“We certainly needed it during the American civil war.”
“I’ll never forget how the price of cotton soared,” said another of the women. “My goodness! I wouldn’t want that to happen again!”
One of the men, only a slight acquaintance, who had come as a guest of Princess Marya Nicolaievna, was unaware of the awkwardness into which he was stumbling.
“Prince Fedorcenko,” he asked, “did I not hear that your son was in Central Asia somewhere? How strong is our hold on the area?”
Even as he spoke, he did not notice the tense quiet that suddenly came over all the other close friends who well knew the delicate circumstances surrounding Sergei’s transfer. Princess Marya attempted to stop the faux pas of her escort in time, but he bumbled on unaware.
Viktor merely stared forward, his eyes looking more hollow and distant than ever, and gave no indication that he had even heard the question, much less intended to answer it. Everyone knew he had heard it, however, and waited anxiously for two or three seconds.
The next voice to be heard, however, was not Viktor’s at all, but his daughter’s.
“Dear me! You know all the secrets the military has!” she exclaimed, fielding the man’s questions deftly but lightly. “Why, the family knows less than someone who reads the daily newspaper! I’m an army wife—I ought to know!”
Her bright smile brought on a chorus of amused chuckles from the others, not only for her off-the-point comments but for her ability to save the family prolonged embarrassment. The conversation moved forward smoothly once more.
19
Katrina was so pleased with herself and with the way the evening was progressing that when Dmitri arrived ten minutes later, she was in a tolerant and forgiving mood.
The party was just being seated in the dining room as the master of the house made his appearance.
“Ah, Count Remizov!” said one or two of the men.
“Welcome . . . welcome, all of you!” said Dmitri buoyantly as he swept into the room, shaking hands with the men and giving his compliments to each of the women in turn. “I apologize for my tardy arrival. It is inexcusable, I know. I hope you will all forgive me. I trust my wife has been taking good care of you!”
Katrina’s greeting to her husband was almost genuine. Who could stay mad at such a congenial, handsome, gracious personality for more than an instant!
However, as Dmitri bent over where she had just seated herself to place a light kiss on her forehead, the unmistakable odor of rum on his breath caused Katrina to fume. She forced a smile and determinedly shook the irritation from her. She made herself put the best construction on it. It was perfectly understandable for him to enjoy a Christmas libation with his Guard Regiment. It had probably been ordered by the commander himself.
But as the evening progressed, it became increasingly obvious that more than a small “libation” had passed his lips before arriving home. He was not obnoxiously drunk, only embarrassingly so—sufficiently tipsy to make a fool of himself more than once. He laughed too loudly and at the wrong times. His hand was unsteady as he poured the wine out for his guests; he sloshed more than a few drops onto the white linen tablecloth, and once missed his father-in-law’s trousers by only a millimeter. His conversation was boring at best, boorish at worst. And he aggravated matters all the more by consuming several more glasses of wine at dinner, followed by two or three snifters of brandy afterward. As her patience wore thin, Katrina stopped even trying to count. Had she married nothing but a common drunkard, after all?
Katrina was exhausted when the last guest finally left sometime after midnight.
Once upstairs in her boudoir, she quickly slipped out of her dress, leaving it in a heap on the floor for Anna to take care of in the morning. She had given Anna the evening to herself and did not want to disturb her now. She had just shrugged into her nightgown when Dmitri knocked on the door.
“Yes?” she said tiredly.
“May I come in, my dear?”
“I am still dressing.” Her tone was cool.
“Modest, are you, Katrina?”
“In my condition—”
He didn’t wait for her to finish. The door opened and Dmitri strode toward her. “I don’t mind your condition a whit,” he said. “If I didn’t know better, I wouldn’t even know you had a condition. You look as lovely as ever.” He bent down to kiss her.
Katrina stiffened. The smell of alcohol was nauseating.
“I am really so tired, Dmitri.” If she hadn’t been so tense, Katrina would have been amused at how much she sounded like her mother.
