CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

THE GROWING SCHISM

“It sounds plausible enough tonight but wait until tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.”

—Count Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“When we two parted / In silence and tears, / Half broken-hearted / To sever for years, / Pale grew thy cheek and cold, / Colder thy kiss; / Truly that hour foretold / Sorrow to this.”

—George Lord Byron, When We Two Parted

Balagansk Prison Infirmary, Balagansk, Irkutsk Oblast, Far Eastern Russia, February 28, 1882

Alexandra missed talking to and sleeping with her dashing husband now that he was required to be at his official work place in Balagansk. She knew that he had received a preemptory set of orders to return forthwith to the prison to attend to the reception of newly arriving convicts. He was equally as reluctant to go as she was to have him go; but–unknown to her–his reasons were not quite the same as hers. He was glum and grouchy when she asked him if he could stay with her for a few more days, and that was quite unlike him. He would not elaborate when she pressed him for more information.

She decided to surprise him by taking the two boys in the Tarasova troika over the frozen road to Balagansk to see him at work and to arrange for the family to stay for a few days at the only building in Balagansk that could remotely pass for a hotel—the newly constructed log rectangle ostentatiously called, The Balagansk Inn. Boris had not written or sent messages for the last ten days; so, Alexandra found it no problem to keep the secret of her surprise visit from her husband.

Alexandra settled her baggage into the storage room of the inn, saw to it that the three horses were given grain and put out to a good pasture, ordered the troika sled to be placed in the carriage house, then gathered up her boys, Oral and Nikita, and slipped and slid over the icy roads to the penitentiary compound.

At the gate, she told the guard, “I am Alexandra Tarasova-Yusupov. My boys and I have come to see the commandant, General Mayor Prince Boris, please.”

Without hesitation, the young private gave a crisp salute, swung open the gates, and said, “Yes, Madame, he is attending to duties at the rear of the main building. It would be better for you to check-in at the reception desk before seeking him out.”

Alexandra had no intention of having anything or anyone spoil her surprise; so, she replied with her signature fluorescent smile, “Of course, Sir. Just as you require.”

He never got past her smile and believed her completely. He returned to his soul numbing job of guarding the gate where nothing had happened in all his twelve months of assignment to Balagansk Prison. His main worry was frost bite–and well he should–because a few of his comrades lost toes to the cold over the winter.

Without looking back, she hurried her boys along the south wall of the main building, where she hoped the warmer route to the rear would be found. The boys complained, and her feet were losing feeling to the cold. She wished fervently that she had worn her good foul weather gear and had obeyed the orders she gave Oral and Nikita to wear earmuffs, heavy woolen gloves, and extra socks, in their thick-soled boots.

The two boys were cold and hanging back, too tired to move as quickly as their mother. She rounded the southeast corner of the main prison building and saw a sight unfolding that stopped her in her tracks. She ordered her two small boys to halt and to stay put.

On the frozen gravel pad in front of the prison’s parade ground bleacher seating stand, she saw a dozen upright poles planted in the ground in three precisely even rows of four. Hanging from a point near the top of each pole was a heavy chain about four inches long which was attached to a sturdy iron ring. To the rings, heavy leather straps secured men’s wrists at a height where they had to stand tip-toed to support themselves. They were stripped to the waist despite the freezing weather. The backs of three men were decorated with eighteen criss-crossed bleeding stripes. Standing behind the fourth man on the row, holding a rawhide whip was her husband, Boris. Alexandra thought she was going to faint. A brutish Cossack stood beside Boris holding a bucket of water. He counted as Boris wielded the whip—eighteen times for each man.

