“They’ve been arresting people all over the city,” Peter said casually. “Most of your Central Committee is in clink.”
“And you came all the way here just to let me know? How kind.”
“When the Government had the whip hand, it was happy just to keep tabs on you. But now it’s like a cornered rat – it’s attacking because it’s desperate.”
I was tired of playing games with him. “Why are you here?” I asked.
Peter sat down and stretched out his great, muscular legs. “If the Government’s going to fall, then it’s time to change sides.”
“You – a revolutionary!”
“The air always smells sweeter at the top of the dung heap. I’ll back whoever’s in charge.”
“You still haven’t said why you came,” I told him, and I realized that could only be one reason why – one reason he’d confided his plans to me. “You … you want me to help you come over to the Party!”
“You will help me.”
I laughed contemptuously. “If the Government falls, your power over me is gone.”
“I could still denounce you.”
“Denounce me! Who to? If the Tsar goes, the Okhrana goes with him. Do you think it’ll bother me if people find out that I’ve been working for the Revolution? Now that my husband’s dead, I don’t care who knows.”
Peter chuckled. “Your husband! What a idiot he was to marry you when he could see from the swell in your belly that you were used goods.”
How dare he say that? When he could never know. When he could never understand. I wanted to hurl myself at him and claw his eyes out – but that wasn’t the way to hurt Peter.
“Konstantin was a fool?” I asked. “What about you? You married a woman who despises you – for the sake of her aristocratic connections. Tomorrow there may not even be an aristocracy any more, and you’ll still be saddled with a shrew. Tell me, Peter, have you ever bedded her?”
From his face, I could see he had. Of course! He might not care about her, but he wanted children with blue blood in their veins.
“What’s she like in bed?” I taunted.
“She’s a fucking cold bitch,” he growled.
“Perhaps you’re too rough for her,” I suggested. “Perhaps she’s taken an aristocratic lover.”
He leapt from his chair and advanced towards me – a big, angry beast. I stood my ground. I wanted him to hit me, however much it hurt, because to hit me would be to admit defeat.
He stopped, suddenly, and his body relaxed. He grinned. “Shall I tell you why you’ll help me, Annushka?”
“You can tell me why you think I’ll help,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.
“I’ve lifted your dossier from the Okhrana files. It proves you’ve been working for the police.”
“Molotov knows—”
“Molotov knows you’ve been working as a double agent. The dossier says you were the Okhrana’s double agent, not the Party’s.”
“It’s a pack of lies.”
“So is that crap you preach about a workers’ paradise. But enough people believe it. And enough people will believe what your dossier says. It’ll ruin you with the Bolsheviks. They might even have you shot.”
“They may have you shot as well,” I reminded him.
He shook his head. “I’ve got another dossier – mine. You should read the last entry. It’s good – I dictated it myself.”
“What does it say?” I asked, my feeling of dread growing by the second.
“Says my first loyalty’s to the Revolution. It even orders my arrest.”
“So why do you need me?”
“I’m offering you a chance to help me, Anna, because it’ll be easier that way. Shit sticks, and I don’t want even a hint of suspicion hanging over my head. But I’ll make it, with or without you.”
“I’ll fight you all the way,” I promised him.
“No you won’t – and I’ll give you two good reasons why you won’t. If you try, I’ll hand over your Okhrana dossier, and whatever happens to me after that, you’ll be out of the Party. You won’t like that, Anna. You want to be at the centre – making things happen.”
He was right. Apart from my child – my children! – the Party was the only life I’d got left.
“And your second reason?” I asked belligerently.
“Once we’re both in the Party, we’ll be fighting on common ground, and you’ll have more chance of beating me.”
“But you don’t think I could, do you?” I demanded.
Konstantin, in Peter’s place would have said, “I don’t know, my dear, but it will certainly be interesting finding out. Without you, life would be very dull indeed.”
Peter was no Konstantin. There was no amused smile on his face, only a self-satisfied smirk. “Course I don’t think you can beat me,” he said. “If I did, I’d never give you the chance in the first place. But I know you, and you think you can do it. So you’ll bide your time. And you’ll keep your trap shut, if and when I decide to join the Party. Won’t you?”
“Yes,” I agreed.
Because he was right again. One day, I’d consign him to hell, but at that moment he held too many high cards.
“Shall we go to your bedroom?” he asked.
Oh God, I wanted to. Our arguments always increased my physical need for him, and in any other place, I wouldn’t have been able to resist. But not there! I couldn’t make love to him in the home Konstantin and I had shared.
“Get out,” I said, as angry with myself as I was with him. “Get out before I have you thrown out.”
He was chuckling as he walked to the door, and on the threshold he turned round and looked back at me.
“In an hour, I’ll be screwing some whore,” he said. “And what will you be doing? Sitting here, wishing we’d gone to bed after all.”
He stepped out into the corridor and closed the door behind him.
I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of being right, I told myself as I heard his footsteps retreating down the hall. I’d never sleep with him again. But I knew that it wasn’t true. The best I could do was to hold out against him for as long as possible – hold out until my body betrayed me.
