“No, I hadn’t heard,” I said. “What kind of meetings are they?”
“Very profitable ones – for Rasputin. The flunkey hands over a shitload of money and a list of things the Minister would like to do. Rasputin takes the list home and thinks about it over half a dozen bottles of Madeira. Then next morning, he phones and tells Alexandra which of the requests he approves of.”
And the Empress, after due consideration and bearing in mind all the facts as conveyed to her by a half-literate holy man, would make her decision. In this way the largest empire in the world, fighting the greatest war ever known, conducted its business.
“Can I pass that on?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” Peter said. “Pass it on to your mates in the Party, and tell the tight buggers I want something good in return.”
He knew, without me having told him, that I informed on him to the Central Committee. He knew, too, that they were making use of him just as he was making use of them. And I was in the middle – an instrument both of them were playing, each hoping to get a better tune out of me than the other. And who did I play the better tune for? I tried to do it for the Party, but to this day I have no idea if I succeeded.
The cunning left Peter’s face and was replaced by lust. I watched his spade-like hands moving towards me, and felt simultaneously sickened and excited. “That’s the business out the way,” he said. “Now let’s get back to the screwing.”
“If Rasputin didn’t have so much power to do harm, the thing would be laughable,” I told Sasha, as we stood by the Neva, looking up at the empty Winter Palace. “Do you know that the Ministry of the Interior has thirty policemen watching Rasputin’s house – only they can’t follow him when he goes out, because he has a car and they don’t.”
Sasha nodded his head abstractly. He’d seemed preoccupied all morning, and I was doing my best to snap him out of it.
“And after Rasputin’s had his night on the town, it’s the Ministry’s job to clean up the mess,” I continued, “and that’s getting harder all the time. Rasputin just used to get drunk and make a lot of noise, but now he’s taken to exposing himself. The restaurant owners have to be bribed not to make a fuss.”
“H … how do you know so much about Rasputin?” Sasha asked.
I cursed myself for the fool that I was. In my efforts to cheer him up, I’d said too much. “The way Rasputin behaves is common knowledge,” I said lightly.
“It’s not common kn … knowledge how many policemen are guarding him.”
“I found out through my contact,” I admitted.
“And who is your c … contact?”
“You know I can’t tell you that,” I said.
Sasha’s eyes went wild. He grabbed me by the shoulders and started to shake me violently. I tried to break free, but he had the strength of a madman. “It’s P … Peter, isn’t it?” he demanded.
“Why should it be?”
“Isn’t it?”
“Yes!”
“And d … do you let him make love to you? Do you?”
“No,” I lied. “But what if I did? Isn’t anything justified if it helps the Revolution?”
Sasha’s grip relaxed. “Yes, anything is j … justified for the Revolution,” he said. “But if I thought Peter was so much as laying a finger on you, I’d k … kill him.”
The winter came and went. The snow melted away, the ice was soon gone. Flowers bloomed in the Alexander Park, trees started to grow sticky, shiny buds.
On June 4th, 1916, a new offensive was launched by General Brusilav in the south-west. Konstantin – the bastard! the wonderful, wonderful bastard! – had anticipated just such a move, and had already managed to get himself transferred to the southern sector.
At first the army made rapid advances, but by the 20th September, a stalemate had been reached.
‘When will they learn to co-ordinate?’ Konstantin wrote bitterly. ‘If the supply lines had been only even adequate, this campaign could have really shifted the balance. As it is, we’ve lost a million lives and nearly all our equipment!’
I didn’t care about the million men. My Konstantin, who seemed to have been involved in every single battle, was alive and unharmed! And with the bad weather setting in, there would be no more fighting that year. I hoped I could persuade my husband to come home – at least for a little while.
And then Romania declared war on the Central Powers and Germany invaded it. The weather was milder down there and a winter campaign was still a possibility. A Russian expeditionary force was sent to support the Romanians, and Konstantin, of course, went with it.
Petrograd was a desperate place in that last winter of Tsardom. Life for the workers was especially hard – wages had doubled since 1914, but prices had quadrupled. Not that there was much to buy, anyway. The common people had to queue for up to thirteen hours for black bread, often to be told when they finally reached the front of the line that there was none left. There was no butter or meat to be had, either, and most people subsisted on a diet of buckwheat porridge.
Naturally, there was a succession of strikes, and naturally, we Bolsheviks encouraged them. The governor called out the troops, but they refused to fire on the crowd. One hundred and fifty of the mutinous soldiers were executed, and support for the Party in military barracks increased so fast that it was hard to keep track of it. From then on, the governor would use regular soldiers as little as possible – security in the capital would be in the hands of the Cossacks.
Even among the privileged, the mood had changed. Members of the royal family said openly that the Tsar should abdicate in favour of his son. One of the grand dukes could act as regent and run the country, they argued – whoever was chosen, he couldn’t possibly make a worse job out of it than Nicholas had.
The winter bit harder. It was so cold that at one point twelve hundred locomotives burst their frozen pipes, disrupting the whole railway system and adding to the already acute food shortages in the capital.
