This chapter is an excerpt from a novel in progress entitled The Name of Man, a sequel to The Name of Hero. Comments and suggestions welcome. You can contact the author directly: Richard Seltzer, 33 Gould St., West Roxbury, MA 02132. seltzer@samizdat.com
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim electronic copies of this novel for non-commercial purposes provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. This novel has not yet been published in paper form.
This historical novel is based on the life of Alexander Bulatovich, a Russian who was an explorer in Ethiopia, a cavalry officer during Russia's conquest of Manchuria in 1900, and later, as a monk at Mount Athos, led a group of "heretics" who challenged the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, asserting the divinity of the Name of God.
The Name of Hero was published by Tarcher/Houghton Mifflin in 1981. You can buy the hard cover edition of that book:
The
Name of Hero by Richard Seltzer. an historical novel based
on the life of Alexander Bulatovich, a Russian who was an explorer in Ethiopia,
and a cavalry officer during Russia's conquest of Manchuria in 1900. Later,
as a monk at Mount Athos, he led a group of "heretics" who challenged the
hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, asserting the divinity of the
Name of God.
You can also buy it on CD ROM with the author's other works:
Everything
But the Internet gathers the complete non-Internet
works of Richard Seltzer on CD, in plain text, with software that lets
you listen as well as read. It includes: The Name of Hero, Ethiopia Through
Russian Eyes, The Lizard of Oz, Without a Myth, Spit and Polish, Mercy,
Rights Crossing, short stories, articles, book reviews, and poems.
You'll find the full text of The Name of Hero and related material at www.samizdat.com/readers.html#name and www.samizdat.com/readers.html#ethiopia
St. Petersburg, Russia, Saturday, March 1 (February 16 old style), 1902
[draft of April 8, 1989, revised March 1998]
"Hurry up. We're late as it is," shouted Fedya, the university student, jumping off the crowded horse-drawn tram with his brother Gavril.
"All right, now, all right," answered Katya. "Remember, there's two of me."
"How could I forget, my love?" laughed Gavril. He lifted her, stole a kiss from her vodka-flavored lips, and took a whiff of her perfume (cheap, like sweat laced with sugar), before planting her gently, but firmly, on the icy sidewalk beside the University of Saint Petersburg.
As the tram pulled away with a metallic screech and a crackling of sparks, Gavril stepped back and stared at Katya, like at a work of art -- a small-framed girl of seventeen, with an upturned nose and bright green eyes.
He had spent hours with her hair, weaving a pearl necklace in and out of the long plaits twisted atop her head. But she had covered it with a red wool scarf, peasant style -- her favorite scarf that she would wear indoors as well as out because she wanted to "look her very best."
Katya was proud to attend a public lecture with these two handsome students.
They differed much in temperament, Gavril mocking the most serious subjects and Fedya taking even the most trivial seriously. But, brothers separated only by a year, they looked very much alike -- both with high cheek bones, a long finely shaped nose, eyes set deep beneath dark thick eyebrows, and both wearing thin dark mustaches with waxed ends. They both disdained the uniform of a university student and wore it reluctantly. But Katya thought they looked "dashing" in their brimmed caps and high-collared dark gray jackets, with a multitude of brass buttons down the front.
The exaggerated importance Katya put on this event was the reason why Gavril, on a whim, had gone to such lengths with her coiffure. Anxiety over the student strike and the possibility of violence was why she had insisted on having "a drink or two" before they started.
"You're sure there won't be a ruckus? No red flags and revolution?" she asked, as she had many times before.
"I swear by all I hold dear," Gavril announced solemnly, right hand raised high.
"And what may that be?" she asked skeptically.
"You, of course, my love," he smiled, continuing to stare at her appreciatively.
Rather than a coat, she wore half a dozen shawls wrapped around her shoulders and half a dozen long woolen skirts, one atop the other, that extended from above her nine-month-pregnant belly to the ground. Over the shawls, she wore a sable stole, and in her hands she held a sable muff.
"Stop staring," she pouted. "Give me your arm. Let's get this over with."
"You sound like you're going to an execution," Gavril mocked her. "I know, I asked for it -- it's so dull just sitting by the stove, watching my belly and waiting. But it's scary, seeing as how I've never been in this part of town before, and what with all the tales you tell of the strike and, last week, the riots. What's a professor doing lecturing with a strike on?"
"Making money," answered Gavril. "It's a public lecture, not part of the course of study."
"But the police, love, they'll be everywhere," she objected.
"Indeed. The Professor's no fool," he joked. "That's how to fill the lecture hall -- trick the police into keeping an eye on you and they'll pay full fee for dozens of plain-clothes agents. That's how it was at the People's Palace last week. I'd wager a third of the audience was police."
"And the rest they herded off to jail."
"Not all, my love."
"No?"
"Some they took straight to the hospital," he grinned broadly.
"And to this you take a woman in my state?"
"There's nothing planned, my dear," he reassured her sincerely. "Believe me, I'm in a position to know."
"Well, let's get going, if we must."
"First, my dear, a gift for the occasion," he announced, waving his arms with a magician's flourish and producing a pair of earrings with large double loops of gold.
While Fedya clapped his hands and stomped back and forth to keep warm, Katya grabbed the earrings and pushed back her red scarf, exposing her ears to the bitter wind, to put them on and display them. "Are they real gold?" she asked eagerly.
"No more real than your pearls and your furs," Gavril answered with a wink.
"No matter," she answered, shutting her eyes and shaking her head to delight in the way the loops tinkled. "They sound like gold. Are you teasing me?" she added hopefully.
"They're brass," he laughed. "Pure brass."
"Why can't you lie, just once lie to me and tell me they're real? Let me believe. You're such a monster and such a dear at once -- I could scream."
"If you two are done with your games," Fedya interrupted, "we're so late now we'll be lucky if they let us in."
They started forward and turned the corner. Then Katya stopped abruptly, awed by the immensity of the four-hundred-meter-long stone structure that housed the University. "Mother of God," she muttered, crossing herself. Her eyes ran rapidly up and down both sides of the street -- packed tightly with brightly colored sleighs and carriages, attended by liveried coachmen and footmen.
Right at the corner, a red motor car of French manufacture halted, unable to advance any further. A chauffeur hopped out and ceremoniously opened the rear door for a bejewelled lady in furs, and a gentleman with a top hat, who arm-in-arm, rapidly, but with dignity, strode toward the nearest entrance.
"Fedya, Gavril," Katya whispered anxiously. "Please go on ahead without me. I'm feeling so foolish, traipsing about in this state." She held her swollen belly. "Everybody'll be staring at me, thinkin' how I'm..."
"Nonsense," insisted Fedya, in an authoritative tone, "As I've told you many times before, your case is far from unusual. Why even by the official statistics, a quarter of the births in St. Petersburg are illegitimate. Right this moment there must be hundreds..."
