The Silver Swan by Brian Doswell (universal ebook reader .txt) 📕

THE SILVER SWAN

by

Brian Doswell


Arkhip Kuindzhi is better known for his paintings of bleak Russian landscapes. His brushwork gives texture and life to a land which is almost totally devoid of either, and his choice of colour brings a magical quality to the earth and sky that is rarely matched in the works of any of his contemporaries. His exceptional work as a landscape painter was what first brought him to the attention of the Russian court and made him a court favourite during the last, fading years of their reign in the elaborate palace in St Petersburg. However, it is not his landscape work that is the subject of this story.

Tsar Nicholas and his family had the sad misfortune to exist at the end of the 19th century which was a time of great change in so many ways. Huge advances in industrial capability led to the balance of power and influence within the state, often better know as ‘new money’, severely undermining the previous god like status of Europe’s royal families. Like so many other royal families at the time, the Russian court found itself in an impossible dilemma. On the one hand, they represented a long blood line of heritage steeped in tradition, pomp and pageantry, and on the other hand, they desperately wanted to embrace the new technologies that were happening all around them.

For close to seven years, St Petersburg had embraced photography with the full time appointment of a court photographer charged with compiling a day by day record of life within the palace walls. This collection of photographs, now buried in the archives of the Hermitage museum, represents one of the most complete photo-diaries of its time. But, while the Tsar was keen to create and maintain this modern record, he secretly longed for the individuality and warmth of a good old fashioned oil painting. Thus it was in the autumn of 1905 that Arkhip Kuindzhi was invited to paint what was probably one of the last court paintings ever to be commissioned in St Petersburg.

The occasion was a grand dinner to be given in the honour of his cousin’s birthday. In truth this was not a particularly auspicious occasion but, as subsequent events unfolded around them, it was to be one of the last such dinners ever given in the whole of Russia. Two hundred guests sat down together that evening to a sumptuous feast. Fourteen courses were to be served to two hundred of Russia's finest, by three hundred servants most of whom would never seen by the diners. For these unseen minions, it was their job to convey the hundreds of plates and dishes between the kitchens and the banqueting hall with the minimum of disturbance to the majesty of the event. Arkhip Kuindzhi was commissioned to record the event in a series of sketches with the final work to be an oil painting depicting as many of the guests as he could encompass on the canvas. The result was completed several weeks later on a canvas some three meters long and almost two high. The view is of the table at a slight angle which allowed him to capture a clear line of noble faces either side of the Tsar himself. In the background, behind the Tsar, is a huge marble fireplace flanked by serving tables dressed with the very best of the palace finery for the occasion. On each flanking table it is possible to discern a pair of silver swans. The four swans were and indeed still are, large silver soup tureens. The body of the swan with fluffed-up wing feathers, provides the bowl of the vessel while the head and neck fold back to provide an elaborately detailed rim. It is thought that each piece was fashioned by Faberge and each weighed over 400 ounces of pure silver.

Igor Polotov was exactly seventeen years old on the day of the banquet. He had been in service in the palace for eight years having started as a boot boy when he was only nine years old. He dearly loved working in the palace and had risen in the ranks from boot boy to first footman which afforded him a Cossack style uniform comprising a high necked heavily embroidered white silk shirt, black trousers and fine soft leather boots which were his pride and joy. All those years of polishing other peoples boots enabled him to draw out the deepest lustre in the leather of his own boots. He loved the softness and the smell of the fine leather and, on this evening, he felt a great sadness as that it would be last time that he wore them. Tomorrow he must leave the palace and join the Russian army for a period of compulsory military service.

The banquet was in full flow. Great trenchers of food came up to the banqueting hall either in the arms of a host of servants or, for very special dishes, via a dumb waiter, a lift worked by ropes pulled by hand from above or below. Borscht was a traditional course at these events and tonight the richly coloured beetroot soup was delivered in huge kettles from which it was ladled into the four silver Faberge swans and then taken to the table on specially designed trolleys where the individual portions were served. Igor Polotov was one of only four of the palace staff trusted to remove the silver swans from their serving tables onto the trolley and then briefly behind a screen where the ladling process was carried out. Igor then wheeled the trolley along his quarter of the table while a second uniformed servant ladled the borscht into gold rimmed soup bowls embelished with the personal crest of the Tsar.

