The Russians Collection

by Michael Phillips

  In Shushenskoye the summers were warm, often downright hot. Mosquitoes and midges were an interminable nuisance, but they weren’t nearly as bad as in the north. Good hunting here helped pass the time and put food on the table. The pine woods abounded with reindeer and bear and wild goats; if one had an interest in trapping, the taiga supplied sable. But it was still Siberia, and winters still managed to clamp down on the land like a heavy-handed barin. For many months out of the year the little village was completely cut off from surrounding civilization, even from Minusinsk, about forty miles to the north.

  Paul read incessantly; one of his driving motivations in life was that of obtaining books. Reading was the only way not to go absolutely insane during those dismal winter nights. While he awaited the paperwork for his final transfer to Shushenskoye, he had made the acquaintance of another exile in Krasnoyarsk who was from a rather well-to-do family and received a regular supply of reading material from Russia. When this fellow’s family heard of Paul, they began to send books to him as well. Those books saved his life during those interminable winters.

  Then one spring, when the snows melted and the poor Siberian residents slogged about knee-deep in mud, something extraordinary happened to Paul. During his first year in Shushenskoye he had taken a room—a corner in a damp barn—in exchange for tutoring the children of a peasant family. But the environment only exacerbated his lung condition. About that time a man and his daughter arrived in the village. Though exiles, they were obviously of some means, for they were able to rent a small cottage of their own. News of their arrival quickly spread in the small village, and when Paul heard he was excited. Most of the residents of the village were simple peasants with no interest in the outside world. What few learned men there were, such as the schoolteacher and priest, were only a little less dull than the peasants, and Paul suspected them of being informers. Thus Paul went to visit the newcomers at first opportunity, not only for the stimulating company they might provide, but also in hopes of somehow procuring a room in their cottage.

  Gennadii Andropov appeared to be in his sixties, although the rigors of the journey east had left him looking much older. His shoulders were slightly stooped and he wheezed terribly, especially when excited. He had a mop of white hair and a matching beard. He was the picture of age and ill-health. But there was within him a smoldering fire of strength and life that his bright, lively eyes betrayed instantly. He loved to talk and laugh, even though both activities caused him much physical distress. He was a pleasant man, unpretentious and full of humor, and Paul was instantly comfortable in his presence. But he found it difficult to understand how such a person could be taken for a subversive.

  The man’s daughter, Mathilde Gennadievna, was a different matter. Unlike her father, she did not immediately set Paul at ease. She was a few years older than Paul. Her hair was a rather drab brown, and her features were angular, emphasized rather than softened by her long neck on which they sat as if they were being served up on a platter. But if her features were like a meal, even if not a gourmet’s delight, they were nevertheless a spare, sensible fare, warm and tasty. Only her eyes stood out from this frugal feast, like a rich dessert—brown as chocolate, luminous as a flambeau. And she carried herself with such pride and dignity that in spite of her unglamorous physical features, observers, like Paul, were at once intrigued and drawn to her. He soon found that this prim, soft-spoken scion of womanhood could sting like a wasp.

  He had brought a loaf of warm black bread from the wife of his peasant landlord.

  “You are too kind,” Gennadii said.

  “It is a malady this place is curing me of daily,” said Paul.

  “So your enemies end up the victors after all,” Mathilde replied, a touch of challenge to her tone.

  “What do you know of my enemies?” asked Paul, nettled at her insightful but presumptuous comment.

  “Mathilde, our young guest would perhaps like some tea,” Gennadii said, then added with an affectionate wink at his daughter, “before you engage him in political debate.”

  “Yes, Papa.” She nodded respectfully to both her father and Paul, then went to the stove for the tea.

  “I am new here, of course,” Gennadii went on, motioning Paul to sit. “But one learns quickly to appreciate the small things in life. And, as much as you diminish your small act of kindness, Paul, it means a great deal to us. Why, a few more such acts could restore my faith in human nature.”

