Katya & The Prince of Siam

Maria (Katya’s mother), Katya and Alla (Katya’s half sister).

 

Seriozha, Katya’s half brother.

 

In Katya’s letters to her brother, written when she left for Siberia as a nurse in 1905, she often mused nostalgically about the happy times they enjoyed together at the turn of the century. In addition, a fascinating memoir by one of Katya’s maternal aunts contains many insights into the lives of the large extended family and of pre-revolutionary Ukraine. One of Katya’s great-uncles writing of holidays in Yurov in the 1850s paints a picture which is typically Russian and had probably changed little by the time Katya was a girl.

 

‘As a boy, I always anticipated our departure with excitement and joy, and recall those blessed moments when the trap was loaded, the horses bridled and my brother, sister and I rode out of Kiev. We had to travel sixty versts along the old post track and, leaving in the morning, we reached Yurov just after sunset. Sometimes Grandmama came with us, spending most of the journey dozing in the trap. With pillows piled around her, she would mutter occasionally in her sleep and then drop off again.

In Yurov, warmly and joyfully greeted by Aunt Tatiana, Uncle Stepan and the whole family, we were led into the big wooden house at the back of a spacious courtyard. Behind the house was a park boasting an ancient alley way of limes, their branches meeting overhead, shady and fragrant on the hottest day.

Beyond the park was an orchard and an apiary. I sometimes used to spend the night sleeping in the old beekeeper’s hut. I would turn up early while he was still cooking his supper, and would sit by the fire where he was baking potatoes. I would offer him a little flask of vodka and demand a story of the old days. And he would tell me of the Dnieper Cossacks and of how he himself had been a soldier in 1812, and chased the enemy out of Russia.

I spent hours by the River Zdvzhi, rod in hand, fishing from the bank or from a boat. Even now at night, I recall those happy days and the familiar sounds of the river ring in my ears like music. We would go bathing and fishing several times a day … But there were also the stables, a ride to take the horses to water, at the cattle yard and aviary, and a trip to woods and fields with the steward.