The Fabergé Secret

by Charles Belfoure

  All of this talk of conversion had reminded Katya of a pressing question she’d wanted to ask the Baron. Mustering all her courage, she said haltingly, ‘I have a question … something of a personal nature. I’m good friends with a man named Dimitri. He’s an aristocrat, and I feel that I need to tell him about my heritage – but maybe it will change his feelings for me. What should I do? Should I just keep it a secret?’

  ‘I sense that you’re more than friends with this Dimitri fellow.’ The Baron nodded sagely. ‘If he really loves you, your Jewish blood won’t matter. And if it does, it’s better to find out now.’

  Still mulling over their conversation, Katya reached the Nevsky Prospect, where she planned to do some shopping. She was scared to follow the Baron’s advice. Suppose Dimitri had to follow the strict rules of his class and spurned her. That was more terrible than losing her job. No, she wouldn’t tell him yet. That evening on the balcony at Princess Tenisheva’s was the happiest in her entire life. If it was to end then let it last as long as possible. She would keep her secret hidden for now.

  As she walked along, she reminded herself that the red dot meant she had descended from these same people she’d just met in the temple. Her ancestors had worshipped in the same manner, using the backward-printed books. And they probably suffered the same prejudice and barbaric violence as those Jews had in the Kishinev and Gomel pogroms. Discovering her real background captivated her. It was like going into the attic, opening an old cobweb-covered trunk, and finding life-changing secrets buried inside.

  All other religions were looked down upon by the Orthodox Church, but Jews were despised as an evil race. Even the Russian Muslims, of which there were twenty million, were held in a higher regard. She couldn’t understand why Jews were hated so. Back in the temple, she didn’t undergo some wonderous epiphany telling her to convert to Judaism (it was also illegal to do so). But by the end of the service, a wave of empathy, compassion, and admiration for these special people had swept over her.

  TWENTY-THREE

  ‘Can’t the train go any faster, Papa? It’s taking forever to get home.’

  ‘Olga, we only went to Volgovo, that’s not far,’ the Tsar said, glancing up from his paperwork.

  Dimitri was sitting with Olga and Tatiana looking at the wintry landscape pass by. The snow was made blindingly white by the sun. He agreed that the Imperial Train was poking along, and wanted to get back soon to work on the Memorial drawings. It was the beginning of December, and Dimitri had promised the Grand Duchesses he would go with them to Volgovo for the Tsar’s Christmas blessing of the village. Now they were heading back to Tsarskoe Selo. A Tsar’s blessing was a great Russian tradition, and an honor for the village. The Imperial Train would stop at the station and thousands of peasants would greet him. Whenever a Tsar visited, a deputation of village elders would present the Emperor with bread and salt on a gold plate. When Nicholas ascended to the throne, he discovered that some villages couldn’t afford the gold plate, but unable to bear being outdone by richer villages, they still bore the huge expense. The Tsar decreed that henceforth, bread and salt would be presented on wood or china plates. That gesture said a lot about the Tsar’s kind character. He had a gentle humanity about him that made him a good-hearted man, but not necessarily a strong Tsar. Dimitri didn’t like to be confronted with his friend’s faults, so he just ignored them.

  ‘I wish we were there,’ Tatiana said.

  ‘Look for places where we could go tobogganing,’ said the Tsar in jolly manner. The Tsarina, who was sitting in an armchair across from him doing her needlework, smiled at her husband. Dimitri noted the silent exchange of affection. When Dimitri was alone with the Tsarina in her boudoir at the Alexander Palace last week, and Nicky’s bird whistle was heard, he saw the happiness flash in her eyes. Seeing their contentment only underscored the emptiness of his own marriage.

  If the Imperial Yacht the Standart was a floating palace, then the Imperial Train was a thousand-foot-long palace on wheels, a string of royal-blue cars adorned with golden double-eagles pulled by a gleaming black locomotive. The interiors were finished in oak with floral English cretonne, silk and leather panels inlaid with tortoiseshell and mother of pearl. The third car held a dining room seating sixteen, the fourth was the drawing room, the fifth held private compartments for the Imperial Couple including a mauve and gray boudoir for Alexandra, and the sixth was reserved for the children and members of the Tsarina’s household. Then came two luggage and staff carriages. The very last car contained a power station to provide the train with electricity, and a chapel topped with a little belfry.

