The Russians Collection

by Michael Phillips

  It had almost sounded to Katrina as if her husband envied Sergei just a little. He had laughed and said being married to her was all the adventure any man could hope for. Yet still, the glint in his eye, if even for a moment, reminded her that the man she had married was not yet altogether tamed.

  So the days gradually passed in the new Remizov household. Eventually, a certain routine came to be established with which both Katrina and Anna grew more and more comfortable.

  12

  One morning in early summer, all the capital received news that the Empress Marie Alexandrovna was dead. Because of her long illness, her death did not come unexpected; still, nothing could diminish the sadness once the end came.

  The entire country mourned the loss. The Hesse-Darmstadt princess was not Russian by birth, but she had become a native in every other way possible and had been taken into the hearts of Russian people everywhere. Their grief no doubt was heightened by public annoyance at the way her husband, the tsar, mistreated her. All the court knew, even if the masses did not, that after the bombing, Alexander had brought his illegitimate family into the very Winter Palace itself to live, out of fear for their safety. The dying empress was humiliated, condemned to spend her final bedridden days within earshot of her husband’s illegitimate children playing in nearby corridors. Even at the very end, she was not spared the mortification she had suffered over the years. Her husband, in his insensitivity, rubbed salt into wounds already deep and filled with acrimony.

  Within two months the tsar married Catherine Dolgoruky, shocking all of St. Petersburg society and further alienating his son, the tsarevich, who promptly left not only the capital but the country altogether, moving his family to Denmark. It was the first time in centuries that a Russian emperor had married a Russian woman, breaking the long-standing tradition that an heir to the throne marry into one of the royal houses of Europe. Alexander flippantly justified his actions. “I am not the heir,” he said. “I am tsar already! I shall do what pleases me.”

  A great fear rose within the inner circles of the court that Alexander II would go one step further and actually declare Catherine empress. As yet she was merely Alexander’s wife. To become tsaritsa required the official crowning of the church. If the tsar went ahead with such an unprecedented proceeding, many feared he might even reject the present tsarevich Alexander as his heir in favor of George Alexandrovich, his eldest illegitimate son by Catherine.

  Within the court, and within the St. Petersburg gossip in general, a quiet debate arose over which son, the legitimate or the illegimate, should be the next tsar. For some, Loris-Melikov among them, the idea of George as emperor was not altogether unacceptable. For to these members of the progressive and liberal camp, the heir apparent, Alexander Alexandrovich, tsarevich in self-imposed exile in Denmark, along with his reactionary tutor and advisor Pobedonostev, represented nothing but a huge leap backward into repression for the already troubled Romanov regime.

  It was early fall when stunning news of a more immediate and personal nature rocked the Remizov household. After talking to Anna about not feeling well, Katrina herself began taking regularly to her bed. After a week, both Dmitri and Anna insisted that she allow the physician to be called.

  His visit turned up neither influenza nor appendicitis.

  “Take good care of her, miss,” was all the doctor said to Anna as he exited.

  Anna went into Katrina’s bedroom immediately. The princess, who had been pale for weeks, glowed with a radiant joy.

  “Oh, Anna, you’ll never believe it! Dmitri and I are going to have a baby!” she cried, tears already beginning to flow.

  Anna ran to get Dmitri, and whether he suspected the truth from her excited, animated face he wouldn’t tell. But the moment he saw Katrina he knew all in an instant. Anna had no more than shut the door behind him when she heard several shouts and whoops in delighted exclamation.

  For the rest of that day, and for several days afterward, he grinned incessantly. He stopped servants in his own house and commanders and cabbies standing with their horses and even strangers on the street to tell them the earth-shattering, delightful news that his beautiful young wife of three months was in a family way, and that he was the cause of it all!

  “A little count, that’s what he’ll be . . . a chip off the old block . . . a man’s man in the tsar’s army! Might even train him to be a general!”

