Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

Indian Masters were fabricated by herself."
He poured down a glass of wine and asked for a refill. "Ah, we have to destroy all
religious superstition in Russia and get rid of our mystics. They are a disgrace to our
intelligence in the twentieth century!"
His disturbing slogans again! Had Marti in his frustrated search for spirituality turned to
the radical Socialists? "So, you came back as a disenchanted Theosophists!"
"I never was an enchanted Theosophist. Izabel was taken in by H.P.B. Call me an
opportunist if you wish, the offer of that journey to Central Asia was too great a temptation to
resist. We would never have been able to afford such a trip, and you saw yourself what it did to
my painting."
Alexandra looked at the picture from Shakh-i-Zabz, which was leaning against the wall,
and to her surprise the ruins of the ivan changed. They had appeared to her like teeth
yesterday, and now they looked like two praying hands in the faded green sky. The turquoise
square with its Kufic writing appeared like an amulet on the wrist of one of the hands.
"When I look at your painting, I now see things which I had not seen yesterday. The ivan
appears like two praying hands. Why is the sky green, and what is that strange square?"
Marti smiled with satisfaction. "Shakh-i-Zabz is a place of pilgrimage for the Islamic Sufi,
that is why the sky is green: the color of the Prophet. And the square is a Bustrahedron, a
magical square in which one can read ‘Allah is Great’ in all directions. Maybe the two stumps
are two praying hands, maybe they are two dancing Sufi, or the melody of two neys expressed
in stone? You have to decide that for yourself."
Alexandra listened intrigued. She had finally touched the deep feelings that lay hidden
below his political slogans.
Marti began to warm to his subject. "All that this has in common with Theosophy is that
Blavatsky’s ideas have a certain Sufi content, and the Sufi originated in Samarkand. But you
can find similar ideas also among the Sufi in Georgia. In my paintings I search for the hidden
symbols, which lie behind the spiritual movements of our day. Long denied by Christianity,
Sufism is one such source."
A softer glow had come to Marti’s eyes. "Do you remember our visit to Becky’s house?
Since that day Gauguin has been my teacher, he knows so much more about the symbolism of
colors and forms than our Symbolists. Can you see the Gauguin in my paintings?"
When they separated past midnight, Alexandra secretly slipped an envelope with a note
of thanks and a reasonable amount of money for the picture into Isabel’s purse. She offered
them the apartment for the time of their absence, which the Sisakians accepted with gratitude.
It would serve as a good hiding place for them.
Alexandra would never see Marti again and Izabel not for many years.
On the morning of Alexandra’s departure for Germany, July 28, 1904, the newspaper
sellers shouted:
"Plehve Assassinated. Minister succumbs to his injuries."
The city crawled with police and soldiers.
Vladimir, who had offered to take Alexandra to the station by car, appeared on foot, an
hour earlier than agreed upon.
"Thank God—and the extremists—we have been delivered of this scourge!" He crossed
himself three times. "Maybe life will become just a little easier without this oppressor." But then
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