The Fabergé Secret Page 9

  The Tsar waved goodbye to Miss O’Brian, then turned to Dimitri. ‘Please come ride with me tomorrow.’

  Miss O’Brian enjoyed walking down Kanimov Street. The great avenues of St Petersburg were alive with greenery, and the air was unusually fresh and cool for a summer afternoon. Though ‘Petro’ was a brilliant Western architectural creation, she hated its usual dank, misty climate. The weather was far worse than London’s, where she had grown up. There it rained during the winter, while here it snowed and was bitterly cold. The city called the ‘Venice of the North’ was built on nineteen islands connected by stone bridges over winding canals. Along with the Neva River that ran down its center, the canals froze so solid streetcar tracks could be laid on them. Then the city became a humid inferno in the summer. This was an odd world to her, especially the people. Not a bit like the English, the Russians were a strange enigmatic group who all seemed fatalistic and depressed to her. Yet they had the habit of painting their buildings in cheerful bright colors of red, yellow, blue, and aqua-green. And though it seemed humanly impossible, they drank more than Englishmen.

  The nanny turned down an alley lined with tall brick walls with wooden gates. She pushed one open and walked to the paint-blistered rear door of a small, shabby brick building. She rapped on it, three quick sharp knocks. The door creaked open, and there stood a tall, middle-aged man with a full beard and mustache. He smiled at Miss O’Brian.

  ‘Welcome, Comrade. So good to see you again,’ he said.

  TWELVE

  ‘Ssshhh! Have respect for the dead!’

  ‘The only way to get our civil rights is to use violence,’ said Asher Blokh, lowering his voice to a whisper. ‘Peaceful methods of protest are worthless.’

  He was standing in one of two rows of university and Yeshiva students that lined both sides of the road leading to the Jewish cemetery in Kishinev. Passing by him just at that moment were five stretchers, covered in black cloth embroidered with gold thread depicting the Ten Commandments. On each stretcher borne by two men were two urns under the black cover holding shreds of the Torah that had been desecrated in a pogrom in Kishinev last Easter. Behind the stretchers walked over ten thousand Jews in total silence.

  ‘Or we can emigrate to Palestine,’ whispered Isaac Hersch, standing next to him. ‘To hell with that. We’d be playing into the hands of the Tsar by running away. Emigration is a goddamn escape not a solution. I’m a Russian, and this is my homeland. I’m not going anywhere!’

  Hersch smiled at his classmate’s stubbornness; Blokh had always had a hard head.

  ‘Herzl says that Jews will never be safe until they have a homeland of their own – in Palestine. Don’t you see? Jews are guests in whatever land they’re living in. Their asses can be kicked out in a second, like they did to us in Spain,’ replied Hersch. The procession now passed them, and he felt he could talk in a louder voice.

  ‘Ha, think the Turks that control that little corner of the world are going to want a bunch of Yids squatting there and taking over? They’re even bigger anti-Semites than the Russians. These Zionists are idiots.’

  Hersch rolled his eyes.

  ‘St Petersburg is orchestrating these massacres. The police just stand by. Some even direct the mob to Jewish-owned property,’ Blokh continued, his voice becoming angrier.

  Once the funeral procession had passed them, the two lines of men broke up, joining the huge crowd heading to the cemetery. Blokh and Hersch walked side by side. They were third-year students in the university in Odessa. Although Jewish enrollment was severely restricted, both young men were admitted because of their brilliant academic records and the large bribes paid by their families to university officials. In Jewish families, there was no sacrifice too great for educating the children. While ninety-nine percent of Christian Russian peasants were illiterate, the same percentage of Jews were literate. But in the Pale of Settlement, it was religion that drove education, with the grammar school ending at age thirteen, then the yeshiva for more advanced studies of the Talmud. From five in the morning until ten at night, young men studied at long wooden tables in a large room. These Yeshiva students were the most admired men of all, because wisdom of the Talmud was seen as the highest attainment.

