In the beautiful country known as France, there lived a very wealthy merchant by the name of Francis. He lived in finery, affording all of the delights one man, or even one hundred men, could ever desire. Though he enjoyed so many delights, and had once had the perfect life, that is, a beautiful wife to go along with all of his other rare and precious things, life could not remain so perfect. As fate would have it though, the Misses would fall terribly ill only but several years into their marriage, leaving Sir Francis and the world forever. Before she met her terrible end, that wonderful, magnificent creature bore to him a child, a tiny little boy whom she had insisted on naming Matthew.
Matthew was his fathers' world, to say the least, and it stood to reason that he should have gotten all of the attention and niceties that his papa's money could buy. The little boy and his father lived the highest of lifestyles, always together, inseparable were the two.
Thus, it only made sense that in the early winter of 1882, on a business trip to Moscow, in the country known as Russia, Francis would take little Matthew, his stuffed polar bear in tow, with him. The trip was intended to be as most others; they would go by train, spend a week or so in lavish quarters, be treated by their hosts, do a little sight-seeing, and then return home, a few thousand pounds richer if all went right. Neither Sir Francis, nor his beloved child, Matthew could have foreseen the tragedy that was about to befall them, for surely they would never have ventured to that frozen land and continued their comfortable lives, but as it were, no barrier nor angel put cease to the events that were to play themselves out.
A gloomy afternoon in the bustling city of Moscow found Matthew sitting in a well-furnished bedroom he shared with his papa, awaiting his dear fathers' return. As usual on business trips, Francis had gone alone to barter with the intended buyer, this time a very well-endowed tsar, promising his son that he would return shortly and they could go out to a delicious dinner. Being a patient child by nature, Matt was content to play on the rich oriental carpet with Kumajirou, his favorite toy- a stuffed polar bear. Though his papa had often tried to bribe him into new toys, the white bear was always the boys' favorite; he had been carrying it around with him since before he could even walk.
Hours passed, the time ticking away as the sky outside became sullen with grey clouds. Every now and then Matt would stand on his tip-toes, peeking out the window, a curious eye on the hustle and bustle of the city.
"Papa must be on his way right now…." Matt consoled himself, though it did little to calm him; he wasn't used to being alone for so long.
Suddenly, from outside the door, he could hear loud noises, banging footsteps thudding down the hall. Afraid, Matthew grabbed up his bear and tucked them both away beneath an oak writing desk. The boots stopped in front of the door…Matts' door. Rough voices quarreled loudly in a foreign language, broken by the cracking of the wooden door. Six enormous men in military garb flooded into the room, yelling and tearing about the place.
A shelf flew by, scattering its papers to the air like a flock of doves taking wing, as it took out a sturdy chair that had been hiding beneath the writing desk too. In shock, Matthew screamed, pieces of the chair biting at his skin. The men stopped, and for a moment, the room was silent. Enormous black boots, so shiny Matt could see his brilliant blue eyes in them, filled with fear, approached the desk *thud, thud, thud, thud….* and they stopped.
Realizing he had stopped breathing, the small boy exhaled, and immediately inhaled to scream as the desk shattered above him, lifted from its place on the floor to collide with the wall. As he cowered, trying to be as small as possible, a rough gloved hand grabbed him, jerking him to his feet. In the middle of the room the men held the trembling French child, pilfering all of the valuables in the room, before dragging him out into the cold hallway, and out into the even colder street.
Feet sliding across a fresh layer of ice on the cobblestone, Matt tried to resist his kidnappers. Effortlessly they drug him to a rough looking cart that appeared to have been cut from a block of wood the sides cut out and replaced with thick metal bars. A door on the back was pulled open, and Matthew thrown inside with his bear whom he had somehow managed to keep a death-grip on through the turmoil. The men chattered to each other before crunching through the icy ground and climbing onto the seat in front of the cell portion of the carriage.