"But, Fedya, those others aren't fool enough to be goin' to fine lectures and parties -- not in this state. There'll be important people -- students like you and rich folks come from all over to see your great Professor Tannenbaum. I'll stand out like a ..."
"Ripe watermelon, my dear," Gavril finished for her. "The most beautiful ripe watermelon in all of Petersburg." He turned her around, holding her by the hips from behind, and guided her up University Line.
She shook her head to hear the earrings tinkle, then turned and kissed Gavril on the nose. "Thank you. I love them. But someday, promise, please promise you'll give me real gold, anything, no matter how small -- just one real treasure to treasure."
"Never," he answered with a smile.
"You beast," she snapped. "You and your truth. When one sweet little lie could make me so happy."
He slapped her gently on the backside. "No more nonsense, pumpkin. Forward, waddle."
Gavril made a mockery of his love for Katya because he was embarrassed to admit that, contrary to his political convictions, he was susceptible to "bourgeois" sentiment and emotion. He had told her that the pearls were paste, but they had been his mother's and her mother's before her -- a valuable heirloom. He had told her the furs were cheap imitations, that she had better not wear them in the rain or the hair would fall out -- but they were real sable, just as the earrings were 24-karat gold.
These deceptions were for her own good, as well as for his ironic amusement, he told himself. Katya took him at his word and put little value in the gifts and used them often and enjoyed them, "pretending" they were real. If she had known they actually were gold and pearls and sable, she would never have worn them for fear that they'd be stolen. If she had known that Gavril truly loved her, she would have lost sleep worrying about him in his reckless exploits, when he posted inflammatory placards and distributed anti-government leaflets. As it was, she enjoyed his mocking camaraderie and their occasional physical intimacy, as brief and beautiful moments -- like a warm sunny October day in St. Petersburg -- a pleasant surprise with no future.
He made much of not marrying her, of not showing jealousy or claiming ownership of her in any way. On occasion he offered her to his brother Fedya, who was not indifferent to her charms. But Katya refused repeatedly and vehemently. She was deeply offended that he should suggest such sinful debauchery. She was his alone, whatever he might say.
On those occasions, Gavril would pretend surprise, insult her for her "ignorance" and "supersitition" and "bourgeois morality," while inwardly he glowed with pride that Katya was his more than marriage vows could ever make her.
The "Twelve Colleges" was built on a grand scale, with high ceilings and ornately carved mahogany woodwork. It had been designed in 1722 by order of Peter the Great, not as a university, but rather as an administrative center -- the "colleges" being his ministries. A hundred years later, Tsar Alexander I had founded the university that, with its four faculties -- History and Philology; Physics and Mathematics; Jurisprudence; and Oriental Languages -- now occupied the entire edifice.
Now, beyond the policemen in black uniforms with green facings, the hallway was packed solid with people. "We should have gotten here an hour ago," said Fedya. "It's mobbed like this every time Tannenbaum gives a public lecture."
Gavril and Fedya stationed themselves on either side of Katya, to protect her from the crush of the crowd, and guided and pulled her toward the winding staircase that led to the balcony.
"I simply can't understand how a mere historian could attract such an audience," lamented Fedya. "Now if it were Mendeleyev who were speaking, that would be another matter."
"Mendel who?" Katya interrupted, always curious, even when maneuvering in a mob to protect her belly.
"The great Mendeleyev," Fedya continued, "He taught here for over thirty years and still returns to give special lectures. The inventor of the Periodic Table of Elements."
"What's that?" asked Katya, tapping Gavril on the shoulder and pointing up at a crystal chandelier with dozens of electric light bulbs. But he was so preoccupied with shielding her from shoves that he couldn't hear her above the general hubbub. She didn't persist, easily distracted, in childlike awe and fear of everything new and unexpected. Despite her physical discomfort, she felt a tingle of excitement at what represented to her the danger and thrill of the unknown.
"The Table of Elements?" replied Fedya, misunderstanding her question. "That's a law of nature that can be used to predict the existence and the properties of elements that no one has yet discovered. It's like a map to unknown mysteries of the universe."
"Incredible," she sighed, breathing heavily from the exertion of standing so long. She found it hard to believe that she, the daughter of a poor village sexton, was here in the midst of all this elegance.
"Yes," Fedya went on, thinking he had caught her attenton. "Mendeleyev predicted gallium, scandium and germanium, and was soon vindicated by their discovery by other scientists."
Fedya continued, lost in his own thoughts, "Now he is working out the chemical composition of ether. That's the matter that fills the seeming vacuum of interstellar space and permeates all other matter, making possible the propagation of light and other electromagnetic radiation. I hear he believes it consists of two elements of smaller atomic weight than hydrogen. He should be giving a lecture on it soon. Now that would be an occasion of importance..."
They squeezed into standing room near the balcony railing. From there they had a clear view of the lecture hall.
Down below, top hats were filing to the front, followed by felt and fur hats. Cadet and student caps and woolen hats were climbing the stairs to the balcony, where the seating was unreserved.
After she caught her breath, Katya wedged her way into a leaning position, with her foot on an armrest and her backside on a ledge where the railing met the wall.
A fellow student, squeezing by, whispered at Gavril, "Our brothers in Moscow were all expelled."
"Half of them were jailed," whispered another.
"And banished to outlying villages," offered a third.
"Fifteen of the leaders were shipped to Siberia," added the next.
"What did they do?" Katya whispered anxiously.
"Not much more than we did a week ago," Gavril answered. "They sang songs, waved flags, demanded freedom of speech and press, broke into some university buildings, and barricaded themselves in. The usual," he added offhandedly. "It's all just games until the workers join us."
Katya scanned the crowd nervously, wondering which were police in disguise and which others were paid by the police to spy on their friends. Soon she became itchy, uncomfortably aware of pressure on her bladder and pains in her legs. She was wondering how she could survive the lecture -- much less the party they were to go to afterwards -- when, to resounding applause, the Professor approached the podium.
Tannenbaum was extremely tall and moderately portly, with a deep, booming voice. His spectacles were more often in his hand than in front of his eyes -- an extension of his hand as he stretched it out dramatically. He spoke with the authority of a giant among pygmies. Katya soon forgot her aches and itches and stared in wonder. Even those who were too far away to distinguish his words or, like Katya, too uneducated to understand them were moved by the tone of his voice.
Halfway through, a cadet stood on the balcony railing, waved a red flag and shouted over and over again, "Down with autocracy!"
"Silence," Gavril whispered to his neighbors. The word spread quickly. Students ignored the demonstrator.
To the pleasure of the crowd, Tannenbaum continued as if nothing had happened.
After a few minutes, police carried away the shouting cadet.
"As I thought," noted Gavril, glancing at his pocket watch. "Too long."
"What?" asked Katya.
