The Russians Collection

by Michael Phillips

  Again the faraway gaze came into Sergei’s eyes.

  “I will tell you everything, Anna,” he said. “But I want to wait until I am able to give you the whole story without interruption. Perhaps after we are married we can go away someplace together.”

  “I will eagerly anticipate it!”

  “Where shall we go, Anna—England, the Crimea, Switzerland, Italy?”

  “As long as we are together, I don’t care where it is!”

  “Then I must make haste to get things in the city set straight. I will return there at once so that I can come back to you.”

  “Another farewell between us,” said Anna.

  “But this will be the last,” replied Sergei.

  86

  Sergei made good on his last two promises to Anna. He returned to Katyk in a week’s time, bringing with him the lapis cross, and as he had vowed two years before, placed it back into her hand. She kept it only long enough to give it back to him on their wedding day, and henceforth it was his.

  The other promise he had made her, that there would be no more farewells to endure, he also made good on. At least there were none of significant import for many years.

  He had accomplished all that lay in his power to do concerning setting the houses of his two families in order. There would continue to be a considerable awkwardness, he said, owing to the incognito nature with which he would have to conduct affairs in the future. But Mrs. Remington was a shrewd one, he said with a smile, and he had every confidence she would be able to manage. His meeting with his father was disappointing at best. Viktor seemed only to vaguely recognize Sergei—not because of any disguise but because Viktor did not have the will to step outside the protective walls of his mental seclusion. Sergei told no one of the child, for her continued safety, nor that he had been to Katyk. There would also be no word of his marriage. For everyone’s safety—including Anna’s family—most of their future would have to be lived in secrecy from the eyes and ears of St. Petersburg society, even though it meant those closest to them knew nothing as well. He would remain in touch with his father’s house by various circuitous means. Otherwise, he and Anna would live as commoners without anyone knowing that he was a prince or what had been his background.

  Sergei and Anna were married in Katyk the first week of June 1882.

  The prince was dressed in the clothes of a peasant, and never were his title or true name spoken. There was much speculation in the community. No one quite knew what to make of this sudden wedding in light of the previous canceled one. Those who had actually met Misha were few, and in the imaginations of the country peasantry, the prince who had visited and worked in Yevno’s fields three years earlier had become almost a mystical figure of past legend. The faces of the Cossack and the prince, therefore, were neither known nor distinguishable. Most people assumed the two men were one, and that the earlier wedding had only been delayed two months. Nothing from the Burenin home was said to discourage such talk. The wider the confusion, the less likely it was that the full truth would be discovered and Sergei’s whereabouts become known throughout St. Petersburg.

  Of Sergei’s and Anna’s acquaintances from the city, only Misha was on hand for the wedding. He did not appear in his uniform, but dressed like Sergei in the simple attire of a commoner. Who he was, nobody ever quite knew, but there was talk of a distant cousin having arrived a short time earlier. Where that word had originated was unclear, though whenever it came within sound of Sophia’s ears, the edges of her lip curled up slightly in an imperceptible smile.

  With the love of true friendship, Misha wished the bride and groom both well, and saw them off for two weeks in the south, then returned to his own duties in the city.

  87

  “Are you ready to hear of it all?” asked Sergei midway through their first week together.

  “If you are ready to tell me,” replied Anna.

  “I am a different man than when I left for Siberia.”

  “I knew that the first moment I was in your arms.”

  “Siberia changes everyone,” said Sergei. “Mostly it embitters them. For me, however, it was the return from Siberia that made the difference. And in my case, the long sojourn healed me of my bitterness rather than added to it.”

  “I knew that too. You have compassion and love for your father now, I can tell.”

  “I only pray the opportunity comes for me to completely reconcile myself to him. I tried to talk to him when I was there. But it will take some time. Hopefully in such a reconciliation his mind will return.”

  “Most of all, Sergei,” said Anna tenderly, “you are at peace with yourself.”

  “And with God,” added Sergei. “It all goes together. The bitterness I felt, the guilt, even the hatred—none of it could have been healed without God’s touch. I was bitter toward Him too. I had a great deal to learn . . . about myself, about being a man.”

  “How did you learn it?”

  Sergei sighed, and led her along the path they had been following, thinking for a moment before going on. “Being alone with no company but yourself forces you to look at things more deeply than you might otherwise. But even then, if you don’t have the perspective to see things truly, your own self can still be your own worst enemy. No, sometimes, Anna, you need someone else’s eyes to help you to see yourself as you truly are.”

  “You found such a person?”

  “I did. I found a man whose search was almost identical to my own—the search to find the meaning of manhood, I mean.”

  “The fellow Kaplan you told me about whom you escaped with?”

  Sergei laughed. “No, not Kaplan, although there are plenty of stories about him I could tell!”

  “Who then?”

  Sergei smiled thoughtfully. “How I ever crossed paths with this man I can’t imagine. Only God’s providence could have arranged it. It’s a long story.”

  “I’m not leaving your side until I’ve heard every word,” said Anna. Sergei was silent for several moments. Then he drew in a deep breath.

