The Schism, parts 3642 - 3645

 3642. But the Minister’s wife, in her desire to make the appearance of Alexis as near as possible to the looks of the handsome young military cadets, made his outfits more and more to a military cut so that the poor boy on that fateful day, was not thought to be the coachman’s boy, but rather the ministers son.

 3643. This then is the reason that late on that afternoon Alexis found himself in a line of boys waiting their turn to complete in the simple tug of war sort of game called ‘Land,” having slipped through the fence bars owing to the slenderness of his ribcage, at the bidding of the cadets who thought him one of themselves.

 3644. As you might expect Alexis did very well in his wrestling matches with the young cadets. He won his first three matches without any difficulty. The simple trick of the match was a sort of waiting game, the first to make a strenuous effort to move his opponent almost invariably lost, because the ring being small, the first to move would end up being thrown out by the force of his own efforts. 

 3645. One of the reasons Alexis did so well was that the cadets, when they placed their hands upon Alexis’ shoulders felt that under his linen blouse with the ruffled front he seemed to be made up of walnuts and ships cables, so tightly constructed and firm was his anatomy.

The Schism, parts 3638 - 3641

 3638. From his side of the fence Alexis the Coachman’s serf boy began to take a passive interest in the cadets in the school yard and their wrestling matches, and for what happened next the entire blame must fall on the minister’s wife. She is the one that caused the catastrophe that now befell the coachman’s boy. It was the fault of his clothes.

 3639. Military uniforms can be very elaborate and often involve multiple colors, and sashes of contrasting hues. Shoulder boards are used to hold those golden spangles and the cut of the pant leg, sometimes flaring out at the thigh, and tucked in at the high boot top, often imitates the riding jodhpur.

 3640. The doorman’s and house servant’s uniform is often very similar to a military uniform, there may be a satin strip running down the leg, and largish golden buttons in a set of six on the breast. Sometimes the lapels are a brilliant contrasting red on a coat otherwise dark blue, and even then the red lapel may in turn be bordered with gold.

3641. As elaborate as these servile garments may become, the design always manages to be somehow comical and slightly degrading. All the decorative elements of a coachman’s getup are somehow always over done and exaggerated to such an extent that a doorman can never mistaken for a five star general, even at a glance, even at a distance.

The Schism, parts 3634 - 3637

 3634. After a while, waking up from his nap on the coach box, a sleepy Alexis began to watch the boys playing in the yard. A wrestling match was going on, but it was a gentle affair. Two boys would firmly grasp each other’s shoulders, and at a signal begin to push and shove each other inside a square marked in the dirt of the yard. 

 3635. The objective was simply to force one’s opponent to have to put one foot outside the boundary and as soon as that happened the match was called and another boy entered the ring to face the current champion. The match was supervised by a student of an upper grade, who had the distinction of being undefeated in the game of, “Land” as they called it.

 3636. The name of the game long ago was “Get out of My Land,” but had been shortened to, “My Land,” and then just the single word “land,” as so often happens. 

3637. The boys were restricted to this form of combat for a simple and obvious reason, their uniforms had to be kept constantly in pristine condition so that, if God Forbid there should be a sudden inspection, all would be in order and no crease or shoelace out of place. These uniforms of theirs were almost as elaborate as Alexis’s coachman’s outfit.

The Schism, parts 3630 - 3633

 3630. One day the minister and his wife had a long meeting at the Office of the Directory of the Financial Affairs that went on till late in the afternoon of a hot and sultry day.

 3631. Alexis, who was twelve at the time, took the liberty of removing his outer formal cutaway velvet jacket, and his crimson scarf with the silver studs, and lay half asleep in the sun on the rear bench of the coach. He knew that the driver would alert him once the minister called for the coach.

 3632. He was wearing his white linen shirt with the lace ruffle collar, and gray wool trousers tucked into high light brown leather riding boots. The gray trousers with their mustard stripe down the side were remarkably similar to the boys of the military academy, who obviously were all the children of the great Moscow families associated with the court.

