by Kim Wright
Neither request had been granted. The bread had gone uneaten. They would never have rye in the house again.
Vlad moved closer to the guard and said something about being a student of botany, a statement aimed at explaining his apparent fascination with the trees around the palace. This was not true. It was Sasha who had studied botany, who had spent his boyhood exploring the banks of the Neva and the broad meadows outside of town, looking for particular types of ferns and flowers. Calling them by their Latin names, pressing them within the pages of the family Bible. It was Sasha who had the gift of seeing the whole world in a single leaf, who claimed that the happiest moment of his life was when he had first looked through a microscope in the university laboratory. The guard might not have been so blasé had he known that the young man whose hands were gripping the iron bars, the one peering so intently through the railing, was instead in his first year of law school at the university which had so thoroughly schooled his brother, or that he had not drifted mindlessly into the great maw of politics, but rather had sought out the Volya on the very day he had registered for his first class.
For Vlad was filled with regret, sickened with it like a fever that refused to leave his body. Regret that he had not tried harder to understand Sasha’s love of nature, even regret that he had mocked Yulian’s passion for dance. When Yulian had brought that girl, his Katya, to the café, Vlad had been the only one of the comrades who had not walked across the room to shake her hand. That young poet who was always with them, whose name he could not now recall - the boy had claimed to know fifty of Shakespeare’s sonnets by heart. He had quoted one for the occasion of Katya’s first day among them as Vlad had sat there scowling, in the far dark corner where he generally sat. He had such contempt for the scene before him - the sonnets, the pressed leaves, and most especially Yulian turning his little Katya first one way and then the other, showing her off just as he likely did when they were dancing. Smiling with pride, as if he were the first boy who had ever found a girl, as if he had invented them, as if the fates of two people could matter more than the fate of the revolution. Blasphemy.
The men in the café that day were a very specific type of Russian. The kind who believed in poetry and beauty and love and already, his puberty barely behind him, Vlad well knew that he was not that sort of man. Women were either whores or comrades – or, in some rare and exceptionally convenient cases, both – but they would never be his weakness. And so Vlad had felt superior indeed on that day as he had watched Yulian making a fool of himself over Katya, spinning her before the others as the poet said some grand words in English, and Vlad had leaned his chair against the wall, smoking his cheap cigarettes.
They were all dead now. Yulian, the poet, even the spinning girl. In retrospect he was sorry he had not shaken her hand.
Vlad had no doubt there would be many more martyrs before this business was finished and he also knew that the best men would go first. The idealists would fall in the earliest days while the men like him – those who preferred whores and newspapers to ballerinas and sonnets - would survive a bit longer. Perhaps he would even live to the end. What sort of world was this, he sometimes wondered, where the better men went out in an early blaze of glory while the lesser ones trudged on? For Vlad knew he was one of these lesser men. He knew this in his heart and if he ever had doubted it, the world around him stood as a constant reminder that he was but a pale echo of his handsome, brilliant, heroic older brother. His parents kept a religious shrine to Sasha at home, candles and a host of icons, all those flat faced Orthodox saints who had collectively failed to save him. And the Volya maintained a tribute of a different sort, flags and pictures of the dead boys, their school portraits clustered on a wall in a shabby room. But both the godless and the god-fearing were in agreement upon this one point: that Sasha Ulyanov had been entirely too fine for this world.
A carriage approached the gate and the guard stiffened to attention. Vlad and a few other curiosity seekers stepped aside as the bars were wrested apart to allow entrance. The carriage rolled to a stop slowly and there was a bit of business with the horses, one of them proving reluctant to turn. Plenty of time for Vlad to look through the glass window and observe the three passengers inside: a laughing boy his own age, his amused attention directed toward a younger girl who had her face screwed up in some sort of crude jest. She was imitating someone - mocking them, Vlad realized. A governess or schoolmistress most likely, some thankless imperial servant who had failed to earn the approval of her spoiled young charge. And one of her brothers was entertained by her brattish outburst while the other, the solemn young man positioned on the seat across from them, was not. This was the tsesarevich, the heir, as handsome as he was claimed to be and dignified too, observing his younger siblings with the world-weary tolerance of the first born. It was an expression Vlad had seen before, on the face of Sasha.
They are a family, he thought. They are, when it is all said and done, no more than a family.
The tsesarevich was the same age as Gregor Krupin, the same age Sasha would have been if he lived. Twenty, perhaps twenty-one. A man on the brink of owning the world. And just as the gates finally finished their slow yawn and the carriage rumbled back to a start, the tsesarevich glanced out the window. The eyes of Nicholas Romanov locked, very briefly, into the eyes of Vlad Ulyanov and Vlad saw in those eyes a sort of resignation, an implied shrug. A Russian is not supposed to look directly upon the tsar. It is too bright, too dangerous, like looking directly into the sun and yet the eyes of the two young men met, even if just for a second. What was there to be done about it now?