The next day was a repeat of the one before. Workers swarmed over the bridges from Vyborg, Vasilovsky Island and Nerva – all heading for the centre of the city. No trams ran, no cabs moved. The shops were closed, the factories on the other side of the river were idle. The whole of Petrograd was out on the streets.
The Government called out the Cossacks, but though their officers ordered them to charge us, the tough Siberian warriors refused. All day we paraded the streets – demonstrating our power – then night fell, and with the cold setting in, people began to drift away to their dormitories and lodgings.
The uprising was coming to the end of its second day. Cobblestones and lumps of ice had been thrown, sticks had been waved, but no one had been seriously hurt. That was about to change. Two days later – on sunday – there would be a massacre – and I’d be part of it.
“The Empress,” my butler said, holding out the phone. “She’s called six times.”
I picked up the receiver. “Your Majesty?”
“You’ve been out!” Alexandra said accusingly.
“Yes.”
“It’s not safe to go out. I’ve written to Hubby and told him all about the hooligans who shout about there being no bread simply because they want to cause a disturbance. And about the strikers who are too lazy to work themselves and stop other, more willing hands from doing an honest day’s labour. They need whipping – all of them!”
I was suddenly weary of it all and could pretend no longer. “Have you seen the people on the streets yourself? They’re shouting for bread because they’re slowly starving to death.”
“And whose fault is that? My husband’s, I suppose.”
“He must take part of the blame.”
There was a pause before she spoke again, and when she did he
r her voice was so low it was impossible to tell whether she was angry, or merely sad. “You’ve forgotten where you come from, Anna. You think like the aristocracy now. You don’t remember how much the muhziks love their Tsar.”
“They don’t love their Tsar,” I told her, exasperatedly. “They don’t even really love their own families. All they care about is their land!”
“I never want to see you again,” the Empress said shakily. “I never even want to hear your name mentioned in my presence.”
The line went dead.
Did I convince her? Did I manage to plant even the tiniest seed of doubt in her mind? No. Even in her dying moments, she probably believed that though there were some very bad people in charge of Russia now, the muhziks still loved their Tsar.
My break with her had to come sooner or later, and I suppose I should have been glad when it did. I hadn’t chosen her as a friend – she’d chosen me. She was a foolish, insensitive woman who could see no further than the needs of her own family. In many ways she, as much as her husband, had the blood of the Russian people on her hands. Why then, when I heard of her execution, did I find myself crying? I really don’t know.
After three days of comparatively peaceful demonstrations, the Government decided to fight back. The attack came on Sunday afternoon, when we were occupying Nevsky Prospekt again – and it was as sudden as it was deadly.
I felt the panic long before the first shot was fired. Now, I know it must have been started by the people close to the intersection of Nevsky and Sadovaya, who could actually see the soldiers being deployed. At the time, I only knew that fear was spreading through the crowd like a deadly virus.
And then the firing started.
Women screamed, men shouted, children began to cry. We were all moving frantically, our footfalls and panting breaths mingling with the reports of the rifles. People fell, some hit by bullets, others merely tripping or being pushed. Everyone searched desperately for shelter – in doorways, behind the ludicrously skeletal poles which carried the streetcar cables – anywhere there might be a chance to escape.
A bullet flew just past my head, buzzing like an angry, metal wasp. I hurled myself to the ground, trying to let my arms, not my stomach, take the impact.
More shots followed, and more, and more, filling my ears until I thought the sound would never, ever, go away.
A dead worker was on the ground a few yards from me. I crawled up to him and huddled against his back. There were bullets everywhere – whining overhead, thudding into brickwork, pinging against streetcar poles, ricocheting from walls, smashing windows.
And then, as suddenly as it had started, the firing ended. I raised my head cautiously, over the worker’s corpse. The soldiers rose to their feet and retreated in an orderly fashion down Sadovaya. What had made them cease the attack then? That was as unfathomable as what had made them open fire in the first place.
I climbed groggily to my feet. Many people remained crouched in doorways and the ones who were actually moving seemed to be in a trance. Some were still on the ground, too afraid to get up. And there were others who would never get up again.
I saw a woman soaked in blood. I saw a man with half his face blasted away. But it was the little girl who affected me most. She was perhaps six, with long black hair tied in plaits. I picked her up and hugged her to me. Her skin was already turning cold, and where there should have been a heartbeat, there was only a terrifying stillness.
I noticed a medallion around her neck and read the inscription – Tania. Knowing her name only seemed to make the tragedy greater.
“This can’t go on!” I screamed across the confusion of the square.
It couldn’t go on. The army had to be turned before more little Tanias died. My legs trembling, my heart thudding furiously, I walked away from the carnage and towards the Pavlovsky barracks.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“I tek you home, Princess,” Winston offers as I stand on the threshold of Ali’s general store.
“Let him go with you, Princess,” the gap-toothed Pakistani urges.
I shake my head. Much as I could use Winston’s strong arm, I daren’t accept. I know that Sonia and Jennifer might already be waiting, and to see me being supported by a man, worse yet, a black man – a Rastafarian with dreadlocks – would be all the proof they needed that I’m no longer capable of looking after myself.
