Читать книгу Peter and Alexis - Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky - Страница 13

Table of Contents

On the banks of the Neva, near the Church of Mary the Mother of all the Sorrowing, next to the house belonging to the Tsarevitch Alexis, stood that of Tsaritsa Martha, the widow of Tsar Peter’s stepbrother Fédor. Fédor died when Peter was ten years old. The Tsaritsa, eighteen at the time of her wedding, had been married only four weeks. The death of her husband sent her out of her mind and she spent thirty-three years in seclusion. She never left her apartments, and neither knew nor saw anybody. At foreign courts she was believed to be dead long since. Petersburg she had only caught sight of through her windows: its whitewashed huts, built after the Dutch and Prussian manner, its church spires, the Neva with its barges and rafts seemed to her an absurd nightmare. Dreams were her reality.

She imagined herself to be living in the Moscow Kremlin, in the old Terems, and that looking through the window, she would see the high Ivan Tower and the Church of the Annunciation. Yet she never did look out of her window, afraid to dispel her dream, afraid of the daylight. Continual darkness reigned in her apartments; the windows were draped. She lived by candle-light. The curtains and screens of ancient tradition hid the last Russian Tsaritsa from the people’s sight. The solemn, pompous ceremony of a Tsar’s Court was strictly observed here. The servants were not allowed to enter further than the hall. Here time stood still, here nothing had changed since the days of the gentle Tsar Alexis. Her crazy mind was possessed of one idea: she believed her husband, the Tsar Fédor, was alive; that he was now at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem praying for Russia, which was being invaded by Antichrist, accompanied by countless armies of Poles and pagan foreigners. There is, she thinks, no Tsar in Russia; he, who calls himself Tsar, not being the true one. He is a pretender, a were-wolf, a Gregory Otriópieff, a runaway artillery man, an alien. But the Lord has not finally forsaken his faithful Orthodox. At the consummation of time, he, Fédor, the only true Tsar of Russia, “the fair sun,” will return with a terrible luminous host, and the foreign troops will flee before him as night fleeth; he will sit with his Tsaritsa on the ancestral throne and re-establish truth and justice. All the people will come and bow before him, and Antichrist, together with all his foreigners, will be overthrown. Soon thereafter will be the second coming of Christ, the end of the world. All this is drawing nigh, is at the door.

About two weeks after the Venus festival in the Summer Garden, Tsarevna Maria invited Alexis to Tsaritsa Martha’s house. This was not the first time they had arranged to meet there. The aunt used to supply him with news and letters from his mother, the Tsaritsa Eudoxia, the first wife of Peter, who had been banished to the Sousdal nunnery under the name of Elena.

On entering the house of Tsaritsa Martha, Alexis was obliged to grope his way for some time along dark wood corridors, halls, chambers, ground floors and staircases. There was a smell of wood oil, old mouldering furniture, dust and the rot of age in the air. The house teemed with small cells, chambers, secret rooms, side rooms and closets. They sheltered the old wives and daughters of Boyars, chambermaids, nurses, housekeepers, laundresses, furriers, saintly madmen, mendicants, wanderers, pilgrims, fools and idiots, orphaned girls, old story tellers and musicians, who were skilled to accompany their ancient legends by melancholy string music. Decrepit servants in faded coats, grizzled and shaggy, well nigh moss-grown, caught hold of Alexis’ lappets, kissing his hand and his shoulder. Blind, dumb, lame, grey with age, almost featureless, they all followed him, gliding along the walls like phantoms; they thronged, swarmed, and crept about in the dark passages like woodlice in damp cracks. He met the fool Shamira, who was always pinching and grinning with the fool Polly. The oldest of the boyars’ wives, Soundóuleya Vahrameyevna, the favourite of the Tsaritsa, now in her second childhood, like her mistress, and fat, yellow, trembling like a jelly, fell at his feet; and for some reason or other began to bewail him, as though he were dead. Alexis felt uncomfortable. He remembered his father saying: “Tsaritsa Martha’s house has been transformed by piety into a hospital for the maimed and mad, for hypocrites and rascals.”

