“Had to take charge!” the doctor snorted.
“I’ll watch you change the dressings,” I told him. “I want to be able to do it myself.”
“That’s not necessary. The nurse will—”
“I want to change them myself,” I said firmly.
I’d be Konstantin’s nurse, and give him more care and attention than any paid attendant could. With deep regret, but without a second’s hesitation, I’d abandon my revolutionary work – bury Lyudmila for ever. I’d almost lost my husband, and now he’d been returned to me, I’d devote all my time to looking after him.
Let Molotov warn me of Party discipline. Let Peter threaten to expose me to the Okhrana if I refused to continuing supplying him with information. I didn’t care. If we had to run away and live in a Mongolian herder’s yurt, what did it matter as long as we were together? Only my family counted.
With the death of Rasputin, the Empress fell into a mystical trance and spent hours every day kneeling by the staret’s grave, praying for the destruction of her enemies. The Tsar himself was becoming increasingly isolated. After Rasputin’s funeral – which only the Imperial Family attended – he didn’t return to military headquarters, but went into seclusion behind the walls of Tsarskoe Selo.
Buchanan, the British Ambassador, went to the Palace to express the anxiety of the Allies and to urge him to do something to regain his people’s confidence. “Do you mean that I am to regain the confidence of my people,” Nicholas asked, “or that they are to regain my confidence?”
While the Tsar walked gloomily around his palace grounds or played games with his children – puzzles were their latest craze – Petrograd deteriorated further. The bakeries needed 90,000 poods of flour a day for even minimal production, but were receiving only 35,000 poods. Of the sixty-three blast furnaces in the Donbas, only twenty-eight were still operating. Lack of raw material was causing everything to grind to a halt.
The city buzzed with talk of revolution. In the aristocratic salons disloyal toasts were drunk and plans to force the Tsar to abdicate were openly debated – even in the presence of members of the royal family.
And still nothing really happened. Life went on much in the same way as it had for the last three years – except that it became a little harder every day.
Konstantin’s wounds were not healing as they should, and though he tried to hide it from me, I could tell the pain was getting worse.
“A temporary set-back,” he assured me.
“I’m going to ring the doctor anyway.”
“Yes,” Konstantin agreed, wincing as he spoke. “I think that would probably be a good idea.”
“Gangrene,” the doctor pronounced.
Gangrene! It couldn’t be!
“Yes, that’s it,” the doctor continued. “Must have set in at the railway station. Split the wounds, you know. Always dicey, that.”
“Will he … will he have to lose his legs?” I stammered.
“We often do amputate with gangrene, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t do much good in this case. Most of the poison’s in the trunk, you see.”
“So what can we do?”
“Give him painkillers, keep the wounds aseptic and dry, and wait and see what happens. It’s a question of blood. Sometimes the body can purify itself, sometimes it can’t. Only time will tell.”
“You knew even before he told you,” I said accusingly, after the doctor had left.
Konstantin smiled at me. How, how, could he always manage to smile? “I guessed,” he admitted.
“And you knew the chance you were taking on the Nicholas Station. Didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“How could you run that risk?” I demanded furiously. “How dare you act like that when you have a family to consider?”
“I didn’t have any choice,” Konstantin answered softly. “There are things we must do even if they hurt our loved ones.”
“Fine talk!” I said.
“It’s more than just talk. And you should know that better than most people.”
“Me?”
“You didn’t really want to join the revolutionaries, did you? But you felt compelled.”
“I … how did you …?”
I looked at my husband’s face, and saw that he was laughing at me. “What else could have explained your long absences from the palace, my dear?” he asked. “No affair however passionate, could have taken up so much if your time.”
“You knew,” I gasped, “and yet you didn’t try to stop me.”
“If you believed in the revolution as much as I believed in autocracy, then I had no right to stop you … though I might have had to fight you some day.”
“You will have to fight me,” I said passionately. “You will! But first, we have to make you better.”
The wounds continued to suppurate poisonous gangrene pus and … I have seen worse … I’ve seen much worse … in Spain … men who had been human torches … who had scarcely an inch of unburnt flesh on them … and in the Bolshevik war against the Whites, I … why, after so long, can’t I think about it without … he was strong … he could stand pain more easily than most men … I’ve seen worse … much worse.
Konstantin …
Konstantin was delirious for much of the time. And I tended his wounds, soothed his brow, and tried to force a little nourishment down him.
Nicky came to see him every morning, as soon as he’d woken up from his troubled sleep. “Why doesn’t Papa get up?” he’d ask, his eyes barely open, a troubled expression filling his young face.
“He’s still sick.”
“When will you be better, Papa?”
“He’s sleeping now, Nicky. Being ill makes you very tired.”
Occasionally, the fever would abate itself and Konstantin became lucid. I loved these times – and I hated them. Loved them because for a short period I had my own dear Konstantin back with me. Hated them because of the things he said. “It’s time for me to go. I’m glad I won’t live to see my Tsar fall.”
There was no self-pity in his voice, just a simple acceptance of the logic of his own situation – and of Russia’s.
