The Fabergé Secret

by Charles Belfoure

  When the Grand Duke finished, the Tsar smiled at him and said, ‘Then, Uncle, we shall have the French pistol.’ Both Dimitri and Nicky knew that his uncle probably had a financial arrangement with the French arms manufacturer.

  To everyone’s dismay, the Tsar had trouble making decisions of any kind. Then when he did, he changed his mind. The only constant about Nicky was his inconsistency. He was slow about almost everything he did, whether it was writing a letter or pasting a photograph in an album. The Tsarina was the exact opposite; quick and decisive. Nicky had the peculiar habit of basing his final decision on the advice of the very last minister or relative he met with. That was why so many jockeyed to get the last word in. He especially hated confrontations of any kind and would never tell someone he disagreed with their opinion, especially his uncles. Upon the early death of his father, Nicky had ascended the throne totally unprepared at the young age of twenty-six. His father had taught him absolutely nothing about governing the Empire. Dimitri remembered him saying, ‘What is going to happen to me and to all of Russia? I am not prepared to be a Tsar. I never wanted to become one.’

  Now, it was the Grand Admiral’s turn. Uncle Alexis was round as a barrel at two hundred and fifty pounds, and a notorious bon vivant. He unrolled a sheath of maps onto the desk.

  ‘We have done more mapping of the terrain around Port Arthur for the gun emplacements, Nicky.’ Port Arthur was a naval station on the Pacific coast that Russia had wrested control of from China, to the dismay of Japan. It was ice-free the whole year and was the headquarters of Russia’s Pacific Fleet. Nicky, who didn’t like clutter on his desk, moved the maps aside. The Grand Admiral then began a ten-minute plea for Danchenko to be promoted over Lyvoko for vice-admiral for the Tenth Squadron.

  When Uncle Sergei’s turn came, he began by slamming his ham-sized fist onto Nicky’s desk.

  ‘Goddamn it, Nicky, why do you let so many Jews live in St Petersburg? All Jews belong in the Pale. The Jews lead the revolutionary movement to overthrow us.’ The Tsar listened without a trace of emotion. In 1891, as Governor-General, Sergei had kicked every Jew out of Moscow. In addition to being a vicious anti-Semite, he was a comically narrow-minded man. He had forbidden his wife, Ella, to read Anna Karenina because it aroused ‘unhealthy curiosity.’

  Sergei changed the subject to something he felt was far more important.

  ‘Nicky, I’ll be needing about sixty thousand rubles for the alteration of my villa in Livadia,’ he said as if he were asking for a cigarette. He avoided eye contact with Dimitri because he wasn’t the architect for the renovation.

  Money was a sensitive subject. As head of the house of Romanov, Nicholas was responsible for managing a fortune of twenty-four million gold rubles. There was another forty million in the form of Imperial jewelry, like the 194-carat ‘Orlov Diamond’ and the ‘Moon of the Mountain Diamond’ of 120 carats. But these riches were drained by the upkeep of all the palaces, yachts, and trains, the salaries for servants, the Imperial charities, and the Imperial Theaters, including the Imperial Ballet. These expenses left the Tsar almost penniless by the end of every year. Each of the Grand Dukes including his cousins, who were also called grand dukes, received one hundred thousand rubles a year. They ran through that quickly and were constantly pestering him for more money.

  The uncles spent another fifteen minutes giving unsolicited advice, then they took their leave. The Tsar smiled at his friend and shrugged his shoulders. Nicholas began going through the stack of official envelopes from his ministers. He came to a small card that was stuck in between them and held it up for Dimitri to see. Written in block letters in pen, it read: YOU SHALL DIE. Dimitri was shocked and started to speak, but the Tsar held up his hand. He didn’t seem disturbed by the discovery at all.

  ‘Lately, death threats have been slipped into the ministerial pile. I just hand them over to the Okhrana.’

  ‘But to get into that pile, someone inside the household must do it,’ Dimitri cried.

  ‘An emperor must expect such things. Remember that dirty cloth I was sent? The Okhrana laboratory tested it, and it was infected with plague germs like von Plehve said. That was a far more cunning, almost ingenious attempt on my life.’