  “We almost didn’t make it out of Kara at all. The river was fierce, and by the time I caught up with Kaplan, I was nearly drowned. My chains had taken me straight to the bottom, but the current was swift enough that the water tumbled me along, though I was submerged. The constant motion enabled me to push my way off the bottom with enough force that I could get my head above water for a breath or two before being dragged down again. In this way, bouncing from bottom to surface and back down, I managed to get enough air to stay alive, and gradually I worked my way toward the shore and the shallower current. Kaplan and I found each other. He traipsed off into the forest and found a thick chunk off a fallen tree. Wrapping my chains onto it, I was able to float and stay above water. He found a log for himself, and thus we swam and floated and were carried downriver a good distance out of range of discovery by the patrols from any of the prisons.

  “By daybreak we were many versts away. We left the river, walked overland mostly through forests, avoiding villages, though in that region there are not many.”

  “Why did you avoid the villages?”

  “Near the mines, the people fear escapees and are not inclined to help.”

  “What did you eat?”

  “The forests are plentiful—berries, honey, insects, even some grasses. And we stole, I am sorry to say,” added Sergei. “If we came upon a cottage or a small village, we waited until night, then would creep into a barn or shed and try to find grain or cheeses.”

  “What about your chains? How did you walk?”

  “Very slowly, I’m afraid, it was many days of difficult travel until we reached a moderate-sized village. We waited until the middle of the night, then crept into it. Not only did we manage to find enough food for two or three days, we located an ironmonger’s. It was not difficult to get inside, though far too black to see well. But all we needed was a hammer and his anvil and a sharp pinching tool. Several good whacks of the hammer and I was free of my shackles
.”

  “Didn’t you make a racket?”

  “Yes, which is why we fled from the place immediately, leaving the chains on the dirt floor where they had fallen. Even as we gained the cover of the trees nearby, we heard voices and shouts behind us!”

  “I’m glad they didn’t catch you!”

  “Not half so glad as I was. Kaplan and I kept moving all the rest of the night to put as much distance between ourselves and that place as possible. And now that I was free, I could set a much better pace. Kaplan had led the way until then, but after I was free of my shackles he had difficulty keeping up with me!

  “Kaplan’s plan had always been to go over the mountains southward into Mongolia so as to get into warmer regions before winter froze all of Siberia. But as soon as we started up into the Khingahs, we realized we were not nearly strong enough for such a trek. Even if we had been capable of the climbs required, we would surely have died of starvation, for it is a desolate land. So we turned back, made our way down again into the river valley of the Shilka, and followed the valley to the river Amur, whose valley was lush and green and fertile and where, at that time of the year, it was easy to find growing things to eat. I think we ate better at that stage of our journey than we had at Kara. But starvation was never far from us, and the cold tried to kill us daily. I know we survived only by God’s grace.

  “The mountains rose above the valley on our right the whole way. Once we saw them giving way to the valley of the Sungari, we turned south again. I was in favor of making for Vladivostok, but Kaplan convinced me otherwise. As long as we were in Russia, he said, we would not be safe. The great Russian seaport on the Sea of Japan was where all escapees tried to find some warm water passage home. Instead, it was where they were all recaptured, or so he said. In the end I went along with his plan to make for the Yellow Sea and the seaports of northern China. The thought of the Chinese intimidated me, but he assured me we would not find them so fearsome as I thought. We would even be able to converse, in the northern provinces, after a fashion, especially in the seaports and towns where we would readily find some European vessel where we could work our way to North Africa or Portugal or the Netherlands or England. If we could get our bodies back to strength, they would not mind where we came from. Good ship hands were hard to come by in China, and captains readying for the return voyage often had scant crews owing to desertion, sickness, and death. I don’t know how Kaplan knew all this, but his words proved true in everything.

  “We made Newchwang well into winter and, true to what Kaplan had said, found passage to Tsingtao in exchange for our labors. The port there was full of Germans and German ships. We had no difficulty in hiring on for a steamer bound around Africa to Lisbon. But I was a nobleman who had never done a day’s work in my life, and Kaplan had been in Kara for fifteen years, but somehow we survived the rigors of ship life.

  “My back and shoulders were never so sore in all my life, and we were both still weak from the imprisonment and our journey overland to the sea. Yet as the days went on, we gradually became more accustomed to the new life of sailing.

  “A great storm hit us our first week out. We ran aground and took on a great deal of water, and the captain limped into Shanghai, where he proposed to lay over until the ship was fixed and seaworthy again. Kaplan and I found a man who removed our convict tattoos.” He ran a hand over his forehead, wincing at the memory. “And it was in Shanghai that I met the man I spoke of.”

  “Was he Chinese?” asked Anna.

  “No, hardly that,” laughed Sergei.

  “Tell me about him. I’m eager to know who he was.”

  “Before his influence upon me has meaning,” replied Sergei, “you have to understand the state of my heart and mind at the time.”

  He paused, breathed in deeply, then began again, this time in a pensive tone.

