Konrad and Alexandra (PDF) - Rolf Gross

Gauguin in my paintings?"When they separated past midnight, Alexandra secretly slipped an envelope with a note of thanks and a reasonableamount of money for the picture into Isabel’s purse. She offered them the apartment for the time of their absence, whichthe 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 lifewill become just a little easier without this oppressor." But then he became pensive, "or it will get much worse, as thosepeople believe who fear the extremists more than the Okhrana."Alexandra embraced him. "The fuse is lit, and my guardian angel takes me away from this powder keg just in time!""Ha," laughed Vladimir, "and I thought you wanted to go onto the barricades with me and fight for this revolution: laLiberté conduit le peuple de Saint Petersbourg! Do you know the painting by Delacroix?"Vladimir took them by taxi. They embraced one last time. He finally remembered to thank her for having saved him at theVolkonsky party. When the Nord Express pulled out of the station he stood enveloped by clouds of steam waving hishandkerchief. Alexandra, to her surprise, had tears in her eyes.21.Alexandra on the train to Berlin1904Alexandra had received a sizable sum of money from her father as a graduation gift and had immediately hired a quiet,older German woman as governess for Otto. Elisabeth came from the Baltics. She would teach Otto German and wouldbe invaluable in München.The three had a first class sleeper to themselves. At the Russian border they were subjected to a thorough search. Ahapless, young man was taken from the train at gunpoint. Alexandra thought of Vladimir, imploring him to be careful andnot expose himself unnecessarily to danger. Hopefully his close scrape with death would protect him from any foolish,misguided sacrifice.Strange, how these two meetings with Vladimir had subtly changed her. She lay awake in her berth and followed thelights of unknown towns running across the polished wood paneling in the compartment counter to the train’s motion. Theunsettling rattle of the wheels across uncounted switches—where did they lead to? Who had set them?The train was taking her to Konrad, and yet her thoughts, like those lights, flew back to Vladimir, who had opened thegates to an inner landscape that she began to understand only now—a territory of which Konrad had no knowledge.What did Konrad know about death?Before her meeting with Vladimir it would have never occurred to her that her flying over Otto’s birth might have been adeath experience, a temporary separation of the soul from her body. And every overwhelming orgasm an euphoricexperience of death?She let their ride after their lovemaking pass before her eyes. In the past weeks she had not had the time to reexaminetheir conversation, and as she did so now, she was struck by the thought that while her experiences at birth and duringlovemaking were restricted to women, it had been Vladimir who had given her the understanding that they were deathexperiences. Was the verbalization of a woman’s knowledge the prerogative of the man? The woman knows but cannotgive words to her knowledge, and the man constructs philosophical systems but cannot experience the woman’sfundamental insights!She sat up wide awake, surprised: lovemaking as a way to teach a man understand his religious speculations? In heropinion all religions were male constructs. She now saw that they might originally have been female insights, like the ideaof rebirth, or that of resurrection. Both must have originated in the woman’s experience that love, birth, and death areclosely related. Was this insight at the core of the esoteric secrets which in the past had been handed down in femaleinitiation rites?Was this part of Deda’s Easter Play too? The origin of the female trinity and Kore’s resurrection that Konrad had alluded72