A Prince Without a Kingdom

by Timothee de Fombelle

  George picked up the red box. On opening it, he discovered further supplies of the remedies he was taking. Then he unfolded the piece of printed paper, which turned out to be the front page of a Moscow newspaper. The picture showed a coffin covered in flowers in the middle of Saint Petersburg Cathedral. A wide border in the color of mourning surrounded the article, which took up the entire page. The only printed words read: GEORGE ALEXANDROVICH ROMANOV IS DEAD.

  So Mr. Lao knew who he was.

  Weeping Willow never returned to the house in the bamboo forest. He left without saying a word to anybody. Barefoot and with a heavy basket under her arm, the little girl, whose name was Stella, watched him walking toward the sea.

  Chakva, Caucasus, fourteen years later, 1913

  The boat, which was all lit up with flares, had cast anchor two hundred meters from the shore. On the beach, dozens of shadows watched its reflections. Some sat on the sand, others were up to their thighs in the water. No one dared speak. There was no moon and no stars, only this incandescent launch on the sea.

  “I told you,” a young woman whispered breathlessly.

  “Has it just arrived?”

  “Two hours ago. It was still light. We saw a flag I didn’t recognize to the rear. Perhaps the sultan of Constantinople is fleeing.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense, Rhea.”

  “It’s all-out war. . . . Look, the other side!”

  Rhea thought her sister was referring to the flashes of war on some invisible shore. But she was pointing to the back of the boat. A dinghy had just been thrown into the water, making the reflections of light ripple. Two men clambered on board with a lantern and proceeded to row toward the beach.

  “Come on, Rhea.”

  The girls made their way over to the spot where the boat would come ashore. The other spectators kept their distance, fearful. One of the sailors stepped into the water and grabbed the lantern from the fore of the boat. As he raised it, the flame alighted first on Rhea’s face. She was only thirteen and felt intimidated, turning her gaze toward her sister as if she didn’t want to be there, preferring people to look at her sibling instead. Her older sister’s hair flowed all the way down to her hips. She must have been at least twenty. Her face was barely visible because she was shielding her eyes from the dazzle of the lamp.

  “I’m looking for Mr. Lao Zhenzhao,” said the sailor.

  “You speak Greek! Are you Greek?” asked the young woman.

  “I’m looking for Mr. Lao.”

  Even in Greek, he had an odd way of talking.

  “He’s probably asleep,” she replied. “He lives in that house over there. He runs our plantation.”

  “I need to bring him on board.”

  “Why?”

  “To drink tea with my master.”

  “Mr. Lao has enough tea to brew up the Black Sea,” said the young woman. She seemed hesitant but, staring at the lights from the boat, she added, “My little sister will accompany you to Mr. Lao’s house.”

  Rhea led the way for the visitor.

  The other sailor stayed in the boat, having stashed the oars. Small rolls of waves broke against the hull. The young woman sat on the gray pebbles, staring at the silhouette of the boat with its three masts linked by garlands of lights. Fifty meters of fine gold. Who did it belong to? She thought she could hear music on board.

  “Is he a prince?” she asked.

  The sailor smiled and smoked his tobacco from Argos.

  “Perhaps. I don’t know, even though I’ve been sailing with him for ten years.”

  “Has he got a family?”

  “No.”

  Mr. Lao arrived at the beach. Having dressed hastily, he was wearing his medal of the Order of Saint Stanislaus back to front. Rhea went to sit on the sand next to her sister. The curious bystanders had all gone, and there was just a dog left sniffing around the algae. Disconcerted, Mr. Lao clambered into the back of the dinghy. The two sailors also climbed on board and made for the open sea with strong oar strokes.

  “Go home, Rhea.”

  “Me?”

  The beach was deserted.

  “Go to bed.”

  “What about you?”

  Stella was staring intensely at the play of light on the sea. When the dinghy became invisible behind the boat, she stood up and took a few steps toward the water’s edge. She hitched up her skirt and tied it around her waist.

