“Alexis.”
He glanced through the open door of the balcony towards the sea, which lay quivering below the fresh north breeze. A haze seemed to rise from the boiling deep, shrouding the sparkling surge and the white sails, like the breasts of proud swans. The Tsarevitch mused that this was the same blue sea which took Oleg and his “droushina” to Constantinople and which is sung about in the Russian lore.
He took out a couple of folded leaflets filled with his own laboured handwriting in German. There was a note on the margin, “Excuse my bad writing, but I have done my best.” This was a long letter addressed to the Emperor, an accusation against his father. He had begun it some time ago, but was always altering it, crossing out, re-writing, and somehow or other he could not bring himself to finish it. What seemed right in thought no longer appeared so when expressed in words. There was some insurmountable barrier between thought and expression, and no words could be found to convey adequately the essential point.
He revised some stray passages:
“The Emperor must save me. I am innocent before my father. I have always loved, honoured and obeyed him according to God’s law. I know I am only a weakling, but the fault lies with Ménshikoff’s training. He never taught me anything; always tried to separate me from my father, and throughout treated me no better than some serf or a dog. They did their best to make a drunkard of me. My spirit was broken by continuous drunkenness and persecution. Albeit, my father on occasion used to be kind to me. He entrusted me with administration; all for a time went well and he was pleased with me. But ever since my wife began bearing children—the new Tsaritsa had also borne a son—they began to treat the Crown Princess badly, forced her to perform the duties of a servant, and she died of grief. Then Ménshikoff and the Tsaritsa systematically irritated and set my father against me. They are both filled with malice, knowing neither God nor conscience. If left to himself, the Tsar is kind and just; but he is surrounded by intriguers, while at the same time he is incredibly passionate; he believes that like God, he has the right of life and death. He has shed much innocent blood, and often he has tortured and put victims to death with his own hands. If the Emperor were to deliver me to my father, it would be my certain death. Even should my father spare me, my stepmother and Ménshikoff would not rest until they succeed in killing me either by drink or poison. The abdication of the throne was extorted from me; I have no desire to become a monk; I have sufficient brains to govern. God is a witness that I never even so much as contemplated rousing the people to revolt, though it would have been an easy task for me to do so. The people are affectionate towards me, and dislike my father for his unworthy wife, his cruel and debauched favourites, the desecration of churches and the abolition of old customs, and also because he spares neither money nor blood, because he is the tyrant and enemy of his people.”
“Enemy of his people?” repeated the Tsarevitch. He thought over his words, then crossed them out; they no longer seemed true. He was well aware of his father’s love for the nation, though this love was often more pitiless than hatred: a loving father does not spare the rod. It were almost better if he loved less. He loved him, his son, also. But for this love he would not chastise or torture him. And again, as always, when re-reading this letter he vaguely felt that it was just and yet not completely just. Wholly guiltless? Wholly guilty? there was an imperceptible shade of discrimination still to observe in order to keep the balance true; he seemed to always, though unconsciously, fail to seize this fine line of justice in his accusations. Each of them seemed to grasp a distinct truth; and the two truths were doomed to remain eternally contradictory, eternally irreconcilable. It was impossible for both him and his father to remain supreme. Yet it mattered little which of the pair gained ascendancy, the conqueror would always be in the right, the conquered in the wrong.
And he himself could only vaguely formulate all this to himself, much less could he explain it to others; and even then, who could understand or would believe him? Who except God could judge between father and son?
Laying the letter on one side with a heavy heart, with a secret longing to destroy it, he sat listening to Afrossinia’s song. She had finished her work, and was now standing before a mirror, trying to adjust her new French face-patches. This continuous, subdued singing all through the monotonous days of her prison life, seemed as involuntary as the singing of a caged bird. She sang as she breathed, unconsciously. Yet the Tsarevitch could not help feeling a quaint contrast between this playing with French patches and the melancholy Russian song:—
Earth so cool and moist,
Loved mother mine,