The Romanov Bride (17 page)

Yes, I averted any difficult conversation with my sister, but upon my return to Moscow came another incident, more egregious than any other. It was said that our brother, Ernie, the Grand Duke of Hesse und bei Rhein, had been secretly sent to Russia by the Kaiser. Ernie was to negotiate some kind of shameful peace with Germany, and supposedly he’d been in hiding at the Palace in Tsarskoye. Simply preposterous. So said the tongues, however, claiming that such was the supposed reason for my recent visit to my sister. It was claimed that I, not any servant, cooked for him lest he be seen and recognized. Further, somehow disguised he was supposed to have got his way to Moscow, hiding in my railway carriage, and could now be found taking secret shelter in the depths of my obitel. At first I assumed this was the work of German spies, but it turned out the story was birthed quite effectively by our Russian revolutionaries. Clearly, their clever ploy was to use a deceitful story to knock away the God-given pedestal from which Nicky ruled.

It came as no surprise, then, that one morning I heard shouting and yelling from beyond the walls. I was in our hospital, attending to a serious wound on the groin of one of our soldiers, when my long-faithful Nun Varvara came running in.

“People are marching upon us, Matushka!” she gasped, unable to hide her fear. “There are men with sticks and rakes coming down the street-they’re shouting the worst things!”

“My dear, I’m busy at the moment. And please keep your voice down-as you can see this man needs his rest.”

“But, Matushka, I’m fearful for your safety!”

“Well, I am not. And besides, I am busy caring for this poor man. The bandages on his wound must be carefully changed.”

“But what-”

“Just lock the gates, my child, and I’ll be there as soon as I’ve finished. At the moment this man’s health is more important than anything else.”

Nun Varvara hurried off, and I returned to my duties of caring for the man before me. Wounded in battle, he had been brought back to Moscow and operated on in our theater just yesterday, the doctors having removed four small pieces of shrapnel. In great pain, the soldier had been slipping in and out of consciousness all morning.

As I removed the bandages and cleaned his groin with warm water, the man moaned and opened his eyes. I looked at him and smiled gently. His wound was serious, but if we kept it cleansed and covered I felt we could keep gangrene at bay.

“Who… who are you?” he asked, speaking for the first time.

I humbly replied, “I am your servant.”

“Someone said you are a princess… but you are not Russian… I can tell by your accent. Are you a German princess? Am I in Berlin? Am I a prisoner?”

“No, my good man, you are in your Motherland. You are in Moscow. And as I’ve already told you, I am your servant.”

From outside came shouting and yelling and some kind of racket. Dear Lord in Heaven, were our gates being broken down?

“What’s that?” said the soldier, struggling to sit up. “Are we under attack?”

I reached for some ointment and lint, and advised, “Please, just lie back down. There is nothing to be concerned about. We must attend to your wound, it must not be overlooked. Just relax.”

Unfortunately, the mayhem outside seemed to grow by the moment, and quite clearly I heard someone shout, “Nemka, doloi!”-Away with the German woman!-but I turned my mind to all things spiritual. There was no reason to doubt, no reason to mistrust, I thought as I finished bandaging the poor man, for all was in God’s hands. After all, not even a hair could fall from one’s head without God’s knowledge. And to calm my soldier I softly began to sing, “Svyeta Tixhi”-“Hail, Gentle Light.” No more than ten or fifteen seconds passed, however, when I heard the disturbing sound of glass breaking.

“Will you excuse me?” I said to the soldier.

But the man had already drifted away, his eyes closed. Moving now with haste, I rinsed my hands and hurried to a small window. Peering out, I saw a mob of easily forty or fifty people, mostly men. They had breached our main gate and were flooding into the garden, rakes and thick sticks raised in their hands. Worse, they were charging after two of my youngest sisters, who were fleeing toward a side door. Right before my eyes I saw a cobblestone fly through the air, hitting one of the sisters on the back. She stumbled, the other girl took hold of her and dragged her on, and the pair frantically disappeared inside a doorway. Just as they pulled shut the door, another stone sailed after them, smashing against the wood. Then came another, and another, flying this way and that, and window after window was shattered to pieces.

“Radi boga,” For the sake of the Lord, I muttered, quickly crossing myself.

Above the rabble, I heard a loud voice shout, “Shpionka, suda!” Bring out the spy!

“Nemka! Nemka!” The German woman, the German woman, the mob yelled nearly as one.

Without a moment’s waste, I hurried off, lifting the front of my robes as I made my way from my patient’s room and through a series of small corridors. I turned corner after corner, for our buildings were all linked by walkways, and when I reached the main doors of my own house I found not only a half dozen sisters frantically pushing against the door to hold it shut but Father Mitrofan throwing his weight against it as well. They had bolted the doors, of course, but the crowd outside was determined to batter their way in. Upon seeing me, Father Mitrofan and all my girls shouted their fear.

