The Romanov Bride Page 19

  “Welcome to my community,” I said with a gentle bow of my head. “I am the Matushka of this obitel-is it to me you wish to speak?”

  At first none knew what to say, how to act. There was some grumbling, some brandishing of the sticks.

  Finally, one of them shouted, “We want your German brother, the Grand Duke of Hesse!”

  “Give him to us!” yelled a handful of others.

  “I, too, have heard such stories,” I began, my voice strong and clear, “but I can assure you that my brother is nowhere to be found within this community. In fact, he is nowhere to be found in Russia.”

  “But he’s hiding in the cellar, I know it!” called one.

  “I’m afraid you are mistaken, for I would never permit such a thing,” I replied. “It would be tantamount to treason.”

  “Nemka, doloi!”

  “German bitch!”

  “Shpionka, suda!”

  “Listen to her speak-she’s pure German!”

  For half an instant it seemed they would rush forward and seize upon me, then ransack the entire community. I felt as if I were overlooking a kettle about to boil over, so evident was their anger and exhaustion.

  “Once again,” I began, my words measured, “I can assure you that my brother is not here, nor has he ever been. However, a handful of you are welcome to enter our buildings and look throughout every room. I only ask that it be no more than six of you who come in because behind these walls and under these roofs are many sick and wounded, not to mention our orphans. Please, I entreat you, do not disturb my patients and do not frighten the children, for they have already been through so much.”

  A voice from the back, certainly an agitator, shouted, “But I saw that German spy with my own eyes! I know he’s in here!”

  “He’s hiding in the cellar!”

  “There must be a secret room!”

  “Please come in,” I quickly replied, “and look for yourselves. If only you would be so kind as to put down your sticks and rakes, you may spend all afternoon with us, you may search everywhere. Only again I ask you, please do so quietly.”

  A man shouted, “She’s lying!”

  “Let’s all go in, we’ll get him then!”

  “Nemka, doloi!”

  The crowd seethed, there was obviously nothing I could do to soften them, to appease them. It was only at this moment, only just then, that I feared all would be lost, and I worried not for myself but for the others, my sisters and our sick ones. I could see these unruly brigands shift from side to side, see their sticks and rakes start to tremble. Standing there calmly, quietly, I called upon the Lord for strength.

  And then I heard it, the pounding of hooves. This time it was not the Cossacks but mounted gendarmes, and they came pouring through our broken gates, fifteen, no, twenty of them. As the crowd of bandits turned to see what was bearing down upon them, I quickly shut and bolted the doors, and I stood there behind the thick wood, listening to the mayhem, the screams, the shouts, the sound of gunfire. I closed my eyes and slumped against the doors, praying that there would be no loss of life.

  It was all over quickly. Not even ten minutes later, when all was essentially quiet, I opened the doors again. What had once been a tranquil garden was now a battlefield, our lilacs and laburnums broken and dashed, and everything else torn apart by the fight. The sticks and rakes had been dropped helter-skelter, the rocks, too, as the people had fled, and all that was to be seen were some of the gendarmes arresting a few of the ringleaders and another handful of injured souls lying about.

  “Quickly, sisters,” I said, leading the way into the garden and to the wounded. “Our help is needed.”

  It was in this way that we tended to those who had meant us harm. There were many bruises, some broken bones, but fortunately there was no loss of life. While most of those hurt needed only some careful bandaging, there were four who remained in our hospital for more than a week, so serious were their injuries.

  Later that day, I received a visit from the Metropolitan and the Governor-General himself, both of whom wanted to see what damages had been done and whether any of us had been harmed. I assured them that all were fine excepting Sister Evrosinia, the nun who had been hit on the back with the stone, for her bruise was so large that the doctors had ordered complete bed rest for a week. I felt no anger over the incident, only grief that my own people should feel that violence was their only avenue of hope. Yes, their poor lives were being stretched beyond limits-husbands off at war and being killed, impoverished wives at home trying to feed hungry mouths. How I longed to soothe their souls and fill their spirits right up with joy.

  There were only two aftershocks from that day which weighed heavily upon my heart. First, the Metropolitan himself wondered if the times were so troubled that it might be best if I retired for a while to a distant monastery, perhaps even the one I’d visited not long ago up in the northern seas. I assured him, however, that my place was there in Moscow and that I would sooner die at my obitel than leave. Second, the Governor-General, realizing that I would not be leaving, ordered increased security be posted round our walls, which saddened me greatly, for not once had I ever wanted to be separated from the outer world and those in need.

  Of greater concern, both of these men individually took me aside and pressed me on the same issue: Would I not, for the sake of the Empire and the Monarchy itself, please speak to both the Empress and the Emperor about the dark influence upon the Throne, namely, that man Rasputin?

  Chapter 34 PAVEL

  Who would have thought that in this cesspool of wounded soldiers and overworked women the Revolution would be reborn! Who would have thought that the Russian peasants and workers, beaten down for so many centuries, would finally snap? In short, the more rotten the war made things for the people, the better things got for the Organization.

  And so that became my job, to somehow make things as rotten, rotten, rotten as possible.

