remaining to all eyes ‘the height a woman should be.’

  A quick study, Anne. Impressive as she was deaf in one ear.

  ‘Well?’ she said, finishing the piece on a suspiciously chaotic flurry. ‘The verdict?’

  I hadn’t recognized a note, and Anne had shifted between sheet and vase... ‘Wagner?’

  ‘Claude Debussy.’ Anne shuddered theatrically. ‘It’s French. Zut alors, Wiktor, you need practice. We must buy you a music cylinder next market day.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘And perhaps a pair of spectacles.’

  I smiled. Caught again. ‘No spectacles.’ I saddled closer to Anne on the bench. ‘And you can just lend me the cylinder Erich Kaltenbach bought you. Aren’t there two in your room?’

  Some shadow passed across my sister’s face. Anne turned around on the piano bench, placed a gentle hand on my arm. ‘There’ll be no more gifts from Erich Kaltenbach, Wiktor.’

  ‘Why?’

  She looked over her shoulder as if to be certain no listener stood close by. Mother and Erene were off in the kitchen, Father and Otomars forever locked in the study with some guest. Anne’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Albrecht Meer proposed last night. On our private walk.’ She put a finger to her lips. ‘That’s a secret, Wiktor. Mama knows but not Papa. Not yet.’

  ‘Albrecht Meer?’ Again? ‘Will you accept?’

  ‘I did say, ‘No more gifts from Erich,’ didn’t I?’

  First, the Lett’s hidden warning, now a hushed marriage proposal. So many secrets today…

  We heard the creak of a door. Father emerged from the study, Otomars and their guest trailing behind. This man was a mystery. No one had told me we’d have a visitor on such a cold windswept Sunday. Yet there he was, a robust-looking man in his late thirties, nothing unusual in his dress, clothes perhaps a bit plainer than a gentleman’s, but still proper enough, still something regal running through him. There was a stern, self-importance to his manner that somehow reminded me of dusty paintings of old Prussian soldiers. Curious.

  The stranger exchanged goodbyes with Father at the main door while Otomars took a seat near the piano looking rather sullen. Was this visitor’s German language Baltic in style? Or did the kaiser’s distant realm run in his accent? Difficult to tell.

  ‘Who is he?’ I whispered to Otomars, but he waved me off without a glance, his stare remaining on the conversation at the door.

  Donning a felt jacket and feathered cap, the man gave a curt bow to all, then saw himself out. The room grew silent. Father walked over to the piano and asked Anne to recall something of Schubert’s. She played beautifully, a hint of sadness in the music.

  When the notes had at last faded, Otomars said, ‘Well?’

  Father shook his head: ‘No.’

  *****

  ‘Otomars says we need guards.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Father locked the rifle bolt, took aim at a crow settling on a stump in the snowy field. ‘For six hundred years our family has tended this land without incident, Wiktor. I’m not going to be the first master terrified of his workers.’ He let off his shot, a miss, the crow fluttering into the air unharmed. ‘Our servants are good people. It’s an insult to us and to them.’

  Otomars should have known. Father had always been an independent spirit. He felt no allegiance to the kaiser, grumbled about paying taxes to the tsar. He had always said the Baltic landowners would be best served with self-rule, autonomous from any king or emperor, proudly on their own with aid from no one. To hire protection was disgraceful to him.

  ‘If he’s so worried, where is Otomars now?’ said Father. ‘Your brother sits with the women instead of practicing marksmanship.’ He glanced down at me. ‘Sometimes I wonder if he really desires a country life.’

  Perhaps, my long silence softened him. As always, Father reined in his censure when it became too severe. ‘Of course, it is grimly cold, so who can blame Otomars, eh, Wiktor? One’s fingers don’t numb through two-layer gloves by the fireside.’

  Yes, certainly. The temperature out here was plunging. Air prickling and popping on my eyes, cheeks burning from briefest exposure. Wisely, Father had decided to forgo our usual Tuesday hunting session, instead settling for thirty minutes of target practice down near the Latvian villages.

  I thought we’d be alone given the weather, but the Letts were stirring, called by the sounds of gunfire on a slow winter day. Old farmers smoking their pipes in the cold winds, capped young men laboring to finish their workday chores, they all paused to watch, leaning on a far away fence as we shot ice balls off another. At least a half dozen of them, gabbing in their mysterious language. It made me think of secrets.

  ‘I wish I understood them,’ I whispered to myself.

  Father heard me. ‘The ruling classes choose the language, Wiktor. The Letts all speak Russian. And the best of their kind learn German. Doctor Gulbis for example. What good is it to learn Lettish?’

  ‘But they can speak right in front of us. Without the slightest concern.’

  Father frowned, shoved a new shell into the rifle. ‘Wiktor, what’s this all about?’

