This then was the sad insecure background from which Ivan and Katya, aged eighteen and sixteen respectively, having borrowed a little money from an uncle, set out to seek their fortune in St Petersburg.
It was a courageous decision and, although Ivan, like his Father ‘lacked good looks and charm’, he too was ‘serious and practical’ and in addition possessed great aptitude for languages, on which he based his hopes of making a career in diplomacy.
As for pretty lively Katya, not only was she fired by a patriotic desire to serve her country, but with nothing but her looks and youth to rely on, she must have feared that had she remained in Kiev, she might have become merely a poor relation, one of those figures that move though the pages of so many Russian novels and finally fade away as unregarded as the shabby furniture in a tolerant relatives household. In addition, tantalising glimpses of an infatuation with a certain Igor sprinkle her letters of this period and it is likely that his absence at the front was a further spur to her ambitions. In St Petersburg, she stayed with one of her mother’s cousins, Aunt Sophia, who had married a doctor named Borodin.
Katya as a nurse in 1905.
IV
East meets West
It was in an atmosphere of extreme political and emotional tension that Katya left for Siberia in April 1905, where she served in a hospital train on the frozen Lake Baikal and, clearly, became a most competent nurse as, during the ensuing year, she was awarded no less than three decorations including the coveted Order of St George. Meanwhile in St Petersburg, Chakrabongse, having failed to obtain leave from his duties at the Military Academy in order to proceed to Siberia, had to content himself with bombarding her with letters and telegram.
The sinking of 40 ships of the Russian Navy by the Japanese in May and lack of political reform in Russia, led the sailors of the Battleship Potemkin to rebel in June. However, the rebels lacked unity and organization and the government carried out swift and ruthless reprisals. Even when Russia accepted the mediation of America and the vastly unpopular Russo-Japanese war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth (USA) in August 1905, it produced no amelioration in the ominous state of the country. Thus when Katya returned to St Petersburg that autumn, she found a city greatly changed – full of tension and disquieting rumour. However there had been no alteration in the intensity of Chakrabongse’s passionate love.
At their first meeting, worn down by his suffering in her absence and tongue-tied – as so often happens – at seeing embodied in smooth rosy flesh the vision that had haunted him awake and sleeping, Chakrabongse, at a loss for romantic words in which to frame a proposal, suddenly blurted out: ‘Do you dislike electric fans?’ Katya, who had never heard of them, but did not wish to seem ignorant, answered that she liked them immensely. In the highly emotional state in which he had existed since falling so violently in love, her reply to this absurd question seemed positive encouragement and, without further ado, he asked her to marry him and live in Siam, where heat would be tempered by the said electric fans!
Though by now far from indifferent to her tempestuous wooer, Katya still hesitated. Chakrabongse, now a mature twenty-three, not only handsome, high-spirited and brilliantly clever, could also draw on an immense fund of determination to achieve any end on which his mind or heart – in this case both – were set. Not only did he entreat her in person, but he bombarded her daily with letters written from the Winter Palace.
My dearest Soulmate Kaya
Can’t you understand that you do not have to doubt my feelings? I don’t need anything but you. If only you can be with me, then everything will be marvellous and nothing can lessen my happiness. There is no question of a lessening in my feelings for you. Simply I have sometimes been afraid to tell you to ask you to be mine. Now if you really love me so much that you are ready to leave with me no matter what, then don’t be afraid, I am sure we will be very happy. We must be in agreement, no matter what, we must hold together.Then we tranquilly can meet the world head on. Only you must remember you’ll have to bear a lot. If you agree then remember we must be as one. Please talk with you brother and make him agree.
Your loving and hopeful
Lekya
Such determination made him totally irresistible. Having consulted her dear friend Elizaveta Ivanovna Chrapovitzkaya, and with the proviso that she must have her brother’s consent, Katya finally gave him her promise.
Armed with this, Chakrabongse, after long discussion, persuaded Ivan to agree, but only on condition that his sister’s marriage would be according to the rites of the Russian Orthodox church. Although the university had reopened briefly in September, in mid-October a strike of railway workers had developed into a general strike involving some 1.5 million industrial workers. A Soviet of Factory and Workers representatives had been set up and effectively was in control of St Petersburg. Witnessing such events at first hand and aware of the uncertain future that awaited his headstrong younger sister Ivan must have been more receptive to Chakrabongse’s wishes than he otherwise might have been. Meanwhile, undaunted, his future brother-in-law set about abandoning his Buddhist faith (for the time being) and being received into Katya’s church. Russian Orthodox, Hindu or Islamic, one feels it mattered not, as long as Katya could be his, and letters reveal that, at one point, it was suggested that the marriage might even take place in the German Lutheran church. As for the traditions of the Chakri dynasty, his royal parents who valued him so highly, the ramifications of his responsibilities to them and to the Russian Imperial family, who had regarded him almost as a son, all such considerations had become of no account.
In fact, he decided to tell neither his father nor the Emperor, reasoning rather speciously, that if they knew of his intended marriage and forbade it, he would not be able to disobey, whereas if they said nothing, for the good reason that they knew nothing, he felt free to do as he pleased. Similarly, Katya did not discuss her plans with other members of her family, neither the Borodins with whom she had lodged, nor her autocratic Uncle Vanya, her mother’s brother, who, after the latter’s death, had assumed a moral if not a financial responsibility for the young girl. From all accounts he had disapproved of his late sister’s extravagant life-style and, latterly, his niece’s decision to become a nurse. He was therefore hardly a sympathetic uncle who might have given her sound counsel on this decision.
Secrecy therefore was of prime importance and, a wedding in St Petersburg being out of the question, it was arranged that it should take place in Constantinople. This also meant concealment of his plans from the over-generous Sultan Abdul Hamid, who might otherwise have wished to organise nuptials of embarrassingly oriental splendour.
Chakrabongse’s plans were apparently so well-laid and carried out with such military precision and attention to the smallest detail that no hint of them disturbed the orderly progression of his ceremonial passing-out of the Military Academy and his leave-taking of brother officers in his regiment. He duly paid his final visit to the Emperor, who created him honorary colonel in the Hussars, invested him with the Order of St Andrew – the equivalent of the English Garter – and bade him a fatherly farewell, quite unaware that his exemplary protégé was returning home with a young Russian bride.
Poum, who should have been returning to Siam with Chakrabongse, had decided not to leave Russia after all for, due not only to his close association with Chakrabongse but to his own marked abilities, opportunities were open to him in Russia that his humble birth precluded him from in Siam. He therefore applied to Chulalongkorn for leave to remain, but this was refused and he was ordered to return. Secure in his position and certain of further promotion in the Hussars in which he was extremely popular, he ignored the king’s command, greatly angering the Monarch, who thenceforth regarded him as a ‘deserter’. After some time he decided to be baptised into the Orthodox church, taking the name of Nicholas, the Emperor himself standing godfather, and thus he became a naturalised Russian. But although nothing was ever said about it openly, there had of course been another reason for his determination to stay on – his love for Madame Chrapovitzkaya. Although she was significantly older than him, this was an enduring love which ended only with her death, far from Russia, in years to come.