  Cigars and jokes and laughter and congratulatory drinks and more boasts than could well reside on the shoulders of any infant, born or unborn, followed Dmitri about in abundant supply.

  A week or ten days later, he and Katrina were taking coffee together in the parlor one evening after dinner. Suddenly in the midst of a conversation not remotely related to parenthood, a ghastly pallor flooded the count’s face. He quickly set down his cup for fear of spilling it. Katrina saw the change and thought he had been flooded by a sudden wave of nausea. She jumped up and ran to him in alarm.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “By heaven, Katrina!” he exclaimed softly, yet with alarm in his voice, “I am going to be a father!”

  Katrina instantly relaxed.

  “And that is what has upset you?” she asked. “I thought you wanted to be.”

  “Yes . . . of course,” he half stammered. “But . . . but actually a father!”

  “That is what happens when you have a baby, Dmitri,” she replied with a smile, returning to the divan where she had been sitting. “You become a father and I become a mother.”

  “But . . . don’t you realize . . . have you thought about what it all means?” he said in a choking voice.

  “It is a little frightening, I’ll admit.”

  “A little! What do we know, Katrina?”

  “We’ll manage.”

  “How? You’re only nineteen—what do you know about being a mother? I’m only twenty-three!”

  “We will make wonderful parents. You will be a tremendous father.”

  “How can you be so sure? How do you know?” Agitated, he jumped up and began to pace.

  “Dmitri, it’s all perfectly natural. We’ll learn. Please sit down and relax.”

  She patted the divan next to her. But he took no notice and continued pacing.

  “I’ve already spoken with my mother,” Katrina went on. “Granted, she wasn’t as much help as I would have liked. I can hardly believe she raised two children. But that’s just it, Dmitri—if my mother can do it, anyone can!”

  “That is not an altogether comforting thought! Your mother isn’t exactly the picture of strength and reassurance.”

  “Yet look at how Sergei and I turned out. You seem to like the two of us without too many reservations.” Katrina eyed him coyly, sending one of her bewitching smiles into his eyes. But her husband was not to be dissuaded from his trepidation.

  “We’ll have help, Dmitri, just like my mother did,” Katrina went on. “Nurses, governesses—and Anna! She has lots of good sense. Anna will be our Nina and Mrs. Remington and Fingal Aonghas all rolled into one. She came from a family of five children. Why, she helped raise the younger ones herself. Nothing could be more perfect, don’t you see, Dmitri? If anything at all goes wrong, we will always have Anna!”

  “You place a great deal of confidence in her.”

  “And why not? She has proved herself worthy of it. Besides, what can possibly go wrong?”

  “But I have never even touched an infant before.”

  “Dmitri,” said Katrina in an altered and more serious tone, “if it would make you feel any better, why don’t you have a talk with my father?”

  “Why your father?”

  “Well, your father is gone. And you couldn’t find a better example to emulate than mine.”

  “Not according to your brother.”

  “Oh, pooh! Sergei is a wonderful brother and I love him. But I don’t think he really knows Papa.”

  “He could say the same of you. He thinks he sees the true side of your father.”
>
  “I suppose . . . but I still think you could talk to Papa.”

  Dmitri shook his head. “I don’t know . . .”

  A long silence fell between them.

  All at once Dmitri rose to his feet and started for the door.

  “Where are you going?” asked Katrina. “It’s too late to see my father now.”

  “I’m not going to see him . . . I just have to . . . I’ll be back later.” His eyes would not look directly at Katrina as he spoke.

  “Dmitri . . . it’s late.”

  He said nothing in reply, then turned and disappeared out the door.

  13

  When Dmitri arrived home much later that night, Katrina had long been in bed, though unable to sleep and dozing in fits.

  She glanced up immediately when the door to their room opened. Dmitri walked in slowly, noticeably unsteady on his feet. He staggered forward, stumbled as he came close to the bed, and caught himself just in time to prevent a fall by grabbing one of the bedposts.

