#27- Many happy returns
Tsarskoye Selo January 14th 1896
The new year celebration has brought the Romanov clan together again. Grand dukes and Grand duchesses resplendent in jeweled gowns and uniforms, fantastic costumes of imagined Byzantine, Norse, and Tartar antecedents and numerous other fancies. The tables groaned with delicacies and the gaslights were reflected by the crystals of the chandaliers into a thousand cascading rainbows.
In one corner Sergei Alexandrovich’s wife draws a dare from a priceless Ming vase. Besides her a guffawing grand duke lies blindfolded and bound, being teased by a peacock feather held by a woman who is not his wife. Severely dressed servants bearing trays with glasses of champange bustle amongst the merrymakers, and many partake rather more than they should.
Elena glided through the festive crowd like a gaunt ghost in a plain grey dress. The crowd, the fesitivities, seemed unreal to her. It was as if they belonged to an entirely different world than the universe of suffering she had witnessed in Armenia. If these people were stripped of their jewles and their costumes, if the mask was removed… would there be anything left?
Which was the true world, and which the lie?
Across the hall her husband beckons her to him.
It is odd. For the past two weeks, even as she had felt more apart from the world, she had drawn closer to Him. He had taken a life, she had saved them and so, though there were still secrets and new lies between them there was also a greater truth.
The shifting crowd hides him from her. Before she can thread her way through it a impromptu line dance breaks out and she is given little choice but to join. When the dance ends and she regains sight of George he is deep in conversation with Dmitry Spiryagin, the minister of Interior.
He had begun, for the first time, to discuss matters of state with her. He had asked for her own report on the situation in the Six vilayets, and Erevan- and was taken aback when she found that he actually expected her to write a report and then compare what she had written with the separate assessments of the Interior ministry, the war ministry, the viceroy of Transcaucasia and the Tbilisi, Erevan and Baku representatives.
She hesitates for a moment, then pushes forward. Her time of withdrawing when the business of ruling arises is over.
Talking, as they had never previously done, she had begun to understand something at his frustration at being increasingly forced into reviewing the reports and reccomendations of others while being cut off from almost any direct contact with his subjects. George often waxed nostalgic to her about his time at the head of the Trans-siberian committee he had oversee a truly titanic enterprise. But it was an enterprise with a defined end and beginning which could be measured on the ground. Obstructive managers could be identified and removed. Efficient officials could be identified and promoted. And the task, large as it was, was not too large for one man to wrap his mind around. Ruling all of Russia was different. There were not enough hours in the day, nor enough room in one’s head to fully comprehend all of the interrelated issues and choices facing the troubled empire- even if it were possible to trust all reports. Which, as poring through the contradictory reports made clear, it was not.
By the time she reaches George Spiryagin is gone. Somewhat to her surprise, Instead of relapsing into brooding or fixating on his minister's words, George smiles warmly and clasps her hand.
“It has been difficult for you to return to all this, hasn’t it?”
She hesitates. But if this holy night was not a time for truth, when was?
“It just seems… so unimportant. The dances, the preening, the gossip and the self seeking plots for advantage… do they all matter? Matter in the end I mean?”
George smiles.
“For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then shall I know, even as also I am known.”
She stares at him, before retorting, perhaps more sharply than she intended.
“I understood as a child, I thought as a child; I felt as a child, I reasoned as a child. But when I became a man, I putaway childish things; now that I am become a man, I have done away with childish things.”
He hadn’t, of course. Though he had become more discreet. Nor does he show any sign of understanding, let alone remorse, when he offers her his arm.
“These things do matter, you know. I may be Tsar but I cannot simply command an pokicy to be implemented. Or rather, I can issue a command but unless the command has support, and support of the right people, it will somehow be obstructed along the way.”
“And these are the right people”
When has she begun to sound so cold? It was not so long ago that she partook in these very same gatherings. These were her friends after all, as well as the families of her and her sister’s husbands.