Some of the men cried out in pain, especially when the Cossack splashed what had to be salt water which stung and kept the wound edges from closing-up to relieve some of the acute pain. Oral and Nikita’s faces were ashen as they began to realize what was going on in the area they could not see. Alexandra pushed the boys back and prepared to retreat, but her attention was riveted on her husband. How could he be doing this? Why was he doing this barbaric thing? She studied Boris’s face intently as he lashed the backs of the men with machine like efficiency. His gaze never wandered from the back of the man he was whipping. His jaws were clenched, whether in concentration, or in revulsion, or as a consequence of his exertions. He switched whipping hands from right to left fairly frequently, obviously related to fatigue, or weakening, or from lack of enthusiasm for his enterprise.

The man he was lashing at the present moment sagged and hung by the wrists, obviously unconscious. He was old, thin, and sickly in appearance. The Cossack kicked his thigh hard enough to arouse the old fellow, then the Cossack jerked him to his feet. Boris resumed lashing. Inadvertently, Alexandra cried out. Boris turned at the sound, and their eyes locked for a brief, poignant, haunting, moment. Alexandra turned her back on Boris and scooped up her twins. She ran to the front of the prison building where she placed them on the ground and took their hands and ran as fast to the gate as the little boys could go.

Without a word, the private watching the gate saluted, opened the gates, and watched dispassionately as the three gentlepersons moved away over the frozen and snow-covered ground towards the area of the Balagansk Post Office and the Inn. Moving like a Fury, Alexandra ordered that the troika be brought to the front of the Inn and the horses hitched to the sleigh. She ordered two chambermaids to pack hers and her boys’ things into their bags without any folding or other time-consuming niceties. She over-paid the inn keeper and over-tipped the help. Without looking back, she and her sons trotted as fast as it was safe for the horses to go away from Balagansk and the images pounding in her mind and that would be a source of nightmares for the rest of her life.

Once he saw his wife looking on as he whipped those whom he believed to be innocent men and saw the look of horror and dismay in her eyes and on her face, Boris continued his labor at a much quicker pace. Occasionally, the Cossack had to remind him that he had shorted a prisoner by one stripe, or occasionally even two. His eyes were red, his teeth were bared in anger befitting a wild beast; and his brain pressed his entire body into getting the task done as expeditiously as possible. It took another hour, even at his accelerated rate, to finish the odious task.

His wife’s look had condemned him. He was a demon, an ogre. He was beyond redemption or forgiveness in his own home or certainly in the hereafter. When he was done, he abruptly marched away and found his bed. There he piled on blankets, pulled them over his head, and began to cry—the agonized weeping of man who knew he was damned. His anguish equaled anything the burning flames of hell or the torment of whips or scorpion stings, or infestation by burrowing worms could produce. The pain was in his soul. He was still whimpering in exhaustion when he finally fell asleep.

Balagansk Prison Infirmary, Balagansk, Irkutsk Oblast, Far Eastern Russia, March 7, 1882

Boris completed everything he could find that needed to be done at the prison over the course of five days. On the sixth–which happened to be the Sabbath–he took a deep breath and went to the infirmary where he knew that the majority of the recent internees who had been flogged would be recuperating.

He asked for Duke Michael Vaughnovich Uskin and was told by a thoroughly uninterested orderly that the old man had died the day he was brought into the infirmary. Boris had to turn away; so, the hardened old soldier would not see the tears that sprang hot and salty into his eyes.

“Misha, Misha, you cannot be dead,” he moaned to himself. “My old friend and comrade-in-arms, Misha, what have I done?”

Learning of his old friend Misha’s having died at his—Boris Yusopov’s—hands was unbearable and cast a deep pall over the rest of his grim visit to the infirmary. It took two hours to make his apology to each and every man he had whipped.

The gist of what he said—with deep feeling and gravitas—was, “My friend, my fellow Russian, I am terribly sorry for what I did to you, for the whipping. I know that you are innocent of any crime, much less the one for which you were sent to prison here and to be beaten. I understand your anger and your anguish as good Russians. I, too, am a good Russian who was sent here for no crime. My only reason for being here and for having to hurt you, was because I knew three of the conspirators who attempted but failed to assassinate the tzar. As I read your charges, I understand that you are here for having had the misfortune to be an associate in one way or another of the criminals who actually did kill our tzar.

