Interlude
Tatiana: Old Flames
Before the revolution—rather, the revolutions—the three of us, Mama, my sister Olga, and I, worked in a military hospital. Olga, as it turned out, just couldn’t deal with the suffering, the stress, or the sheer physical work involved. I think she might have been able to take on any two of those; all three, together, were just too much for her. She was put to work handling administrative and clerical matters, which suited her a good deal better than changing bandages and emptying bedpans . . . or holding the hands of the dying.
Me, I just wanted to help. No . . . no, that’s not quite right, nor quite honest; I wanted to feel, by helping, and for the first time in my life, like an active, useful human being. They still tried to shield me from it, of course, and it took a good deal to convince everyone that I was serious about taking on duties at least as onerous as anyone else had.
I flirted with most of the patients, at least a little. Why? Why because I thought morale was critical to healing, and it wouldn’t hurt their morale any for me to flirt with them.
One was more than flirting, however. There was an officer of the Guards—everyone knew who he was so I won’t mention the name—already well decorated for bravery and advanced beyond what his years would suggest. He was fairly short, not much taller than I was, a little dark, and with maybe some Tatar in his ancestry. It was his grandfather, I think, who had been the first one ennobled in his ancestry, so marriage was out of the question.
Still, a girl could dream, couldn’t she? Me, I dreamt of a happy life, somewhere in the country, with cows and chickens and a brood of children, his children and mine, and hopefully none of them bleeders like my poor, dear, utterly frustrated brother.
Maybe if we could both have run off to America . . .