  Paul replied with a doubtful shrug and a cynical snort, “I doubt that.”

  “You would slight my father’s words?” retorted Mathilde, from where she was drawing tea from the samovar. Her voice was soft, but fight flashed from her eyes.

  Paul winced as if he had been stung. But he realized his attitude hardly did this gentle man any justice.

  “Forgive me,” he said quickly. “If nothing else, I fear this place is causing me to lose my manners.”

  “That is just what the government wants, isn’t it? To force us to lose ourselves. It is the one victory they must not win.” Gennadii glanced at his daughter and her lips curved upward in approval.

  “So it is true, then,” said Paul. “You are a revolutionary, Gennadii Nickolavich?”

  Mathilde answered with passion in her voice. “My father is a kindhearted, peace-loving man who never had a subversive thought in his life.”

  “I would not go quite that far, my dear,” Gennadii said. “I must admit at least one or two unkind thoughts toward the . . . ah, shall I say . . . establishment?” He smiled, and his eyes danced. “Mathilde, why don’t you tell Paul our story? I’m afraid my own breath is nearly spent.”

  Mathilde spoke as she served tea. “My father is a writer,” she said. “He writes fiction, stories of Russian life, mostly. Nothing seditious, mind you—not even close.” She smiled toward her father and they exchanged a look of some shared memory. She continued. “I am the revolutionary of the family.” She paused as Paul registered his shock. “Have you known no women radicals?”

  “I have,” answered Paul vaguely. “Were you in St. Petersburg?”

  “We live, or lived, in Kiev. And there, I was arrested for distributing leaflets to factory workers.” She took a seat next to her father.

  “And did your father write the leaflets?”

  Gennadii chuckled at this, but his daughter answered indignantly, “Never! He was arrested before they even realized he was a writer—he was exiled with me simply because he was my father. If I had had other family, they would have been here also.”

  “I am sorry for you both,” said Paul earnestly.

  “It is a terrible world when a simple weaver of tales and an outspoken girl must spend the rest of their lives in exile,” said Gennadii. “And, though I must say better men than I have come this route, I do not know if there have been any better women.” He reached over and gave his daughter an affectionate pat on the arm. “But I am not bitter over my plight, Paul. Bitterness eats away at a soul until its final state is worse than the first.”

  “But don’t you hate the government for what it did to you?”

  “Hatred is another emotion that does no good. All that has happened has indeed awakened emotions within me, perhaps even begun to convert me to my daughter’s way of thinking—in some areas, at least. Change is needed. It must come. And if I were a young man, or at least had some vigor left in me and was not nearing the end of my days, I would devote my life to seeing that change came. But I would not let hatred or bitterness stop me; neither would I let it drive me. I would do it because it had to be done.”

  “Sometimes I want to give it all up. It seems so futile, and the masses don’t appear to want our help anyway.”

  “Does that change the need?”

  Paul slowly shook his head, reluctant to agree, but sensing immediately the wisdom in the man’s words.

  “I think you best be careful, Gennadii,” said Paul wryly, “or the constable may arrest you for agitation.”

  “Imagine t
hat!” chuckled the man.

  After this initial meeting Paul spent every moment he could with the Andropovs. Before long he was invited to occupy the spare room in the cottage. His life was greatly changed by this growing relationship. Gennadii’s gentle wisdom and solid logic were a balm to him, working in and upon him to soften some of the jagged edges his hatred and previous associations had imprinted upon him. He began to see how the path of his former life had taken a terribly wrong detour, leading him down a road that not only was a dead end, but likely would end up destroying him. Some of his faith, if not in God, then at least in the godly virtues he had learned as a child, began to be restored to him. However, he did not in any way forsake his extreme ideals and his belief in change and in the necessity for a radical overthrow of the present government in Russia, but in these ideas he found a companion more in Mathilde than in Gennadii.