Igor doubted that any of the guests would truly appreciate the choreography of the borscht service. The four swans were lifted from their normal decorative positions and wheeled to each quarter of the table with a military precision. The four servers took a great deal of pride in the delivery of their own swan. To them it was a highlight of their evening and an unspoken competition between them to deliver the most elegant service, regardless of it being noticed or appreciated by the guests.

The service was barely started when there was an enormous explosion in the courtyard below the banqueting hall. Great puffs of dirt and smoke billowed upwards past the windows. The chatter of two hundred people ceased immediately. Then a second explosion, louder than the first, seemed to shake the very walls and several small panes of glass shattered along the length of the room. Those nearest rushed thoughtlessly to the windows to look down on the scene in the courtyard. As the smoke cleared it became apparent that the courtyard was full of armed and angry peasants. Someone shouted that it was the Mensheviks, another that it was the Bolsheviks, in practice it was neither but a group of starving peasants who were taking part in the general strike of that year and who had come to protest their hunger in the face of such a lavish banquet.

The assembled company fell into disarray; ladies swooned, aged Generals in uniform drew swords and pistols prepared to meet all comers. Chairs were knocked over as many of the guests ran for safety without really thinking where they might go. The grand silver swan service of the borscht was abandoned.

Igor Polotov quietly wheeled his trolley back towards the screen. The mêlée had upset the swan which now lay on its side, all but empty. He righted the silver bowl on the trolley and stood for a moment wondering exactly what he should do. The room was suddenly a scene of total chaos. The Tsar and his family were huddled in a far corner surrounded by cerimonial palace guards, most of who had not seen action for the best part of thirty years. Others dashed to and fro with no clear purpose.

Igor picked up a discarded napkin and lovingly wiped the borscht stained rim of his swan.

Behind the serving screen the dumb waiter gaped, a dark, invitingly open void. Igor looked at the dark space once and then again. It could hardly be called a plan, more of an idea or perhaps just a whim. Igor lifted his swan into the serving hatch and then climbed in beside it. He slowly lowered himself and the swan using the rope pulley until the cabin reached the lowest level which Igor knew was not the kitchen but the goods yard where the tradesmen delivered their produce.

The goods yard was at the back of the main building and far from the courtyard where the protest was happening. The gathering gloom of evening was enough to cover his exit from the covered tunnel where earlier there had been trays of vegetables and now was only empty boxes. On impulse he snatched an empty sack which he used to cover the swan, and a second larger sack which he threw around his shoulders to disguise his palace uniform. A small, two-wheeled hand cart stood abandoned at the end of the tunnel and he carefully placed the swan on it before wheeling it away into the night.

If anyone had asked him what he was doing he would not have been able to tell them. Maybe he wanted to claim a souvenir of his palace life before going into military service. Maybe he just wanted to disappear. Maybe there was a hint of fear at leaving a life that had been all he knew for so long. Or maybe not.

Igor wheeled the handcart into the darkness of the night that wrapped itself around him like a cloak of invisibility. He was heading towards the village where his grandfather lived but he was not sure how far that was, or even if he was on the right road. It was cold but dry and Igor was now far too far away from the palace to turn back. He could barely explain to himself how he had come to be wheeling a silver Faberge swan along a country road on a handcart. He knew if he were to be stopped he would certainly be shot. He could only carry on.

Dawn light showed that he was on the outskirts of his grandfather’s village and he recognised the patchwork of small fields where his grandfather, among others, grew their vegetables. He searched for, and found, the tumble-down shed where the old man kept the few tools he needed to work the field. Igor pushed the handcart along the narrow track to the shed and then carefully stowed the silver swan in its sacking cover in the darkest corner of the shed behind a selection of other sacks and boxes. It would be safe there, safe from harm, safe from the Bolsheviks.

Later that morning Igor reported for duty at the nearest military post and was immediately escorted to a recruiting station where he surrendered his soft leather Cossack boots in favour of something much more functional. Within days he was moved on to a camp where he was taught to fire a gun