"The police waited too long. They could have had him before he finished a sentence. He's one of theirs -- planted to provoke trouble. They should know better than to be so obvious."
After the lecture ended in wave after wave of applause, Katya, dazed by the experience, followed docilely as Fedya and Gavril led her, against the current of the exiting crowd, to the front of the hall, where admirers were clustered around the Professor.
"Why didn't you tell me?" whispered Katya. "I'd have never thought ... he's so tall and handsome."
"So old," laughed Gavril. "Old enough to be your father, maybe even your grandfather."
"Well, he's a fine figure of a man, with a voice to make angels forget they're angels."
Finally, Fedya caught the Professor's attention, "Sir, may we follow you?"
The Professor smiled, "Well, no one's ever been so formal about it, asking permission and such. But I suppose I do have a number of followers." He looked up at the ceiling for a moment, as if he were remembering and counting them.
"No, sir," answered Fedya. "What we mean is to follow you home."
"Home?"
"You see, your wife invited us to the party."
"Party?"
"For your name day?"
"Oh, yes, the party. But that's a small affair. Just a few of my friends and my wife's family and such. What did you say your name is?"
"Fedya Mikhailovich Schedrin. This is my brother Gavril and our friend Katya. We've been students of yours these last two years."
"Indeed? I didn't realize the University allowed girls, and in such a condition..."
"No, not Katya. Just Gavril and I are enrolled, but we do our best to pass on what we learn to her. That's why we brought her here today -- she so much wanted to see the famous Professor Tannenbaum."
"I'm flattered, I'm sure," he noted, putting on his spectacles to give her a closer look: the turned-up nose, the full lips that reached out as if she were trying to pronounce French or to blow a kiss to a friend, the eyes that one moment withdrew in shy innocence and the next flashed provocatively. "There's no telling what my wife's up to," he explained. "She's a charming creature, always full of surprises. A rare gem of a woman..." He paused for a moment, then reached out his arms expansively, "Yes, do come along, if you like; if you don't mind spending the evening with a bunch of elderly snobs. At least there are sure to be plenty of refreshments. There's no holding her back when it comes to spending on entertainment. Yes, do come. You and the young lady are sure to liven things up."
From the age of eight up until the previous May, Katya had worked twelve hours a day, six days a week at one of the many textile mills along the steam tram line that ran along the Neva, south from Petersburg. It was at the end of the line, in Murzinka, that she lived with her well-meaning but strict father, the sexton at the village church. Her mother had died when she was born.
For years, her father had lived in fear that she would become a "fallen woman." He kept her under close watch the few hours when she wasn't at the mill and unintentionally stimulated her imagination with his unfounded suspicions.
She turned over all of her earnings to him, and he saved every kopek for her, hoping that, with a substantial dowry, she might have the good fortune to marry a respectable shopkeeper and escape the poverty that had been the lot of their family for generations.
One day as she was having lunch with two other girls by the river just outside the mill, two gentlemen chanced upon them and struck up a conversation about the rights of women and workers and unions and other dangerous topics. Katya ran and hid behind a tree, afraid to be seen with them in case police should be about or in case these fine gentlemen themselves might be police in disguise, trying to provoke unsuspecting girls to "revolutionary" talk so they could haul them off to prison or, by the threat of prison, have their way with them.
While she watched, the other girls flirted and giggled, ignoring the politics. Soon each had paired off with a gentleman of her own. One couple settled in the tall grass near where Katya was hiding. The girl teased and played until her man was panting and pawing at her. Then she jumped up and ran off, laughing at him for wanting what she had wanted him to want.
Katya saw a chance to escape for good from her father's house. She ran out, took the gentleman by the hand and led him deeper into the tall grass.
The gentleman was Gavril. He followed her, laughing at her sudden willful passion. He was so excited already and so attracted by her frightened, active ardor and the quick nervous thrusts of her tongue through his teeth, that he took her virginity there in the grass as she wanted him to.
When they were done, her curiosity spent, she was shaken by wave after wave of fear, regret, and guilt. He cradled her in his arms comforting her with a gentle back rub and humming a lullaby to her.
"Where did you learn that song?" she asked between sobs.
"From my mother," he answered.
"What's her name?" she asked.
"She's dead," he answered simply.
Katya never returned to work that day or ever after. She went home and lay in bed, claiming she was sick and carefully going over in her mind just how she could use this incident to escape for good.
Gavril had told her where he lived; so a month and a half later she went to his lodgings and said she was going to have his child. She thought she was lying. She didn't expect him to marry her. She just wanted some money, a place to stay, a start away from home.
He welcomed her, joking that she had laid a trap for him, making it clear that as a matter of principle he would never marry. But from the warmth that shone from his deep-set dark brown eyes, he was truly delighted that she had come into his life. That was his way with her -- never asking anything of her, forever mocking her and her emotions, but surprised and pleased, as if it were the fulfillment of a heartfelt wish, when she came to him unbidden in the night, with that same frightened and curious ardor.
She kept up her pretense of pregnancy as best she could -- claiming headaches, morning sickness, and moodiness. But soon the acting came all too easily. Then she wasn't acting at all, but actually feeling all those symptoms.
The reality shocked her. One moment she was playing a game -- enjoying her freedom in the big city with a rich student to pay her bills and take care of her. A golden road stretched far ahead, for her to dally along and explore at leisure. But now that road had vanished. This unborn baby meant she would be trapped without past or future in an uncertain, endless present. Neither her father nor the foreman at the mill would ever forgive her. There was no going back.
She considered having an abortion and asked Gavril if he knew anyone who could do it. But he wouldn't listen to such talk. He treated her kindly -- more kindly the more pregnant she became -- without, however, relenting in his mockery and without ever telling her that he really cared for her.
The Professor led the way through the crowd, past all the elegant sleighs and motorcars, back to the tram stop.
The murky night sky was starless and moonless, but downtown Petersburg shone with an electric brilliance that Katya had never before experienced. She stared in wonder. Even the tall towers of the Peter and Paul Fortress on Petersburg Island had a fairy-tale quality, bathed in light against the black sky. "The Tsars are buried there," Gavril told her. "How appropriate that they should spend eternity in a prison."
Across the river on the mainland stood the Admiralty and the Winter Palace -- imposing stone structures that she had found forbidding and frightening in daylight but that now sparkled as if all the snow trapped in crevices and window frames and roof tops were thousands upon thousands of diamonds.
Straight ahead the great gold dome of St. Isaac's Cathedral glistened. "I only wish it was real," Katya sighed.
"What?" asked the Professor, blowing on his hands to keep them warm.
"The gold," she said, pointing. "It's only paint, you know."
"Paint?" he asked in disbelief. "Why I assure you my dear, that's pure gold. Over two hundred pounds of it."
"But Gavril..." she started, then stopped, embarrassed. She glared at Gavril, who just smiled and winked at her. She quietly cursed him for making a fool of her.