  My revolutionary comrades fished me out of some pit, brought me back into the fold, and this became my job: gluing up posters. It didn’t seem very important, but they assured me it was, and they even had a name for it: agitprop. And so they gave me a pot of glue and posters by the stack, and I put them up everywhere and by the thousands, too. Only I had to do it so I wouldn’t be caught, because if I was that would be the end of me, a necktie from a lamppost!

  In the following weeks I scurried around Moscow like a rat, fixing posters up on buildings, doors, walls, stairs. Usually the police ripped them down in a matter of hours, and then I had to just go round and round, fixing them up again. Sometimes I just dropped the posters on the street or left them on seats of the trams. But people saw them everywhere. Pictures of the Tsar and his religious popes riding on the backs of the toiling workers. Pictures of the capitalist pigs, all dressed up in expensive coats, licking the Tsar’s feet. The laughing Tsar drinking champagne while he stood at a cannon using peasants as cannonballs to fire at the Germans.

  “We must show the people that the Tsar sits atop them not as a god but as a man,” explained one of my comrades, a smart fellow known only as Leon. “And that’s what these posters do, they soil the image of the Emperor and bring him down from such a high level.”

  “Ah, so this is like flinging mud at him?” I laughed.

  “Exactly.”

  “I like it!”

  And so I flung a lot of crap, I did. I’d go out at nine, maybe ten at night, my posters carefully hidden in a bag, and I glued them everywhere, tromping alley to alley, from the Khitrovka to the Arbat. Actually, I found the best places to leave them were the traktiri littered about the city, the dirty cafés of the proletariat that were packed with workers, everyone crammed along plank tables, drinking pitcher after pitcher of kvass, that beerlike brew made from moldy loaves of black bread.

  One night I took my favorite poster, a real juicy picture, into one such traktir, The Seven Steps Down, with a low ceiling and a big hall, a place where coachmen usually gathered a
nd where, late at night, there was cockfighting in a secret room. Though I wasn’t a Believer, I stopped in front of the icon by the door, crossing myself just like everyone else. Every bench and table was filled, waiters in white blouses and baggy pants ran this way and that, and off in the corner an accordion player played while a Tsigane woman with a big shawl and shiny jewelry and gold teeth sang. Here they used to serve great big plates of greasy suckling pig, but no more. Meat just couldn’t be found, it was getting scarcer by the day, and so it was just kvass and hard rolls, here and there some sausages that looked as if they’d been made from cat. There were maybe two hundred people in there, packed like sardines, mostly men with long beards and greasy hair, some loose women with flimsy skirts.

  So what did I do? I got myself a tankard of drink and strolled around, smiling so innocently. And somehow I did it, I pulled my lovely pictures from under my coat and soon enough they were on a table, spilling onto the benches, and from the benches onto the floor. I acted as surprised as anyone.

  “Ha!” I yelped with surprise. “Ha!”

  A great roar of laughter went up and spread through the room when they saw the picture, my poster: the Empress-whore, bent over and getting fucked from behind by the monster Rasputin, with the Tsar, drunk or drugged, passed out in a barrel of money, his eyes crossed as if totally not caring about anything or anyone else, least of all us, his Russian people.

  And the people loved it!

  The poster was grabbed from hand to hand, ripped from one person to the next, until it reached every corner of the room. A drunk guy jumped up on a table and pulled some prostitutka up behind him. Taking a soup bowl, he crowned his curly blond girl queen of the hall.

  “Oh, Mama Tsaritsa, I love your big German ass!” he proclaimed as he mounted his empress from behind and started to hump and hump.

  Maybe two or three years before, well, this fellow would have been hauled away and beat up for such a thing, for making fun of our Empress. Either that or he would have been arrested by the police and given three. But now the whole room roared with laughter at the sight of our traitor Empress getting fucked by her secret lover, that mad beast Rasputin.

  What agitatsiya! How good it worked! I laughed until there were tears in my eyes!

  Chapter 35 ELLA

  In early December of 1916 I wrote to Nicky, begging an audience. He was to be in Tsarskoye for only a short while longer, and a reply came not from the Emperor but my sister, asking me to come at once. I departed the very next day. I kept hope that I would see the Emperor himself, but upon my arrival at the Palace, I found myself ushered directly into Alicky’s boudoir. She was reclined there, dressed in a long white robe, a white shawl draped around her shoulders. Her hair was put up, but she wore no adornment excepting her wedding ring, and she looked exhausted and worn, so thin. For the first time I could easily see what more and more people had been telling me, that my baby sister, nine years my junior, now looked years older than I.

  “Hello, my dear,” she said in English, holding out her hand.

  “Greetings.”

  As required by protocol, I curtseyed to my sister, the Empress, then kissed her hand, and only then was I able to embrace her as family. Before the war we had rarely spoken in our native language, and now of course not a word of German ever passed our lips. Had there been others in the room, we might have spoken Russian, but since it was just the two of us sisters we continued in English, the language of our mother and of course the language that Alicky spoke almost exclusively with her children and husband.

  “How are things at your community?” asked Alicky.

  “We are full and we are busy. With God’s help I believe we are doing good work,” I replied. “Among other things, I wanted to tell you that I’ve had reports that your four hospital trains seem to be running well.”