  “Go to bed, Rhea.”

  “What are you doing?”

  Rhea saw her big sister keep on walking: first her feet, then her knees, and finally her waist disappeared beneath the water. Without disturbing the surface of the sea, Stella dived in, reappearing farther off, where she began to swim. She turned back toward Rhea and signaled again for her to go away. She dived once more and vanished into the liquid night.

  Rhea fled toward the trees.

  Mr. Lao sat on the floor, holding his cup in his right hand.

  Weeping Willow was at the far end of the carpet, pouring from a large samovar. He wore a red blanket over his shoulders.

  “I’m sorry for disturbing you in the middle of the night.”

  The candles gave off an ecclesiastical scent in the boat’s long cabin, as Lao bowed his head respectfully.

  “I wanted to wait until tomorrow. But there are skirmishes on the sea toward the west. I have to leave, so as not to be trapped.”

  The Chinese plantation manager bowed his head again.

  “I wanted to thank you,” said the stranger. “I left without thanking you for healing me.”

  Mr. Lao opened his mouth to give a response, but then thought the better of it.

  “I know what you were going to say,” offered George. “By your reckoning, it’s the first time that a dead man has returned to thank his doctor.”

  Lao nodded, and a long silence fell between them, before he ventured, “According to the newspaper, your mother suffered greatly in grief.”

  “I had no intention of living. I wanted to die. It’s not my fault.”

  “In that case, it’s mine, Your Majesty.”

  “Don’t address me in that way.”

  Lao hadn’t yet sipped his tea, but he inhaled its aroma.

  “Perhaps you should let your mother see you, one day,” commented Mr. Lao.

  “Nobody misses me anymore.”

  “Just your mother —”

  “Be quiet.”

  George was staring at a candle as the boat swayed.

  “You have also come to ascertain whether I’ve told anybody,” said the plantation manager, wetting his lips in the tea for the first time. “This tea is Ottoman,” he declared.

  “Yes.”

  “I haven’t breathed a word,” continued Mr. Lao. “I haven’t spoken about it to anyone. I’m always on my guard. My tea merchant often repeats a proverb from his home village: Tell your secret to a friend, but your friend also has a friend.”

  Weeping Willow nodded. The wick of a candle spluttered as it drowned in wax.

  “Perhaps I’ll go to see my mother,” he said.

  “Promise me.”

  George had learned that his mother hadn’t stayed until the end of his funeral service. She had left the cathedral, distraught. After his departure from the palace at Abbas Tuman, Weeping Willow had guessed that nobody would mention the fact that his corpse had never been found. There were enough curses hanging over his family already. George Alexandrovich was dead. That was enough. A coffin was buried containing no body, but filled with books.

  “Look at me, for example. I left my country,” explained the man, “without ever seeing my mother again.”

  Weeping Willow glanced at Mr. Lao, who was smiling. Only the light trade winds rippling the surface of his cup of tea betrayed his emotions.

  “And then my mother died,” said Lao.

  Somebody pushed open the glass door that gave onto the deck.

  “I said nobody was to enter!” growled George.

  The sailor took a step backward.
r />   “Forgive me.”

  “Go outside.”

  “We’ve netted something out the back,” declared the sailor, looking pale.

  “I told you to go outside.”

  “I —”

  “Out!”

  Defying his master, the sailor dared to go over to him and whisper in his ear. George was taken aback. The red blanket slid off his shoulders.

  The crew on the boat was from Cyprus. In every sea of the region, as far back as antiquity, fishermen had harbored a secret dream of one day catching a fantastic creature in their nets. And the sailor had just uttered the magic word in Greek: Leucosia, meaning fair maiden, and the name of one of the three sirens.

  George stood up. Perhaps he too had been looking for a fairy or a siren during his fifteen-year odyssey? He had searched all the gulfs and rocks of the Mediterranean as far as Gibraltar. But there was still no woman by his side.