  Katrina had left a lamp burning, and by its light he flashed her a lopsided, foolish grin as she turned over to greet him.

  “Do you realize how late it is?” she asked, hardly making an attempt to hide her annoyance.

  “Time . . . ?” Dmitri slurred. “Who can tell . . . it’s fall and gets dark so soon now, you know.” He grinned again.

  “Well, I was worried about you.”

  “Nothing whatever to be concerned about, my dear.”

  “If I had known you were out carousing, I might have gone to sleep. I thought something might have happened to you.”

  “Did I keep you awake, dear little wife? Ah, I am sorry to be such—” He could not even finish the sentence for the chuckling that accompanied his attempted remorse.

  “You’re drunk!”

  “Am I now? Well, that is serious!”

  “Yes, you did keep me awake,” said Katrina angrily. “But never mind!” She pulled the blankets up and turned her back toward him.

  “Well!” He drew out the word to the best effect his drunken tongue would allow. “May I not go out when I choose? Am I a prisoner in my own house?”

  Katrina said nothing.

  “It is a fine turn of events, I must say! We can talk about it in the morning, when you are sober,” said Katrina finally, not turning around.

  “No! I want to talk about it now! Am I or am I not master in my own home?”

  “Oh, Dmitri!”

  “Answer me now, wife!” he said sharply, grabbing at her arm where she lay and twisting her around in the bed to face him.

  “Dmitri . . . my arm!” she cried. His grip was not so painful as that his sudden angry gesture caught her off guard. Never had she seen the slightest hint before that moment of anything but tenderness toward her. The shock on her face was clearly evident in her wide, frightened eyes—visible to Dmitri even in his drunken state.

  The look in those eyes he loved jolted something inside Dmitri awake. He gasped and released her arm immediately—distressed and dismayed at what had come over him. He spun around and walked away.

  Katrina slipped quickly out of bed and hurried to him.

  “Dmitri, what has happened to you . . . to us?” Katrina asked, something almost of desperation in her voice.

  He did not say anything for a few moments, breathing deeply, trying to steady his blurred and confused thoughts.

  “I . . . I began to feel . . . so helpless,” he said. “I’m sorry, Katrina . . . I suddenly felt closed in.” His voice was soft and tentative, void of the drunken bravado.

  “I’m sorry, Dmitri,” said Katrina. “I was hurt that you left me so suddenly like that and went out alone. But I didn’t mean to get angry at you. I just didn’t . . . I felt alone and afraid . . .”

  A rush of tears obliterated the remainder of her speech.

  “Dear . . . Katrina . . .” He pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her trembling frame. “I’m so sorry for leaving like that . . . I’ll never do it again.”

  Dmitri did not exactly make good on his resolve. Throughout the fall, in fact, he was seen more and more in the company of his old army friends. Such a trend did not particularly please Katrina, but in the interest of harmony she managed to hold her tongue.

  Her patience was rewarded by the unexpected and sudden announcement one day that Countess Eugenia had decided to return to Moscow. No one quite knew why she had waited so long, grumbling the whole time about the unbearable St. Petersburg weather and the oppressively foreign atmosphere of the capital.

  The removal of the pall she had cast over the house injected Katrina with a refreshed sense of optimism about the future. With her departure, now they could at last really begin their lives. For a week or two Dmitri did not go out with his cronies once, convincing Katrina that his unsettledness had been entirely a result of his mother’s inhibiting presence. And the stirrings of new life in her body added to Katrina’s sense of hope and enthusiastic anticipation.

  Soon, however, Dmitri began to slip back into what Katrina was beginning to call his “old ways”—drinking, gambling, keeping late hours with his army friends. Katrina fluctuated between hope and despair, and her temper with Dmitri was variable and volatile. One moment she could not imagine herself happier, the next she wondered how she would make it through another day. Dr. Anickin said that such emotional upheavals were quite common for young women in her condition. Katrina, however, did not tolerate them well.

