The Romanov Bride Read online

  But the nastiness of the Khitrovka seemed not to faze her in the least. In fact, the misery ahead seemed to draw her, and this sister of the Empress, this princess who had once danced the mazurka on the finest parquet floors in the greatest palaces, this greatest of European beauties, stepped through an open sewer along which slowly ran human waste of the nastiest sort. When she came to the corner of a crumbling building, she turned left, obviously certain of where she was going. Wasting no time, I hurried along, turned the corner, and nearly ran into her and three big, thick policemen, for there she stood, this woman in robes, talking to the giant men.

  “Please, Matushka,” said one of the uniformed ones, “in a block or so you’ll enter the heart of the Khitrovka, and this is as far as the three of us dare go. We ask you again and again, please, no farther! If something happens in the streets ahead, we will not be able to go in to help you.”

  “My dear men, you are always too kind to me and I so appreciate your good thoughts,” she replied in the gentlest of voices. “But, once again, I am needed in these parts.”

  “Yes, but-” began another constable.

  “Please, my boy, do not worry. My life is in God’s hands, not yours.”

  With a kind wave and smile, she pressed on, going where certainly no princess had ever gone, deep into the filthy Khitrovka. I myself thought of turning back, but curiosity had hooked me, and I tailed her into a dark alley where the sun was all but blotted out. I couldn’t help wondering, if those policemen back there on the edge of the Khitrovka knew her by sight, just how often did she come here and what in the name of the devil was her business? Might it not be with spies and Germans?

  As I traipsed after her, nearly losing her from sight, I heard screaming, then breaking glass. From another direction came drunken laughter and crying children. As I passed a traktir-the cheapest of taverns-its doors were shoved open by two men, laughing and stumbling, and a stinky cloud of stale beer and boiling cabbage overwhelmed me. A few steps later I came to a man slumped against a building, lying in a puddle of his own vomit. All this I saw, and a woman with a painted face who stood in a doorway marked with the required red lamp. When I glanced at her she pulled open the top of her dress and showed me her huge naked breasts.

  “Right this way, handsome,” she called, licking her lips.

  I looked away. This place was nothing but a pile of roaches feasting on one another, and like an insect myself I scurried on. Rounding a corner after the princess nun, I watched as she proceeded down a lane of disgusting shops, this one selling something that was supposed to be sausages, another grimy bread, and there, a guy chopping chickens on a huge stump and throwing the carcasses on the floor. Next I saw a handful of tailors working frantically away as they transformed stolen fur capes and coats into unrecognizable hats and muffs. Up and down the passage were gathered clumps of men, too, and great wafts of smoke from papirosi-the cheapest cigarettes-curled into the dark air, mingling with the scent of sour sunflower oil that came from every kitchen. Time and time again they greeted this lowly Romanov not with a sneer or snarl or the least bit of coarseness-let alone a threat of any kind-but with a simple and polite nod of the head.

  “Good afternoon, Matushka,” these forsaken souls called one after another.

  A row of five fat, toothless babushki sat upon huge iron pots of lapshi, and though the old women didn’t rise-their one and only job was to sit tight on the pots so that their big thighs and thick skirts would keep the pots of noodles warm-all of them bowed their heads to the princess nun and crossed themselves. When I passed by, however, the women and every questionable guy about gazed at me the way a starving man stares at a hen. I pulled up my collar and wrapped my arms around myself, and probably the only reason they left me alone was how ragged I looked-it was obvious to anyone that I had nothing to offer, not even a dirty kopeck to my name.

  Up ahead I suddenly saw a boy appear out of nowhere, a filthy street urchin covered from head to toe in grime. The princess stopped and greeted him, they exchanged a few words, and the boy pointed in one particular direction. The little one then reached up with his dirty paw, and she, not hesitating in the least, reached out with her clean white hand and took it. Obviously nervous and scared, the boy quickly led her off through a series of small streets that got narrower and dirtier with each step. I pushed on, for neither of them suspected that someone, namely me, was following.

