Danielle Steel - Zoya

“Nicholas … my love … we're going to have to move.” The words seemed wooden and strange as he looked up at her with confused eyes.

“Because Papa died?”

“Yes … no … well, actually, because …” Because now we're poor … because we can't afford to live here anymore … because … “because these are going to be difficult times for us. We can't stay here anymore.” He looked at her seriously, trying to be brave, as Sasha played with the dog, and the nurse quietly left the room in tears. She knew she would have to leave them now too, and it broke her heart to leave the children she had cared for since they were born. But Zoya had told her the day before. There was no hiding from it now.

“Mama, are we going to be poor?”

“Yes,” she was always honest with him, “in the way I think you mean. We're not going to have a big house or lots of cars. But we're going to have the important things … except Papa …” She felt a lump rise in her throat,“… but we have each other, sweetheart. And we always will. Do you remember what I told you about Uncle Nicholas and Aunt Alix and the children when they took them to Siberia? They were very brave and they made kind of a game of it. They always knew that the important thing was to be together, and to love each other, and to be strong … and that's what we have to do now,” the tears were running down her cheeks as she spoke, but Nicholas was looking at her solemnly, trying desperately to understand.

“Are we going to Siberia?” He looked intrigued for the first time and she smiled.

“No, darling, we're not. We're going to stay here in New York.”

“Where will we live?” Like all children, he was interested in the simpler realities.

“In an apartment. I'll have to find a place for us to live.”

“Will it be nice?”

She thought instantly of Mashka's letters from Tobolsk and Ekaterinburg, “We'll make it nice, I promise you.”

And then with sad eyes, he looked at her again, “Can we take the dog?”

Her eyes filled with tears again as she looked at Sava playing with Sasha on the floor, and then back at him. “Of course we can. She came all the way from St Petersburg with me” She choked on the words but she looked into his eyes reassuringly, “we're not going to leave her now.”

“May I take my toys?”

“Some of them … as many as we can fit into the apartment. I promise.”

He smiled, a little mollified, “Good.” And then his eyes grew sad again, thinking of his father and the fact that he would never see him again. “Will we go soon?”

“I think so, Nicholas.” He nodded, and with a last hug for her, he took Sasha and the dog and they left the room, as Zoya sat on the floor, watching them go, praying that she would be as strong as Evgenia had been for her, and as she thought of her, Nicholas tiptoed slowly back into the room and looked down at her where she sat.

“I love you, Mama.”

She closed her arms around him and tried not to cry, “Hove you too, Nicholas … I love you so very, very much….”

He bent closer to her then and pressed something into her hand without a word.

“What's this?”

It was a gold coin, and she knew how proud of it he was. Clayton had given it to him only a few months before, and he had showed it to everyone for weeks. “You can sell it if you like. Then maybe we won't be quite so poor.”

“No … no, my love … it's yours … Papa gave it to you.”

He stood very tall then, fighting back his own tears. “Papa would want me to take care of you.” Zoya only shook her head, unable to speak, as she pressed the coin back into his hand, and holding him close to her, walked him back to his room.

CHAPTER

32

The Wrights had lost their money too. Cobina and her daughter had formed a supper club singing act, wearing frontier garb and funny hats. She and Bill were getting a divorce and the house on Sutton Place had been sold for almost nothing. Other women were selling their fur coats in hotel lobbies, and polo ponies were being traded for quick cash. Everywhere, Zoya saw the same kind of panic there had been in St. Petersburg twelve years before, but without the physical threat of the revolution.

Their own house on Long Island sold for barely more than the price of the cars kept there, and Clayton's attorneys told her to grab it. “Cholly Knickerbocker” reported fresh outrages almost daily. The column was actually written by a man named Maury Paul, and the fates he described now were beyond belief, society ladies becoming waitresses and shopgirls. Some remained unaffected by the crash, but as Zoya looked around Sutton Place now, it seemed almost deserted. Her own servants were all gone, save the nurse who had looked after the children. Sasha still didn't seem to understand why Clayton was gone, but Nicholas had grown thoughtful and quiet, and asked Zoya constant questions about where they would live, and when they would sell the house. It would have driven Zoya mad, except that she was so sorry for him. She remembered her own fears in Russia during the revolution. His eyes were bottomless green pools of pain and worry. And he stood looking like a sad little man, as he watched her pack her more practical dresses in her bedroom. There seemed to be no point taking her elaborate evening gowns, all the Poirets and Chanels and Lanvins, and Schiaparellis. She wrapped those in bundles and gave them to the nurse to sell in the lobby of the Plaza. The indignity of it would have been crushing, but she was too worried to care. They needed every penny they could get to live on.

And in the end, she sold the house with the furniture Elsie de Wolfe had bought for them, the paintings, the Persian rugs, even the china and crystal. It barely managed to cover Clayton's debts, and gave them enough to live on for only a few months.

“Won't we keep anything, Mama?” Nicholas looked around so sadly.

“Only what we'll need in the new apartment.” She pounded the pavements for days, in neighborhoods she d never seen before, and finally she found two small rooms on West Seventeenth Street. It was a tiny walk-up apartment, with two windows looking into the back of another building. It was small and dark and there was an almost overwhelming smell of garbage. For three days, she moved things in herself, with the help of the nurse and an old black man she hired for a dollar. They brought in two beds, and a desk, the settee from her boudoir, one small rug, and some lamps. And she hung the Nattier painting Elsie de Wolfe had recently brought them back from Paris. She dreaded bringing the children there, but in late November, the house on Sutton Place sold, and two days later, they tearfully kissed the nurse good-bye, and standing in the marble hall, Zoya watched her kiss Sasha as they all cried.

“Will we ever come back here, Mama?” Nicholas looked at her, trying to be brave, his chin trembling, his eyes full, as he looked around for a last time. She would gladly have tried to spare him the pain of it, but she took his small hand in her own, and pulled her warm coat tightly around her, as she answered.

“No, darling, we won't” She had packed almost all their toys, and a box of books for herself, not that she could concentrate on anything now. Someone had given her Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms , but it had sat on her night table, unread. She could barely think, let alone read, and she was going to be busy, looking for a job. The money she'd gotten from selling the house would only keep them going for a few months, if they were lucky. Nothing was worth anything now, everyone was selling houses and furs and antiques and treasures. None of it was worth more than someone else was able to pay, and the market was glutted with once expensive objects that were now worthless. It seemed remarkable that there were others who were virtually untouched by the crash, as Cholly Knickerbocker continued to report their weddings and parties and dances. There were still people dancing at the Embassy Club every night, or at the Central Park Casino, to the music of Eddy Duchin. But Zoya felt as though she would never dan: e again, as she and the children walked down their front steps for a last time with their suitcases, and Sasha's best doll tucked under her arm. And as though it had happened only the day before, she could think of nothing but the burning of the Fontanka Palace … her mother's nightgown in flames as she leapt from the window … and Evgenia hurrying her out the back door of the pavilion to Feodor and the waiting troika.