  Dimitri still thought of that blue swatch of cloth. If it hadn’t been intercepted, it would have spread death throughout the palace killing not only the Tsar’s family but many others in the household including himself. There was no medicine to cure the plague. Impressed by Nicky’s courage and demeanor, Dimitri knew his friend had accepted the fact that there were people who wanted him dead.

  The children bounded into the study during the brief interval between ministerial visits. They were accompanied by Miss O’Brian, who was carrying a Kodak Brownie.

  Dimitri liked the gray-haired nanny because the girls adored her. Although she had a very severe English-looking face with a pointy chin, Miss O’Brian was the opposite of British reserve with a wide toothy smile and a jolly nature.

  ‘Nanny has been taking snaps of us with her new camera, Papa,’ said Olga in a giddy voice. ‘We’ll have ever so many more pictures for the albums. We made funny faces and Nanny snapped them. Come, Dimitri, pose with us!’

  The Tsar loved pictures of his family, and he kept his many photo albums in the adjoining billiards room. They were all bound in green Moroccan leather and embossed with gold double-headed eagles. An official photographer printed the pictures, and the family loved to sit together on rainy days to paste them in the albums. But Miss O’Brian’s photos were far more fun and informal. Dimitri was delighted to join in, and so was the Tsar, who got up from his desk to pose. Any fun family event took precedence over his work.

  Miss O’Brian, who was by the Tsar’s desk, snapped the camera twice by mistake.

  ‘Oh, Nanny, you took snaps of Papa’s desk, that won’t do,’ chided Marie as her sisters burst into laughter.

  ‘Oh, dear, wasn’t that foolish of Nanny?’ Miss O’Brian said with a giggle.

  ‘Don’t let it bother you, Miss O’Brian,’ Dimitri said. ‘I’ve ruined a few snaps in my time.’

  Dimitri bowed to the Tsar and waved goodbye to the children.

  ‘Come back tomorrow for tea, Dimitri,’ Tatiana shouted.

  As Dimitri was walking down the hallway, he checked his pocket watch and saw that he had plenty of time to dress for the theater. He backtracked a few yards and opened a door to a room on his right. It was the Alexander Palace’s display room for the Fabergé items. Dimitri loved to go in the room and look at the collection. Like a child playing with toys, he always opened the ‘Trans-Siberian Railway Egg’ first and wound up the foot-long miniature train inside. The incredible detail and craftsmanship never failed to amaze him. Each time he looked at an egg, he found another wonderful detail to marvel over. These things weren’t valuable; they were one-of-a-kind priceless. He took out the surprise from his next favorite egg, the tiny exquisite gold carriage in the yellow enamel ‘Coronation Egg,’ and wheeled it back and forth. Then he opened a gold and blue egg to reveal a miniature solid-gold model of the former Imperial Yacht, the Azova. Suddenly realizing time had flown by, he closed the yacht egg. Lara would kill him if he were late. He didn’t notice a tiny folded paper tucked under the golden yacht.

  FIFTEEN

  ‘You’d look smashing in that hat.’

  Dimitri and Katya were walking up the Nevsky Prospect, looking at storefront displays after their tea.

  ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t do it justice.’

  ‘Nonsense. Go ahead and buy it.’

  ‘I’m a practical girl and don’t shop on impulse. Let me think about it,’ she said with the cute smile that he found so charming.

  As usual in the mid-afternoon, both sides of the Nevsky were jam-packed with people visiting the expensive shops that lined the great thoroughfare. A bobbing sea of men in black suits and women in colorful day dresses made up a tide of human beings. If one wanted to stop and talk with another, they had to step to the si
de against a building to avoid being swept away. Soldiers in their uniforms were scattered throughout the crowd. An endless parade of single- and double-horse open carriages was driven by coachmen in top hats. In the middle of the cobblestone street were iron tracks; in each direction came trams full of people pulled by lumbering horses.

  ‘It would be easier to swim across the Neva than cross the Nevsky,’ Katya said.

  Dimitri laughed. ‘Yes, it’s impossible to get to the other side.’ He loved this bustle of life in the center of St Petersburg, the incredible variety of people walking along – Poles, Armenians, Muslims, Finns, Tartars, Circassians, Cossacks, and Mongols.