Fortunately, they didn't have long to wait, and the tram was far less crowded than before. Fedya and Gavril sat on either side of Katya. The Professor insisted on standing. Katya stared up at him in wide-eyed admiration. He smiled back, and made fun of his height and his abilities, "My height has been a great boon to my career. That and my voice. All people have to do is see me and hear me to know what a great man I am. I rather enjoy playing the professor and being looked up at. But, I must confess, I'd feel better about all this success if I thought people listened to what I say. For instance, you, my dear, what do you think I was talking about?"
She knitted her brows seriously, as if organizing a complex thought, then simply said, "History."
"Yes," he chuckled. "Indeed. History. Yes, it's not my profound and original thoughts that draw people to these lectures. My books have caused no great stir. I doubt that anyone reads them. Just my looks and my voice -- a fine basis for professorial acclaim, wouldn't you say, dear? And what will they think of me when those start to fade? So far nature has been far kinder than I had any reason to expect," he chuckled again.
As the tram rattled past the Kronstadt pier out onto the Nicholas Bridge, a sudden gust of wind covered the windows with snow, totally blacking out the city from view. Then another stronger gust violently rocked the car, tipping it, for a moment, onto one set of wheels. Several passengers were thrown to the floor. Tannenbaum, holding tightly to an overhead strap, swung wildly, but stayed on his feet. Fedya clung to his seat with both hands tense in panicky caution. But Gavril, immediately, before there was time to think, dropped to his knees in front of Katya, caught her as she was flung forward, and held her and tenderly comforted her until the danger was past.
Soon the tram passed the Alexander Garden and turned onto the broad and brightly illuminated Nevsky Prospekt. They passed the construction site of the Singer Sewing Machine Building opposite the Cathedral of the Virgin of Kazan ("St. Peter's imitated by pygmies," mumbled Gavril), and the Gostinniy Dvor with its multitude of shops ("all second-rate," Gavril insisted).
But Katya was so enthusiastic that Gavril's mocking cynicism had no effect on her. She even didn't mind riding in a tram again instead of, as she had hoped, in a fine carriage with velvet seats. She still imagined the Professor's house was in this the finest part of town. Perhaps it was as magnificent as these palaces that they were passing one after the other.
But on they went, over the Moika Canal, then over the Fontanka Canal, all the way to the end of the line at Znamenskaya Square. There they changed to another line, the line she was all too familiar with, with its steam-driven tram. They proceeded through the less fashionable lower end of the Prospekt. They passed the ominous shadowy shape of the vast monastery complex -- the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. Then they followed the river along Schlusselburg Prospekt, over the Obvodny Canal and beyond the city proper, into the suburbs.
Out the window, by intermittent moonlight, Katya could see the frozen Neva, and sleighs and sledges, drawn by little Finnish horses, bound for villages along its windy path as far as Lake Ladoga and the Schlusselburg fortress-prison, with its full complement of "revolutionaries." Soon the shadows of huge factories began to appear and the flimsy little shelters of workers.
"Where are we going?" Katya finally dared ask, shifting nervously in her seat. "Here we're halfway, now, to my father's village of Murzinka."
"It's not far now, dear," smiled Tannenbaum. "Not in the best of neighborhoods, I must confess. But a fine old house. Once it was elegant -- a country estate overlooking the river. But the coming of the factories and their smoke chased the rich away. But it's a fine gem. Especially now that we've refit it with modern bathrooms and kitchen and central hot-water heat. You could fit a few hundred people in there, I'd wager, if you jammed them all together standing. Besides, it helps get me out of my books, keeps me in touch with the times, too, riding the tram like this with all the variety of inhabitants of our fair city."
When they finally arrived at their stop, even though it was only a short distance to the house, Katya was in such evident discomfort that the Professor hired a sleigh and solicitously helped her aboard.
For several blocks around, the streets were full of parked sleighs, like the street outside the University had been. Only now it was much colder, and the blanketed horses stomped about restlessly, trying to keep warm. Many of the drivers gathered about a fire they had built by the roadside.
"Are all the neighbors entertaining tonight?" Tannenbaum asked his driver.
"No, sir, just your house, sir," he answered. "I've driven a dozen or more parties there tonight, sir. I hear there's hundreds of 'em packed in there and all havin' a jolly good time of it, I'm sure, sir."
"Indeed. Most peculiar. But then again," he laughed, "my wife is always full of surprises."
Just outside the front door, stood a heavy-set gentleman with white bushy sideburns and a handlebar mustache. He was arguing loudly with a good-looking woman in her mid-thirties, who patiently ignored him, as if she were used to such tirades.
"I beg your pardon, sir," interrupted Tannenbaum. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"It's this party, sir, that apparently half the world has been invited to, and not the better half, I fear. Why there's no room to stand, much less sit, and the place is full of the most questionable characters. Why it's probably crawling with pickpockets."
"Indeed? That would be most unfortunate," offered the Professor, in good-humored sympathy. "Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Professor Tannenbaum."
"Goodness, sir. I didn't mean to malign you, or rather your party. But I've never seen such a motley set of people so jammed together. It rather put me off. My name is Solovyov, Sergei Vassilyevich Solovyov of the Russian and English Bank." They shook hands. "This is my friend, I mean my cousin, Tatiana Dmitrievna Titova. You see, we were invited by way of a friend of Tatiana's who has a daughter at the Smolny..."
The Professor cut his explanation short, shaking his hand heartily, "How do you do, sir. These are my students: Gavril and Fedya Schedrin, and their friend Katya..."
"Maslova," she answered for herself.
"You don't say," replied Solovyov, at a loss for words at the sight of a woman up and about at her advanced state of pregnancy.
Tannenbaum rang the bell, and, almost immediately, the door was opened by a slender young woman as tall as himself, "Welcome home, father," she said. "Happy name day."
"Heavenly days!" he exclaimed at the sight of the crowd. "Where did they all come from?"
"It's Sonya's doing. I did my best to help, of course; but it was all her idea."
"Marvelous, simply marvelous. And what of the Tsarskoye Selo crowd?"
"Not a one of them would come. That's what inspired Sonya. She came home with two straggly pilgrims she had found outside her father's office, and turned them over to me and the servants to clean them up and put them into new clothes. Then she set to work like a madwoman to create this totally unforgettable gathering."
"But how did she do it?"
"She contacted everyone she had invited before -- your friends and students -- by phone, by messenger, however she could. She urged them to invite their friends and to have their friends invite friends. She borrowed servants from the neighbors, tripled and quadrupled her food orders and ordered 300 extra bottles of champagne. She was determined to pack the house."
"That she did, indeed. Simply marvelous." He turned to Katya, Gavril, and Fedya, "What did I tell you? She's a real gem of a woman, isn't she? But, Beth, what about the drivers out there in the cold? Surely, there's enough to go around?"