He sighed with relief on entering the light, airy corner room where his Aunt Marya Alexeyevna was expecting him. The windows looked out upon the blue sunny space of the Neva with its vessels and barges. The walls were bare and the logs of which they were built showed as in a village hut. The sole ornaments were the icons and the lamps which glimmered before them. Wooden seats ran along the walls. His aunt rose from the table at which she was sitting, and tenderly embraced the Tsarevitch. She was dressed after the old fashion in a head-dress and a jerkin of dark, quiet colour with brown spots. Her face was ugly, pale, slightly bloated, like that of an old nun. Yet in the ill-tempered lips, the clever, sharp, piercing eyes, there was something which suggested the Tsarevna Sophia—the evil brood of the Miloslavskis. Like Sophia, she too hated her brother and all he did; she loved the old times. Peter had spared her; he called her “old crow,” because she was always cawing evil to him.

Maria gave Alexis a letter from his mother. It was an answer to the son’s recent note, all too short and laconic: “Mother, farewell! Please do not forget me in your prayers.” Alexis’ heart throbbed, as he began to decipher the lines of the familiar writing, scrawled in awkward, childish characters.

“Tsarevitch Alexis, God be with thee! I, poor woman, am grieved to death, that thou hast forsaken me in my sorrow, forgotten me who bore thee. I tended thee, yet thou hast so soon forgotten me! But for thee, I should not live in such tribulation and poverty. Sad, very sad, is my life, I would I had never been born. I know not why so much suffering has fallen to my lot. Yet I have not forgotten thee; but am always praying the Holy Virgin to keep thee pure and well in body and soul. There is an image here of the Kazan Virgin for which a church has been built. For thy sake I had this image brought to my house, and at night I have myself taken it back, carrying it on my shoulders. And on May 23, I had a vision. The heavenly Queen appeared to me, pure and radiant, and promised to petition her Son, our Lord, to turn my sorrow into joy. And I heard, unworthy though I be, the radiant Virgin speak these words; ‘Thou hast honoured my image and carried it back to my church, I will exalt thee and protect thy son.’ And thou, my joy, my own child, let the fear of God dwell in thine heart. Write me, darling Aliósha, if only one line to still my sobs; let me rest from my sorrow, have mercy upon me, thy mother and slave. I pray thee write. I greet thee devoutly.”

When Alexis had finished reading the letter, his aunt gave him presents, sent by his mother—a small image; a handkerchief which the lowly sister Elena had embroidered with her own hand; and two small limewood cups, for drinking vodka. These humble presents touched him even more than the letter.

“You have quite forgotten her,” said Maria, looking him straight in the face. “You neither write nor send her anything.”

“I dare not write,” replied the Tsarevitch.

“Why not?” she retorted with vivacity, and her sharp eyes seemed to sting him, “And even if it did mean a little suffering, what matter? It’s for your mother, and no one else.”

He remained silent. Then she began telling him in a low voice all she had learnt from Michael, a half-witted saint, who had come from Sousdal, “Their joy is ever buoyant: visions, signs, prophecies and voices from the images do not cease. Job of Novgorod says: ‘Some ill is awaiting thee in Petersburg. Yet I feel that God will deliver thee; thou shalt see what will happen.’ It was revealed unto Vissàrion, the old man who lives immured in the Jaroslav wall, that we are on the eve of a change. Either the Tsar will die, or Petersburg fall. And St. Demetrius appeared to the Bishop of Rostov, Dositheus, prophesying that there should be tribulations and that the fulfilment will soon come.

“Soon, soon,” concluded Marya, “for many are they who cry: ‘Revenge, O Lord! and speed Thy fulfilment.’”

Alexis knew that the fulfilment meant his father’s death.

“Remember my words,” she cried with prophetic voice. “Not for long will Petersburg exist! it will soon perish.” And looking out of the window upon the small white houses among the green marshes, she repeated malignantly: “Sink it! Woe to it! Let it sink back thither whence it came, the devil’s bog. Sprung up like a toadstool, it will rot like one. Not even its site will be known, the damned place!”

The old crow was started on her cawing.

“Old woman’s tales,” said Alexis, waving his hand hopelessly; “we have heard not a few of such prophecies and they have all turned out to be rubbish.”

She was going to reply, but glancing at him with her sharp piercing eye, she said:—

“What’s the matter with you Tsarevitch? Are you ill? have you been drinking?”

“I am forced to it. The day before yesterday at a formal launching, they carried me out senseless. I would much rather have been a convict in exile or ill in bed than there!”

“You should take medicine or feign illness to escape such launchings? seeing you know your father’s ways.”

Alexis remained silent, then he sighed heavily: “Ah Marya! Marya! I am much troubled. I hardly know what to do with myself, so troubled am I. No man could stand this without God’s help. I would be glad to hide myself somewhere, run away from all this.”

“Where can you escape from your father? his arm is long. You will be found out anywhere.”

