The Russians Collection

by Michael Phillips

  She closed her eyes. God, I haven’t remembered you quite as much as I should, she prayed silently. I have been so busy and distracted by all that has happened. But help me, God, to remember you in all things.

  She paused and exhaled deeply. In the stillness of her room her soul was at peace. And thus she did, in her own quiet way, rejoice in thankfulness that her steps were ordered by Another.

  Slowly forms and faces began to come into her mind, and she prayed for each—first for her father and mother, for whom prayers of thanksgiving and love flowed forth, then her sisters and younger brother, and especially for Paul, for whom her prayers did not bring joy but heartache. She prayed for Polya and Nina. Then suddenly she heard words of prayer coming out of her mouth for Olga Stephanovna!

  “And the Princess Katrina, God,” she went on, “I pray that you would let her be happy with me, and help me do my best for her. And whatever was the reason that she picked me to be her maid, or if you had some hand in it like Papa would say you did, help me to do what I’m supposed to, and when things get hard to remember what Papa would tell me about praying to you, and to let every occasion be one to remember you in. Thank you, God, for being so good to me when I hardly deserve it!”

  She ceased, opened her eyes, and breathed deeply, a smile on her face. She started to rise, then suddenly stopped, slipped back on one knee, and bowed her head briefly once more. “Oh, and I thank you, God, for Mistress Katrina’s brother, that he was so kind to me!”

  Anna climbed to her feet. But she did not return to her table to work on the letter she had begun earlier in the day. She went, instead, directly to bed. The letter she had hoped to send home would have to wait a while longer. She could not keep her eyes open another minute.

  30

  Thick and pungent smoke filled the dimly lit room. But for those who appreciated such things, it was for the most part derived from expensive, imported tobacco.

  The group of officers, gathered around a well-appointed gaming table in the recreation hall of the barracks, would have smoked nothing else. To a man, each represented a family of fine Russian standing. Even in the reformed army of Tsar Alexander II, the commissioned ranks remained almost entirely the exclusive realm of the aristocratic gentry.

  Several footmen leaned against the wall in the shadows, awaiting their masters’ calls. However, for the most part they appeared bored and disinterested. This listless attitude of the servants sharply contrasted with the highly charged atmosphere among the officers. The conversation, growing louder by the second, had reached drunken pitch, with four or five of the men shouting to be heard above the others.

  “I’ve got twenty rubles on Remizov!”

  “Ha! I make it fifty!”

  “What do you say to fifty Imperials?”

  “I’d have to see your money first, Rimsky.”

  A quiet voice, lower in volume but stronger in fervency, rose from below the din of voices and demanded their attention.

  “This is madness,” it said with intensity. “Someone will be killed before the night is through, and then where will be your foolish and drunken revelry?”

  The voice belonged to the young Prince Sergei Fedorcenko, one of the more respected of the company during moments of sobriety. For all but Sergei, however, that time had long since passed.

  Sergei shoved his chair back from the table. What had begun as an innocent game of cards had now become an inebriated game of fool’s roulette. They did not heed him, and he jumped to his feet.

  “Dmitri,” he cried, “don’t be insane! Put an end to this.”

  “He is right!” bellowed Dmitri, at the moment looking a far cry from Katrina’s Greek god, with his bleary eyes and rumpled shirt and jacket and tousled hair. “Let’s end this immediately!” he repeated. “Here is one hundred Imperials!”

  He dug into his pocket, fished about for a moment, then pulled it out and slammed the money triumphantly on the table. “And a hundred more to any man who can best me! We’ll follow Tolstoy to the letter! Ha, ha!”

  “You are all a set of dimwitted louts,” said Sergei. “One of you reads a book—probably the only book you’ve ever read!—and you make a perversion of it. I doubt any of you have even read beyond the first half of part one!”

  “Let us have our fun, Fedorcenko!”

  “Do you think Count Tolstoy intended his words to be played out in this idiotic manner?”