"Of course, I should have thought. Ilya!" she shouted back over the crowd.
"Ilya!" her father repeated in his booming voice.
"Yes, master?" the servant answered, squeezing with some difficulty toward the door.
"Please, could you run out and talk to the drivers," requested Tannenbaum. "Tell them they are welcome to join in the party, or if they would feel more comfortable in the kitchen, there's warmth and food and drink there as well."
Solovyov stared in disbelief as Ilya ran by him and out the door. "You don't actually mean..." But before he could register his objection, the host and his daughter were swallowed by the noisy crowd.
"Hey, Gavril!" came a shout from the other end of the hall, near an icon of Christ.
"We're among friends," Gavril laughed reassuringly, for Katya's benefit. Then he surged ahead with her and Fedya in tow, past stinking cigars, wine-stained dinner jackets and low-cut gowns; stepping on and being stepped on by military boots and peasant footcloths; being jabbed by high heels and pointed toes, and brushed by a young woman's bare foot.
The current of the crowd carried them into the drawing room, where two dozen students -- the jackets of their uniforms unbuttoned -- were gathered round the piano, loudly bawling bawdy songs. By chance a door opened as they were being swept by, and they found themselves propelled into the Professor's library -- one of the few islands of relative quiet.
"Welcome!" shouted the Professor, seated comfortably on top of his oak desk, legs crossed, champagne bottle in hand. "If you chance upon my wife somewhere among the multitudes, please convey to her my hearty thanks. All these lively people -- I haven't felt so good in thirty years. And would you believe I never suspected for a moment... But, come in, come in. There are still window sills to sit on. We were just solving all the world's ills.
"Gavril, Katya, Fedya, I'd like you to meet Professor Katkov, Captain Azbotkin, and ... I confess, I don't know everyone's name, and strongly suspect everyone doesn't know me. But I must point out the patriarch of us all, the one who makes us all feel young -- Prince Dmitry Dolgoruky: a real live Decembrist."
"Surely, you jest," interjected Gavril, incredulous. "That was seventy..."
"Yes," continued the Professor, "seventy-six years ago, in December of 1825, dozens of young Guards officers led their troops in revolt against Tsar Nicholas I. Dmitry here would have been among them, a last minute convert to the cause of constitutional monarchy, had he not had a bad cold that morning. That cold saved him from a lifetime of hardship in Siberia, and helped preserve him fit and alert to the advanced age of ninety-five so he could join us tonight in our momentous deliberations." He raised his bottle high, "To Dmitry, to the common cold, and to our common cause."
Evidently impressed, Gavril whistled, "Ninety-five!"
The elderly gentleman stood, did a short vigorous dance to the music that permeated the thick oak walls, then bowed to generous applause.
"Do you realize," announced Fedya, as if having made a great discovery, "that someone seventeen today, like Katya here, would be ninety-five in the year 1980. And a baby born tonight might even live to the year 2000."
"Mercy me!" exclaimed Katya, awed by the enormity of the thought. "That far off is more than my head can figure. I can no more see myself living then than living on the moon."
"Don't worry," Gavril jovially comforted her. "Things that matter don't change very fast, at least not in Russia."
"I'll drink to that," bellowed the Decembrist in a firm deep voice. "All that changes is the cut of the clothes and the number after the tsar's name."
"Yes," continued Gavril, "I suspect a trip to Russia eighty years from now would be like a trip to America today."
"Quite an optimist," commented Professor Tannenbaum.
"That backward heathen place?" objected Captain Azbotkin, twirling his well-waxed mustache and sneering in disdain. "God forbid. Didn't they just shoot their president again? How many does that make? Three or four assassinations? And now who do they have governing them? Some 'roughneck'?"
"'Rough rider,'" Gavril corrected him.
"Crude in any case," Azbotkin continued. "A lot of good democracy does them. Long live the tsar!" he toasted, and was joined by half a dozen others.
"Yes, we do so much better," added Gavril, joining the toast, with an ironic grin. "It's been more than twenty years since a tsar was murdered."
"Wasn't that the same year the Americans had their last assassination?" asked Fedya, as if on cue. "A President Garfield, I believe."
"And in the last hundred and fifty years the Russian succession has been settled without violence how many times, Fedya?"
"Just twice, I believe."
"A fine record of political stability. Indeed. To the Tsar!" proposed Gavril.
While Tannenbaum settled the problems of the world, Sonya played the part of the gracious hostess. One minute she was in the kitchen, giving a dozen borrowed servants orders for more smoked sturgeon, herring fillets, salmon, meat pates, cakes and pastries, to be prepared on the spot or fetched from the homes of helpful neighbors. Next she assisted as half a dozen gentlemen in dinner jackets, including a doctor, attended to a corpulent, extravagantly be-jewelled, middle-aged woman who had fallen in the dining room.
All the while, Sonya stayed alert to comments and snatches of conversation around her, and tried to direct the more animated and eloquent of her guests to out-of-the-way rooms where they wouldn't be overly bothered by the shifting mob and the loud hum of everyday chatter.
Those with heated opinions about the peasant and land question she directed to her own bedroom upstairs, where an aide of Count Witte, the Finance Minister, was the center of attention.
In one of the guest rooms, Father Gapon explained and defended his celebrated proposal for workhouses and colonies for the unemployed.
Would-be actors and poets she consigned to the attic, encouraging them to make full use of the old clothes and discarded furniture as props for impromptu performances.
People she considered bores -- showing off their ideas, their accomplishments, their goods for sale -- she corralled into the rooms of Matryona the maid and Ilya the general house servant. These included representatives of an English bicyle company, an American sewing machine company, and a French automobile manufacturer, along with an assemblage of conceited students and pompous professors. Many were mesmerized by a typewriter salesman who argued convincingly that his product would "totally revolutionize society."
Passing through the drawingroom during an intermission in the singing, Sonya spotted another bore -- this one unmannerly and boisterous: the heavy-set banker who had introduced himself as Sergei Solovyov.
"Impossible, utterly impossible," he muttered loudly, for everyone's benefit.
"What seems to be the trouble?" offered Sonya, intending to guide him to the servants' quarters.
"These people... this crowd of... Any minute I expect to have my pocket picked..."
"Hello, there, Sergei," a short thin man with a monocle approached him. "Fancy meeting you here."
"Ah, Dr. Chernikov, the first familiar face I've seen. I was just telling this young lady that I expect to lose my billfold to a pickpocket at any moment. I was brought here by my wife, I mean my cousin..."
"Certainly not your wife," chuckled the Doctor, "seeing as how she's an invalid. Unless, of course you have more than one," he winked, drunkenly.
"Indeed. I mean, no indeed. My cousin, my great-aunt's granddaughter, a charming lady, Tatiana Dmitrievna Titova -- she's a widow with a daughter nearly grown."
