The Tsarina's Legacy

by Jennifer Laam

  “They’re interested,” Michael said. “And considering what you want to do, getting involved with Reb, interest could be dangerous. That’s the point.”

  “I hoped you would … I want…” She hesitated. She wanted to make sure she really understood what she wanted before she said anything further.

  “What?” He looked away from her, moistening his upper lip with the tip of his tongue. “If you have something to say to me maybe now is the time to say it.”

  Veronica closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. “Look, back at the airport, I shouldn’t have told you I was done. It wasn’t true.” She opened her eyes once more. “Because right now I don’t care about what they think. I don’t care about the potential danger. All I care about is what you think. You.”

  She thought she saw a bit of the old magic in his eyes. “What are you trying to say?” he asked carefully.

  I miss you. I miss how it feels when you touch me. I miss the smell of your hair. I just … I miss you.

  “I want … I want us to do this together,” she said.

  “Come with me today then,” he said, his tone urgent. “I’m going to talk to Irina about your grandmother’s mysterious phone call from Laurent.”

  “Thank you.” She put her hand on his arm. “But I need to meet Anya. She’s taking me to Reb Volkov.”

  He threw his hands up in frustration. “How can you be so casual about all of this? You’re going to see Reb? You understand where we are, right? In Russia?”

  Veronica winced. He may have been trying to make a point to protect her, but he didn’t need to act like a flippant jerk in the process. She had already put herself out there. She shouldn’t have to tell him he was hurting her feelings. Thinking back to her conversation with Dmitry the previous night, she took another tactic. “You’re overreacting. Besides, we’re in St. Petersburg. Things are different here.”

  “Really? What about the graffiti by The Bronze Horseman?” He looked around self-consciously and lowered his voice. “You remember that?”

  She shook her head. “I still think you’re overreacting.”

  “Maybe you don’t care if you’re in danger, but I do. Your grandmother does too.”

  “It’s not that I don’t care,” she said, defenses rising. “But it’s why I’m here. To meet with Reb. To help him. I’m not going to abandon that now.”

  They looked at one another a moment more, but to her disappointment, Michael dropped his gaze first. She stared at his dark lashes and the curve of his forehead, wishing he would just hug her. Something. Anything to show the distance between them was closing.

  “I’m not standing in your way,” he said. “But at least be careful. For my sake if not for your own.”

  * * *

  “But how could you not recognize Vasily Turgekov? He is one of our most famous public figures!” Anya’s tiny car, a shaky product of some Eastern European factory, pulled into a narrow alley lined with a jumble of buildings, showing their age but newly painted in cheerful pastel hues of blue, green, and pink to counter the dull gray sky. “Don’t you watch movies?”

  “It’s just been so long since I’ve seen him,” Veronica said.

  “He is a monarchist, you know. Is he funding the Society? Is he a friend of Irina who gets special treatment? A major donor?”

  “I didn’t know. I mean, I don’t know if Irina knows him.”

  “You don’t know. You don’t know. But I know! I interviewed him. Me! I was so excited. I admired his early work. I wanted to think the best of him.”

  “I know. I know.” Veronica put her head in her hands, trying to concentrate on the rattle of Slavic pop music coming from Anya’s car radio. As they made their way down the narrow alley, Veronica peeped through splayed fingers. The last remnants of flowers and ferns clung to pots clustered haphazardly on balconies with intricate iron railings.

  “But the things he says in the interview! And he knows.” Anya pounded the steering wheel with one closed fist. “He knows Reb is my brother. He knows Reb is gay. And still he would say these things to me. Liquidated! Can you imagine?”

  “I am so sorry, Anya,” Veronica said. “I will make this right. I promise.”

  At the end of the street, a group of approximately ten young men and women had gathered with picket signs. The men sported hipster beards and the women had dyed their hair turquoise and violet. Veronica translated their Cyrillic signs in her head: “Free the Wolf,” “Gay Rights Are Human Rights,” and “I stand with Reb Volkov.”

