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15 July, 1917.
Somehow inside the chaos it has begun to feel like an excellent idea for Russia to be exactly where he is -- Ekaterinberg, sweltering in July heat, his fingertips against the smooth casing of a rifle, the tip of the rifle making a tiny indentation in the uniform between the squared shoulders of his Tsar. The man who used to be his Tsar.
"Nicholas," he says. "Nicholas, I believe it is time to go down into the basement."
11 May, 1891. Kyoto.
Japan is all in white, a fantastically epauletted and embroidered uniform that Russia could easily imagine gracing the shoulders of one of his own generals. The European cut doesn't detract at all from how he sits seiza in the center of his audience chamber behind a low stand -- only renders it exceedingly peculiar and strangely fascinating, the way the pants reveal the effortless fold of the other Nation's slim legs where the familiar kimono would have hidden them.
Russia lets the door click shut behind him. The stand is laid out for tea, with a bowl of hydrangeas floating in water serving as some sort of centerpiece.
"Please," Japan says, his eyes downcast on the hydrangeas, "add my personal apologies to that of Emperor Meiji for the inappropriate actions of the unfortunate Tsuda Sanzo against your Nicholas Andreivich."
Russia sits on the floor, crosslegged, puts his elbows on his knees and tucks the ends of his scarf behind his shoulders. It is not at all uncomfortable. He smiles at Japan, who is still not looking at him.
"Japan," he says expansively, "I am glad to see that you care for my Tsarevich almost as much as I do."
"The deep lack of hospitality to a state guest which has been revealed by my citizen shames me," Japan murmurs. He pours the tea, his hands long-fingered and white on the iron kettle. Russia thinks of snowflakes, late snowflakes in spring.
"Nicholas has told me how much he was enjoying your country," he says.
Japan resettles the kettle, delicately. "It is exceedingly important for a future sovereign to gain wide experience."
Russia pictures Nicholas, imagines him standing on the beach in Manchuria, looking across the sea, thousands of miles of Russia gathered behind him like the bunched shoulder muscle of a bear, and decides he agrees. "Yes," he tells Japan. "Wide experience, so that he might become accustomed to the hardships of his office, don't you think?" He leans forward, so his elbows dig into his thighs, and inhales the scent of the tea.
"Russia-dono," Japan says, barely a breath, and Russia thinks he is smiling, somewhere behind the graceful set of his jaw, somewhere where he isn't calling Russia lord -- sufficient, but not suitable, not basileus, not tsar, not the names that belong to him properly -- "The pain suffered by Nicholas Andreivich is entirely inappropriate for his high station."
"I am gratified you think so."
"The person of the Emperor is sacred," Japan says. Axiomatic. Which it is -- in the crippled fashion Japan has always thought of it, isolated and absurd. He used to keep his emperors locked up in their palaces, after all.
"The Emperor is his empire," Russia explains. Japan is making an effort, and Russia does so enjoy clarification. "There is nothing between him and his country. If one is struck, so is the other. He lives or dies by the will of his land, and by the will of God."
"You make your point." Japan gestures, barely, to the teacups, picks one up in careful fingertips. Russia follows willingly enough. The porcelain is too small in his hand.
He drinks all of the tea in a single inhalation, puts the cup down on Japan's side of the table, past the hydrangeas. It rattles.
"Your Nicholas Andreivich is very young," Japan says.
Russia thinks, but mine.
15 July, 1917.
The Romanov children have always loved their Nation. Russia reassures them now, in the dank shadows of the basement. They glitter in the dimness, the little princesses in their pretty gowns, glitter and glimmer. The diamonds sewn into their gowns light up their faces.
Russia holds out his hand, smiling, and the youngest laces her fingers through his, biting her lip. He feels as if he could never allow harm to such a child, to something so small, so in need of his protection against the world. They will be safe with him, all the small things of the world, safe and fed and warm.
Across the basement, the soldiers stand at attention, all seven rifles pointed at Nicholas, bayonets affixed. Nicholas is shivering, and saying something in Russian. Russia knows those soldiers; they don't speak a word of his language. Nicholas can talk all he wants and they won't remember a thing.
He sits down on a stool and pulls the little princess onto his lap, holds her there easily with one arm. The others cluster around him. They are crying. They shouldn't be crying, Russia thinks.
"Would you like to hear a story?" he asks them.
The oldest princess, Olga, is twenty-two, and Russia suspects she believes she's too old for stories, but she says, "Ivan, please," so he starts.