  A few minutes later the boy and the nun came to a crumbling grayish stone house and disappeared inside. When I approached the building, I saw the name “Petrov” written in faded, peeling paint, and guessed that this place was like the one where me and my wife had lived, and entering I found out, sure, I was correct. This Mr. Petrov, who owned the building, rented out small corners, measured perhaps by the arzhin-the length of an arm or two-to the poorest sorts. Coming to one grimy curtain, I slowly pulled it back, seeing nothing and no one, only a couple of wooden bunks and some torn clothes. Drawn by voices, I moved on past the stairs and in a nook found myself staring at three men who, like me, looked as if they hadn’t been to the banya in months. Gathered around a wooden crate, they were munching on sunflower seeds, and scattered around them on the floor lay what looked like a rug of dead beetles but was actually a carpet of husks. There were cards strewn in front of them, and off to the side was a jug of cloudy vodka. They stared up at me like wild dogs ready to pounce, and one of them reached down for a knife sticking out of his boot.

  “Well, what of it?” demanded one, tugging on his long, tangled beard.

  The words simply fell out of my mouth. “Did you see a sister in gray robes? Did she-”

  “Back there,” said another man, motioning the direction with his chin. “She went to take care of the whore Luska.”

  With a nod of my head, I quickly moved on, weaving between tattered curtains that divided one small room from another. It was then that I sensed it, heard it-soft but pained crying, a mourning that came from deep within someone’s soul. Following the sound the way a hunter follows the moon, I soon came to the rear of the Petrov slum house, where one of the tattered curtains glowed with the soft light of a kerosene lamp. Besides the soft crying, I now heard another voice furiously chanting.

  “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, please have mercy…” repeated Matushka over and over.

  As quietly as I could I edged forward, sensing beyond the curtain not just one but two figures huddled around something, a bed perhaps.

  “I begged Ludmilla not to do it!” sobbed a woman, referring to the whore Luska by her full and respectful name. “I begged her to just go ahead. And she promised… she promised…!”

  “You did all you could, my child.”

  “But she said she wouldn’t and then… then she came back right here and did it herself… oi, bozhe moi! She was just so afraid… afraid that if she looked pregnant the men would turn away… and… and afraid to bring a new life into this disgusting place!”

  “Even if I’d gotten here sooner, I wouldn’t have been able to help her. She lost so much blood so quickly.”

  As quietly as I could, I inched my way around, searching for a crack in the curtains, when all of a sudden-Gospodi!-something reached out and grabbed me by the arm. I nearly shouted out, nearly jumped right out of my skin! Looking over, I saw not a thug about to slit my throat but a smiling brat-that kid, the filthy one. Grinning, he put a finger to his lips and then tugged me the other way. I shuffled to the side, and then the urchin pointed to a hole in the curtain. Understanding, I bent over and peered into a makeshift room, and there, sure enough, was that Romanov as well as another, a woman with loose clothing and wild hair. A prostitute, it was obvious. The two of them, the sister in robes and the sister of the night, stood on either side of a plank bed, and all I could see on the bed between them was a pair of legs spread wide, the feet turned out. Clearly, someone was dead. It was only when the Romanov sister bent to the side, reaching for her basket, that I got a clear view of the bed and nearly threw up
. Lying there was a naked woman, most definitely dead, the black hair between her legs absolutely soaked with the darkest blood I had ever seen. Her thighs, a yellowed sheet, and everything else were covered with this blood, too, and, worse, lying between her legs was a still bloody lump of something. What in the name of the devil had come out of her womanly parts? What had she cut away? A growth of some sort? Some kind of tumor? But no… dear God, no. In horror, I watched as this so-called Matushka leaned over, a clean white towel in hand, and carefully picked up the lifeless form, wrapping it gently in the folds. And it was then that I saw the smallest arm drop out of that lump.

  “It’s a beautiful little girl, and she’s merely crossed over to a better world,” said the Romanov in the kindest of voices. “And now she will rest for eternity in the arms of God.”