  “Wow!” Veronica said, switching to English without thinking. “This is awesome.”

  Anya glared at her.

  Veronica returned to Russian. “I only mean I didn’t realize Reb’s fans were so devoted. Have they been out here long?”

  “Since the announcement of Reb’s sentencing. It is nice of them to come, but it would be far nicer if the press covered their protest. Or if there were more of them.” Anya leaned back in her seat and pressed her voluminous head scarf down so she could look over her shoulder as she made her first attempt to navigate a tricky parallel-parking space.

  “The protesters come to his flat every day?”

  “There may not be many of them, but yes, they are fiercely loyal, so they are here every day. Unfortunately, as you can see, this isn’t a highly visible street. Not many people see them. Their online presence is much stronger. At least for now.”

  Anya made a sharp turn and squeezed her car into the space between a delivery truck and a long sedan with tinted windows. When she pulled forward, Veronica was jolted in her seat as the car bumped the delivery van. The bump didn’t faze Anya.

  When they exited the car, the group of protesters approached, more curious than aggressive. A few faces paled as though they thought Anya and Veronica were part of the government’s security force, ready to whisk Reb away to prison camp. Veronica waved at them and received blank looks in return. Had she really expected them to recognize her? To call her Nika? Tsarina? Not everyone followed celebrity gossip like that. Get over yourself.

  “Nice building,” Veronica commented once they were inside the lobby. They passed a set of crumbling metal mailboxes and trudged up precarious stairs that creaked under their weight.

  Anya looked pointedly at the exposed circuit breaker and electrical wires dangling from sickly green wallpaper.

  “I wasn’t being sarcastic. I like the ambiance. This place would fit in San Francisco or North Hollywood.” Veronica pulled her coat tighter around her chest, shivering. “Maybe Chicago or New York.”

  “Aesthetically, perhaps, but the truth is we might as well live in a separate universe.”

  “What do you mean?”

  They reached the second floor and stopped at Reb’s door. Anya raised a gloved finger to press the bell. “I would rather we stuck to our old Soviet concrete blocks if we had control over who we love.”

  The door opened abruptly. They were greeted by the beautiful face of Reb Volkov, all angles and dark hair and piercing blue eyes. He stood barely taller than Veronica and wore a white V-neck shirt with a wolf imprinted on it.

  “This is her?” Reb said in Russian, indicating Veronica with a grand sweep of his hand. A giant orange cat perched across his shoulders and appraised Veronica with steady golden eyes, tail twitching. “The long-lost Romanov heiress? Our tsarina? Our grand hope?”

  “She is the one,” Anya said.

  Reb eyed Veronica up and down. She returned the favor and took note of the black Velcro band around his lower leg and the slight bulge at his ankle.

  “Oh, you noticed,” he said, tapping his ankle. “Yes, this is what has become of me. Trapped like an animal!”

  “Remember what they said,” Anya cut in gently. “A two-kilometer radius around your apartment. Now, will you let us in?”

  “Fine.” Reb opened the door and beckoned them inside. The room smelled strongly of oil paint with an undercurrent of healthy male perspiration. A sultry male French voice, Serge Gainsbou
rg, Veronica thought, sang from an iPhone propped in a deck with speakers. Reb strode across the room, the cat still lodged on his shoulders.

  “And another thing,” Reb said, as though continuing a previous conversation with Anya. “What will happen to Caravaggio? I can’t take him with me.”

  “If it comes to that, I’ll take him in.” Anya offered her hand to the cat and let him sniff and nibble at her fingers. She moved a few canisters of bushy-tipped paintbrushes out of her way so she could place her purse on a low bench in the corner of the room. She kept her phone in her hand. “But it won’t come to that. You’re not going anywhere.”

  “What if I do? He can’t handle being away from me. Look at him! This is how he has spent his days since he was a kitten.” Reb looked at Veronica, his voice still hostile, as though she were personally to blame for the animal’s plight. “I found him curled up under The Lute Player. Just a ball of orange fluff who found his way into the gallery.”