“Come on then, my tired wife. Let us go to bed.” He gently took her hand and led her to the bedroom.
He seemed to be making such an effort now to be compatible, and as he helped her into bed he gazed down on her with such a tender expression of love that she almost forgot her irritation. She smiled up at him. Encouraged, he climbed into his side of the bed and drew close to her.
“You made a lovely evening tonight, Katrina,” he said. “I am quite proud of my wife.”
“I suppose I enjoy having guests and playing the hostess. Perhaps next year we could have a grand ball.”
“And I promise not to be late!” He smiled his sheepish, endearing smile.
“You had better not be!” she replied with a light, teasing tone.
“I was sure I was a doomed man when I came in to find you already gone in to dinner,” he chuckled.
“You make me sound like the chief of police.”
He laughed. Brushing aside a loose strand of her hair, he kissed her. In spite of the liquor, she could not keep from responding with a gradual warming of her passion.
“I’ll warrant Vlasenko could never kiss like that!” He laughed again. “I am so happy you are not vexed with me.”
“Oh, Dmitri, it is Christmastime—our first Christmas together. I don’t want to be mad.”
He recoiled slightly. “Which is as much as to say that I deserved it nonetheless, eh?”
“Of course you deserved it,” she replied, still half-playfully. “You can’t deny that you were rude and dreadfully inconsiderate.”
“Guilty as charged, Madam Gendarme! I am overwhelmed by your great mercy!”
“Do you know what I think, Dmitri?” said Katrina, her irritation now quickly returning at the provocation. “I think you do feel guilty, but are too proud to admit it. So instead you want to start a fight in order to vindicate yourself.”
“You think all that, do you?”
“And if you weren’t so drunk, you’d see your own foolish behavior for what it is!”
“I am drunk—at least I was drunk. But pleasantly so. Now I am sobering up very quickly. All your analyzing prattle is enough to sober up a peasant.”
“They have nothing on you.”
The discussion that had begun playfully enough grew sharper and sharper until not a hint of amusement remained. All the pent-up frustrations, not only of that day but of weeks and months, seemed suddenly to vent themselves. They pulled apart, all hint of passion dissolving in the heated exchange. Katrina sat up on the side of the bed, while Dmitri sat up likewise on the other side and threw his legs over onto the floor.
“I’d sooner be drunk as a peasant than—”
He broke off, unable in his present condition to come up with a suitable conclusion for his intended barb.
Katrina was quick to take up the thought. “Than be a responsible husband!” she spat.
“If I’d known it was going to be little more than a prison, I would have thought twice about the whole thing!” he shot back.
With the acrimonious words still hanging heavily in the air, he lurched out of bed, grabbed his dressing gown, and stormed from the room, slamming the door behind him.
Katrina fell back against the pillows and wept. The whole stupid mess had happened so quickly. Her mind was reeling. She didn’t even understand what had gone wrong. She thought she had been trying so hard to be understanding. Was
her marriage ruined after only eight short months?
Overwhelmed by fatigue and distress, she did not at first hear the knock at the door. Then it came again, a little louder.
Had he come back to apologize?
She rose and went to the door. “Dmitri,” she said, opening it. “I—” She stopped. Anna stood in the doorway.
“Forgive my intrusion, Your Highness,” she said. “I heard a crashing sound and was concerned.”
“Oh, Anna!” cried Katrina, breaking into a fresh flood of tears. She threw her arms around her maid. “I’ve ruined everything, Anna! My marriage is over! I—I . . .” Sobs choked out whatever additional words of self-recrimination were on her lips.
Anna held her mistress like a child, then led her back to the bed. They sat down together arm in arm, and remained in silence for some time.
At length, Anna rose, then helped her mistress back into bed, adjusting her pillows and making the blankets as comfortable as possible. She pulled the silken coverlet up around Katrina’s shoulders and neck, then stooped down, gave her a final motherly embrace, kissed her on the cheek, and rose to return to her own bedroom.