  “You are saying it can’t be done?” asked Dmitri. “That War and Peace is a complete fabrication?”

  “That is the point of fiction, is it not?” continued Sergei in frustration. “Though perhaps you ignoramuses are not aware of that fact.”

  “You don’t think Tolstoy tried his own bet before writing it?” laughed Dmitri.

  “I do not. The count is a genius, not a fool.”

  “Enough of your sentimental palaver, Fedorcenko!” put in one of the others.

  “That’s right! Put your money where your mouth is, or shut up and leave the man alone.” Several other voices chimed in with similar sentiments.

  Dmitri pushed back his own chair, rose somewhat unsteadily to his feet, walked the few paces to his friend, put his arm around Sergei’s shoulder, and drew him a few yards from the noisy group.

  “Come on, Sergei,” he said. “I could use the support of a friend. Will you at least hold the money for the bets?”

  “I’ll not be party to watching my best friend kill himself.” Sergei paused, then added in a gentler tone. “But I will stand by and pick up the pieces when you are through—if there remain any pieces left to pick up.”

  “I knew I could count on you!”

  “Just make sure my contribution involves collecting the wagers from this table, not collecting you off the street down there!”

  Dmitri gave Sergei’s head a playful shove. “Not to worry, my friend! I swear, before this evening’s out, I may even get you out on that ledge.”

  Without waiting for Sergei to voice any more objections, he stripped off his jacket in a single sweeping motion, tossing it none too carefully toward a nearby footman, and shouldered his way back into the throng of his comrades, all of whom had risen from their chairs and clamored for action.

  “Get a bottle of rum!” someone shouted to a servant as the crowd spirited Dmitri toward the nearest window.

  The game as Dmitri would have it, the fool’s wager according to Sergei, consisted in the subject—in this case Dmitri, already more than a little drunk—climbing outside the third-story window and seating himself on the thin sloping ledge below it, feet dangling over. With hands free and holding on to nothing for balance, he was to set a full bottle of rum to his lips and drink it down in one effort, never removing it from his mouth, finally to climb back to his feet and inside the window, all without falling to his death below.

  In the celebrated book by Leo Tolstoy, the hero had performed the gambit successfully and leaped triumphantly back into the room, swaggering on weak knees, face pale, rum dripping from the corners of his mouth—but very much alive. Dmitri was wagering a good deal more money than he could well afford that he could do likewise. He was also betting that no one else in the group would have the nerve to try it after him.

  While a commode was being moved away from the most appropriate window, the one with the narrowest sill, Sergei considered leaving the room. He had no stomach for such idiocy. Perhaps he should go down to the street and stand below. When Dmitri toppled over, at least he could break his fall and they would both be killed together! But Dmitri, for all his cocky overconfidence, remained his best friend, and Sergei’s sense of loyalty was too strong to allow him to desert Dmitri now.

  The servant returned with the rum and the window was thrown open. An icy gust of sub-zero wind rushed in with a stinging whistle.

  “At least you can put your coat back on,” said Sergei in one last bid for sanity. “The pretended event took place in June you know.”

  Dmitri laughed. “Then let it be known that the real Guard
s are more indomitable than fictitious ones!”

  Sergei shook his head with disgust.

  Dmitri climbed onto the sill, swung his legs over, and eased himself down onto the projecting ledge. It could not have been more than six or eight inches wide, and sloped at a twenty-degree angle away from the building. In the calmest of weather, a perfectly sober man would need strenuous concentration to keep his balance upon it unsupported.

  Dmitri shook his feet a couple of times as they dangled freely in the air, then held his hands out to demonstrate to all those crowded into the open window above that he was indeed sitting unsupported, as promised. Slowly he turned his neck around and glanced up at them with a leering grin on his face. “Where’s my bottle of rum?” he cried.

  A great cheer went up, the bottle was produced, and several arms leaned over to hand it to him. He grasped it in his right hand, turned back out to face the night, and with a great flourish sent the bottle to his lips and tipped his head all the way back.

