The Past
Valya
That morning, she had read an unfavorable symbol at the bottom of her coffee cup—a grave. Valya jerked back as though burned. Especially as it wasn’t just one grave, but two.
She immediately rushed to the cathedral. There, she prayed to every saint she could think of, kissed the icons, lit the candles. Spent hours on her knees beseeching and weeping in the cloud of smoky incense.
When Valya returned to the tearoom, she had another unwelcome surprise.
The sign on Samovar’s door proclaimed Fermé.
“What is this?” She was tired and hungry and knew she had opened the tearoom. She pushed open the door, and it gave with a bright chime of the new bell she had recently purchased. A few faces turned to her—guiltily, clearly avoiding her eyes.
“Valya!” Her daughter shot up from her chair, uncharacteristically edgy. “We didn’t think you’d be back so soon.”
“Why would you think that? I went to church, not the countryside,” Valya grumbled, sweeping a gaze over her tearoom.
There were no patrons. A few of the tables and chairs had been wedged together in the middle of the room, the group of people gathered there bent forward, heads nearly touching as they whispered.
Valya smelled bad ideas brewing, disastrous consequences.
“Did my invitation get lost in the mail?” she grumbled some more.
“Why is the tearoom closed? And what are you whispering about, hmm?”
“I cannot take it anymore. Him.” Svetlana paced. “I need to leave Paris. Go where he won’t find me.”
Valya recalled how pallid Svetlana had appeared when she returned from Parc Monceau with baby Zina the other day, telling her she had seen the Grand Duke, back from Russia, where there was no revolution, threatening to take the tearoom and leave them homeless.
“Calm yourself, Sveta,” Valya said, striving for calmness herself.
“We can repeat our prophesy, the warning. He fears it. He will leave again. You will see.”
“No.” Svetlana shook her head, so hard Valya thought it might swivel right off her neck.
“He will never leave me alone,” she whispered.
“He will never release me. He told me so, at the park. He said he will find me no matter where I go, that he owns me. No, he will continue to torment me. Unless…oh, why can’t we just kill him! ”
“Because we aren’t murderers.” At least, Valya no longer had the appetite for it. Especially after the Grand Duke had left and her granddaughter was born. She wanted to be a better woman for the girl, to take care of her and to see her grow into a woman herself.
Sergei spoke. “Admit it, Valya, there are only bad choices for people like us.”
“What people?” Valya demanded. She had had a soft spot for the medium since he helped her back in Moscow as a boy.
But he was out of his depth now. “People who have lined their pockets with francs, gotten away with it, and are free to spend said francs to their hearts’ content?
” They knew she was right, which explained their silence.
“Then I will run. I will take Zina, and I will run.”
Valya’s heart skipped a beat. “Why would he be interested in the girl?” She had her suspicions about what had happened between the Grand Duke and her daughter, had assumed the girl was his, but could not be sure. How could he?
“He threatened to take her!” burst from Svetlana. Tears spilled down her reddened cheeks. “No, Mama, I cannot watch him take first our home, then my daughter.”
Valya was momentarily distracted by her daughter calling her Mama. She pressed down the swell of emotion and asked, “Is he the girl’s father?”
Svetlana turned her face away. “He thinks he is, and that is enough.”
Again, Valya was distracted; she was imagining life without her granddaughter, should her daughter take her away, all the purity, joy, and love wrenched away from her.
She would be alone in this foreign country.
No family, not even much of a home, nothing.
“All right. Let’s think about what to do. ” They would solve this, together.
But Sergei slipped his toned dancer’s arm around Svetlana’s too-thin shoulders; they were shaking. “I am with Sveta. Either kill the bastard or else leave Paris. There is no other choice. Even I can see that.”
Mila rose. “I agree. Dasha and I can help smuggle her out of town. The bastard won’t even notice.”
“Oh, why not.” Dasha gave an ugly, glittering smile. “She doesn’t need that overprivileged, overstuffed pig.”
Coralie and Marie-Louise stopped whispering. “We have friends in Lyon who can take in Svetlana and the child for a time,” said Marie-Louise. Her unemotional face had transformed into something resembling human.
No, no, no. They could not leave her alone, would not leave her. Valya would not let them. “And what will you do? Live like a nomad? Without family, without roots?” Without your mother? “Besides, the train is dangerous, the Grand Duke will find you easily.”
