The Last Train to Kazan. Stephen Miller
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a sip of wine and winced, shook his head and pushed the hateful dish away.
With nothing to fill his mouth, Giustiniani was free to tell his life story while Ryzhkov ate, and so began a poetic and amusing saga of olive groves and grapevines and cypress trees.
Tommaso di Giustiniani was a submariner in the Italian navy who had surfaced just in time to be sent to Russia to help the Allies quell the worldwide revolution. He had ceased to refer to himself as nobility, dropping the ‘Conte’ and shortening his name. ‘The family is…well, it is not what it was,’ he said by way of explanation.
Giustiniani liked to entertain and he liked to talk, and he had, apparently, all the time in the world to do it. But Ryzhkov saw him for a man who preferred being underestimated, preferred to conceal his true strength inside. You didn’t go down in those tin cans if you didn’t have the black space inside you somewhere, and you didn’t last if you didn’t know how to handle men. For Giustiniani, dropping his noble connections was an obvious first step; a title and estates were worthless when pressure was cracking the hull, or when the destroyers were trying to find you, and all the crew knew it. Ryzhkov wasn’t an expert on the Italian underwater boat service, but he knew that all such machines were fantastic creations that used the most expensive materials in their defiance of the seas. Thus, despite his old-world charm, the lazy smile, the unmuscled gestures, Giustiniani was a modern man.
The brandy came, and by that time Ryzhkov had grown sleepy and drunk. Giustiniani signed the chit and they moved into a large room that had been converted into a lounge and attempted to play billiards on a threadbare table. ‘There is no felt, eh? No felt in Yekaterinburg at all. There is a felt shortage,’ Giustiniani said, missing a shot.
At one point Ryzhkov found himself gazing at two billiard tables, the visions overlaying each other at angles, identical balls swimming in the sea, and knew that he was very, very drunk. He tried to snap back to sobriety because Giustiniani was talking about the Romanovs.
‘Everyone says they are dead,’ Ryzhkov said.
‘Everyone says a lot of things. Everyone says that Nicholas and Alexandra were seen in Perm yesterday morning. Everyone says that our advance party stole them away just before we took the town on Tuesday accomplishing this with such stealth that no one actually saw them. Those kinds of witnesses we have plenty of. All we can be certain of is that the Imperial Family has vanished since last weekend. And their property also,’ he added with a smile.
‘What do you want me to do then?’ Ryzhkov said. They were both standing there looking at the billiard ball. Giustiniani stared at him for a second, then reached out and swept it into a side pocket.
‘I want you to go and get cleaned up. We’re expected at an orgy.’
Cleaning up meant splashing cold water on himself in the shower at the military quarters that Giustiniani took him through, a quick shave which was frightening because of his inability to see his own face clearly, then more frightening when he finally came into focus. A rinsing of his mouth with mint water, and then Giustiniani was there at the door, looking as fresh as a spring day. They journeyed through the streets by hired cab, the driver being all too happy for the fare.
By the end of the night Yekaterinburg had been transformed into a town gripped by a fever as powerful as a gold rush. The people were manic, like inhabitants of a desperate new boom town – everyone simultaneously trying to ingratiate themselves with the winners and queuing up for transit passes to Vladivostok.
Outside the Hotel Palais Royal there was a fist-fight in progress, and soldiers stood about listlessly leaning on their rifles, smoking cheroots and waiting for the combatants to tire. The foyer was crowded with women negotiating terms and conditions with various suitors, and the stairs were threadbare and treacherous, owing to the increasing lack of illumination the higher one climbed.
It didn’t seem much like an orgy to Ryzhkov, at least not in the imagined Roman sense. It was held in the ballroom of the hotel, supposedly one of the city’s finest, and was crowded with sweating matrons and men holding their hats in their hands, everyone seeking approval, affection, a little cash, a passage east – easily the most prised item – or a position in the new government of Admiral Kolchak.
The ballroom itself was an elongated chamber with high windows at one end that looked over the city, giving a view of the stream that ran down to the lower Iset pond and the fishing docks at the head of the lake. There was a balcony there and the doors were thrown open, but this did nothing to dispel the cloud of tobacco smoke and the ladies’ heavy perfume.
It was a curious mixture, a large number of Czech officers of various ages and a few other uniforms, most of which Ryzhkov could not place. Giustiniani was well known, it seemed. He kept Ryzhkov with him, introduced him to all as his ‘aide’, and otherwise ignored him. Ryzhkov excused himself and took air on the balcony. Refused all drinks and tried to sober up.
It was not to be, however. Giustiniani would find him on his next orbit and take him across the room to meet some other governmental dignitary or eminent military figure. The Czechs had acquired the Russian habit of commemorating everything with a vodka toast. And so it went, Ryzhkov losing count of how many times this occurred.
The whereabouts of the Romanovs was on everyone’s tongue. The consensus agreed with the announcement he had witnessed – that the Tsar was dead and the family removed to a ‘safe place’. The announcement had also been published on a broadsheet that had been pasted up around the city and recovered by the Czechs. Still, there were no bodies, and no eye witnesses to the Tsar’s execution, since the executioners had fled the city, presumably with the Romanov women and servants in tow.
‘But the worst sin is that there is no champagne, none whatsoever. The Bolsheviks drank it all!’ a man was screaming at him. He was flanked by two red-headed women who hung on his arms and offered their cheeks to Ryzhkov. One woman had torn her dress and her heavy breasts were exposed. She made fluttering attempts to cover herself, and then gave up.
‘What is this, then?’ Ryzhkov said. They had forced a bottle on him.
‘Vodka! Made locally. You mix it with lime juice and fizzy water from the springs! Goes down good, eh?’ the man shouted. A band had begun playing but they were as drunk as everyone else and the music wheezed and swerved through the tonal spectrum. Ryzhkov put his mouth to the bottle and drank the faux champagne. At least it was cold, with an antiseptic taste that seemed somehow more healthy than the punch that had been served but had now run out.
‘Come on now,’ the second of the redheads said to him. ‘You’re good for it, eh?’
Ryzhkov didn’t know what she was talking about for a moment. The other two were dancing. The music was just an unstructured wailing, all out of beat and synchronization. The woman was kissing him now, and pulling him into the shadows. The room was emptying out, and filling up again. They had taken over the whole hotel. He found himself in a corridor with a group of other officers, the uniforms too confusing to place. The doors were open and the true orgy had begun in the opened-up suites.
‘We may die,’ the redhead said into his ear. ‘We may die at any moment.’ She pulled him into a room. There was another couple on the floor, but it didn’t matter. Her hands were on his fly and he had thrown his coat on the floor. They wrestled on the bed with the other couple groaning beside them. He hadn’t had anyone in a long time, and now she swam before him, her breasts wobbling as he tried to thrust himself into her, her face looking up at him, imploring him, gripping him by his buttocks, lunging up to snatch a kiss. The other couple had finished and were standing there laughing. He saw that she was talking with them, having a conversation in the middle of his efforts. ‘…not much…not much at all,’ she was saying. After a moment she pushed him away.
‘Too drunk,’ he muttered, and the woman slapped him. For a moment he saw white, reeled backwards and made a fist, flung it at the woman, but she had already got up. Then he was on the bed, his face pressed into the hot blankets, while the other man hurled abuse at him. The other woman was laughing as the redhead complained to her about his quality.
He staggered to the door