  ‘Otomars says someone from the house staff hung that ba
g in the tree.’

  He laughed. ‘Who? Erene?’

  ‘No. Dear Erene would never…’

  ‘Matiss?’

  ‘I couldn’t imagine…’

  ‘Exactly. Your brother finds conspiracies everywhere.’ He bolted the gun. ‘Our forefathers were crusaders, Wiktor. Fighters for the Cross. They conquered a wilderness, so we might live here in peace. And if they weren’t afraid, why should we be?’

  ‘They had soldiers.’

  ‘We are soldiers, Son.’ He passed me the rifle. ‘Now, take one more shot and let’s go home.’

  I crouched down and found a secure position. As I tried to steady my shaking hands in the cold and find a worthy final target in the fields beyond, a sudden laughter interrupted my concentration.

  It came from the Letts watching along the roadside fence. Unattended by those above, a little boy, perhaps three or four, imitated my marksman stance at their knees. An invisible rifle in his hands, he fired imaginary shots between the fence rails at Father and me. Laughing as he hit his targets, young lips mimicking explosion sounds as the bullets found their mark again and again. Ignored and un-hushed by his elders.

  Chapter Three

  The stone made a spider-web crack in the glass top of the table, then thudded across the floorboards until it found quieter grounds atop the rug near my desk. I stood back, away from the window. Somewhere a woman was screaming. Mother? Anne? No, it was the servant Erene in the entrance way, she had dropped the tray, a flat clang from the platter ringing through the room, the coffee cups in pieces, a puddle of steaming brown liquid seeping over the floor.

  Staccato heart in my ears, I sprinted to the stairwell. At their base, near the door, I spied Anne, her arms locked around Mother whose face had turned grey as her hair.

  ‘What has happened?’ my own voice high and girlish with panic.

  Our mother’s words went unheard. Erene passed me on the stairs so quickly that she knocked me down. I fell to my knees, holding the banister to keep from falling farther.

  Erene’s words turned fear to stark terror: ‘We’re on fire. They’ve set the house on fire!’ She looked to Anne, then back to Mother. ‘Where’s the Master? Mistresses where’s the Master?’ With each ‘M’ her voice grew shriller.

  Anne shouted: ‘Out. We need to get out.’

  Erene’s reply was incomprehensible, syllables merging, rising to a scream. My sister cut her off: ‘We must go.’

  ‘They’ll kill us. They will.’ A quick and panicked utterance, it was not my mother’s voice, foreign and cracking, though it came from her lips.

  Somewhere off in the hall came the chiming of falling glass. ‘Who will kill us?’ I gasped, hands shaking on the banister. What bandits, what army of invaders had found its way into our lands?

  My head throbbed as I hurried down the stairs. At the bottom the heat was that of the kiln, my eyes quickly tearing, black clouds caressing the ceiling.

  This could not be happening.

  A group of servant girls, cries like seagulls on the Libau docks, ran past and huddled about Erene. She escaped them, pressed up against the door. ‘We must leave Mistresses, the smoke is growing worse.’

  Mother jerked her head around. ‘Where’s Wiktor? Where’s my baby?’

  ‘Here Mama.’ I rushed to embrace her.

  ‘We must go, Mother!’ Anne pleaded.

  ‘No, not until we find Rudolf. He was upstairs.’ Mother released me, tried to climb the steps, but Anne and Erene pulled her from the stairwell, their calls fading in the choking fumes, cries turning to gravely wheezes.

  The thickening billows were overpowering. The insides of my throat cracking, I could no longer hold my breath and inhaled the searing clouds, my body rejecting each gasp in a spasm of painful coughs. Whoever was outside, whatever band of marauders ransacked our land was the lesser evil. They might kill us, staying inside certainly would.

  Yet, even suffocating, near blinded, I hesitated. What might they do to Mother, to Anne, if we opened that door? It failed my young sense of justice. Our family had never hurt anyone, why should they want to harm us? This must be a mistake, some grievance against the wrong victims.

  While I cowered at the door, the decision was made for me. The servant girls panicked, and despite Mother’s command, they broke open the door and fled out into the night. If the smoke retreated momentarily from the blast of winter air, somewhere close within this new breath fed the flames. The vengeful gloom returned, stronger, doubly thick, carrying the scorching heat of its source. It burned, the hairs on my arms beginning to glow like embers.

  Anne pulled our screaming mother out into the yard, arms still locked about each other they collapsed into the snow. Cries again and again for Father, nowhere to be seen. Please, God, let him be outside the house. Head dizzy, I stumbled to a knee in the ice, finally saw them, the enemy.