“Matushka, you must run away!” called Sister Mariya.

“They want to hurt you!” exclaimed the novice Makrina.

Even Father Mitrofan, usually so rational, frantically urged, “You must flee through the kitchens and out the back door!”

I slowed, gathering my thoughts and prayers. In all things there was wisdom, in all things there was His plan.

“Please, step aside and allow me to handle this,” I said to my sisters. “One must be ready at any time to wear the martyr’s crown of thorns.”

At first they hesitated, but my young ones meekly obeyed, retreating as one into the next room. As the beating on the doors grew steadily rougher and harsher and the screaming beyond louder and coarser, I knew absolutely what I must do. I reached for the iron bolts and drew them open, and then I threw wide the double doors. A great cry went up from the mob, which seemed poised to run right over me, but then the advancing horde stopped, stunned by the sight of me standing there in my gray working robes.

“Welcome to my community,” I said with a gentle bow of my head. “I am the Matushka of this obitel-is it to me you wish to speak?”

At first none knew what to say, how to act. There was some grumbling, some brandishing of the sticks.

Finally, one of them shouted, “We want your German brother, the Grand Duke of Hesse!”

“Give him to us!” yelled a handful of others.

“I, too, have heard such stories,” I began, my voice strong and clear, “but I can assure you that my brother is nowhere to be found within this community. In fact, he is nowhere to be found in Russia.”

“But he’s hiding in the cellar, I know it!” called one.

“I’m afraid you are mistaken, for I would never permit such a thing,” I replied. “It would be tantamount to treason.”

“Nemka, doloi!”

“German bitch!”

“Shpionka, suda!”

“Listen to her speak-she’s pure German!”

For half an instant it seemed they would rush forward and seize upon me, then ransack the entire community. I felt as if I were overlooking a kettle about to boil over, so evident was their anger and exhaustion.

“Once again,” I began, my words measured, “I can assure you that my brother is not here, nor has he ever been. However, a handful of you are welcome to enter our buildings and look throughout every room. I only ask that it be no more than six of you who come in because behind these walls and under these roofs are many sick and wounded, not to mention our orphans. Please, I entreat you, do not disturb my patients and do not frighten the children, for they have already been through so much.”

A voice from the back, certainly an agitator, shouted, “But I saw that German spy with my own eyes! I know he’s in here!”

“He’s hiding in the cellar!”

“There must be a secret room!”

“Please come in,” I quickly replied, “and look for yourselves. If only you would be so kind as to put down your sticks and rakes, you may spend all afternoon with us, you may search everywhere. Only again I ask you, please do so quietly.”

A man shouted, “She’s lying!”

“Let’s all go in, we’ll get him then!”

“Nemka, doloi!”

The crowd seethed, there was obviously nothing I could do to soften them, to appease them. It was only at this moment, only just then, that I feared all would be lost, and I worried not for myself but for the others, my sisters and our sick ones. I could see these unruly brigands shift from side to side, see their sticks and rakes start to tremble. Standing there calmly, quietly, I called upon the Lord for strength.

And then I heard it, the pounding of hooves. This time it was not the Cossacks but mounted gendarmes, and they came pouring through our broken gates, fifteen, no, twenty of them. As the crowd of bandits turned to see what was bearing down upon them, I quickly shut and bolted the doors, and I stood there behind the thick wood, listening to the mayhem, the screams, the shouts, the sound of gunfire. I closed my eyes and slumped against the doors, praying that there would be no loss of life.

It was all over quickly. Not even ten minutes later, when all was essentially quiet, I opened the doors again. What had once been a tranquil garden was now a battlefield, our lilacs and laburnums broken and dashed, and everything else torn apart by the fight. The sticks and rakes had been dropped helter-skelter, the rocks, too, as the people had fled, and all that was to be seen were some of the gendarmes arresting a few of the ringleaders and another handful of injured souls lying about.

“Quickly, sisters,” I said, leading the way into the garden and to the wounded. “Our help is needed.”

It was in this way that we tended to those who had meant us harm. There were many bruises, some broken bones, but fortunately there was no loss of life. While most of those hurt needed only some careful bandaging, there were four who remained in our hospital for more than a week, so serious were their injuries.

Later that day, I received a visit from the Metropolitan and the Governor-General himself, both of whom wanted to see what damages had been done and whether any of us had been harmed. I assured them that all were fine excepting Sister Evrosinia, the nun who had been hit on the back with the stone, for her bruise was so large that the doctors had ordered complete bed rest for a week. I felt no anger over the incident, only grief that my own people should feel that violence was their only avenue of hope. Yes, their poor lives were being stretched beyond limits-husbands off at war and being killed, impoverished wives at home trying to feed hungry mouths. How I longed to soothe their souls and fill their spirits right up with joy.

