The Fabergé Secret

by Charles Belfoure

  ‘Beautiful evening,’ he called out. The woman didn’t seem startled by his words. She turned to face him. He could see in an instant why she wasn’t dancing. She wasn’t at all homely, but rather plain. Her hair was piled à la mode, and she wore expensive earrings and a becoming diamond necklace. Her trim little figure looked good in a lilac gown spotted with little rubies. Because of the thousands of women he had met over the years, Dimitri instinctively made these judgements. He had been tutored by the master of criticism, Lara. She could evaluate a female in a millisecond. Lara would deem this woman too plain to be wearing such an expensive gown and fancy jewelry. ‘A mule in horse’s harness’ was the expression she liked to use. Women who looked like that usually stood by a wall watching the dancing. Lara would say she wasn’t a wallflower; she was the wall. But Dimitri found the woman’s wide eyes very striking; they were of an extraordinary cornflower-blue. It was a pleasure to look her straight in the eyes because they were so remarkable.

  ‘Not as humid as a regular summer night,’ replied the woman. Her voice immediately told Dimitri she was well-bred and educated.

  Because it seemed all women nowadays smoked, he offered her a cigarette from his Fabergé case, and she accepted it.

  ‘I’m Dimitri Sergeyevich.’ He gave a slight bow.

  ‘Katya Alexandrovna. Beautiful Fabergé case.’

  ‘Thank you, it was an Easter gift. Yes, the summer heat can be quite harsh,’ Dimitri said, adding to her comment about the weather; a safe conversation topic at a ball. ‘I was inspecting the construction of a new villa near Krasnoe Selo, and I was quite bowled over by the sun. I had to sit in the shade a bit.’

  ‘Even the healthiest person can get sunstroke very quickly. You were wise to take shelter. I’ve seen many people especially, the elderly, suffer and even die from exposure in the sun. You must also drink plenty of water.’

  ‘Ah, so you volunteer to minister to the sick? How noble to use your time that way. I wish more society women did that.’

  The woman was clearly amused by his comment.

  ‘I hope not. I’m paid a salary for being a doctor – but then, I’d probably do it for free.’

  Dimitri turned to face her.

  ‘A doctor, you say? What a fine thing!’ He was genuinely impressed. He threw away his cigarette.

  ‘You’ve never met a female doctor?’ Katya had a bemused look on her little heart-shaped face.

  Dimitri thought for a second, then shook his head.

  ‘You’re the very first.’

  ‘Doctor Katya Alexandrovna Golitsyn of the St Igor Hospital – by way of the Pavlov Medical College,’ she announced, extending her hand.

  ‘Prince Dimitri Sergeyevich Markhov of the St Petersburg Imperial Academy of the Arts and the Institute of Civil Engineering,’ he replied, clicking his heels, bowing, and kissing her hand.

  ‘A woman doctor! What times we live in,’ he added.

  ‘A prince with a university degree – and one that actually knows how to do something! What times we live in.’

  They both laughed. As they strolled through the park promenade lined with lime trees, he found out that tonight she had accompanied her father, Aleksandr Vassilievitch Golitsyn, an immensely wealthy textile industrialist, one of the very richest men in Russia – everyone in Court knew him. Katya said with no embarrassment that she had danced with her father twice, but other than that she’d had only three requests to dance, and that was due to her father’s money and influence. Dimitri admired her candor. While he knew that would crush many girls, it didn’t seem to make the slightest bit of difference to Katya. As they walked, the music from the ballroom filled the summer night.

  ‘Listen!’ she said. ‘They’re playing the polonaise from Eugene Onegin!’

  ‘You’re an admirer of Tchaikovsky?’

  ‘The greatest composer ever. Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven step aside!’ Her eyes lit up.

  ‘My opinion exactly!’ He didn’t want to brag that he was designing a memorial building for the composer.

  ‘Of course, my next question will be, what’s your favorite piece?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s an easy one. The Capriccio Italien,’ Dimitri said.

  ‘Mine is the Concerto Number One in B-Flat Minor for Piano and Orchestra. The Capriccio Italien has such a marvelous middle section but the beginning is so loud and military,’ Katya said in a critical tone.

