Page 181 - Revelation

Svetlana de Rohan-Levashova. Revelation

honestly trying to avoid any possible conflicts. I always sincerely pitied that they failed
to love each other... They both were (my mother still is) wonderful people and I loved
them both very much. But when my grandmother somehow tried to adjust to my mother
all the time they lived together, my mother behaved in quite the contrary way and by
the end of grandmother’s life sometimes showed too openly her irritation which
wounded me deeply, because I was strongly attached to them both and did not like to
get, as the saying goes, "between two fires" or take anybody's side.

I could never understand what caused this permanent "quiet" war between these
two wonderful women, but apparently there were some very strong reasons for that or
maybe they simply were truly "incompatible", as happens quite often to strangers who
have to live together. One way or another, I was very sorry for that, because in general
it was a very united and faithful family where everybody stood for each other with
might and main and survived every misfortune together.
But let’s come back to those days when everything just began and every member
of this new family honestly tried to live in peace and friendship. My grand-dad came
back home too, but to everybody’s huge regret, his health sharply worsened after the
prison. Most likely, it was the long wanderings of the Seriogins about unknown towns
and the terrible time in Siberia that did not spare my grandad’s poor heart –
microinfarctions followed one after another.

My mother made very good friends with him and tried to help him as much as she
could to forget everything bad as quickly as possible, although she had a very tough
time herself. In the past months she had managed to pass preparatory and introductory
exams in a medical institute, but to her huge regret, her long-awaited dream was not
destined to come true for the simple reason that in Lithuania one had to pay for a higher
education and my mother’s family, where there were nine children, lacked the financial
means for that... That year her still young mother, my other grandmother, who I also
have never seen, died because of the consequences of a nervous breakdown which had
happened several years previously. She fell sick in war-time, on the day when she knew
that there was a strong bombardment of a pioneer camp in the sea town of Palanga and
all the surviving children were taken in an unknown direction. Her youngest son, the
most beloved of all nine, was among them. He came back home several years later, but
regrettably it did not help her much and she went out slowly during the first year of my
mother and father’s joint life... My mother’s father – my grand-dad – had to take care
of a very big family in which only one daughter – my mother’s sister Domicella was
married. Unfortunately he was a terrible "businessman". Very soon a woollen factory
which he owned as my grandmother’s "dowry" was put on the market for debt and my
grandmother’s parents did not want to help him anymore, because this was the third
time he lost the property they gave them as a gift.
My other grandmother descended from a very rich Lithuanian noble family of the
Mitruliavichus, which even after dispossession of the kulaks had enough lands left in
their possession. Therefore, when my grandmother married my grandfather (contrary
to her parents will) who had nothing, in order to save face her parents presented a large
farm and beautiful and spacious house to the newly-weds, which over time my
grandfather lost due to his great "commercial" abilities. But because by that time they
had five children, my grandmother’s parents could not remain aloof and gave them a

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