  “I had been sinking into a hole of great despondency for years. Surely you could not help being aware of it—the troubles with my father, my struggle with my position in the army, all the frustrations vented in my writing, the book, my trial, the sentence to Siberia. Anna, I tell you, after I left you, I became as lost a soul as ever crawled the face of the earth. I tried to take my own life once, halfway to Kara. I was a vegetable. I thought I would lose my mind—consumed by guilt, bitterness, anger, despair, frustration. And certainly there was no place in my soul for God. I had failed in everything—with my family, with my father, with the only woman I ever loved. I failed my country, my career . . . everything!

  “I considered myself a man without a scrap of manhood left within me. I was less than nothing. I might as well have been dead. I wasn’t a man. Whatever manhood means, I had lost it, although I don’t know if I ever knew what it was in the first place. My own father wasn’t exactly the ideal man in my sight. Strong, authoritative, stoic . . . but almost without a heart, without a place in him to feel and hurt and open himself to those around him. Your own father came as close as anyone, I suppose, to showing me the other side of what being a man might mean. And yet, Anna, as shamed as I am to admit it, the fact that your father was a peasant made me wonder if it was somehow ‘different’ for him than for me.”

  “There are differences when we are brought up the way we were, Sergei,” said Anna.

  “But not differences in what constitutes essential manhood. At least so it seems to me now. But then, I have been thinking on it a great deal since landing in Shanghai.”

  “What happened there?”

  “As I said, I met a man. It was to take two or three weeks for the ship to be fixed. We left the ship and were walking through the city when we came upon what looked to be a street brawl. A big, good-looking fellow was in the middle of it. He towered over the rest, and it was instantly clear that he was European, not Chinese. Kaplan and I rushed in to see what we could do, and then we realized it wasn’t a brawl at all. The fellow, who was speaking in Chinese but wasn’t apparently making himself too well understood, was mixed up in an accident that had just happened and was trying to get them to help him lift an overturned cart of some peasant farmer.

  “Before I knew what was happening, there we were side by side with the big brute of a man, and the three of us quickly had the thing set right. He turned to us and shook hands, and began thanking us.”

  “In Chinese?”

  “No,” laughed Sergei. “But I understood him no better than if it had been.”

  “What was he speaking then?”

  “English. I can read it well enough, but I don’t speak it sufficiently to be understood. Before too long we stumbled into French, and after that got on tolerably well together. I always knew my French studies would come in handy someday!”

  “Was the man French?”

  “No, he was a Scotsman. And his French wasn’t much better than his Chinese. But I could understand him, and we got on.”

  “What was he doing there?”

  “He was a sailor too. Or he had been. He’d come about a year, maybe a year and a half before. He found himself shipwrecked off the coast of China, and was rescued by some English missionaries who brought him back to life.”

  “It sounds exciting.”

  “The whole thing is one of the most captivating stories I have ever heard. Why, Robbie’s adventures on the high seas and then in China make mine in Asia and Siberia seem tame by comparison.”

  “Robbie . . . that’s his name?”

  “Yes. Robbie Taggart.”

  “You sound as if you were quite taken with him.”

  Sergei did not answer immediately. He breathed deeply, gazed into the distance, and reflected on Anna’s words.

  At length he nodded slowly. “Taken with him . . .” he mused, repeating what she had said. “Anna, there is no other way to say it than that my whole life was changed as a result of him. The man altered my entire outlook . . . on everything! He became a friend, but so much more than a friend. He is just a remarkable man. There is no way I can describe or ever repay the debt I owe him. With
out him, Anna, you would have no husband, at least not the one you do have now. I want you to meet him. I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but someday you will meet him. Because I must see him again, if only to look into his eyes and tell him what he did for me.”

  “He doesn’t know?”

  “Most of our time together I spent listening to him, listening to his father-in-law, a missionary by the name of Wallace, and especially watching Robbie. We talked, of course, but mostly I observed and absorbed. It was not until my return voyage, out there on the seas all these past months, that I had a chance to let it all sink into the depths of my being. I suppose you could say the change came mostly after Robbie and I parted.”

  “How long were you with him?”

  “After our first meeting, Kaplan and I went back to his mission with him. He’d come to Shanghai for some supplies. It turned out we missed the sailing of our ship, and I remained at the mission two months before Robbie helped me arrange passage west on another vessel.”

  “What about your friend?”

  “Kaplan? He decided to stay at the mission!” laughed Sergei.

  “He must have been taken with it, too.”

  “He didn’t say much, but I have the feeling he was asking himself a lot of questions about his own life.”

  “You still haven’t told me what it was about Robbie that had such an influence on you,” said Anna.

  “It was just him—the man he was,” answered Sergei. “There were so many similarities between us. We were close to the same age. He had left Scotland probably about the same time I left St. Petersburg for my reassignment on the Caspian. We both left behind us women we loved, and neither of us had an inkling of who we really were or what lay ahead. Our paths led us eastward—his around the Cape and eventually to China, mine to the Kara mines of Siberia. Maybe that is why he had such an impact upon me, because I could see so much of myself in him.”