  Dimitri nodded. He liked her forthrightness. Most women never spoke their mind unless gossiping.

  ‘Well, there’s a reason for that opening. Tchaikovsky was on holiday in Italy, and the villa he was staying in was right next to a military garrison that woke him up every morning with bugles. So, he worked it into the piece,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘He told me that.’

  ‘You met Tchaikovsky?’ Katya stared at him, her lips slightly parted.

  ‘Yes, a few times. He was a great favorite of the Tsar. A fine fellow.’

  ‘It’s sad he died so young from cholera. Think of all the music he could have written.’

  ‘Yes, suicide is especially tragic.’

  ‘Suicide?’ she asked in an astounded voice.

  ‘Yes, Tchaikovsky was tormented because he was cursed with “the unspeakable vice of the ancient Greeks.” Couldn’t live with it any longer.’

  The doctor’s eyes widened in surprise. They had a very inviting, warm quality to them.

  ‘Is that true?’ she asked under her breath, looking around to see if anyone was listening.

  Dimitri nodded and grinned at the doctor’s reaction. He enjoyed sharing a little gossip with an intelligent person.

  ‘Prince Dimitri, you’re scandalizing me,’ she said in mock horror. ‘Tell me more!’ They both burst out laughing.

  ‘God’s truth, I could spend an entire afternoon shocking you with stories from the Court – sordid affairs, ménages, incest …’

  ‘I may just take you up on that offer. But first, tell me about this villa design you suffered in the sun for. What is the style?’

  Whenever Dimitri was asked about his designs, he launched into feverish descriptions of the buildings, their design, and the materials they used. Tonight was no exception. Katya listened with great interest; not the usual bored attitude he received from his wife and fellow courtiers.

  ‘Ah, you sound like a committed classicist with your Corinthian capitals and pilasters. But my arts circle says the Russian Style Moderne, or what they call the Art Nouveau, is the current style. Are you interested in that mode, Prince Dimitri?’

  ‘No … not really. It seems rather superficial and …’

  ‘Have you seen Fedor Schechtel’s Levenson Printshop in Moscow? It just pops with creativity, the colors, shapes of the windows; so marvelous,’ Katya interrupted with great enthusiasm.

  ‘Well, no, I …’

  ‘You know of course he did the Yaroslavsky Rail Terminal there, it’s almost finished. I saw it when I was at a conference in Moscow last fall. That incredible arch in the tower.’

  ‘You seem quite up to date on the vanguards of the artistic movement.’

  ‘St Petersburg is definitely the center of all that’s advanced in the arts – except for architecture, maybe,’ Katya said, then immediately regretted the last part of her reply.

  ‘Yes, Russia is definitely undergoing a creative renaissance.’

  ‘Our Silver Age,’ said Katya proudly, ‘the new Russian cultural rebirth with Sergei Diaghilev, Mikhail Vrubel, Leon Bakst, Gorky, Valentin Serov, Fabergé, Pavlova, and of course, Chekhov. Oh, so many! And I didn’t even name one composer. Rimsky-Korsakov – there!’

  ‘And of course, Glazunov,’ Dimitri added.

  ‘No one loves the arts more than a Russian,’ she said enthusiastically.

  ‘I’ll wager you’ve seen all of Chekhov’s plays at the Moscow Art Theater.’

  ‘Of course – with its new interior designed by Shekhtel and Ivanov Fomin. Have you been there? Well, you
should,’ said Katya without waiting for an answer. ‘You’ll see real human drama, not papier-mâché pastiche and melodramatic make-believe. The Cherry Orchard will be premiering soon.’

  ‘It sounds like I really must see it,’ Dimitri said, intrigued by her enthusiasm.

  ‘Oh my, we’ve walked so far,’ said Katya in a surprised voice. The music coming from the Catherine Palace was very faint now. ‘I must get back, Prince Dimitri. My father will think I’ve run off with one of the Cossack Guards.’

  They both did an about-face and strolled back to the palace, talking about Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. Katya wondered if a hundred years from now it would still be played every Christmas; she hoped so because it was so brilliant. As they neared the row of glass doors, a black and white object skittered out the shrubbery and raced by them.