  “He’s a Hermitage cat. He’s feisty. He will be fine.” Anya adjusted her glasses so they sat farther back on her nose and then righted her hijab. “I’m not worried about Caravaggio. I’m worried about you.”

  Reb dropped down onto a low sofa that looked like it had come straight from a garage sale back in Bakersfield—a garage sale in the seventies. Canvases of Russian landmarks were tacked to the walls, left half-done on easels, drying near an electric fan with a blaring motor that almost drowned out Serge Gainsbourg. Red and black Soviet propaganda posters covered the back of the door and random paper balls hung from the ceiling. It looked as though Reb had either purchased the balls from a discount party store or made them himself out of papier-mâché. On the humming refrigerator, she spotted a large magnet with a reproduction of Caravaggio’s Lute Player, the sad young musician, mouth half-open, gently cradling a rounded lute in his elegant fingers.

  On the opposite side of the room, clinging inconspicuously to an easel, Veronica saw one of the paintings that had gotten Reb into so much trouble in the first place. She pointed to it. “They didn’t confiscate your work?”

  Reb stroked the back of Caravaggio’s furry neck. “I managed to smuggle this one out by bribing a guard.” He swept his hand in its direction. “What do you think?”

  Veronica moved closer to the painting. Reb had painted the iconic swirling onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square. The cathedral was lovingly rendered, tilted at a dramatic angle so it appeared as though you were lying on the ground and looking up at the structure. Clouds billowed behind it, stark white against a cobalt sky, adding further drama to the scene. Part of the reason Reb had become so popular in the first place was his obvious love for Russian culture and the Russian soul.

  Apart from the church, however, the rest of the painting was cartoonish. The Russian president stood in front of St. Basil’s, chest puffed like an angry bear. He wore the robes of ancient Muscovy and a long beard. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Russian history would think he looked like Ivan the Terrible. Behind this figure lurked two Siberian wolves, licking their chops. But they weren’t eyeing the president. They were looking directly at Veronica, as though they intended to gobble her up for dinner and then spit out the bones.

  Another figure in the background was clearly meant to represent an Orthodox clergyman in a high hat and vestments. He was masturbating.

  “What’s the matter?” Reb said. “You want to say something?”

  Veronica knew nothing about art. And the painting was weird. One minute she liked looking at it, and the next minute she wanted to turn her head. She preferred the softness of The Lute Player. She resorted to the mantra of the graduate student who hadn’t read an assignment: “It makes you think.”

  “Spare me the platitude. I want to know what you think.”

  “The way you’ve portrayed the church and the sky makes me wonder what it’s like to be in your head. You must see the world in such a beautiful light.”

  “And the rest of it?” Reb asked.

  “You’ve taken a sacred place,” Veronica said, “and you’ve made it ugly. I mean, I get what you’re trying to say. The oppression and absurdity. But I can see why some people were upset.”

  “Reb did nothing wrong!” Anya cried.

  “Oh no, please, let the royalist speak,” Reb cut in. “We know what a long history the Americans have of treating sacred spaces as such. Please, Ms. Bourgeois Capitalist Autocrat, render your judgment.”

  “I’m not saying you did anything wrong. I’m only saying that since it is such a sacred place and since you have the patriarch or metropolitan or whoever he is”—Veronica gestured toward the painting, struggling for a way to express it in Russian—“taking care of himself, perhaps an apology is in order.”

  “The church is a joke!” Reb said, pointing an accusing finger first at the painting and then at her. Miraculously, Caravaggio remained on his shoulders.

  “The Society wants me to serve as the official representative of the House of Romanov. That means I’ll work intimately with the church. I knew that before I came here. So I can’t agree that the entire church is a joke.”

  “Oh! Well! Forgive me, Your Holy Majesty! Should I kiss your toes? Why didn’t you just say that when you came in! I’ll say I’m sorry and all will be absolved.” He crossed himself carelessly, in the Orthodox fashion, from right to left.

  “Why are you so angry at me?”