Feelings of doom and despair – from which we Russians seem to draw a morbid satisfaction – grew every day more widespread.
Rumour abounded. The Prime Minister was in the pay of the Germans and had offered to give them Petrograd. His cabinet colleagues had been bribed a million roubles to starve as many peasants as possible.
Morale was as low – and mistrust as high – in the barracks. “It’s bad luck to be awarded a medal by the Empress,” a private in the Litovsky Regiment explained to me.
“Why?”
“Get a medal pinned on you by her, and sure as I’ll be rolling drunk at Easter, you’ll have caught a bullet within the week.”
It was hardly surprising that the man who drew most hatred was the one who had made himself most conspicuous – the man who had bragged loudly of his powerful influence at court. Subversive cartoons began to appear on the streets. They showed a simple-looking Tsar and his devious wife sitting in the hands of a huge, black-bearded figure – Grigorii Rasputin.
Sooner or later, someone was bound to come up with the idea of killing the starets. The leaders of the plot were Prince Yusupov and Grand Duke Demetri, the Tsar’s nephew. They lured Rasputin to Yusupov’s palace, fed him enough poison to kill an elephant, shot him three times, and finally beat him around the head with a blackjack. And still he was not dead – when he was fished out of the river a few days later, the doctors found water in his lungs!
The Empress was destroyed by the news. She had issued muddled and contradictory decrees before, but now she issued no decrees at all. The head of the government had abdicated her responsibilities, and there was no one to take her place.
Chapter Twenty
Whose hands are these resting on the table in front of me? I look up and see a face. I know it should have a nose, a mouth, eyes, yet to me it seems as featureless as a big, pink balloon.
“What did you say?” I ask.
“I said you’re going to have to go home now, Princess. We’re closing up, aren’t we? Told you that wh
en I brought you the last bottle.”
“What about all-day opening?” My voice sounds slurred, and I realize that for the first time in years, I’m drunk.
“Don’t have all-day opening round here, Princess. Isn’t really the call for it, is there?”
He laughs – Terry laughs. Having identified him, I can now, with effort, make my eyes focus his face back into something recognizable.
“We used to drink vodka by the bottle,” I say, and instantly curse myself for falling into the trap of the aged, the random serving up of slices of the past. I should not have had that third Guinness.
“Let me help you up, my old love,” Terry says.
He takes my arm and starts to lift. “There we go. Gently does it, my old love.”
Feet touching the ground, legs, not backside, now supporting me, I take a ten-tententave – tentative – step forward. It works. The old machine might creak, but after a few complaints it will still do what I want it to.
“Will you be all right, Princess?” Terry asks. “If you like, you can wait until I’ve closed up. Then I’ll walk you home, won’t I?”
“I’ll be perfectly all right,” I tell him.
Ah, the foolish pride of the old! But is it foolish? What have we got left without it? Possessions? Achievements? Children? These are all the products of something we did when we were younger, different people. Memories? Memories are simply that – things of the past. Knowledge? No one is interested in our acquired wisdom. So all we have left is pride, pride that we can still function. It’s the only way we can exist, the only way we can define ourselves independently of others who, unlike us, still have a contribution to make to the world. And when we lose that pride, we die.
I stop in the doorway of the Vulcan, and wait for my body to speak to me. Will it let me get back to my room without further interruption? Will my aged, wrinkled bladder store the Guinness until I am safely back in Matlock Road? I don’t want to be caught short. I don’t want to be like other old drunks I’ve seen – having to piss in the street.
If the legs aren’t any slower than usual, I can hold out, my bladder promises me.
I take its word, and step onto the pavement. I must sober up before Jennifer and Sonia arrive. Eccentric, drunken great-grandmothers are perfectly acceptable to the aristocracy and the proletariat – they are a laugh, a conversation piece – but in Sonia and Jennifer’s circle, they’re a social embarrassment.
Where do the girls get it from – this smug, unimaginative, bourgeois self-righteousness? Not from me! And not from their grandfather, my son Nicky. From their father probably, named Konstantin, but never half the man my husband was. No heroic life and death for this watered-down Konstantin. He expired on the golf course – only fifty – from a massive, stockbroker’s coronary.
The fresh air and the walking have helped to clear my head a little, but the rest of me is starting to feel worse. It’s not just my bladder I should’ve questioned. I should have spoken to my heart, which is now beating too fast, and my lungs, which are having difficulty taking in air.
Thinking about it only makes it worse. Turn your mind to something else, old woman, and let your body take care of itself. I was remembering the death of Rasputin, the fact that when they fished him out of the river …
No, no, no! Why is it that every time I relive this narrative in my head, I seem to get stuck on Rasputin, as if he were a barrier in the road which the wheels of my mind cannot coast over? I know why. It’s because of what’s on the other side of that barrier. But painful journeys must be endured – there’s no other way.
By Christmas 1916, the Germans had occupied most of Romania. On January 7th 1917, they decided that what was left was not worth the effort of taking, and suspended operations. On the 6th of January – the day before the end of the fighting – my husband Konstantin was wounded during an enemy artillery bombardment.