  And in Mathilde Gennadievna he found more than a comrade in ideals. He also found a woman to love, and one who loved him with a completeness and devotion that boggled his mind. They were kindred spirits; they agreed on everything—and on nothing. They constantly debated, mostly about political issues, but sometimes simply about which path they should take on a hike or if the weather would permit hunting on a given day. But they thrived on these debates and admired each other the more for them.

  No one was happier than Gennadii when, in the spring of 1888, they finally married.

  10

  News reached Siberia by degrees of the death of Alexander III and the ascension of the new tsar. Paul was as curious as anyone about how Nicholas II would affect events in Russia.

  Paul and Mathilde discussed this subject often, sometimes heatedly.

  “No one can be as heavy-handed as Alexander III,” said Mathilde one winter evening as they sat before a cozy fire in the hearth. “He unjustly exiled my father and me.”

  “Well, Alexander II exiled me.”

  “I thought you were exiled after his death.”

  “Only days. Close enough to still be considered his reign.”

  “His heir became tsar the moment of his death, so it was the Alexander III who exiled you.”

  “Now, you are picking nits!”

  “Nevertheless . . .”

  Paul sighed resignedly. “It does not change my point. I met a man in Kolyma who had been exiled during the reign of Nicholas I. One Romanov is the same as the next. Even if there is a ‘good-willed’ one, he would still be constrained by the colossus they have bred.”

  “But a weak tsar, as we have heard this new one to be, is a godsend, for we may at least be able to break his resistance to the reform so desperately needed in this country.”

  Paul considered Mathilde one of the most intelligent women he had ever known, yet sometimes her political notions could be sadly naive. But then, she had never sat at the feet of rebels such as Andrei Zhelyabov or Sophia Perovskaya. The idea of terrorism appalled her. But even if he had seen the senselessness of that path, he still believed passionately that the only way to real change in Russia was to be found in the complete overthrow not only of the Romanovs but of the monarchy itself.

  “Mathilde,” Paul said patiently, “a weak tsar, or even a good-willed tsar, would be worse for Russia than any tyrant. A weak tsar would be far more likely to be manipulated by his reactionary ministers than by the people. And if he happens to be benevolent—heaven help us! Such a monarch will only lull the masses back into the false security that got them in this fix in the first place. A tyrant would keep the masses honed and fighting ready. If Ivan the Terrible were to ascend the throne today, ah, then we’d see revolution posthaste!”

  Mathilde, worthy adversary that she was, smiled and conceded. “All right, Paul, I see what you mean. What stand, then, do you propose to take with our new emperor?”

  Paul had had sixteen years to organize his ideas on this very topic. He had read volumes on political thought, from Voltaire to the writings of the German Karl Marx which had in the last few years been filtering into Russia. He had obtained a book on English grammar and had painstakingly taught himself to read English so he could learn about democracy. Besides Jefferson and Paine, he had read Sidney and Beatrice Webb’s Theory and Practice of English Trade Unionism and Henry George’s Progress and Poverty, as well as illegal copies of essays by George Kennan, the American journalist who had toured Siberia in 1885 and viewed firsthand the horrors of the Russian exile system.

  In addition, Paul had written pages and pages of his own manifestos and bylaws for organizations that remained real only in his own imagination. He had compiled a book of notes on a feasible new government for Russia. He had managed to smuggle out of the country to the revolutionary leader Plekhanov in Geneva an essay entitled “Social Democracy and Economic Change in Russia,” which was published and distributed widely among the revolutionary community.

  Since the arrival of Gennadii and Mathilde, he had gone even further in focusing his ideals and beliefs and goals. But thus far it had all been theoretical, all ideas and dreams. Mathilde posed her question, looking for no more than a theoretical answer, yet at the moment she had spoken it, it struck him in an entirely practical light. When he had first heard of the death of Alexander III and the prospect of a new emperor, he had felt a gradually increasing restiveness. As much as he might argue that one Romanov is the same as another, he did sense that the lifting of Alexander III’s oppressive hand would have repercussions. If the revolutionaries acted quickly and with solidarity, a strike against the Romanov regime could be made before the people were lulled into their infernal apathy. Of course, those were sizable ifs. But not insurmountable.

