Konrad and Alexandra (PDF) - Rolf Gross

Alexandra had fallen into melancholy silence. A great longing for her sunny homeland overcame her. As the last night fellshe sank of into a restless sleep, dreaming that she was about to give birth to her child alone in an endless, snowbound,northern wilderness.St. Petersburg came as a shock to Alexandra. Walking through the station in the early morning hour of their arrival, shehad to step across a bunch of homeless drunks who had spent the night among the droves of stranded travelers waitingfor their connections. Sacks and luggage, packages, bedding, crying children huddling with their mothers wrapped inshawls. The bearded men from the villages, smoking and drinking, leered at her. A sea of humanity. The stupor andresignation of this mass of people struck her—and the filth! Nowhere in Western Europe had she come across anythingcomparable.Niko and Otar awaited them. They took a droshki to the place Konrad’s institute had rented for them. A spaciousapartment on the second floor in the Litenaya Quartier: four high-ceilinged rooms, a large, live-in kitchen, a small maid’sroom, and a modern bath. Their district, bordered by hospital foundations, the barracks of the Imperial Guard, and theNeva, was inhabited by the professional, bourgeoise intelligentsia, professors, physicians, lawyers mixed in with the villasof a few rich merchants. One of the most desirable districts of town. A preferred location for preferred people. She couldnot have wished for anything better.Konrad disappeared to his institute. The semester would start in a month. Meanwhile he was overwhelmed bybureaucratic work. He had to organize the annual summer ball at the botanical gardens, his obligation. Departmentmeetings, the curricula needed to be worked out, the students had to be selected and registered in the courses thedepartment offered. She saw him only at night.For a few weeks she kept busy making the apartment livable. For the time being they slept on a couple of mattresses onthe floor and ate in the kitchen. They would have to buy more furniture in the months to come.She hired a woman to help her in the house and do the daily shopping, who took her, one warm and humid morning, tothe market in the neighboring Rozhdestvenskaya district. In the few blocks they had to walk, across LitovskayaBoulevard the world changed. In the run-down tenement blocks lived factory workers.At one street corner a woman sold kvas from a big barrel on a cart, a turbid brown brew made from fermented rye bread.A mob of people holding bottles and enameled milk cans crowded around the cart jostling and pushing and shoutinginsults at each other. She found the same graceless scene repeated at the open market. One woman in a high voiceaddressed her as "fine lady" followed by a vulgar Russian epithet. Alexandra bristled, and then she realized, that thesepeople were angry and restless. Their rage was not specifically directed at her, the social outsider, but equally at eachother. Alexandra heard Ilia’s voice saying, "Look at these disadvantaged, suppressed proletarian masses." She hadnever understood his Socialist jargon, but now she saw the conditions with her own eyes.An equal distance from their street in the other direction she discovered the ostentatious glitter of the expensive shopsalong Nevsky Prospekt, the famous boulevard of St. Petersburg. Here the arrogant upper class raced their liveriedcarriages, or idled away in the specialty restaurants and French cafés. Police and military were everywhere.Nowhere had she seen such a chasm between the poor and the feudal rich. Despite its wild mixture of races andlanguages, Tiflis seemed more homogeneous. For the first time in her life Alexandra felt a certain embarrassment tobelong to the privileged class.She decided to conquer the city. For days she wandered through its streets in search of beauty and her own destiny. Shegrew convinced that she had to do something to reduce human misery. In this environment her long-standing wish topaint or design rugs suddenly appeared frivolous.One day on her way home walking through the pleasant, shady park surrounding the hospitals, she had the suddeninspiration that she should find work there.At first she thought of seeking a part-time occupation as nurse, something that many socially concerned women did.Then she remembered Dr. von Haffner and saw herself as a physician. She had the intelligence to master medicalschool, and if she would apply herself, she could finish it in less time than the average student. She knew what shewanted and why.She almost ran home. Out of breath she sat and examined her spontaneous idea, trying to think through all the manyimplications that such a decision would have for her and their life.Times were not as stable as everyone wanted to believe. She sensed the unrest not only among the workers in theRozhdestvenskaya but also among the students she had met. She was not Russian, and therefore able to clearly see thepomposity and sleepwalking aloofness of the emperor and his government.Tsar Nicholas II, a good but weak man, lived in a God-given state of ignorant bliss. Preoccupied with the fatal hemophiliaof his son, he was oblivious to the social fermentation that surrounded him, and whenever he was forced to notice theunrest, used draconian measures to suppress it.Still the imperial house was the only guarantee for the stability of the empire. There existed no viable politicalalternatives. The political opposition followed chaotic mystical ideas and was deeply split and leaderless. The possibilityof a radical change was on everybody’s mind.She might one day have to provide for herself and her family, like Izabel. What better profession could there be in such a53