Quietly weeping, Katrina was asleep before Anna’s head even touched her own pillow.
20
Some days later, in a section of town far removed from the fashionable Remizov home, a vastly different meeting of friends was occurring.
Few citizens of the capital who were not residents of Grafsky Lane ventured there, even by light of day. This poverty-ridden Tartar district of the city was so infested with crime that black-coated gendarmes walked their beats only in pairs, praying for an ordinance then under discussion to pass, permitting them to carry sidearms for their protection. As it was, they had only their bare hands and a solid hardwood stick to keep a very tenuous peace.
The ragged Tartar children and gaunt-eyed veiled women on the scene that particular afternoon, poor and disreputable as they may have appeared, hardly seemed to merit such police vigilance. The real threat, especially at that early hour, was holed up behind closed doors, in dark, rat-infested corners—the thieves and owners of prostitutes and dealers in opium. Any of them would have killed for half a kopec’s worth of food.
With them, in these shadowy recesses of St. Petersburg, were criminals of a different sort—men driven to crime by the extremity of their passionate ideals. These St. Petersburg slums held the only sanctuary possible for beleaguered revolutionaries and terrorists.
Throughout the closing months of 1880 and into the new year, the tsar’s appointee had indeed achieved both his and the tsar’s objective. Loris-Melikov had, if not quite put the revolutionaries to flight, certainly subdued them and given them cause for considering their peril before instigating any further incidents.
In the panic of the previous year, many citizens had believed the rebels and malcontents to be so vast in numbers that they might flood the city at any moment with revolution. That could well come later. But as 1880 drew to a close, Melikov believed the troublemakers to be relatively small in number and, with some good sense and stoic persistence, easily contained. Taking this practical approach, he had made great strides in curtailing the threat, and, he believed, eliminating the terrorist hold on the city. Indeed, the government’s enemies had been driven deeply underground; some in their fear of arrest had fled the city, even deserted the cause. But the tenacious few that remained were as much to be feared as earlier. For they were the unbending, unshakable elite of the sacred cause.
There were as many hidden and personal reasons for their staunch loyalty as there were insurrectionists. Among this select class of criminals, motives were seldom discussed. It was taken for granted that each had his own motive, and it was enough.
One of those gathered that afternoon in the back room of a grimy Grafsky Lane tavern, however, possessed motives so sinister, so evil in intent, that even his very comrades would have shuddered at a full revelation of his heart. Basil Anickin’s hatred was uncompromised by human compassion, so purely personal that it had long ago driven out any vestige of humanitarianism. He sometimes spoke of the oppressed masses and the corruption of the government, but these words and causes had become for him only a tool to achieve the one goal that mattered to him.
After he had received his first contact in the mental hospital, Basil had labored like the devil himself upon a struggling soul to force his drug and depression-dulled brain back into focus. He had gradually, by degrees, regained his lucidity, and even managed to convince his keepers that he had recovered. Basil Anickin’s mental state was, perhaps, normal for him. But it was by no means sane.
In mid-November, months after the originally envisioned date, he had been finally transferred from the asylum back to the Peter and Paul fortress, and his friends had effected a successful escape. Anickin would not quibble about the timing. He was a free man now, and little else mattered.
Even Basil, in one of his more philosophical moods, might have seen the irony of using such a term to describe him. Free was a euphemistic word to describe the hunted life of a fugitive.
From the high-society son of a wealthy physician, to a criminal sitting in a dilapidated tenement in Grafsky Lane—a man could hardly descend lower socially. Even imprisonment in the fortress held a certain twisted sort of prestige in these low circles. Now he had only filth and squalor and near starvation to boast of. Yet the comforts of his past life meant nothing to a man consumed by hatred and vengeance.