But they are not here when I arrive, and now I have time to prepare a little. I need a plan of campaign, a strategy. Like I had in my days as a Bolshevik agitator. I knew then how to act – knew all the weaknesses and fears of my factory workers, my bakers, my soldiers, and played on them ruthlessly. All in a good cause, of course, everything we Bolsheviks did was always in a good cause, Joe Stalin was a kind man who murdered forty million people in a good cause …
Enough! You’re wandering, old woman. There must be something I can offer my great-granddaughters. There has to be a price – a price I can afford to pay – which will allow me to keep my freedom.
Footsteps in the hallway. The sound of a key being turned in the lock. They know I’m here and all they have to do is knock, but they don’t bother. It would be troubling an old woman too much to expect her to get off her chair and admit the guests herself. Besides, why should she want to do that? What need has she for privacy – at her age?
The door swings open, and they are standing there. Jennifer, the elder of the two, is dressed in smart suit which, if not exactly severe, is at least crisp and efficient. Sonia, in contrast, is wearing a dress which, while neither frilly or fluffy, manages to give the impression of being both.
“Hello, great-grandmother,” Jennifer says. “It’s Thursday again.”
“Yes,” I agree. “Thursday again.”
I try to fight back my dislike. I shouldn’t be too hard on them, I tell myself. My great-granddaughters are just as much prisoners of their safe, complacent, bourgeois world as my father was of the mir. They are as incapable as the Empress of seeing life through any other perspective but their own.
And what do they see when they look through their perspective at me? An old woman with whom they have nothing in common, but who, nevertheless, they feel obliged to visit. An aged relative whose living conditions are a social embarrassment – and yet who steadfastly refuses to move. A time bomb ticking away, ancient but not yet defused, a withered radical with still enough strength left in her to get arrested at some demonstration and humiliate them in the press. Yes, I can see their point – I only wish they could see mine.
My great-granddaughters consider they live in great style. They have servants! And if these servants are not loyal family retainers but Filipinos on two-year contracts (return flight included), well, these days that’s what you have to settle for. They throw lavish dinner parties – these granddaughters of my Nicky – at the end of which the ladies actually withdraw and the gentlemen pass around the port …
I know about these parties for a fact. I attended one – and only one – of Sonia’s.
An invitation to my great-grandaughter’s house. I needed a new dress, Sonia fussed, something classic. And I must visit the hairdresser’s just before the party. Did I have any of my old jewellery left? What, none? Not even in the bank? It didn’t matter, some could be hired. I wasn’t to worry, Charles would pay for everything.
Imagine it – a group of people around a long rosewood table, people who would have loved to attend one of the banquets we used to have in Petersburg – but who would never have been invited.
“Great-grandmother is a princess of old Russia,” Sonia said to the merchant banker on my left.
He was a heavy man, though not exactly fat, with a smooth pink skin. Sonia’s words made him raise one pale eyebrow in appreciation. “And if my understanding of the Russia hereditary process is correct,” he said pompously, “that makes you a princess too, doesn’t it?”
Sonia giggled. “I suppose it does, though I never use the title.”
But she would
if she thought she could carry it off!
“Terrible thing that happened to your country,” the banker told me. “The greatest tragedy of the Twentieth Century.”
“Do you mean Lenin?” I asked carefully. “Or Stalin?”
“Whole pack of them,” he replied. “The Tsar might not have been perfect, but at least there was some sort of order in the country.”
Some sort of order in the country! The bread lines. The millions of young men walking into battle without even a rifle. “No, Nicholas wasn’t perfect,” I agreed.
“That’s where you slipped up and we didn’t,” the banker explained patronizingly, pink skin gleaming in the candle light. “Certainly our ruling class is not as evident as it was fifty or sixty years ago, but it’s there, behind the scenes, still ruling.”
“We made mistakes in Russia,” I admitted, “but we meant well.”
“I’m sure you did, and then the Bolsheviks came along and—”
“I’m talking about the Bolsheviks,” I told him. “I was a Bolshevik myself.”
It was one of those moments which sometimes occur at dinner parties when all other conversations have temporarily stopped and your words, intended only for the person next to you, carry to everyone else. Mouths around the table dropped open, people forgot what they’d been just about to say. The banker didn’t know how to react. The silence continued.
“Better dead than Red,” he said finally. “Trouble was, with Stalin in power, being the latter often meant ending up being the former.”
He laughed as though he’d said the cleverest thing in the world, and the others joined in.
He was right. Stalin killed a lot of good men. But they hadn’t given up their lives merely to be the butt of this man’s humour, the source of an amusing quip which would break the tension. He shouldn’t have joked – not about that.
I’d promised myself I’d behave, but now he’d made it impossible. I wanted to hurt him and I knew exactly how to do it – I’ve not lived so many lives without learning how to spot a fake when I see one.
“I should have thought a man with your background would have sympathized with a working class movement,” I said to the banker.
The Silent Land Page 23