  An army in rags. No successor to Napoleon, no endless hordes of Huns, it was nothing but a group of farmers. No uniforms, no flags, just a bunch of people in peasants’ clothes. The men, hundreds of them, carried shovels, rifles, bricks and stones. Many shook torches in their hands. They had a greasy, dirty look to them, as if they were children of the hellish atmosphere that had just released us. There was no roar, no great swell of sound. Most stood there silently, letting a few do all the shouting. They screamed fierce words, most too distorted to understand. But I caught a few in Lettish: Degt. Burn. Liesma. Flame.

  To my horror I recognized faces in the crowd: Janis Stalts who fed the horses in the stables; old Matiss, who only yesterday returned from Riga with Brother’s newspapers; even faithful Rothberts who taught me Latvian sonnets during his breaks from fence building. They had treated us so kindly, so respectfully. Father had given them work, helped them feed their families. Why had they all betrayed us?

  I could not run; they’d formed a wall around our home, watching as it was consumed behind. Sparks fell to earth around me, birthing little steam geysers in the snow. The great heat blistering my neck, I patted my head, prayed my hair was not aflame.

  I glanced back, away from the vicious mob. The entire left side of the building, where Father’s drawing room had been, was caught in climbing flames, the winds blowing the sparks across the roof. Dumbfounded, I slowly realized the constant screaming in my ear was Mother calling out for our father.

  Where was he? I took a step nearer the house, but the blaze was only growing, the heat an impenetrable wall. Was it too late?

  Averting my watering eyes from the pyre, I found Otomars standing a few yards away in front of the manor. He had his riding gear on, red coat, high black boots and leggings, helmet lying in the snow. He was talking to one of the mob, a thick man, with a deeply creased face sporting a blue work cap, their conversation drowned beneath the venomous crowd and Mother’s hysterical screams. Otomars’s stern expression showed not a trace of fear, as if he still controlled these rebellious workers. Heir to the estate, their master, even as it went down in flames behind him.

  Another group of servants, coated in soot, burst through the house door. One stooped to tend a damaged limb, several others ran in mad circles trying to choke out the searing embers inside their lungs. A few sprang into the crowd, embracing…embracing who? Brothers? Sisters? Lovers? Husbands? Or traitors in our own household?

  Fear began to ebb toward rage.

  Otomars made his way across to the family, the man in the blue cap walking parallel, as if there was an unspoken battle line, some invisible moat separating them. My brother paused, put a hand on Mother’s shoulder. She seemed not to notice, an uncomprehending look of terror on her face. Yes, I wanted to strike out at the traitors, to rip the torches from their hands, to shove their ungrateful faces into the ice, and show them that our family wouldn’t cringe before their kind.

  Half-bent, Father passed through the fire-ringed door. Either he’d doused himself to retard the flames, or he’d been taking a bath, because he wore nothing but his robe, not even shoes on his feet. Ste
am trailed from his uncovered head, in his hands his hunting rifle, on his face stark hatred.

  Otomars shoved the gun from his hands, knocking it to the ground. Father dropped to retrieve it, Otomars swiftly kicking it to the feet of the man in the blue cap.

  My jaw opened in horror. Our brother had betrayed Father, all of our family. Why? What cowardice was this? I sprang forward to help Father, but Anne gripped me solidly by the shoulder, shoved me to my knees.

  ‘Wiktor,’ she whispered, trying to soothe my rage. ‘Pray with me.’

  *****

  They escorted our family down the hill toward the stables. I glared at each as we walked. So many familiar, so many faces from childhood, people I had long trusted. Even the house servants stood with them now, most averting their gaze as we passed. But those that didn’t, they were the most horrible: the visions that would haunt my dreams years later. In their eyes I saw emotions undreamt until this night: hatred and mirth, pride and vindication. Some laughed in unrestrained glee. Others shouted out in Lettish, unknown words that I could not define yet felt their meaning. And their desirous looks toward Anne, so unconcerned by Otomars or Father, eclipsed only with a glance from the man in the blue cap.

  My eyes found my brother ahead. He’d given up the family’s possessions, home, everything without fight or protest. My fists balled in such rage that my nails cut deep into my palm.

  At the stables, Jazeps Bats and several others were standing about our wagon, taking out the cargo, removing the seat cushions, the leather lining, gutting the thing, leaving only the base wooden skeleton. They hitched an old plow horse to it and then motioned us in. I helped Mother step up into the wagon, then Anne, and finally climbed in myself. Otomars went forward and waited for Father to join him. He did not, remaining at the end, surrounded by his ex-servants. Some looked as though they might embrace him, others as if murder crossed their thoughts, most shuffled about uncomfortably.

  Father finally climbed into the bed, the shake of the floorboards sobering my thoughts, reminding me this wasn’t some horrible nightmare. Unable to stop her tears, Anne removed her knit stockings, tried to force them onto Father’s bare feet while he sat unmoving.