Basil sat on the floor listening to the proceedings around him with aloof interest. His eyes narrowed keenly when the discussion chanced to probe something that might possibly be of use in fulfilling his driving purpose in life. The others in the room, especially those who did not know him from before, tended to avoid him.
Basil Anickin did indeed present a most forbidding figure these days. His once strong physique had grown wasted and hollow. His face, at one time so strikingly handsome that it nearly won the heart of a proud princess, wore a ghostly look, the eyes ringed with cavernous circles, his cheeks sunken and skeletal. This cadaverous appearance was enhanced by his hair. It had been cropped by his captors, and now he chose to keep it so as some statement of principle or badge of imprisoned honor. Only his eyes belied the sense of death about him. They shone and glinted with passion, with hatred, and with a brutal strength of will as they never had previously.
His presence at this clandestine gathering, however, was not primarily for the benefit of his companions, nor was it strictly for the cause he had espoused years ago. If by his presence some strides could be made in destroying the detested government and Romanov regime, so much the better. But more than anything, he had taken up with his former comrades because he knew in all likelihood he would never be able to achieve his goal without them.
During his weeks in the asylum, while he contemplated his proposed rescue, he had also begun to formulate a purposeful plan for his desired revenge upon the young Count Remizov and his foolish new bride. And it so happened that his scheme seemed to fit very nicely around the designs of The People’s Will. He reasoned that after the tsar was assassinated, there would follow a spontaneous rising of the people, with naturally resulting mass violence—peasant risings, general strikes, street fighting, and many isolated incidents of physical violence against aristocrats by their servants and others of the peasant classes. The murder of Count Remizov and his wife would raise no untoward questions, and Basil would walk away a free man. He would then travel to Switzerland or England, and live out the remainder of his life in fulfilled peace.
On the far side of the room, another younger man sat quietly contemplating his own future. Paul had not been successful in foiling Anickin’s escape. He regretted that fact more and more deeply as he watched the man that afternoon. Anickin looked like a hungry animal—of some dark species that thrived on blood.
Paul’s only recourse now was to stick as close to the man as possible. Better to have a mad bear in your sights than crouching unseen behind you.
But the thought of being in that lunatic’s company for even a second made his skin crawl! Moreover, if Anickin’s purposes began to run against the organization’s, Paul might find himself caught in a ticklish—and dangerous!—situation.
Perhaps he was inflating the potential risks all out of proportion. It had been over a year since Anickin’s attack against Princess Fedorcenko and Count Remizov. More than likely, thought Paul, the malice that had precipitated those acts of violence had long since dissolved.
Or had it? Paul wondered morosely.
One would have to be blind to truly believe that! But perhaps it was possible that at least Anickin intended to concentrate his malice against the tsar and not some inconsequential noble family. Why else would Anickin be present at this meeting? No doubt he was sane enough to recognize priorities, and that the death of the tsar must certainly take precedence over personal objectives of revenge.
But about his own personal motives? Paul rebuked himself. He needed to heed his own counsel and remain single-mindedly set upon the program of The People’s Will! Anna was capable of taking care of herself, after all. She had done so very well in the several years she had been on her own in the big city. It would do no one any good for him to try to assuage his own guilt by maintaining this false sense of protectiveness toward her. He’d be worthless to the cause if he continued worrying more about his sister than the larger drama of their destiny to reshape Russian society. He could not fail his comrades now. They were so close to success.
He glanced again toward Anickin, who had suddenly leaned forward with intense interest as Zhelyabov was describing some tunneling procedures they were using in order to mine a street that lay within one of the tsar’s oft-traveled routes. The insane lawyer was surely no longer a threat to Anna or her mistress. He had more important enemies to worry about than a mere ex-lover.
Paul turned his attention also toward Zhelyabov. This was where their future purpose lay—with the designs and schemes he was now describing! And it might have surprised Paul that the glow in his own eyes looked strangely like a reflection of the expression worn by the mad lawyer, Basil Anickin.
The Russians Collection Page 87