  What was insurmountable was his frustrating imprisonment here away from all the action!

  He looked at his wife and, not too surprisingly, saw reflected in her eyes the same spark that had begun to flame up within himself.

  He shook his head. “What can I do? What can we do? I have spent years studying, but has it been to prepare myself for some part in the coming revolution, or has it been merely to occupy my time until I die?”

  “Do you truly believe you will die here in Shushenskoye, wasted and useless?”

  “What choice do I have? I used to think of escape, but I have never been able to justify it because of the repercussions it would have on those who remain here. Too many escapees, and the officials would clamp down mercilessly on the other exiles so that what little hope they have of making a life for themselves would be eliminated. I could not do that, Mathilde, not after having lived among so many who are good and worthy.”

  “Yes, I see that.”

  “And I could never leave you and your father behind. But Gennadii could never make a journey back to Russia, especially the kind an escapee must make.”

  “Of course, you are right.”

  “And my own health has just returned. Is it worth it to risk that?”

  “A good point.”

  “And—” He stopped suddenly as the incongruity of their conversation dawned upon him. Mathilde had agreed with everything he had said! He studied her for a moment, and a brief smile darted across her lips. “Just so many excuses, aren’t they?” he said, returning her smile.

  “Perhaps.”

  “They are valid excuses.”

  “Of course.”

  “Would you stop agreeing with me?” he blurted out, only partially in jest. “Say what you really think.”

  “You won’t like it.”

  “It has to be better than this infernal pandering.”

  She sighed. “All right. This is what I think: You are afraid to return to St. Petersburg. You have been away so long you are worried you will no longer fit in. But more than that, you fear being sucked into your former circle, and the program of violence and terror. You are not certain if the philosophies you have formed in the last sixteen years will survive in the real world against a corrupt and detestable government.”

  “And if they do not?”

  “You were a boy then, Pa
vushka. You are a man now. Look at those big feet of yours! They are on solid ground, they will not easily fall.”

  “Then you wish me to escape?”

  “It is something to think about, Paul. But if anyone escapes, it will be us, not just you.”

  “And what of Gennadii? He could not make such a journey, yet if he stayed behind, who knows what they’d do to him?”

  “We don’t have to do anything hasty, but at least we must not be closed to whatever possibilities that arise.”

  “I agree.”

  They smiled at each other, and Paul leaned over and kissed his wife.

  Later that same afternoon Paul went for a short walk; it might be twenty below out, but a man had to have some fresh air. When he left, while Gennadii took a nap, Mathilde went to the small desk in the parlor, sat down and took a sheet of paper from a drawer. Pressing the pen against her lips, she thought for a moment, then dipped the pen into the ink and began to write: Dear Uncle Boris . . .

  She wrote a paragraph or two of polite greetings, asking after her aunt and cousins, and then reporting on her father’s and her own status. When half the page was filled she paused, tapping the pen against her chin thoughtfully. Then she continued:

  Uncle Boris, when Father and I were sent away to our exile ten years ago, you said you would do everything possible to help us, and that you would use whatever influence you had with the Kiev authorities to get us back to Russia. I know you have kept your promise and have been met with every brick wall there is. But there is a new tsar now, and perhaps his reign ushers in a new spirit of generosity toward those who have surely paid the price for their “indiscretions” against the government. Thus, if you can see your way to intercede for us, and my husband also, once more, we would be ever filled with gratitude. My father, and your dear brother, does not grow healthier here. Every winter kills him a little more. It would be a shame for him to die so far from his beloved Russia, which he extols so beautifully in his stories. But I must be frank with you; I ask not only for my father (he could be content anywhere—you know Papa!) but for myself and my husband also. We yearn to be restored to our lives. If the winters do not kill us, the monotony surely will.