David Dickinson - Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

Haemos . Blood, the Greek word for blood. Philos , love of something, as in philosophy, love of wisdom, philology, love of words. Haemophilia, literally, love of blood. Powerscourt was thinking about blood and the Russians’ love of it. He thought of the blood on the snow in the streets of St Petersburg as the workers tried to reach the Winter Palace to hand in their petition to the Tsar, mown down by the Imperial security services, their faces chopped into bloody pieces by the cavalry, their children shot as if they were criminals. He thought of the end of that terrible day when he and Mikhail and Rupert de Chassiron had tried to help the wounded outside the Stroganov Palace. Often all they could do was to wipe away the blood and send the dying off to meet their Orthodox God with clean hands and clean faces. Cleanliness next to Godliness. He thought of the blood being spilt in that ludicrous war between Russia and Japan, the disfigured and the maimed and the blind and the deaf returning to beg on the streets of their capital. He thought of the blood flowing in the basement cells of the Okhrana, of the terrible whips lacerating men’s backs till their blood ran down in red puddles on to the floor, of Roderick Martin’s lifeblood dripping into the dust as he was lashed to death in Major Shatilov’s squalid office. He thought of Grand Duke Serge, cousin of the Tsar, married to the Empress Alexandra’s elder sister, his blood and guts blasted by the nitroglycerine explosion all over the walls of the Nicholas Gate in the Kremlin.

He thought of the little boy called Alexis, the Tsarevich, growing up in the Alexander Palace, the blood flowing uncontrollably round his body.

Haemophiliac Son. Haemophiliac Nation.