Chapter 1
Vasil was my first love. He was endowed with the unassuming beauty of a Siberian. He was tall, his hips were slim, he moved with a feline grace. His eyes were robin egg’s blue, his slightly turned up nose had a puppy loveliness, his wide mouth showed two rows of perfect teeth in a heartbreaking smile. And Vasil smiled a lot; at least when we were together sheltered by hazelnut bushes at the rear of our garden. We weren’t hiding to misbehave but to avoid snooping, were it by my grandmother or Vasil’s sergeant major Ivan who both tried to pull out our love before it had time to take roots even if their reasons were not the same. My grandmother was plotting a marriage made in Heaven for her little darling and Siberia was her very perception of Hell and Vasil’s companion in arms felt a fatherly concern for his child-soldier whom he, until now, succeeded to keep out of harm’s way and intended to bring home in one piece, his heart included.
The month was May. The “war to end all wars” was finished and illusions not yet lost. Our liberators from the German yoke were sincerely welcome to our villa by my father, a spirited combatant of the Czech Resistance against the occupants. He treated the Soviet soldiers like his cherished guests for whom only the best was good enough, from tableware to copious food that our cook Mary and the Red Army chef Anton prepared hand in hand. Yuri Andreevich Dudorkin, the Lieutenant Colonel of the Red Army and my father cemented nightly their Slavonic brotherhood toasting each other with the Russian vodka and the Czech plum brandy Slivovice, served with the accompaniment of classical music performed on my grandmother’s Steinway by an exceedingly talented Army pianist.
The atmosphere became more and more casual as the evening reclined into night and an accordionist was called in to play the Russian golden oldies, emotion dripping from his hands into the hearts of his public. That was the moment when the ladies had to leave the gentlemen among themselves and my only way not to miss the good time was to listen to the music crouched on the half ending in front of my children’s room. What was happening next downstairs I know just as related by Vasil summoned to give his virtuoso performance of the Russian folk hop cossatchok danced crouching down with weight on one while leg kicking his limbs into the air under the enthusiastic encouragement of his soused admirers. Then came the crowning glory of the evening when Vasil’s enthusiasts joined in, falling on their asses madly giggling and staying on the floor until they sobered up enough to stagger to their beds; a view offensive to a young girl’s eyes and recalled to me unwillingly and on my explicit demand by Vasil who, a hard-core abstinent, found such a vile comportment under human dignity. It was in one of these spirited moments when Yuri Andreevich Dudorkin drew his well-served gun, that hadn’t missed a single fascist invader bringing death and squalor to Holy Mother Russia, out of its holster and offered it to my father as a token of eternal friendship - a poisonous gift that would cost my father just about his life.
This was a glorious time when we didn’t know we were dancing under the Guillotine and that, in the near future, many heads would fall. Only Vasil and I had a true lovers’ forewarning of the boding evil gathering its dark clouds around us. Every night we said goodbye we held our hands tight and tighter dreading it may be the last time. Our life in the Siberian cottage with blazing fire in a huge wood stove, a tabby cat on my knees and Vasil at my feet, was drifting away like a dream at dawn. We were aware that our days were counted as the Red Army being ordered to return to the Soviet Union Vasil would either march out of my life or become a deserter, finally found, court-martialed and shot. Was I ready to pay any price to stay together concealing Vasil in the hideout where my father sheltered persons in danger during the war? Want a bet?
Even if that had been feasible – which it wasn’t without my father’s authorization – to embark on a life-long commitment to Vasil was the last I wished for. It needed some talk and persuasion to convince Vasil I loved him too much to put his life in danger and more tongue in my cheek to prevent him from asking his sergeant for the permission to marry me and take to the Homeland of the Proletariat the daughter of a banker, the arch-enemy of the working class.
We spent our last day together holding hands, swearing never to give our hearts to anybody else, to write each other a daily letter and, once, when the proletarians of the whole world would be united and nothing would stand in our love’s way, Vasil would come for me on a white stallion and we would live happily ever after in a fairy-tale land.
I received from Vasil as a good-bye gift a pair of fluffy socks whose warmth should be mounting from my feet straight to my heart. They were a dual gift of love: his for me and his grandmother’s for him, not just knitted but also spun from the yarn of Vasil’s beloved Angora rabbit, and embroidered by Vasil with a love bird holding a crimson heart in his tiny beak. To take and give, I cut off a lock of my hair, enshrined it in a golden locket set with a ruby in a cluster of diamonds, that my grandmother bestowed upon me for my sweet sixteen. It was meant to be worn at my debutante ball and passed on the glorious day of my betrothal onto the lucky one fated to take me up the aisle on the happiest day of a woman’s life. Braving out my grandmother’s wrath I hung the locket on Vasil’s neck, this being proof enough that I had some feelings for him. Before we parted Vasil blushing asked me for a kiss - his and mine first one, the one that can’t be denied. He held me in a reverential distance, his lips on mine soft and light implying we were twin-lovers and any hint of sex incestuous.
What happened after was grief and woe.
At my coming-out ball I couldn’t answer my grandmother’s simple question what had happened to my golden locket matching so well my white gown. She accused that “savage” whom I have stooped as low as to befriend of having stolen it. I am pretty certain my grandmother knew but couldn’t accept the truth that her little “angel” had fallen so low as to give her heart – and the locket - to that disgraceful peasant.
After the Communist Putsch in 1948 my father was degraded from a freedom fighter to the enemy of the people. When an installation engineer, a former Nazi collaborator, now an aware member of the Communist Party having been called in to repair our heater, discovered Dudorkin’s gun in its hiding place under the water pipes, my father was charged with holding an arsenal of weapons to organise a capitalist take-over. My father was saved from the capital punishment by the intervention of his Anti-Nazi fellow fighters who testified for him and won his acquittal.