“You won’t die!” I said angrily. “Damn you, I won’t let you!”
“Have I done nothing to stifle the irrational side of your nature, my dear? How can you ever expect to fulfil your destiny as a revolutionary if you cling to a symbol of the old regime – a social dinosaur – like me?”
He was laughing at me. The facial muscles were weak, but the true force of his smile – the gentle, mocking amusement – was as powerful as it had ever been.
“Would you have me any other way?” I asked. “Would you change me if you could?”
He shook his head feebly. He scarcely made a dent in the pillow. “No. I’ve had a very good life in many ways, but the last few years, with you, have been the best of all.”
“They’ve been wonderful for me, too.”
“I’m sorry that I could never love you as a man should love his woman.”
“Do you think I care about that?” I asked him fiercely, as Peter’s face flashed across my mind. “Any man can give me that kind of love. But what you’ve given me, no other man in the world could. That’s why you can’t die.”
Not all gangrene cases die, I said to myself over and over again. And Konstantin’s a very strong man.
He couldn’t die. He was the centre of my universe and God simply couldn’t take him. How I prayed for a cure! Kneeling before the Virgin of Kazan until my whole body ached, gazing at the blessed icon until my eyes watered and the Madonna herself seemed to be shedding tears of pity.
“Grant me this one request,” I implored, “and I’ll give up everything I believe in. Grant me this, and I’ll devote my life to Your work.”
Miracles do happen! Jesus raised the dead. Rasputin, whose very existence mocked the Lord, still managed to bring the Tsarevitch back from the verge. And Nicky, our dear son, was born a cripple, yet learned how to walk.
But miracles, to be
miraculous, must also be rare. On a cold, frosty, morning, just as the winter sun was rising over the Neva, Konstantin died.
He was buried in the family vault on his estate outside Novgorod. The Tsar was not there – he was now so far gone that he couldn’t make the effort even for his oldest friend – but the officers from the Regiment turned out in force.
Troopers mounted on jet-black horses met the casket at the railway station, and solemnly escorted it back to the house. Cannons had been placed on the terrace, and a salute was fired. Four Captains who’d served under him carried the coffin to its final resting place. It was a magnificent ceremony.
“What are they all doing here?” my dead husband said in my head, as the soldiers marched past. “Don’t they know there’s a war going on? Their place is at the Front, leading their men, fighting for the Motherland.”
“Not everyone has your sense of duty,” I told him in my thoughts.
“What about you, my little princess? How are you managing without me?”
“It’s hard. I loved you so much.”
“Will you become a revolutionary again, now that I’m gone?”
“I expect so … I don’t know … nothing seems very important any more.”
“Don’t give in, Annushka! Fight for what you believe in – like I did.”
“I will,” I promised. “I will.”
I looked at the row upon row of muhziks who had come to pay him their last respects. Who could have guessed then – seeing them openly weeping for Konstantin – what they would do only a few weeks later? I should have guessed. A peasant myself, I should have been able to get into their minds. But my brain was clouded with grief, and it was of some comfort that others were sharing that grief with me.
When the pomp and circumstance was finally over, I took Nicky into the library. He was wearing a uniform which was an exact replica of Konstantin’s, and throughout the whole ceremony, he had been a brave little soldier.
“I’m going back to the city,” I told him, “but I want you to stay here with Vera.”
“Why Mama?”
“Petrograd’s going to be very dangerous soon. You’ll be safer here.”
“You would be, too.”
“I’ve got work to do. But I promise to very careful.”
His lip quivered slightly, but he refused to cry. “All right,” he said.
“You like it here, don’t you?” I asked guiltily.
“I’ll like being close to Papa,” he replied.
Oh, the poor child! “He’s not going to suddenly appear at breakfast one morning, like he used to do when he’d been away,” I said. “He really is dead.”
“Oh, I know that!” Nicky said, almost contemptuously.
Like his father, he was no fool.
Two disembodied voices echo in my ears. One is flat and reasoned, the other is lighter, the rhythms flitting like a butterfly from word to word.
“Is she going to be all right, do you think?”
“Don’t know. You hear me, Princess? Wha’s happenin’?”
I can see oranges and bananas, tins of curry powder and bags of rice. I am in Ali’s corner shop, sitting on a rickety chair, though I have no recollection of even entering the store.
“Wha’ say we call a doctor?” Winston asks.
“Or an ambulance,” Ali suggests.
“No ambulance,” I croak.
“Say wha’?”
“No ambulance …” firmer this time.
Ambulances mean hospital. Hospital means that I’ll not be at my ‘residence’ when Sonia and Jennifer call. And I know how they’ll react when they learn where I’ve been taken. First, they’ll shake their heads, implying they expected this all along. Then their busy little bourgeois hands will begin to pack up my things – because when I’m released from hospital it won’t be to Matlock Road they take me, but to the Gulag.
I must protect my mind. I – must – protect – my – mind. As long as that is clear, as long as I can see him as he was, Konstantin is not dead. But let me once get into that home, let one of the spores of geriatric woolliness which float around once settle on my head and begin to grow, and the picture will fade, the memories will decay. And it will be as if my wonderful, wonderful husband had never existed.
