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By Root 3207 0

forgive that a bit but not the other things, in particular the terrible crime you are accused of, which is so repellent to me personally. I refer to the draining of his lifeblood out of Zhenia Golov’s body. I don’t know whether you are aware that my own child, the Tsarevitch Alexis, is a haemophiliac? The newspapers, out of courtesy to the royal family, and the Tsarina in particular, do not, of course, mention it. We are fortunate in having four healthy daughters, the princesses Olga, the studious one; Taty-ana, the prettiest, and something of a coquette—I say this with amusement; Maria, shy and sweet-tempered; and Anastasya, the youngest and liveliest of them; but when after many prayers an heir to the throne was born at last—it pleased God to make this joy our greatest trial —his blood unfortunately was deficient in that substance which is necessary for coagulation and healing. A small cut, the most trivial, and he may bleed to death. We look after him, as you can expect, with the greatest care, on tenterhooks every minute because even a quite ordinary fall may mean extreme peril. Alexei’s veins are fragile, brittle, and in the slightest mishap internal bleeding causes him unbearable pain and torment. My dear wife and I—and I may add, the girls—live through death with this poor child. Permit me to ask, Yakov Shepsovitch, are you a father?”

“With all my heart.”

“Then you can imagine our anguish,” sighed the sad-eyed Tsar.

His hands trembled a little as he lit a green-papered Turkish cigarette from an enameled box on the table. He offered the box to Yakov but the fixer shook his head.

“I never wanted the crown, it kept me from being my true self, but I was not permitted to refuse. To rule is to bear a heavy cross. I’ve made mistakes, but not, I assure you, out of malice to anyone. My nature is not resolute, not like my late father’s—we lived in terror of him—but what can a man do beyond the best he can? One is born as he is born and that’s all there is to it. I thank God for my good qualities. To tell you the truth, Yakov Shepsovitch, I don’t like to dwell on these things. But I am—I can truthfully say—a kind person and love my people. Though the Jews cause me a great deal of trouble, and we must sometimes suppress them to maintain order, believe me, I wish them well. As for you, if you permit me, I consider you a decent but mistaken man—I insist on honesty—and I must ask you to take note of my obligations and burdens. After all, it isn’t as though you yourself are unaware of what suffering is. Surely it has taught you the meaning of mercy?”

He was coughing insistently now and his voice, when he finished, was unsteady.

Yakov moved uneasily in his chair. “Excuse me, Your Majesty, but what suffering has taught me is the useless-ness of suffering, if you don’t mind me saying so. Anyway, there’s enough of that to live with naturally without piling a mountain of injustice on top. Rachmones, we say in Hebrew—mercy, one oughtn’t to forget it, but one must also think how oppressed, ignorant and miserable most of us are in this country, gentiles as well as Jews, under your government and ministers. What it amounts to, Little Father, is that whether you wanted it or not you had your chance; in fact many chances, but the best you could give us with all good intentions is the poorest and most reactionary state in Europe. In other words, you’ve made out of this country a valley of bones. You had your chances and pissed them away. There’s no argument against that. It’s not easy to twist events by the tail but you might have done something for a better life for us all—for the future of Russia, one might say, but you didn’t.”

The Tsar rose, his phallus meager, coughing still, disturbed and angered. “I’m only one man though ruler yet you blame me for our whole history.”

“For what you don’t know, Your Majesty, and what you haven’t learned. Your poor boy is a haemophiliac, something missing in the blood. In you, in spite of certain sentimental feelings, it is missing somewhere else— the sort of insight, you might call it, that creates