Powerscourt helped himself to a few more blinis. ‘They’re really very good, these blinis,’ he said. ‘I can tell you one thing, you know one more fact than I do. Apart from the bit with the Ambassador, that’s all I know too. I don’t know any more than you do. All attempts to get the Prime Minister to talk have failed.’
De Chassiron wiped his mouth carefully. Powerscourt thought he might be rather vain about his appearance. As his wild boar and the diplomat’s fish arrived, Powerscourt asked for a diplomatic overview of where Russia now stood, its main political and foreign attitudes that might, somewhere, contain a clue to the life and death of senior British diplomat Roderick Martin.
De Chassiron smiled. ‘Be happy to oblige, Powerscourt, nothing diplomats like doing better than spinning their private theories about history and current trends. But where to start? I tell you where I’ll start. St Petersburg is a very deceitful place. You look at these incredible buildings all about the centre of the city designed by Quarenghi and Rastrelli and these European architects in their sort of heavy international baroque, and you think you’re in Europe, in another Milan or Rome or Munich. It’s deceptive in exactly the same way that America is deceptive, except that in New York or Washington it’s the common language that makes you think you share a common culture and common values. You don’t. Here it’s the architecture that makes you think you’re just in another part of Europe. For the Doge’s Palace in Venice read the Winter Palace. For the Uffizi in Florence read the Hermitage. It’s not true. Even here, in a city designed to turn his fellow countrymen into good Europeans, Peter the Great never quite succeeded. And if they’re not truly European in this place, think of the rest of the Russians, most of whom are peasants who have never even seen a city and wouldn’t know a baroque one from a city built, or more likely destroyed, by Genghis Khan.’
Powerscourt’s mind wandered off briefly to contemplate a city built or razed to the ground by Genghis Khan. Birmingham, he decided, maybe Wolverhampton.
‘There’s another thing about these buildings, Powerscourt.’ De Chassiron paused to spear a large mouthful of his fish. ‘I don’t know what a democratic building would look like, maybe it would have to look classical like that damned Congress in Washington, but these buildings here, they’re autocratic, they’re to be lived in by one lot of autocrats and handed over to another lot of autocrats. Those great palaces outside the city, Peterhof and Gatchina and Tsarskoe Selo, they’ve all got a shadow over them and the shadow is that of Versailles and the Sun King. These Romanovs are the last serious autocrats in Europe, if not the world. Our King has the powers of a lowly parish clerk, heavily watched by a suspicious parish council, compared to them. And consider this.’ He held up the passage of a particularly large slice of his fish and waved his fork at Powerscourt. ‘What sort of representative bodies, councils, assemblies, parliaments do you think the Tsar has to help him in his work of administering this vast empire? Two? Three? House of Commons? House of Lords? Not one, not even a House of Lords. I’ve always suspected that Kings of England were very happy to have all their aristocrats penned up in a House of Lords. They could plot against each other rather than plot against the King. Very satisfactory all round. But here, these aristocrats may not be fully European but they know the political power exercised by their counterparts elsewhere. If you were an English lord or a duke, your power might not be as ostentatious as it once was but it’s still pretty real and there’s probably more of it than people imagine. If you’re a Prussian Junker you have enormous power. Here you have nothing, whether you’re a peasant, a worker or an aristocrat.’
‘So what do the people who would be in the Lords or Commons, or the Congress in Washington, do here? Where do their political energies go?’
‘That’s a very good question, Powerscourt. I wish I knew the answer.’ De Chassiron screwed his monocle in for another brief inspection of the wine list. ‘Some of them campaign for reform and so on. Some may even join one or two of the more extreme left wing sects that spring up all the time. They gamble. Quite often they gamble huge fortunes away. They fornicate with other people’s wives. Then they fornicate with yet other people’s wives. There’s a great deal of that going on. The wives must get worn out. The cynics say that Tolstoy wasn’t writing fiction when he described the affair between Anna Karenina and Count Vronsky. Some of them drink. That’s usually in addition to, rather than a replacement for, the fornication with the wives of others and the reckless gambling. Sometimes they retire to their estates in the country. Lots of these people own properties the size of a small English county, for Christ’s sake. Not many last out though in the rural idyll. Prolonged exposure to the theft and violence of the peasantry sends them back to the cities. There’s a story, probably apocryphal, about one aristocrat who retired to the country to read all of Dostoevsky and improve his soul. After three novels he blew his brains out. People said it was Petersburg’s Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment who pushed him over the edge.’
Powerscourt found it hard to see how any of these varied activities could lead to the death of an English diplomat. ‘What about the violence?’ he said. ‘What about all these assassination attempts? Could they have anything to do with Martin’s death?’
‘The French Ambassador, Powerscourt, the wisest foreigner in the city, says this is a society at war with itself. There could easily, in his view, be a civil war or a revolution here. Nothing is stable. The Tsar is both symbol and cause of so many problems. Symbol because he stands for nearly three hundred years of autocratic rule, and the autocratic principle will not permit him to share power with any council or elected assembly. He is a terrible administrator but if any minister he appoints manages to do the job properly he is fired because he puts the Tsar in a bad light. Then you get more toadies and the trouble starts all over again. He and his family are more or less prisoners in that palace of theirs out in the country. The security people won’t let them go anywhere else in case they’re blown up. In Tsarskoe Selo, at least, they’re safe because they’re guarded by thousands of soldiers and police twenty-four hours a day. It’s gilded, their cage, it’s very gilded, but it’s still a cage.’
A surly-looking waiter had removed their plates. De Chassiron had ordered another bottle of Chablis and was contemplating the menu. ‘I can recommend the cranberry mousse, Powerscourt,’ he said finally, placing the order before his guest had a chance to reply.
‘Then there’s this bloody war,’ he continued, staring intently at the demented wallpaper. ‘They’re going to lose it and there’ll be the most enormous fuss. Imagine Mother Russia being defeated by the Japanese, little better than savages in the view of most of Russian society, small inferior yellow savages at that. It’ll be a terrible blow to the imperial prestige when they lose to the little yellow chaps with their ridiculous moustaches. They say the Tsar was one of the most eager campaigners for war.’
‘Do you think that could have had anything to do with Martin’s mission?’ asked Powerscourt, rather enjoying his crash course in Russian politics. ‘Could they have been asking for help with the war? A naval alliance or something like that?’
‘It’s possible,’ said de Chassiron, ‘but why all the bloody secrecy? It’s not as if His Nibs is going to take a sled down the Nevskii Prospekt and shout the news aloud to all comers. I wonder, I haven’t told anybody else this, and it’s only a theory, but I wonder if it didn’t have to do with security. Once the Okhrana are involved everything gets much more complicated and much more secretive than it need be.’