“I will do all I can to lighten your burdens during your stay in Balagansk. Soon…fairly soon…you will be released from your incarceration and pardoned of your so-called crimes and will be able to live in Far Eastern Russia unmolested. You know that you will never be allowed to return to the Rodina, because you know why the Okhrana behaved so abominably. The Department for Protecting the Public Security and Order—“the guard department”–had you sent here, and you know that it was a monumental injustice. I repeat, my brothers, that I am heartily and forever sorry.”

Tarasova House, No. 71 Pekinskaya Street, Vladivostok, Far Eastern Russia, March 4, 1882

Freezing March winds howled down out of the canyons and off the ice bound lake surfaces as Boris drove his three horses to their limits to get home before dinner was served at Tarasova House on this the coldest day on record. The family was seated at the great table but had not yet been served when Boris burst through the two fourteen feet tall entryway doors. He was disappointed when he saw that there was no empty seat by Alexandra. He was distraught when he saw her look away from him intentionally. He took the seat kept empty in memory of the ancestors, thereby eliciting looks of frank disapproval from everyone in the family. He had done the equivalent of dropping his cigar into the punch bowl as the tzar was about to be served. He knew all of that, and he did not care. All he thought about was his wife—his icicle of a wife, at the moment—sitting in her chair with her father on her right, and Abram’s elderly aunt on her left. He had to talk to her this evening, or all was lost.

The meal was excellent, as usual. The conversation was stilted and empty, the stuff of empty cocktail party prattle. Although the fireplaces kept the room snugly warm, there was a chill in the room. Though this was a gathering of family, it felt to everyone there that it was a meeting after a funeral of a hated great-grandfather that was about to descend into internecine strife with an unyielding squabble over expected inheritances.

Finally, Boris could not tolerate the pretenses of civility, and he would not permit a continuation of him being frozen out from his wife and family. He spoke first.

“Abram and Irina, it is time for Alexandra and I to have a serious talk. I ask that you do us the courtesy of allowing that conversation to be held in private and now. I know you have heard things about me and my work. However, you do not know the whole thing. After tonight, I hope that will all be cleared up.”

He turned towards Alexandra.

She had an expressionless face, as devoid of caring and emotion as if it had been carved from alabaster.

“I have no desire to talk to you, Boris. Now or ever. It is time for you to go, find a new place to live, find new relationships among your aristocratic friends.”

“We must have a real understanding, Alexandra. Silence is the same as ignorance, and almost equal to lies. Do me this one–perhaps one last–courtesy of hearing me out; and I will listen to what you have to say without interrupting you.”

“If I agree, will you agree never to trouble me again?”

“If–after I have had my say–you do not want to have anything to do with me, I will absent myself entirely and without rancor.”

“All right. We can go into the withdrawing room and have this talk. I want my father and mother to be right outside of the door so that they can come if I call.”

“Are you actually afraid that I might or that I could do you physical harm, my dear little wife? That is the most unkindest cut of all.”

“Oh, cease the drama, Boris. I am no Julius Caesar.”

“And I am no Brutus, Alexandra. And this is no Shakespearian drama, nor is our conversation on the level of a mass stabbing. It is a misunderstanding between husband and wife.”

“Then, let us repair to the withdrawing room and get it over with,” she said gritting her teeth and rising from her chair in such a way as to put the greatest possible distance between her and Boris.

Five minutes later, they sat facing each other on chairs situated ten feet away at Alexandra’s insistence. The gulf was such that they might as well have been separated by an ocean.

“I request the opportunity to go first, and to have the courtesy of you hearing me out until I have finished. After that, you may say whatever you wish; and I will respect your privilege,” Boris politely requested all the while fighting back his sorrow and his anger.

“Go then.”

Her face was a marble statue of pure hate and implacable disgust.

“What you saw is not as simple as you think, Alexandra…” he began.

