The Silent Land

by Sally Spencer

  We approached the Iconostás – the screen which shields the altar from the rest of the church. At the table in front of the Iconostás’ middle door, we came to a halt. This was the table at which the ceremony was to take place. I was breathing easily and my pulse seemed to be beating at its normal rate. I congratulated myself on how well I was keeping my head.

  I wasn’t really, of course. At the storming of the Winter Palace, I was calm. Fleeing for my life across Soviet Central Asia, with Stalin’s OGPU snapping at my heels, I was calm. After both those events I could remember every detail, every incident in its logical order. And what are my memories of my wedding? Nothing but a series of disjointed images. Calm? I was terrified.

  Images. The candles and perpetual lamps burning before the sacred icons which hung from the Iconostás. The solid silver balustrade in front of the Iconostás. The choir singing, the bells pealing. The scores of banners and eagles captured from Napoleon which gave the church a military air and made it, I thought ‘calmly’, an appropriate place for my husband to be married in.

  My husband?

  My husband!

  Not quite yet. There were still forms to be observed, rituals to be gone through.

  The Archbishop fastened our wrists together with a cord and, so bound, we walked three times around the table. The knot had been tied, we were now as one.

  We were handed a cup of wine, and we drank it as we were supposed to drink in life together, first Konstantin taking a sip and then me. As he handed me the cup, I looked up at him. Can we really do it? my eyes asked his. Can we actually we share our lives? Will the bond between us ever become really strong, or will it always be as easy to loosen as the cord which tied us just a few minutes ago?

  And Konstantin’s eyes said to me, You and I can do anything we set our minds to.

  The Archbishop told us of our obligations and led us through our vows while the Tsar and the Grand Duchess Tatyana held our crowns over our heads. The Grand Duchess sighed several times, I remember. Perhaps she was wishing that it was she who was marrying Konstantin.

  It was finally over. Konstantin led me from the cathedral and out into the open once more. The bright light made my eyes water, and the crisp winter air cleansed my nose of the smell of incense. I felt as if I had just woken up and, like many sleepers, tried to reconstruct the dream I’d just had.

  The crowd had swollen, and was being held back by the soldiers. My eyes swept over the sea of faces – civil servants and shopkeepers, workers and bourgeois ladies. All craning their necks, like crowds always do, in order to miss none of the spectacle. Then suddenly my gaze was being drawn, as if by a magnetic force, to one particular spectator. Unlike everyone else in the mob, he was neither impressed nor envious. His eyes were hard and unforgiving. His face bore the signs of suffering – both in the past and at that very moment.

  My mind was playing tricks on me, I told myself. It was impossible that he, of all people, could be …

  I felt a gentle pressure on my arm. “What’s the matter?” Konstantin asked. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

  A ghost! A phantom! Nothing more. It couldn’t be any more.

  “It’s just the excitement,” I told my husband, as he helped me into the fairy-tale coach which was to take me to my new home on the bank of the Neva.

  “How much further?” I asked Konstantin as our coach approached a large building which had to be either a very rich bank or an important ministry.

  “We’re nearly there,” my husband replied.

  “And is your palace as impressive as this,” I joked, pointing to the ministry/bank.

  Konstantin smiled, and the coach turned. “It is this,” he said.

  The carriage passed under and archway and came to halt in the courtyard.

  I looked around me, trying to absorb it all. The palace breathed elegance. The walls, so white that even the weak winter sun reflected dazzlingly off them. Tall windows with neo-classical mouldings above them. Pillars which led the eyes upwards towards heaven. It was a Renaissance palace fit for a Renaissance prince like Konstantin. But where did I fit in?

  “Do you like it?”

  “It’s so … so …”

  “So big?” Konstantin asked innocently.

  “Yes – and so beautiful.”

  “It is one of Quarenghi’s more impressive works,” my new husband admitted.

  “If I’d seen it before we got married,” I confessed, “I wouldn’t have dared go through with it.”

