Author: Michael Phillips
Category: Literature
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“Let them laugh, my child. Laugh with them! If your new life throws uncertainties at you, the confusion will not last. You are bright, Anna—very smart, you are. Why, you are nearly a woman, and not to be looked down upon by anyone, even nobleman or lady.”
He paused, thinking. He had planned to wait until she was boarding the train, but this would be the best time. “Wait a moment, my child,” he said.
He rose, lumbered to a cupboard where he reached high and lifted down a small wooden box, not much larger than a loaf of Sophia’s bread. It contained the sum total of his family’s valuables—a few things that had been passed down, a rusted sword hilt, several poor pieces of jewelry, and a sheaf of nearly meaningless official papers.
Clutching the box in his hands, he carried it back and sat down again on the bench. He placed the box on his knees, and reverently lifted its lid. Reaching inside, he removed a tiny cloth-bound package tied together with a leather lace. Carefully he unfastened the lace and unfolded the outer cloth wrapping to reveal a tiny, soft deerhide pouch no larger than the palm of his hand.
“Anna,” he said, “I had intended to give you this tomorrow. But now I think tonight would be better. It is not much, I suppose. But it is the only thing of material value I possess. Do not open it now. Tuck it in with your belongings, and when you perhaps feel lonesome for your family after you are in your new home, open it then. Perhaps it will stir sweet memories.”
He took her palm and laid the packet in it, stroking her hand gently with his rough fingers before letting it go.
“What is it, Papa?”
“Not much really. A small trinket only. But I want you to take it—a part of home, as a little token of your heritage, and perhaps a reminder of your old papa, Yevno. I have no money to give you, but take this. It is all I have of any worth, but it may come to be useful to you someday. I love you, my dear and special daughter.”
“I will treasure it always, Papa,” said Anna softly, tears standing in her innocent eyes. “Thank you.”
“Now . . . to bed with you! Soon you must begin your journey—that is, if the snows do not bury us as we sleep!”
Anna leaned over and kissed her father’s cheek, then suddenly threw her arms as far as she could reach around his great bulk. He extended his long arm about her slender frame, and drew her to him tightly. When she tiptoed away a moment later, tears streamed silently down the time-worn cheeks of old Yevno Burenin.
Slowly he rose.
But he did not immediately return to bed. He stared for a few moments through the pane of the window into the blackness outside. He squinted, but could discern no fluttering white flakes. The gentle snowfall seemed to have stopped. They would get through in the morning, he was sure of it; although one corner of his father’s heart could not help wishing for a blizzard.
Oh, God! he silently prayed, lifting his heart in mute appeal toward the Maker to whom he had given his simple homage throughout nearly the whole of his life. Keep the child in your care . . .
Yevno sighed deeply. Slowly his thoughts settled for a time on Paul, then gradually found their way back to Anna, whose peaceful breathing he could hear from the bed. A smile crept across his tired face. At least thoughts of Anna contained no heartache.
Again he whispered, “Keep the child in your care.”
No other words could he find, nor were more necessary.
But welling up within Yevno’s breast were feelings and supplications too grand for the limited scope of his thoughts. From deep within him rose the cry of universal fatherhood, which the great Father-heart at the core of the universe has placed within the soul of every parent.
Lord, prayed poor, simple, faithful Yevno Burenin, bring her to fair womanhood by your gentle and loving hand. Let her heart belong always to you, so that you might protect her and love her and fill her with the gladness of being alive. Nurture your life in her; sprout it and make it grow, even as you bring the rain and sun to nourish the stalks of grain in the fields with which we make our bread. Water her with the people you will send to encourage and strengthen her. Make the soil of her heart rich and fertile. Give her your world and your word and the teachings of your faithful servants and your own self to feed on in her heart and soul. Deepen the roots of her faith. Ah, God, take the precious child whom you gave Sophia and me—take her beyond what this simple old father of hers will ever be. Be Father to her, more than I will or can ever become. . . .
