WeWriWa—A place where there’s no suffering

Welcome back to Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sunday, weekly Sunday hops where writers share 8–10 sentences from a book or WIP. This week’s snippet comes a few lines after last week’s, when young widower Mr. Lebedev was reunited with his three youngest daughters in February 1921. He now has five of his ten daughters back.

Next-youngest sister Natalya asked oldest sister Galya why she’s stumbling around, and Galya revealed she’s now blind (though hoping to get a sight-restoration operation in America). Mr. Lebedev has promised Fyodora, who’s not quite seven, he’ll spend the rest of his life giving her all the love and protection she was denied in the orphanage system.

Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse and by Rhine with his belovèd daughter Elisabeth

“Where’s Mama?” Fyodora asks.

“She’s in a very nice place where there’s no more suffering,” Mr. Lebedev tells her, holding back tears. “We’ll see her again someday.”

“Where are my other five sisters?”

“I don’t know.  Some of them may be with your mother.”

“Now, please, Papa, we have to go to America.  Take us to a place where there’s no suffering,” Natalya pleads.

“So then Mama went to America?” Fyodora asks.

“She went to a magical place with angels, harps, fountains, gold, eternal youth, and love,” Mr. Lebedev elucidates.

When Mr. Lebedev remarries a bit over two years later, to female protagonist Lyuba’s mother, Fyodora realizes her mother must be dead, and what her father meant when he said her mother went to a magical place with things like golden water and harps. Her Machekha (Stepmother) Katya is the only mother she ever really knows, having been separated from her blood mother shortly after her third birthday.

Father and child reunion

Welcome back to Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sunday, weekly Sunday hops where writers share 8–10 sentences from a book or WIP. This week, to mark Father’s Day, I’m featuring a snippet from my first Russian historical, You Cannot Kill a Swan. I wrote the scene of Mr. Lebedev reuniting with his three youngest daughters back in 1998 or 1999, and it still chokes me up every time, particularly the section with little Fyodora.

Mr. Lebedev, who later becomes female protagonist Lyuba’s stepfather, had ten daughters in his first marriage. They were all taken away by the Bolsheviks, the older ones to Siberia and the youngest ones to the orphanage system. He eventually was reunited with oldest daughter Galya, and then seventh-born Alla.

In 1920, Alla got a job in the orphanage where the three youngest had been taken, and the four of them plus a brother and sister they’re friends with eventually escaped and began making their way out of the USSR. (The boy later becomes Fyodora’s husband.) It’s now February 1921, and they’ve reached their family’s old city, Pskov.

Mr. Lebedev has just said he can’t believe four of his daughters are still alive.

“Five, Papa, five,” Natalya says. “Dora’s on the mattress over there.  She’s got whooping cough.”

Mr. Lebedev strides over on shaking legs and picks his youngest daughter up.  Fyodora stops her coughing and recognizes the father she hasn’t seen in almost four years.  She only vaguely remembers what he looks like, but she’s never forgotten he has two different-colored eyes.

“Papa, you finally came back.”

“Praise God we’re together again,” he says, his voice shaking. “Now that our family’s back together, we’re never going to be separated ever again, and I’ll spend the rest of my life smothering you with all the love and protection you were denied while we were apart.  No one will ever hurt a hair on your head again.”

Mr. Lebedev is eventually reunited with four of his other missing daughters, and finally gets a boy after he remarries Lyuba’s mother. He’s always been a good sport about being a father to so many daughters in a row.

WeWriWa—A strange choice of dance teacher

Welcome back to Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sunday, weekly Sunday hops where writers share 8–10 sentences from a book or WIP. This week’s snippet comes about a page and a half after last week’s, after Igor and the Likachëva ladies have had a lively conversation about art, movies, their church community, the upcoming presidential election, and the unfairness of the voting age being twenty-one instead of eighteen.

Igor is very surprised when 11-year-old Flora reveals her ballet teacher is his aunt Lyolya, since Lyolya only teaches one type of student.

This has been slightly edited to fit 10 lines.

Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav Nijinsky (né Vatslav Nizhinskiy) as Giselle and Albrecht in the 1910 Ballets Russes performance of Giselle

“You’re invited to my Christmas ballet show,” Flora says as she takes back the geriatric Jitterbug. “I’ve been taking ballet for about five and a half years; your Tyotya Lyolya is my teacher, and I sometimes dance with her daughters Gizella and Odetta.  She named them after characters she danced a lot before she had to retire.”

