Dressmakers are feverishly stitching away at the gown on this monumental body, pricking their fingers, keeping their heads down under the rain of blows the woman hands out. Broad hips, a bulging stomach—the flashing of the needles draws the silks taut, drapes the flesh, squeezes and tapers it, and, finally, phew, manages to achieve a tight fit around this ponderous graven image. The Empress Elizabeth enters the ballroom … The courtiers see her scowling—one of the guests has a more elegant coiffure than her own. Quick, a pair of scissors! The unfortunate woman loses her locks and flees in tears … After the ball they cut Elizabeth out of her dress, snip through the brocade, tear away the lace. The empress loathes undressing, all those hooks, all that lace, the farthingales … The next night there will be another ball and she has chosen the costumes: on this occasion the women are to be attired as men and the men will wear dresses with hoops. Oh, the walking dolls, tripping over their crinolines and the buxom women squeezed into military tunics! She orders the musicians to increase the tempo—the dancers fall over, lie struggling on the floor …

Now another costume change: a torturer tears off the Countess Lopukhina’s clothes to expose her back to the burning lash of a whip. The skin bursts open, the leather whip becomes soaked in blood, the woman faints, they open her mouth, the torturer seizes her tongue, a blade flashes …

And yet another masquerade: young peasants dressed in uniform charge into a field of barley with fixed bayonets and skewer other peasants clad in uniforms of a different color.

The swift succession of these scenes reflects the viewpoint of a girl in her teens poking her nose in everywhere, listening, watching, guessing. Soon she herself will be drawn into this maelstrom of masks: tsarina, rejected wife, adventuress, mother, lover, regicide …

“The only thing that’s been retained from my script,” Oleg often says to himself during the filming, “is the pace of the action.” And then at once he recognizes that this way of filming History was the whole point of his scenario. Its energy, its originality. His screenplay has survived. What could be more important?

Six months earlier, in February, the jury had finally given its verdict: the making of the film about Catherine II was entrusted to a seasoned director, Mikhail Kozin. But “Comrade Erdmann” was not forgotten: he was appointed “artistic assistant.” “The wolves are fed but the sheep are still alive,” his teacher, Bassov, observed. “You’ve neither won nor lost. No, that’s not true. You’ve won, because Kozin is a heavyweight. A strange guy, you’ll see he’s easily offended. And he stammers, which makes communication tough. But a good eye, he knows what he’s doing … And who’d have thought those slugs at the SCCA would have run scared! A spot of support from the Kremlin comes in handy, wouldn’t you think?”

In particular this “support” made it possible to start filming in June. “Her f-f-first s-summer in R-r-ussia,” said Kozin. For Oleg his trembling lips were painful to watch—yes, Catherine’s very first summer in St. Petersburg. It felt as if Kozin were eager to propel the young German girl without delay into the short-lived paradise of white nights.

Curiously enough, his stammer made relationships on the set easier. Kozin said only what was essential. Unable to describe, he showed. Miming a scene, he left the actors to infuse it with emotions from their own experience.

This art of silence reconciled Oleg to his secondary status: “I could never direct people the way Kozin does!” Bassov’s advice came to mind: “Note every detail of his way of working. You’re not so far from him in the way you see things. But he can only speak to other people through the camera.”

By now, two months after the start of filming, Oleg’s notebook is filled with observations, sketches, jottings. The scenes that worked: the dress being cut off Elizabeth, the men in crinolines crawling about on the floor, Lopukhina and her torturer, the battle in a field of barley …

The facts are true. Elizabeth owned fifteen thousand dresses. Catherine herself was once knocked over by a male courtier’s skirt when dancing. Lopukhina was mutilated, while her fellow accused, Princess Bestuzheva, slipped a cross studded with diamonds into the torturer’s hand, thus saving her own tongue. The bayonet charge in a field of barley is a reconstruction of one of the battles in the Seven Years’ War …

A Swedish diplomat and the young Poniatowski come to the reception given by Catherine and Peter. The tsarina owns a little greyhound bitch that snarls at the Swede but nuzzles affectionately up to Poniatowski. “Dogs are the most treacherous of creatures,” the diplomat hisses into the blushing favorite’s ear.

