Thanks again, everyone, for all your positive comments and support for my novel and blog!
I wanted to share an excerpt from the beginning of the book with you. I decided to start the story with a diary entry written a few weeks after Hélène first arrived in Saint-Pétersbourg (she wrote it like other people who spoke French in the Russian capital). After the Prologue, Hélène’s story begins the day she is born in Châlons-sur-Marne in France in 1889.
The photo I chose for this blog is from the front of a postcard Hélène sent to her mother in 1909 from Saint-Pétersbourg, around the time she wrote the diary entry. It depicts a soldier in the Russian Imperial Guard and she specifically chose it knowing her maman so admired men in uniform (maman’s second husband, Hélène’s step-father, was a Captain in the military, after all). On the back of the postcard, Hélène wrote: ‘I am sending you a soldier from the Imperial Guard. Oh! They have very nice military outfits. Here, I will try to send them all to you!’
The equipment this soldier is wearing reflects the world’s rather romantic view of battle, just before the start of WW1. Particularly poignant this week as we remember our loved ones who served in wars.
Here’s the excerpt:
Prologue
Hélène, December, 1909, Saint-Pétersbourg, Russia
Diary Entry
‘I can’t stop thinking about my little daughter’s solitude – how lonely she must be, living with strangers in France while I’m here working in Russia. Every evening, my dear Lili, I go to sleep imagining your sweet little face, your silky blond hair, your large sad blue eyes, and your melancholy smile. It obsesses me to the point where my only aspiration is to offer you, one day, the happiness of living in a united family with a father.’
Hélène Aubry paused in her writing, gazed out the window of her little third-floor bedroom garret, and viewed the snow-covered rooftops of Saint-Pétersbourg. It looked just like the fairy tale images she had seen in her childhood books; all that was missing were princesses with long golden tresses and handsome charming princes. She smiled and looked around her spartan room: where were the princes hiding?
But this relentless cold, the frosty gusts blowing in from the Russian steppe could quickly brush away those magical images. Snow had been falling for two days, and now the winds had picked up and the temperature had dropped to crystallize the icy landscape. Hélène pulled her wool scarf tighter around her slender shoulders and drew her fingers into the palms of her fingerless gloves. She absent-mindedly pushed back an errant lock of curly blonde hair, and rubbed her nose to warm it up.
As she surveyed the winter scene outside, she heard the muffled clip-clop of a horse’s hooves on the hard-packed snow and the unmistakable swish of the sleigh runners on Katherinen Kanal before she saw the troika itself, the couple in the back seat relaxed, sharing an intimate moment huddled and wrapped together in furs behind the driver and his horse.
With a little sigh, Hélène collected herself and turned her mind from these idyllic images to ponder what to write next in her diary. At 20 years old, she had an intense desire to leave something tangible of herself behind, maybe something for her daughter to read one day, but only a vague idea of what to write. How old will her daughter be when she reads this? How much will she understand? How to delicately step around some of the awkward parts that she’d rather not divulge? Hélène steeled herself to just continue: pick up her dip pen; recharge it in the ink well; and write the words as they came to her, half writing to herself, half to her daughter.
‘I know that she will want to know who her father is. At the same time she cannot dig into this past. Sorrow and anger can only be the bitter fruit of this search. One must forget the past, let it drift away.’
Hélène felt the momentary anger that always accompanied these thoughts. Why must I bury the past under a rug? Why must I be in exile? Why must I take the blame? But she soon controlled these selfish emotions. Another deep sigh, and a return to the dip pen, the ink well, the paper.
‘I feel such tenderness for her and hope my exile in Russia will bring her a good education. It is just as well that my work as a governess absorbs me and doesn’t leave me many free moments. In the evenings when all the family is sleeping, I have decided to take my pen and consign to these pages some of my reflections. If one day this diary reaches you, my dear little daughter, you will understand how much your mother loved you and struggled to assure you of an easy life with lots of happiness. All children prefer to have their mothers close to them. Your maman is far away, but her thoughts are always close to you.’