Igor tilts his head to the right and looks upward. “I thought my Tyotya Lyolya only taught crippled kids, since she was crippled herself and wanted to help kids who were in the position she once was.”

“Gizella and Odetta aren’t crippled, and they take her dance lessons.  Do I look crippled to you?”

Igor wonders if the long illness Violetta mentioned involved Flora being crippled, but he dares not say anything, since he barely knows these people, and doesn’t want to get accused of being rude or dredging up the painful past.  If Flora indeed were crippled at some point in the past, it must not be a subject they want to talk about.  What’s not nice society doesn’t show.

Wilfride Piollet as Odette in Swan Lake, 1977, Copyright La Volé

Lyolya (Yelena) Lebedeva was beaten over her kneecaps with iron crowbars when she and three of her sisters were taken away from home in 1917, and she was left badly crippled. During the next three years in various Siberian camps, her sisters found ways to disguise her condition and get her positions which didn’t involve standing or walking. When her condition was finally discovered, she was pushed off a bridge into the Lena River as punishment, and left behind.

Four young siblings found Lyolya unconscious on a large rock in the river, and dragged her home. In the Smirnov home in Bulun, Lyolya began the long, slow process of recovering both her body and mind, and in 1928, she was discovered by a Russian-born ballet talent scout on his way back to America. She, her foster brother Rostislav, and a number of other dancers were taken to America under false pretenses, and they all defected in San Francisco.

When Lyolya reached retirement age, she decided to become a ballet teacher to children recovering from polio and mobility injuries, since she knew firsthand what it was like to go through that. Her husband Savva, himself a premier danseur noble, teaches boys who’d prefer a male teacher. Savva’s leg was once so badly broken it was almost amputated, so he too knows what it’s like to relearn how to walk and dance after a devastating injury.

WeWriWa—Dr. Scholl

Welcome back to Weekend Writing Warriors, where participants share 8 sentences from a book or WIP. Today’s excerpt comes from Chapter 37, “Storm Before the Calm,” of my current WIP. Inessa, her children, her youngest cousin, and her youngest adoptive sister have finally arrived in America in August of 1937, and moved into the now rather crowded old family apartment above the restaurant where two of her cousins have been working since they came to America in 1934.

At her old friends’ insistence, Inessa has invited over both longtime community midwife Mrs. Kuzmitch and a very progressive doctor who now does much of his work underground. Her old friend Vera serves as her translator. Given her traumatic injuries, and the morphine, Prontosil (an early antibiotic), and codeine she’s had, she’s considering using a hospital for the third child she’s expecting. But before the consultation can begin, Dr. Scholl, who also appeared in my second Russian novel, wants to see her leg wound. This has been tweaked a bit to fit 8 sentences.

I gave Dr. Scholl that name in honor of Sophie and Hans Scholl of the anti-Nazi White Rose movement.

***

“How are you today, Mrs. Zyuganova?” Dr. Scholl asks, extending his hand. “As I’m a doctor first and a specialist in women’s reproductive health second, I’d like to get a look at this wounded leg before asking any questions about this pregnancy.”

“Tell him to remove those damn bullet shards,” Inéssa says as she rolls over. “They’re probably what’s causing me so much extended pain.”

Dr. Scholl opens one of his bags and removes several bottles, gauze, medical tape, long tweezers, cotton swabs, saline solution, and a small flashlight.  Véra explains to Inéssa that some of the bullet fragments are poking through the still-healing wound, and that Dr. Scholl can see a number of others inside the wound.  Inéssa closes her eyes as she feels Dr. Scholl rubbing a numbing agent on and around the wound, followed by the vague sensation of tweezers entering her skin over and over.  After the wound has been washed out with saline and the blood rubbed off, Dr. Scholl wraps it in dressing and tapes it in place.

Sweet Saturday Samples—Lyuba Meets Lyolya

This week’s excerpt for Sweet Saturday Samples is the conclusion of Chapter 39 of The Twelfth Time. Lyuba meets her new stepsister Lyolya after she comes home from Minnesota, and then everyone has a welcoming party for Lyolya at the Lebedev home in Greenwich Village. Little Kroshka is especially delighted to see this missing member of their family. (Zaychik, Darya’s nickname, is Russian for bunny.)

***

When Lyuba and Dárya get off at Penn Station, Mr. Lebedev, Mrs. Lebedeva, Katrin, and a strange woman are waiting.  Dárya looks uncertainly at her mother as they draw closer to the welcoming party.