When Yevno lay back down on the bed several minutes later, with the pleasurable satisfaction of hearing his entire family sleeping peacefully, his prayers had extended from his own daughter Anna and her brother, to the very ends of the universe.
Even if the simple logic of his brain could not have formulated the notion in words, he knew that the Creator of the universe, a God more huge, more powerful than all the trains and bears and blizzards in Russia, made his home not merely in some distant place in the sky the priests called heaven, but in a quiet corner of his own heart.
That same God lived in Anna’s heart, too. And when he bid her farewell the following morning, Yevno knew that the Father of all creation would be holding her hand.
10
Prince Viktor Mikhailovitch Fedorcenko was no stranger to the realms of power and decision in Russia. From a line that predated the rise of the Romanovs, he traced his lineage and his name back to Viktor Restcenko, whose own grandfather sat on the boyar council that had founded the Romanov line with the election of Michael Romanov as tsar in 1613.
The Fedorcenko name meant something in St. Petersburg—indeed, in all of Russia. The prince was certainly no country rustic to be awed by a summons from his tsar. Yet the knowledge of these facts made him feel no less uncomfortable as he sat in the reception area awaiting his call.
Fedorcenko’s apprehension, however, had less to do with the summons to appear before the mighty “Sovereign of all Russia” than with the fact that his last interview had ended less than congenially. Tsar Alexander II had been in a rather sour mood that day. After all, the whole of Russia, over which he was supposedly sovereign, was trying to tell him what to do—in this case, clamoring for him to go to war against the Turks. The prince had made the mistake of speaking too candidly, overstepping the fine line between loyal friendship and court protocol. Not that anyone could claim real friendship with the tsar. His only real confidante was that woman, Catherine Dolgoruky, his mistress of more than ten years. Fedorcenko, however, felt that by virtue of years of loyal service he ought to be permitted a limited latitude. Alexander Romanov was generally a fair and rational man.
He did have his moments of testiness, however, and on the day of his last audience, Viktor had stumbled into a nest of bees ready to swarm at the least provocation.
This whole business in the Balkans was definitely telling on the fifty-eight-year-old monarch. Again, as in so many instances in his reign, he found himself backed by events into a corner where he could please no one—least of all himself. Fedorcenko had suggested honestly, albeit subtly, that there were times when assertiveness, not conciliation, was called for.
Sitting now in the antechamber, he squirmed slightly in the stiff chair as he recalled that previous conversation on the last occasion when he had been here in the Winter Palace.
“Ha! I can’t believe that you, of all people, Viktor, would level such a statement!” There had been no amusement in Alexander’s dark blue, normally gentle eyes. Their usual melancholy held an edge of vindictiveness.
“I thought it might be helpful—”
“Perhaps you would be happy if I returned Russia to my father’s reactionary policies? We would have revolution breaking out across the whole empire!”
“I am only suggesting, your Majesty,” the prince had replied, aware that he himself was now somewhat backed into a corner, but unwilling to concede his position like so many of the tsar’s advisors, “that it is perhaps unimportant, in the greater scheme of things, whether I am happy or unhappy. As I see the matter, it has lit
tle to do with whether or not we involve ourselves in the Balkans. You cannot hope to please both me and, let’s say, Orlov. It would seem futile to try.”
“Oh, I see!” burst out the tsar, shifting his frame in an agitated manner in his chair. “It is my own personal assertiveness you question!” His drooping moustache twitched and his eyes lost their focus momentarily, as if he saw a grain of truth in what he thought had been said, but was unwilling to admit it.
“Your Majesty, nothing could have been further from my intent. I only hoped to—”
“Prince Fedorcenko, I believe this audience must come to an end,” interrupted Alexander peremptorily. “I have several other pressing matters to attend to.”