The cart began to clatter down the street, and the damp wood of the cage began to seep cold liquid through Matt's thin outer layer. He tried unsuccessfully to stand, but finding the roads very bumpy, was repeatedly thrown back to the cold, hard floor as the prison trundled through town. Crying freely, he pulled at the freezing bars until his fingers had turned a bluish tint. On the sidewalks the people of Russia went about their lives, paying no attention to the hysteric boy in the Police men's carriage- he must be a thief or miscreant, either way, it was nothing new.
Buildings and shops began to clear, giving way to forest and fewer homes until nearly all of civilization had been consumed by the wilderness. In this isolated area they came to a halt, one of the men coming around to retrieve Matthew. Wanting to be out of the cage, he didn't try to resist when his arm was grabbed too hard and yanked forward, spilling the child to the ground. The man grunted, pulling Matt up by his hair, roughly smacking the hair down, and taking him by the hand.
"PLEASE! I have to go back! My Papa will be worried! Please let me go!" the blonde child sobbed, trying to back-pedal but failing on the slick ground.
In front of the carriage loomed an ominous iron gate covered in vine and behind that the silhouette of a very large two-story home. A modest young woman clad in a bland, green apron on top of a brown long-sleeved dress was standing before the gate, speaking with one of the looters. Her face would have been youthful, but seemed to be wrought with the weariness of a woman twice her age. She knitted her eyebrows as the man spoke, in what could only be a look of genuine sympathy. Finally when the man stood silent, she appeared thoughtful, then nodded, looking over at Matthew. Led by his shoulders, Matt was taken to the woman who offered a kind smile and took his hand that wasn't occupied by Kumajirou.
It was then that the kind policemen mounted their carriage and drove away, leaving the nana with another homeless little orphan they had thankfully found before it became too cold.
Turning his shining orbs to her, Matthew pleaded once again, "My Papa is waiting for me! Please let me go back! I don't belong here!" Unfortunately, the woman was not fluent in French, Matthews' first language, and only smiled sadly at him before leading him gently to the old house.
Once upon a time, the home must have been quite the jewel, but through the years and constant wear and tear, had fallen into slight disrepair. The house had once belonged to Nana's grandmother, who had started using it as an orphanage since she seemed to have a knack for finding homeless boys, and the trait had been passed along to Nana as it so happened.
Groaning under their feet, the stairs held firm as the two figures made their way inside through a red paint-covered door, adorned with ornate gold vines and green leaves, now beginning to flake. Their first stop inside is the dining room, consisting of one long, rough wooden table, matching benches beneath it on either side. A squatty stove sat brooding in the corner, its dented metal pipe running up through the ceiling. Cupboards lined the walls, a few of the doors askew, warped with the weather and age. Passing through this chow hall, Nana escorts her new addition up a wooden staircase to the second floor. On the left is a hall leading to the washroom, to the right is a set of double doors, sealing away the bay. Kindly, she takes Matthew to the bay, which proves to be a large room with two rows of beds, one against either wall, facing inwards.
Like the rest of the orphanage, the bay leaves much to be desired. Gray ceiling meets with red brick walls. Each bed has an unpainted metal frame, clean white sheets stretched tight over each mattress, and at the footboard of each stands a small chest to hold the owners' few possessions.
Pushing him gently into the room, Nana urges him to pick a bed. Since he won't be staying long, it doesn't matter where he sleeps, Matt thinks to himself, since his papa will be coming to get him very soon.
He chooses a bed towards the middle on the right side of the room, and Nana finds him a big blanket to put on top of it. Making up the bed a little, Kumajirou gives it the final inspection before Matt lets Nana lead him out of the bay and back downstairs.
Before he can go outside she digs in a closet, fetching an old, tattered jacket; it is far too big for Matthew, but is warm, and he willingly lets her help him into it. Pulling the fabric closed in front of him, Nana smiles at her work and stands, going to open the front door. The French child can barely contain himself and makes a run for the gate! ….Only to find it locked-a thick chain and heavy padlock left to laugh at him from their post. A gentle hand takes Matt by the shoulder, pulling him away from the gate, and guiding him around the side of the house.
Here, in the side yard, young boys are running about, all playing and rough-housing. There is a big age range; the oldest boy looks to be in his early teens, and others, maybe a year or so younger than Matthew, now seven, are to be seen as well. Nana urges him forward towards the others, murmuring something in Russian before leaving the young Frenchman to play with his new orphan brothers.
Awkward, Matthew hugs his polar bear, watching the others from a safe distance. They are all so oblivious, and foreign. Shivering, Mattie turns away, trudging back to the front steps to sit and wait for his papa. If he doesn't sit out here, his papa may not see him, and leave without knowing Matt is there.
Dutifully the boy waits until late in the evening when the temperatures have reached a truly frigid low and the other boys are nearly tuckered out. None of them seem to have noticed him yet given his "hiding" place on the front steps. As the sun begins to dip behind the tops of the evergreens, Nana reappears in the door way, banging on a large metal pot. Dinner time.
Barely moving in time, a herd of boys trampled the stairs where Matt had been sitting only seconds earlier. He was the last inside, following the crowd unenthusiastically; unsure of whether it would be safe to leave his post in case papa came by. Papa would probably wait until the morning to come now, he reasoned, since it was growing dark and the city was unknown.
Supper was as foreign as the Russian language to little Matthew. If the smell wasn't enough to repel the gourmet, some of the colors that appeared to float in the stew did the job. As all of the other boys gobbled down their soups hungrily, Matt was doing his best not to become sick; even Kumajirou was feeling nauseous. When the orphans were nearly done, Nana walked by, stopping to scold the French boy for not eating, but in the end could not force him to do so, and ushered them all upstairs for wash time.
Never had Matthew imagined that bath time could have been made into a horrendous debacle. He had never bathed in a lower class Russian orphanage. The wash room turned out to be a slightly moldy stall, not much larger than the room Matt and his father had shared in the Tsars' palace just earlier that very day. In the middle of the room stood three low benches, on which were placed four buckets of steamy water and four blocks of soap. Each boy picked up a rag on his way in and they crowded about the buckets, taking turns with the soap bars and dipping their cloths into the warm water.
Slightly OCD, especially for a person of French origin, Matthew found this practice horrifying. Everyone, their naked, dirty bodies in such close proximity, SHARING SOAP! He had never seen something so very…UNSANITARY. Brilliantly, he found Kumajirou was the answer! The plush bear couldn't get wet, so if he were to just hold onto the bear…. Nana, being the understanding woman she is, quickly caught on and gently took the polar plush, nudging Matt into the washroom anyways.
The whole experience proved to be just as traumatizing as Mattie's imagination had conjured it up to be. Keeping his eyes on his toes, he quickly ran in, poked an arm through the crowd of boys gathered around one of the buckets, and withdrew his cloth. In a matter of seconds the boy had swabbed his skin with the sudsy water and was dipping his cloth again to rinse. Thirty seconds found him standing before Nana again, holding out his arms for the bear; in his haste he'd even left his glasses on, now fogged up from the steam of the washroom.
With a sigh she returned the plush and led Matt over to a small standing closet where she selected a set of old pajamas from a neatly folded stack. Taking the clothes in his arms, the blonde boy ran into the bay. He jumped into the thread-bare pajamas, quickly squirming under the sheets of his bed before any of the other boys could come into the bay.
A restless sleep finally overtook Matthew as he lay in the unfamiliar bed, surrounded by unfamiliar people who only spoke an unfamiliar language. In a world like this, who could he hold on to? Clutching Kumajirou the little one slept, hoping desperately that the new light of day would bring with it the shining face of his papa, and it would all be right. In the morning everything…would be..right.