She rolled her eyes.

“Please hear me out,” he repeated.

She nodded her head.

“I was a general mayor, a decorated hero, an aristocrat in the best of standing with the tzar and his family. His brother is—or probably, was—my godfather. I had the attention of the general staff of the imperial Russian army with every likelihood that I would be promoted shortly to general lieutenant and find my place on the general staff. The future was bright; I was a prince, scion of the wealthiest and most influential family in all the Russias.”

Alexandra had not heard this before, and her face registered her growing curiosity.

“Then a series of unfortunate incidents occurred to ruin all of that, not of my doing except the very first one, which I could never have imagined would bring me down…it was so innocent.

“I will be brief, because the story has so little to it. My only fault was to make a boyish error. While I was in the general staff academy, I chose to share an apartment with some people I should not have. They were Alexander Soloviev, Andrei Zhelyabov, and Alexander’s girl-friend, Sophia Perovskaya, all of whom were flirting with the philosophies of Mikhail Bakunin and his Land and Liberty reformers party. I was peripherally interested…curious, really…but I did not subscribe to any of their theories, and most certainly not to any of their subsequent actions.

“I presume you have heard of these people, Alexandra?”

“Who hasn’t?” she snapped, but without the rancor that she displayed earlier in the conversation.

“Yes, well, I could never have imagined the trouble they would bring to me, to the tzar, and to the empire. Let me give a little summary: In October, 1879, the Land and Liberty group split into two factions with a majority of members–who favored a policy of active terrorism—going on to establish a violent organization, the infamous Narodnaya Volya [People’s Will]. Those maniacs decided to assassinate Alexander. The next month, my presumed great friends, Andrei Zhelyabov and Sophia Perovskaya hatched a plot to use nitroglycerine to destroy the Tzar Train. However, the volunteer terrorist made a fool’s mistake and destroyed another train instead. The People’s Will’s next plot was an attempt to blow up the Kamenny Bridge in St. Petersburg as the tzar was passing over it. They were bumblers from the beginning; so, that attempt was also a failure.

“Because Alexander II and the Russian government dragged its feet about writing a new constitution, the People’s Will made plans for still another assassination attempt on the tzar’s life. It will be of no surprise to you that the plotters were: Sophia Perovskaya, Andrei Zhelyabov, Gesia Gelfman, Nikolai Sablin, Ignatei Grinevitski, Nikolai Kibalchich, Nikolai Rysakov and Timofei Mikhailov. My only association was with Sophia and Andrei of that deadly group and that very minimal and temporary.

“At any rate, on February 17, 1880, one of their associates—Khalturin—built a crude bomb in the basement of the building under the dining-room where Alexander was scheduled to eat. The bomb was scheduled to explode at exactly six-thirty in the evening. This time, their planning and execution were almost perfect. The bomb exploded precisely when they wanted it to. The People’s Will were certain the tzar would be in the middle of his meal with the bomb went off. Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for Alexander; his main guest, Prince Alexander of Battenburg, arrived late; and dinner was delayed. When the bomb exploded, the dining-room itself was empty; and Alexander was unharmed. However, he was enraged because sixty-seven people were killed or badly wounded by the explosion.

“In his fury, Alexander gave the Okhrana carte blanche to find and to destroy all of the plotters and their associates. Perhaps, Alexandra, you can see where this is leading. By early February, 1881, the Okhrana discovered that the People’s Will had developed another plot led by Andrei Zhelyabov to kill Alexander. The secret police foiled the plot, and Zhelyabov was arrested but refused to provide any information on the conspiracy. He brashly told the police that nothing they could do would save the life of the tzar.