  But Jewish university students like Blokh and Pesach were a different breed altogether. Those men who studied secular subjects in the universities were looked on as heretical; it was something for the ‘goy,’ but not for Jews. Blokh and Hersch in turn looked on the religious Jews as hopelessly old-fashioned and ridiculous. Their dress, Yiddish language, and obstinate isolation made them even more alien to the Christians, fanning the flames of anti-Semitism and making things worse for all Jews, especially the ones who were ‘Russified.’ The two students may have admitted that the study of the Talmud as youths sharpened their minds, but they felt Jews needed to move with the times and study sciences, arts, and literature – to become modern.

  ‘Anyway, this isn’t just about the Jews,’ Blokh snarled. ‘All people have suffered under the tyranny of the Tsar, tens of millions of gentile peasants. The first uprising last year was by the Christian peasants in Poltava, remember? To capture political power for the masses, there’s no other alternative than violent mass revolution.’

  ‘But our Little Father, the Tsar, knows what’s best. He’ll take care of us,’ replied Hersch, knowing full well this would ignite an outburst from his friend.

  ‘The Tsar? That bastard can …’ Blokh halted his speech, realizing his leg was being pulled. He started laughing, then stopped because of solemnity of the crowd.

  The procession was almost to the cemetery.

  ‘Don’t forget that those gentile masses you’ll be fighting alongside still think of us as Christ-killers that collect blood to make our matzoh,’ said Hersch, and he wasn’t joking this time. ‘Three centuries of Jew-hating isn’t going to go away just like that.’

  ‘I may be a fool, but I think fighting for political freedom will transcend that hatred. People will be different after the revolution.’

  ‘You are a fool,’ said Hersch in a friendly tone. ‘Remember the saying: the lion and the lamb may lie together down in green pastures, but the lamb isn’t going to get much sleep.’

  Blokh smiled at his friend whom he’d known since the Russian grammar school they attended together.

  ‘And keep your voice down, the Okhrana are everywhere,’ added Hersch. ‘They’re probably walking next to us in this crowd.’

  Blokh instinctively looked around him, searching for anyone that didn’t look Jewish. But the crowd was all black-garbed people with stricken expressions. It was if they were attending a funeral for a family member. In a way, they were. When the Torah was vandalized and desecrated, it had to be buried in a holy ceremony. Although Blokh wasn’t a believer anymore, he understood the emotion surrounding him. To gentiles, it might seem stupid to bury torn and burnt paper in such a solemn manner, but these people were devastated with grief, and would mourn for the next year with the same intensity as over a dead child. Jews were killed and maimed in the Easter pogrom; violating the sanctity of the beloved Torah was just as brutal and shocking. The violence in Kishinev, Blokh was delighted to discover, had awakened more Jews to the revolutionary movement and some had armed themselves for self-defense.

  The stretchers reached the open iron double gates with Stars of David affixed on their pickets. At the exact moment they entered the cemetery, a collective groan arose from the crowd as though on cue, and it startled Blokh. It was a cry of anguish that lasted for a few seconds, then evaporated into the sunny blue sky above. Blokh looked up at the telephone wires that stretched between wooden poles along the edge of the cemetery, and saw they were lined with silent shiny black crows. It was if they were gathered in mourning too.

  A crypt had been prepared for the burial, and the procession stopped before it.

  A rabbi cried up to the sky in a loud stentorian voice:

  ‘It is enough, O Eternal Father! We are Thy childre
n and Thou art our shepherd. Yet we feel abandoned, helpless orphans. God of our fathers, like unto Job, no tribulation will ever shake our faith in Thee, but why then must our faith in Thee be eternally tested?’

  The ten urns were gently placed inside the crypt and covered with moist black earth. Then the crowd turned away and walked home in silence. Blokh and Hersch walked by themselves behind the crowd.

  ‘We will kill the Tsar,’ said Blokh confidently. ‘With the information from our new inside source, we’ll succeed.’

  THIRTEEN

  Katya and Clara turned onto the Nevsky Prospect by the Alexander Garden.

  ‘Are you on call this Thursday night?’ Katya asked.

  ‘No, Popov will cover as long as I can do Friday.’

  ‘Wonderful, then you can come to the circle. The discussion is Repin versus Somov, who is the better portrait painter,’ Katya said.

  ‘Repin,’ Clara exclaimed. ‘I’d love to have my portrait painted by him.’