“I can help with that.” Klara took Svetlana’s hands in hers. “I have a garage, and a motorcar in there you are free to take for however long you need.”
Mary approached the two women and placed a hand on Svetlana’s arm. “I have luggage from my travels with Josephine. I can help you prepare.”
Svetlana gave a grateful nod; once more, her eyes shone with tears.
“My sister lives in Marseille,” said Henriette. “You may stay there until you are sick of her. And you will be. But at least you will be safe from that monster.”
The blind devotion to Svetlana incensed Valya.
She felt her face swell with anger until she thought she would scream.
Her world was shrinking. Her daughter was doing it, really doing it, leaving, and taking her granddaughter with her.
But with a glance around the tearoom, Valya blew out a resigned breath.
“Fine. Leave, then.” She waited—for Svetlana to ask her to join them, to apologize, something, anything.
But she did not. “How you will survive on your own is a mystery.” Without your mother, without the business, Valya wanted to add, knowing the money would run out eventually.
But she did not. “I will not be here to watch you leave.” With the last thing that matters to me.
She walked to the door, aware everybody in the room was watching her unabashedly.
Let them. She turned slightly. “Are you certain you won’t change your mind? ”
Svetlana shook her head, her mind apparently and irrevocably made up. “I will leave in three days’ time. Meet me here at ten in the evening. That is, whoever wants to.”
“Do not worry,” Henriette assured her. “We will be here.”
Valya caught her daughter’s questioning look, Will you be here?
She turned back to the door without acknowledging the look and placed a hand on the knob.
The smell of bad ideas, of disastrous consequences, rushed back to her.
In her mind’s eye, she saw the two graves.
But she could never stop her daughter once her mind was made up.
This was her life, her child, and Valya had to let them live it.
She pulled open the door, and she left the tearoom without another word.
She would remember the peal of the bell, too happy for a forever goodbye.
For that was the last time she would ever see her daughter—alive.
Valya was still staying at her client’s apartment three days later.
On the evening of Svetlana’s planned escape, Valya couldn’t rest. She wound through the night back to the tearoom at half past nine.
The smell of disaster had solidified, becoming a cold, hard knot in the pit of her stomach. She imagined those graves…
She veered onto rue Daru, glimpsing the darkened tearoom in the distance.
All was quiet. Perhaps Svetlana had changed her mind? Or already left?
Suddenly, the tearoom door banged open and Sergei dove outside. Even from where Valya stood, rooted to the pavement, she saw the smear of dark red on his cheek. His eyes were wide, his face ashen and pulled in what could only be anguish.
It was enough for her to start sprinting. “What happened?” she demanded. He shook his head, blabbering something she couldn’t make out. Valya grabbed his shoulders and shook him, hard. “Speak, man, for God’s sake!”
“She’s gone—Sveta. H-he, he killed her. He—”
Valya didn’t hear the rest. Her legs moved on their own. She ran inside like a woman possessed, whipping her head around, looking for…
Her eyes landed on the huddle of people in the middle of the tearoom, where mere days earlier they had whispered and planned the ill-fated escape. This time, there was a wail, lone and heartbreaking, issuing from behind the huddle.
“It is my fault. All my fault,” came the familiar voice.
Valya had heard it somewhere before. Yes, in Montmartre, when they had told fortunes on the streets.
This man, this policeman—inspector?—had accosted her and Svetlana, threatened them with arrest and worse.
What was he doing here? Dimly, Valya recalled she had also seen him from time to time at the Grand Duke’s.
The other sounds in the room brought her back: weeping, sniffling, deep sighs. A baby’s cry, somewhere upstairs.
She pushed past Mila and Dasha, Klara and Mary, Henriette. A gasp wrenched from Valya. Her vision blackened, her limbs reducing to jelly. If not for Sergei, rushing up in time to catch her, she would have fallen.
For in a puddle of blood lay a motionless body. Her daughter. Her Sveta.
A man bent over the body. It was that policeman from Montmartre. She thought his name was Lucian.
When Valya could stand, she slowly walked over to her daughter. Now she could only hear her own rough breathing. The tears threatened to come, stabbing at her eyes, swelling her throat and face, but she resolutely held them off. There would be time for weeping later.