  In an instant all sound ceased. With deathly quiet the men now stood at the window gazing down on their comrade, not noticing the cold and having forgotten for the moment the money lying on the table behind them. The only sounds to be heard were the whining of the gusty wind, and the faint gurgle coming from Dmitri’s throat. All that mattered was the courageous feat being played out before their eyes, each man gaining renewed respect for their fellow in arms with each second that passed. Count Remizov did not require the winning of their respect, for he already had gained it with his frequent feats of bravado. Notwithstanding, a man in his position and with his temperament was duty-bound periodically to prove himself anew, if not for the sake of his reputation with others, then for himself.

  The liquor took forever to drain from the bottle.

  Dmitri’s hands, neck, and face became mottled with the cold, countered by the warm rush of the alcohol into his system. As the rum emptied from the bottle, he gradually tilted his head further and further back, now and then swaying ominously. But as hands stretched out to steady him, he managed to flash a forbidding glare toward the spectators, as much as to say that if any one dared touch him prematurely he would deal with them severely later. The bet must be fairly won without interference . . . or lost, whichever way fate would have it.

  Dmitri brought his balance back into control. Every swallow took longer than the last. The seconds dragged by; when only three or four gulps remained, it seemed Dmitri would gag if he attempted to swallow another drop. Watching it all, Sergei knew that the most hazardous moments were yet to come, when Dmitri removed the bottle from his lips and attempted to right his swirling head, drunk with liquor and dazed by the cold and wind. By that time would he even know up from down?

  At last the final drops of liquid drained into Dmitri’s mouth and dribbled down his chin. Sergei’s mouth went dry as his friend jerked the bottle away.

  “Move slowly,” said Sergei as gently as he could, breaking the silence of the group of onlookers.

  But Dmitri was too drunk to demonstrate good sense. He either did not hear his friend, or chose to ignore him, and let out a loud whoop as he flung the bottle into the darkness. Several seconds later the glass shattered on the cobblestones below, with all reason indicating that Dmitri would no doubt soon follow it to an identical end.

  Almost the same instant, as in one motion, he lurched to his feet, grabbing the window frame behind him, then lunged, feet first, back into the room through the window. He remained on his feet just long enough to bask a second or two longer in the applause of his comrades. The next moment his knees crumpled and he fell into Sergei’s arms, who dragged him to a cot toward the back of the room.

  “I did it!” he rasped through stiff, blue, rum-soaked lips.

  “The only thing you did was prove beyond any final doubt that you are the biggest fool here,” Sergei said, his voice brusque but relieved.

  “That is something, anyway,” said Dmitri with a weak laugh.

  “Though I wonder if it required proving at all,” added Sergei. He turned and called for a servant to shut the window and bring blankets. Dmitri pushed him away, saying he would not be treated like an invalid. He struggled back to his feet, but could only remain standing a second before he collapsed again on the cot.

  “Hey, you swindlers over there!” he called in a drunken slur. “Where’s my money?”

  One of the officers walked toward him with a fistful of cash and set it beside him. One by one the others began to file out of the room, not begrudging of their financial losses but hearty in their congratulations.

  At length only Sergei and Dmitri remained, with a few servants setting about to clean up the mess of empty wine bottles and leftover remnants from supper.

  “That was the worst rum I ever drank,” said Dmitri.

  “You’re lucky to be alive,” Sergei said, “and all you can think of is the quality of the drink that nearly killed you?”

  “This is hardly the time to do penance. Perhaps I shall give up vodka for Lent to show my gratitude to the powers above for sparing my neck.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt you.”

  “That’s a bit sanctimonious, even for you, Sergei.”

  “I don’t claim to be a saint. But neither do I take pleasure in mocking holy things.”

  “I think the feeling is returning to my feet,” said Dmitri, purposefully ignoring his friend.

  “Dmitri, listen to me. You’re going to bring ruin on yourself if you continue this wild behavior. You have nothing to prove. Why do you do it?”