  A servant knocked on the door of the boudoir, then brought in tea.

  ‘You may butter me a scone, my sweet Olga, it’ll make the time go quicker,’ Alexandra said.

  ‘Just a few more minutes,’ said Asher Blokh in a voice brimming with excitement.

  ‘I don’t see why we have to wait here. The place will be swarming with Cossacks in no time. They’ll ride us down in an instant.’

  ‘Shut your damn mouth, Svirskii, you fucking coward. I want to be here to see this,’ snapped Blokh.

  Blokh, Isaac Hersch, and Roman Svirskii, a short stocky man with a bullet-shaped head and squinty blue eyes, stood in a grove of pines on a hill a half-mile away overlooking the train track. They were bundled up against the bitter cold.

  ‘There!’ cried Hersch, pointing. ‘They’re coming!’

  The smile vanished as Blokh’s gaze shifted to the left.

  Would the bomb go off as planned? The precise timing of the mechanism was critical to success. Sometimes bombs wouldn’t go off on time, or at all. Once when they were walking up to a test bomb they thought was a dud, it exploded. They could have been killed had they been fifty feet closer. Svirskii held out a pocket watch that reflected in the bright winter sun. The train and all its cars were in sight now, but it was traveling much slower than they calculated. They focused all their attention on a point ahead on the tracks.

  ‘Just ten seconds,’ cried Svirskii.

  A puff of black smoke accompanied the sound of a low thud under the locomotive. They heard the squeal of the brakes, but it was useless; the train could not stop in time. The shiny black locomotive and its carriages went flying off the tracks. The sound of bending metal and crushing of wood was amazingly loud. Every car shattered into pieces when it hit the ground. The locomotive was on its side, sliding through the snow, reminding Blokh of a sled. Svirskii put away his watch and ran. ‘Come on, you fools,’ he shouted behind him.

  ‘We killed the Tsar!’ screamed Blokh. He pounded Hersch on the back.

  The wreckage of the train came to a rest and all was silent. Blokh could see the bodies of the engineers, who had been thrown from the train into the snow. Steam belched from the locomotive. A man staggered from one of the cars and collapsed on the ground.

  ‘One last time again, Papa, before we go home,’ Marie cried. ‘Please!’

  The Tsar smiled at his daughter. Dimitri knew he wouldn’t say no because he was having so much fun. The train always carried toboggans in the winter, in case the family found a good hill for sledding. This one was a steep embankment right next to the tracks. On the way to the Crimea in the summers, the Tsar would stop the train at the top of a hill and use silver trays from the kitchen pantry to slide down its sandy slope. Nicholas couldn’t resist another sled ride down the hill where they had stopped. He had a child’s heart for fun.

  ‘This will be the last time. We must be getting back,’ replied the Tsar. He tried to use his sternest voice, but his daughters who were trudging up the hill saw through it. Anastasia was having trouble climbing, so Miss O’Brian had to carry her up.

  As Dimitri and the girls were arranging themselves in the bright red toboggans, an officer of the Palace Command ran up to the Tsar and whispered into his ear. A shocked expression came over Nicholas’s normally placid face.

  ‘Children, come at once!’ he shouted in an unusually harsh voice. T
he girls knew to obey without question.

  Dimitri got off the sled, and the Tsar walked up to him with a grave look on his face.

  ‘The decoy train was blown up.’

  Whenever the Tsar took a trip in the Imperial Train, a second train was dispatched as a decoy to confuse terrorist bombers. The ruse worked, but six men were killed.

  ‘Comrade, you know you’re only supposed to come here on the appointed day and hour,’ Azref said crossly.

  ‘To hell with that! Who is trying to kill the Tsar and his family!? I told you I won’t be a part of any violence,’ yelled Miss O’Brian, her face beet-red. ‘The yacht, and now the train!’