  The other prostitute, the living one, had turned away now, sobbing uncontrollably as the sister tenderly wrapped the towel around the aborted child. The Romanov mumbled a soft prayer over the small body and then lowered it into the willow basket and slowly drew the lid.

  “Now, young woman,” said the sister to the prostitute, “you must get me some more clean towels. Oh, and a sheet or two as well. I will need some help cleaning the body, for with your permission I would like to take both mother and daughter back to my obitel for Psalter and a proper Christian burial.”

  “Yes… please… take her far away from this place…!” As the prostitute rose to her feet, I turned away, stumbling backward. I wanted to run straight from that rat hole of a building, to run far away. Instead I managed just a few steps, where I yanked back a half-torn curtain and slumped into another little corner and dropped down onto a bed of planks. Some lazy slob was asleep on the top bunk, and I lowered myself onto the lower one. Bent over, my head in my hands, I stared at the floor, not moving for the next hour, maybe more. All the time I was aware but wasn’t aware of the two women working away, washing the body and then wrapping it, too, in a sheet or something, perhaps just another torn curtain. I heard the sound of rags being wrung, lots of drops falling into a pan of water. And the soft chanting of hymns being sung as well.

  Sometime later, I heard Matushka say, “I’ll take the infant in the basket with me now, and I’ll pay the men out front, the ones who were playing cards, to bring the body. Now, young woman, what about you? What can I do for you?”

  The prostitute mumbled, “Nothing… nothing at all.”

  “Will you come to services for your friend Ludmilla?”

  “Well…”

  “Yes, please come tonight to my obitel on Bolshaya Ordinka. And after you’ve prayed for Ludmilla, let’s have a talk. Perhaps I can rent a sewing machine for you-the efficient kind with a foot pump. I’ve done this for others, and they’ve set themselves up in business. Perhaps that would be of interest, or perhaps one of the classes that we’ve just started for adult workers. Do you know how to read?”

  “But, Matushka, I’m not worthy of such kindness. I’m just a woman of the night and… and I’m not good enough for… for…”

  “Nonsense. God’s image may become unclear, but, my child, it can never be entirely wiped away. Please, just come see me.” The princess nun then said, “As for the young boy who led me here, to whom does he belong?”

  “Little Arkasha? He belongs to everyone… and yet, as far as I know, to no one.”

  “Just as I feared. Hopefully he’s still waiting somewhere for me.”

  Listening through the curtains, I heard the creaking of the willow basket, the swoosh of long clothing, and then gentle steps. Moving on the other side of the curtains, I saw her, too, or rather the essence of her, for as the Romanov nun moved along, the tattered fabric walls of all the corner rooms swirled and swayed as if a spirit from another world were passing. A moment later, another set of steps moved quickly after her.

  “Matushka, wait!” called the young woman.

  She stopped right in front of the corner where I sat, only an old piece of hanging material separating us, and said, “Yes, what is it, my child?”

  “I just wanted to tell you not to pay the men out front until they get there-you know, until they bring Ludmilla all the way to you. Otherwise, they’ll just take your money and do nothing.”

  “Oh, I’m not worried about that,” she said with a soft laugh.

  “Do not fear, they’ll not fail me.”

  And in this Matushka was absolutely right. Without a moment of hesitation, she went right up to the three card players and paid them generously in advance to carry the body of the dead whore up to her obitel. She then proceeded onto the street, looked for and found the urchin Arkasha, and when I peered out the door of the Petrov slum the last I saw of this Romanov was her flowing gray robe as she walked away, carrying the basket with the swaddled dead baby in one hand and, with the other, holding on to the boy’s dirty paw.

  Not bad, I thought, for while that day this Matushka had fished two dead souls out of the Khitrovka, that of Luska and her stillborn child, this strange sister had also managed to take with her a live fledgling, young Arkasha. She led him straight out of this hellhole and to her home for beggar boys, perhaps saving his life. And as for the drunken card players-such unruly comrades-they didn’t disappoint Matushka, either, for not even thirty minutes later they gathered up the dead whore Luska and carted her off on their shoulders, delivering her, just as promised and paid for, to the Marfo-Marinski Obitel.

