The Russians Collection

by Michael Phillips

  His hand trembled as he set the glass back on the sideboard. Anna rose and rushed to him. She could no longer bear talking to his back, even if looking upon his emotion shamed him.

  She grasped his arm and turned to face him with pleading eyes. “I am sorry, Your Highness!” she said, tears obscuring her vision. “I would never think to rebuke you. I had no right to say what I did.”

  He flipped the back of his hand toward her as if to indicate it had been a mere trifle.

  “I selfishly saw only my own pain,” Anna went on, suddenly seeing the human side of the stoic Prince Fedorcenko. “I had no right to forget that you did—you do love your son. Please forgive me!”

  He did not reply verbally. Silence was his only remaining protection against complete humiliation in front of this servant girl. He had come to see her on a whim, hardly knowing what compelled him to seek her out. But Anna could detect in his eyes that her apology was appreciated.

  Anna continued speaking, to spare him. As she spoke, she temporarily forgot how far beneath him she was, and discovered a renewed inner strength to keep from breaking down herself.

  “Maybe Sergei’s plight is hopeless,” she said, “although I am not ready to fully accept that. I cannot helplessly let go of him. I must do something for him.”

  “Forgive me for saying so, Anna, but if there is nothing I can do, what could a poor servant girl hope to accomplish?”

  “I don’t know, but I must see him.”

  “I do not see what—”

  “Please, Prince Fedorcenko . . . I must go to him!”

  “Anna, I fear that would be impossible.”

  “You would, even now, deny us—”

  “No, Anna,” he interrupted, “you misunderstand me. It has nothing to do with my objections now.” Gradually the prince was gathering back his self-control. “Anna,” he said, taking her hands in his, looking in her face, and speaking with deep earnestness, “I have given this a great deal of thought since my son’s trouble came upon him. Perhaps, I was . . . too hasty before he left. If there were some way I could atone for past mistakes and bring the two of you together, I would be prepared to do that now, believe me. I would give up my proud, foolish notions of class responsibility. If only I could turn back the time to that moment when I first saw the two of you in the garden . . . if only I could have realized that Sergei’s happiness means more to me than I could have believed possible. For so many years, all I could think of was my own—”

  He stopped, pulled away his hands from hers, and turned quickly away. She saw him breathe in deeply, then try to continue.

  “I held the power,” he said, “to permit that happiness. But instead I heaped misery, perhaps even death, upon him—” His voice broke.

  Anna moved around to face him. Tears had welled up in his eyes and threatened to spill over. But he did not turn away from her.

  “It is a hollow statement now, Anna,” he said, his tone tentative, “but if I were given the chance again, you two would have my blessing.”

  “Thank you, Your Highness,” Anna murmured, unable to say more.

  “And not merely because it would make my son happy,” Viktor added, “but because I see so clearly now that he made a wise choice as to where to place his affections.”

  Anna glanced down.

  “None of us, however, will be granted a second chance,” he said, trying to bring resolve to his voice. “We . . . we have lost Sergei, Anna. We must both accept that painful reality.”

  “I can go to Siberia,” pleaded Anna.

  “It is no use.”

  “Even if I cannot see him, he would know that I was near, and that I love him. I cannot desert him!” she cried in desperation, bursting into fresh tears.

  Prince Viktor Fedorcenko had never been one to feel altogether comfortable in such situations. The complex mystery of crying women was an arena of life far removed from the offices and situation rooms and battlefields where he had always been at his best. Yet all that past life of being a nationally important figure and advisor to the tsar was beginning to fade. Alexander was losing faith in him. Whatever influence he might once have enjoyed now rested upon the shoulders of Loris-Melikov. And Viktor’s son was considered a traitor to the very empire to which he had given his life.

  In light of all these factors, somehow the pleading and loving voice of a servant girl and the heart of a son who had been estranged from him for years seemed more real and tangible than all the prestige he had once enjoyed, the glory which now was gradually crumbling away.

