Nelka Part 7

"I understand fully what is meant by 'A la Guerre, comme a La Guerre.' It is extraordinary how every preconceived notion and habit is thrown to the winds. I like it very much. Everyone acts as the immediate occasion seems to necessitate and it is so much more simple. Everything is changed and I see that it is just so everywhere in time of war because one thing is so very much more important than all the rest. It is when nothing is supremely important that life is simply impossible and that you are baffled at every step."

"It was terrible in many ways. Those first days at Kara Youssouff, but I feel it was the greatest privilege to be there. One felt helpless before such a demand but it was all so real and every breath meant so much."

Once finished with the Balkan war, Nelka returned to America and joined her aunts.

Before leaving she spent several days with my mother and me in our country place. After she left my mother wrote to Nelka:

"Max and I miss you very much. I was so happy to have you with us for a time; your visits are always so nice and cheerful. I always remember them with so much pleasure. We had a long talk with Max about you and decided you were a real friend for us and Max said: 'we must always be real friends to her.' He is very fond of you."

(I was then 16 years old and very much in love with Nelka.)

Once finished with the Balkan war, Nelka returned again to America and joined her aunt Martha in Washington.

She brought Tibi back with her and here a tragic event took place which had a decisive influence on both Nelka's and my life.

While in Washington Tibi somehow got hold of rat poison and despite the help of the best veterinarian and also the help of two human doctors who were friends of Nelka, Tibi died.

Nelka took the death of her mother in a most tragic and painful way, but the death of Tibi affected her to a much greater degree. Her grief was beyond all comprehension and she went into a state of utter despair, verging on the frantic. Her Aunt Susie and a few friends tried to help her as much as they could but absolutely nothing seemed to help.

Just before she had left Russia, Princess Wasilchikoff had asked her to a.s.sume the reorganization of a sister community and hospital in Kovno, a fortress-town near the German border. Nelka did not accept the offer though it was of considerable interest to her, because she was then returning to America and had plans to stay with her aunts.

But when her little dog died, she quickly changed her mind and telegraphed Princess Wasilchikoff that she was ready to accept her proposition. This she did primarily to try and get her mind focused on something and to get it off the brooding about Tibi. Her grief and despair can be judged from the various letters which she wrote to her aunt at that time, and for a long time to come.

Ashantee 1913.

"If that cannot be done I want to be buried in unconsecrated ground with Tibi and shall arrange for it. I cannot leave Tibi where she is buried and not know what will happen later."

"I hope when I die to know that it will be alright but I cannot get any nearer to being reconciled now, and it just comes over me with a fresh feeling all the time, that I cannot accept it. I have never felt so about anything. I am glad that you miss darling little Tibi.

I feel estranged from everyone except those who knew and cared for Tibi."

During her trip back to Europe, she wrote from Rotterdam 1913.

"It just seems some times more than I can bear. I don't know how to get reconciled--that is the worst. I don't accept it and I have an outraged sense all the time of the fearful crime to that happy little life, and so many constant torments come up afresh all the time, that I just feel crazy. I tried to face it all and wear it out of my head in the beginning, but that did not work and now this willful keeping from thinking as much as I can does not help either. Why couldn't anything have happened to me that would not have hurt Tibi? I suffer because that little face is just always before me. If I could just have her for an hour and know that she was all right, I would die the happiest person in the world."

Paris 1913.

"I can't keep up my spirits all the time. I am terribly tired, look a perfect sight, but I don't care. Paris has not changed much. It will always be the most beautiful city in the world, I think, and the most civilized. Church was such a delight this morning. I like this Paris one better than anyone I know, but it all now seems simply a past and I know it will always be so."

Poustinka 1913.

"It seems to me almost superfluous to comment any more on the sadness and pain of what occurred--it is also just more and more and everywhere. The more one sees of life, the more frightened one is of being happy. I think life is just totally and absolutely inexplicable."

"Veta has got a little apartment opposite the Lycee and Max hopes to get in January. I am giving him English dictations and he is studying all day. Veta thinks of nothing else and wants to get him safely married at 21, which she thinks is the best thing for Russian men."

Well, I was safely married at 21 but not with the approval of my mother who opposed my marriage to Nelka because of our age difference.

Poustinka 1913.

"I have not yet seen about the cemetery here but I think I will arrange to be buried there if it is allowed, or else to find some piece of land somewhere. I just hope, hope, hope in something beyond as I never have before. I simply can't stand the injustice of Tibi, of her death and I can never get reconciled to it for a minute."

And a year later she wrote from Kovno in 1914:

"The approach of this anniversary has been taking me, despite of myself, over every minute of those dreadful, dreadful days a year ago. I don't want to speak of it all to you or make you feel any more than I have already the weight of a grief that will never leave me--but I do want to tell you that I shall also never forget how good you were to me and how you helped me through that simply fearful night. I don't know how anything could be any worse but still if you had not been there I don't know what I would have done--and I shall always remember and be glad that Tibi died not far from you."