  “Why not?”

  “I can give you a thousand reasons, the foremost being—”

  “Spare me, Sergei! I’ll give you one reason why I do things no one else does—because they cry out to be done! Why does the mountain climber risk his life to climb higher up Narodnaya than any man ever climbed before? Surely you know the answer. Because the Urals exist, Sergei! The mountain’s there—that’s reason enough!”

  “I may as well just resign myself to the fact that someday I shall be picking up your pieces.”

  “That is what a friend is for.” Dmitri smiled, and Sergei knew he was right. With that smile, and the personality that went with it, Dmitri nearly always managed to get his way.

  A long silence followed. At last Sergei seemed willing to let the affair drop and began thinking of other things.

  “I very nearly forgot,” he said at length, half to himself.

  “What’s that?”

  “A promise I made to my sister.”

  “What promise?”

  “She wanted to dance with you at the Winter Palace tomorrow.”

  “Me?”

  “She asked if I could get a few of my friends to dance with her. Heaven knows, you are all such cretins, I shudder at the thought. You, my pickled herring of a companion, will probably still be drunk from tonight’s rum! But she is determined to pass her time with adults instead of children her own age. And I did promise her I would try.”

  “Well, certainly you can trust your baby sister with your good friend the Count Remizov?”

  Sergei laughed. “Trust has very little to do with it. One wrong move and I’ll have the tsar haul you off to the Fortress!”

  “I wouldn’t put it past you, my self-righteous friend. But nevertheless, I shall feel honor-bound to give your little sister the pleasure of my esteemed company.”

  “It appears as if your own hot air has warmed you sufficiently so that you no longer need my assistance.”

  Sergei retrieved Dmitri’s jacket from the back of the chair where the servant had laid it. “I think it is time we call it an evening,” he said.

  “Yes, we shall need our rest for the festivities tomorrow!”

  Dmitri rose with surprising agility, caught up his coat from Sergei, and flung his arm around his friend as they left the room.

  31

  The remarkable edifice stretched over three huge city blocks.

  In the windows of that imposing, pretentious
abode of Russian tsars called the Winter Palace, tens of thousands of candles burned against the frozen St. Petersburg night. Around its enormous perimeter shimmered hundreds of torches. The warmth of a single one would have provided desperately needed heat to a single peasant cottage, and would have kept alive one of the many who died every night from the mere cold in the bitter winter of the north.

  But not one of those dying peasants would begrudge the blessed tsar, their “Father on Earth,” a single one of those hundreds of torches or thousands of candles. It was only fitting that the ruler of the mightiest nation on earth should live in the mightiest palatial residence on earth, in a manner worthy of his name, which still to them meant “Caesar.” Even in this age of change and question and radicalism, to the vast majority of the Russians, the head of the Romanov family was not mere royalty, not merely the head of the Church on earth, but the closest thing to a deity in the flesh.

  And here in the most imposing royal house in all of Europe, the tsar was able to live out that role amid splendor and opulence. Begun in 1755, and not completed until the reign of Alexander I over sixty years later, the Winter Palace boasted 2,500 rooms, marble columns of all sizes and shapes beyond counting, a staff during its early years of two thousand servants, and a full fifteen miles of hallways and corridors. Not only did its sheer size dwarf even Versailles outside Paris, its resplendence outshone any possible European rival. Dozens of galleries, each as lofty as a cathedral, displayed to full effect over a thousand famous paintings. Like the Russian land itself, the palace existed on an imposing scale.

  On this night, the year 1877 opened in St. Petersburg with a gentle snowfall descending on its million inhabitants. The three Fedorcenko carriages represented only a fraction of the seemingly endless cortege of vehicles threading their way down the length of Nevsky Prospect, all bound for the Winter Palace. From the vantage of the last of the three sleighs, Anna observed the colorful, brightly painted home of the tsar for the first time, decked out and brilliantly lit for the gala New Year’s ball that would officially inaugurate St. Petersburg’s social season.