A church bell chimed twice. It was time to return to the small dark room where they all met. It was in the back of a bank, yet another irony, but the comrades were largely just like Vlad, the sons and daughters of the middle class, and the father of one of them worked in this building, had gotten them the room under the foolish impression they were using it to study. The Volya met every afternoon and Gregor would be there, even today, even as his brother lay dead, for to mourn one human life above another contradicted everything in his philosophy. On the day before he got the news of Yulian’s murder, Gregor had just returned from one of his recruiting trips to the nearby farms. Vlad had sensed that the trip had been a colossal failure, although Gregor had not used the word. Instead he described how he and the others had worked side by side with the farmers, intending to show them that their hopes lay in joining the Volya, the party, that the goals of collectivism should be their future too. But the farmers had shown little interest in politics. They were tired at night. They wanted to eat their bread, drink their vodka, tumble their wives, and go to sleep, not to talk of revolution. They were not interested in a glorious tomorrow. The real one would come soon enough.
Gregor had laughed as he told Vlad these stories. He had held out his fine white hands, a student’s hands, now covered with cuts and blisters, and he had said “The revolution is for them but it shall not be by them,” and then he had thrown back his head and roared, as if it were all a great joke. For it was, in a way. The students of the Volya would have to save the peasants who would not save themselves. They were simple souls, really, and in dire need of rescue by men like Gregor and Vlad. These boys from the university – for yes, the ironies are now stacked like firewood, are they not, leaned one upon the other to make this great blaze – it was the boys from the university who could see what the men in the fields could not. That progress is not a slow and steady thing, the result of years of careful planning. It comes in sharp, thrust upon us all at once. The only sound that truly changes the world is the sound of a bomb.
Gregor had said this and Vlad had nodded. Their brothers may be saints but they were survivors, and survivors must make their strange alliances. There were times when Vlad thought he hated Gregor as much as any Romanov, because on that horrible day two years before when five bodies had swung, Gregor Krupin’s had not been among them. Vlad did not know for certain and would never know, but he
suspected that Gregor had been one of the ten boys who had talked.
The carriage had rolled to a stop before a great entrance, high blue doors at the top of marble stairs. Through the wall of leaves Vlad could catch glimpses. The girl jumped from the door of the carriage, not waiting for assistance from a servant and the younger of her two brothers scrambled out after her. She was wearing a white dress with a red sash around her waist and the ribbon in her hair was the exact same color. There was laughter coming through the trees and Vlad closed his eyes at the sound. This was where his hate belonged, on these pretty parasites with their sashes and ribbons.
Vlad knew that someday he would supplant and dispose of Gregor, and that he would take pleasure in that shedding, but for now he must keep his focus where it mattered. You do not have to like a man to use him. Besides, the betrayal of a whole race of people was a greater crime than the betrayal of a single man. It had to be. Evil was numerical, measurable, subject to the same laws of math as a crate of apples. Each day these royals were allowed to live, a hundred peasants died in their place. In the mine shafts, the sewers, the factories and the fields, they sputtered and coughed and bled and died, casually sacrificed to support the Romanovs and their world of elegance and ease.
Through the blanket of the trees, Vlad could hear the girl laughing and he knew he would not rest until he had completed the task that his brother had begun. He would devote his life to the sanctity of the revolution. Just like Sasha.
Chapter Five
St. Petersburg – The Winter Palace
June 14, 1889
4:45 PM
There were those who considered dance to be the greatest art of Russia, far outstripping any national accomplishments in music or literature. The supremacy of Russian ballet, of course, went uncontested – so much so that it was rumored that in the academies of Paris, French girls had begun adding an “-ova” to the end of their last names in a misguided effort to imply they had been born in the east. But while ballet was the pinnacle of the form, all Russians considered it their patriotic duty to know at least a few steps of a folk dance, and it would have been unthinkable for any lady at the tsarina’s court to be unskilled in the waltz.
This was how Tatiana met Konstantin. He served as one of a cadre of imperial dance masters, and if Tatiana’s position within the palace required an odd balancing act, Konstantin’s was even more demanding. For to dance with someone is an extraordinarily intimate act. More intimate than lovemaking in many ways, and it was Konstantin’s professional duty to take a variety of women one by one into his arms, to push his thigh between their knees and slip his palm into the small hollow beneath their shoulder blades. He was required to transform them into larks and gypsies and tigers in turn, as they moved throughout the nuances of a dozen different tempos. And, most challenging of all, he must perform these transformations before the watchful eyes of their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons.
It was not a task for the faint of heart.
In the stratified world of the Winter Palace, Konstantin was one of the anomalies, a man who belonged neither here nor there. On the dance floor he was the undisputed master of his realm; even the tsarina must follow his lead. He moved among the numerous court parties as an honored guest, one invited specifically to pay attention to the ladies at dinner. Otherwise, they were often ignored by the men, especially when the talk drifted to hunting or war, and in this role Konstantin quickly became as adept at navigating a flirtatious conversation as he was at navigating a crowded dance floor. But at the end of these long evenings, he would return down the hall which led to his quarters, unfastening the cuffs of his tuxedo as he walked, loosening his tie and waist sash, sometimes even slipping out of his shining black shoes and carrying them, dangling lightly from his fingertips. The hall was long, but, when he finally got to the end, for the first time in his life he had a room of his own.