  ‘And I told you that there are revolutionaries who are committed to the violent overthrow of the autocracy. Terrorists with whom we have no connection,’ Azref shouted back at her. ‘It’s madness to use violence against an empire with one million soldiers plus regiments of Cossacks.’

  ‘The Combat Group must have agents inside the household. And they must be found!’ Miss O’Brian turned and stomped out.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘This isn’t just about peasants and workers. The autocracy must treat the professional classes and intellectuals as citizens, not subjects, by giving us civil and political rights,’ said Evigenia in a passionate voice.

  ‘Nonsense. Over ninety percent of the population are peasants. When they were emancipated, they felt cheated by the land settlement. They wanted the land for free, not to pay for it in installments for forty-nine years!’ countered Val Taganstev, a geography professor. ‘They’re the angriest and should be in the vanguard of the revolution.’

  Each week the arts circle was given even more to politics. Often, the meetings were rife with arguments.

  ‘What do you think, Dimitri? Who should lead the revolution? The peasantry or the workers?’ Grigory asked eagerly.

  Dimitri didn’t know what to think. All his life, he’d been given full rights to do whatever he wanted; a prince had a great life with nothing to complain about. But now his entire world view had been turned upside down. The appalling photos had stayed vivid in his mind. Ilya had shown them dozens more. Then there was the dead boy in the wagon.

  He hesitated before he spoke. ‘The extent of the misery of the lower classes, as well as these pogroms, shows there’s something fundamentally wrong in Russia.’ A part of him didn’t want to believe it. He still refused to accept that Nicky had anything to do with this. A good man like his old friend would never allow such a horrible thing to exist.

  ‘But you think there should be a revolution to overthrow the autocracy, don’t you?’ hectored Grigory. ‘There are some revolutionaries out there who feel that only all-out violence will change things. You think that’s the method to use, Dimitri?’

  ‘Absolutely not!’ Dimitri replied in a loud voice that caught everyone’s attention. ‘We’re all in agreement, violence is out of the question, right?’ he snapped. All the group nodded including Grigory. The attempts on the yacht and train had outraged him. But because the government kept the incidents secret including the plague cloth, he could not tell the group about them. ‘But something has to change,’ he said sadly while looking straight into Katya’s eyes. ‘People can’t be treated like this – that I believe.’

  ‘The government would sooner listen to the monied educated and professional classes about political change than peasants or servants whom they consider their social inferiors,’ Katya said.

  Dimitri stood up. ‘You must forgive me for leaving so early. I must go home to write my political manifesto, then saddle my horse and charge the Winter Palace.’

  The group burst into laughter, and the meeting broke up. Katya walked out to the street with Dimitri. It was mid-December and a new layer of snow had covered the sidewalk. A sharp wind cut through them, and Katya huddled against Dimitri as he helped her into his waiting carriage.

  On the ride to her house, they sparred over what Tchaikovsky’s best work was (it was a never-ending argument), and chatted about the state of medical treatment for the poor and her patients. As she talked, Dimitri fastened his eyes on to hers and drank in her voice. Each time they met, the more she talked, the more attracted he was to her. At tea or lunch, they would talk and talk. The time always raced by, each saying almost in unison, ‘Where did the time go?’

  ‘I’ve seen so many people die,’ Katya said as she gazed out the window. ‘I always wonder if they had had a meaningful, fulfilling life. Because you only get one shot at life.’

  ‘If having a meaningful life means doing something you love, then you certainly have one, Katya,’ Dimitri said with admiration. ‘You love being a doctor, don’t you?’

  Katya nodded. ‘Yes, it’s my own universe when I step inside the hospital. All my own worries and problems disappear when I care for my patients. But I’ll wager that’s the same feeling when you do your architecture. Or don’t princes have worries or problems?’

  She always teased him about being an aristocrat. ‘Does your castle in the Crimea have one or two dragons? Do you use the solid gold plates at every meal or just at supper?’

  ‘We certainly do have problems,’ Dimitri replied indignantly. ‘Like what is the proper vintage French wine to accompany my horse’s dinner. An 1892 or 1898? It’s a very vexing problem.’

  Katya burst out laughing. Her laugh was always like a little song. Dimitri liked its charming high-pitched trill.

