The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

brothers, knew of this and teased him unmercifully. Later she married Samoilov, a professor of physiology.

Late in the evening, after the dancing, there was always supper—pirogi [deep-dish pies] with meat, pirogi with fish, pirogi with [sautéed] cabbage, pickled mushrooms, hors-d’oeuvres and, of course, tea again—many cups and glasses of tea.

We, younger children, were never sent to our rooms. We had equal rights, participated in all the games, and stayed with the guests until the end. At supper I even had my own specialty: I masterfully cut the Swiss cheese into pieces as thin as paper. Because of this expertise, the students foretold a career as surgeon for me. My mother smiled, pleased: she wanted me to be a doctor.

Besides these weekly Saturday get-togethers, two or three times a year we had real balls. Sometimes there were even masquerade balls (on Christmas or Shrovetide). In those cases a ballroom pianist was hired and the pies and kulebiakas were ordered in a pastry shop. Usually there were fifty or so guests at these balls—sometimes more, and always there were young people. We danced to exhaustion through the night until morning. We always had a large apartment, and the dances were organized in several adjoining rooms. The adroit dancers waltzed from one room into another. After the quadrille, we would organize a “gran-pon” where all the dancers, holding hands, would race down the hallways, through the bedrooms and the nursery, bumping into chairs, and maneuvering between tables. I remember that once all the [pre-Lenten Carnival] mummers were dressed up in cooks’ costumes with white chef’s caps—this was quite striking and gay. There was much noise and laughter. The cook, the dishwasher, and even the caretaker looked on admiringly from the dark vestibule and the corridor at the merry guests.

I was the youngest in our family. Besides my sister Anna, I had two older brothers. Now I am the last of the clan. My oldest brother Innokentii (Kesha) died from tuberculosis in Paris in 1935, having contracted this disease in the difficult conditions of émigré life. My other brother, Mikhail, who was two years older, was executed by the Bolsheviks in 1920 simply for the fact that he had once been an officer (a second lieutenant in the reserves), doing his military service under the old regime. He was never involved in politics. For twenty years, I’ve heard nothing of my sister who remained in Russia. All my cautious attempts to find out anything about her were in vain.

It would be unfair for me, in telling of my family, not to mention our nanny because she occupied a place in it and even played a significant role. She was, of course, a member of the family as well. This occurred very frequently in Russian families. Entering a strange family, frequently at a very young age and looking after a first child, then a second, and then after all of them, the

Vladimir Zenzinov, Coming of Age

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nanny became an organic member of that family. She became attached to its life with all her soul, frequently forgetting or rejecting her own. And if she had heart and character, she would not only leave a lifetime mark in the soul of each child but would become a valued, sometimes invaluable member of the family to which she had tied her own life and fate.

This was our Nanny precisely—and I capitalize this word because in our family this designation of a profession became a proper name. Her real name was Avdot’ia (Evdokiia) Zakharovna Gorelova. At first, we just called her Dunia, but out of respect for her, mother made us call her Niania [Nanny]. That is what we then called her for the rest of our lives. That is how she is imprinted on my soul. Nanny was twelve or thirteen when the serfs were emancipated. She remembered serfdom well and told us stories about it. It should be said, however, that she told us no horror tales—she lived under serfdom without being aware of it. (She was from Smolensk Province.)

While still a very young woman, probably in 1874, she came to Moscow from her village to earn some money. She had just given birth to her son whom she left behind in the village. (I did not know who her husband was or whether he was still alive. I only knew her brother, Gavriil Zakharovich, a Moscow cabbie who always stood on the Bol’shaia Dmitrovka in front of the merchants club. He would visit her for tea. This was a large, fat man with a very red face. He would drink innumerable glasses of tea in her room—until “the seventh sweat.” This was the primary treat his sister could give him.)