Chapter 35: Signs of a Fracture

There is no such thing as a bad Tsar.

A startling number of Russian citizens sincerely believed this proposition, and by now it was well on its way to becoming established fact.

“That’s what I’m saying! Everything that’s made our lives so hard until now, it was all because those rotten Grand Dukes were covering His Majesty’s eyes and ears!”

“Hear, hear! And even so, His Majesty struck the Grand Dukes down so that he could hear our voices, so where would you find a finer man than that!”

“Aren’t the Grand Dukes His Majesty’s own kin? To cut down his own relatives for our sake, truly the Tsar is….”

The sovereign is a good man; it is the fellows beneath him who are the problem.

This framing was, surprisingly, one of those tricks of the ruler’s trade that had always worked well, in every age and in every land.

Even in the 21st century, a great many people have a habit of wanting a strong leader to guide them and show them the way.

How much more so in a culture where autocracy was taken for granted; there such faith and such dependence could only run deeper still.

It was no wonder that the monarch who had beaten the hell out of Japan and who had swallowed tears of blood to punish his own relatives for the sake of the workers, Nicholas II, grew more popular with the citizenry by the day.

Of course, not everyone looked on this trend favorably.

“How did it come to this? If the citizens come to revere the Tsar like this, doesn’t that leave us in trouble?”

“But the workers’ lives have improved….”

“That is nothing but an unjust servitude! Are we, who pursue true liberation, supposed to rejoice because the chains on our wrists have been loosened a little!”

“That may be so, but everything in this world has to advance by stages….”

“Where in this world has there ever been a revolution by stages!”

The revolutionaries split over the present state of affairs and argued back and forth as though ready to devour one another.

True to men who enjoyed a fight of words more than anyone alive, the revolutionaries carried on endless disputes over three great questions.

Had the Tsar’s Great Purge helped sow the seeds of revolution, or was it cutting down the revolution’s sprouts?

If the present situation was M’s long-term plan, then what lay at the end of that plan?

And whose side, in the end, was M on?

Nobody could give a clear answer to any of it.

But there was exactly one man who had no intention of even joining the argument.

Lev Trotsky decided that instead of butting into the debate, he would go and find the answer himself.

A week since he had slipped into Petersburg under the false name Pyotr Petrovich.

The mood of the streets was nothing at all like what he had expected.

Rather than the eve of a revolution, it was closer to a festival for the Tsar’s coronation, and everywhere he went, cheers of long live the Tsar rang out.

In an atmosphere like this, if a man so much as let the word revolution pass his lips, wouldn’t the citizens beat him to death before the Okhrana ever got the chance?

Trotsky studied the city’s mood as closely as he could and succeeded in making secret contact with the man he had come for.

A shabby church in the south of Petersburg.

When he called out from the alley to Gapon, who had just finished his relief work among the poor and was on his way out, the priest nodded with the air of a man who had known all along.

“Father Gapon. Might I have a word with you?”

“You are… ah, you must be the man Kamenev spoke of.”

“That’s right. I am a colleague of Kamenev’s.”

“Mr. Trotsky, is that correct?”

For Gapon to come out with the name he went by in the movement, just like that, made Trotsky’s eyes widen slightly.

He hardly thought Kamenev would have been loose-lipped enough to hand over his name as well, so how did this man know?

Of course, Trotsky’s name was famous among revolutionaries, but recognizing at a glance that he was that Trotsky was another matter entirely.

“I heard it from M. That there was every chance Mr. Trotsky would soon be entering Petersburg. And yet to have truly braved the danger and come all this way, you are a remarkable man.”

“M again… well, some risks are worth taking, and so here I am. Since you say you were expecting me, I’ll ask you straight out.”

In the narrow alley behind the church, Trotsky spat out the question he had been carrying with him all this time.

“What is M aiming at? Sweeping away the Grand Dukes and strengthening the Tsar’s power, what on earth does that have to do with revolution?”

“If I am to be honest with you, I do not understand the whole of M’s great design either.”

There was no falsehood in Gapon’s voice.