Thousands of desperate people swarmed fearfully along the platform. Scores of the walking wounded were trying to fight against the flow and reach the safety of the street – one-armed soldiers, one-legged soldiers, soldiers with eye patches, soldiers so swathed in bandages that it was impossible to know what was wrong with them.
The train’s escort did its best to keep back the mob, but it was an almost impossible task. Row after row of parents pushed for all they were worth, hoping to see their sons – and sometimes wishing they hadn’t.
“My God … it’s … I don’t … you haven’t got a nose any more.”
“Serge! It’s me – your mother. Can’t you see me?”
“Make a space! Make a space! Don’t jostle my boy – he has no legs.”
Others, recognizing familiar faces, demanded news. “Ivan Petrovich! Have you seen my Vyacheslav? Is he all right.”
“I don’t know. I … I heard someone say that he was killed just outside Bucharest.”
Happy fathers, sad fathers. Mothers who wept, one who kept banging her head against a pillar until her husband dragged her away. Anguish, relief, disbelief – that was how it was at the Nicholas Station that January morning.
Nicky sat on my shoulders above the crush and surveyed the mad scene. “Where’s Papa?” he asked. “I can’t see Papa.”
“He’ll be at the other end of the train,” I said.
In a proper carriage, not a converted cattle truck.
“You men on the left, form a phalanx and hold the line,” called out a loud, authoritative voice – a voice I recognized as my Konstantin’s. “You men on the right, link up. We need a passageway.”
“Can you see Papa?” I asked Nicky.
“No, I … Yes! There he is. He’s on a bed, but they’ve pro … pro …”
“Propped it up?”
“Yes, on the side of the train. It’s like he’s standing up, only he isn’t really.”
The crowd, including me, was slowly pushed back until a corridor had been created for the injured soldiers to walk down.
“Wave to Papa,” I suggested.
“He won’t see me. He’s looking at the soldiers.”
An hour passed. My face turned numb with the cold, my shoulders ached from carrying Nicky, but the crowd began to get a little thinner and by elbowing and manoeuvring I managed to catch a glimpse of Konstantin.
He was as Nicky had described him, his stretcher leaning against the train, his eyes watchful, his hands directing the bearers of other stretchers and the soldiers who were keeping order. Occasionally, he’d speak to one of the wounded men, but mostly he said nothing as the procession of mutilated young bodies was carried past him.
He seemed thinner, and I could tell the position he was in was causing him pain. I wanted to shout, “Konstantin, Konstantin!” but I knew my husband too well for that. Much as he wanted to see me, he wouldn’t thank me for disturbing him at such an important task.
The stream of wounded finally dried up. “That’s it!” one of the guards shouted over the loud murmuring of the mob. “Train’s empty!”
The crowd let out a low moan of disappointment and began, lethargically, to disperse. Who knew when the next train would arrive? Who knew if there’d ever be another one?
I pushed and shoved my way to the edge of the platform, put Nicky on the ground and threw my arms around my husband.
Konstantin winced with pain, and I released my grip. “Where is it?” I cried. “Where are you hurt?”
Konstantin grinned. “Just about everywhere below the neck. Shell fragments. They’ve taken some out, but I’ve still got enough metal in me to make a pair of skis.”
“But you … you are going to be all right?”
“I’ll never be able to kill a wolf for you again but with a little luck, I should make some sort of recovery.”
I put my arms around him, more gently this time. “I never wanted you to kill wolves for me. I only wanted you back alive.”
Our Hispano-Suiza had been used as a military ambulance since the start of the war, but this was the first time we’d needed it ourse
lves. I sat next to Konstantin’s stretcher – feeling pain myself every time we hit a bump – while Nicky jabbered excited questions.
“What’s war like, Papa?”
“War is a very bad thing, Nicky.”
“Then why are we fighting one?”
“Because we have to.”
“Did you kill many Germans, Papa?”
“Yes.”
“Did you like it?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Then why did you do it?”
“Because I had to.”
“What’s the fun in being a man if you’re always having to do things?”
Konstantin smiled. “Would you like to answer that, my princess?” he asked.
“I’ve never been able to find satisfactory answers to your questions,” I said. “Why should I do any better with your son’s?”
I had my family back together again. I was very, very happy.
The doctor slowly unwound the dressing which covered most of Konstantin. I wanted to cry, or be sick – or do something – but I stood there silently, looking down at the body which seemed to have been put through a meat grinder.
The doctor examined one of the wounds more closely. He frowned, and shifted his attention to a second one. Then a third! “There’s been recent bleeding,” he said, “and some of the stitches have burst. How did that happen?”
“They stood his stretcher on end so he could supervise the unloading of the wounded,” I said, ignoring my husband’s reproachful glance.
“They did what? Good God! Weren’t you told that even the lightest jolt could damage you? You’re only flesh and blood, you know.”
“The crowd was getting out of control,” Konstantin said matter-of-factly. “In another five minutes it would have become completely unmanageable and then who knows how many people might have been trampled to death? There was no one else to deal with the problem – I had to take charge.”
The Silent Land Page 21
