A Prince Without a Kingdom (35 page)

When he opened his eyes again, George couldn’t taste the blood anymore. He was breathing calmly. On hearing the milk woman’s words, he had experienced a deep sense of relief. The tsarevitch is dead. A sense of peace worthy of the great hereafter. His lungs were still filled with a burning sensation, but he was alive. And he was no longer the same person.

Five years ago, his older brother, Nicky, had become Nicholas II, tsar of all Russia. It was then that Weeping Willow’s disease had taken a turn for the worse. He hadn’t even been able to attend his father’s funeral. From that day on, he had become the crown prince, the next on the list: for Nicholas II had no son.

George the Weeping Willow might succeed his brother at any moment.

Ever since, he had been haunted by the desire to depart, to flee or to die. His tuberculosis had returned with a vengeance. The crown hovered above his head like a threat. All he wanted was to be able to watch the stars and to lie down on the heathery earth. He didn’t want to be emperor.

“The tsarevitch is dead.” These words had given him back his life. He thought of the
Tsarevna,
or Little Princess, the boat belonging to his grandfather Alexander. It was waiting for him on the Bosphorus, rescued at the eleventh hour from the scrap yard where it was due to be destroyed.

He considered how free he was as a dead man, and got back on his feet.

George was barely able to stand. He stared at the motorbike lying across the path. The woman hadn’t yet returned with the palace guards. He made his way over to the horse and undid its harness. Too weak to climb on its back, he whispered softly to it and made it kneel down slowly instead, like a circus horse. No sooner had Weeping Willow hoisted himself onto its back than the animal stood up. It was a draft horse that had never been mounted before, and it reared up as it tried to throw off its rider. Weeping Willow kept whispering, his arms wrapped around the beast’s neck. He gave a kick of his heels and together they galloped off, taking the path to the west.

Nobody recalled seeing a rider lying prostrate on his horse passing by. He didn’t stop for more than one hundred kilometers. The animal’s coat was covered in blood, but Weeping Willow was too far gone to notice. He was riding through the forests of Georgia.

At Chakva, on the shores of the Black Sea, he slid onto the sand in the middle of the night. The sound of the waves was music to his ears.

A little girl found him the next morning. She spoke Russian with an accent and stayed on her knees, singing to him, while her brother set off in search of grown-ups. Weeping Willow watched her without coughing: he didn’t have the strength. He could see giant bamboo canes above her.

The women finally arrived. They were on their way to work in the tea fields that covered the hills. They could tell at a glance that George was in agony. The families that lived in Chakva, on the eastern shores of the Black Sea, belonged to the Greek-speaking minority that had come from Anatolia. The mother of the little girl settled him into their house, in the heart of the bamboo forest, where everyone spoke Greek among themselves. Weeping Willow stood up several times to leave, but he never got farther than the door. He spat into a bowl, which the little girl rinsed out ten times a day.

It was the end, and he knew it. He had dreamed of dying on the waves, alone with the gulls. But he would have to make do with a simple view of the sea between the bamboo canes, and an eight-year-old girl instead of cawing birds.

The climate in this part of the Caucasus was almost tropical. The tea plantation was magnificently maintained. It was run by a Chinese man, Mr. Lao, who had left his country in order to manage one of the first plantations in Russia. He was never without the medal that one of the tsar’s ministers had awarded him for services to the Russian Empire.

When Mr. Lao came to see the sick man he had been told about by his workers, a woman raised the curtain with the invalid lying behind it and said, “He’s dying.”

“No,” countered Mr. Lao. “He’s not dying yet. He will die tomorrow.”

Next to him, the little girl shuddered.

The Chinese plantation manager stared at George, pushing his eyes open with his fingers. He tore off the sick man’s shirt and put his hand to his heart. Then he went away again, followed by the little girl.

That evening she returned with a cloth bag containing some small folded squares of paper. She opened them one by one, to reveal that each was filled with a fine powder. These were Mr. Lao’s remedies.

The first sachet contained a mixture of indigo, powdered bones, and gardenia. The second blended the roots of blackberry bushes and licorice with crushed-rice powder. The little girl boiled up a few pinches of these powders, and the water turned dark.

The next day, George was still alive. And the day after too. A week later, he wanted to sit on the steps and stare at the bamboo forest. After that, he was able to go and observe the workers in the tea fields. People wondered what he was doing still there.

He pinched himself when he woke up, to find out whether he really was still alive.

He could speak some Greek and most of the European languages. He made everyone laugh by asking why, in this plantation, only the women and children worked.

“What about you?” they asked.

And he shrugged.

“I’m convalescing, ladies.”

In reality, he had never thought about working. His only job was being born and then, every morning of his life, trying to come to terms with his birth.

One morning he went to take a look at Mr. Lao’s house. George hid between the trees to view the handsome white residence that gave onto the sea. One day, he would ask the plantation manager about the secret of his powers. Was Weeping Willow being cured? He heard a noise.

Mr. Lao was standing behind him, bowing, his head level with his knees, holding out a little red box as an offering.

“Take this for another fifty days.”

When George approached him, Mr. Lao knelt down, his gaze still lowered. He put the box on the ground, where it rested on a sheet of printed paper folded in four.

“Another fifty days.”

George tried to help him to his feet again, but Mr. Lao pressed his forehead into the grass, so that he was even lower. Then he stood up and walked slowly backward, inclining his head until he disappeared between the trees.

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.