“On March first, 1881, the tzar traveled by carriage from Michaelovsky Palace to the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. An armed Cossack sat with the coach-driver and another six Cossacks followed on horseback. Behind them came a group of police officers in sledges. It was deemed a fairly serious set of security precautions. However, all along the route he was surveilled by members of the People’s Will. Near the Catherine Canal, Sophia Perovskaya gave the signal to Nikolai Rysakov and Timofei Mikhailov to throw their bombs at the tzar’s carriage. The bombs missed the carriage and instead landed amongst the Cossacks. The tzar was unhurt but unwisely insisted on getting out of the carriage to check the condition of the injured men. While he was standing with the wounded Cossacks, another terrorist–Ignatei Grinevitski–threw the bomb he had been saving for just that opportune moment. Tzar Alexander II was killed instantly and the explosion was so great that saboteur Grinevitski also died from the bomb blast.

“This is what became of the surviving conspirators: Nikolai Sablin committed suicide before he could be arrested, Gesia Gelfman died in prison, and my so-called friends, Sophia Perovskaya, Andrei Zhelyabov, Nikolai Kibalchich, Nikolai Rysakov, and Timofei Mikhailov, were hanged on the third of April, 1881. You might ask, what has this to do with you, and more, what has it to do with what you saw at Balagansk Prison a week ago, Alexandra? On the surface, you might ignore the cause and effect involved. But my associates and I did not have the luxury of escaping attention of the Okhrana.

“The government issued an edict condemning everyone who had had any association with the monsters in the People’s Will Party or with any of the plotters individually. The commandant of the General Staff Academy realized that if the Okhrana caught up with me, my life would be forfeit, no matter all my service, high born birth, family influence, or great wealth. He told me as a friend and ordered me as a superior to leave at once for the Far East. He saw to it that I be placed in a position befitting my rank. Just before I left, his final words to me were, ‘This is not over. The Okhrana will hunt you and make every effort to find some flaw or mistake on your part. I will see to it that you are given orders from time to time that will be found favorable to you by the general staff, and the government. Have no communication with your family, or they will fall under your same condemnation.’”

He paused and took a drink of bottled sparkling Evian water–the French curative elixir won in conflict from Switzerland–to soothe his scratchy dry throat, then continued, “So, each time a group of political prisoners was delivered to Balagansk, I was required to demonstrate that they were being treated as criminals. This last group of one hundred came with specific orders: I was to whip each person—young or old, male or female, healthy or sick—with eighteen strips with a single strap rawhide whip. I was given the right to use a cat-o-nine-tails if I thought the prisoner deserved harsher punishment. I did as little as I could and still escape a negative report being sent back to Moscow by a spy, and I never resorted to the cat. My orders included a personal threat. If I was weak in carrying out the punishment, I would take the prisoner’s place hanging from the stake. With the possibility of facing twenty-four separate beatings, I knew I would never survive. That brings me to what you saw.”

There was a long pause after Boris said his piece.

Then, Alexandra quietly asked, “Is that all you have to say, Boris?”

“Not quite, Alexandra. I want you to understand and to accept me back as your husband in every sense of the word.”

“I presume it is my turn now, Boris. Try as I might, I cannot forgive what you have done or what you stand for—the cruel tsarist government and all its wicked servants. I was going to demand a divorce before I heard what you had to say, but your information has given me a chance to rethink my position. The church forbids divorce, and I and my children would suffer if I made the effort. I will continue our marriage in name only. You must find new quarters, new friends, and a new life. Because our business matters are contracts set in stone, I cannot force you out of the family business or from the business with Jardine-Matheson Company. But, you and I will not work together, sleep together, eat together, or make new business contracts together, for as long as we both live.”

Her face was livid, and her brow was sweating from her passion. Boris recognized the finality of her statement, and his attitude changed to the opposite of his previous placating requests. His face turned to stone—the face of the implacable warrior about to lay waste to Ottoman Turks. She would live to rue this day.

He took a breath and said simply and calmly, “Alexandra Abramovna Tarasova-Yusupova, you will regret this decision of yours for the rest of your days. Never forget that I am a Yusupov and that I have enormous resources at my command. Pray as much as you want, I will reappear in your life.”