  Konstantin laughed. “Don’t underestimate yourself, my little princess.”

  Little princess? Yes, I was, wasn’t I?

  An army of servants was lined up in the courtyard to greet us – footmen, coachmen, chauffeurs, grooms, carpenters, stone masons, blacksmiths, cooks, confectioners, valets, personal maids, upstairs maids, scullery maids, washerwomen, boot-boys, messengers, porters …

  The women bobbed in curtsey to me, the men bowed. All of them looked up at Konstantin with adoration.

  “You must change out of your wedding dress, and then I’ll show you the house,” Konstantin said.

  “I want to see it now.”

  “You’d be much more comfortable if you—”

  “Now,” I insisted. “And I want to see it all.”

  “As you wish, my impatient princess,” Konstantin said with mock resignation.

  He was right, as usual. I should have changed, and if I’d known just how many miles of corridors there were, it would have been into my riding clothes!

  For his own amusement, Konstantin took me at my word. I’d asked to see it all, and all I would see. Every bedroom, every salon.

  “Just how many rooms are there?” I asked, after an hour had passed and we still far from completing our inspection.

  “I couldn’t really say,” Konstantin admitted. “You’ll have to ask my butler.”

  He showed me his library, which smelt of old leather and – despite being huge – was crammed to bursting point. “First Folios of Shakespeare,” he said, pointing to one of the shelves. “They were extremely difficult to get hold of.”

  He took me into the theatre, big enough for a full-scale production, luxurious enough to satisfy even the choosiest sybarite. “I sometimes ask the Mariinsky Company to put on a private performance,” he told me.

  “And they agree?”

  He nodded. “I pay well, and they prefer my stage to their own.”

  He led me around his art gallery, showing me the originals of pictures I recognized from books, pointing out the work of other artists I was totally ignorant of.

  “That study in blue is by a young Spanish artist,” he said. “His name’s Picasso. I think he’s going to be very important. Certainly he deserves to be.”

  Do I make my husband sound boastful? Nothing could be further from the truth. In all the time we were married, I never saw Konstantin deliberately try to impress anyone else, though he rarely failed to do so. His books and paintings were for his own pleasure, and nothing more.

  We finally arrived in the bigger of the two ballrooms, where the crystal chandeliers which had once belonged to Louis XVI hung majestically from the ceiling. “And now, my dear, you really must go and change,” Konstantin said, “or you’ll be late for your own ball.”

  Strictly speaking, there should have been no ball. By the rules of Petersburg society, they were only held in the season, and the season began with the Tsar’s ceremonial appearance at the Winter Palace on New Year’s Day.

  “It’s only out of respect for your great beauty that His Majesty has graciously consented to let me break with tradition,” Konstantin continued. “If you don’t appear, there’ll be trouble.”

  He was making fun of me. The Tsar had consented out of respect for Konstantin, his old army comrade. And that consent mattered! My Konstantin was afraid of nothing living or dead – he would have faced the Devil himself with a smile on his face – but his devotion to the Tsar was absolute. Without his master’s nod, there
would have been no ball. Without his master’s nod, there would have been no marriage.

  What a ball it was! Konstantin had spared no expense and people said there’d been nothing like it since the fancy dress ball at the Winter Palace in 1903. If I close my eyes now, I can still see it. The soldiers’ uniforms – white and scarlet. Their helmets of gold and silver, surmounted by the Russian eagle. The Court officials in their uniform, heavy with gold embroidery and tailing off into short breeches and white silk stockings. The ladies, in their low-cut court gowns, shoulders bare, walking carefully to avoid stepping on each other’s trains.

  And in the middle of it, me – little Anna – drenched in the diamonds that my husband had given me just that day. A diadem set with two rows in my hair. A ferronière with a single diamond crossing my forehead. A diamond necklace. Diamonds bordering the neck of my dress. A flower on the back of my gown made entirely of the precious stones. Two diamond chains leading to the front of the bodice and then to a buckle at my waist. If I had one quarter of the stones now, I could buy the whole of Matlock Road, and yet, had I worn any less, I would have been considered underdressed.

