Michael Loris-Melikov had already done what many would have considered impossible. Not only had he won Alexander’s favor, he had managed to keep from being destroyed by the bickering and divisive factions of Russian politics. Viktor would not rate him brilliant, but his pragmatic wisdom went far beyond the commonplace. He had juggled all the various factions of the Imperial Court, had pushed a far-reaching program of historic foresight tenaciously through the maze of imperial and political red tape, and had emerged largely unscathed—with his reputation and his head still in place. Whatever new obstacle the tsar had set in his path, it could hardly be insurmountable to such a skillful politician and shrewd strategist.
“Surely, Michael,” said Viktor, “you have gone too far now to allow anything to impede you.” Viktor’s words, coming as they did from a man who had all but given up, were rather hollow. He meant them, but he had not the fortitude left to heed them for himself.
“Besides my news of the arrest of Zhelyabov,” Melikov replied, “I will also be delivering to the tsar the first draft of my proposed constitution.”
“That is good news!”
Viktor rose momentarily from his emotional lethargy to speak with deep sincerity. The constitution was everything—what moderates like him had been hoping for. The constitution was the only hope, as he saw it, for suppressing the radical movement and bringing the nation into the twentieth century. He might even go so far as to say this news superseded even his personal grief. If they could make a success of it, the Russia he dearly loved might still have a chance to survive.
“Unfortunately,” Melikov added almost drearily, “what I will hand to His Majesty is little more than a glorified extension of the zemstrovs. And we all know what a pitiful failure they have been.”
“That was local government, Michael. There was never a sufficiently broad base of experience on the local, especially the rural, level to make those so-called self-governing bodies work effectively. That factor alone should change the impact dramatically on the national level.”
“I would have expected you to be above such self-deception, Viktor.”
“Perhaps I am deluding myself,” sighed Viktor, “but something in the way of democratic change is better than nothing, is it not?”
“In my opinion, what the tsar expects is equivalent to nothing. The other day he said to me, ‘There is one thing in this country that I hold sacred and inviolate—that is the Russian monarchy. Have your reforms if you must, and your constitution too. But I will not rob my heir of his rightful due.’”
“It sounds as though he is giving you power to change the government with one hand, and yet taking it away from you with the other,” observed Viktor.
“That, my friend, is precisely Alexander’s game. He wants me to change the system without changing the system.”
“Now I see why you called it a task you didn’t know if you could conquer.”
“Listen to what else he said,” Melikov went on. “He wrote it for me, in an official letter, presumably so that I would not forget the boundaries of this position he created for me.”
He took a sheet of paper from his desk, looked at it for a moment, then began reading. “Here are Alexander’s words:
‘My father, for all his difficulties—a reign that began with mutinous rebellion and ended with a humiliating defeat at the hands of the British—passed on to me a throne completely intact. I received from him the power and majesty of the Russian autocracy as he received it from his father and had been passed down through the Romanov line for nearly three hundred years. I fully intend to do the same with my son and heir. I suppose we must have this constitution, but, mark my words, I will be able to approve it in clear conscience only if it preserves the autocracy of the Russian throne.’”
Melikov stopped, put the paper back on his desk, then looked back toward Viktor. “Believe me, Viktor,” he went on rather sharply, “I have marked his words, in that I will not forget them. But fulfilling his wishes is quite another matter.”
“I suppose whatever else Alexander is, he is a Romanov above all,” commented Viktor.
“Exactly! And by his stiff-necked clinging to the cursed autocracy, he may well lose everything. Then he would have nothing to pass on to Alexander.”
Melikov’s bold critiques were gradually loosening Viktor’s tongue. He could scarcely believe one so close to the tsar could be so free with such denouncing words. “It is rather curious,” he said, “that the future tsar’s throne should be of such overpowering concern to him. He and the tsarevich have had almost as many differences as I have with my son.”
“Everything about the tsar is curious these days, Viktor. There is not much that makes sense. One thing I do know, that is if the tsarevich’s reactionary policies hold sway over the tsar rather than his former bent toward reform, you may mark my words, there will be revolution in this land of ours one day.”
“Despite your earlier confidence that Zhelyabov’s arrest will put a stop to the violence?”
Melikov nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, Viktor, you see through the charade of my optimism.” He sighed. “Deep down I do fear the movement is much larger than Zhelyabov himself. That is why the constitution is so vital. I tell you, Viktor, the people—specifically the troublemakers—will not stand to be merely appeased. I have done what I could to stave off open rebellion and violence. But all my efforts have been built on the premise that we give the people what they are clamoring for and thus knock the wind out of their radical sails. Failing that, I fear in the end the masses of people who are now neutral will eventually throw their support to the other side.”
“I believe it was de Tocqueville who said that the most dangerous moment for a bad government is usually when it begins to reform itself.”
“I should like to remind His Majesty of that.”
“Then I will soon have company where I stand outside the palace door,” added Viktor with attempted humor. It felt good to crack a wry smile again.