  “You defend the precious Orthodox Church. You know what they think of me? Of gay men? Of gay women for that matter? They want us burned alive. You heard me correctly. And you know what? The other religious groups aren’t any better. Not in Russia. Islamic clerics?” He glared at Anya’s hijab. “Same thing!”

  Anya sighed. “I don’t think that way.”

  “A few extremists are making disturbing comments,” Veronica said.

  “More than a few! Religion encourages them to think that way. They say we’re satanic. I say they’re a joke. This is exactly what my great-grandfather in the Red Army fought against. But oh, I forgot.” He ducked toward Veronica again. “These people are your friends.”

  She shook her head. His eyes grew wide. “So innocent.” He grabbed his phone and tapped a few buttons. Caravaggio hopped down, shaking himself off and giving his leg a few quick licks. “I never should have listened to Dmitry. Me! Working with the Romanov heiress! Nobles are pigs. My great-grandparents fought with the Reds in the Civil War. The Romanovs were ignorant xenophobes who thought of nothing but their own pleasure. For all I know my great-grandfather might have had your great-grandmother, your precious Alexandra, arrested.”

  Veronica followed most of Reb’s tirade but had trouble formulating a response in Russian. “I mean … obviously … that was a hundred years ago.”

  “You say you support me. Dmitry insists you can help and bring attention to what is happening to gays in Russia to the West and tells me all of the wonderful things you can do to help me. But how do you explain this?”

  He thrust the phone in Veronica’s face. She saw the two pictures from the newspaper that Michael had shown her earlier: Vasily Turgekov and Dmitry Potemkin.

  “I told you there had to have been some mistake,” Anya said, bending down to pet Caravaggio as he rubbed against her legs. “She says she didn’t know who he was.”

  Reb held the phone up again and pointed an accusing finger at the phone. “Vasily Turgekov. How could you not know?”

  “I am sorry,” Veronica said. “I truly had no idea. I haven’t slept much. Everything happened so fast last night.”

  “Oh, I can see that.” Reb swiped the phone with his finger and showed her the other picture. “And this? You are in love with Dmitry Potemkin now?”

  “What?” Anya grabbed the phone from Reb.

  “I’m sorry, no. No. I … it’s not what it looks like,” Veronica told Anya.

  “Again with the idiocy. You think Anya is in love with Dmitry?”

  Veronica shook her head uncertainly.

>   “Heteronormative and bourgeois. I should have known.” Reb swiped the phone again and showed Veronica another picture. In this one, Reb held Dmitry in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral as they gazed into each other’s eyes.

  It took Veronica a few seconds. Reb was right. She was heteronormative. “Oh!”

  “I told Dmitry he should come out.” Reb shoved his phone back in his pocket. “He thinks he can help better this way. But now I wake up to this? To these idiots in the Russian media declaring the love of my life has fallen for a woman? An American woman? A noble?”

  “He has not. My God, Reb. Ever since I met that man he has done nothing but talk about you. You’re right. I was looking at the world like a stupid straight girl. If you were a woman I would have figured it out immediately. He is desperately in love with you.”

  Reb bent to stroke Caravaggio. “The people I love most in this world—Anya, Dmitry—tell me to trust you. But a royalist can never be trusted.”

  “I’m not a royalist,” Veronica said. “Tsarina is only a ceremonial title. I want to use it to help you in any way I can.”

  “Why? I hear the Society is interested in reparations for the noble pigs. The rich get richer. Why should I believe you want to help me?”

  Veronica raised her hands helplessly. “Because this is all I have left. The Romanovs haven’t held the crown in nearly a hundred years. And maybe this is just a ceremonial title, and maybe it’s silly, but this is it. This is what I have in my life. And I want to make a difference. I know that sounds dramatic, but it’s how I feel.”

  Reb arched his beautiful black eyebrows in a wonderfully skeptical manner. Veronica realized Russians were the last people in the world who would worry about being “dramatic.”

  “I want to do what’s right,” she said. “At some point I have to say I’m in charge of my life, not my doubts.”