The Secret Wife(45)
A jug stood ready on a side table and Kitty was happy to accept because it was a hot day and her mouth was dry.
‘This is the notebook I told you about.’ She passed it over. ‘I think it may have belonged to my great-grandfather, who was a novelist.’
Vera took the notebook, put on a pair of reading glasses and opened the first page. ‘This is a diary,’ she said straight away. ‘These short lines’ – she held it out to show Kitty – ‘are dates. Do you see? That one reads March fifteenth, Wednesday.’
‘Which year?’
Vera looked at the front cover of the notebook. ‘I can’t see a year. Would you like me to translate a little so we can discover what it is about?’
‘Oh, yes, please!’
Vera opened it to the first page and spoke slowly: ‘February eighteenth, Sunday. We had obednitza at 11.30.’ She glanced up to see if Kitty had understood – ‘That’s a liturgy in the Russian Orthodox Church’ – before continuing. ‘Then we worked outside in the garden, digging over the soil. A letter from the outside world made me laugh with M’s description of his landlady’s cabbage soup tasting as if she had boiled up some dirty stockings from her laundry bag. He writes that he is teaching tricks to a foul-smelling mongrel with traces of so many breeds that it is impossible to guess its parentage. The dog is a fast learner who will wait in a corner for several minutes until given a signal, upon which it will retrieve a ball and drop it in his lap in return for a crust of bread. It would put to shame certain other dogs of our acquaintance!’
Vera stopped and looked up to see if this made sense to Kitty.
‘I wonder why he talks about a “letter from the outside world”. Where was he?’
Vera shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Shall I carry on?’
‘Why not try a later passage?’
Vera flicked to the middle of the book and chose a page: ‘30th April, Monday. Olga and I are learning to make bread, under the watchful eye of Trina.’
‘Who is Olga? And who is Trina?’ Kitty wondered out loud.
Vera shrugged and continued: ‘It seems you must knead the dough for at least twenty minutes to get air into it, then let it rest for half an hour before moulding it into shape. Any activity that distracts us from missing Mama, Papa and Maria is welcome, and I expect that in my next life the skill of breadmaking will prove useful.’
‘In my next life?” Kitty wondered, then answered her own question. ‘Perhaps this was written at a time when Dmitri was planning to emigrate. He lived in Berlin between the wars.’
Vera flicked a few pages further: ‘4th June, Monday. We are all furious with Maria, who has been fraternising with the youngest guard, Anton, the one with the crooked nose. She thinks it is a joke, but it encourages them to toy with the rest of us. I had to push Anton hard tonight as he grabbed my breast on the way to the latrine, and he made a crude sound with his tongue, taunting me.’ Vera looked up at Kitty. ‘It appears this was written by a woman.’
Kitty was surprised. ‘Who can it be? And why was there a guard? Where were they?’
Vera read on: ‘I feel a growing sense of dread that we will die in this godforsaken house with whitewashed windows, denied even one ray of sunlight, and that I will never see my dearest love again …’
‘It sounds as though they are in captivity. I wonder why.’
Vera gasped as she read the next bit. ‘Tomorrow is Anastasia’s seventeenth birthday.’ She looked at Kitty. ‘Do these names mean anything to you? Olga, Maria and Anastasia?’
‘No. Should they?’
Vera skimmed down the page and translated another bit: ‘Alexei is being very brave but he has not been well enough for us to wheel him into the garden since we arrived here.’ She looked at Kitty. ‘I suppose it could be a forgery.’
‘A forgery of what? Who do you think they are?’
Vera frowned. ‘These are the names of the Romanov imperial family, who were imprisoned after the Revolution in February 1917.’
‘Surely it can’t be!’ Kitty racked her brains, trying to remember her history lessons. ‘Why would Dmitri have a journal belonging to one of them?’
Vera placed the notebook on a side table as though it were a precious relic and stood up. ‘I think I should wear gloves when handling this. It could be a document of historic importance.’ She walked across the room and retrieved a pair of white cotton gloves from a drawer.
‘Really? Do you think there’s a chance it is genuine?’
‘We know both the elder girls and their parents kept diaries. They are held in the State Archives of the Russian Federation but parts have been released in translation and this is remarkably similar in tone and content. That description of whitewashed windows sounds like the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg. It’s well documented that Maria flirted with a guard there and the others were furious with her.’
Kitty was stunned and could barely take it in. ‘What happened to them?’
‘They were murdered in the early hours of July the seventeenth, 1918.’ Vera sat down again and opened the diary to its last page. ‘This diary finishes on the fourteenth, a Sunday.’ She reached for an iPad that Kitty hadn’t noticed before. Somehow it seemed incongruous in the dusty, bookish surroundings. She tapped on it for a few minutes then said, ‘Yes, the fourteenth of July 1918 was a Sunday. Of course, there will have to be many tests if this is to be verified as genuine.’