The Romanov Bride Read online

  “Yes, and why not? She has written at length about woman’s suffrage all across America and Europe, and she has come to tell me about some model education plan in the American city of Gary.”

  “I see. And how is our patient, the cook?”

  “She suffers greatly, but I sense improvement already. Mark my words, we will be singing a Te Deum to her within a month’s time.”

  “Slava bogu.” Thanks to God, said Nun Varvara, crossing herself.

  A few minutes later I went to my parlor and found a woman standing there. Her dress was pale blue and her hair brown, and one couldn’t help sensing her determined but pleasant air. Admiring a bunch of my favorite flowers, white lilies, which were arranged in a vase, she stood near my desk, which was piled with papers.

  Entering the bright room, in English I said, “I am so happy to find that I have time to meet you today, Mrs. Dorr.”

  “Your Highness speaks English?” said the woman, turning to me, her eyes wide with astonishment. “I thought we might be conducting the interview in French.”

  “Well, my mother was English, after all.”

  “Forgive me, I had forgotten.”

  Motioning her to sit, I added, “I welcome any opportunity to speak English, because if one is wholly Russian, as I am, and especially if one is Orthodox, one hears hardly anything except Russian or French. When I was a child I always spoke English to my mother, and German to my father, such were the ways of our household.” My furniture of English willow creaked loudly as we sat down, and I asked, “Tell me, what do you think of my convent?”

  “It’s beautiful-the vines on the walls, the verbena along the paths. It’s all so warm and welcoming that I feel as if I’ve stepped back into the romantic thirteenth century.”

  “That is just what I wanted my convent to be, one of those busy, useful medieval types. Such convents were wonderfully efficient aids to civilization in the Middle Ages, and I don’t think they should have been allowed to disappear. Russia needs them, certainly now more than ever-yes, we need the kind of convent that fills the space between the austere, enclosed orders and the life of the outside world. Here in my community we make a point of trying to understand what is happening around us. My sisters read the newspapers, we keep track of events, and we receive and consult with people in active life. We are Marys, but we are Marthas as well, and we are most hopeful of building up a strong, new Russia.”

  Mrs. Dorr took out a small notebook and wrote something down, and said, “Well, things are looking quite well in your country. Of course, the entire world knows of your riotous and bloody events of a few years ago, and, quite frankly, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I arrived last week.”

  “As one of our noted politicians recently said, just ten more years of steady, hard work and Russia will be saved. You see, the Russian people are good and kind at heart, but they are mostly children-big, ignorant, impulsive children. If only they would realize they must obey their leaders-only then will we emerge into a wonderful nation. Everyone is trying so hard, and I pray daily for the Emperor.” The bells of our church chimed the hour softly, and I paused to cross myself. “Now tell me about those wonderful public schools of yours-I hear there is quite a model system being established in your city of Gary.”

  “Yes, in Gary, Indiana, actually. What has begun there is something called the Gary Plan, or platoon schools, which is a system of dividing schools into separate platoons, so to speak, for more efficient use.”

  The American plan for education was all most interesting, and for nearly three quarters of an hour I listened as this very able woman explained the plan for improving the lot of each and every child via stimulating education. The standard curriculums were being expanded upon, explained Mrs. Dorr, and schooling during the summer months had even been added. Most interestingly and strangely, educational services were even being made available to the adult worker, which I had never heard of before. As I listened I couldn’t help admiring what the Americans were doing-making education more natural and based upon the child, and more democratic too. Mrs. Dorr told me it was an exceedingly expensive program, but it had proved so popular that it was being accepted as far away as New York.

  “ America is simply stupendous,” I finally exclaimed. “How I regret that I never went there. Of course, I never shall now. But, to be perfectly frank, to me the United States stands for order and efficiency of the best kind, the kind of order only a free people can create, the kind I pray may be built someday here in Russia. Truly, it is wonderful, and I can scarcely help envying you sinfully.”

  “May I quote you, Your Highness?”