  And the simple fact was, however discomforting he had always found the shedding of tears—his or his wife’s or anyone’s, for that matter—he could not refuse to comfort this young woman who, but for his arrogance, might well have been his daughter-in-law.

  Thus, the tall, tired, proud, stoic military officer and Minister of the Empire slowly bent his arms and stretched them stiffly and tentatively into new and unexplored regions of intimacy. As his arms closed around Anna’s small shoulders, his hands drew her tenuously toward him. The gesture broke down Anna’s reservations completely in love for the man out of whose being her Sergei had come, and she cried out her tears freely against the rough wool of his uniform tunic.

  Several minutes passed.

  When Viktor gradually began to sense the flood of her tears subsiding, he spoke again. The tone was fatherly, yet sad and serious.

  “There is something you must see,” he said, loosening her from his embrace and leading her gently back to the settee. When Anna was seated he took a folded paper from his pocket.

  “It is from Sergei,” he said. “He gave it to me for you. It is not much, I grant you, and if you read between the lines it would seem even more hopeless than it does on the surface. But you will understand from it his state of mind.”

  She took the paper from his hand, opened it, and read:

  Farewell, Anna. I am dead. You must accept that. It is the only way I can prevent myself from going completely insane. Grieve for me as you must. Then go on with your life without me. I am buried in a deep grave. Light a candle for me, pray for my lost soul, but do not—DO NOT—hope for resurrection. I do not want it. And there can be none. Forget about me, Anna—for your own sake, and for mine. Forget I exist. For by the time you read this, I will exist no longer.

  Anna quietly made the sign of the cross over her chest as tears streamed once more down her face.

  Although the note was unsigned, the handwriting was Sergei’s. She knew it well. But the words sounded as though they had come from a stranger. She could almost hear the terse, cold, cynical brevity as if the message had been spoken.

  How could Sergei have sunk to such hopelessness and despair? She ached inside, searching to find some hint that his humanity remained, some trace of the Sergei she knew. Over and over she read the words, almost frantic to locate a clue of desperation that said he was calling out for help in spite of the finality of the words themselves.

  But it was not there. Sergei had given up on his country, on his family, on her . . . and most of all on himself. Worse, he seemed to have given up on God as well.

  Was that not all the more reason for her to go to him? Her very presence, the love she could give him, even if only for the briefest of minutes, might be the only thing that would rekindle his hope. Her papa had always said, “A little love in the tea is sweeter than a copper’s worth of sugar.” She could visualize her father’s smiling countenance as he uttered the words, while she, on the other hand, doubted she would ever be able to smile again.

  Oh, Papa, Papa . . . she thought, what would you say? How I need your wise, understanding words, your simple, loving embrace!

  “I know what you are thinking, Anna,” came a gentle voice in the midst of her quiet reflections of home. Anna glanced up, realizing suddenly that Sergei’s father was the closest person she had to her own papa just then. “You think that your going to Sergei may be his only hope, is that it?” said Viktor.

  “I ca
n think of nothing else.”

  “Even if you were able to obtain permission to visit him,” Victor said, “he is already on his way, I have no doubt, to that land from which few return. You would never find him. Even if you and I both went, we could never find him. And even if, by some miracle, you were able to reach him, and see him and speak to him and give him that hope you want to give him, even then, Anna, it still would not change the fact that Sergei is facing an imprisonment that will last for the rest of . . . his life.”

  Viktor’s voice broke over the final word. “You will never be able to be together, Anna. You must understand that. By law he is considered legally dead once he is in Siberia. Even if you were now married, his sentence carries the same weight as death. You would be free to remarry. My son was right when he said that you must go on with your life.”

  The hard words pounded over Anna’s head like stones tumbling down a raging mountain torrent, carried by water so powerful that nothing could stop them.

  “I know I must sound coldhearted to you,” Viktor went on. “I know it will take time for you to adjust to this change in your life. But it is the only thing you can do. Imagine how much more it would grieve Sergei to know you were wasting your life away—your entire life, Anna, for you are so young—waiting for the impossible.”