  When she was at her lowest, she longed for those days—they seemed like years ago—when she had been a normal, halfway stable young girl, in love with her brother’s best friend.

  But that seemed like a lifetime ago!

  14

  The view from the grimy tavern window was not one to inspire faith in humanity. Two boys, both smudge-faced, dressed in tatters and with wild, feral looks in the depths of their young eyes, had found a hunk of moldy bread in a garbage bin and were in the midst of a violent battle over possession of the precious morsel.

  But Paul Burenin had long since ceased trying to conjure up faith in anything, be it human or spiritual.

  In fact, he had almost ceased being appalled by the ugly scene in the alleyway across from the tavern. Such incidents were all too common in the sections of this city where he dwelt, a city where the contrast between wealth and poverty was as sharply defined as the stabbing hunger pains in a child’s stomach. Pains ignored by the fat, content aristocratic princes and princesses, counts and countesses, whose tables were spread with luxuriant delicacies.

  Still, Paul was not completely inured to what he saw. It stirred something in him that went beyond horror and outrage—something he had learned a year ago from the cold, hard words of a demented lawyer by the name of Anickin.

  “Watch! And let it burn deeply into your soul.”

  Neither cynicism nor moral callousness could quench the fire of rage that now burned within him. He could observe the starving boys carrying on with a detached calm, but only because his mind reminded him that soon all would be made right. Justice would be had. It might not fill the stomachs of those two with more food—not immediately, anyway. But on a larger cosmic scale of right and wrong, justice would be served.

  Paul lifted his glass of kvass to his lips and drank deeply, though without relish or satisfaction. At nineteen, he was old enough to be accustomed to the foul-tasting drink, and enough of a man to pretend he enjoyed it. He was still young enough, however, to wonder why Russians everywhere drank such a brew.

  When was the last time he had felt satisfied or happy? Even hate gave him no more satisfaction than the strong drink he held in his hand, not the kind of satisfaction it seemed to give some of his comrades. But he no longer expected anything so frivolous as happiness out of life. He had made his choice, and had given up all claim to happiness long ago. It was part of the ultimate sacrifice he must make for the cause. A sacrifice, not of his life—although that might come, too—but as Kazan had once told him, of his “very
humanity.” Such sentiments had shocked him two years ago. Now they were his life’s creed.

  The tavern door scraped open. Two men, both familiar to Paul, walked in and sauntered in his direction. If they had chosen this spot for a rendezvous, they could not have made a better choice. The place was busy at this hour, with the evening shift of workers from the cotton mill having just left the tedium of their day’s labors. Few could afford the kopecks for the cheap vodka and kvass they were lustily consuming. But even less could they stand to face the hungry, sallow faces of their families cold and stone sober. It would not be so bad if their fourteen-hour workdays counted for anything. But once the factory owner and governmental officials deducted various taxes and expenses and fees from the meager wages, there were hardly two coppers left to jingle about in the pocket. Vodka, and the ensuing drunkenness, was nearly as vital to the survival of some of these men as a loaf of bread.

  So the workers crowded nightly into whatever grimy tavern happened to be situated along the route home. Such places made a fine covering for men whose business brought them together for other reasons.

  Paul glanced up casually as the two newcomers slid onto the bench at the same table across from him. He remembered when such a meeting caused his heart to pound in his temples and his stomach to quake. But they had become routine now. This was what he did. These were the people with whom the business of his life was conducted. They were comrades in the cause.

  Each of the two men had picked up a pint of kvass on his way in, and they sloshed the glasses down on the table. The younger was tall, with a fine-featured, intelligent face. He had been a medical student until he was expelled several months ago for attending a radical assembly. The other man was stockier and coarser in appearance, although he too had been a student, expelled from the engineering school. He was now employed in the adjacent cotton mill as a cleanup man, but his foremost activity remained that of a radical agitator.