  He went out on deck and made his way toward the aft of the boat. The sailors were huddled near the tiller, with two lanterns flickering above them. They had formed a circle around somebody whose guilty demeanor, clenched fists, and sopping-wet hair and skirt were more reminiscent of a drowned cat than a mermaid. She hid beneath her hair. Nobody dared approach her.

  George wasn’t sure whether to cover her in his blanket. He leaned gently over and noticed that the mermaid had two bare feet where a tail should have been.

  Mr. Lao had followed George outside. He parted the sailors and surveyed the scene, standing next to the boat’s Russian owner.

  “Stella?” he called out.

  A face streaming with water appeared between the locks of hair. Two eyes found those of Weeping Willow. She had changed a great deal since the man with tuberculosis and the little girl from Chakva had first met.

  “What are you doing here, Stella?” asked Mr. Lao.

  But there was no reply.

  Despite the threat of war, the boat remained in the bay for ten days. And when it sailed off, one cold morning, there were many tears shed on the beach. Stella was going away with Weeping Willow. Their marriage had taken place at night. The priest had placed the Orthodox wedding crowns on the heads of the bride and groom, and George had flinched at the weight on his head.

  At dawn, on the shore, Stella’s mother had kissed her eldest daughter good-bye, as Mr. Lao held a black umbrella over them and the sand was whipped up. Little Rhea stayed hidden in the bamboo forest. She had climbed to the top of a thatched roof, in among the leaves and the wind, from where she watched the gathering on the beach as if it were a funeral. Stella forgot to seek her out and kiss her.

  George had the front of the boat emblazoned with a gold star, after his wife’s name. The sails swelled. They promised they’d be back, but the following summer the straits leading to the Black Sea were closed off with a sinister din. War broke out across the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus.

  The boat and its new star never returned to Chakva.

  That said, one day, even though armored soldiers roamed the region, the boat dropped anchor off the shores of Constantinople. George had entrusted the care of Stella to his crew. It was 1915 and the baby she was expecting might arrive at any moment. He promised to return before the baby was born. For the first time, Weeping Willow went back to Saint Petersburg.

  He saw his mother on a bridge, behind the Anichkov Palace. He kept the promise he had made to Mr. Lao. It only lasted for a moment.

  He had arranged a meeting with her in a letter on which was reproduced, in freehand, the motif of his blue handkerchief, to prove that it was him. It bore the refrain of his youth: Combien de royaumes nous ignorent. And, embroidered in gold thread, the signature he had created for himself, when he was fifteen years old, by carving it into a tree. The word Romanov, the name of his dynasty, was written in the Latin alphabet. But the V had been doubled, and was separate from the other letters, one line below.

  W, as in Weeping Willow.

  In the letter to his mother, George told her about what had happened to him, about being cured and his new life. Dear Mother, I am alive. I know that you haven’t forgotten me. If she wanted to see him, to be sure that it really was him, all she had to do was drive past at five o’clock. He would be beneath the sculpted horses on the bridge. She mustn’t stop.

  He also announced that he was going to have a child.

  Standing in the rain, George heard the sound of horses’ hooves first. Then he saw the carriage pass by with its misted-up windows.

  Stopping off in Moscow, he found Mademoiselle in a railway station. He noticed her red eyes, her suitcase, her upright figure, and he heard her French accent. He followed her discreetly as far as the post office and offered her a job. He was looking for a nurse for his child. He was sure that it would be a little girl.

  But it was a prince. Vango. A prince without a kingdom.

  To begin with, George’s mother kept safe the letter he had written her. But when the revolution broke out in Russia two years later, in 1917, it was found in one of the deserted palaces.

  In the boat, sitting on the carpet-covered deck and listening to Stella singing, Weeping Willow had carefully used his knife to pull out the golden thread on the second V. Only one remained now: V for Vango, his son.

  It was ten o’clock in the evening, and Mademoiselle was pouring pitchers of hot water into a copper bath. Vango lived in his mother’s arms. For several days now, the boat had been far from the war. Weeping Willow folded the square of blue silk. He had no idea that one day the signature on this handkerchief would identify his son, delivering him into the hands of his enemies.

