The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

It was natural in her situation to seek work as a wet nurse in a respectable home. So she showed up at Smolensk Square in Moscow where servants were hired in those naive times. It was there that Uncle Kolia saw her. He was looking for a wet nurse for his brother’s wife, i.e., for my mother who was expecting her first child. In her youth, Nanny was a true Russian beauty if we are to judge by a photograph taken in our home which we saved. She was in a magnificent costume of a Russian wet nurse with wide tunic sleeves, decked in lace and ribbons, an embroidered shirt and several strings of beads. My oldest sister Mania, who died in childhood, was in her arms. It was said that Uncle Kolia was a great judge of female beauty, so it was natural that he would choose Nanny [as nurse] for his sister-in-law. From that moment on, until her death in 1908, Nanny lived in our family, having no other and not having one of her own. She nursed my oldest sister, then moved to Ania [Anna] and each of us in order. Later she reared my sister’s children. She took care of us, was inseparable from us, and sat at the bedside when one of us, children, was sick.

I remember her from my very first moment of recall. Remembering my childhood illnesses, I always visualize her at the head of the bed. I would twist under her rough, kind hand as she rubbed me down with butter melted

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Chapter Seven

in a spoon over a candle flame. It tickles, it makes me laugh, it’s hot and I complain and fidget. She quivers and groans as if she is ticklish too, and this makes me feel better. “Oh, oh, things are so hard for Afoniushka (she always had humorous catch-phrases from the village which seemed to be free improvisations to us) . . . there, that’s the way Volodiushka… now your little hands and feet are resting . . . soon you’ll be healthy again and running around the yard.” And one fell sweetly asleep to her stories. She knew many of them and we knew them by heart from her, but we still kept insisting that she tell them to us again. She would wake us in the morning clapping her hands: “Wake up kids, the buns are ready!”

Nanny was illiterate and all of us children, in turn, taught her reading and writing. But nothing came of this. She remembered the letters and could point out each of them in a book. She even could pronounce syllables but could not combine them into a word no matter how hard we tried. She remained illiterate until her death. But I am convinced that she had a huge influence on all of us, perhaps just a touch less than that of mother, though perhaps equal to hers. Most of all she loved Misha, the second brother in age and likely the least fortunate of all the children. Maybe that is why she loved him more then the others. As a child, he was ill more than the rest of us and endured all the various childhood diseases. Perhaps he also reminded her of her own son Vania who grew up in the village. He was also a sickly child. Having grown up and come to Moscow, he, like Misha, was not distinguished by exemplary behavior and was “good-for-nothing,” as she called him. When Misha was in military service (“Mishutka, Mishutka, this is no joke!”) and had to go to the barracks very early in the morning before daybreak, Nanny would wake him and give him tea. At night she would clean his dress uniform, the buttons, the buckle, and the boots. And she was absolutely right when she would later say in all seriousness: “When Mishen’ka and I served in the army . . .”

As I recall all that I have lived through and reconstruct the past in my mind, I can only come to the conclusion that our family was a happy one.

I am not sure of the reasons, but in our family I developed in a way different from my brothers and sister. Our family was of the middle class not only in terms of income, but also according to its habits and its overall moral atmosphere. Nobody was absorbed in social issues, and politics were of absolutely no interest to anyone. My sister graduated from the gimnazium, attended the women’s institute where she studied history and literature, and then married a doctor. She moved to the Black Sea and began to raise her own family there. Both my brothers were enrolled in the Alexander Commercial Institute on Staraia Basmannaia [Street]. From my father’s perspective, this was perfectly natural. What else would the sons of a merchant be other than

Vladimir Zenzinov, Coming of Age

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