  ‘Oh, I adore cats. I have one,’ Katya said, turning to watch it disappear in the shadows.

  ‘I love them too. I always had one or two when I was growing up, but my wife hates cats. We have a dog, a borzoi named Fedor,’ Dimitri said.

  Katya brought her hand to her heart. ‘I love cats, especially when they sleep cuddled up to you.’

  Dimitri was touched by her lack of artifice. It was such a contrast to ladies of the Court, who never said anything they really meant. When they reached the ballroom, she turned to him.

  ‘My arts circle meets every Thursday night at seven. The address is at 23 Tverskaya. You must come sometime, Prince Dimitri,’ Katya said, spotting her father in the vast crowd and waving to him.

  The orchestra broke into a waltz, and she and Dimitri exchanged big smiles.

  ‘Tchaikovsky’s waltz from Eugene Onegin,’ Dimitri exclaimed.

  ‘My favorite waltz,’ Katya added.

  ‘And mine. Doctor Golitsyn, may I have this dance?’ Dimitri asked with a bow.

  ‘You most certainly may.’ They glided onto the dance floor and whirled skillfully among the other scores of couples. Dimitri noticed that despite tonight’s lack of partners, Katya was an excellent dancer. Her petite, lithe body moved gracefully through the steps. She really was quite attractive, he realized, noting her flushed cheeks and sparkling blue eyes as he twirled her around.

  When the dance was finished, Dimitri bowed to her again, and they bid each good night. As he walked up to Lara, who had finished dancing with General Sorokin, she crinkled her nose.

  ‘My God, Dimitri! Was that a pity dance? Who were you dancing with?’

  SIX

  Katya pulled the thermometer from Pyotr’s mouth and nodded with great satisfaction. This new Bayer aspirin is a miracle drug, she thought. It’s true, Germans are the best scientists in the world.

  ‘You see, I told you that if you rested and took the pills, your fever would go down.’

  The little boy looked up at her with watery blue eyes in a thin pale face. Katya took the red stuffed bear off the nightstand and danced it on his blanket. She got a wan smile out of the six-year-old.

  ‘Visiting hours are almost here. Guess who’s coming to see you? Mama!’

  That got a bigger smile. Katya recorded the temperature on his chart and watched him play with the bear. She waved to him and moved on to the next patient four beds down. It annoyed her that St Igor Hospital had no separate children’s section. Adults and the little ones were all lumped together in men’s and women’s wards.

  ‘Mr Yevgeny Victorivitch Kazimirov, roll over and let me see the stitches on your back,’ Katya ordered in a friendly voice. She had quickly learned being a woman doctor brought resistance from the more modest male patients who didn’t like being examined, especially near their private areas. Kazimirov’s incision was on his lower back, perilously close to his derrière, which embarrassed him. The fat forty-year-old businessman grumbled then slowly rolled over. Katya yanked up his white linen nightshirt.

  ‘Mmm, doing nicely,’ she said prodding the wound. ‘We need more salve to help heal it, then we can remove those cat-gut stitches. Next time, you won’t ride your horse after so much vodka.’ That brought a laugh out of Kazimirov. She marked his chart and moved on.

  ‘My friend, Vladimir Ivanovich Prigozhin, stick out that leg and show me your dog bite. He probably thought it was a nice delicious bone, your legs are so skinny.’ Katya had also learned that you could catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

  Prigozhin chuckled and extended a white bony leg with a big bandage on it. Katya gingerly pulled the bandage away. ‘It’s still red, but it’s not infected, and that’s what’s most important. Sister! Come apply some petroleum ointment to Mr Prigozhin’s wound here.’ Infection was by far the biggest killer in the hospital. But Katya had trained under the new germ theory that bacteria caused disease and infection. Now that hand-washing and sterile bandaging were standard practice in the hospital, infections had plummeted.

  A nurse in a white nun’s habit came up and did as she was ordered. Katya walked down the long aisle between the beds, and she went through the glass and wood doors in the women’s ward. Like the men’s area, it had a high open ceiling supported by white cast iron trusses with side walls of out-swinging glass windows.

