Quarenghiâs, Voronikhinâs. My instructions hadnât been followed. These priceless documents were going to be left behind.
The folders wouldnât fit into a standard crate so we had to make a special one. Fortunately the carpenters were still there. I gave them the measurements but they said âWeâve got no more wood.â So I told them to break up a chest in which cushions were kept. While the crate was being put together I made up my mind to perform an act of vandalism. I was tormented by the fact that the unique tapestry upholstery on Voronikhinâs furniture from the Greek Hall was being abandoned. We couldnât save the chairs, but we could save the tapestries. Every piece was held in place with hundreds of tiny gilt nails. I still probably couldnât have brought myself to touch them if at that precise moment a gun hadnât started firing. As it was I grabbed a razor blade and started slicing into the upholstery, cutting as close to the nails as I could. We laid the portfolios in the new crate, with the tapestries between them.
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Next to be dealt with were the palaceâs sculptures, now looking painfully fine in the bare galleries. Too bulky to evacuate, they were manoeuvred down into an inconspicuous corner of the palace cellars and bricked in. To make the new wall blend with the old it was smeared with mud and sand. The outdoor statues â Apollo, Mercury, Flora, Niobe with her weeping children â were buried where they stood, dotted about the park. On the white marble of Justice and Peace a workman wrote, âWeâll come back for youâ, before disguising the newly turned earth with fallen leaves.
All around, the Red Army was now in full retreat. Entering the palace on the morning of 19 September, Zelenova was angry to see dusty military motorbikes carelessly parked among the lilac bushes of Empress Maria Fedorovnaâs Dutch garden. In her office, she found a major cranking the handle of a telephone:
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I was struck by how tired he looked. Someone was grunting on the other end of the line, and he replied (obviously not for the first time) that he hadnât hung up, that the line was bad, and that he hadnât got any more men. The person at the other end carried on angrily grunting away. The major very slowly put down the receiver and I started my speech. âPlease immediately tell your soldiers to remove their motorcycles from the private gardens!â He asked, âWhose private gardens?â And this poor exhausted major had to listen to a whole lecture on Cameron.
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That evening Zelenova received a call from Leningradâs museums administration, telling her that she had been made Pavlovskâs director â an empty promotion since she was also put formally in charge of its ârapid evacuationâ. âThen the call was cut off, so I couldnât explain anything . . . I knew we had to leave, but how could we abandon all the crates we had prepared, and all the things we hadnât packed yet? No, letâs keep on working!â Realising that no more lorries would arrive from Leningrad, she commandeered horse-drawn carts:
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After we had seen off the last of the cart-drivers a green MK [car] appeared. A short lieutenant jumped out and demanded, in an unexpectedly loud, bossy, voice, âWho are you and what are you doing here?â I explained that I was director of the Palace museum and park, and that these were my colleagues. The lieutenant exploded: âBut everyone in the town has been evacuated!â
âWe are arranging evacuation ourselves, and waiting for transport.â
âThere wonât be any transport! Youâre lucky that I came round to check that everyone from divisional headquarters had gone. Get in my car this minute!â
âI canât go anywhere, even if you tell me to, because Iâm here on the orders of the High Commandâ â and I gave him the