The Secret Wife(3)
He felt honoured that a grand duchess was conversing with him in this natural, everyday fashion. ‘Of course, Your Imperial Highness. Do you prefer small or large dogs?’
‘I think small. And there’s no need to call me “Your Imperial Highness”. I am a nurse here, not a royal. Mama, my sister Olga and I are all training as nurses to help the war effort. These days I am known as “Nurse Romanova Three”, while they are One and Two.’
He chuckled at the impersonal moniker. ‘Do you like Terriers, Nurse Romanova Three? The Black Russian Terrier is a clever dog and not too boisterous. Spaniels are also popular with ladies for their silky coats. And then there are small breeds of Bulldog. I rather like French Bulldogs.’
She clapped her hands. “Oh yes! I love those serious wrinkled faces, as if they have the cares of the world on their shoulders.”
Her sister Olga, the other angel in white, called to say she was going through to the next ward. Dmitri expected Tatiana to follow but instead she lingered.
‘I see you have a leg wound,’ she said. ‘Is it terribly painful? Can I get you anything?’
He shook his head. ‘Thank you, I’m fine. I’m just annoyed that I was careless enough to get myself wounded in the first week of war.’
‘Is it a bullet wound?’
He thought back to the moment when he ran out to collect Malevich from the field, dragging him by his collar. In retrospect he’d felt a blow on his thigh but thought nothing of it as he concentrated on saving his friend. ‘Yes. I didn’t realise I’d been hit until we got back to base. It was odd because the pain and bleeding didn’t start until then.’ All of a sudden the blood had begun to gush and he’d collapsed on the grass. It was a mystery why it hadn’t bled earlier, out on the field – as if one of the saints was looking after him. After his collapse he remembered feeling very hot and starting to shiver, his teeth clenched, and they’d ripped off his trousers to see a ragged hole going all the way through his left thigh and grazing the right. Fortunately the bullet had not lodged inside. Perhaps that’s what had enabled surgeons to save the leg. Over the last weeks he’d been transported back from the front at Gumbinnen, East Prussia, via various medical stations, to the Catherine Palace in St Petersburg, where the grand staterooms had been converted into wards.
Tatiana asked his regiment and exclaimed when she heard he was in the 8th Voznesensk Uhlans: ‘You are one of my own men! I must take especially good care of you.’ Both Olga and Tatiana had been given honorary command of their own regiments on their fourteenth birthdays.
‘It’s a great honour to be nursed by my colonel.’ He grinned. ‘But I suppose I will have to behave myself with you around.’
They chatted for a while about the war, triggered only a few weeks earlier by the German Kaiser’s rampant militarism. It was still a shock to Dmitri, and Tatiana told him it was even more shocking to them as they had so many German relatives, their mother having been born there. She called the Kaiser a swine. Olga glanced in to look for her sister and made a brief, impatient gesture with outspread hands.
‘I must get to work,’ Tatiana said. ‘I am supposed to accompany a more experienced nurse and she will be waiting. But tell me, is there anything I can do to make your stay more comfortable?’
‘I don’t suppose you could lend me a book? Any book at all. I love to read.’ He hoped he wasn’t being presumptuous. ‘I would return it, of course.’
She seemed delighted. ‘I too love reading. Who are your favourite authors?’
He hesitated. So many good writers these days were anti-tsarist: Alexander Kuprin, Maxim Gorky, Ivan Bunin … he must choose from an earlier era: ‘Tolstoy, of course. And Chekhov.’
‘I agree with you,’ she said. ‘I much prefer the classics to the modern writers. My absolute favourite is Turgenev. Have you read Fathers and Sons?’
Dmitri was surprised, as the novel dealt with the younger generation rejecting the values of the old aristocratic order. ‘Not since I was a boy. I love the poetry of Turgenev’s language. He conjures images that stir the soul.’
She was amused: ‘You sound like a writer yourself.’
He made a face. ‘I used to keep a journal as a youth but not for a long while now. It was rather whining and self-indulgent.’
‘Really? I keep a journal. I try to describe events of the day truthfully. I like the challenge of finding exactly the right words and often they come to me when I am doing something completely different: working here in the hospital, or doing my embroidery, or …’ She stopped, colouring slightly.
He liked the way she spoke, slowly, considering her words, and the intelligence he could see in her eyes. ‘In that case you have the instincts of a writer.’
She laughed. ‘Oh, I could hardly pretend … no one reads my journal but me.’
‘Without an audience, you can express your truest feelings. I used to find writing very useful for understanding myself. You know how sometimes you react instinctively in ways that puzzle you? You think: why am I angry? Why does that make me sad? It’s fascinating to unravel the tiny spark that provoked the reaction, perhaps just an unintended nuance, something that struck a chord and triggered the emotion of a much earlier experience … human nature is the most compelling study of all.’ He stopped, feeling he was talking too much and perhaps boring her, but she seemed to be listening intently.