Viktor Fedorcenko loved his tsar as much as any poor peasant. Sometimes he wished he could love him with the innocence of the country muszhik, without the clutter of the emperor’s human flaws to contend with. But the two men had practically grown up together, Fedorcenko being two years younger. The prince knew the tsar around a card table, on the dance floor, and across a conference table. He had seen him abased, and he had seen him exalted. His was perhaps the best kind of love and loyalty, for it had remained firm throughout all the emperor’s vacillating reign—indeed, throughout his entire life. But unwavering fealty to a ruler with supreme power is not always enough. Many loyal aristocrats had lost their heads in this country, and Viktor did not want to add his to the list.
Loyalty alone had certainly not been enough on that dark, frightful day ten years earlier when an assassin’s gun had tried to end the tsar’s life. The two men had been walking side by side, and had it not been for the intercession of a passerby—a simple hatter’s apprentice—Viktor would have been killed along with the tsar. But though Alexander survived, he had emerged from the terrifying experience a changed man—bitter, more skeptical, doubtful and mistrusting. He had always been a deeply sensitive man, brought easily to tears. But it did not take long for the suspicious cynic in the ruler to take root after the incident, repeated again only a year later.
Alexander II had done more for the social and cultural advancement of Russia than any tsar since Peter the Great. Indeed, some among the loyal intelligentsia—a dying breed these days—would make a favorable comparison between the two men. Alexander, the “tsar-liberator,” had at long last emancipated the serfs.
But even that tremendous historical act had been met with everything from ambivalence to downright hostility by nobles and serfs alike. Within months of the Emancipation peasant riots broke out; not as many as feared or expected, but an indictment the tsar did not deserve, nevertheless. The peasants did not care much about the ethereal qualities of freedom. They were an earthy people, and more practical matters fueled the fires of their passions. The land allotments granted by the Emancipation were simply too small for even meager survival, and the redemption rents were too high. They could never hope to pay them or feed their families. In the face of such realities, what was freedom anyway? Thus they complained, some revolted, and all considered this just a new form of the old slavery.
The landowners had no reason to be enthusiastic over the change, either. Many dug in their heels in opposition to the Emancipation while it was being considered, and continued to grumble vocally afterward. Their tsar had, by his gratuitous act, given a third of their lands away without a counterbalancing restitution. And now, when they went to collect their fees from the newly freed peasants, the ridiculous provincials blamed them! The tsar would never do such a thing! He was too kind and good—it was all the fault of the landowners! If the tsar knew the boyars were committing such outrages, he would never stand for it! Truly they were an ignorant lot, better off in serfdom than in this new stratum of society so erroneously called freedom!
So the barschina was too exorbitant for the peasants to afford, yet too small to compensate the landowners’ losses. The free peasants grumbled and rioted; a few noblemen attempted to mount a revolt against Alexander. The peasant uprisings were squelched. A dozen aristocrats were exiled. No one benefitted from the Emancipation. And the tsar bore the brunt of everyone’s dissatisfaction.
Fedorcenko supposed that for all Alexander’s reforms he would likely be remembered by historians as one of Russia’s weakest, most ineffective rulers. That would be a great pity. Viktor knew without doubt that he was certainly Russia’s most benevolent, most deeply caring monarch. He had inherited many traits from his uncle Alexander I, and while religious fervor was not one of them, he had a genuine compassion for his people, only hinted at in the earlier Alexander.
Yet he could not seem to translate that sympathy into a comprehensive policy that worked. Nor was he powerful enough as a leader to muster the support he needed in these dangerous times among his aristocracy. His own frustration with his position caused him to vacillate between attempting to be the people’s tsar and friend, and stepping the next moment into the shoes of his ancestors as “Autocrat of all the Russias.”
Viktor himself, loyal as he was, became at times frustrated, even angry, with the tsar’s political unpredictability.
The situation in the Balkans was a case in point.
Alexander’s imperialistic proclivities were well known. Compassion notwithstanding, territorial acquisitiveness had flowed deeply in the blood of every tsar since Ivan the Great sent his army across the Urals in pursuit of the retreating Mongols. And now, four hundred years later, Alexander would like nothing better than to be the tsar credited with regaining losses to the east, west, and south. His father had been humiliated in the Crimea, and though he did not fully agree with his father’s politics, the Romanov blood pulsed in his veins. He would like to avenge those losses, this in spite of the grossly apparent fact—more visible to Alexander than anyone—that Russia contained within her present borders more internal problems and strife than he could hope to cope with.