Gapon genuinely did not know M’s full picture, so this was a truth he could have staked his conscience as a clergyman upon.

“But what I heard from M directly, that I can certainly pass on to you.”

“I am listening.”

“M holds you in very high regard. Said you were a far finer talent than Lenin. Though I hardly know who Lenin is.”

Trotsky’s eyes wavered, ever so slightly.

However indifferent his mouth pretended to be, there was no helping the fact that his pupils reacted first.

“Ahem… and? On what grounds?”

“I will pass on M’s words exactly as they were spoken. Lenin is a systematic theorist and an excellent organizer, but his theory is only ever completed inside a study; the moment it steps out into the street, it loses all its life. He also said it must inevitably end in a dictatorship centered on Lenin himself.”

“…Just as I thought.”

“By contrast, a man who can stand before tens of thousands and turn theory into reality, an orator who can set fire to the hearts of the masses, a commander who can hold an organization together and carry things through even in the midst of chaos. M’s assessment was that in Russia today there is only one such man, and that man is Trotsky.”

The further Gapon’s account spilled out, the more the muscles beneath Trotsky’s eyes began to twitch like mad.

This was no mere flattery.

An assessment that pinpointed precisely, this precisely, what he himself had always thought.

Wasn’t this exactly the sort of objective analysis that pulled an admiring that’s M for you out of a man before he knew it?

Indeed, indeed, he was the better man, better than Lenin.

“Ah, and one more thing.”

Gapon shifted his gaze slightly and went on.

“M said that an intellectual like Trotsky would know very well how hollow the question of whose side M is on truly is.”

“…What is that supposed to mean?”

“The theories of today’s revolutionaries, he says, are all of them flawed. That they stop at smashing the bourgeoisie and completing the revolution, and are woefully short on any consideration of what the world after that ought to look like.”

Trotsky folded his arms.

There were any number of theories about what sort of society ought to follow the revolution, but set beside the means and methods of revolution itself, they were thin stuff, and that was the truth of it.

“On the other hand, those who take the broad view avert their eyes far too harshly from the problems of the present. For the vast majority of the workers who exist in Russia, a world after the revolution is a tale out of a dream.”

“That is….”

“For most workers, is it not today and tomorrow, the bread to feed their families and the hours they can spend with the people they love?”

Gapon’s voice dropped lower still.

“If you tell a man that he and his family must starve to death today for the sake of tomorrow’s revolution, who is going to nod along gladly? What is needed is someone who can see clean through both sides at once, and a man of that caliber….”

Gapon, who had been delivering an entire sermon, broke off and looked Trotsky straight in the eye.

He did not need to speak the name; his gaze said everything.

An intellectual acknowledged by himself and by everyone else, an outstanding revolutionary, and beyond even that, the very incarnation of a colossal hunger for recognition and a narcissistic streak.

Lev Trotsky could not hold back another shudder of exhilaration at the assessment that had pinpointed his worth so exactly.

‘You are a far finer revolutionary than Lenin.’

And it came from none other than Russia’s greatest sage, the man who had read the Great Southern Strike, the Russo-Japanese War, and Bloody Sunday perfectly.

Trotsky had to summon all his strength to hold down the corners of a mouth that insisted on rising.

* * *

The Alexander Palace was never without the happy laughter of the little princesses, as always, but exactly one thing had changed.

“Misha, what’s this?”

Namely, that the long, long era of the Doll Play Occupation was finally showing signs of coming to an end.

By now we were close enough to speak informally in private, and precisely because of that, my little sisters had taken to demanding I come play with them more often than ever.

And so, after a solid week of playing dolls with the children until I couldn’t stand another minute of it, I had wrung my brain dry and produced a magnificent escape route.

Maria peered down at the big sheet of paper spread across the floor, her eyes going round.

“I made it myself. It’s called The Grand Tour of Russia.”

The paper had Russia’s major cities drawn out on it in bright, multicolored ink.

Moscow, Odessa, Baku, Kiev, Warsaw, and a great big illustration of Petersburg right there on the board.

It was a proper, full-fledged board game, packed dense with railway lines linking city to city, with ports, with holy sites.