"Once upon a time," he says, "there was an old man and an old woman who had never had any children, which made them very sad. One day, in the middle of winter, when the sun was shining on the snow and making it glitter as bright as your diamonds, they went out and made a statue of a little girl all out of snowflakes."
The little princess is shaking against him, so he holds her tighter.
"And because the snow was so beautiful, and that old man and old woman wanted a child so very much, the little statue's cheeks turned pink and her little chest moved in and out with the air, and her hair turned dark like the night sky -- she was alive! Just like a real little girl. The old man and the old woman took her home and kept her like the daughter they had always wanted, and they called her Snegurochka -- the little snow maiden."
Nicholas watches him, across the room. Russia beams at him. Nicholas has done some things that Russia will never forgive him for, but he has lovely daughters.
"The little snow maiden," Russia tells the princesses, "was a perfect child, always happy, always kind to her parents, never disobeying, never disappointing them. But one day, she asked if she could go out and play with a few of her little friends, just once. And because her parents loved her so much, they said yes."
Behind Nicholas, Yakov Yurovsky has come down the stairs and is talking to his soldiers in Hungarian. Russia dislikes the sound. He thinks about telling Yakov to use the language of his motherland, decides against it -- it'd interrupt the story.
"Sneugurochka went out into the forest with her friends," he says, gently. "They built a bonfire to jump over, because it was starting to get dark. Each of the little girls jumped over the fire, one -- two -- three -- and they called to Snegurochka, saying Jump! Jump! So she did, right over the fire --"
Yakov is walking over to them. Russia holds up the hand that isn't keeping Anastasiya still, makes him pause.
"--but the fire was so hot she melted back into snowflakes, a little white cloud of snowflakes, all gone --"
Nicholas shuts his eyes.
"-- poof, just like that."
18 May, 1896. Moscow.
France is drunk. It's his embassy, and his champagne, and his party down in the ballroom below this balcony, his party for Russia's new Tsar and Tsarina. Russia assumes he can be drunk if he pleases. France always does as he pleases, and elegantly, effortlessly, opera and ballet and parties, balls. Parties.
Russia makes his way to the balcony railing, looks down. Nicholas' crown glitters like the champagne glasses.
"Russia, Russia," France says at his elbow, liltingly, "I thought you weren't going to come at all." He's holding two bubbling flutes, one half-drunk, the other an offer. Russia takes it.
"Nicholas came. Did you think I wouldn't?" His voice sounds leaden to his own ears, weighed down and hoarse. It's not right. His Tsar is newly-crowned. He pours the champagne down his throat to clear it, to chase away all the screaming with bubbles and joyousness -- his Tsar, he thinks, his Tsar for his people --
France has the bottle, too, and pours his glass full. "I am," he says, between sips, "terribly sorry. Horrible thing."
"One thousand three hundred and eighty-nine," Russia says, "crushed under the feet of their own countrymen. One thousand three hundred and eighty-nine of my people. This is very good champagne, France."
"I grew it myself." He's smiling, cheeks flushed just faintly.
Russia drains the glass, again. It makes no difference. "Pour me another. They were celebrating their Tsar."
France does. "It is a fine thing, to crown an emperor," he says.
"It is," Russia says. "And a finer thing to crown a Russian Emperor."
France laughs. "Why is that?"
Russia clutches at the balcony railing with the hand that isn't holding onto his glass. "In the fourteenth century," he begins, "the Patriarch of Constantinople, a very holy man named Philotheos, received a vision from God, telling him of the sacred cowl that the great Emperor Constantine had given to Pope Sylvester, a cowl that Philotheos would receive himself soon."
France has come quite close, attentively. "Oh," he says. "A hat." One of his hands is over Russia's on the railing. It is very warm, almost hot. Russia ignores it.
"And Philotheos did. The Pope sent it to him in appreciation of the true greatness of the Christian Empire."
"A powerful hat." France's hip is pressed against his, pushing him flush to the carved slats.
"But Philotheos knew," Russia goes on, watching the circling dancers below, so many, so crowded, "that the cowl wasn't his to keep, that if he kept it, it would be taken by the Turks, and the empire would be lost --"
"Oh?" France breathes.
"So he sent the cowl to Novgorod, to the Prince of the Rus." Russia gestures with his captured fingers, points France's hand at Nicholas below, where he circles, glittering, happy -- surely he is happy -- how can he be happy -- "The Prince of the Rus, and thus delivered to us, to me, to Russia, the greatest imperium in the world."
France kisses him. He tastes of champagne, souring. Russia lets him. He is the greatest empire in the world. This is a celebration.