Konstantin was introduced to Tatiana the first week he came to the palace. Filip had just been granted his most recent promotion, and Tatiana had thus been invited to join the tsarina’s court of ladies. She had learned with a remarkable swiftness, despite her utter lack of experience with dance. There is not much waltzing in a slaughterhouse.
Theirs was not a case of love at first sight or even at twentieth sight. Nor did they have that sort of instant antipathy that often masks sexual attraction. Instead they began with a matter-of-fact appraisal of their role in each other’s new life: She must learn to dance and he must teach her. Tatiana could not have named the precise day when she became aware that her excitement about the next lesson might truly be an excitement at seeing her dance master. Konstantin understood only in hindsight that at some point he had begun to put on his best shirt on the days he was to instruct her, that he took the time to rub powder into his palms before he led her to the floor, that he remembered her favorite waltz song and would request the pianist play it for their practice sessions. But a passion that develops over time has a unique sort of magic - it comes not with bells and fireworks but rather with the slow awareness that assumptions once taken for granted are now no longer true. Falling in love slowly is like awakening one morning to find that the sun has risen in the west.
They laughed about it later, their initial disregard. Konstantin’s tutelage had been polite but firm; her willingness to practice - even on five days a week when he had suggested only three - had been nothing more than conscientious. Tatiana’s position in the tsarina’s court would require her to learn many skills, and she had been relieved to find that at least one of them came easily to her.
Her talent was a relief to him as well. He was one of many dance masters and eager to make his mark. Because he was the most recent addition to the royal contingent, he had been saddled with the most hopeless of the Romanov ladies - the tsar’s squirming young daughter Xenia, the ancient and arthritic Princess Louisa, and Ella, who looked as if she should be able to dance like an angel, but whose reserve made her awkward on the ballroom floor. These were women for whom no amount of instruction would improve their musicality or grace, women destined to clatter their heels to the marble floors with each step, to clutch his shoulder as if they were drowning, to grow dizzy in the spinning and thus require their partner to constantly step in to smilingly rescue them from their own ineptitude. Konstantin feared that if people judged him by the progress of these three pupils he would be sent back to Siberia on the next train.
At least when he danced with Tatiana people could see that it was not his fault.
4:40 PM
The rude detective had been as good as his word, for despite the fact that the day had dawned with the unpleasantness of the double suicide, the afternoon waltz practice commenced at the usual time of 4 PM.
As part of the series of performances scheduled for the upcoming ball, the imperial ladies and their attendants were presenting what was known as a formation waltz, an elaborate patterned dance which began and ended with twelve couples on the floor. But during the long central movement, each couple would move in turn to the heart of the circle for a brief moment in which they were featured in a particular step or – if the female dancer in question was especially unsteady - a held pose.
They had been practicing for weeks and it was still a disaster. It had been announced at the last rehearsal that half of the ladies should come to the next session at the customary time of four and the other half at five, the discrepancy being explained as some challenge of choreography or blocking. The ruse fooled no one; the real reason was that the four o’clock ladies were in need of an extra hour of practice and the five o’clock ones were not.
Tatiana, of course, was a five o’clock lady and when she arrived at 4:45 she went back to the platform where she had stood earlier that morning and considered the scene before her. There was the customary swirl of activity in the theater - various couples in their places all about the stage, the trio of musicians who came to such rehearsals noisily warming up, some of the ladies standing to the side having costume f
ittings. Konstantin was dancing with Ella, which was not surprising, but as Tatiana squinted down at them, she could see that they were talking, which was.
It is not easy to converse while you waltz. The woman holds her head back and to the left in an exaggerated curve and the man is likewise also looking to the left, although his arch is not so extreme. But their faces are turned in opposite directions and the music is often very loud and besides, dancers are expected to have expressions of paralyzed rapture. Their mouths should not move. Elegant silence is the goal, with communication between the couple flowing exclusively through their bodies, a gesture as slight as the pressure of a palm directing the lady’s shoulders or the most subtle shift of his hip easing her own into a turn.
But the reality was that the dance masters talked to their students constantly. Granted, it was mostly a matter of counting out the beat or saying “Slow” “Hold” or “Left,” “Right,” or “Now,” but most of the instructors had acquired the skill of ventriloquists, carrying on these primitive conversations without moving their lips. The students rarely spoke in return, and were thus the dummies, Tatiana supposed, but as she watched she could see that Ella was openly talking and that Konstantin had tilted his had gracelessly close to her in an attempt to listen. He noticed Tatiana above them at some point and their eyes met briefly. Impossible to read his expression or to guess what news the grand duchess might be so determined to convey under the guise of a waltz.
Tatiana sat down in one of the small chairs and began to lace up her dancing shoes. It would not do to show any more interest in one of the swirling couples beneath her than the others, but she could not help but notice that Ella, while by no definition a skilled dancer, was one of the ones who loved it. You could tell by the way she finally stopped talking and tilted her chin back, closing her eyes as they moved. Konstantin often instructed his partners to close their eyes. The better to hear the music, he would say. The better to lose your embarrassment at performing under the watchful gaze of others.