"I do believe I detect a touch of guilt," noted Chernikov.
"Why... why I..."
"Of course," laughed Chernikov. "You never could take a joke. I know Tatiana. We met at the Saltykov's a couple months ago. It was she who invited me here, knowing that you and I are friends. She said they'd said, 'Come, and bring along whomever you like.'"
"My God! No wonder there's such a mob. And now they've invited all the cab drivers to join in the festivities, and I can't even bribe one of them to leave. So we're stuck here for the duration with this pack of radicals and revolutionaries -- yourself excepted, of course, and this charming young lady. What did you say your name was, dear?"
"Madame Tannenbauma. The Professor's wife."
"Oh, God help us," moaned Solovyov. "Then you're one of them, too. I only hope government spies aren't about, taking names and associating me with such people."
"It sounds like you need another glass of champagne to calm your nerves," Sonya offered cordially, trying to lead him away.
"Champagne?" he exclaimed, standing firm and gesticulating wildly as he launched into a tirade. "Yes. That's the very problem here. Serving champagne to cabbies and servants and impoverished students. It's too rich for their blood. They go away wanting more of the same, talking about higher wages and equality, and Lord knows what else."
"You sound like a government bureaucrat," replied Sonya. "You're worried sick over a few strikes and the supposed plots of a handful of exiles when the Empire as a whole is quite calm. You might even say that the Empire has reached new heights now that it has gobbled up Manchuria."
The doctor quickly countered, "You understand, of course, that we're only in Manchuria on a temporary basis."
"Of course," she smiled. "Only until we've been able to take Korea and force a showdown with Japan."
"You seem sadly misinformed, my dear," Dr. Chernikov pursued condescendingly. "Associating with these radicals has given you a distorted view of the world. If you had an opportunity to discuss such matters with high-ranking military officers who are in the know, you..."
"My father is a major general in the Second Guards Division."
"Oh."
"Suffice it to say," Sonya continued, "our government shows a heady self-confidence abroad; but at home, it is unduly cautious. Social issues, like how to give the peasants enough land so they won't starve..."
"Are taboo," Solovyov finished her sentence for her. "Leave the peasants and the workers alone. Don't go giving them fancy ideas and serving them champagne. The poor will be with us always, as the Bible says. Just let them be and they'll be content, as their forefathers were for thousands of years. By stirring up false hopes, you only breed discontent."
Sonya laughed. "You're actually afraid of a party like this, aren't you? Like our government bureaucrats -- so bold with the Chinese and so suspicious of their own people." The piano and the singing started up again, but Sonya was so riled by this pompous banker and his doctor friend that she kept talking, her voice becoming shrill as she raised it to make herself heard. "Ministers surround themselves with guards. Newspapers and books are closely censored. In the University and even at parties, people assume the secret police are everywhere. Really, gentlemen, isn't this absurd? Do you really believe I'm a bomb-throwing revolutionary?" she smiled flirtatiously.
"Why, no!" Solovyov yelled, then blushed, realizing that, with a lull in the music, his voice had carried throughout the room. "Of course not, miss, I mean, madame," he pursued in a softer ingratiating tone. This time his words were drowned out; so he angrily bellowed. "There must be limits! Dissatisfaction spreads by loose talk!"
"Nonsense," Sonya smiled confidently, pleased that she was able to maintain her equanimity while speaking loudly and clearly enough to be heard. "People always find ways to express their dissatisfaction. If they have intelligence, they do so artfullly, within disciplined limits, flirting with revolution, politely. Such double entendre enlivens social gatherings and gives banal ideas, like ours, an aura of profundity and daring."
Solovyov shouted back, "Then you should make better use of your intelligence. Form, my dear, is all important."
Sonya replied calmly, "I find it embarassingly bad form for anyone to take this drawing-room radicalism seriously. It's like a jealous husband making a fool of himself. Real revolution would be very different -- more like a raging passion."
"You talk of revolution like some virgin school girl talking of love."
Shocked, she backed away, turned away, and blushed. The words had hurt her more deeply than their superficial meaning would warrant.
"Is that gentleman giving you trouble?" asked Gavril, who, emerging from the library door in search of drink, seemed to have materialized out of nowhere.
Sonya blushed again that her embarrassment had been noticed. "He's an intolerable bore," she replied too loudly. "He's in mortal fear that he'll be tainted by all these radicals or that someone will steal his precious billfold. I almost wish someone would."
"What you need is another drink," Gavril suggested. "Katya!" he shouted, going back into the library and grabbing her from behind. "Forward, waddle!" he commanded, pushing her ahead, back into the drawing room.
"Waddle?" she complained. "Didn't I ask you not to use that word?" she rambled on as she plunged ahead and the people around, out of respect for her pregnant rotundity, pressed hard against one another, trying to back away.
"Why don't you take off that scarf and show off your hairdo and your pearls?" Gavril prompted playfully.
"They're very pretty, and I thank you for them," she leaned close and spoke tenderly, not wanting to hurt his feelings. "But among all these fine ladies with their Paris dresses and their real diamonds and pearls, I'd feel fooish, like pretending to be better than I am, with my bits of pearl-like paste."
Gavril laughed and winked.
As they rushed past, a tall stranger in a dress coat smiled at Katya and greeted her in a strange language. She stared back at him in bewilderment.
"An American," explained Gavril.
"But he can't be American. He's wearing Russian clothes."
"He could have bought that dress coat in London or New York or Tokyo or anywhere. As Fedya says, 'In our age, dress is a symbol of class, not nationality; just as class, not nationality, is the true enemy.'"
"What?" asked Katya, not hearing him clearly and not understanding what she did hear.
"Anyone who wears a dress coat is the enemy."
"Oh," she said, nodding her head, not wanting to seem stupid, determined to pretend she understood. "But," she pursued, leaning close to him to make sure he could hear, "if you weren't a student, you'd be dressed like that, too, wouldn't you?"
"Exactly," he replied, with an ironic grin, pleased at her desire to learn, and even more pleased at his ability to confuse her.
They soon arrived at a table with large, silver bowls full of ice and bottles of champagne. Gavril grabbed one.
"What's the idea?" Katya insisted. "Pushing me like that, in the state I'm in, just to get yourself a bottle?"
"Not for me, dear. But for our charming hostess," He leaned close, kissing her ear and nibbling her earlobe as he answered.
"Another woman, already, is it?" she began, flirtatiously. "But what's that in your hand there?" she added hurriedly.
"A banker's billfold... How much do you suppose a banker carries on him, a boisterous bore of a banker?"
"I don't rightly know. But how did you come by it?"
"Not so loud, my dear," he whispered loudly. "After all, you're my accomplice in this."
"Accomplish, you say?"