“I’m sure she’s a good person.  You can’t distrust all strangers, záychik.”

“Welcome home,” Mr. Lebedev says. “This is your stepsister Lyolya.  We’re going right home to my house for her welcoming party.”

Lyolya hugs Lyuba. “So this is the stepsister I’ve been told I have.  I guess it’s a bit late to welcome you to my family, since our parents have been married for six years.”

“Are you my new aunt?” Dárya asks.

“Yes I am, darling.  What a cute little girl you are.”

“I hope you weren’t postponing your party till I got back,” Lyuba says. “You didn’t have to put yourselves out like that.”

“I was committed to finishing the run of my show before I had much free time.  And then my father just wanted to wait a few more days for you to be here.  We’re all going to enjoy a nice supper at his house.”

“Don’t even think of going home first to unpack and settle in,” Mr. Lebedev says. “There will be plenty of time for that later.”

“We just got a new Model A while you were away,” Mrs. Lebedeva says proudly as they walk away from the station. “Unlike Iván, your stepfather actually spends his time making sales instead of making friends.  It’s so nice to have your own car.”

“I think it’s so touching how you changed your patronymic to Ilyínichna,” Lyolya says. “Even if Serafima is never found, my father gained a new daughter in you.  He still has ten daughters, even if one of them isn’t blood.”

“He’s been more of a father to me in the last nine years than my blood father ever was,” Lyuba says. “Though my evil parents-in-law are always calling me by my old patronymic.  I think they’re doing it on purpose.”

“We see them sometimes,” Mrs. Lebedeva says. “Várya is rather cute.  It’s too bad she has those two for parents.”

During the ride down to Greenwich Village, Lyuba tells her company about her second visit to Minnesota and how nice life is there.  As she’s narrating, she watches the tall buildings and busy streets going by, and can’t help feeling she’ll miss big city life.  Even if the long-term reality is anything but idyllic, it’s nice to at least be located in such a metropolis and have access to so many things.  In a small Minnesota farming town, she won’t have the option of regularly going to the movies, museums, the ballet, a large library, or anything Manhattan has to offer.

“It’s only a one-story house?” Lyolya asks. “Our houses back in Russia had two stories and were bigger.”

“We’re lucky we even found a real house,” Mr. Lebedev says. “Most people here, even the rich ones, live in apartments.  I was living in Lyuba’s tenement with five of your sisters till I remarried.  Then your stepmother and I moved with your youngest sisters to our own house and let her sister’s family keep the first house.”

Ósyenka gets the door and stands back shyly at the sight of the stranger.  Fyodora gently pushes him forward.

“Is this little one really Fyodora?” Lyolya asks. “She’s so big!”

“I don’t recognize you,” Fyodora says. “I haven’t seen you since I was three.”

“This is your brother, Ósip,” Mr. Lebedev says. “He’s got heterochromia just like I do.  Your oldest blood niece Zhényushka also has it.”

In the living room, twenty-one-year-old Króshka starts barking hysterically and leaps off of Svetlána’s lap, running into the entryway.  She jumps at Lyolya’s feet and continues barking and panting until Lyolya picks her up.  Once she’s in her arms, she starts licking Lyolya’s face.

“Welcome home,” Svetlána says. “Thank God you’re alive.  As you can see, my dog is alive and well too.  She hasn’t been so animated for awhile.  I think she recognized your smell and wanted to welcome you home.  She gave me a similar reception too, when we were reunited after five years.”

“She must be an old lady by now,” Lyolya says. “Wasn’t she born in 1908?”

“She’s very old in dog years.  I always thought she was holding on longer than most Pomeranians because she knew you were alive somewhere.  She wanted to see you one last time before God took her to the other world.”

“Does this mean Króshka will be going away soon?” Ósyenka asks. “I don’t want to lose her.”

“Dogs age a lot faster than people,” Véra says. “She’s a hundred in people years.  I think if she could talk, she’d ask you why you were gone for so long.”

“Now only Serafima and our cousin Nádya have to come to America, and our family will be complete!  I can’t wait to meet them too!” Ósyenka goes back to playing with a model aeroplane.

“Yes, it’s nice to have a completed family,” Lyuba says. “One day my own little family will be back in the same place too.”

“Be thankful you know everyone in your own family is alive,” Svetlána whispers. “There’s no guarantee Serafima and Nádya are still out there.”

“You never know.  Nobody thought Lyolya could still be alive, and here she is.  Miracles happen to those who deserve them.”