Konrad and Alexandra (PDF) - Rolf Gross

"Well," Alexandra stretched her words, "what a show! Is this the entertainment of the future?" She finished her glass ofchampagne in one swig."Oh, no," laughed Konrad, "this is inimitable Berlin. This genre cannot be exported. You will see, in Bavaria suchentertainment looks and sounds entirely different. There they are Catholic, and because they are no less crass, the barebreasts are replaced by the bucolic."On their way home, Alexandra asked Konrad to take her on a ride to his favorite part of the country, away from this city."You will think that I suffer from Russian paranoia, but among these gross people I do not feel at ease. I want to tell youabout the things that happened to me. Besides I have not been on horseback with you for an eternity and you oncedescribed the country around Berlin as beautiful."22.Riding to Rheinsberg1904They traveled by train north for almost an hour. Konrad rented horses at a stable he remembered from his student years.The land was flat and green, strewn with small, dark lakes surrounded by reeds in shallow depressions, tall woods of redpines, the sour smell of an overgrown, waterlogged moor. On the horizon towered billows of white clouds. Their horseskicked up the light, sandy soil of the path, two deep ruts separated by a ridge of grass. How different this country wasfrom her own land. Protestant, frugal, of a clear transparent blue-green sobriety, bare of sensuality. Konrad’s land.Konrad, happily whistled a tune from his student years."You know whom I met three weeks ago? You won’t guess, Izabel and Marti!"Surprised he stopped whistling. "Where have they been hiding for all these years?""It’s a long story. I met them accidentally on a party where to another lost friend had taken me—Vladimir!"Konrad frowned and his relaxed face clouded over like in the old days, when she had mentioned Vladimir’s name."Vladimir the Beautiful, your arrogant pursuer. We have not seen him since that visit to Becky’s museum."She smiled at his familiar reaction. "Well," she continued, "the four of us were nearly killed in the bomb attack at theVolkonsky Palais two weeks ago. Did you hear about that?"Konrad stopped his horse. "You did not tell me that you had been there. What a dreadful thought. How did you get there?Yes, I heard of this attack through the Kandinsky circle. Theosophists? What were you doing among the Theosophists?"Alexandra drew him out. "A few things in my past you don’t know, Mother is distantly related to Mme. Blavatsky. Sincemy childhood I have heard the most curious tales about this woman and her Theosophists, and the fact that they areofficially banned in Russia only added to my curiosity."Her smile turned into a tease. "Have you not also become interested in Theosophy all of a sudden? It is really a strangecoincidence that we both attended Theosophical meetings independently and at nearly the same time."Konrad looked irritated. "And what about Vladimir? Has he become a Theosophist? I cannot believe it. A new girl friend?"She laughed, a little too self-sure. "Oh no, I seduced him into accompanying me there."Konrad frowned preoccupied. "What happened in that bomb attack? Who planted the bomb and how did you escape?"He shook his head.She laughed. "The bomb explosion was the great unplanned surprise of that evening, but it seems it was the only one inmy control. We were saved by a sudden premonition which I had in the middle of all the glittering festivities."She described the turbulent happenings of that evening, the beautiful intelligentsia, Marti disguised as a Moslem Sufi, thefabulous vegetarian food, Witte and Stolypin, the apparition of H.P.B. in the hashish cloud, the Indian Fakir, Badaev, thefake Tibetan medicine man, and their escape in Vladimir’s car.A meadowlark rose warbling into the silk-blue sky. Alexandra followed the tiny spot with her eyes, and suddenly the birddropped like a stone."You see, that it was high time I returned to your care, my sober Prussian!"Konrad knitted his brows. "I am trying to imagine Izabel and Marti as Theosophists. I would have never guessed that theyhad connections to Blavatsky.""I did not either. They visited me on the following evening to thank me for their ‘rescue’, and we spent half the nighttalking about that. Izabel seemed rather disillusioned with Blavatsky, most of whose magic seems to have been exposedas simple conjurer’s tricks. Besides Marti has a different problem, I think he is a follower of Trotsky’s and the Marxists’.He called himself an opportunist in his relation to the Theosophists who paid for their trip to Central Asia."76