David Dickinson - Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

Below them, diminutive people strolled along the Nevskii Prospekt in their Sunday best. Late worshippers were going in to a service at the Kazan Cathedral to their right, a favourite place for prayer and meditation of the Empress Alexandra. The trams rolled on their tracks towards the Alexander Nevskii Monastery. On their immediate left was the Moyka river and beyond that the great expanse of Palace Square flanked by the General Staff Building, the Hermitage and the Winter Palace, the winter sun glistening off its golden domes. Across the frozen Neva, slightly to the north, the forbidding Fortress of Peter and Paul, burial ground of the Romanovs and prison fortress for their enemies. Further round to the north-west, Vasilevsky Island, home to the university and cabbage soup. To the north-east behind the Finland station, the Vyborg side, home to many factories and unimaginable squalor. To the south-west, beyond the Yussupov Palace and the Mariinsky Theatre, lay the Narva Gates, built to commemorate victory over Napoleon, and behind them the Putilov factories where the current wave of strikes began. From all these different districts the great columns of marching people would be snaking their way towards the heart of St Petersburg.

Today, both Mikhail and de Chassiron had told Powerscourt, might be a key date in Russian history.

‘Today could change everything,’ de Chassiron said, waving a hand expansively across the city spread out in front of them, glad to be able to embrace historical change in person. ‘Autocracy could be banished. The will of the people could bring about a constitution. Of course it depends whether the Tsar pays any attention to them. He’s perfectly capable of ignoring the whole thing.’ And with that he screwed his monocle back into his left eye and continued his close inspection of the fashionable ladies down below.

‘I believe that the Tsar is not even in St Petersburg at the moment,’ said Mikhail Shaporov, whose connections with the imperial household were better than most, ‘and I don’t believe he is intending to come here at all today. Quite what the marchers will do when they hand their petition in to the Chief of Protocol rather than the Tsar of All the Russias, I cannot tell you. I dread to think how cross it could make them, unless, of course,’ Mikhail peered over towards the Winter Palace as if the Chief of Protocol might be rehearsing his welcome even now, ‘he manages to convince them that the Tsar is inside and will consider their point of view.’

‘How do you know that, about the Tsar not being here today?’ De Chassiron was on the scent of the source like a bloodhound.

‘I can’t tell you that, I’m afraid,’ said Mikhail cheerfully, ‘but believe me when I say it is totally accurate.’

‘Can I ask you a question, Mikhail?’ said Powerscourt. ‘This palace here, the one we’re standing on, it belongs to one of your cousins, you say?’

‘It does,’ said Mikhail. ‘My mother came from a very large family so I think we are related to half the aristocracy in the city. My father complains that you cannot drink tea in the Yacht Club without falling over three or four relations, all of them asking you for money.’

Powerscourt saw, to his enormous delight, that the mother Shaporov would have to make the acquaintance of Lady Lucy as quickly as possible. They could start comparing notes on numbers of second cousins and impoverished younger sons.

‘And was the Beef Stroganov invented here? That dish with beef and onions and mushrooms and sour cream and so on? Was it so called because the original chef was employed in this palace?’

‘It was named after a General Pavel Alexandrovich Stroganov, of the family of this palace,’ said Mikhail. ‘That must have been about twenty-five years ago. It has made my father very sad.’

‘Why is that?’

‘My father is very competitive. You will see what I mean when you meet him. “Why should this useless family of Stroganov have a dish named after them”, he said, “when they have not done anything for a hundred years except ride their horses and sleep with other people’s wives and drink their vodka? We have done lots of things. We are rich. Why should there not be a Veal Shaporov or something like that?”’

The young man shook his head. ‘It’s all passed now, the obsession for a recipe that would bear the family name. But for a while it was bad, very bad. We had new cooks coming all the time as the old ones whose new recipes did not find favour were thrown out. I was quite young, so I missed out on most of these strange dishes. There was roast chicken with rhubarb and peaches, I remember. Caviar with chestnut and dill sauce. Christ!’

The marchers were intending to meet in Palace Square at two o’clock. In the side streets down below Powerscourt could see groups of soldiers, rubbing their hands together to keep warm, rifles slung across their backs. Some distance away, over by the Admiralty, he could see the cavalry trotting slowly along in perfect formation. What this city needs today, he said to himself, is not soldiers or cavalry but a properly trained detachment of the Metropolitan Police, led by officers with experience in controlling large crowds.

Mikhail was glancing through a roughly printed paper.

‘They’ve written a proclamation, gentlemen, a letter to the Tsar. Would you like to hear some of it?’

Dim memories of great petitions in English history floated across Powerscourt’s brain. The Chartists, hadn’t they marched to London bringing some great petition with innumerable signatures asking for reform? Hadn’t there been a Petition of Right from the Lords and Commons to the King in 1628 that pointed the way to the English Civil War? Not a good omen for the Tsar, Powerscourt thought, King Charles the First in his impeccable white shirt being led to the scaffold outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall.

‘I’d love to hear it, Mikhail,’ he said, raising his binoculars to his eyes and staring out to the south.

‘“A Most Humble and Loyal Address of the Workers of St Petersburg Intended for Presentation to His Majesty on Sunday at two o’clock on the Winter Palace Square,”’ Mikhail began. ‘“Sire: We, the workers and inhabitants of St Petersburg, our wives, our children, and our aged, helpless parents, come to Thee, O Sire, to seek justice and protection. We are impoverished; we are oppressed, overburdened with excessive toil, contemptuously treated. We are not even recognized as human beings, but are treated like slaves who must suffer their bitter fate in silence and without complaint. And we have suffered, but even so we are being further (and further) pushed into the slough of poverty, arbitrariness and ignorance. We are suffocating in despotism and lawlessness. O Sire, we have no strength left, and our endurance is at an end. We have reached that frightful moment when death is better than the prolongation of our unbearable sufferings.”’

Way off in the distance Powerscourt thought he could hear singing. He strained his head towards the noise but nothing was clear.

‘Christ,’ said de Chassiron, peering at the Russian characters over Mikhail’s shoulder, ‘I shouldn’t think anybody’s talked to the Tsar in that tone of voice in his entire life. I shouldn’t think even his bloody wife talks to him like that. What do you reckon, Mikhail?’

‘I’m sure you’re right, Mr de Chassiron,’ said Mikhail tactfully, his eyes skimming further sections of the proclamation. ‘I suspect the great ruler would be furious if he ever read this.’

‘I wonder if it isn’t always the same question,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Why this great march now? Why today? Are things much worse now than they were before? Much worse than the day before yesterday or last month? If marches and proclamations today, why not last year? Perhaps you’d better translate a bit more, Mikhail.’