Konrad and Alexandra (PDF) - Rolf Gross

established tradition with some mildly radical overtones.Vladimir finished his second glass, lit a cigarette, and tried to relax. It was all over, they might as well drive home.In front of Alexandra’s house, Vladimir pulled a crumpled paper from his pocket and gave it to her."I dedicated my last poem to you."He kissed her hand."From now on I shall write prose, maybe even erotic prose."She gently brushed his lips and forehead with her gloved hand.41.Pregnant Alexandra and her two men1906During the winter pregnant Alexandra and her two men, an odd troika, roamed the underground theaters that werespringing up all over the city like mushrooms. Alexandra gave up her disguise as Novella d’Andreae. She had nothing tohide nor prove. She decided to work in the maternity ward of the hospital, to enroll in additional courses in gynecology,and look for another woman doctor with whom to establish a private family practice after the baby’s arrival. As she grewbigger she laughed. "I am a good advertisement for my future practice. I should carry a sign on my belly with my nameand credentials."Her pregnancy was uneventful, the baby peaceful and unproblematic. Aunt Sophia offered to come, but Alexandra talkedher out of it.When her labor started on the eighth of May, Konrad took her in a taxi to her hospital, where she was well taken care ofby her colleagues. She succeed in relaxing herself completely. The delivery was fast and easy.Once again she saw the lights and floated across the last, hard phase of giving birth. She enjoyed these sensations, theywere like old friends.As she had expected, it was a girl.They named her Sophia, after Alexandra’s and the child's natlideda.Two bouquets of flowers awaited her in her room after her delivery, one from Konrad, another from Vladimir.To make Alexandra’s life easier, Konrad agreed to engage a wet nurse for little Sophia after the second month. Acleaning lady took care of the heavy housework, and Elisabeth, Otto’s beloved Nana, became Alexandra’s indispensableadjutant at home.During Spring 1906 St. Petersburg had stabilized. Witte’s energetic sweep of the radicals in the factories did put an endto the recurring strikes. With new medical care for the workers and better housing provided by the owners of thefactories, the life of the workers improved. The restless, gifted young found it much easier to enter and rise through theuniversities. A steadily increasing number of women and Jews from the Russian Pale, who had been strictly limited byquotas, were now able to gain a hold in the universities and the arts.The ugly Marxist uprising in Moscow in December 1905 which Witte had put down, became the only bloodstain on hisreign. After successfully securing the state loan sponsored by a consortium of Jewish banks in France, Germany andHolland, Witte handed in his resignation. A week later the first Duma was opened by Nicholas II with great pomp at theWinter Palace. It lasted only a few months before the Emperor dissolved it over a constitutional disagreement on thelimits of power between parliament and the crown.Stolypin became the new president of the council of ministers. Lacking Witte’s humanist scruples, Stolypin began hisreign with a ruthless cleansing of revolutionary troublemakers. He had them arrested, executed, or exiled. Thousandsdisappeared. Lenin, Trotsky and the entire leadership of the Bolsheviks were exiled or sent to Siberia. Among them wasSasha Manovsky. To avoid a scandal, Manovsky had been persuaded to leave "voluntarily" for Paris.Georgia had a new viceroy, Vorontsev, a moderate, unusually sensive man, who tried his best to bring some kind ofstability to the politically chaotic and restive Transcaucasus.Vorontsev first brought the politically powerful Armenian bourgeoisie on his side. He then made peace with Noe Jordania,the moderate leader of the Georgian Socialists, who had rallied the land-starved Georgian peasants.Jordania, a wily Mingrelian seasoned by decades of underground existence in Georgia and France, understood that aconservative, practical Socialism with strong Georgian nationalist overtones would be the formula for his success inGeorgia. He considered Lenin’s autocratic posturing as merely another manifestation of Russian imperialism, and in thegreat schism of Russian Socialism sided with Trotsky’s comparatively democratic Mensheviks. Another reason for133