"Cherie," France says into his mouth, "you are not nearly drunk enough for this yet." He pulls back. "Your Nicholas is very handsome and his wife -- they tell me she was a Lutheran, I'd never believe it -- lovely girl -- so thoughtful of them to come to my party rather than cleaning up that -- horrible mess. Kiss me again, won't you?"
Russia hears, somewhere, the terrified crying in Khodynka Square. He wonders if he will stop hearing it. He feels frozen, chilled to stillness. He takes France's shoulders, feels the rich fabric of his suit under his hands. Pulls France forward. The other Nation's hands fold onto him, one in his hair and one knotted in his scarf.
"Look," he says, "they're dancing--"
When France shoves up against him, he is crushed, starved of air, wanting.
15 July, 1917.
Yurovsky says to Russia, leaning against the wall, the butts of their rifles easy in their hands, "What we Communists want isn't any different from what you want for us. It never has been."
Russia understands that Yakov is afraid that he is angry. He turns so he can look the man in the eyes. They are almost of a height. "Do you remember St. Petersburg in 1905?" he asks.
Yakov's eyes darken, dull pools like black ice under the wheels of a carriage. "How could we forget his soldiers shooting us down, when we merely wished to speak our case to our beloved Tsar?"
"I remember St. Petersburg," Russia whispers. "What I want -- it is what you want. Comrade." The word is like a caress on his tongue. What he wants is to say it over and over again.
Yakov exhales, hard. His shoulders tremble with released tension. "Comrade," he agrees.
It's only the form of what I want for my people that's changed, Russia thinks, not the want itself, not ever -- changed and changed for the better, changed for the people, for the starving and the abused, for all my people who need me, who need Russia--
Yakov unslings his rifle from his shoulder. Nicholas flinches.
The emperor is not one with the nation, Russia thinks, a little desperately. What makes one man identical with the nation, it is the people who are one with the Nation --
He wonders if this is madness, though it truly does not matter if it is.
12 July, 1917. Galicia, near Lviv.
Whatever act of will which turns a stretch of land into a battlefront has entirely abandoned Galicia. Russia sits on a hill, on the ground, between the trenches and near the last of the foxholes. The ends of his scarf are spotted with blood and drift aimlessly in the wind, stretching out behind him. He shivers even in the pleasant warmth of early summer morning, shivers and watches his hands shake where they rest on his thighs, ragged nails catching on the fabric. He's watching the 11th Army disperse in chaotic little bands, running off and disappearing without any orders, not from him and not from Kerensky either.
On strike. He would laugh if he was sure it wouldn't hurt. He thinks it would hurt.Can soldiers be on strike?
He knows when Germany comes up behind him because the wind dies, blocked, so that the fringe of his scarf drags through the churned-up dirt.
"The most democratic army in the world," Russia says by way of greeting, gesturing at the empty foxholes.
Germany does laugh, all short and brutish confidence.
"So democratic they run away," he says, and then crouches down on his haunches next to Russia. "Your Grand Duke has really been a disaster, hasn't he. Are you ready to surrender to me yet?"
Never, never, Russia thinks. Says, "Not to you."
Germany scowls. His face is narrowed, thinned like the hungry faces of Russia's own soldiers, and there are rents in his uniform, tears and smears and stains. He gets to his feet.
"You can't fight me any longer," he says.
This upstart creature, this reanimated toy of Prussia's Bismark, with his -- railroads and his -- cold, clear eyes, watching Russia's starving soldiers run --
Russia says, "I refuse to fight you. That does not mean you have won."
16 July, 1917. Rossiyskaya Sovetskaya Federativnaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika.
"I have served you my entire life," Nicholas says, and what Russia hears is the streets of his cities, their cacophony of voices, and what Russia sees is an unfolding red banner, spilling out of Nicholas' mouth with his voice and covering Russia's hands, and he doesn't think he's even pulled the trigger yet -- "I abdicated because I serve you still," Nicholas is saying --
In the corner where the soldiers are, the princesses and Alexandra have stopped crying. Russia thinks of all his people, and of the merciless snow, and of how Ludwig stood over him, cold.
"I know," he tells the man who used to be his Tsar. "That is not enough."
What Russia does after that he only remembers as he remembers dreaming: how the impact knocks him backward too, how his lungs sear hot and then gasp in sudden chill, how he thinks to himself of countries he has never truly been, southern and hungry things, and of a great double-headed eagle soaring upward forever -- but only for a moment, these things, the snatches and ghosts of a dream he has put away. There is no heaven that these eagles could reach -- there are no eagles at all --
The red seems to have gotten all over his uniform. It looks like it will stain.