Melikov shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind your company, Viktor. But I am not quite ready to commit political suicide yet. I hold my tongue as well as I juggle.”
He smiled grimly. “Time is of the essence, Viktor. Now that the terrorist threat has abated for a season, I fear Alexander will waver even more in his support of reform. What he began he is already shrinking back from.”
He eyed Fedorcenko with an inquisitive eye. “You were close to him back when the reforms of his early reign were effected,” he said after a moment. “How is it, do you think, that so much was accomplished back then?”
“Alexander is not the same man he was twenty years ago,” replied Viktor.
“In what way, do you think?”
“Back in 1861, he could badger and cajole even the most hardheaded of nobles. Otherwise he would never have succeeded in abolishing serfdom. But his base of support eroded and has fragmented since then.”
“Not to mention that he lacks the essential drive these days,” added Melikov.
“Even back then, it took years of debate and study before we were able to bring about the fruition of emancipation.”
“We don’t have years now, Viktor. We can only hold the flood at bay so long.” Melikov stopped abruptly. “And speaking of the time,” he said, rising, “I must be off.”
Viktor rose also, while Melikov gathered up some papers on his desk and slipped them into a leather portfolio. He walked around the desk and gave Viktor a brisk handshake.
“It was good to talk with you, Michael. I wish I could be of more help.”
“Your day will come again, Viktor—if this government has any sense at all. Be patient, and circumspect. Don’t give up yet. Good day.”
When Viktor and Melikov parted, Viktor continued on to his own office. But there was no more for him to do there than there had been the day before, or the day before that.
Alone again, the mounting oppression began to weigh heavily down upon him once more. The conversation with Loris-Melikov had lightened the burden temporar
ily, but only accentuated his present impotence to be of any substantive help—to the governor-general, to the tsar, to anyone! Now, when the Motherland needed him most, he was useless.
He must live with the awful burden not only of having failed his son but his beloved homeland as well. He had done with his life just what Melikov feared the tsar would do to his throne. In a vain attempt to save a tiny stone, the whole fortress was in danger of crumbling.
Viktor poured himself a drink, downed it in a single swallow, and poured another. “Perhaps I should set myself as an example to His Majesty,” he thought mordantly. “Perhaps, come what will, I should speak to him.”
He had nothing to lose anymore. For the first time in his life he could abandon all caution and say exactly what he felt. Yet as much as he mourned his nation’s woes and his own impotence, what Viktor felt more than anything else was apathy.
Indeed, he had nothing to lose. But if he did chance to gain liberty for his country, what even did that matter? It could not bring back his son. And what was life or freedom or a constitution or anything else without that? Nothing else was anything to Viktor Fedorcenko.
He was a lost soul, as lost as his son in the faraway icebound reaches of Siberian Russia.
27
It had been only two months since his sentencing. It might as well have been two years . . . or two centuries.
What did time matter now? Time for Sergei Viktorovich Fedorcenko no longer existed. Time was a weight, an invisible ball chained to him, heavier than any burden that clung to his arms and legs to keep him from escape.
It seemed that he had been trudging northward forever. Already in flashing visions of insanity, as he desperately tried to recall her face, he found himself unable to remember what Anna looked like. He could see her body, her form, even her hair and hands and simple servant’s dress. But the beautiful, wonderful, loving face would not come into focus in his brain, sending him into deliriums of panic and frantic, maddening frustration. The other faces of his former life, even those he loved so dearly, looked at him from a distance, receding from view into the fog of his past, a life he would never know again. With every step northward and eastward he trudged, their faces grew smaller, their voices and laughter more faint.
Laughter . . . would he ever hear its sound again? Would he ever hope again . . . would he ever dream again . . . would he ever love again, except in the bitterness of his own past?
The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of men are full of evil, and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead. Their love, their hate, and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun.
Onward and upward he forced his weary feet, blindly following those ahead, heedless of those who came after him, condemned men all. Northward across the plains, upward through the snow-covered Urals, and downward into the great immensity of Russian Asia. Now he was separated from his past not merely by his crime, nor by the huge mountains rising from out of the lowlands as if to the very sky itself.
He was separated by an entire continent. He had left behind him the westernmost reaches of Europe, and with it the finest of Russian culture and history. Before him now lay only emptiness and desolation . . . ten thousand kilometers, from one end to the other, of Asian Siberia.
This was now his home . . . and would be until God showed mercy upon him and took life from him.
I saw the tears of the oppressed—and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors. And I declared that the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living, who are still alive. But better than both is he who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun. And I saw a man all alone; he had neither son nor father nor mother nor brother. There was no end to his toil . . . and all was meaningless under the sun. . . .
What was there now to hope for, to fight for? The invisible tide of fate had quelled all hope, sweeping over him like a flood, drowning every dream. He was not only a prisoner of the state, but also a captive within the depths of his own being. For how can a man with no vision continue his struggle on the battleground of life without in the end becoming prisoner to his own lifelessness, bound on all sides by thoughts that have no escape?
