by Terri Dixon
I felt my heart skip a beat when I saw Peter. I was happy to see him, and I had been thinking about him anyway. I liked him. I had virtually no information to base that on. I was chalking it up to chemistry. I was a little concerned about it, because he was older than me albeit not by much, and because I had almost no experience with men. The only boyfriend that I really ever had was Virgil, and he turned out to be gay.
He seemed embarrassed. “Hello, may I come in? Never mind. I know it’s late, and you’re probably trying to sleep,” he said.
I opened the door and swung my arm as an invitation for him to come in. “I can’t seem to sleep, anyway. I haven’t been able to sleep much since I came to your country. I should be sleeping all the time as dark as it is, but becoming a Tsar is keeping me awake.”
He walked across the room to one of the velvet upholstered chairs and sat down. “I don’t think that I’d be able to sleep much if I were you either.” He smiled a little.
I sat down on the edge of the bed. It was the closest piece of furniture to the chair where Peter sat. “So, what’s on your mind?” I asked.
“I’m not even sure. There’s something about you that makes me want to find out more about you. I hope that’s not too forward. I’ve never had a conversation of a personal nature with royalty before,” he explained.
“Well, that’s flattering. Just for the record, I’ve never been royalty before, so I wouldn’t worry about protocol. I had a question for you anyway. Are you and grandma way more obsessed with Catherine the Great than you let on?” I looked above me and pointed to the painting over the bed. “So, why does she keep that anyway? Shouldn’t that be in the Hermitage, some other museum? Does she really believe that the President would get rid of it?”
He let out a deep breath. He seemed nervous. I wasn’t sure which item on the agenda made him nervous. There were so many.
“It’s not what you think,” Peter said. “My grandpa had a good reason for arranging to buy it.”
“I would presume that it was sold because everything is for sale in Russia these days. That’s what my grandma used to say.”
“I understand her views. However, it’s the American media poisoning minds in that case. I understand that a lot of that goes on in your country. Actually my grandfather until his death and now my grandmother sits on several boards in this country. She’s very well connected, both politically and privately. She heard that the painting was going to be destroyed, because people were starting to talk about returning a Tsar to the throne. Catherine the Great and Peter the Great are two of the most notable Tsars. They represent the largest threat to the ruling government. Out of sight, out of mind. Tish was going to put it in a museum after my grandfather died, but instead brought it here so that the mobsters couldn’t destroy it. It’s part of our history. It’s almost sacred, and they were going to burn it, like the Nazis would have. She didn’t notify anyone about its location, so no one really knew where it went. That way no one could destroy it.”
“The government was actually going to destroy it?” I was shocked.
“The government here is sensing the winds of change. They can feel the air of revolution. They hate that.”
“But why would they destroy national treasures? It seems a little paranoid and animalistic.”
“Exactly, like Adolf Hitler, hiding in a bunker. Like Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole in the ground. Like Osama Bin Laden hiding in a compound in Pakistan. These people feel that their day is coming soon. They sense that there is a power in their midst that they cannot control. They fear losing control. They are very paranoid, and they feel that they need to do anything necessary to stay in power. It is an old ideology that if they can keep the people ignorant, they will hold onto their power.”
“I feel so stupid,” I said. “I can’t believe that all of these things that I’m told back in my country are all about political relations. I can’t believe that there isn’t any real news anymore. I always respected journalists for the work they do. I can’t believe that so much of it isn’t real.”
“Don’t be too disillusioned. I think that journalists want to report the real news, but they have bosses too. We all have someone or something to answer to. It is an unfortunate fact of life. I have to answer to my grandmother, so that I can have a great career in program engineering. Surely you have some kind of legacy to fall into as well.”
“You mean, besides being a Tsarina?” I asked.
“I mean you must have had a family legacy before all of this came along.” He smiled as he spoke. “We all have something. We all have one cross or another to bear.”
“Most of my family worked in a truck factory,” I replied. “I don’t know how much of a legacy that is. Sometimes I think that since most of the family is dead, I should have a clean slate and be able to do whatever I want to. I don’t know if that will be the way it turns out. I’m not sure what I want to do with the rest of my life. I’m not even sure what I want to major in at school. I don’t think that they have a program for becoming an autocrat. Up until now I had wanted to be a history professor.”
Peter smiled at me. “I wish I had a decision to make about my future. In my family it has always been planned for me. My grandma told me what to study at university. I did what I was told to do. She makes the rules. She always told me that every time someone doesn’t listen to her, bad things happen. Sometimes I wonder if she isn’t right about that.”
“So, what kind of bad things would happen if you didn’t do what she wanted you to?” I asked, wondering why he would listen so closely to Tish, no matter what the rewards were. He didn’t seem to me like the kind of guy who was a follower.
Peter rose from the chair. “Maybe I should go and let you get some sleep.”
I hadn’t meant to upset him. I could tell that I had. “Wait a minute, I’m sorry,” I said, putting my hand on his arm to try and stop him from leaving. “I didn’t mean to bring up a sore subject. Don’t leave. I like it that you’re here. You’re the only comforting thing in this room.”
“No I am sorry; it is just that there are some things that upset me. My lack of control over my life is one of them.” He sat back down. He looked at the table where the photo album sat. “I suppose I should tell you a little bit about myself. I am rather complicated once you get to know me.”
I followed his gaze to the photo album. “Not if it’s going to upset you,” I answered.
He wrinkled up his face at me. “Let me guess, you have already looked through that photo album. You sure are a curious one.”
“I was trying to do something to help me relax.” I tried to defend myself of being a busy body.
“My parents are dead. They spent a lot of their time as political activists. My grandmother told them to stay out of politics and protest groups. They did not listen. Now, she is my only family. That is why I have a tendency to listen to her. It is not because I believe that I should stay silent and well behaved, but because she seems to need me. I am her world.”
“Oh.”
He looked at me with his big soft eyes. I felt sorry for him. I knew inside that it was wrong, because he would take offense at it, but I couldn’t help it. I could tell that it was important to him to maintain a controlled presence and give the impression that he could handle anything. I remembered how I felt when my father and brother had died, and my grandmother too. I still couldn’t imagine my mother passing. We were very close, even though she’d failed to tell me about the ring and drove me crazy with her smothering.
“There was a big stink—that is what I call it—in Moscow several years ago. There was an attempted coup during Christmas. Some people that you were probably told were terrorists, tried to throw out the gangsters that run the country. Do you remember hearing about that?”
“Yes, it was on the news I was only about eight years old, maybe younger.”
“My parent
s were part of the opposition or terrorists.” He sighed. “They were killed by the police during the riot in .” He sighed again, trying not to cry. “I was twelve at the time. I watched it all on TV.” He wiped away a tear. “You do not forget a thing like that.”Red Square
“I saw some of that on TV myself. I can’t imagine. I saw these two people being beat by the police and then they were hung, like in the 1800’s or something. I couldn’t believe that they did that to anyone right in the middle of . I couldn’t believe that they would do that to a person at all. It was the first time that I’d ever watched anything like it on TV. I was surprised my mom didn’t turn it off, but I think it caught her by surprise. All my mother said was that barbarism was alive and well.”Red Square
Peter had covered most of his face and wasn’t looking at me anymore. “Those two people were my parents,” he said, barely above a whisper. “I saw that on TV too.”
I felt my heart skip a beat. I didn’t know what to say. How do you comfort someone in that situation? I’d never been in any position anything like it before. I was stunned. There were so many emotions that I was feeling at that single moment, and none of them was good. I was sitting there with probably the saddest man I’d ever met. I’d never met anyone who’d lost anything more or anything so tragically. What he had been through made my father’s, brother’s, and even grandma’s deaths seem less profound. I sat and stared at him, speechless.
Peter took some deep breaths and worked his hand off of his face. “I do not expect you to say anything. There is not a lot to say. Life is not like in the movies. There is not always a happy ending, and the good guys do not always win.”
I reached out and took his hand. I looked him in the eye. I saw more pain than I’d ever seen resting in those eyes. At that moment, I felt something that I’d never felt before. I had no idea what it was, but it compelled me to lean over and kiss him passionately on the lips. He kissed me back, pulled me from the bed onto his lap and kissed me back full and hard. He held me tight and the kiss lingered for quite some time. I finally pulled back.
“I’m sorry,” I said. "Purely a reaction. I don’t know what came over me.”
He leaned back and smiled at me. “I do not know, but I am glad, whatever it was. I was hoping that you would not leave the country before I got to see what that was like.”
It felt right. I can’t explain it, but it felt right. I was sitting there on his lap, and I felt like everything was as it should be. I’d been cautious when it came to men after the Virgil debacle, but this time I didn’t care. My mother would call it hormones, but I knew it was more than that. I had no idea what I would think in the morning, but I didn’t really care in that moment.
“Maybe I should be going,” Peter said. He helped me to my feet, but he still held my hand. “Do you think you might let me kiss you one more time?”
I didn’t answer. I was afraid I would say something stupid and ruin the moment. I took his face and pulled it to mine. I kissed him with all my heart and soul. I found myself pulling him onto the bed. I wanted him to hold me. I wanted him to be a part of me. I wanted him. I didn’t care what the consequences might be.
The Ring of the Queen