Nice to meet you! My name is Masha Alexandra van der Heyde. For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved to write. Crime Passionnel is my fifth book; it is the first one about my family.
My Russian heritage has always formed a part of me. My sister and I were baptised in the Russian Orthodox church in Paris on Rue Daru, where my family went whenever we were in Paris to visit my aunt Katya and uncle Volodja, who would listen to the Russian radio in their tiny French apartment. But most of all, my feelings for Russia came through my grandmother, Lydia Kamendrovsky.
After Russia, Berlin and Paris, my grandmother, Lydia, moved to Holland with her Dutch husband, where two of her children lived and thrived. When her husband died young, she could have gone to her remaining family in Paris, but she chose to stay in Holland. It was not always easy here as a foreigner, but I think she was happy, in her own way. See, after losing all she had in her beloved Russia (and once more in Berlin), she found a new home here.
I remember her in Leeuwarden, with a picture of the Tsar and her icons on the wall. Her strong Russian accent with the rolling ‘r’s. She would not leave the house without her ‘ghat’ (hat), and when my mother would comment on her cold hands, she would always reply with a smile: ‘Cold ghands (hands) but a warm gheart (heart’). Food was always shared, and even when you politely declined, it was offered at least three more times. And I remember her group of Frisian admirers, old men who were charmed by her, taking her out for tea in little Frisian tea pavilions.
Then came Alzheimer’s, and after a time of desperation, her mind was back in her beloved Russia. She forgot her Dutch, only talked in Russian, and whenever my father Nikolai visited, her face would beam and she would sigh: “Brother Dmitry! How I have been looking for you!” She died on 23 May 1991, thirty-two years after her husband.
My grandmother’s nostalgia and her feelings for a Russia which did not exist anymore seeped into her son (my father), Nikolai van der Heyde (and also into me). My father, Nikolai, spoke Russian, went to summer camps for Russian children in Paris, and in a way felt more Russian than Dutch. In the army, he was in the secret services with the mission to make the Dutch understand ‘how Russians think’ (and had a lot of fun making that up). After that, he studied at the Film Academy and became a movie director.
Crime Passionnel is my tribute to them. To my grandmother, Lydia and my father Nikolai, who taught me that memories never truly fade. Their dreams and stories live on within me.