How cruel are the scales and balances of life, tipping in favor of those whose only goal is to satisfy their greed and selfish ambition to get whatever they can, while others—provoked by deep yearnings of the human spirit to resist the injustices of life—find themselves grinding out their steps toward exile in a labor camp.
I have seen evil under the sun, and it weighs heavily on men. God gives a man wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing his heart desires, but God does not enable him to enjoy them. He snatches it away from him, and sets his feet to toil and labor and meaninglessness. What does a man get for all the toil and striving with which he labors under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. All is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Man’s fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust they return. As a man comes, so he departs, and what does he gain, since he toils for the wind? All his days he spends in darkness. . . .
Sergei thought little about the options awaiting him. The mines of Nerchinsk near the Mongolian border—the Siberia of Siberia, where perennial ice freezes the landscape, even during the summer months—or Kolyma, the uttermost place of exile in the arctic netherworld of isolation. What matter to him where he went, or even if he survived past Tiumen or to the next holding prison at Tomsk? What matter to him whether he even lived to see a single speck of gold, silver, lead, or Siberian snow? If he prayed now, it was only that merciful death might take him while he was still young.
In the scant moments when his brain tried stiffly to function as it once had, he could not concentrate long enough on any one thought to make sense of it. His head hurt dreadfully, and in spite of the frigid temperatures, his body was hot and aching. He could not eat, although the taxing daily march depleted him of all stamina. Twice yesterday he had dropped to the ground. The first time brought a beating at the hands of a nearby guard until he again regained his feet. The second time he had gone unconscious before hitting the ground, and did not awaken for several hours, when he groggily became aware that he was bumping along on the bed of a rough wooden cart.
Whether he would make it through this day, he neither knew nor cared. He had managed to hold down a cupful of the foul gruel he had been given last night. He had slept tolerably and had awakened, if not with renewed energy, at least capable of holding his feet under him. But he could not keep from shaking with chills one minute, and burning from heat the next. And to make matters worse, he had picked up an irritating and itching rash all over his back and chest, and was starting to cough. Tiumen could only be a day or two away. All he needed was a few days rest. Not that it mattered how he felt. But this was misery itself.
Again the heat seized him and his brain began to spin. He shook himself, trying to clear his sight, but lights flashed before him.
Fleeting images whirled about through his head . . . sights that had no meaning, nonsense sounds . . . memories that stung his heart but whose features his mind could not fit into sequence.
Emotion swelled within him. Suddenly, for a brief instant, the visage of his beloved Anna came into view and stood indistinctly before him! He gasped, and his chest surged full. The face . . . he could just faintly make it out!
Deliriously he lunged forward, his arms outstretched. She was so close! If he could just clutch her for an instant . . . to shelter his bruised and beaten body in the warmth and innocent comfort of her precious embrace!
He stumbled toward her. Anna . . . Anna! he cried. But he could not even hear his own voice . . . Anna!
No! Her face . . . she was fading farther f
rom him . . . No, God . . . no! Anna!
His hallucinating brain had deceived him! His heart wrenched in agony as he realized he was the victim of a wretched mirage. A thief had come to destroy the last remaining fragment of hope he possessed—sending the final weight of chaotic confusion against the fragile veil of reality that stood between him and insanity.
With a deafening, guttural wail of remorse, he threw himself to the ground, his arms still stretched toward the empty wilderness, begging to die.
“Hey, you blackguard!” yelled a nearby guard, leaping toward him. “None of your insolent sloth!” Without sympathy, and in cold-blooded determination to silence Sergei’s pleas, he sent a cruel boot into the young prince’s side, followed by several whacks with the club in his hand. “On your feet, you miserable scum!”
Sergei pulled his legs up under him and covered his head with his hands and arms, but otherwise surrendered to the would-be courier of death. Waves of nausea engulfed him in his last moments of coherence. As darkness closed over him, his final thought was that perhaps now this horror would finally come to an end.
When he next came to himself, he was on his feet, tramping wearily and listlessly forward as if the incident had never occurred. How or when he had again begun the death march, he could not imagine, nor did he even pause to conjecture.
His head pounded horribly within his skull. And try as he might, he could see Anna’s face no more.
28
The little cheese shop on the Maly Sadovaya was doing a meager business that chilly Sunday morning.
The shop had opened for business only a few weeks previously and could hardly be expected to have much trade built up in such a short time. But, nevertheless, the proprietor could not have been expected to establish any business or handle the requests should customers begin coming his way. The shelves were but sparsely supplied with goods; three quarters of the rough planks were altogether empty.
The man’s customary response to the few potential customers who stopped in to inquire after this or that was, “Ah, you know how it is to get on one’s feet. But we will increase our stock very soon.”
The Russians Collection Page 92