I think unquestionably the loss of Tibi was the greatest suffering that Nelka ever experienced in her life, even though the loss of her mother and of her aunts was a great shock each time and deep grief which held on for a long time. But there was something about the death of this little dog which hurt Nelka more than anything else.

While in later years she never hardly spoke about it, I think the pain always remained.

Nelka was a great believer in 'circ.u.mstances' in life. The death of Tibi was a 'circ.u.mstance' which affected Nelka's life and mine as well. Had Tibi not died as she did then, Nelka would not have returned that year to Russia. By returning to Russia in 1913 and then the war breaking out the next year, she was prevented from returning to America and thus never again saw her Aunt Susie, who died without her in 1916, while Nelka was at the front. She then stayed on through the war and then the Revolution, and we were married in 1918. Had Tibi not died, all the conditions would have been different and very likely we would not have been married, at least this is possible. I think both she and I have been believers in 'circ.u.mstances.' I know that I am. Circ.u.mstances which affect all our life. Sometimes one small event, something so insignificant that it is hardly noticed, can bring about a chain of events which entirely and basically change the whole course of one's life. This is what I think the death of Tibi did to the lives of both Nelka and me.

When Nelka came back to Russia in 1913 she undertook the reorganization job offered by Princess Wasilchikoff. Nelka felt it would help her forget and would act as a relief valve for her feelings. Princess Wasilchikoff offered Nelka complete freedom and independence of action and decision in all concerning the sister community and the hospital. She could act and do as she wished and desired. So Nelka agreed with the stipulation that she would undertake this job for one year, and having made her arrangements left for Kovno. The whole picture of the Kovno enterprise is very vividly seen from a number of letters written by Nelka during 1914.

Kovno 1913.

"I think life is a great mystery and thus far renounciation seems to me the only achievement."

Kovno 1914.

"Kovno is a little different from what I expected. It is much more of a hospital than I thought but it is to be completely made over. It is now for 50 beds and a separate house for eye illnesses with two wards in it. There are 40 sisters and 18 servants."

"Two hours after I arrived I attacked their hair (the sisters), and now it is as flat as paper on the wall. I also berated a doctor within the first 24 hours for not appearing for his lecture. I thought I better acquire the habit of discipline at once for the position is rather appalling and I am trying my best to impose terror. When I feel the terror getting rooted, I will try for a little affection and good will."

"I am now racking my brains how to get 180 dresses and ap.r.o.ns made by Easter and keep within the limit for cost."

"I am preparing different and complete charts for all the wards and a laboratory is to be opened in a month. The planning is not the most difficult; it is arranging things within given conditions and in a certain sense in a margin, and appeasing demands and complaints from all sides. The new division of the work was very complicated, too. In one ward, every sister, who was ordered to it either wept, flatly refused or prepared to lose everything and leave on account of the nature of the sister at the head of it. Of course I had to insist on acceptance of the distribution of service, on principle, but I am glad to have found good reason to get rid of the said sister, in time. Finally the young sister who has to go there now, and who reiterated for days that she would rather wash dishes for the rest of her days than go there, after a frank talk of half an hour, said she would, and that I wouldn't hear another word from her. I was reduced to real tears of grat.i.tude and admiration for the effort."

Kovno 1914.

"My head I know is not as strong and clear as it was."

"I have a very nice room which is in the most immaculate order imaginable--I am never in it. Next to it I have what is called my 'chancellery' which has an immense big writing table, another table, three chairs, bells and excellent light and telephone. I spend most of the time in it when I am not going the rounds on a rampage. I like to know that my food costs only 15 cents a day."

During some time in 1914 I was very ill in Petersburg. My mother was at the same time in bed with the flu and unable to take care of me, so in desperation she telegraphed to Nelka in Kovno and Nelka arrived immediately.

Kovno 1914.

"I spent three days in Petersburg, arriving there finding both Veta and Max very ill. Max with fever of 104 or more. Max had all kinds of complications afterwards ending in an abscess in the ear. I looked after him for three days and nights and then Veta got up."

Kovno 1914.

"Every day I live the more insoluble everything seems and the more convinced I am of the insolubility of everything. There are lovely things and tracks in life and humanity, but as a whole the latter is so loathsome and life so sad and dreadful. I feel a terrible fatigue of life and it seems to me that all my energy is simply restless, except the energy to denounce. If I live a hundred years ten times over I think my feeling of indignation for some things will never diminish."

Always still feeling the loss of Tibi, Nelka did not seem to be able to get reconciled. She wrote to her aunt:

Kovno 1914.

"I have just the interest of having begun the thing and wishing to see it permanently established, as I have started it, but at bottom I don't care what happens to anything, and I am only thankful I have had my thoughts arrested momentarily. I had no right to complain of anything or wish for anything as long as Tibi was alive, and what torments me most is not my grief but that Tibi should have suffered.

I don't understand anything and I only live in hope and helplessness.

I can bear the grief of Tibi's death but I cannot get reconciled to the conditions of it."

During that winter my mother moved from the country where we were living to Petersburg, and Nelka happened to be with us when this took place and took part in the moving. Here is some of the description of the event: