Although we had a four year age difference (he was older) it didn't matter to us. We were alike in temperament, thinking and ability that many thought of us as twins instead of lovers and partners. It was quickly dismissed when they saw who we really were. With my fiery green eyes and red-gold hair, I give the appearance of a woman not to be reckoned with. I was soft and caring to those I loved and ruthless and aggressive when those I loved were threatened and hurt. I was also very prune to depression and had been known to be blunt and snappish when my temper rose. He, in the meantime, was just as dark-haired and -eyed and much more cautious and more thoughtful and fast thinking than I am (not so rash and headstrong, really). He also dismissed all of my paranoia and even countered them with more rational and logical thoughts. He was much more immune to stress but was very worrisome when I vexed him. I was more reckless than he was.
For the first fourteen and a half years of my life, I have never met him or even have known that he existed. He watched me from afar without my knowing, seeing who I am and what has truly happened to me. He never met me face-to-face until that day in the back of the alleyway on a cold day, where my stepbrothers were trying to kill me.
Forgive me for starting at the wrong point in time. It is careless of me to think that all people know where and how I came to be, but it is not so. That day in the alleyway that I mentioned marks a major turning point in my life. Yes, it is a day of some liberation from what I considered, childishly, to be a tyranny, and still do at times when I think about it. I should also fill in the blanks on how three strong-willed, yet easily manipulated members of my now-estranged family tried to kill me. This all started before I was born and even thought of, the real beginning of all things.
My father was a Jewish Russian soldier in the former tsar's army, religious first and devoted to country second. He had lived in the same Siberian village, Tobolsk, for the years of his childhood. He knew what happiness meant there, also seeing firsthand what political torture was to his country even if it was months after it happened and spread. If I remember correctly, it was a pocket of Siberia that supported Socialism, a theory of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, hence his fascination with it later. It was also a village that held its reverence to the tsar and his family, but the ideals of Socialism was always about, especially with the exiles that came from the western side of the country.
Father had a great, devoted family who has been long gone in the folly of staying behind and protecting what was rightfully theirs in the village. But because Father was otherwise overprotected by this family, it never occurred to him that someday, he had to leave this place of safety. He was schooled carefully, smothered by his mother and spoiled by his brothers and sisters because he was the youngest of ten children. Indeed, Father has never left his home village until Alexander III released the pogroms, meant to destroy those of the Jewish faith. At eighteen, Father was sent from his village by my elderly grandfather, knowing he'd never see him or his family again because of their stubbornness and his siblings' want of staying behind with their families and their belongings.
They wanted him to have the life they wanted for themselves later and because he was the youngest and the most naïve, the world was put before him so he could experience it before it was taken away. And Father did leave with a new name and identity, however. Before heading to Moscow, Father promised many things, conditions that everyone begged him to consider before he went out west: that he'd practice the Jewish faith until the end of his life, marry and start a family and raise his children to be Jewish. He meant to keep these promises. Long after he waved goodbye to the February snowy landscape that he played in, a scene of which he kept to himself for years to come, he even attempted to uphold this legacy and the beliefs that he was left to keep.
As the dashing red-headed peasant Father made his way west to Moscow and was accepted into the tsar's army as his new name Peter Alexis Michalovich, young and ready to serve the Motherland of Russia. He served well, never went after the Jews in the pogroms as he was asked and practiced the faith every evening secretly (especially on the Sabbath). As his rank grew, so did his privacy, for he had to keep himself a secret even in a roomful of nosy officers and inspectors. He was a loner and never attempted to gain any friends or influence. His goal was only to do his duty as a soldier, but to avoid hurting those that were of his faith. But he had a heart and helped his fellow countrymen well.
Years had passed without any detection of his identity and he marked a decade in such a glorious military. However, after the shaky 1905 October Manifesto, he met a young German noblewoman, who had just recently been widowed: my mother, Victoria von Rumey. Her dead husband had left her millions of dollars in America and marks in Germany, a voucher in America, stocks and of course, a home in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where her voucher was located. Baron von Rumey had connections in America and had insured that his wife and anybody else with her could reach America, just in case something had happened to the family or his death forced her to no longer live in Germany. And indeed, something did happen to her in those months following her widowhood and that was in the handsome Russian soldier she saw. She left her home, her family and her dignity, to escape the black world of Death: the sudden passing of her husband.
In 1906, smitten and very much in love, Father asked leave of the Russian Army to pursuit his dream of marrying the beautiful German Victoria von Rumey. He was granted this by the tsar himself, Nicholas II. The weak ruler all-too-quickly accepted resignation and bid him a fond farewell, as Father had risen much in the decade and some years in which he was assigned to the tsar's military. Nicholas also told him of the importance of the family, something Father was eager to start with, knowing that he too chased love and within a decade's time, it cost him his life.
Understand this about Mother, though. Sweet as she was before bitter events settled into her mind and those around her, she rebelled against family tradition, but believed in the one she herself developed, establishing her own rules and iron rule. She took care of her ambitions and those she bothered to care for. She wanted her own way, sweet to achieve it at first and then throwing her powerful temper about (it was a scare tactic that served her well enough, and it worked often). Otherwise, she'd have someone else do her dirty work for her except in her case of blind love and devotion, something she was cautioned against as she secretly spirited herself away. Her politics were of different structure from the norm, what we call Hitler's government today, and her enthusiasm and wishful thinking that it would happen gave her more the reason to feel superior, pretending allegiance to the Kaiser. She liked total control of those around her and developed a hate of those not white, blonde-haired blue/green eyed and Protestant.
This made Father cringe. That was one of the reasons why he hesitated in marrying her. It did not matter how much he loved her. He never told her about his history as they courted graciously. He wanted to wait for the right time to tell her this heavy secret, a mistake that would cause rifts much later. He didn't want to ruin his chances of having a family.
Father kept his secret and kept it well even when he went through to Germany to see for himself if Mother's home was worth leaving Russia for. Even as he introduced himself to Mother's stricter family, they knew who he was ("Just by looking at him, that dirty Jew who walked in all proud in his Russian Cossack uniform," someone once boasted to me later). His silence about his history, and never a denial about anything, confirmed their suspicions.
So, for seven years afterward, the two of them battled her family for their marriage and a simple blessing. The more Father saw Mother for who she was, the more determined he was to keep his promises, no matter how much it would hurt him not to raise his family Jewish. It also doesn't help that Mother's sons from von Rumey (George, Warner and Kurt), by then children with iron wills like Mother, supported the family's claims that Father was a Jew, a dirty scoundrel that offered nothing but trouble and heartbreak. The latter two, who were twins, were strongly influenced by the former, only a few years older. This influence lasted them until now, when only last month, they were killed, a fault that I have deeply felt.
In early 1913 my parents and my stepbrothers packed their bags, the latter three by force, and fled to America. My parents secretly married through Christian rites on the boat, in which a Protestant clergyman blessed their marriage. They had left behind the rigid, shadowy clouds in Germany and headed to the great unknown. Beyond them America came into sight, Bridgeport laying itself open to them. With millions of dollars and a house to live in, there was never a lack of want. Mother had arranged everything in secret and was excited (perhaps the first time) that the turn of events was going in her direction. Life was terrific and off to a good start.
It became obvious later that year why they wed so quickly after six years of free love.