Dmitri and the One-Legged Lady. Michael Pearce
‘Dmitri Alexandrovich,’ said the Governor in a fatherly tone, ‘– a little more cognac? – are you religious?’
The question caught Dmitri off guard. The fact was that this was a tricky point in the Kameron family. For generations the Kamerons, as loyal servants of the Tsar, had been members of the Orthodox Russian Church. Then with Dmitri’s grandfather the line had hiccuped. Awkward as always, he had announced that he had become a Freethinker, with the result that he had been dismissed from the Tsar’s service. His son, awkward, too, and determined, as all male Kamerons, to quarrel with his father, had conversely announced his return to the faith; only the faith that he had elected to return to was that of his Scottish ancestors. Since, however, there were no Presbyterian churches in Russia at the time, the genuineness of his return had not been able to be tested and while the Tsar’s officials were working this out he had been allowed to continue in the Tsar’s service and had been still serving at the time of his unfortunately early death. All this had left Dmitri in some difficulty as to his own position.
‘Well –’
‘My advice,’ said the Governor,’– another cognac? – is to leave unto God the things that are God’s and unto man the things that are man’s.’
‘Seems reasonable,’ said Dmitri.
‘That is what it says in the Bible. Or more or less. And I have always found it a sound maxim to follow. At least as far as the Russian Church is concerned.’
‘Good idea,’ said Dmitri. The last cognac had left him rather blurred.
‘I commend the principle to you as a good one to adopt. Especially in the case of the One-Legged Lady.’
‘But that’s just what has not happened!’ cried Dmitri. ‘Man has just walked in and helped himself to –’
‘I was not speaking of others,’ said the Governor, annoyed. ‘I was speaking of you.’
The haze descended again.
‘Of me? Oh, yes, well –’
‘And of the One-Legged Lady.’
The One-Legged Lady? Who the hell was she? It sounded intriguing. He must look her up some time. But, wait a minute –
‘The One-Legged Lady?’
‘Is no business of yours. It will only lead to trouble. You mark my words, Dmitri Alexandrovich, I have a nose for such things. You keep right out of it. Assume a wisdom if you have it not. That’s what the English poet, Shakespeare, says. Or more or less. Wise man, Shakespeare. What he doesn’t know about the Russian Church isn’t worth knowing. You keep right out of it. That’s my advice, Dmitri Alexandrovich. Keep right out of it.’
He had invited a few friends round that evening to celebrate his promotion to Assistant Procurator. Unfortunately, their congratulations fell short of the whole-hearted.
‘You’ve let them buy you off, Dmitri,’ said Vera Samsonova, never one to shrink from telling other people the truth about themselves.
‘The surprise is that you were prepared to let yourself go so cheaply,’ said Igor Stepanovich.
Dmitri fired up.
‘If you tried to sell yourself, you wouldn’t get an offer!’ he retorted.
It had been a hard decision on his return from Siberia whether to stay in state service or to try to pursue an independent career at the St Petersburg Bar.
‘But to agree to work for them!’ said Sonya reproachfully. ‘After all they’ve done!’
Sonya had recently returned from Europe, where she had drunk deep of the liberal notions that the little group of friends liked to meet regularly to discuss.
‘And you’ve said!’ put in Vera Samsonova.
‘If you want to improve them,’ said Dmitri, employing one of the arguments that Prince Dolgorukov had used to persuade him, ‘the best way is from the inside.’
‘If you want to improve your career,’ said Vera Samsonova nastily, ‘the best way is from the inside.’
The thought, it must be admitted, had crossed Dmitri’s own mind. It was all very well for the others to tell him to abandon his career in the State Prosecution Service and work for the greater good of mankind. The trouble was that mankind was unlikely to pay him; and if you were a young lawyer struggling to make your way in Tsarist Russia of the eighteen nineties, that was quite a consideration.
It was not that he was against working for the greater good: it was just that he wanted to eat while he was doing it. So when Prince Dolgorukov had approached him after that little business of the massacre at Tiumen, he had been willing to lend at least a quarter of an ear.
‘You will rise more quickly than most,’ the Prince had assured him. ‘A glittering career awaits you!’
Unfortunately, it appeared to await him at Kursk. Wasn’t that sacrifice enough, thought Dmitri, bridling?
His friends sensed that perhaps they had gone too far.
‘I am sure Dmitri will do his best,’ said Sonya conciliatorily.
‘Yes, but for whom?’ said Vera Samsonova.
‘I do think that’s unkind, Vera,’ said Sonya severely.
‘Yes,’ said Igor Stepanovich. ‘It’s not surprising if Dmitri gets outwitted by someone like Prince Dolgorukov.’
Dmitri bit back his reply. With Dmitri biting his tongue and Vera Samsonova biting hers, the rest of the evening passed off amicably.
Dmitri told them about the One-Legged Lady.
Why on earth, asked Vera, would anyone in their right senses want to steal an icon? And in particular the Holy Icon of the One-Legged Lady of Kursk?
‘Because it is encrusted with diamonds,’ said Igor Stepanovich.
‘Because it has miraculous powers of healing,’ said Sonya, who had clearly imbibed insufficiently of the sceptical currents of the West during her stay in Europe.
Vera frowned. Russian intellectual society was sharply divided between westernizers, who saw in Western liberalism the best hope for the salvation of Russian society, and slavophils, whose views were exactly opposite. The little group of friends were strongly westernizers.
The group fell to discussing the general problem posed by religion for the development in Russia of a truly modern society. Sonya claimed that there was no problem since even Europe was not perfect and what was needed was a marriage of the best of Russia, which was its deep spirituality, with the best of the West, which was its progressive ideas. Vera said that no such marriage was possible because the two were contradictory. And Dmitri, after his fifth glass of vodka, heard himself maintaining that what Russia needed was a Dissolution of the Monasteries on the Scottish model (he had never been quite clear about the difference between Scotland and England).
The consensus was that religion was one of the things that was holding Russia back. As for the One-Legged Lady, the general view – put most forcibly by Vera Samsonova – was that if some old relic that smacked of superstition had gone missing, then so much the better. And what a relatively enlightened person like Dmitri was doing trying to track it down, the group, with a return to its earlier doubts about the genuineness of his commitment to progress, simply failed to see.
Even if Dmitri had been minded to return to the Monastery, he would have been unable to, for the Procurator had bespoken the sleigh for the rest of the week for a round of social visits.
‘But the One-Legged Lady –’
‘That old icon?’ said the Procurator offhandedly, looking up from his newspaper, ‘I’d forget about it if I were you.’
‘But –’
‘In any case,