“I am sorry,” continued Alexis, “that I did not follow Kikin’s advice and go to France or to the Emperor. There my life would be more peaceful, till God wills otherwise. Many in my position have found refuge in flight; only there is no pretext for going away. I really don’t know what will become of me, auntie dear; I want nothing, only give me freedom and let me live quietly. Or that they should give me leave to become a monk. I would abdicate the throne, and would live in retirement away from everything. I would choose some quiet, plain country seat, and there end my days.”

“Enough, enough, Alexis! the Tsar is not immortal after all. He too will die in God’s good time. They say he suffers from epileptic fits; such people never live long. God will grant the end. I feel sure it won’t tarry much longer. Wait, I say—the time of our rejoicing will also come. You are beloved by the people, they drink your health, calling you Russia’s Hope. The crown will not pass you by.”

“What is the good of it, Marya? I believe it is my fate in any case to be a monk. Nothing awaits me but the cowl, either in my father’s life, or later after his death, when they will treat me as they did Basil Shúisky, who was forced to become a monk, and then imprisoned. My life is likely to be a gloomy business.”

“How can we help it? One hour’s suffering and the issue is a whole life. Be patient, Alexis.”

“I have borne it patiently for a long while, I can no more,” he burst out, unable to contain himself any longer. His face had grown pale and convulsed. “Would it had an end! This weariness is worse than death; my head seems to be always on the edge of the block. And why all this, O Lord? What have I done to him? Did I not try my very best to please my father? When quite a child I was dragged about on campaigns, half killed with work, made to do sentry duty in the frost, drink vodka till my head swam, I wonder I came out of it alive. I bore it all patiently. I spared neither health nor life. And he never even pitied, not even so much as addressed a kind word to me. He is always angry, and looks as fierce as a beast. It makes no difference what you do for him. If you tore yourself in two, all he would say would be, ‘Why not in four?’ Well, never mind, put it down to my fault, let it be granted that I disappoint him. Who is responsible for it that I was born such as I am? I am not a fool by nature, and he knows it. Were I a fool, I would have a little better life. But I live according to my own lights, not his. He cares nothing for the people, I sympathize with the people. That is the reason why I am in disgrace. ‘Do not do the good you would, but the evil I will.’ Two men in the world are like unto God: The Muscovy Tsar and the Pope of Rome—their will is their law. I would not mind if this were all; in old days he used to scold and beat me, yet it always seemed that he considered me; that I was not quite a stranger to him. But do you know what he has devised of late? He neither scolds, nor beats me, not even touches me; all he does, is to remain silent. I talk to him; he neither heeds nor sees, but looks past me, as if I did not exist. And this lasts for months, years! I am no longer a human being in his eyes, but some creature worse than a dog. Now, is this fair? After all I am his son, his flesh and blood. Even the serpent does not eat its young. He has no fear of God. I know what it is he wants—my death. To me he is not a father, but a monster, a blood-sucker, a torturer. Ay, it would have been better if he had killed me at once. And what does all this mean? O Lord! what is he trying to do with me? What?”

He was going to add something, but his voice broke; all he could do was to falter faintly “O Lord! Lord!”

He dropped his arms on the table, covered his face and pressed his head between the palms of his hand; he did not weep, only seemed to sink down, shrink and contract, as from some severe inward pain, and a convulsive tearless sob shook his whole frame.

Tsarevna Marya bent over him; on his shoulder she laid her small white, firm, powerful hand; the Tsarevna Sophia had hands just like these.

“Don’t be fainthearted, Tsarevitch,” said she, with gentle severity in her kind voice. “Do not murmur against God. Remember Job! It is good to trust in the Lord, for our life and going forth are in His hand. He can turn evil into good. When God is with me what can men do unto me? Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear, for the Lord will not forsake me! Trust in Christ, my darling Aliósha! He will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able to bear.”

She stopped; and he too had grown quiet under the touch of this fond, firm hand, and the sound of these old, familiar pious words.

Somebody knocked at the door. In came Soundóuleya Vahrameyevna sent by the Tsaritsa Martha to fetch them. Alexis raised his head; his face though very pale was almost calm. He glanced at the image and the faintly glimmering lamp, crossed himself piously, and said:—

“You are right, aunt; God’s will worketh in all things. Moved by the prayers of the Holy Virgin and all the Saints, God will judge between us according to His righteous will. This was, and is, my hope.”

“Amen!” said Marya. They got up and together went into the Tsaritsa Martha’s private apartments.