  ‘Madame Sviazhsky, how is that stomach of yours doing?’

  ‘Oh doctor, it feels that a dozen Cossacks are dancing inside me, kicking their legs out.’

  ‘You Cossack devils in there! Stop that dancing!’ Katya said, poking her finger in Madame Sviazhsky’s plump belly under her nightshirt. The patient started a fit of giggling.

  ‘Sister, fetch the Bromo-Seltzer!’ When Katya’s father had returned from his trip to the United States, he’d brought these blue bottles of medicine. They really eased his stomach troubles, so she ordered some for the hospital. One mixed the granules with water to make a fizzy concoction. Like many of the well-to-do women in the hospital, Madame Sviazhsky’s ailments were largely in her head. Why were so many women here like that? Were they bored, and needed imaginary sicknesses to devote their time to? Or did they do it to get the attention of their husbands, which had the exact opposite reaction? They wanted to be gravely ill. All Madame Sviazhsky had was simple indigestion.

  ‘We will prepare you a nice hot-water bottle and get the old samovar boiling for a nice glass of tea with some mint. How would that be, madame?’

  ‘Oh, thank you. I am so glad I have a woman doctor to attend me. You really listen to my complaints and respond – not like these fool male doctors.’

  Katya smiled at her patient and wrote some remarks on her chart. The next bed over was Madame Ravenskaya, who never talked to Madame Sviazhsky because she thought she was on a higher social plane.

  ‘Madame Doctor, could you please tell that old crone, Madame Sviazhsky, to stop moaning and groaning so?’

  ‘Yes, madame, I will see to it.’

  Madame Ravenskaya had a genuine reason for being here; she had cancer of the liver that seemed to be spreading. Katya knew that when it came to cancer, she or any other doctor was quite powerless to stop it. It was like standing on a railroad track and trying to stop an oncoming locomotive. She only could try to ease Madame Ravenskaya’s pain, which meant injections of morphine.

  ‘How is the pain today, madame?’

  ‘It hurts terribly, but I’ll get by.’ Katya had nothing but admiration for her patient, who took on the excruciating pain with great dignity and courage. She knew Madame Ravenskaya would be dead within two months, so she planned to have her moved home with a private nurse and an ample supply of morphine to spend her final days with her family.

  ‘You’ll be getting your injection at eleven,’ said Katya in a gentle voice while taking Madame Ravenskaya’s pulse, which was on the faint side. ‘Then just nod off and have good dreams of all the pleasurable times you’ve enjoyed.’

  ‘Thank you, Madame Doctor. I have had some good times in my life.’

  ‘A beautiful lady like you must have had wonderful fun.’

  Katya finished her rounds, tending to three more female patients. Then D
octor Orlinsky, her supervisor, came up to her.

  ‘Doctor, I’d like your opinion on one of my patients.’

  It pleased Katya to be asked her professional opinion by Orlinsky because it meant she had become accepted in a hospital run by men – often very hostile men. He led her to a separate ward on the third floor, for intensive treatment and reserved for the sickest patients. They walked to the bedside of a thin, pale man in his seventies. Katya could imagine how handsome he would have looked like in the picture of health, but now he seemed cadaver-like, a living corpse.

  ‘Mr Shamrayev is suffering from a congenital heart ailment, the left ventricle is not performing properly,’ explained Orlinsky in a cold clinical manner, as if there was no sick person lying there. Like most of the male doctors, Orlinsky had no bedside manner; just brusqueness, which Katya always hated. The doctors seemed like meat inspectors impassively examining a side of beef. In their cruel manner, they would explain to families the harsh truth of the situation causing mothers and sisters to break into tears or fall to their knees. Then the doctors would turn their backs on them and walk away. Katya had vowed that when she became a doctor, she would never ever emulate that behavior. Orlinsky gestured for her to listen to his heart with her single-ear stethoscope.

  ‘Yes, the irregularity is quite apparent,’ Katya said.

  ‘When you’ve given it some thought, tell me if the nitro-glycerin would be preferred and the dosage.’ He turned on his heels and quickly walked away.