Princess Kuznetsova

Princess Kuznetsova

Madame Nina died many years ago. Few, if any at all, will remember the old lady. She was a living yet fading memory of pre-communist Russia, as one could guess after a glance at her ragged yet fine clothes, her proud and dignified posture and her heavy rolling Russian accent.

Princess Kuznetsova, as she introduced herself, had fled the Communist Revolution in St Petersburg on a train to Paris with her husband, Prince Kuznetsov. Their two year old daughter had died of an infant disease shortly before they left Russia. Big round tears would roll down the grooves of her wrinkled cheeks when, once or twice, over the years, she would revisit this tragedy, she would then be gently rocking her body still holding the imaginary child against her chest quietly calming herself and the child down. The next minute she would break out with loud welcoming laughter as another one of us kids came home to find her sitting in our kitchen. We knew to expect an affectionate attack on our cheeks: two big loud and juicy kisses and a pinch left them rosy and lipstick smeared.

The couple had arrived in Paris with not much more than the clothes they were wearing and a few valuables they managed to rescue. Quickly regrouping with other compatriot “white Russians” they would form a tight net of support they could rely on. Within this diaspora they would, if not recreate the life of abundance they had left, at least preserve their exuberant nature and nurture their collective culture and language.

The prince, her devoted husband, had died many years ago, leaving her an apartment in Paris, filled with the few memorabilia they had managed to save from the revolutionaries. After a while, the couple had also managed to purchase a piece of land in what used to be the countryside near Versailles. For many years, they cultivated the ground of their modest ‘summer residence’, planting flowers and vegetables. After the prince had been taken from her too, she kept tending the little piece of garden by herself until her arthritic hips and hands forced her to retreat into the little house at the back of the property. The garden was left to the weeds.

The village they had moved to all those years ago, before I was born, was now the small sized town we had also had immigrated to.

As a child, I passed by her house every day on my way back from school always peeking at the property and sometimes at the hunched lady in dark clothes working the earth and pulling weeds. One day, she waived me onto her little property that she was still attending at the time, and at the end of which sat the tiny one room house. The first time I stepped inside her house, my eyes would try to imagine what this poor place might have looked like in its prime, and came to the conclusion that there had never been a prime. What there had been were years of struggle, grief and the forever loss of Mother Russia and all those left behind. What no revolution could take away from them was their Russian soul, and it seemed to me that the more suffering had been put upon them the tighter this soul would glue the exiled together, and the brighter the nobility of their hearts shone.

To the left of the room there was an old bed where she would occasionally nap, on the other side stood an old table with two old chairs, an old cement sink on wooden sticks leaned against the wall, the wobbly old cupboard was missing a leg, and a very old samovar that sat on a shelf next to shiny metal cookie jars. Always filled with her own baked goods, the boxes’ shines stood contrasted with the general dusty brown toned modesty of the rest of the room like a treasure chest in a cave.

I don’t know how old she was in those years. The two hour trip, despite becoming increasingly tiring and strenuous, was her pilgrimage in tribute to the memory of her now gone husband. Her stories that I would spend hours listening to, were to me a magical mirror into a mythical past, long gone from our reality, but that would feed my imagination already overflowing with innumerable and vivid details and images of Tolstoi novels and the dreams of little girls.

Every once in a while, during the warm season, she would make the two hour trip by metro, train and bus from Paris, usually arriving in the morning with baskets and bags in each arm, always wearing bright red lipstick and her old raincoat that had seen better days, as well as a hat or sometimes a headscarf depending on the weather. She’d be walking down our street with difficulty, huffing and panting under the weight of her provisions, sometimes putting her bags down to catch her breath.

As soon as she would see me, her body would straighten, her face brighten and she’d joyfully wave at me. In her loud and sonorous voice that could carry all the Russian joy and effervescent passion, untypical for this subdued neighbourhood, she brought life, fireworks and many stories of old into my family’s life. The neighbours saw her as an eccentric foreign old fool, and wouldn’t talk to her. They did not to talk to us either. We were foreigners too. So, we bonded in common exile.

From now on, Madame Nina would often be sitting in our kitchen, talking and having tea with my mother for hours. She could be heard from quite a distance, and was always a welcome warm and cheery presence in our home. When bursting out into laughter it was with both arms in the air, then dropping her hands to her thighs. Madame Nina told us about her time in Russia before the wars; the balls, the gowns, the red Crimean champagne, the music… She made our lives larger. She brought sound, songs, cookies, laughter, cheers, friendship and affection into our quiet and boring suburban life. When she was there my mother would scream less and show her photogenic side.

Then, she came less often. My mother went to see her in Paris one more time. Then, one day, the property was sold. In its place sits now a big non-descriptive family home with a garage. The new neighbours remained strangers.

Half a century later, I look back at a past that still referenced its history. History was still alive and tangible because the old ones still took the time to keep it alive by telling it to the younger ones who still listened, thereby watering the roots of all our cultural identity.

Even though Russia wasn’t my home, Russian history is part of European history. Madame Nina’s stories weaved together in my mind with the ones my own grandmother had told me about hers. Both had in common wealth, happy memories, refinement, fine garments, large families and a place they called home…and losing it all. They defined how I saw myself in the world and who I wanted to be.

These memories of the old Russian princess resurfaced as I was wondering about the fate of today’s children. A friend who works with teenagers told me that most of them don’t even have a single friend, they eat in their rooms alone clicking Instagram and Tik Tok accounts…at best, struggle with addictions of all sorts and suicidal thoughts, and are medicated more than ever before. It seems to me that their most important preoccupation and daily purpose is to find out what their identify of the day is. There are no limits to what they can be and yet, they have no reality they can rely and fall back on. There just is nothing left of them.

Madame Nina knew a world that wasn’t perfect, but it was infused with beauty and a sense of connection that prevailed beyond exile. A protagonist of the past, who lived to tell, whether somebody listened, or not; she would probably have just spoken it to herself, to not forget, to still feel alive far away from home. I was privileged to be there to listen, and find out that I might be part of something more meaningful, and to project some of it into what I expected of the future. When I look around, I see a population that has lost its memory and with it all connection to what matters tomorrow.

We kids were not really fond of Madame Nina’s wet kisses. But I would not trade them for anything these kids have. Madame Nina was alive, genuine, spontaneous, affectionate, generous and funny…and after fifty years somebody remembers her for of these qualities.