A similar shortcut is taken in filming the trade in bodies organized by Potemkin: he receives a hundred thousand rubles from each new lover he introduces to Catherine. This is precisely the sum each favorite is given by the tsarina as a “gift of welcome.” Kozin telescopes the two transactions together: the young man collects his rich pickings and goes straight to hand it over to Potemkin …

Oleg notes even more economical details: Catherine arrives in Moscow, her carriage gets bogged down in the mud, the golden onion dome of a church is reflected in a puddle, a pig lazily contemplates the mired carriage … Five seconds of action and Catherine’s scorn for Moscow is plain for all to see!

The sequence in which Catherine hides under the bed to escape the anger of her lover, Orlov, is equally brief. “I would have made it a comic scene,” thinks Oleg. “Kozin shows a terrified woman confronting males equipped by natural selection for killing, violating, and crushing the weak …”

This laconic style is the echo of Kozin’s shackled voice.

Poniatowski loves Catherine at the risk of rotting in prison! “At the sight of her beauty one forgets the existence of Siberia.” A romantic declaration to which Kozin adds three seconds: the lover returns to Europe, and his grand passion is quickly forgotten.

“Having loved you, how could I love another?” Catherine asks Potemkin, in tears. A moment later the camera catches her in the arms of Vassilchikov, the one who has the courage to admit: “I’m simply a kept woman …”

It is at this moment in the filming that a little incident occurs. The actor playing Vassilchikov moves off into a gallery in the palace. Kozin is about to speak, he has his eye on one of the dollies. Tongue-tied, he gasps painfully … Suddenly the dolly, badly wedged, begins to slide down its track, then stops. “A tracking shot by telepathy,” shouts out one of the technical crew. They all have a strong sense of there being “a drama behind the drama”—of a world that underlies the words spoken.

Oleg goes out, toward the ashen-gray Neva, lights a cigarette. The thought is disturbing: a life beyond the games of power and desire they are in process of filming …

He hastens to reassure himself: “But of course not! Kozin’s going to make a good, realist film, faithful to the Party line. Catherine’s marriage to this great oaf, Peter. Her first lovers, coup d’état, the ferment of great reforms. Wars, festivities, debates with Diderot … The apotheosis: Catherine in the Crimea. And the decline—the fall of the Bastille, a tsarina in old age, deserted by Mamonov, weeps at a window …”

“They’ve finished for the day, Oleg! Shall we go home? No, first treat me to an ice cream. Kozin said I was brilliant.”

Oleg kisses the pretty face from which the makeup has just been removed: Dina—the young Catherine II. Half an hour ago she was hurrying over to a secret alcove, a mirror slid aside, revealing a bed and Vassilchikov, naked …

They stop on the Palace Bridge, embrace, Dina’s body is as pliant as a growing plant. A body that lends itself to everything the role demands. And when they embrace this suppleness offers a soothing pleasure, a banal sweetness.

“Did you see that dolly moving all on its own? That was a paranormal phenomenon, wasn’t it?”

She laughs with light, childish joy. Everything about this shoot is running so smoothly that their meeting seems to be part of the script. The costumes are delivered on time, the sets are skillfully designed, and the young female star falls in love with the “artistic assistant.” All that is needed now is for Kozin to become infatuated with the tsarina number two, the “older” Catherine! A handsome couple they’d make: this bear with his stammer and the East German actress who will soon be coming to Leningrad …

They walk around the Peter and Paul Fortress, sit down in a café. Dina heaves a comical sigh: “I don’t want to put you off your food, but all my lovers smell really bad. Especially Poniatowski. He’s the fattest and, what’s more, Kozin wants him to wear a lot of things made of fur. Apparently he was an aristocrat terrified of the tiniest draft. Talk about the prince and the pea! And I have to put up with his emanations …”

Outside the window the fortress wall can be seen and the bluish expanse above the Neva, lit by a shaft of light … A few months ago Oleg’s life had been this frozen river, rare meetings with Lessya, sadness, shame. Now, there is this young woman who loves him, the filming, the work with Kozin. An aura of being on vacation. The buoyancy of a life waiting to be explored.

Dina holds out her hand to him, draws him to her. He lets it happen, going along with the sweetness of these human games. At twenty-eight he finally feels he has understood that not loving too much may be a form of wisdom.

In Dina’s expression he recognizes the smile with which the young Catherine, in love, greeted Vassilchikov.