  “Thank God. There is so much suffering, so much that needs to be done. You know, of course, that I visit my hospitals here daily. Just yesterday I assisted in an amputation.”

  Yes, I knew that my sister, who had received her nursing certi ficate at the beginning of the war, was deeply involved in the day-to-day physical activities of her hospital. While some members of Court found it demeaning that the Empress should be participating in the most gruesome operations-“Better,” they said, “if Her Imperial Highness would visit all the hospitals, her appearance granting hope to many more”-I found it admirable that someone so high should dare to reach so low.

  I cast my eyes to the floor and softly said, “I had hoped to see Nicky. Will he be joining us?”

  “I’m afraid not. He is in meetings with his generals all day, for he is to leave tomorrow for the Front.”

  “I see.”

  I tried my best not to hide my disappointment. Not a soul knew better than I that my sister’s health, and to a great degree her reasoning, had been damaged by worry for her son, who had nearly died any number of times. Because of this Nicky was more balanced in his approach to things, and so I had hoped to talk with him and him alone, for I wanted to implore him to see what was happening around us, and to tell him what so many important personages of the Empire had begged me to relay. Quite specifically, Nicky needed to allow the Duma to appoint his ministers, for as it was now Alicky was essentially making these decisions, and not just of her own accord but under the strong influence of that man. Yes, everyone in the Empire was fully aware that you could not rise to power without the blessing of Rasputin, and that man’s wisdom on political matters was woeful at best. It was making the entire country crazy-so many screaming, Imagine, a peasant running the country!-and with all that in mind I had come, at the very least, to beg my brother-in-law to banish the man once and for all and for good to Siberia. Best would be if Nicky allowed the Duma itself the right to appoint the ministers, returned that man to the back of beyond, and, too, sent my sister off to the Crimea for a much needed rest at her beloved Livadia. That would quiet the tongues.

  “Alicky, my dearest,” I began, knowing that I now had no choice but to broach all with my sister, “as you know, I’ve long steered away from political matters, but things are worsening in Moscow, quickly so. The food lines are growing, and the people are so weary, so tired, and so hungry.”

  “My weak heart aches for them.”

  “On top of all this, in every queue and in every salon, the worst things are being said about… about…”

  She shook her head in disgust, and guessed, “Father Grigori?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “But it’s he who just had a vision that Nicky must halt all military trains and for no fewer than three days allow only food to be transported into the cities. You know he was against the war in the first place, and you know how much he cares for the common people.”

  “My dear, the stories about him are simply horrible. And it’s not just in Moscow but here in Petrograd. Kiev, too, and Pskov. Really, all across the Empire.”

  “Surely you’re not like the others?” said my sister, unable to hide her anger and disappointment. “Tell me you don’t believe the gossip and calumny as well?”

  “All I know is that he no longer occupies himself with matters of your family, but with politics, and-”

  “Ella, he is a man of God!”

  “But have you not become too dependent upon him?”

  “Can one become too dependent on the wisdom of the Lord? I seek Father Grigori’s counsel on many matters because of his spiritual closeness, because of his connection, to the God Almighty. Besides, even you know the greatest religious leaders of their time have always been attacked by petty politicians and connivers, not to mention the courtesans. As mother of this country, what concerns me is the well-being of my people, nothing more, and how I seek counsel is therefore my business. I must remain above the petty minds, you know this all too well. Nicky and I have oft been attacked, but we must stay above all the squabbling and seek the right, Godly direction for our nation. You know very well that all true countrymen say that a con
stitution would not simply be the ruin of Nicky but of the true Mother Russia.”

  “Yes, but…”

  And so it went, round and round. My dear sister was nothing if not powerful in her beliefs, and it was her conviction that they must not surrender any power to the bickering politicians who sought to pull Russia this way and that. God had placed Nicky on the Throne, and through God’s wisdom he would find the correct path. Our conversation was intense and deep, serious but not hateful. And yet all the same it broke my heart.

  “Really, my dear,” said Alicky, rising at the end of our conversation, “my own position on Father Grigori is quite immovable. I hope I have made myself clear.”

  “Yes,” I said, coming to my feet. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you. Perhaps it would have been best had I not come.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, kissing me on both cheeks. “But I always relish your visits. Can you not stay for lunch? I know the children would love to see you.”

  So discouraged was I that I begged, “I’m sorry, but I have so many matters awaiting me in Moscow.”

  “Then at least the girls and I will see you back to the train station.”

  Some twenty minutes later, Alicky and the older girls, Olga and Tatyana, and I stepped out into the bitter cold, quickly climbing into a limousine. As we set off for the station, I sat right next to my sister, holding her hand the entire way, which was our little custom, and yet this time, rather than chatting as usual, we rode the short distance in silence. We were both exhausted, both fearful, perhaps, of the months ahead. If only our soldiers could hang on until the spring, then victory would be ours. Just a few more months…

  I loved my sister so, as she did me, and though I protested that it was too cold, Alicky and the girls saw me through the station’s Imperial Rooms and onto the gusty, cold platform. As the winter winds swept around us, I tenderly kissed my nieces.