  As I stood by my husband’s side, I found myself searching the gathering for the face I’d seen outside the cathedral that morning, the hard, unforgiving eyes, the scarred face, the …

  Ridiculous? Of course it was! Though there were hundreds of people at the ball, it was still a very exclusive affair. He, of all people, could not possibly be there. But I couldn’t stop looking.

  It was an hour before dawn when the last of the guests departed and we were finally left alone.

  “You look tired, my dear,” Konstantin said. “Shall we go to bed?”

  To bed?

  Yes!

  But how?

  Together?

  This was my wedding night, but the marriage, though sanctified, was never to be consummated. I realized I had no idea what part Konstantin expected me to play in his life.

  My husband took my arm and led me up the grand spiral staircase. Vera, my maid, followed at a discreet distance with Konstantin’s valet.

  Would we, at some point, part? Would Konstantin suddenly say, “This is your room,” and disappear down the corridor? Did I want him to? Questions, questions, questions!

  Perhaps Konstantin was wondering, too. Perhaps he didn’t finally make up his mind until we stopped outside the exquisitely carved, heavy oak door.

  “I prefer to sleep at the back of the house,” he said. “It’s away from the noise of the prospekt and has a view over the river.”

  I wasn’t even aware that we’d reached the back. I was totally lost in the palace of which I was the supposed mistress.

  Konstantin opened the door and ushered me through it. I’d grown used to splendour that day, but this room – which he’d not shown me on our tour – took my breath away. The Empire bed, with its canopy of shot silk, looked big enough to sail to America in. The Persian carpets which covered the floor were of a delicacy I’d never before seen.

  And the paintings! There were three of them, abstracts. Though I was not very familiar with the form, I could still admire the sweep of them, the use of colour. They pumped out a feeling of energy. They were a triumph in themselves because they gave a sense of the triumph of life.

  “Picasso again?”

  Konstantin shook his head.

  “Who then?” I asked.

  “They’re Konstantin Mayakovsky’s. I keep them here as a constant rebuke. But one day, I’ll devote the time to them that art demands. Then I may, perhaps, have something really worth displaying.”

  One day! Even wise Konstantin did not always realize that ‘one day’ may never come. Only the old, I think, carry the knowledge with them constantly, and then fate, like the cruel joker it is, surprises them with another morning.

  Konstantin opened the door in the wall opposite the bed.

  “Your dressing room,” he said.

  “Is it?” I asked, knowing I sounded stupid, yet unable to bring myself to ask any of the questions which sprang to my mind.

  I sat down at my dressing table. It was a beautiful thing – Chippendale. Konstantin had sent his servants scouring all of Petersburg to find something special for me, and had paid well above the market price when they did. He never told me that himself – I discovered it later. I wondered then, and wonder now, how many other kind marvellous things he did for me that I never found out about.

  While Vera unpinned my hair and Konstantin’s valet struggled with his boots and breeches, we talked – in English – through the half-open door.

  “How do you feel now, my little princess?” my husband asked, and though I was not looking in his direction, I knew he was smiling.

  I felt overwhelmed, as I had that day he killed the wolf. I felt I had been on a merry-go-round which had only just stopped turning. But part of me – a large part of me – felt guilty. “Was all that ostentation really necessary?” I asked.

  Konstantin laughed. “The Court expects it, if you can afford it. And I – we – can.”

  “But those crystal bowls with the uncut sapphires and emeralds in them – just lying around as if they were of no more value than chocolates. What purpose can they serve?”

  Konstantin laughed again. “It’s the fashion among the wealthy, to show just how rich they are. I do it mainly to annoy the people who can’t afford it.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I don’t really like Petersburg society, Anna. Any of it. It’s mean and nasty and greedy. Were it not the Tsar’s explicit wish, I’d never entertain at all.”

