As his voice trailed off from the agreed script, the questions came flying. ‘Do you support fascism? Do you condone Anders Breivik? Do you deny the Holocaust?’ A look of indignant contempt sailed like a gunboat across Grigori’s face.
‘Your questions tell me all I need to know about the spin your paymasters intend to take on today’s disturbances, as well as on the issues that confront us now and will challenge us in the future. Your adherence to an invented past will trap us into reliving our tragedies time and time again.’ And with that, the delegation withdrew behind the university’s gates. The verbal altercation was rapidly edited and transmitted to the whole country through the controlled media.
Meanwhile, President Babel and his bodyguards had been ambushed in their armoured Chevrolet. The traffic lights on the Neva embankment had been rigged to flick to red as he moved off the bridge. Suddenly, three men opened fire with small arms, using armour-piercing bullets made from depleted uranium to riddle the convoy. Two others stepped from behind sphinx statues, aiming grenade launchers, and then there was flaring phosphorus burning everyone to death. Rumour had it that foreign security forces were responsible. Others said that Babel’s people had fallen out with the Yellow Mafia. Within hours, a bloody feud between the rival oligarchs and leading biznesmeny from the brewing, banking, printing, and electronics syndicates had led to multiple murders by sniper fire, poison, or a sharp blade between the ribs.
• The Duma holds an emergency meeting ratifying Prime Minister Viktor Akulov as Acting President;
• President Akulov immediately confirms Russia’s civil government’s continued intention to give succour to the Great Migration, quoting Sweden’s Interior Minister Gecht in a TV debate on SVT World, ‘Russia will only fulfil its geographic ambition if it can accommodate people of Asiatic origin’;
• Commentators in the World News Media start warning of the rise of Russian neo-Nazism, comparing Russia to Germany in the 1920s;
• Under the auspices of an emergency act sponsored by George Soros at the UN, the World Bank secures Russia’s re-entry into the G8 and begins to formulate the Levantine Accords to facilitate loans to restructure the Russian economy;
• The pro-liberal Radio Meduza, operating out of Riga, quadruples its programme output in support of Acting President Akulov, welcoming his efforts in following his predecessor’s policy of guiding Russia back into the family of democratic nations.
They were rushing, fleeing violence on Nevsky, making for the sanctuary of the Alexander monastery. Ignoring the Ka-226 helicopters and the speeding police Passats, they barely escaped the crunch of Gaz Tigr 4X4s, which were ploughing down rioters at the intersection of Konnaya and Ispolkomskaya.
Hiding in Mitropolichiy sad after they heard about the state of emergency, Ekaterina took him by the hand, marching him down Mirgorodskaya Ulitsa, then back along Telezhnaya in a wide arc to avoid the police cordons of KamAZ trucks and checkpoints manned by scarf-faced militia armed with Viyaz-SN machine pistols.
‘Here in Tikhvin are graves of many great people.’ Ekaterina’s eyes clouded with admiration. ‘Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov.’ Then, raising her hand, ‘Over there is resting place of Dostoevsky.’ He turned to follow her long finger, an iron gateway guarding the remains of the author of Crime and Punishment. ‘Some charnel house, no?’
They joined the back of a queue shuffling slowly towards the entrance. The old, sick, and lonely hobbled staccato-style up the steps. Ekaterina asked, ‘Are you sure you want to go?’
Tom nodded, the great Cathedral doors opening, swallowing them like Jonah’s whale. Inside, they were lost in deep darkness, broken only occasionally by the shimmer of tallow candles sending a warm ripple across icons. The recitation of liturgy was accompanied by the swish of dark robes brushing stone, solemn priests circling under the dome.
He was conscious of people perpetually crossing themselves and considered following suit, but his instinctive secularism still held strong. Tom estimated there must have been two hundred people there. Old babushkas wrapped in shawls, bowing fervently, prostrated themselves before painted saints, gilded frames, pock-marked prophets, and apostles rising in a pantheon of flickering candlelight.
Then, emerging out of the scented fog, a procession of bearded priests came walking towards the chancel. From the gallery above, a choir filled dead air with a song so heart-rending you could feel the isolation of a Siberian winter. Ekaterina stood still, staring straight ahead. Tom shifted uncomfortably from left to right. His atheist inclinations were completely overwhelmed by this ritual assault on all five senses. It was hard to imagine how the Marxists could have suppressed such outpourings of faith for so many years. Only 10 percent of the Christian churches had survived the famine years of the 1920s, when the Party seized altar gold and silver plates to melt down for bullion. Synagogues were untouched. Then there was the Kamchatka martyrdom of thousands upon thousands of the faithful. In the handful of enclaves that held out, the authorities broke up prayer meetings with squads of secret police wielding steel batons and sledgehammers.
It seemed incredible that Lenin and his disciples could have upstaged Jesus. But, perhaps they had not. Maybe, they had only temporarily substituted for him in a failed attempt to pervert the Russian soul. The congregation responded in unison throughout the service. They queued to buy candles, kneeling and kissing icons. The Professor found the atmosphere positively medieval. Commanding huge respect, crones with wrinkled leather skin and curling yellow fingernails who were bent double moved between the flowing shawls of Byzantine priests. Ancient matriarchs performed some special rite known to them alone, people bowing as they passed and making room for them wherever they decided to rest their legs. At the high point of the service, the triple blessing, they assumed to lead the congregation, stumbling onto their knees, shuffling on their bellies across the stone floor, foreheads lowered to the ground as the liturgy soared to its peak.
‘Where were you baptised?’ she asked as they moved in step.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Heathen!’ she said in so low a register that no one could hear. ‘You call yourself civilised?’ He felt her fingernails dig into his palm.
‘Are you offering me salvation?’
Her voice came back in a whisper. ‘You are beyond redemption, you’d best ask the blessing of the Great Patriarch himself!’
Standing in line, he looked on as Ekaterina kissed the hand of the priest before receiving communion. Then it was his turn, and he hesitantly stepped forward. His partner glanced back with a look of encouragement. ‘Time to make good’, she said. Tom felt frail fingertips brush his forehead as he bowed before the chalice and spoon. Looking up, four-square into the blind gaze of the old man before him, he saw rather than heard the words form on cracked lips. Syllables birthed from asthmatic lungs. Straining to understand, he moved aside, his palate burning with the after-taste of vinegar, the wraith-like sensation of this man’s Hebrew God caressing him with a cadaverous hand. The whole experience left him feeling as if a shard of glass was moving in his conscience.