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Authors: Eva Stachniak
Tags: Historical, Adult
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visitors, I told the Chancellor.
Prince Lev Naryshkin made the Grand Duke titter with his loud farts and imitations of street whores. Count Vorontzov had presented him with a silver traveling set, encrusted with tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl. “Fit for the best of soldiers,” he said. Madame Kluge was inventing excuses to visit. She was finding fault with chambermaids, making them scrub the grate of the fireplace over and over again. Always managing to appear when the Grand Duke was alone, speaking of Eutin to him, telling him she had been born there.
The Empress came, too. She’d watched as the Grand Duke busied himself with his maps, patted his head when he explained to her the movements of troops in some obscure battle. “Your grandfather would have been proud,” she told him. I told the Chancellor of the promised spring bear hunt, with the trackers and running hounds. And of the teasing. About Mademoiselle Gagarina, her prancing about, her mincing steps. “I’m looking for a bride for you,” the Empress had said, pinching her nephew’s cheek. “I have to, before it’s too late.”
At the word
bride
, the Chancellor bristled. I took note of the sharp twist of his head, the tightening of his lips. I thought of a bird, swooping.
“Has she mentioned anyone yet?”
“Princess Marianna of Saxony, a few times. But the Grand Duke doesn’t like hearing about her.
Horseface
, he calls her. So now the Empress mostly speaks of the Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst.”
“As if we needed another German! As if the one we have was not trouble enough. Does he still wet his bed?”
“Yes. The maids complain of washing his sheets.”
The Chancellor did not hide his irritation with Peter the Great’s grandson. The world was not a plaything of Dukes. Russia needed an alliance with Saxony or Austria. The Prussian King was getting too strong. It would be better for everyone if the heir to the throne understood that much.
There was weariness in his voice. On his desk, papers were turned facedown, arranged in clusters of two so that none could be removed unnoticed.
The Chancellor sighed. “Am I asking too much of him, Varvara?”
A spy does not need to answer such questions.
A spy needs to speak of the letter hidden in the secret drawer that opens only when the carved column on the right is pushed. A letter calling Frederick of Prussia the cleverest monarch in history. A letter complaining that Russia is a barbarian land where people worship idols and kiss their pictures hoping they would cure them from all ills. A letter in which the heir to the Russian throne writes:
If I had not left Holstein, I would by now serve in Your Majesty’s army and learn what being a true soldier is all about
.
A letter Madame Kluge agreed to put in the right hands.
In the first days of October, Professor Stehlin began marking passages from the history of Russia for me to read to the Grand Duke. The description of the Grand Embassy of 1697, Peter the Great’s European journey, where the Tsar learned the intricacies of shipbuilding and during which he bought his books and treasures. The Battle of Poltava of 1709, where the Russian troops defeated the King of Sweden and captured the land that gave Russia precious access to the sea.
Look at him
, I read,
this God-like man, now enveloped in a cloud of dust, of smoke, of flame, now bathed in sweat at the end of strenuous toil. Through God and Tsar, Russia is strong. For the Sovereign is the father of all people, like the Earth is their Mother
.
“With Peter the Great,” Professor Stehlin told the Grand Duke, “nothing was ever left to chance.”
The Grand Duke did not roll his eyes.
The visit to Kunstkamera—Peter the Great’s famous museum on Vasilevsky Island—was to be like a puzzle the Grand Duke was to solve by himself. Why had his grandfather opened it? Why make people come and study his famous collections? What did Russia’s greatest Tsar wish his people to learn?
The Grand
Prince Lev Naryshkin made the Grand Duke titter with his loud farts and imitations of street whores. Count Vorontzov had presented him with a silver traveling set, encrusted with tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl. “Fit for the best of soldiers,” he said. Madame Kluge was inventing excuses to visit. She was finding fault with chambermaids, making them scrub the grate of the fireplace over and over again. Always managing to appear when the Grand Duke was alone, speaking of Eutin to him, telling him she had been born there.
The Empress came, too. She’d watched as the Grand Duke busied himself with his maps, patted his head when he explained to her the movements of troops in some obscure battle. “Your grandfather would have been proud,” she told him. I told the Chancellor of the promised spring bear hunt, with the trackers and running hounds. And of the teasing. About Mademoiselle Gagarina, her prancing about, her mincing steps. “I’m looking for a bride for you,” the Empress had said, pinching her nephew’s cheek. “I have to, before it’s too late.”
At the word
bride
, the Chancellor bristled. I took note of the sharp twist of his head, the tightening of his lips. I thought of a bird, swooping.
“Has she mentioned anyone yet?”
“Princess Marianna of Saxony, a few times. But the Grand Duke doesn’t like hearing about her.
Horseface
, he calls her. So now the Empress mostly speaks of the Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst.”
“As if we needed another German! As if the one we have was not trouble enough. Does he still wet his bed?”
“Yes. The maids complain of washing his sheets.”
The Chancellor did not hide his irritation with Peter the Great’s grandson. The world was not a plaything of Dukes. Russia needed an alliance with Saxony or Austria. The Prussian King was getting too strong. It would be better for everyone if the heir to the throne understood that much.
There was weariness in his voice. On his desk, papers were turned facedown, arranged in clusters of two so that none could be removed unnoticed.
The Chancellor sighed. “Am I asking too much of him, Varvara?”
A spy does not need to answer such questions.
A spy needs to speak of the letter hidden in the secret drawer that opens only when the carved column on the right is pushed. A letter calling Frederick of Prussia the cleverest monarch in history. A letter complaining that Russia is a barbarian land where people worship idols and kiss their pictures hoping they would cure them from all ills. A letter in which the heir to the Russian throne writes:
If I had not left Holstein, I would by now serve in Your Majesty’s army and learn what being a true soldier is all about
.
A letter Madame Kluge agreed to put in the right hands.
In the first days of October, Professor Stehlin began marking passages from the history of Russia for me to read to the Grand Duke. The description of the Grand Embassy of 1697, Peter the Great’s European journey, where the Tsar learned the intricacies of shipbuilding and during which he bought his books and treasures. The Battle of Poltava of 1709, where the Russian troops defeated the King of Sweden and captured the land that gave Russia precious access to the sea.
Look at him
, I read,
this God-like man, now enveloped in a cloud of dust, of smoke, of flame, now bathed in sweat at the end of strenuous toil. Through God and Tsar, Russia is strong. For the Sovereign is the father of all people, like the Earth is their Mother
.
“With Peter the Great,” Professor Stehlin told the Grand Duke, “nothing was ever left to chance.”
The Grand Duke did not roll his eyes.
The visit to Kunstkamera—Peter the Great’s famous museum on Vasilevsky Island—was to be like a puzzle the Grand Duke was to solve by himself. Why had his grandfather opened it? Why make people come and study his famous collections? What did Russia’s greatest Tsar wish his people to learn?
The Grand
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