The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

I don’t know what his godfather—“Brother Kolia,” as we called him— gave him on the occasion of the cutting of his first tooth. My mother selected him as the godfather in order to strengthen the connection between the new brother and his half-brother. My miserly grandmother Olga Vasilievna celebrated the first tooth with generosity; my mother kept grandmother’s gifts of heavy golden ten-ruble pieces from the age of Catherine the Great (two or three of them) until times of dire need. My father fell in love with his namesake, his first-born son by his second wife. And my mother just adored him: he was the joy of joys that bloomed for her in a family of strangers. I was the second child after him—and both I and the next brother, Georgii, had it hard: we were expected to measure up to Kolia’s radiance and lovingness, but we were only of this world. For better or worse, we adapted ourselves to this “shadow of our times,” which fell on those of this world but did not darken Kolia’s existence.

For my godfather my mother chose her second stepson, Alexander Niko-laevich, wishing to strengthen our blood-bond. For godmother she chose her own mother, and she named me in honor of her beloved.

Kolia died at the age of three from diphtheria. My mother gave birth to a third son, Georgii, a handsome, curly-haired boy who was much loved by his godmother, my father’s third daughter, Elizaveta Nikolaevna. But my mother was not to be consoled. Kolia’s death was a blow from which she never completely recovered. I think that had Kolia lived, he would have helped her find a path to the heart of her new family. Without him this path was never found.

How cruel life is—or perhaps how merciful: it was not meant for her to be at the funerals of either her beloved mother or her beloved son. She was terribly ill and was nearly at death’s door herself when those two left this earth. Life in the new family was fourteen years of daily hard work for my mother. It was one long continuous workday.

She had to feed and clothe a house of thirty people, including children, relatives, and servants. Before that my mother had never been in charge of a household. However, when she harnessed herself to my father’s household affairs, she handled everything so well, so ably fulfilled the offices of minister

Sergei N. Durylin, Domestic Love

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of internal affairs, minister of provisions, and minister of education in my father’s domain that she never received anything but well-deserved praise from my father. I remember our family dinner table, fourteen feet long, packed with place settings. At the table would be my father, my mother, four brothers (we were fed separately), six or seven sisters, the governess Olga Ivanovna, two distant female relatives of my father’s first wife, who lived at our house. These fifteen or sixteen people were family, but dinner never proceeded without guests: we invariably had one or another aunt (my father’s sisters), or one of the Tarasovs (my sisters’ cousins). And we mustn’t forget to add one of my sisters’ girlfriends or my brothers’ buddies who would stay for dinner. But even that’s not all. Either my father or one of my older brothers would bring someone else from town to dinner—some customer or just a friend—and having brought him, would simply ask my mother:

“Mother,” (if my father was asking) or “Nastasia Vasilievna” (if my brothers were asking), “Ivan Ivanovich is having dinner with us. Do you have something to feed him?”

And my mother would always give one and the same response, “Yes,” and would only afterwards lament that she never received advance warning. In order to “feed the visitor,” who was sometimes the very picky Ivan Ivanovich, she had to add two fancy dishes and good appetizers and wine to the usual simple but filling family meal. And for all this she would only have half an hour, for my father himself would hurry her: “Mother, it’s time to eat. We’re hungry.”

And this visitor, Ivan Ivanovich from Gluttonville, rich in black soil, hogs, and grain, would eat and praise to the skies the appetizers, the first course, the second course, the third course, the homemade plum brandy, the St. John’s Wort liqueur, the marinated sturgeon, and the pickled and marinated apples, grapes, plums, cherries, and lingonberries.

At the same time she had to feed the small children and make sure that the broth and the cutlets were prepared to the exact specifications of the military doctor von Reson.

And she had to look after a third table (the third table in the same house at the same time!), to make sure that the sales clerks in the employees’ room were full and satisfied.

Of course, she couldn’t forget about the fourth table: she had to make sure that the “servants’ cook” Arina would make rich, filling shchi [cabbage soup] and thick porridge [traditionally of buckwheat] for the servants: the kitchen staff, the caretaker, the maids, and the nanny.