  As they spotted the first lighthouse of Crete, a gust of wind was all it would have taken to blow the handkerchief out of Weeping Willow’s hands, drowning it in the sea, and changing Vango’s destiny forever.

  The five pages written by Mademoiselle to Vango, but which had never reached him, recounted much more and in a style that was simple yet powerful. They also mentioned the treasure, which the tsar’s mother had stored for safekeeping in Weeping Willow’s boat when the great revolution had begun. Mademoiselle described the little fishing port where one night they loaded on board a padlocked barrel with the seal of the tsars.

  Doctor Basilio read and reread these pages for many years. When he had first opened the letter, a long time ago, he had bought a Russian dictionary that he left in Mademoiselle’s deserted house in Pollara, in order to check how some of the words had been translated by the prisoner of Lipari.

  There was even a short paragraph about Mademoiselle’s youth in Paris, and it contained a former address, which was enough to make Basilio dream. It was the address of the place where she had worked before setting off for Russia in 1914. When would Vango come to collect Mademoiselle’s letter, which filled in the blanks of his life?

  For Basilio, many of the sentences addressed to Vango remained incomprehensible and even poetic sounding.

  You see, the truth is I remember everything. And the star I embroidered on your blue handkerchief marks the exact spot where we were shipwrecked, on the big V of our islands.

  These words surely meant nothing, even if the Aeolian Islands did form the shape of the letter V over the sea. The translator must have made a mistake. But Basilio liked this poem, which he kept just for himself.

  Paris, December 20, 1942

  It was pitch-black at nine o’clock in the morning. For two years now, the clocks in Paris had been moved forward to Berlin time.

  Two men were walking up the Champs-Élysées. The first was called Augustin Avignon. He wore a black woolen scarf and a hat pulled down over his head to protect his ears from the biting cold. He was followed by a young man, who carried a heavy briefcase in both arms. Avignon was issuing a barrage of short sharp orders, as if to hear his junior respond as frequently as possible.

  “Yes, Superintendent.”

  Avignon had been superintendent for nine months, and he still hadn’t gotten used to it.

  “His name’s Max Grund?”


  “Yes, Superintendent.”

  “Find out what grade he is for me.”

  “Yes, Superintendent.”

  “I’ve only ever addressed him as offizier. I must look like a fool.”

  “Yes, Superintendent.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Sorry, Superintendent. The Germans are establishing new offices every day. It’s hard to keep up.”

  The city was dark. The street lamps along the avenue were off. They came across some men pushing a cart full of wood.

  “Is it a little farther up?”

  “Another hundred meters, Superintendent.”

  “I’m going to give them a piece of my mind, I can tell you. The sparks will fly.”

  “I understand, Superintendent.”

  “So, are you taking any vacation, Mouchet?”

  “Just for Christmas.”

  “To do what?”

  “My wife wants to visit her family in Nice.”

  “And when does this vacation of yours start, Mouchet?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Perfect.”

  Whenever he listened to himself speak, Avignon was always hoping to catch the intonations of the great Boulard. He imitated his former boss as best he could, as he tried to punch above his weight. To be a bit stronger, a bit tougher, a bit more generous than he really was. But he often fell short of the mark.

  “My regards to your wife. Is it Monique?”

  “No, it’s Elise.”

  “Lise, yes, of course.”

  “Elise, Superintendent.”

  “Don’t split hairs, Mouchet. And merry Christmas to your children.”

  “Yes, Superintendent.”

  Mouchet didn’t have any children. Avignon had chosen him as his assistant because he was young and had never known Boulard. With luck, the copy wouldn’t seem so pale to him.

  “Here we are,” declared Mouchet.

  “You can say what you like, but they’ve got good taste,” commented Avignon when they stopped in front of a set of large metal gates. The Nazi flag was draped from the balcony of a handsome private mansion with a courtyard. France had lost the war and Germany was occupying the country.