  “The waste still seems wrong,” I protested.

  “So what would you have me do? Follow Jesus’ teaching? Sell all I have and give it to the poor?”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m very rich, Anna, but not that rich. Were I to give every peasant and worker in Russia his share of my wealth, each one would receive very little indeed.”

  Looking into the mirror, I could see that I was frowning. “You could help some at least,” I suggested.

  “Very well, then. Your wish is my command. Tomorrow we’ll sell the precious stones and distribute the profits.”

  “Where?”

  “Why not in your mir?”

  And what would happen then? The crops would rot in the fields. The muhziks would go on an incredible spree and probably drink themselves to death – if they didn’t kill each other in brawls first.

  “Well, my little princess, shall we do it?”

  “You’re laughing at me,” I accused him.

  “Of course I am. I hope I’ll always be able to laugh at you. But if that’s what you want, we’ll do it. Is it what you want?”

  No, it wasn’t. The muhziks were too ignorant and narrow to save themselves, as ignorant and narrow as I had been when I entered the Count’s house for the first time. They needed education, they needed leading. They needed to be dragged to their salvation whether they wished it or not.

  But where was the leadership to come from? Not the Little Father. Even my brief stay in Petersburg had shown me that he and his creaking government machine were not up to the task. Not from the aristocracy – they were as self-absorbed as the muhziks. There had to be another way.

  My mind drifted back to a conversation I’d had long, long ago.

  “The S … Soviet is rule by the workers. It sees to it that people get f … food, and that each person gets a f … fair share.”

  I’d been so absorbed in my thoughts that it came as a shock to me to realize I was fully undressed and in my night-gown. Her task completed, Vera wished me good-night, and left. I heard the click of the corridor door to the dressing room, and knew that Konstantin’s valet had gone, too. There was only us now, with one thin wall keeping us apart – and the thought terrified me.

  I told myself I was being irrational. Konstantin had no wish to make love to me – and I wouldn’t have minded if he had. There was absolutely nothing to be frightened about. Except
… except perhaps that how we behaved to each other that night, our first night together, would set the pattern for the rest of our married life.

  Konstantin coughed to let me know he was there, standing in the doorway between dressing room and bedroom. He was wearing his night-shirt and, for once, he looked uncomfortable. “There’s a bed in my dressing room,” he said. “I’ll sleep there if that is your wish.”

  “What do you want to do?” I asked the man who’d saved me from the gutter and given a name to my unborn child.

  For a long time, he didn’t speak, and though I tried to read his face, it gave away nothing. “We’re an odd couple, you and I,” he said finally. “We can never experience the love that most couples share, but I think … I think I could learn to love you in another way. Perhaps I already do. I’d like to share your bed, Anna.”

  And I wanted to share his.

  We lay stiffly side by side for a while, and then Konstantin reached over and pulled me to him. As his firm muscles pressed against me, I felt passion rising in my belly and fought it back – though it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life.

  The yearning for him became easier to suppress in time, but it never went away, and while millions of women throughout the world feigned sexual excitement, I was forced to lie there and pretend the opposite.

  I wish, just once, my dear Konstantin, we could have broken down the barriers and I’d been able to show you how much I cared for you.

  Konstantin was soon asleep, but my brain refused to rest.

  The window, the small voice which lives inside my head nagged. Go to the window!

  I gently disentangled myself from Konstantin’s arms and climbed out of bed. The winter sun was rising, shedding its watery light over the Artillery School and the Finland Station. I looked down on the Liteiny Bridge and was not surprised when I saw the solitary figure standing there.

  He was too far away for me to distinguish his face, but I was sure he was staring in my direction. Sure, too, that he’d been waiting in the freezing cold for most of the night. And though he looked little bigger than a matchstick or a toy soldier, I was convinced it was him I’d seen in the crowd outside the Kazan Cathedral.