Chapter Twenty-One
I was in my bedroom when the nausea hit me. First came the taste of bile in my throat, then the room began to swim before my eyes. And with the nausea came the fear, a river of ice which rushed through my veins, chilling my whole body.
I clutched the dressing table for support. Sofia, my new maid, hovered uncertainly. “Is anything the matter, Madam?”
“It’s nothing,” I managed to gasp. “You can go.”
“Are you sure …?”
“Get out!” I screamed.
Sofia gathered her skirts and scuttled out of the room, leaving me alone. Alone with my thoughts. Alone with my problems.
I made my way shakily over to the window and gulped in a breath of crisp winter air. How would my two lovers react when they found out about my pregnancy? I wondered. Sasha would definitely want the baby. But perhaps Peter would, too – he seemed incapable of love, but he knew all about possessions. I imagined confessing to them that I did not know which was the father, and trembled at the thought of what they might do to me – and to each other.
It was three days after my first attack of morning sickness that I took part in the demonstration which – though we didn’t know it at the time – was the beginning of the end of the Romanov dynasty. The march started in the Vyborg District, a grimy industrial area on the other side of the Neva from the smart Nevsky Prospekt. The crowd which gathered was composed largely of women textile workers from the Lesnoy factory.
We paraded around Vyborg. Other women – thousands of them – joined us from the other textile factories. Steelworkers from the Putilov plant swelled our ranks, and then men from the Anchar and Obukhov works.
As the numbers grew, so did the confidence of the marchers. They were not little people any more, at the mercy of the Government, the Okhrana and their bosses – they were a mighty force, and they were unstoppable.
“Bread,” they chanted, “We want bread!”
I surreptitiously slipped a candied fruit into my mouth. What right did I have to be indulging in such luxury when these women were half starved? I thought guiltily. Yet I couldn’t help myself. My body had developed a craving for sweet things, and I was a slave to its demands.
“Down with the war,” the marchers proclaimed. “Down with the Tsarist monarchy.”
Yes, down with the Tsar! I thought. Down with privilege! Candied fruit for everyone!
I had started out at front of the march and intended to stay there, but new people joined us from side streets, and by the time the column reached the Liteiny Bridge, I was perhaps twelve or fifteen rows back.
I looked down at the river. It was still iced over, yet there was a spring-like feel to the air. I looked across the water at the palace which belonged to Princess Anna. I gazed at her boudoir window and thought of the luxury the room contained. How I hated her at that moment.
An excited buzz ran through the crowd. “Police! Police!”
They were on the other side of the bridge, trying to stop us from entering the central district. We marched on, crossing the bridge, getting closer and closer. Then, suddenly, the column came to a jerky halt. Messages passed down the line as those at the front became the eyes for the rest of us.
“The police have taken out their truncheons!”
“Somebody’s down!”
I was a Party member. It was my duty to lead – to be the first to take whatever punishment was being meted out. And yet a part of me was relieved that I was not there, being battered by the police. I didn’t mind getting hurt myself – what was mere physical pain after the agony of Konstantin’s death? – but now I was no longer a free agent who could choose whether to live or die. Now I had the responsibility for the child I was carrying.
We were in retreat! Yet though we gave ground to the police, though we returned to the Vyborg bank, we did not turn round – we walked backwards, never once taking our eyes off the splendid buildings on the other side of the river.
“We can cross the ice!” somebody shouted.
The words spread through the crowd like a breeze rippling through long grass. “The ice! We can cross on the ice.”
People rushed to the steps or scrambled down the embankment and soon there were thousands of us edging our way over the slippery surface. The police on the bridge started to move towards the far embankment, but they must have known they faced a hopeless task. On the bridge we had all been crammed between two parapets. Here on the ice, we spread out, no longer a column, but a tidal wave.
We climbed the embankment and marched along the riverside. We met with no opposition. We invaded Nevsky Prospect, perhaps a hundred abreast, bringing trams and cars to a stop. We looked up, at windows from which middle class office workers looked down, and chanted, “Bread. We want bread!”
We were showing these complacent people who had never even been inside a factory that we had power. They would realize now that the world as they had known it was finished. They must be trembling in their boots.
Life is not slow to mock the overconfident. I returned home to find an invitation to a grand ball at Princess Leon Radziwill’s palace the following Sunday. It should have arrived earlier in the day, my butler informed me, but the messenger had been delayed by ‘some slight disturbance’ on Nevsky Prospekt!
Only hours earlier I had been marching down Nevsky Prospekt with my comrades, and now I sat in my parlour, watching Peter sip his vodka. It was hard to believe it was still the same day.
“I didn’t hear your Rolls-Royce drive up,” I said.
“I walked.”
“Yes, I suppose even someone who likes flaunting his wealth as much as you wouldn’t be foolish enough to drive so ostentatious a car through the streets tonight.”
Our meetings were always like this – each of us trying to get the advantage, each trying to hurt the other. The antagonism existed even in bed, but there it served only to intensify the passion to a degree which was frightening.
The Silent Land Page 22