There were only two aftershocks from that day which weighed heavily upon my heart. First, the Metropolitan himself wondered if the times were so troubled that it might be best if I retired for a while to a distant monastery, perhaps even the one I’d visited not long ago up in the northern seas. I assured him, however, that my place was there in Moscow and that I would sooner die at my obitel than leave. Second, the Governor-General, realizing that I would not be leaving, ordered increased security be posted round our walls, which saddened me greatly, for not once had I ever wanted to be separated from the outer world and those in need.

Of greater concern, both of these men individually took me aside and pressed me on the same issue: Would I not, for the sake of the Empire and the Monarchy itself, please speak to both the Empress and the Emperor about the dark influence upon the Throne, namely, that man Rasputin?

Who would have thought that in this cesspool of wounded soldiers and overworked women the Revolution would be reborn! Who would have thought that the Russian peasants and workers, beaten down for so many centuries, would finally snap? In short, the more rotten the war made things for the people, the better things got for the Organization.

And so that became my job, to somehow make things as rotten, rotten, rotten as possible.

My revolutionary comrades fished me out of some pit, brought me back into the fold, and this became my job: gluing up posters. It didn’t seem very important, but they assured me it was, and they even had a name for it: agitprop. And so they gave me a pot of glue and posters by the stack, and I put them up everywhere and by the thousands, too. Only I had to do it so I wouldn’t be caught, because if I was that would be the end of me, a necktie from a lamppost!

In the following weeks I scurried around Moscow like a rat, fixing posters up on buildings, doors, walls, stairs. Usually the police ripped them down in a matter of hours, and then I had to just go round and round, fixing them up again. Sometimes I just dropped the posters on the street or left them on seats of the trams. But people saw them everywhere. Pictures of the Tsar and his religious popes riding on the backs of the toiling workers. Pictures of the capitalist pigs, all dressed up in expensive coats, licking the Tsar’s feet. The laughing Tsar drinking champagne while he stood at a cannon using peasants as cannonballs to fire at the Germans.

“We must show the people that the Tsar sits atop them not as a god but as a man,” explained one of my comrades, a smart fellow known only as Leon. “And that’s what these posters do, they soil the image of the Emperor and bring him down from such a high level.”

“Ah, so this is like flinging mud at him?” I laughed.

“Exactly.”

“I like it!”

And so I flung a lot of crap, I did. I’d go out at nine, maybe ten at night, my posters carefully hidden in a bag, and I glued them everywhere, tromping alley to alley, from the Khitrovka to the Arbat. Actually, I found the best places to leave them were the traktiri littered about the city, the dirty cafés of the proletariat that were packed with workers, everyone crammed along plank tables, drinking pitcher after pitcher of kvass, that beerlike brew made from moldy loaves of black bread.

One night I took my favorite poster, a real juicy picture, into one such traktir, The Seven Steps Down, with a low ceiling and a big hall, a place where coachmen usually gathered and where, late at night, there was cockfighting in a secret room. Though I wasn’t a Believer, I stopped in front of the icon by the door, crossing myself just like everyone else. Every bench and table was filled, waiters in white blouses and baggy pants ran this way and that, and off in the corner an accordion player played while a Tsigane woman with a big shawl and shiny jewelry and gold teeth sang. Here they used to serve great big plates of greasy suckling pig, but no more. Meat just couldn’t be found, it was getting scarcer by the day, and so it was just kvass and hard rolls, here and there some sausages that looked as if they’d been made from cat. There were maybe two hundred people in there, packed like sardines, mostly men with long beards and greasy hair, some loose women with flimsy skirts.

So what did I do? I got myself a tankard of drink and strolled around, smiling so innocently. And somehow I did it, I pulled my lovely pictures from under my coat and soon enough they were on a table, spilling onto the benches, and from the benches onto the floor. I acted as surprised as anyone.

“Ha!” I yelped with surprise. “Ha!”

A great roar of laughter went up and spread through the room when they saw the picture, my poster: the Empress-whore, bent over and getting fucked from behind by the monster Rasputin, with the Tsar, drunk or drugged, passed out in a barrel of money, his eyes crossed as if totally not caring about anything or anyone else, least of all us, his Russian people.

And the people loved it!

The poster was grabbed from hand to hand, ripped from one person to the next, until it reached every corner of the room. A drunk guy jumped up on a table and pulled some prostitutka up behind him. Taking a soup bowl, he crowned his curly blond girl queen of the hall.

“Oh, Mama Tsaritsa, I love your big German ass!” he proclaimed as he mounted his empress from behind and started to hump and hump.

Maybe two or three years before, well, this fellow would have been hauled away and beat up for such a thing, for making fun of our Empress. Either that or he would have been arrested by the police and given three. But now the whole room roared with laughter at the sight of our traitor Empress getting fucked by her secret lover, that mad beast Rasputin.

What agitatsiya! How good it worked! I laughed until there were tears in my eyes!