  “Yes, by all means. Think of America-a great, young, hurrying nation that can still find time to study all these frightful problems of poverty and disease, and to grapple with them as well. I hope you will go on doing that, and still find more and more ways of helping children, you must never let go of that. Too, I am entranced by the way you are trying to bring education and beauty into the lives of your workers. After all, how can you expect workmen to have beauty in their souls if they toil all day in hot, hideous factories or on remote farms? The poverty of our peasants and the poor working conditions of our workers are for us a great, great problem that we must quickly resolve.”

  We talked more about the Gary schools, which I was eager to see here in Russia, and about American women and their welfare work, especially for the tubercular and anemic. It was my belief, I remarked to my visitor, that if a country were to thrive, women would have to play a role equally important and equally prominent as that of men. I’d always had a special devotion to Jeanne d’Arc, I explained, and believed she had been inspired by God, just as so many other women had been called by God to do great things.

  “In America,” said Mrs. Dorr, “we would say you are a good feminist-and to me that is the greatest compliment. I can’t tell you how much I admire your convent for its beauty and even more for the ease with which you are reaching out to those in need. Everyone seems so happy and content here.”

  “I’m so glad that you like my little obitel,” I said as I rose to my feet. “Please come again and see all that I hope to accomplish in the years ahead. We have great plans to help a great many.”

  “Thank you, Your Highness, I would love to return. Your convent is one of the brightest stars in the new Russia, and one that it can least afford to lose. I wish you all the best success.”

  Yes, all that my lovely adopted homeland needed was a few more years of peace and hard work. We were so close. Our industries were flourishing, our scientists had become known throughout the world, and our crops were so bountiful that we had left our famine years behind and become Europe ’s bread-basket. Indeed, we were such a rich country, wealthy in oil and gold and diamonds, and finally we were on the verge of being able to exploit all of this for the good of the entire Motherland. Even our writers and painters and musicians-such as Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Repin and Kandinsky, Chaikovsky and Rachmaninoff-were becoming known around the world. If only we could keep moving forward, not leaving the poor behind but embracing them and bringing them along and raising them up.

  Perhaps we didn’t even need ten years, perhaps only another five. In any case, we were never to find out because the peace and harmony that we so desperately needed was shattered by the outbreak in August, 1914, of that hideous war: the Great War. Within so short a time millions of our people were killed as war engulfed the whole of my beloved country, gushing over all like a waterfall of flame and leaving everyone, victor and vanquished alike, horribly maimed.

  Chapter 32 PAVEL

  When the war broke out, well, that was when I thought the Revolution was absolutely lost forever and ever. On all the streets there were crowds waving flags and singing “God Save the Tsar!” and everywhere there was this joy, this sense of pride and love for the Motherland. I couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe that the oppressed would feel such passion for the Tsar and his lying ministers who had done nothing but walk al
l over them for centuries and centuries. Why, even the lowliest of workers were tripping over themselves as they rushed to enlist in the Tsar’s army. How was this possible? How could they not see what my Bolshevik leaders did, that this stupid business was simply a war of kings and empires, namely German, English, Austrian, and Russian? Sure, it was nothing but a stupid imperialistic affair spurred on by the capitalist warmongers who would make big profits from the sale of guns. And who was going to do the actual fighting? The nobles themselves, those princes and counts who for centuries had bought and sold us pathetic serfs? The rich factory owners who would grow fat and rich from the sale of their guns and bullets? Absolutely not! No, it was the poor and downtrodden who would be out there on the front lines, massacred one after another, their bodies crushed into the mud.

  The last of my leaders were so discouraged that they had all left by the time war broke out. They said that new guy, Lenin, was in Switzerland and that that writer, the famous one, Gorky, was off sunning himself in Italy. But not me. I had nowhere to go, no one to see, so I just disappeared into my own country, sleeping in haystacks or train stations, stealing food from here, there, and what did I do when I needed a ruble or two? Why, that was easy, I just robbed someone, the old babushkas were the easiest, the donation pots in the churches a cinch, too. Actually, I never went hungry because fortunately it was a great sin to refuse bread to a beggar. And I begged a lot.

