Boris Akunin - The Coronation

There was another knock at the door, even more insistent than the previous one.

‘My lady, Georgii Alexandrovich is here!’ the maid’s frightened voice announced.

‘How can that be?’ Pavel Georgievich cried in alarm. ‘What about the opera? Well, that’s it. Now he really will send me to Vladivostok! Oh Lord, what shall I do?’

‘Into the wardrobe,’ Izabella Felitsianovna declared decisively. ‘Quickly! No, not the left door, the right one!’

Somewhere very close to me a door squeaked and I heard agitated breathing about three paces away, beyond the multiple layers of dresses. Thank God my brain was unable to keep up with events, otherwise I should probably have simply fainted away.

‘Well, at last!’ I heard Snezhnevskaya exclaim joyfully. ‘I had already given up hope! Why promise and then make me wait like this?’

There was the sound of a prolonged kiss and beyond the dresses Pavel Georgievich gnashed his teeth.

‘I was supposed to go to the opera, but I escaped. That scoundrel Paulie . . . Give him it in the neck, I will . . . Here, I had to come here . . . I have to . . .’

‘Not straight away, not straight away . . . Let’s have a glass of champagne – it’s already waiting in the drawing room . . .’

‘To hell with champagne. I’m all on fire. Bellochka, it’s been hell being without you. Oh, if you only knew! But later, later . . . Unbutton this damn collar!’

‘No, this is insufferable!’ a voice in the wardrobe said in a breathless whisper.

‘You’re crazy . . . Yourwhole family’s crazy . . . Youwere saying something about Paulie?’

‘The boy’s got completely out of hand! That’s it. I’ve decided to send him to the Pacific. You know, I believe he’s rather taken a fancy to you. The little whippersnapper. I know I can trust you completely, but bear in mind that he picked up a nasty disease on the voyage—’

The wardrobe swayed and a door slammed.

‘He’s lying!’ Pavel Georgievich howled. ‘I’m cured! Ah, the scoundrel!’

‘Wha-a-at!’ Georgii Alexandrovich roared in a terrible voice. ‘How dare you . . . How dare you . . . dare?’

Horrified, I opened my door a crack and saw something I could not possibly have imagined even in the most appalling nightmare: Their Highnesses had grabbed each other’s throats, and Pavel Georgievich was kicking at his father’s ankles, while Georgii Alexandrovich was twisting his son’s ear.

Izabella Felitsianovna tried to come between the two men, but the admiral-general caught the little ballerina a glancing blow with his elbow, and she was sent flying back towards the bed.

‘Afanasii!’ Snezhnevskaya shouted imperiously. ‘They’re killing each other!’

I jumped out of the wardrobe, prepared to accept the blows of both parties, but that proved unnecessary because Their Highnesses senior and junior gaped at me wide-eyed, and the battle came to a natural end.

I caught a quick glimpse of my reflection in a pier glass and shuddered. Tousled hair, dishevelled sideburns, and there was something pink clinging to my shoulder – either a slip or a pair of pantaloons. In my state of abject confusion, I grabbed the shameful item and stuffed it into my pocket.

‘Will . . . er . . . will there be any instructions?’ I babbled.

Their Highnesses exchanged glances, both looking as if a tapestry or bas-relief on the wall had suddenly started talking. But in any case the threat of infanticide or patricide was clearly over, and Iwas astounded yet again by Izabella Felitsianovna’s presence of mind and acuity of wit.

Their Highnesseswere apparently struck by the same thought, because they said almost exactly the same thing simultaneously.

‘Well, Bella, you are a most amazing woman,’ Georgii Alexandrovich boomed.

And Pavel Georgievich chanted in a bewildered tenor: ‘Izabo, I shall never understand you . . .’

‘Your Highnesses,’ I blurted out, realisingwhat a blasphemous misconception the grand dukes were labouring under. ‘It’s not at all . . . I have not . . .’

Without listening to what I was trying to say, Pavel Georgievich turned to Snezhnevskaya and exclaimed in a tone of childish resentment: ‘So he – he – can, and I can’t?’

I was struck completely dumb, with no idea at all of how to resolve this terrible situation.

‘Afanasii,’ Izabella Felitsianovna said firmly, ‘go to the dining room and bring some cognac. And don’t forget to slice a lemon.’

I rushed to carry out this instruction with a feeling of quite inexpressible relief and, to be quite honest, I was in no great hurry to get back. When I finally entered the room, carrying a tray, the picture that met my eyes was quite different: the ballerina was standing, with Their Highnesses sitting on pouffes on each side of her. I was rather inaptly reminded of a performance of Chinizelli’s circus which Mademoiselle and I had attended with Mikhail Georgievich the previous Easter. We had seen roaring lions sitting on low pedestals while a brave slim female lion-tamer strolled around between them, clutching a massive whip in her hand. The similarity was heightened by the fact that the heads of all three of them – Snezhnevskaya standing and the great dukes sitting – were on the same level.

‘. . . I love you both,’ I heard and halted in the doorway, because this was clearly not the moment to come barging in with the cognac. ‘You are both very dear to me – you, Georgie, and you, Paulie. And you love each other too, do you not? Is there anything in the world more precious than loving devotion and affection for one’s kin? We are no vulgar bourgeois. Why hate when you can love? Why quarrel when you can be friends? Paulie is not going off to Vladivostok – we would miss him wretchedly, and he would miss us. And we will arrange everything excellently. Paulie, when are you on duty at the Guards company?’

‘On Tuesdays and Fridays,’ Pavel Georgievich replied, batting his eyelids.

‘And you, Georgie, when are the meetings at the ministry and the State Council?’

Georgii Alexandrovich replied with a rather dull-witted (I beg your pardon, but I cannot find any better definition) expression on his face: ‘On Mondays and Thursdays. Why?’

‘See how convenient it all is!’ Snezhnevskaya exclaimed delightedly. ‘So everything’s arranged! You, Georgie, will come to see me on Tuesday and Friday. And you, Paulie, will come on Monday and Thursday. And we will all love each other very, very much. And we won’t quarrel at all, because there is nothing to quarrel about.’

‘Doyou love him in the sameway as you love me?’ the admiral-general asked stubbornly.

‘Yes, because he is your son. He is so very much like you.’

‘But . . . what about Afanasii?’ Pavel Georgievich asked, looking round at me in bemusement.

Izabella Felitsianovna’s eyes glinted, and I suddenly sensed that she did not find this terrible, impossible, monstrous scene in the least bit arduous.

‘And Afanasii too.’ On my word of honour, she winked at me. But that is impossible – I must have imagined it – or else it was a nervous tic in the corner of her eye. ‘But not in the same way. He is not a Romanov, after all, and I have a strange destiny. I can only love the men of that family.’

And this last sentence sounded perfectly serious, as if Snezhnevskaya had just that moment made a remarkable and possibly not very happy discovery.

1 Thank God! He has recovered consciousness. You were right.

2 Affair of the heart.

I found myself caught in a false and distressing position, and I did not know how to escape from it.

On the one hand, the previous day’s clarification at the Loskutnaya had put an end to the tension between the grand dukes, and at breakfast they regarded each other with a sincere goodwill that reminded me more of two good comrades than a father and son, and I could not but be glad of that. On the other hand, when I entered the dining room with the coffee pot, bowed and wished everybody good morning, they both looked at me with an odd expression on their faces, and instead of the usual nod, they also said ‘Good morning,’ which confused me completely. I believe that I even blushed.