The Romanov Bride

Oh, it was time, and I was eager to leave those dazzling days behind, for my new calling was ever so much more important…

I hesitated not a moment, for I knew that the value of this single item alone could accomplish much. In a rapturous moment, I pulled from my finger the ring I had worn for more than twenty years, setting it firmly on my bed.

And with the joy of both liberation and anticipation, I proclaimed, “Yes, I will sell everything that I possess, for I have the absolute conviction to follow Christ’s Commandment: ‘Sell that thou hast, and give to the poor.’ Further, I have decided that I will pension off my servants and close entirely my court. You must help me sort these things, Varya, for I intend to dispose of every last one of these jewels, and with the proceeds to realize my great dream. On the other side of the Moscow River, down along Bolshaya Ordinka, I have found an impressive piece of property. It is upon these premises that I intend to build an obitel-that’s right, a cloister, a women’s monastery-dedicated to prayer, labor, and charity.”

Chapter 28 PAVEL

Who could you trust? No one. In short, our plan for me to dress up like a chorister and blow up the Tsar was found out. Stupid people. Evil snakes. There were spies everywhere, all of whom could be bought for a ruble or two. Or just a jug of samogon-home brew-the worst vodka made from the nastiest of potatoes. The Russian peasant-he was a lazy good-for-nothing, loyal to neither master nor collective, only to liquid spirits, no matter how bad.

It had seemed like such a good plan, to strike right at the heart of the beast-oh, how glorious it would have been if I’d succeeded in blowing up Nicholas the Bloody and his kin in his own home, and right before Christmas, no less! I would have been such a hero, so famous! Why, it would have been like hurling gas on a fire, for that was our goal, not simply to kill or maim but to incite revolution, to spread it fast and furious. And if I’d succeeded it would have done so much good for our cause-the chaos would have spread so quickly, burning and burning, and how the people would have risen up against the oppressors!

But foo…

Some pathetic soul informed on a handful of our comrades, and these men were promptly arrested. Within a matter of days a kind of tribunal was set up, all of ours were found guilty, and that very day, within a few hours, they were hung. All of them.

Of course, following this we searched long and hard for the right target, not merely as revenge but, again, to move the people to action and help them liberate themselves from the chains of the capitalist and tsarist masters. And this target we did not find until the spring of 1906, and he was called Pyotr Stolypin. I actually never saw the man until that fateful day when we took action against him and his, and by then our bloody Tsar had seen fit to make this Stolypin the very top man, some kind of big minister. Some said we chose Stolypin as a target simply because he was so high up-supposedly, the bastard controlled everything from the security forces to the censors and even the passports-while others claimed we needed to get rid of him because his reforms were doing too much good and therefore soothing the masses and making it easier for them to tolerate the Tsar and his money-grubbing hounds. But really, I think, it was because of how many of us he killed. Yes, that was the immediate problem. It was this Stolypin who continued-no, made even bigger-the program of catching and immediately convicting and killing our people. Within a matter of months, thousands of good revolutionaries were hanging and dangling in the wind from Stolypin’s so-called neckties. Because we lost such a lot of comrades and so quickly, too, the call to action came fast. It was either do something or dwindle into dust and blow away, the hopes of the downtrodden forever ruined.

We all knew that to keep the Organization alive we had to get rid of this Stolypin, and I was ordered to return to the capital, and there I was to work as a spy. And this was my duty: to track the comings and goings of this Mr. Minister, who settled not really in Sankt Peterburg but just outside of town in a comfortable country house on Aptekarski Island. I took a job across the lane in another house, nothing special, just minding the garden, but it gave me plenty of time to watch. In this way, I learned and reported the rhythms of the Minister’s house and when he himself, the big sheeshka-pinecone-came and went, as well as who actually lived in the house, who guarded it, and so on. He and his wife and their brood of four children lived in this big wooden dacha with lots of rooms, and there were many servants and lackeys ru

One of my jobs was to count the number of carriages attached to the house, because they would be useful when the uprising finally came. We could use them for barricades.

It was by my calculation that every Saturday Stolypin stayed at this summer mansion and received all sorts of people, petitioners from all sorts of classes wanting this or that from him. And when I made my report of this we quickly decided that it was on such a Saturday that we would kill him.

“The perfect time for us to get directly into the house,” one of my leaders reported.

There lived with Stolypin an old maid, A

Anyway, though A

“And that’s where my mistress sits, up there in that big window, you see?” A