From the 'Antique Square'
to tell us it was the Red army. So we shouldn’t have moved south after all. I know it sounds childish -- forgive me, seriously -- but I won’t despair. My sisters and I were huddling like chickens for an entire thirty minutes and then I decided I was sick of being frightened. Played the piano instead -- had a very nice waltz around the guest room with George, he came from the White army with a saber wound in his side but is all cured now.”
Over time, she began to sign her letters “Love, Cathy,” and her diary started to mention “Mr. X” or “My darling golden X.”
“Sang a duet with X, the army hasn’t spoiled his voice one bit. He needed a shave badly, though... Says there’s no time in between battles. Silly!”
“X my golden one is leaving me again. Went to church with him -- not really a church anymore, as the Reds are keeping potatoes stored in there. But the Father performed a service for us in secret and blessed the icon I gave to X.”
“Talked with golden X on the phone and then the line got cut. Red guard told us we were using the people’s electricity. Would like to ask village people if they need my phone.”
Her diary ends suddenly, in October 1920. I suppose she went to Sevastopol like most other blue-bloods in Russia did at that time, to nurse burned, torn, gassed men who had only wanted to defend the life they had grown up with. She must have gone to see the young man whom she had sent the photograph and the lock of hair. Perhaps he had been wounded. Perhaps he had been a prince. I chose to leave the mystery to the two of them. What I do know, however, is that he left Russia on a ship to Turkey and she did not; that five years later, he came back to Russia and looked for Cathy. There is a crumpled sheet with prisoners’ initials on it. Among them are five CNE’s. Had she perished together with so many others? Or had she survived, and left her story in an old folder so that the new regime would not identify her?
Chances are she did not live to see 1925, when the short skirts she had so dreamed to wear finally came into fashion. She didn’t see the calm settle
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