Just then the voice of the banker Solovyov bellowed forth from the other side of the room, "My God, it's stolen! They actually did it. Someone has taken my billfold. Pickpockets! There are pickpockets in the house!"
The music stopped abruptly.
"Lord have mercy!" Katya moaned softly. "And me accomplished and all."
"Well, how much do you think it is?" Gavril pursued.
Katya turned to look him in the eye, then leaned close to his ear, for fear of being overheard, "How can you joke, and us as good as on our way to Siberia, and me in my state..."
"Come on now, Katya. Take a guess," he urged, too loudly for Katya's comfort. "How much money is worth that much wind?"
"A thousand? Two thousand, maybe?" she answered quickly to shut him up.
"Ten, my dear," he took pity on her and whispered in her ear again. "Just one lonesome ten-ruble note. The man's afraid not because he's rich, but because he's poor. Let's take pity on the poor man."
"What are you doin'," she whispered back nervously.
"Giving alms to the poor."
"But that's a hundred ruble note you're putting in there. Where did you come by such a fortune?"
"My parents are sometimes generous."
"Don't go showing that thing where folks can see," she whispered even more nervously. "You must be sick in the head to go putting your money in his wallet. Now they'll say you stole that, too, and send us away for twice as long, Lord have mercy."
"About face, my dear."
"What!" she exclaimed, as he abruptly spun her around.
"Forward, waddle!"
"Not that again," she whispered hoarsely, leaning backward, awkwardly, so only he could hear. "You're not going to swipe more of them, are you?"
Soon they reached the vicinity of Solovyov, where everyone was shuffling about, offering suggestions and sympathy, as he raged on, "Imagine inviting common cabbies and common workmen, and..."
"Common bankers?" offered Gavril.
"What?"
"I believe you dropped this, sir."
"My God! My billfold! Where did you find it?"
"On the floor a few steps away. Perhaps you dropped it."
"More likely the thief's doing. Took the money and left the evidence behind -- the swine."
"Well, aren't you going to check to see if the money's still there?" Gavril suggested.
"Indeed, of course, yes," Solovyov blustered, shielding the billfold from the eyes of the many curious bystanders while he quickly checked the contents. His face reddened.
"Is something the matter, sir?" asked Gavril, in his most solicitous voice, aware, in the strained silence, that everyone in the room was listening.
Solovyov glanced again, then awkwardly stuffed the billfold into his pocket.
"Is anything missing?" Gavril pursued.
"No... I mean, yes."
"How much?" insisted Gavril, savoring the reactions of the audience. "I feel a certain responsibility, being the one who found it for you."
"Quite a substantial sum. Yes, quite a lot indeed, I assure you."
"But I couldn't help but notice that there was money still left in the wallet."
"You did? I mean, yes, of course, you would. I suppose the ruckus I raised frightened the thief. He grabbed a handful of money, dropped the wallet and ran, leaving behind a mere pittance, a hundred rubles or so," he added with a touch of pride.
"Well, sir, on behalf of the radical students and other politically questionable elements in this fair gathering, I wish to extend my sincerest apologies," declaimed Gavril with an elegant bow.
Sonya shouted, "Bravo!" The crowd laughed and applauded. The students started singing "La Marseillaise," and the mood of the party once again became jovial, open, and democratic.
Wanting to avoid any further confrontation, Sonya maneuvered far away from the banker, toward the front hall and up the main staircase. On the way she passed an elderly lady in bloomers -- loose Turkish trousers tucked into high boot tops, worn with a scant skirt coming just below the knees.
"They should have kept the ban on school girls wearing corsets," the old lady was lecturing her neighbors. "If women are so foolish as to punish themselves with devices like that..."
Sonya missed some of the words in the general hubbub, then heard, "It takes a strong government to bring about lasting reform. There are precedents: Peter the Great taxed the peasants for wearing beards... If the Minster of Education weren't so weak..."
Then again she heard , "... as bad as Chinese women binding their feet."
Sonya was tempted to turn back and join the discussion. She empathized with the ideas of the Dress Reform Movement, but not with the means they were now pursuing. It sounded so right and progressive that women should dress sensibly and comfortably, rather than constrict their breathing with corsets, weigh down their hips with heavy skirts that they could trip over, and distort their posture with high heeled, pointed toed shoes. Such talk had been all the rage when Sonya's mother was young. But fashion had prevailed over common sense. Over the years, the struggle for dress reform had become the discredited cause of a few old die-hards, who, unable to persuade the general public, still hoped to bring about reform by government edict. The Minister of Education had tried and failed to initiate such reforms for school girls -- before he was assassinated, just last summer.
Sonya shook her head and continued up the stairs, laughing at herself to herself. Her hair was loose and free -- an outward protest against foolish fashion. But here she was in high heels, in a long dress with a train and flounces and frills, modeled after the latest Paris fashions; and, yes, she was wearing a tight corset that pushed her bosom high and full, up to the V of her neckline -- a corset that, as she ascended the stairs, kept aggravating that bruise on her hip from this morning.
The doorbell rang, and Sonya turned to see her step-daughter, Beth, glide toward the door, champagne bottle in hand.
Eighteen-year-old Beth seemed to delight in playing hostess, using a combination of smiles, sharp elbows, and imperious commands to move undaunted through one people-jam after another. With her exceptional intelligence and impulsive exuberance, she was in many respects a younger version of Sonya. But whereas Sonya was relatively short, Beth had her father's exceptional height. So she was easy to spot in a crowd such as this -- with her dark eyes and naturally curly black hair that, like Sonya and the lady in bloomers, and unlike every other woman at the party, she wore long and unrestrained.
Opening the door, Beth found a peasant in the scraggly, filthy state Shemelin and Sofronov had been in before they had been bathed and given new clothes. Her first inclination was to presume that this was an eccentric beggar attracted to the house by the glitter and noise of the party. She handed him the champagne bottle and sent him on his way with good wishes and a friendly gesture. But when she tried to shut the door, he blocked it with his foot, handed her back the bottle, and stared at her intensely and ominously, without saying a word, until she let go and let him pass into the vestibule.
He had a long, lean, swarthy face; smoked a crudely carved long-stemmed pipe; and had no coat, but rather layer upon layer of rags. Variegated filth-stained colors showed through the many rips in these make-shift clothes. On his head, instead of a hat, he wore more rags, like a poor man's version of an Indian turban or head bandages of an Egyptian mummy.
He plunged into the crowd as if he knew exactly where he was going, and the crowd parted in front of him, instinctively pressing back to get away from the filth.
Beth followed closely in his wake. He went straight to the base of the stairs, to Shemelin, who stared at him in shock, and backed away, crossing himself repeatedly and praying loudly, "Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy..."
The newcomer laughed and slapped him in the face. "Wake up, lad. I'm still flesh and bones, as you can feel." He slapped him again.
"Butorin..."
"So the living still call me."
