The Secret Wife(18)
He got through the days by dreaming of the life he and Tatiana would lead together once the war was over. Would they stay in St Petersburg in a wing of one of the palaces? He would prefer to be in the country; he was more at home in wide open spaces. Still it didn’t feel real; he couldn’t allow himself to believe they would be married until her parents had given consent. In truth they had not known each other long. They’d had less than three months together before he came back to the front, and he could sense Tatiana had changed while he was away. Before she had been light-hearted and almost carefree; now she had grown up. She said as much in her letters:
Malama sweetheart,
Can you believe it is fifteen months since that December day when I waved farewell to you outside the Catherine Palace? I was a mere child in those innocent weeks at the start of the war, with no idea of what I would have to confront. Now I often assist as surgeons amputate men’s limbs; I dress stinking gangrenous wounds; I give injections and distribute medicines; I comfort those who are dying; and yesterday I was even able to calm a man who had some kind of fit of terror. He was staring straight ahead, rocking backwards and forwards and uttering a moaning sound that disturbed the other patients. At first I just talked in a low voice but he didn’t seem to hear or see me. Finally I began to sing, upon which he stopped moaning to listen, and at last he fell asleep for the first time since he arrived on our ward. I think my singing must be particularly soporific!
The patients give me a little insight into the life you are leading at the front and I am terrified on your behalf. I know that you are holding the line somewhere in Lithuania and are not currently in battle, but that shells pound the earth and snipers watch for any careless movement. Malama, I beg you to be extra-cautious and avoid any heroics. Souvenez vous que vous tenez mon coeur entre vos mains.
Tatiana’s endearments still amazed Dmitri after all this time. He was loved by his mother and sisters – perhaps his father even loved him in his own strict, old-fashioned way – but they were family and were supposed to love him; Tatiana had chosen to love him and he couldn’t understand why. What was special about him? He could list a thousand reasons why he loved her but they only made him feel even more unworthy: her gentle nature, her quiet dignity … he loved the way her eyes sometimes seemed to be gazing from a place deep inside her and focusing somewhere far in the distance, hinting at the intelligence of her inner world.
He glowed with pride when she sent him a newspaper clipping describing Olga and her as ‘The White Sisters of the War’. As well as nursing, Tatiana told him she headed a committee that helped to provide aid for the refugees who had poured into Russia from German-occupied territories, and she travelled the country inspecting facilities. Dmitri knew she was being modest in her letters when she wrote that she felt shy at committee meetings and wanted to dive under the table. He heard from other soldiers that Tatiana’s was by far the most popular of the picture postcards of the grand duchesses being sold to help fund the war, and surely that spoke volumes about her achievements as well as her beauty.
Her mother, on the other hand, was increasingly criticised in the press. ‘Rumours Spread that Rasputin urges Alexandra to Broker Peace with Germany’, ran one headline that reached them at the front, followed by: ‘A Third Government Minister Sacked by the Tsarina for Daring to Criticise her “Close Friend”’; ‘Tsarina will not Believe Stories of Rasputin’s Corruption’. Perhaps it was inevitable that the populace would be suspicious of Alexandra, as she had been born in Germany and still had family there; certainly it had been short-sighted of Nicholas to leave her in charge when he went to take command of the troops, allowing the disreputable Siberian to stay by her side.
One day Dmitri overheard a group of soldiers speculating that Alexandra was having an affair with Rasputin. This was treacherous talk and he could have disciplined them for it but he knew such sentiments were widespread and decided to pretend he hadn’t heard. He couldn’t discipline every soldier who thought that way, although he didn’t believe the rumour for one second. Alexandra was too proper, too insistent on recognition of her exalted position to entertain such a scruffy fellow in her bed. She seemed to him rather a cold mother, although Tatiana always sang her praises.
He wondered if Alexandra ever read the newspapers? Certainly Tatiana could not, because she seemed oblivious to the criticisms of Rasputin’s relationship with her mother. Since their argument she was cautious when she mentioned him in letters and there was no more ‘Uncle Grigory’. Still she maintained that Rasputin increased her understanding of God and Dmitri felt sure that her rather eccentric views on spirits almost certainly came from him. One day she wrote of a woman who came to the hospital to read soldiers’ palms:
She was a hearty type, like any farmer’s wife, but there was a mysterious look in her eyes when she communed with the spirits. Every soldier she spoke with seemed convinced of her powers, so I asked her to read my palm. She wondered if I had a question to which I sought the answer, so I asked if she could see when I would marry. She held my right hand and pored over it for some time, tracing the lines with the tip of her finger, then she said that my love line is strong and I will marry someone I love truly. She hesitated before adding that the line of fate is interrupted, making a sharp turn off to the right, and that this means I will pull off something extraordinary in the future. She would tell me no more, but I am greatly cheered that we will marry, Dmitri, because it must mean you will survive this war.