But hunger for land, for new territories, for conquest, for steadily enlarging borders, was an inborn trait in both of the Ivan’s and the Romanov’s royal houses. Why should it be any different for this tsar? Despite his almost completely German ancestry, Alexander II was, after all, a Romanov. And in fidelity to that name he had already added nearly a million square miles to his country’s frontiers, though at a devastating cost.
Fedorcenko was hard put to hold his tongue at such blatant misuse of the imperial prerogative. He was as loyal a Russian as the next man, but such expansion was unnecessary—especially now, with the country falling apart internally!
But Russian monarchs seemed notoriously doomed not to learn from their predecessors’ mistakes. Alexander’s father, Nicholas I—a strong, iron-fisted throwback to tsars of old—had in large part been defeated in the Crimean War because of his determination to protect Russia’s other vast frontiers. He had allowed himself to commit only a fraction of her huge military might to the main battle. True, Alexander had no immediate war to worry about. But the national purse was nearly bankrupt. Prince Fedorcenko had heard Reutern, the Minister of Finance, warn the tsar, “We would be plunged into penury even if we were victorious in the Balkans, and increased taxation would certainly play into the hands of the revolutionaries.”
More than pure imperialism, however, impelled the tsar upon this disastrous road. Ever since the mortifying defeat in the Crimea, a determination had grown in Alexander to reestablish Russia’s position of power in Europe.
Prior to 1853, the West had for a century trembled in awe of Russian might. Tsar Alexander’s own great-grandmother Catherine I had developed a large, glorious army, a force to be feared. His uncle Alexander I had defeated Napoleon in 1814. But the Crimean War had dispelled the apparent illusions of his nation’s awesome power. Suddenly Russia was no longer invincible, and the Treaty of Paris seemed bent on keeping it so.
Now, twenty years later, war threatened in the Balkans. Turkish rule, which had been crumbling internally for years, was being seriously challenged. The Serbian and Bulgarian revolts had been met with severe, even brutal reprisals by the
ir Turkish overseers. Yet the Serb and Bulgar rebels fought on, hoping desperately for Russian intervention to come to their aid.
Here was Alexander’s moment of opportunity! At last he could reclaim the supremacy his father had lost. The prospect of regaining control of the Balkans tempted the imperialist in Alexander with a tantalizing prize.
The world stood watching . . . waiting.
In the West, Britain feared for her Ottoman interests. And Turkey was making menacing and threatening noises, perhaps remembering too vividly its victory of two decades earlier.
Besides the international fervor, many knowledgeable Russian people themselves called for the tsar to intervene on behalf of the “brother Slavs” suffering at the hands of the heathen Turks. “Pan-slavism,” as that new wave of nationalistic fever had been labeled, had grown almost to fanatic proportions, with the tsaritsa herself at the vanguard of the movement. Out of her own financial resources, she had sent medical supplies to the beleaguered provinces. Several military regiments had likewise gone, though unofficially, to join the battle.
In spite of all these forces pushing him toward war, Alexander wavered. Lacking the impassioned militarism of his father, he nevertheless hungered for military and diplomatic supremacy. But deep down inside, Alexander hated war.
Unfortunately, he seemed to lack the diplomatic genius to avoid it. Moreover, his own political desires were at variance with what a military confrontation would entail. It was bad enough to be pulled in many directions by other nations, or by the varying demands of his own people. But it was political suicide to face opposing tensions within one’s own self. And it was precisely this sort of inner personal dualism and contradiction that had been the hallmark of Alexander’s reign. Genuinely mindful of the needs of his people, his imperialism undercut the good he might have been able to do. His great opportunity to pull Russia forward was hindered by the autocracy remaining stubbornly in his blood from his father. He was indeed a man being torn in conflicting directions, and thus the nation floundered. He was, in the final analysis, no Peter the Great.