I’d had the servants track down a set of finely made, pretty little tokens, and with stacks of mock money laid out beside them, the whole thing came together into quite a respectable playing board.

“The rules are simple. You roll the dice, and if you land on a city, you can buy it. If somebody else lands on a city I own, they have to pay me a toll, and if you run out of money, you lose.”

“Wow, that sounds fun!”

“Me too, I want to play too.”

Tatiana picked out a knight-shaped piece, her eyes full of anticipation.

“All right, then let’s split into teams. Me and Maria on one side, Olga and Tatiana on the other.”

Anastasia was four, so the rules would be too hard for her to follow; for the time being she would sit next to Olga and watch.

“Nastya (Anastasia), sit next to me and cheer for me!”

“Okay!”

The first round began in a light and easy mood.

Maria rolled the dice, landed on Moscow, and cried out with shining eyes.

“Moscow! I’m buying Moscow!”

“Good. Then hand over the money.”

When I took the fake bills and set Maria’s piece down on the Moscow square, Tatiana snatched up the dice.

“Then I’m going to….”

Clack! Her piece came to a stop right in front of Odessa.

“Odessa’s a good one too. It has a port, so a lot of money will come in later on.”

“Really? Then I’ll buy it!”

Olga sat beside me, quietly watching the game.

Bright child that she was, she seemed to have grasped the rules at once, and she was snickering to herself as she watched Maria excitedly snatch up cities at random.

“Olga, it’s your turn.”

“All right, all right.”

She rolled the dice, and when her piece came to rest on Kiev, her hand stopped for a moment.

“There’s a church here? Saint Sophia Cathedral?”

“Yes, if you buy a city with a holy site in it, you get a bonus. For reference, Warsaw has the Holy Cross Church, so keep that in mind.”

I had made the game under the pretext of teaching Russian geography, so I’d worked the names of real churches and holy sites into it everywhere.

Olga touched a finger to the Saint Sophia Cathedral square and murmured.

“Church… now that I think about it.”

“Hm? What about churches?”

“Mama was crying yesterday.”

The eyes that had been so happily enjoying the game dimmed a little.

Maria and Tatiana were too busy counting their money between themselves, and Anastasia was occupied fiddling with a stack of mock bills, so I kept the conversation with her going a while longer.

“She didn’t say anything in particular, but… Alexei keeps falling ill, you know. I think that’s why Mama has been looking for a priest who can cure sickness.”

“I see.”

Having grasped the shape of the situation, I calmly picked up the dice.

“I hope she finds a good one.”

It was my turn, so I rolled them across the floor as I was.

“Oh, Misha, I heard something the other day.”

Tatiana must have been listening in, because she broke off from counting her money to cut in.

“I think Mama’s already found him. I heard one of the maids saying that some incredibly amazing priest had come to Petersburg.”

“Oh, is that so?”

So it’s Rasputin.

-Yep. That’s Rasputin.

With a son born with hemophilia, it was hardly strange for a mother to go hunting for a healer, clutching at any straw within reach.

But understanding the Empress’s heart didn’t make this something I could step in and stop.

If I told a mother already on the verge of collapse over her son’s hemophilia that the healer was a swindler and she mustn’t meet him, what sort of reaction would come back?

Obviously she’d turn on me, saying I wanted the Tsesarevich dead of hemophilia as fast as possible and was getting in her way to make sure of it, wouldn’t she?

Can’t stop her.

And no reason to stop her, either.

-Strictly speaking, it’s something we ought to be welcoming.

Because thanks to Rasputin’s existence, the Empress, the one person in this palace who still hadn’t entirely set aside her suspicions of me, was going to be grateful, and was going to open her heart.

“Misha! It’s Misha’s turn, hurry up, hurry!”

Olga puffed out her cheeks and badgered me until I came out of my thoughts, and I chuckled and nodded.

“All right, all right.”

The dice leapt into the air, spun round and round, and my piece came to rest precisely on Petersburg.

The die was already cast.

I would give him a warm welcome, so let him come in, as far as he pleased.

Into my Alexander Palace.

~~~

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