The Romanov Bride

Chapter 18 PAVEL

We killed the Grand Duke-hurrah! Word raced across town, the Grand Duke was dead, his body blown to smithereens-hurrah! All Moscow was rushing to the Kremlin to see the blood-hurrah!

Oh, we had such a celebration, and we rejoiced at every single story, that someone saw the Grand Duke’s heart on the roof of a neighboring building, that a finger with a gold ring was found on the other side of the square, that the snow on the cobbles was sure to remain red until the first thaw melted it through the cracks and into the soil. We took delight in it all! The Grand Duke was dead!

Our magnificent bombmaker, Dora Brilliant, nearly fainted with joy, muttering, “I did it, I killed the Grand Duke!”

Everyone else seemed to take credit, too. Our Savinkov, who’d been so active in the planning. Kalyayev, our little poet, who had actually tossed the bomb. And others, like Azev, that notorious inciting double agent, who was always in the background of every revolutionary act. And even me to a degree. There were dozens who’d had a hand in the murder, and we felt so very proud. I guessed, too, that there were those who hadn’t played a part at all but who perhaps felt guilty, maybe an aide-de -camp or a colonel, those close to that wretched man whose minds might have echoed with all the things they could have done, should have done, would have done, to avoid calamity.

But, no, none of that was correct, for none of us was actually due the glory or, for that matter, the blame. Only one person was responsible for the murder of the Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich, and that was the Grand Duke himself. He was so arrogant, so pompous, so reactionary, and so convinced of the holiness of himself and the Tsar. Just think how different things would have been if he’d even been able to tolerate talk of a constitution, let alone admit that we, his downtrodden subjects, were not animals, after all, but human beings.

And over and over we shouted, “Da zdravstvuet revolutsiya! ” Long live the Revolution! The Grand Duke is dead!