  Oddly, one fall day in 1915 I found myself outside her white walls.

  I didn’t know quite why I decided to walk halfway across the city, let alone how I had got back to Moscow in the first place, but suddenly there I was, staring at the thick vines creeping up the walls of the Marfo-Marinski Obitel. Yes, just standing there, my belly empty, admiring how the leaves on the vines were so yellow and orange and red. So pretty. But sure, these colors meant it would be winter before too long, and I wondered if maybe the sisters would feed me here today, or at least offer me a cup of tea with nice sugar. That was what I really wanted, hot tea and a sugar cube I could hold in my teeth as I drank.

  I certainly never expected to see her, but I had been skulking about outside the women’s monastery for, who knew, an hour, maybe more, when not the large carriage gates but the small brown side gate suddenly swung open. First came two sisters dressed in long gray habits, which was strange to me because I had never seen anything like this, a sister dressed in anything but either all black for regular days or all white for feast days. And yet here were these freshly scrubbed girls in something so different, so modern-imagine, gray robes!-and with white cloth around their pink, healthy, and plump faces. Even that was strange, for all the other sisters I had ever seen were all pasty and pale, as if they barely ate and never saw the sun. But not these two! Accompanying them, hanging on to their arms, actually, were two men with bandages over their eyes. I knew the story of these men immediately, as did anyone from the country-these two had been soldiers fighting in the dirty war and their eyes had been burned away by gases in the trenches. They were everywhere in the country now, thousands of blind men like them, and I watched as the two young sisters escorted these men along, either getting them out for fresh air and a stroll or, perhaps, teaching them how to get about town with no eyes.

  And then to my astonishment Matushka herself came through the small gate as well.

  I couldn’t see her face at first, but of course it was her, my heart knew it immediately, for even though she too was draped in long gray robes, the figure was as tall and elegant as a real dama. Sure, and a moment later she turned slightly and I saw the lovely face that I had glimpsed only once but would recognize anywhere, for I had seen it time and again in my dreams. Like the young sisters, she wore not a scrap of black, which was so strange. She was carrying a basket, too, and just as she pulled shut the gate a slight wind came up, catching her garments, and even I was touched, really it was beautiful, this vision of her, so light in such dark times. Somehow she was set apart, so different, but then again, that was the way she had been when I’d seen her sitting in that carriage all dressed up in her fine clothes and all those expensive stones. Yes, though her clothing was now completely different, clearly marking her as a bride of Christ, there was something that was absolutely the same about her. Perhaps it was those eyes, so soft, so sensitive and kind, and I remembered that night when she had looked out the carriage window right at me, how her gaze had disarmed me, and how in that way she had saved her life and those of the two children as well. Again today she glanced my way, and again I lost my breath, stunned by something, I really didn’t know what. She seemed to smile at me, but no, it wasn’t at all possible that she remembered me from the night when our fates had passed each other like desperate boats in a violent storm.

  People up and down the street, upon recognizing the Grand Duchess, stopped and bowed and crossed themselves.

  “Good morning, Matushka!” cried two or three of them almost in unison.

  “God bless you and your work, Matushka!” hollered a man, a knife sharpener who’d set up his grinding wheel on the corner.

  “Thank you, Matushka!” called an old woman, bowing at the waist as she marked her forehead, stomach, right shoulder, left. “My son lives because of you!”

  There was only one comrade, a one-legged man balancing on cracked crutches, who looked at this royal abbess as if she were nothing but a dog. He was leaning against a tree just a few paces from me, and he turned his dirty, worn face to me.

  “You know, don’t you, that that bitch of a woman and her sister are nothing but dirty German whores?”

  I quietly replied, “So I’ve heard.”

  “It’s true, I tell you, and it’s only because of them that we’re losing the war!”

  Obviously he’d been a soldier, and nodding toward his missing leg, I asked, “When?”