3633. Adjacent to the Department of Financial Affairs was a private school for the children destined to enter the Tsar’s guards, of which I am one and my son was enrolled there at the time of the event I am describing. The playground of this school was bordered by a high wrought iron fence, but it was decorative, and a thin child turning sideways would be able to pass through it.

The Schism, parts 3626 - 3629

 3626. I think especially of the little toenail on the foot of a baby that was the child of a servant in my father’s house. One time when she was nursing her baby I happened to notice his little foot peeping out from under its wrapping. It was a very bright pudgy, pink foot, and the nails were very small.

 3627. Now you would think that in the construction of a tiny child’s foot there might not be too much detail in the nails, but getting down on my hands and knees I took a close look at the child’s nails, and they were just as perfectly shaped as you could imagine. Michelangelo himself, or even Donatello could never have carved a more perfect toenail, even if they had been involved in a competition. 

 2628. That little serf boy when he was ten was taken away from his mother to be the doorman for the coach of one of the ministers of state. His job it was to jump down from the back of the box and open the door for the minister’s wife. The wife of the minister had a special liking for that boy because all of her children, all three of them, had died just after they were born.

3629. His name was Alexis, and it was the special delight of the minister’s wife to design all his uniforms and hve them made by her own personal tailor. There was not just one of these uniforms but several, yellow with gold trim, dark blue with crimson stripe down the leg, and that sort of thing. Whenever these new clothes were delivered she would call for Alexis, and then, with the assistance of the tailor and her maid, she would dress him up like a favorite doll.

The Schism, parts 3622 - 3625

 3622. You can see from the forgoing that I am the Tsar of the Russians, by the express will of the Almighty, because either He put me here on my throne, or God forbid, there is no God, and this entire thousand years of elaborately decorated architecture, grand hallways with gilded mirrors, ceremonies with ermine capes studded with diamonds and rubies, is just a big pathetic and very expensive farce.

 3623. Katuzov had been listening thoughtfully and quietly through the Tsar’s sermon, for a sermon is what you might say it was. It was a meditation on the will of the Lord, a theological inquiry into how God makes his will known on the earth. Everyone knows that God works in mysterious ways, and the Tsar was theorizing on just what those mysterious ways might consist of.

 3624. Katuzov was paying careful attention to what was being said, and as often happens in a theological discussion of any sort, he felt joyous agreement with what the Tsar was saying and at the same time other ideas came creeping into his head like little bugs crawling around on some fruit, and these ideas did not completely agree with the thesis of the Monarch. 

3425. Since he knew that Tsar Nicholas valued the independent thought of his ministers he ventured to propose a small theological thought of his own saying. “I understand that God must obviously take special care of his royal children, but the question that troubles me is, since he created the poor ignorant and benighted surf’s child with just as much care and attention to detail, wouldn’t he be just as perturbed and upset by its death as the death of any royal child.”

The Schism, parts 3618 - 3621

 3618. I few years goes by and one month before the wedding is to take place the little Archduke dies of the small pox. He was always a sickly little boy, and would have died of Tuberculosis anyway, but it is the pox that carries the boy off and disrupts the marriage.

 3619. Therefore consider the mechanics of ancestry. No matter what the parents intend, no matter how intelligent their schemes of political alliance may be, in the end it is only God himself that makes the decision and casts the deciding vote regarding who it is that marries whom.

 3620. God always has at his disposal tools big and small to disrupt the devious schemes of his wayward children. Sometimes he likes to get a grand war going that lasts four or five years just to put a stop to some royal wedding in London he doesn’t approve of, and at other times the same end might be achieved by a run away bus on which the brakes have divinely failed.

3621. Yes, the wedding dress is measured out in Heaven by angles, and no mother or father can ever have anything to do with it. In other realms where people mistakenly believe that they can marry for love and be the masters of their own fate, their contracts and arrangements are so many little houses of straw that the big bad wolf will blow down if he is so inclined.