  ‘He did mine, so maybe Father could arrange it,’ Katya replied in an enthusiastic voice.

  Her father had commissioned the famous Ilya Repin, who did the Tsar’s portrait after his coronation, to paint her. He was a charming gentleman who tried his hardest to paint a flattering picture of her, making her far more attractive than she was in real life. Now Clara’s portrait would be radiant. Yes, her father would easily set it up with Repin.

  ‘So, do you think Prince Dimitri will come again? Quite a handsome man!’ Clara giggled.

  ‘Maybe. The prince seemed very interested in our discussion,’ Katya replied.

  ‘Interested in you,’ Clara teased.

  ‘Don’t be silly. What a thing to say,’ Katya said testily.

  ‘So how is your favorite suitor doing?’ Clara asked, referring to Ivan Pavlovitch. ‘Has he finally gotten the message?’

  ‘I think he understands that he is not going to marry the boss’s daughter – I hope.’

  When they passed over the Moika Canal, Katya called out, ‘We’re almost to our little peasant country church.’

  Standing before them on the Nevsky Prospect was the Lady of Kazan Cathedral, a copy of St Peter’s in Rome. The city’s main Orthodox Church, it had curving wings of open columns that defined a vast semi-circular courtyard just like St Peter’s Square. Church-goers were streaming in, and Katya and Clara joined them.

  Because Katya and Clara considered themselves modern women of science, to them, religion was nonsense. They definitely agreed with Karl Marx that religion was the opiate of the masses. At the hospital, the two doctors felt sorry for the relatives of dying patients who brought holy water and smoke-blackened ikons to their bedsides in hopes of God granting them a miracle. Only a breakthrough in medicine, not God, would help people survive cancer and heart disease. Researchers bent over microscopes were the ones to ease humanity’s miseries. Pasteur’s germ theory, once laughed at, was now universally accepted, and mere hand-washing and better sanitation had saved millions from bacterial infection. One day, Katya hoped, there would be a pill to defeat one of the world’s biggest killers, tuberculosis.

  So, for Katya, coming to church on Sundays and feast days was a pretend exercise. She was only going through the religious motions that every Russian Christian had been taught since childhood. A well-bred Russian was expected to worship for the sake of appearance. She remembered her late mother, Anna, being devout; she often brought home bread rolls that had been blessed, and the family made the sign of the cross over them. To Katya, praying to ikons lit by red glass lamps was as primitive as a native praying to an image carved from a log.

  In the Russian Orthodox Church, sitting down before God was seen as disrespectful, so worshippers stood for the whole service. Katya and Clara joined shoulder-to-shoulder with the throng stuffed into the majestic space, a tall barrel-vaulted ceiling supported by polished granite columns with gilt capitals, the air thick with incense. The mass began. All around her with their heads bowed were all classes of society, from the most refined and educated to the coarsest peasants. The church was the only place in Russia where the population mixed so intimately. Instead of being deep in prayer, Katya looked at the great frescoes on the wall, for there was no sculpture allowed in the Orthodox Church. She loved the choir, their voices so well blended that the singing seemed to come from a single mouth. Although no musical accompaniment was permitted, the singing resonated joyfully within the great cathedral. Like wound-up automatons, she and Clara always took communion, as they had since childhood.

  At the end of the long service, the priest in his caftan and flowing beard dismissed the congregants. Many went up to kiss the crucifix he held in his hand. Katya and Clara refused to do this on the grounds it was most unhygienic: a child would kiss it after a slobbery tubercular old man. At the corner of Bolshaya Morskaya Street, the women bid each other goodbye.

  When Katya got home, the Sunday dinner was about to begin. Her sister and her family just arrived before her, as they attended another church. She could hear her father, who had not gone to church this morning because of an undisclosed ailment, yelling his head off in his study. There was only one person he’d be that upset with: her brother Boris. He’d skipped church, and his father was letting him have it. Katya decided to intervene so dinner would not be delayed. She hadn’t eaten breakfast, and she was hungry.

  Her father was at his desk, which had a large gray metal box sitting on it. Boris was standing across from him, slump-shouldered with his usual sheepish expression.

