I went to my superintendent. He said, “You will have to take provisions to the soldiers who are surrounded on three sides by the Germans.” I said, “How will I take the provisions?” “Well,” he said, “I don’t know, because you will be subject to bombardment on three sides, but I have nobody else to send.”

I thought it over and said, “Look. Give me flat cars. The Germans expect we will come in freight cars. Their guns will be trained on freight cars. It takes quite a few minutes to change their gun sightings, so by that time we will be past.”

He looked at me very seriously. “Well,” he said, “that is an idea. I hope that you go to confession and communion and get the blessing of the chaplain before you go.” I did.

He allotted me some soldiers, and I arranged it so that all the flour, beans, and other big bags were put like a wall on both sides of us. All the rest of the food was inside, like dried fish and that sort of thing.

We departed late in the twilight. There were four of these flat cars. The trip was about forty miles. We prayed all the time. The enemy could hear the wheels going over the rails. Every second you could see shells passing by; most of the time we were perhaps twenty yards ahead of the shells.

Finally we arrived at that garrison that was completely surrounded. The soldiers hadn’t eaten in three days, and believe you me, I was the belle of the ball. They threw me up in blankets. They were so happy.

That was the first time I came close to death.

The Persian Lamb Coat

It was the time of the Russian Revolution. I was going with my little pail, trying to get food from the garbage pails of the Communists. I didn’t get very much. It was getting cold and kind of dark. The streets of Petrograd were barely lighted, for most of the lamps had been smashed.

I was slowly wending my way back home—slowly, because I was hungry. It was already the height of the starvation. There was some kind of lassitude in me that blended with the Russian twilight.

About five yards in front of me was a woman of probably about 40, walking. She had on a Persian lamb coat.

I was ill clad, for I had already sold everything that I possessed. Suddenly, out of nowhere, two men appeared. They had the Red Army stripes and were evidently off-duty.

One said to the other, “Hey, look at the dame. She is certainly an aristocrat. She is wearing a Persian lamb coat. Let’s kill her.”

Before I could open my mouth, before I could make a gesture to warn her, two shots rang out and she fell dead.

They came and got the coat off her and looked at it, then looked at me. “Comrade,” they said, “you sure could use a coat like this. You are ill clad in this cold weather.”

I said, “No thank you. I wouldn’t wear the leftovers of any bourgeois.”

“ ’Atta girl!” they said and walked away.

I knelt before the woman, turned her over, for she was face down, and put her hands crossways, like we usually do with dead people in Russia. She wore a cross. (All Russians wear a Baptismal cross.) I got her cross out, put it over her hands, said a silent prayer for her, and walked away.

“If You Save Me…”

Next, I see our family’s little hunting lodge in Finland. We had called the estate “Merri-Lokki,” meaning “Sea Gull,” because it was perched high up on the rocks.

Early in the Revolution, my husband Boris and I were locked inside it by some of the Finnish villagers who were Communist. They decreed that we should die by starvation. They had taken all the food out of the villa before our arrival. They left us wood to keep warm, so that our sufferings might be prolonged.

There is no pain in starving—not for the first few days. Your head becomes clear. You think logically. You crave food, of course, but you feel you can live without it if you have to.

A few days later your head becomes light, and your body swells in places. Then you begin to feel pain, like a knife inside and across your middle. Your hair falls out in batches. Your teeth loosen. And you can’t help it; sometimes you go crazy and gnaw at the wood in the room.

Most of the time we just lay in bed. I was in a state of suspended animation. I was constantly dreaming of food. Starvation is insidious: you die, yet you live. Some of the villagers thought that we were dying and they were right.

Then Finland joined the Germans and decided to wipe out all the Communist pockets in Finland. The authorities finally came to Kiskila and arrested the whole village. They came and liberated Boris and me. We were very weak. I weighed 82 pounds, had lost a lot of hair, and was swollen up, as people are when hunger lasts too long.

But before our release, half asleep, half awake, half alive, half dead, I said to God, “If you save me from this, in some way I will offer my life to you.”

The Blessing

My mind goes back, back, back, to the Russian hermit in Solovetsk, a monastery in the north of Russia. During the civil war in Russia, we happened to visit that monastery. It so happened that this very day, a hermit returned to the monastery after having spent thirty years alone in his hermitage. The abbot told us we could visit him.

We entered a simple cell and on a bench was sitting a frail old man whose silvery grey hair stood out making a halo around his head. His grey straggly beard fell low on his chest. His lined cheeks were pink, and in the blue eyes of this old man I saw the eyes of a child.

We chatted a while and then asked for his blessing. The staretz (holy elder) blessed Boris beautifully and wonderfully, but didn’t say anything extraordinary.

When I knelt for his blessing, his hands on my head brought warmth to my whole body, and my heart jumped with joy. I felt very happy. He lifted my chin, looked into my eyes and said, “Child, you are predestined by God to do great works for him. You will suffer much, but don’t be afraid. Follow where he leads. Go in his footsteps.” Then he blessed me with the usual long blessing.

We walked out of there, Boris and I, wondering what the words of this holy man to me meant.

— From In One Ear and Out the Other, pp. 68-69; The Little Mandate: How It Came to Be, p. 17, 21-22, (both unpublished manuscripts); Fragments of My Life, p. 56; Tumbleweed, p. 82; and The Gospel of a Poor Woman, p. 142. The last three are available from MH Publications.

to be continued