Sonya fought her way down the stairs, through the wall of curious bystanders, following the newcomer as he moved into the dining room. "Beth," she called, "who is this person?"
"A friend of Shemelin's, it appears."
"Well, we must do something with him. Call the servants."
"Ilya! Matryona! Come quickly!" called Beth.
"We'll have you cleaned up in no time," Sonya told him in her friendliest voice.
"No one cleans me," he replied softly, but decisively.
"What was that?"
"I am who I am, and that's how I stay."
"Really, my good man. You are welcome here. But, to put it bluntly, your odor is offensive. And you should not be so rude as to impose that stench on these other guests. I strongly suggest that you go now with these servants. They will clean you up and give you..."
"No," he replied simply, and squatted on the floor, drawing a long-bladed knife from his foot cloths.
"Shemelin, who is this man?" insisted Sonya.
"Alexei Butorin, your ladyship. We were comrades, he and me and Bulatovich, in Manchuria together. He's been a bit strange since finding some bodies without heads, Russian bodies, comrades. He talks to the dead and reckons on things not of this world. Crazy or blessed or cursed -- God knows. But I wouldn't fool with him, your ladyship."
Sonya stared Butorin straight in the eye, and addressed her servant, "Matryona, go quickly and get candles and incense, the most pungent incense you can find. There's more than one way to deal with an odor."
Butorin laughed, "I like you, lady. You and the Amazon." Beth blushed. "Both beautiful ladies." He put away his knife, stood up, and strode toward Beth. She backed away. He laughed again, "Not you I want. Not now, my beautiful Amazon. Just that bottle you carry about."
She laughed back, in relief, and tossed it to him.
"To Mazeppy!" he shouted and took a deep swallow of champagne.
"That's what we call ourselves," explained Shemelin. "Followers of Mazeppa -- that's what we call our leader, Bulatovich."
"Who is this Bulatovich?" asked Beth.
"An officer," replied Shemelin, "a fine and noble officer, from one of the Tsar's own Guard regiments. He treats us common Cossacks like brothers and fights like Satan himself."
"He's charmed, my lady," added Butorin. "Black magic charmed. Magic from blackest Africa." He seemed to revel in the attention he drew.
"And where is he now?" pursued Beth.
"We thought he was off to Japan or America," answered Shemelin. "So he said, being as he was in trouble and like to be tried for deserting and such."
"What do you mean?" Sonya interrupted defensively. "I never heard of any scandal."
"Do you know this Bulatovich they are talking about?" asked Beth.
"Never mind," Sonya cut her off. "Continue, please, quickly."
"He was in the right, your ladyship, God be praised," Shemelin continued. "He went off and saved a missionary from the heathen, when the general told him not to be leaving camp. But who was he to go against a general in time of war? Or so they'd have said in court, if it came to court.
"That was better than a year ago. Since then, Sofronov and me been walking the length of this great empire. And I came to see I needed Mazeppa, needed his strength, wanted to follow him, even if it be to hell. So we came to Petersburg to find what clue we could of him. Only today, miracle of miracles, I found him. Not in the flesh, not yet. But now we know he's back at his regiment and once again stands tall with honor."
"Vsyo moyo, skazalo zlato," intoned Butorin. "Vsyo moyo, skazal bulat. Vsyo kuplyu, skazalo zlato. Vyo vozmu, skazal bulat."
"What was that?" asked Sonya.
"An old saying, my lady," he explained. "'Everything's mine,'said gold. 'Everything's mine,' said steel. 'I can buy everything,' said gold. 'I can take everything,' said steel. 'Bulat' as in steel or saber. 'Bulat' as in Bulatovich. Our Bulatovich has a will of steel."
"Indeed," noted Sonya. "I never thought of his name that way. I rather like the gist of it. But for sound, I prefer the synonym -- 'Stalin.' It's easier to say."
Beth prodded Sonya and whispered to her, "Do you know this Bulatovich? You'll have to tell me more about this fascinating officer."
For the next hour or more, there was a press of attentive guests in the vicinity of Butorin. He luxuriated in this attention and the free-flowing champagne; and he welcomed the heavy use of incense as a way to heighten the magical aura he tried to project. He told wild tales of the adventures of the Mazeppy in Manchuria -- claiming that Bulatovich had used African magic to repel bullets and even artillery shells. He told, too, of how he himself had found the headless body of one of their comrades and how he had been haunted by the ghost ever since.
"And what do you do when you see your ghost?" asked Beth with skeptical playfulness.
"I dance," replied Butorin, suddenly vaulting over the back of a chair and onto the dining room table. There he did a few wild turns, while astonished bystanders scurried to move dishes and bowls of food out of his way. Then he stretched out his hand to Beth, "Come, my pretty Amazon, let's dance away the ghosts together."
She backed away from his odious smell, but he grabbed her firmly and hoisted her up onto the table with him. First he alone, then she, too, danced, getting caught up by his compelling rhythm and the response of the inebriated crowd, that clapped and stamped their feet in ever faster rhythm, until the two of them collapsed in a dizzy heap there on the tabletop.
"Show us the dead," she laughed loudly, as she disentangled her long hair from his rags.
"Give me a loaf of bread," he ordered. "A big round loaf."
One soon appeared, passed from hand to hand from the kitchen. He pulled his knife from inside his foot cloths and quickly carved out a mouth, nose and eyes, like a jack-o'lantern.
"And what do the dead say?" asked Beth.
"Bring me charcoal, bring me candles, five of them," ordered Butorin, getting caught up in his own performance.
Abruptly forcing Beth off the table, he used the charcoal to draw a perfect five pointed star on the white tablecloth, placed a lighted candle at each point, and ordered his spectators to shut out all other lights.
Suddenly the house, except for an occasional clinking of dishes in the kitchen, was very quiet, and the crowd pressed as close as possible to the dining room, to see what was going on.
Butorin sat cross-legged in the middle of the pentacle, the candles casting shifting, upward shadows across his face. He held the loaf of bread at arm's length, and in a deep serious voice began to speak.
At first he spouted gibberish and mumbo-jumbo, an amusing parody of a seance. The crowd reacted, appreciatively, with intermittent and then continuous loud laughter, until he suddenly dropped the bread and stood up with his arms straight up in the air and started to say, "The dead who are not dead tell me of a father who is not a father, a wife who is not a wife.
"They speak of a soldier who is no soldier, a monk who is no monk. They speak of a man who is not a man and a woman who is not a woman with a boy who is not a boy.
"They say there will be a turning and a twisting till people and things find their proper names and go their separate ways.
"Who is this man who is not a man? We would follow him to hell, and he would leave us here.. there, I mean..." He shook himself, and looked around, as if surprised to see all these people, then sat down and dangled his feet over the edge of the table, with a mindless drunken grin on his face.
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Related material, such as books by Bulatovich about Ethiopia
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