  He paused, drew in a long breath, and once again tried to assume a steady businesslike countenance.

  “At any rate,” he said, “that is my counsel to you. I realize I have hardly earned the right to offer you, of all people, advice. But I was your master for some time, hopefully a fair and compassionate one. And I doubt you’ll hear different counsel from another.”

  “I take it you are saying there is nothing anyone can do?” said Anna. “Neither myself, nor you . . . nor anyone.” The firmness of her conviction was clearly dissolving.

  “There was a time,” answered Viktor, “when I could have wielded my authority on Sergei’s behalf. But my influence at the court is nearly gone. There are ways for the son of a man in my position to avoid prosecution for a crime even as terrible as Sergei’s. But I no longer occupy the position I once did. I have fallen from imperial favor. I was already on shaky ground in the changing political climate that keeps Russian aristocrats fearful for their heads. And Sergei certainly did not help his own cause on my behalf with that book of his. The tsar took it very personally. And this latest treasonous incident, especially committed as it was in battle! Ah, Anna—all of it has reflected woefully on me.”

  He paused, then shook his head slowly. “It is not entirely Sergei’s doing, I must admit that in all fairness. The erosion, as I said, began long before that. I was never much good at groveling to obtain the tsar’s favor. I always believed somehow that honesty would win out. But how miserably I was wrong! I would march straight to the Winter Palace this minute and kiss the tsar’s feet if I thought it would bring back my son. But it is too late for that. The tsar is angry with me because of Sergei. He says I have made him look doubly foolish, especially in these times when radicals are saying all manner of falsehoods against him. He is in no mood for being ridiculed from within the ranks of his own circle of advisors, which is his perception of what I have allowed to happen. He refused to see me when I attempted to obtain an Imperial decree in Sergei’s defense. I doubt I could fight a warrant against me for spitting on the street!”

  The room fell silent. There seemed little more to be said. A moment or two more passed; then Prince Fedorcenko bade Anna farewell, turned, and departed, leaving her alone in the parlor.

  Anna’s mind was numb. No single thought would remain focused within her mind. One moment she was thinking of the first day she had seen Prince Sergei as they watched the skaters on the river. The next she was thinking of their walk in the garden. Then her mind raced back to Katyk, and filled with images of the joy she and Sergei had shared there together—walking by the stream with a stiff autumn breeze at their backs, sitting under the willow talking for hours, or resting before the hearth in the cozy izba, with children on Sergei’s knee shrieking with laughter as he told them his lively, animated tales. The most precious memory of all was that of working in her father’s field together to bring in the grain before the coming of the rain.

  But within a short space of time, these pleasant images faded, to be replaced by one unfamiliar to her senses and therefore all the more dreadful in her imagination. In the eye of her anguished mind, Sergei lay dejected, alone, half starving. The surroundings were dark, as of a deep, cold, dank prison cell—without life, without hope, without sight of sun or any other human being. And there lay Sergei—silent, thin, in rags, his heart broken, his mind deadened by the stupefying numbness of aloneness, what little life there was left in him pouring slowly and invisibly out onto the damp, cold stone floor as if his tortured body were a sieve.

  Oh, but for me, she thought in the agony of her distress, we would still be in Katyk. But for me, none of this nightmare would be happening!

  Anna buried her face once more in her hands. No answers came to her distraught mind . . . and no prayers came to her lips. Only the depth of her heart could open itself to the Father, although as it did she neither knew it nor felt it.

  24

  Winter in Russia was as cold as it was hard.

  There were no exceptions—at least in his lifetime Yevno remembered none. Changes, yes. But no exceptions. Youth felt the cold not nearly so deeply, and was innocent enough to delight in the frozen white powdery manna from above. The young did not feel the cold in their bones, and their cares were few. The weight of provision did not yet rest on the unburdened shoulders of guileless childhood.

  He had been young once, too. He had not felt the burden or the cold then as he did now.