“These are the people with influence, wealth and power which can be used to support or oppose me. This is the Romanov clan. These are the people who have the most invested in the autocracy and who cannot allow a revolution or foreign conquest to end it. “
“Is that a danger?”
His face darkens.
“That is always a danger. Less so now, perhaps. Nothing like a short victorious war, not to mention new land grants, to distract the Narod away from dangerous thoughts.”
“You would win much goodwill with your new Armenian subjects if you ensured that some of the vacated Turkish land goes their way.”
“Some already has. Unfortunately this seems to have sent the wrong message.”
“Spiryagin?”
“It seems your Armenians have chosen to vacate additional Mohamedan land.”
“I thought that is what Yudevitch wanted. Isn’t that why he handed them guns? Did he think they would lay them down once the war of empires ended? ”
“That may have been a mistake. There is a time and a place for everything. The time for such detestable measures is in the heat of the fighting not two months after a peace treaty is signed. The place is most definitely not within our own borders and not against peaceful Tartars who have been my subjects for two generations!”
Her heart sinks.
“What happened?”
“Some of the Armenian volunteers from Karabakh returned to their homes after being discharged. I have conflicting reports of what happened next… as usual. Either they assaulted a Tartar village on their way before dispersing or else they used their training and hidden arms to defend their villages, then retaliate against a Tartar raid. Either way it matters not. I can’t have my subjects killing each other and if the slayings spread to Baku and the oil refineries… “
Elena nods. Finances have been already burdened by the costs of the Anatolian campaign and the mobilization in Manchuria. If revenue from the oil wells in Baku and the factories they supplied were interrupted…
“What are you going to do?”
“Well dear, what do you think I should do with your Armenians? I can string up and exile some individual ringleaders. But we are unlikely to catch them all, or even identify the correct ones. That will create martyrs, but not a deterrant to future outrages. And it is unlikely to mollify the Tartars. No, I am afraid wholesale exile of the offending villages north of the Caucasus is the only action which will both send a strong enough message and eliminate the source of the unrest.”
“And create a thousand new outbreaks of unrest! The Armenians are already suspicious given the way you are settling Cossacks and Witte’s Robotniks on the lands the Turks vacated, including many they claim the Turks expelled them from. Not to mention the relocations of refugees east of the Caspian. If you do the same in Karabakh you will merely confirm in their minds that you view them as enemies to be dispersed rather than allies to be supported! And you will encourage the Tartars to provoke further clashes- since they will know the outcome of such clashes will favor them and harm their enemies”
George scratches his fledgling beard.
“What if both the Tartar and Armenian villages are exiled? That would at least show lack of favoritism- and eliminate both troublespots.”
“No, that would lead Armenian and Tartar to unite against Russian rule. They will suspect you are using minor strife between them as an excuse to colonize their lands with Russians. A rebellion by either group alone would be troublesome and bloody. But together? Disastrous. On the other hand…”
George quirks an eyebrow
“Yes? Do go on. So far you are making better sense than many of my ministers.”
With a bit of a shock Elena realizes that words spoken by her casually in the midst of celebration could save or condemn thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people to exile.
“If you were to exile only one village of each nation, and transfer their lands and homes to the possession of members of the same nation, perhaps the Armenian church and the local Tartar Waqf, the offenders would be punished, members of their group deterred, and yet your punishment will not be viewed as an assault on the entire nation rather than it’s offending members.”
George laughs.
“Is this how your parents disciplined their children? I hope you do not intend to be quite so devious with our own.”
Elena strokes her belly and half-smiles, half frowns as she looks into her husband’s eyes.
“We may soon have a chance to find out. Another seven months if I am not mistaken.”
George gulps. They had had a strormy reunion, but have slept in seprate beds more often than not since.
“So soon?”
“It only takes once after all.”
George gestures at the silently attending servant and plucks two glasses of champagne from his tray, handing one to Elena (1) before raising his own in a toast. If he harbors any doubts he conceals them perfectly.
“To many happy returns!”
(1) Fetal alcohol syndrome is unknown at this time.
. corrected.