  As they walked, Dimitri and Katya were deep in discussion about the last arts circle meeting. It was now late October, and Dimitri had been attending them every week since the summer. He had also been having tea or lunch with Katya each week; the time always had to work around Katya’s hospital schedule. The more he was with her, the fonder he grew of her, but in the last month, he’d sensed a tiny change in her buoyant personality. It was like one note in a musical piece that was ever so slightly off.

  ‘I was shocked by Ilya’s photos. I can’t seem to get them out of my mind,’ Dimitri said. The arts circle discussions would always start out about the arts then veer into politics. The intellectuals had story after story about the miserable lives of peasants on the estates and the workers in the factories. At first, he thought it all hogwash, having never heard of such things at Court. Factory workers who lived in company housing filthier than pigsties? Children getting their hands and arms ripped off by the machines they operated?

  But at the last meeting, an art instructor named Ilya Nicolay brought photographs he had taken of workers around St Petersburg. He said he was using the camera for social reform, as a man named Jacob Riis had done in America. The photos showed first-hand the suffering Russia. Dimitri was shocked by the filth and poverty of the workers in the pictures. Using flash photography, Ilya could shoot in the darkest hovels and factory barracks. Poor dirty people packed thirty in a room looked at the camera with dead eyes. Half-alive workers in rags slept on slimy floors. Emaciated child workers peered out from under the dangerous-looking machines where they slept. A mother with a shriveled breast fed a pathetically thin baby. Ilya had also traveled to villages to capture peasant life, which was almost as filthy and destitute as in the city. The shacks were like pigsties. He had a lot of pictures of dead rotting animals and wilted crops from a recent famine. Dimitri hadn’t heard of any famine. Shaking his head, he just couldn’t believe these pictures were taken in Russia. It was unbelievable to him, but everyone in the circle said they were real. If so, he thought, how could people be allowed to live like that?

  As he shuffled through the dozens of photos, he wondered if the Tsar knew about this. Maybe he knew, but never mentioned it to Dimitri. It certainly wasn’t some isolated circumstance. If things were this bad in St Petersburg, the grandest city in Russia, they must be worse in out-of-the-way places in the Empire. Dimitri owned country estates; were the peasants there living in shit?

  ‘Yes, there it was in black and white; all the suffering and injustice,’ Katya said gravely. ‘He’s bringing more pictures for the next meeting. He’s thinking of publishing a book of them, but he doesn’t have the money to do it. It doesn’t matter, the government would ban it anyway. There’s no freedom of expression in this country.’

  Dimitri was puzzled. ‘They would? But people should know about all this.’

  ‘The intelligentsia has to improve society through practical reforms like education, public health, and political freedom. Science is the key to overcoming Russia’s economic and social backwardness.’ Katya caught herself speechifying and looked embarrassed. ‘Sorry, I’ll get down from my soapbox,’ she said.

  ‘Some people want to use violence to bring about change,’ Dimitri said sadly. He was thinking of the plague cloth. Then there were the death threats in the ministerial pile; more had showed up over the past months, but thankfully, there had been no more assassination attempts.

  ‘Marxism rejects violence as an instrument of revolution. But some revolutionaries insist that violence is the only way to overthrow the Tsar.’

  Dimitri enjoyed the arts circle including the political discussion but always felt uncomfortable when talk turned to replacing the Tsar’s rule with a democracy and a parliament. But no one, not even Grigory, the most rabid of the bunch, had proposed using violence. If anyone had, Dimitri would have walked out then and there. He couldn’t bear the thought of hurting the Imperial Couple and their children.

  ‘Are you a Marxist?’ Dimitri asked, hoping Katya had chosen the non-violent path.

  Katya laughed. ‘I don’t know what I am. But I’m a doctor who saves lives not takes life so I could never be a terrorist.’

  ‘I know I could never kill anyone,’ Dimitri said in a firm voice.

  ‘But there has to be change in Russia,’ Katya insisted.

  ‘The Romanovs have been Russia’s divine rulers for almost three hundred years. They feel they know what’s best for their people, not a parliament.’

  Katya stopped in mid-step, faced Dimitri, and scowled. ‘After seeing those pictures, do you actually believe that?’

  Her cornflower-blue gaze bored into him. Taken back by her ferocity, he had no reply. Then her expression softened.