  Perhaps it did grow colder each year, thought Yevno. He certainly felt its bitter sting through every bone, in every fiber of his tired body. To young Tanya and Vera and Ilya, whose shouts and laughter even now greeted his ears as he lay in bed, the snow meant exuberance and life and joy—with a thousand new possibilities for play and happiness every morning. That their fingers and toes were frozen beyond feeling mattered nothing.

  But the snow was no life-giving manna to one like Yevno. It was, rather, the powder of death—killing the ground, taking from it the power to give life, killing the bones, killing the fingers, numbing legs and arms and even brain. Spring always came, they said. Indeed, he had found it so. Yet every year he doubted the fact anew. Every year it seemed longer in coming. One year, he was all but certain, it would not come at all. They would wait and wait and look and look outside. But snow . . . more snow . . . drifting higher and higher until everything was covered—cottages, fields, barns, even trees. The whiteness would remain . . . forever.

  Perhaps then would come death—the final winter, and the soft frozen flakes would indeed bring life . . . of a new kind.

  “Your tea, Yevno,” said a soft voice, interrupting his drifting thoughts.

  “Ah, Sophia,” smiled Yevno, turning to face her and stretching out his hand. “You take such care of this tired old husband!”

  “No more than you would do for me if I lay in bed,” she said, lovingly caressing his forehead and stroking back his gray hair.

  “Alas, I never seem to be given such an opportunity,” chuckled Yevno, “for I am always the one lying here. You still possess the youth and vitality of a forty-year-old, Sophia.”

  “Bah, Yevno, I am as old as you!”

  “Why, then, does age not creep up on you?”

  “Perhaps because I am so full of love for you,” she said with a smile. She stooped down to the bed and kissed him.

  Yevno sipped from the strong, hot brew. It felt good to the tongue and stomach as he swallowed, but was powerless to send its warmth to his benumbed extremities under the blankets at the far end of the bed. No matter how much tea he consumed, he could not seem to make his feet aware of it.

  “The children sound so happy,” said Sophia after a moment.

 
“They do not need food to make them laugh. They know we will take care of them,” said Yevno seriously. “But how long will we be able to, Sophia?”

  “There is yet much wheat and rye in the bins in the barn.”

  “Thanks to Anna and her prince, and my good health last fall. But as you yourself can see, that health has failed again.”

  “We have grain enough to last until this year’s stradnya pora and beyond, Yevno, my dear husband. You can lie right here all winter, through all the snow our God chooses to send us, though it bury us alive, and we will have bread in plenty! For one time, Yevno, put aside your fretting over your family. You are the best husband a woman could have hoped to have. Look at me—I am old, and still plump! You have fed me well all the days of my life . . . yes, and through all the winters, too!”

  Yevno sighed and tried to force a smile. “Ah, wife, you ever lavish me with your kind words. But the reality of the cold is that the earth is frozen, and I lie here and slowly we eat the grain, and the bins will grow empty, and then how will I replace their stores? With what will I make provision for my family then?”

  “You are anxious over a mirage, my husband,” replied Sophia. “We have grain enough to last ten blizzards, if our tiny izba were full of ten children!”

  “Ah, but next year, wife . . . what of next year? Do we have wheat to last two winters . . . or three? What if no miracle comes next time from the city? What if there is no Anna . . . no prince? Were it not for them, you would even now be sweeping the kernels of wheat from the bottom of the bin, mixing more dirt into your bread than grain itself. Last year’s harvest was meager, and had we not had much left over, we would now have none.”

  Sophia nodded. She could hardly deny it, for she knew it was true. But the fact was, Anna and the prince had come, and this year the elder prince had hired a helper, and they did have wheat and rye in abundance. Next winter at this time, she had every confidence they would yet be eating bread from grain cut from this year’s stradnya pora. It was all in the cycle of life. Winter did not make poor people like them die; it taught them to endure. Even buried under a blanket of whiteness, life in Russia went on. Thus it had been for centuries.