The Faint-hearted Bolshevik by Lorenzo Silva Read Free Book Online Page B

more than a pervert. But I suspect that, in my position, even Emmanuel from Königsberg-Kalininigrad himself would have said to hell with the categorical imperative and stopped telling his neighbors where to get off, in order to lie on his bed and dream of the abject delights of paedophilia.

Of all the striking photographs in the world, there is one that inspires awe regardless of ideology or prejudice: the one of the four Russian grand duchesses, the daughters of Nicholas II who were put to the sword (of whatever sort) by the Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg after the Revolution. It doesn’t matter whether you’re atheist or orthodox, reactionary communist or an econotechnoliberal, a supporter of the monarchy or someone who believes that every last drop of blue blood should be poured down the drain as soon as possible. Those four perfect faces, those four proud and angelic children, forever united by their tragic destiny, leave an indelible impact on whatever small piece of heart we may have left.
    I keep their photograph on my desk (well, let’s call it that) here as in all the other places I’ve lived over the past five years since I discovered it. I’ve looked at it so often I know it by heart. It’s difficult to choose one from among the four girls. They all have that elusive Slav beauty, partly divine, partly wild. The same beauty that the best ice-skaters and gymnasts possess (apart from the American ones, so vulgar with their orthodontic braces), a beauty that has led me to become addicted to their competitions. However, if I had to choose my favourite, for example if someone were to threaten me with doing something as cruel as taking a pair of scissors to the photograph, I would beg him to spare the Grand Duchess Olga.
    Of the four, she is the eldest and perhaps the haughtiest. She stares right at the camera, fully aware of her boundless charm, like a professional. The others hold their heads erect, but she tilts hers to the side, with calculated languor. At her young age she is already imbued with her semi-divine status and knows that the photographer is a lackey, little more than a muzhik. The Grand Duchess floats in a dress that is worth and costs (not that she’s paying) more than everything the photographer owns. She has no reason to fear him, and she proclaims this through her childish insolence, tinged with a precocious hint of the femme fatale.
    I’ve repeatedly asked myself what that girl, that budding young woman, felt when she saw the first rifletouting muzhik burst into her chambers to trample on the cloud of tulle in which she had lived until that moment. When she had to suffer in silence as her beautiful flesh paid for all the muzhik blood spilled by the despots adorning her family tree. I’ve never read, although maybe it’s been written down somewhere, exactly what they did to the grand duchesses before dispatching them to the common grave so that nobody could plant a possible Czar of all the Russias in their bellies. Of course I’ve imagined it, naturally, and not always in a virtuous way. At the age the Grand Duchess Olga was when she was forever cut off from the line of succession, she must have been a creature eminently capable of arousing impure thoughts and acts, and it’s debatable whether an inflamed Bolshevik would have turned his nose up or repressed his manhood. The Russians’ propensity for lust and torturing their neighbors is as notorious as their propensity to wail away to a background of balalaikas. Therefore, assuming a probable situation (whether it happened or not is neither here nor there), I have also often asked myself what the Grand Duchess felt when the first muzhik ripped off his cartridge belt and howled with pleasure. The feelings an ordinary woman would experience are well-known, but not those of a Grand Duchess, accustomed to thinking of muzhiks as being on the same level as dogs, or lower, depending on the dog.
    I can’t deny that on imagining this horrible scene