  ‘Please forgive me for snapping at you.’

  He saw a convenient way to change the topic.

  ‘See that lot over there? That’s where the Tchaikovsky Memorial I’m designing will go.’ The brick and stone building on the site was beginning to be demolished. He had shared some of the preliminary drawings with Katya, who was very excited by the project. He liked the fact that she didn’t hold back criticism of the design. Most architects would have been deeply offended.

  Katya’s mood completely changed.

  ‘It must be wonderful to see a building you’ve designed get built. It goes from a drawing to a huge three-dimensional object.’ Briefly she placed her hand on his arm. The sensation of her warm touch was wonderful, and he was sorry when she removed it.

  ‘It is. I remember the first commission I had, a little pavilion in the Crimea, and the incredible feeling of elation when it was completed.’

  ‘You have great passion for your art. I like that,’ Katya said, her eyes glowing.

  Dimitri liked looking directly into Katya’s eyes; they and her enchanting personality were like magnets that drew him. Her interest was such a contrast to Lara’s boredom when he used to excitedly describe a new project. Dimitri hadn’t bothered to tell his wife about his commissions for years.

  ‘Ah, but I always hear the passion in your voice when you talk about your patients,’ Dimitri said. ‘Like that little boy you brought back from the brink of death.’

  Katya gave him a bashful smile which he found very charming.

  ‘Now, Mr Classicist, I want to show you something just down the street,’ she said, taking him by the arm.

  They joined the torrent of humanity and walked west over the Fontanka Canal bridge. As they strolled, they looked in the plate-glass windows of haberdashers, dressmakers, confectioners, and druggists. Then Dimitri paused for a beat when he spotted Lara with some other people looking at displays in the showroom of a women’s clothes shop. With her female friends, including Princess Betsey, was General Vladimir Pevear. Pointing at a hat, he made a comment that convulsed the ladies in hysterics. He was the epitome of the tall, dashing military man with ramrod-straight posture and dark almost exotic good looks. It was said that his great-grandmother was a Tartar princess. Lara held his arm while she slowly walked about, perusing the merchandise. Men often accompanied aristocratic women while shopping, especially if they were beautiful. The women insisted that they wanted a man’s opinion on a selection, while in truth they couldn’t care less. What did a man know about ladies’ fashion? The men in Court, Lara always said, preferred seeing the females out of their cloth
es.

  The fact that she was in the company of a man didn’t bother him a bit. Except for social and Court functions, he and Lara spent very little time together. She liked to say about a husband, ‘Give me a husband who, like the moon, won’t appear in my sky every day.’

  Dimitri’s instinctive reaction was that he didn’t want her to see Katya, so he switched positions to block her out of view. There was nothing wrong with being seen in public with someone of a lower social class, especially if they were from a rich family, but Lara had ridiculed him for days after for dancing with the plain-looking Katya at the Catherine Palace ball. She wouldn’t let up. Dimitri had kept their weekly arts circle meetings and teas secret. If she saw Katya with him, he’d be in for a new round of abuse. He pretended to want a closer look at something in the window. Katya continued talking, and Lara never spotted them as they walked on.

  ‘This is the Eliseyev Emporium, just finished,’ Katya called out at the corner, pointing to a stone building with a great shallow arch. At each corner stood a bronze statue. Dimitri already knew about the new store but didn’t want to let on and spoil Katya’s excitement over showing him.

  ‘Isn’t it beautiful? And don’t you dare say it’s “interesting!”’ she cried.

  He burst into laughter. ‘It is bold, and I do like the way the storefront transoms are detailed. The wrought-iron balconies are well done.’

  ‘You’re not placating me? I won’t stand for it.’

  ‘No,’ he replied, looking up at the building. ‘It has a classical proportion with a base, shaft, and top, but with very imaginative detailing. It reminds me of work by an American, Louis Sullivan.’

  They continued walking and turned right on Konnogvardeysky Boulevard toward her house. They talked about the ballet, and how Pavlova’s long lithe figure had changed the body type of Russia’s ballerinas. They wouldn’t be short and voluptuous like Kschessinska anymore. Dimitri and Katya could discuss any topic under the sun. He was disappointed when they reached her front door.