  ‘Why didn’t you let me know earlier you needed your baptismal certificate? Now you’ve missed the deadline for the examinations. What’s to become of you, boy? You’ve had every advantage in life, but you’re lazier than a goddamn peasant.’

  Aleksandr Vassilievitch halted his tirade when he saw his daughter. Then he pointed his finger at Boris.

  ‘This blockhead failed to get his baptismal certificate in on time,’ fumed her father, his face beet-red. Katya took action, as she always worried about him getting a heart attack. It was impossible to legally exist in Russia without a baptismal certificate issued by the Church. She frowned at her brother, who looked away.

  ‘Is it in there?’ Katya pointed to the box. She had never seen it before.

  ‘Yes, all the family papers are in there,’ her father snapped.

  ‘Both of you go into the dining room,’ she commanded, and they obeyed. Katya knew she had to find the certificate herself to calm her father down, so she needed peace and quiet.

  She undid the latch and looked inside to see a jumble of papers that her father had stuffed in over the years. She rummaged through the mess, but was quickly frustrated so she dumped the entire contents on the desk and began sorting through it, creating one neatly stacked pile. Her stomach was rumbling from hunger now. The papers went back to the early nineteenth century. She stopped cold when she found her mother’s death certificate. It said she died of cholera and was signed by a doctor. It was sadly ironic to Katya that now she signed a few of these each week.

  She continued sorting and was about to place a paper on the stack when something caught her eye. Next to the name of Leonid Alexandrovitch Golitsyn was a red dot. She looked at the date, 1801, and mentally did a family tree, mumbling out the names of ancestors – Leonid was her great-grandfather. She set that paper aside and continued looking until it slowly dawned on her where she’d seen that red dot before – in the hospital files – and what Krensky the clerk had told her. Her eyes widened in disbelief. She tore through the pile on the desk. She found Boris’s baptismal certificate but kept looking until she found what she was really after: a baptismal certificate for a Jewish convert to the Orthodox Church in Leonid’s name.

  Katya put her hand to her mouth in astonishment. She stared at the yellowed paper for over a minute, her mind spinning like she was on an out-of-control carousel. Steadying herself against the desk, she folded the document and slid it in her skirt pocket. As if in a trance, she slowly put al
l the other papers back in the box and shut it, then walked into the dining room with Boris’s certificate in hand. The meal had already begun.

  ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ Yelena said.

  FOURTEEN

  ‘Yes, Minister, I think we will follow your guidance on the new army-issue pistol. Thank you very much for seeing me.’

  Von Dalek, the Minister of War, bowed and backed out of the Tsar’s study at Tsarskoe Selo and into the antechamber where other officials were waiting their turn to see the Tsar. It reminded Dimitri of a doctor’s waiting room, furnished with tables, chairs, and magazines. It led to a small courtyard where more men waited.

  Dimitri stood by the Tsar’s Fabergé-appointed desk. It was as orderly as Nicky was. Every pen and piece of paper, as well as the calendar with appointments written in by the Tsar’s hand, was always exactly in the same place. Nicky had told Dimitri that he wanted to be able go into the study in the pitch dark and place his hand on any object. The Tsar was unlike any other monarch because he had no private secretary, he preferred to handle things himself. Even the Tsarina had a secretary to help her with her mountains of correspondence. When official papers arrived on Nicky’s big writing desk, he opened, read, and signed each one of them.

  Three men in dress uniforms filed in and bowed. These were the Grand Dukes and Nicky’s uncles – Vladimir, Commander of the Imperial Guard; Alexis, Grand Admiral of the Navy; and Sergei, the Governor-General of Moscow. The brothers of Alexander III exerted an intimidating bullying influence on Nicky, who hated to be left alone with them. That was why Dimitri was in the study, although they barely acknowledged his presence. All of the uncles were huge, bearish men who towered over the slim, five-foot-seven-inch Tsar. They all wanted special favors and considered their requests as orders to their thirty-five-year-old nephew.

  ‘Nicky, the French-made pistol is far superior to the one von Dalek wants,’ bellowed Grand Duke Vladimir. He went on for five minutes denigrating the Minister of War’s choice of the weapon. Nicky sat and listened in silence.