  ‘Yes, I feel the same way about architecture.’

  ‘To do something one loves is most important,’ Katya said.

  ‘But what about love?’ he asked in a quiet, soft voice.

  ‘Love?’

  ‘Love itself.’

  ‘Why … yes … Dimitri, that’s very important,’ Katya replied uncertainly.

  ‘Not to have a passion for something, but to love someone with all one’s heart. Isn’t that the highest attainment in life?’

  ‘If a person is lucky enough to find that someone,’ said Katya, looking straight into Dimitri’s eyes. ‘Has that happened to … you?’

  ‘It just has.’ Dimitri got up and sat next to her. He placed his hand at the back of her neck and gently pulled her toward him. He gave her a long, deep kiss. Their lips melted together, and the kiss seemed to last an eternity. When they finally pulled apart, Katya rested her head on his shoulder, and he wrapped his arm around her, clenching her tightly to him. The moment was absolute bliss; he had never had such a sensation of closeness. There was complete silence, only the wheels of the carriage rattling along the street. He drew her even closer and began kissing her cheek and forehead. When the carriage stopped in front of her house, he gave her another long kiss.

  Katya turned to him before leaving the carriage. Before she could say anything, Dimitri leaned forward to take her into his arms and kiss her again. She held on to him for a moment, not wanting to let go. Then she forced herself to move away and smiled at him.

  ‘You know we’re playing with dynamite, here,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Yes,’ Dimitri responded in a serious voice. ‘If we’re caught, we’ll both be cast out by our respective tribes. My love for you could destroy you – and me. How do you feel about that?’

  ‘Tea tomorrow at Mrs McIntosh’s?’ she asked. ‘I’ll have finished my shift at four.’

  ‘My carriage will be waiting at the hospital.’

  Dimitri waved goodbye. His body literally ached to watch her leave. He wanted to run out and hold her just one more time. But that wouldn’t have been enough, he thought, feeling deliriously happy.

  As the carriage made its way home, he came back down to earth, and thought of a few revisions he should make to the front facade of the Memorial. He realized that he was more concerned that Katya liked his design than the Tsar.

  Katya watched from her doorway until the carriage was out of sight. Instead of going inside, she walked across the street to the narrow park and sat down on a bench. The happiest, most magical moment of her entire life had j
ust taken place. Her heart seemed to be floating above her head. She had to gather her wits.

  Katya was stunned when it dawned upon her that Dimitri might be falling in love with her that night at Princess Tenisheva’s. It had been just a quick kiss, but its effect had levitated her several inches above the floor. When she went home to bed, she couldn’t sleep and stayed up all night thinking about that wonderful fraction of a second.

  Then Katya thought she was deceiving herself, convinced it was absolutely absurd. It was just a simple kiss. He had probably kissed a million women like that in his time. She was terrified when she realized that she was falling in love with him. There was a magnetic field between them, pulling them together. She wanted desperately to break away, but she was aroused and desirous at the same time. Tonight in the carriage sealed her decision: she wanted him with all her heart. The passion overwhelmed her, and she was going to surrender to it. The best part of kissing him was the drawing of their faces close together, right before their lips met.

  But it filled her with anguish to think how this would all play out. Nothing but unhappiness and heartbreak could come of it – because Dimitri was married. Divorces in the Orthodox Church were rare. The Church believed marriage a holy sacrament not to be broken. One’s spouse must be exiled to Siberia or disappear for five years before a divorce could be granted. Even a woman beaten to pulp every day by her husband could not obtain one. In addition to the Church’s restrictions, there was the scandal of a divorce in Russian high society. Katya didn’t fool herself into thinking Dimitri was a babe in the woods; he’d had countless affairs, which were acceptable because they were discreet. But he would be exiled from his peers if he divorced. Society would turn his back on him.

  And even if he could obtain a divorce, could a man like Dimitri, who’d had many sexual liaisons, really love one woman for the rest of his life? She wouldn’t bet on it. He’d grow bored and restless after a short time. How could she compete with all of the beautiful, stylish women throwing themselves at him? She would be in a constant dread about whether he was cheating on her.