  All this I know because I helped too. At first the card players wouldn’t let me, all three shouted “Nyet!” and told me to be off. But I told them I didn’t want any of their money, and though at first they grumped and threatened me, in time they let me lend a hand. Holding Luska by her right leg, I helped the three comrades carry the corpse away from that pathetic house and all the way up the Bolshaya Ordinka and eventually right through the brown wooden gate of the obitel.

  And though I didn’t take a kopeck for my work, in the end, after we delivered the body behind the white walls and into the chapel, I did get paid, though not in rubles. Upon the orders of Matushka herself, the young novices of the monastery led us into the dining hall and fed us all a large hot bowl of meat borscht with some fresh black bread and heaps of butter, plus two cups of good, strong caravan tea. They even gave me two cubes of sugar, and sitting there like a squirrel getting ready for winter, I drank my tea with one cube of sugar packed into each of my cheeks.

  It was a heavenly moment shattered by something quite like a bolt of lightning.

  “Do I by chance know you?” asked a voice. “Have I seen you somewhere before?”

  I turned sideways and looked up. None other than Matushka herself was staring down upon me, her beautiful face, framed by the wimple of her order, more than just puzzled. On her lips rested a smile as fragile as a fine teacup, while in her eyes I could clearly see some kind of demon-either that of pain or dark anger, just which I couldn’t tell.

  Panicking, I didn’t know what to say, but in the end I did what Russian peasants have always been so good at, and I shook my head, and muttered, “Nyet, nyet.”

  But she didn’t believe me, I understood that by the way she continued to stare harshly upon me. I could almost hear her thinking: Who is this man, what kind of prickly thorn has he been in my path of life?

  “Well,” she said, “enjoy your tea… and come back to see us again.”

  But she wasn’t as good at lying as me, her voice was just too flat and her eyes too tight.

  Chapter 33 ELLA

  Our initial, glorious victories were, so tragically, only short-lived, and what we all expected to be a short war soon appeared otherwise. Our Second Army was all but wiped out in the Battle of Tannenberg-100,000 taken prisoner, 35,000 killed or maimed, with only 10,000 escaping-and it was even worse for the First. Lord, I think 125,000 of our men were slaughtered out there in Prussia. Really, we could not continue for long with losses like that, so it was no wonder that I heard grumblings when I walked beyond our walls. Less and less I was greeted w
ith smiles and more and more with wicked words, for the poor, tired souls were angry at everything German, including me simply because of my ancestry.

  “Hessian witch!” the nasty few would mutter behind my back, though in truth it did not hurt.

  As incredible and ridiculous as it seemed even then, there were rumors about that I was sending gold to my native lands-yes, supposedly I was hoarding Siberian gold right there at my obitel and sending it by the nugget via secret courier to Germany to help in the war efforts against my beloved Russia! What tittle-tattle, what evil tongues! What no one knew was my intense dislike of the Prussians, who’d all but overrun my native Darmstadt, or, for that matter, that I’d never been fond of my own cousin, the Kaiser Wilhelm, who had once so strongly sought my hand in marriage. And these dark stories weren’t just the work of German spies, who were so intent on damaging the morale on the home front. Incredibly, it was also the work of those foolish revolutionaries, who came secretly flooding back into Russia, intent on undermining dear Nicky and Alicky, revolutionaries who were more determined than ever to wipe away our God-given monarchy. Black rumors swelled like great waves, passing from one tongue to the next, one claiming that Nicky was being drugged by Alicky, another that Alicky had a direct telegraph line from her boudoir all the way to Cousin Willy in Berlin. Of course, the worst of the worst was being said in and about that foolish man, Rasputin, who had become such a stain on the Throne. For the life of me I could not understand Alicky’s dependence on him, and I prayed night and day for her deliverance from him.