  “Last winter.” He shrugged, and added, “I suppose I’m one of the lucky ones-I was wounded, they pulled me back from the front, and a week later all my comrades were wiped out, every last one of them. I should be dead like the rest of ’em, but instead I’m just a gimp.”

  I should have said something, like maybe talked about the Organization and the need for revolution. I should have grumbled about the bourgeoisie, about exploitation of the lower classes, or, really, about any of the things I had been taught. I’m sure the soldier would have listened eagerly, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the beauty in robes, the wind and the light curling around her as she stood there across the street. In reply to all her well-wishers, she simply and meekly bowed her head in thanks and hurried on, quite alone, basket in one hand while with the other she pulled her robe close to her face as if hiding herself, as if the last thing she wanted was to be recognized.

  I didn’t know why, but as soon as she started off I knew that I would follow her. I mumbled something to the one-legged comrade and then hurried along until I was some twenty or thirty paces behind her. All these questions were tripping through my mind. Where was she going, what was she doing, and, most important, was there food there in that basket that I might take from her? Or was it money, eh? After all, she was heading north on Bolshaya Ordinka, so perhaps she was headed straight toward the Kremlin, perhaps she had taken a basket of money from her church and was giving it over to the ministers. Yes, that was likely, and it occurred to me then that I could kill her now, thereby finishing the job I’d neglected so long ago. I could jump on her and beat her and make myself rich at the same time, too.

  But then she veered off the wide cobbled street, soon crossing Solyanka Street and weaving her way through a maze of lost alleys, ducking through one archway, past the falling-down house of a half-ruined noble, and eventually emerging onto another street. She continued up this way and then cut to a boulevard. What was this all about? By then I could tell she was not hurrying toward the Kremlin, so what in the name of the devil was this holy princess doing? Where was she headed, this sly cat? Perhaps instead of taking money to the Kremlin she was delivering a basketful of r
ubles to German spies. Now, I thought, wouldn’t that be wonderful if the stories passing from tongue to tongue were really true! And how great it would be if I caught her in the act, right in the middle of a secret meeting! Ha, I could report it and maybe then the people would get so mad that finally and at long last they would rise up!

  Trailing her, I couldn’t stop, didn’t dare.

  She had remarkable energy, that one, for she was moving so quickly that I had to trot along to keep up with her. She was all business, and yet people smiled and nodded at her as they passed, perhaps not recognizing how high and mighty she really was, only seeing the strange light robes and knowing that she was from there, that community that had become so well known and, too, so well loved throughout Moscow. Pure and simple, she was a vision of Godliness to all who laid eyes upon her, that much I could tell. Or perhaps she was just a simple reminder that some still believed with all their hearts in a better world. And yet still I couldn’t tell what she was doing, just where she was going in such a rush.

  I wondered of course if she had some kind of business in Kitai Gorod, the Chinese town, but after we crossed a kanal and turned to the right, it was clear she wasn’t going that far. No, we were descending into the lowlands in and around the Yauza River. And from the mist in the air and the stench that soon filled my nose, I understood that this stupid, foolish woman was heading straight into the Khitrovka, the famous slums of Moscow, which sprawled around a dangerous market selling rotten food and stolen goods, not to mention young girls, even young boys. Bozhe moi, my God, this was the most hellish corner of the country, and even I wanted to run up and tell her, No, stop, it’s too dangerous! Don’t go in! Word was that ten or twenty thousand pathetic souls lived in this Godforsaken area, a collection of thieves and robbers, beggars and murderers. If anyone escaped the labor camps of Siberia, they didn’t stay out in the forests. No, they snuck all the way back here, because both the police and the soldiers were too afraid to go into the depths of the Khitrovka and flush them out. Even my revolutionary pals told me that if I was ever found out, if I was ever chased, this was where I should run, straight into these slums. Of course, the lowlifes in and about might cut my throat for a ruble or plunge a knife in my back for pleasure, but at least the police wouldn’t catch me, oh, no!