«Do you smoke?» He popped open a silver cigarette case and proffered a cigarette.
Grigory started to stretch out his hand, but then refused.
«Thank you, Your Excellency, but I don't smoke.»
«As you know, as you know…perhaps you'd like some water?» and, without giving him time to catch his breath, he inquired with seeming carelessness, «And, by the way, why did your late father change his name?» He bored into Grigory with his gaze. «We, of course, are guessing…,» he added, and fell silent.
«Y-your Ex-excellency,» stuttering in his agitation, Grigory at last managed to say sorrowfully, «how should we know that?»
«Well, think it over. I won't hurry you. Try to remember, if you don't want your wife and father-in-law to find out the honest truth. That you are not a Jew, but a respectable Christian. A Catholic, what's more.» He felled Grigory with this last sentence. «So, let's work together, if you don't want complications for yourself and your family.»
«Y-your Excellency,» Grigory quickly began crossing himself, «I swear by Christ the Lord, by the Blessed Virgin Mary, this is all a mystery to me. Spare me- and he began to cry-I have a son-,»
«By the way, about that son,» continued the Colonel, «why did you make a Jew out of a Christian? And there was probably a circumcision, according to their laws…»
Grigory nodded in agreement.
«I love her, Your Excellency. And, after all, emperors have married commoners before. Nicholas the First's older brother, Grand Duke Constantine, the heir to the throne-,» he babbled, but the Colonel made a face and interrupted him:
«Stop. We will not touch the imperial name. We are talking about you. So, Mr. Ravelli, I am waiting for explanations. And soon. I've wasted too much time on you as it is.»
Grigory arrived home only the next morning. Rakhil, catching sight of him, simply threw up her hands.
«Gotenu, why do I have such tsures! Girsh,» she called him by his Jewish name, «what have they done to you?»
Grigory collapsed wearily onto a chair and, slowly enunciating the words, got out: «Things are bad for us. Bad,» and repeated the conversation.
Women are usually more resolute than men. And, without thinking about consequences, they make decisions rashly.
«Girsh, get all our documents in order, and let's go to America. They're never going to leave us in peace.»
After deliberating, the couple decided that Grigory should go to Kishinev and begin petitioning to get a passport for foreign travel. And, at the same time, try to find out whether it would be possible, in the near future, to secretly get on any ship leaving Odessa, and illegally travel abroad. And, once he was there, send for his family.
That very day, without waiting for another summons for questioning, Grigory headed for Kishinev; and a week later, sad news made it back to Tiraspol.
According to eyewitnesses, he was walking down the street. Not far away, students had come out onto the thoroughfare. They were shouting antigovernment slogans, smashing glass in wealthy stores, and breaking signposts.
Cossacks, gathered in the side streets to break up the student demonstration, came out unexpectedly. If Grigory had known about riots, he would have managed to dodge them and run into an entryway. But the janitors, expecting the dispersal of the rioters, had prudently locked the gates. When the Cossacks burst out in an avalanche onto the street, smashing every living thing beneath them, he was unable to hide and was trampled by their horses.
Zubatov found out about it sooner than Rakhil. Ravelli's corpse happened to be recognized by a doctor in the city hospital, who had once known, not only Grigory, but his father as well.
That was how it came about that Grigory was not buried as a nameless victim. As for the fact that no family members were present at the funeral-no one is to blame for that. Where Tiraspol is, and where Kishinev is…you have to understand.
For lack of a prime suspect, Zubatov closed the investigation and went away to Petersburg. Ravelli's widow, as he supposed, was ignorant of her husband's secret. And his sisters… Two had died in childhood. The third was a revolutionary. A fugitive. And had long ago severed family ties with her brother.
Zubatov was mistaken. Probably because he had never really loved anyone. And, therefore, had never trusted anyone. Rakhil knew Grisha's secret. If she could make up her mind to deceive her father and marry a Catholic, passing him off as a Jew, then she could keep a secret.
She understood that the police would leave neither her, nor her son, in peace; and, as soon as an opportunity arose, she went away with Shmuel to Gaisin.
At the police department, she represented herself as the victim of a fire, in which all her documents had burnt up; and, in return for a small bribe, she obtained new ones. (In this, she was helped by her cousin, the owner of a barbershop). In any case, she wrote down a different person as Shmuel's father. Her own cousin. Thus my grandfather became Shmuel (Samuil) Solomonovich.
The family's subsequent history was not as unclouded as might be wished, but the police did not trouble them.
The French Intelligence Service, having rooted around for an unspecified amount of time in the Odessa area, and spent no small sum of money, received information regarding Ravelli's death. And calmed down…until 1912…
That year, the centennial of the Battle of Borodino was celebrated. In one of the Petersburg newspapers information appeared-obtained, God knows where-about Napoleon's secret visit to Russia-that is, to Odessa. They wrote about the appearance in 1808 of an heir, who later lost himself in Russia's vast spaces.
The author (his pseudonym was very soon exposed) was fighting for the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in France; and Russia, as France's ally, ought to assist her in this endeavor…
By the time the article had reached Paris; by the time they had become alarmed in the Élysée Palace and given orders to the Secret Service to carefully, so as not to quarrel with an ally, verify its authenticity-a world war had begun… The problem was set aside until a better time.
On November 11, 1918, at twelve noon, the first of a hundred and one shots rang out through Paris, proclaiming that the First World War, which had lasted four years, three months, and twenty-six days, was over. This permitted the French government to renew the search for the imperial heirs who had vanished in Russia.
With this goal in mind, a military expedition was quickly thrown together, apparently directed towards the protection of French interests. In a secret commission, given to the head of the expeditionary corps, were orders to begin an active search for the Ravelli family along the whole Black Sea coast of Russia.
Less than two weeks later (the new premier, Clemençeau, really hurried his generals), on November 23, the first French vessels visited Novorossiisk. After another three days, on November 26, troops landed at Odessa and Sevastopol. The search for the Ravellis led to a large-scale military operation. After a hundred and six years, a French soldier once again stepped onto Russian soil.
Soon, in all the newspapers printed in cities under the control of the occupying forces, there appeared announcements inviting all Ravellis, in connection with the discovery in France of the enormous legacy of Count Ravelli, to appear at the Commandant's office with documents verifying the ancestry of the bearer of the papers.
The approach was an original one. Russian Ravellis themselves responded to the honey-coated cake, providing the opportunity for the professionals, without arousing suspicion, to root around in their biographies.
In order to speed up the search, bait was placed in the prepared cage: the one who helped to find the lucky owner of the enormous fortune would also be generously rewarded. Thanks to this clause, all those who had dreamed in childhood of treasure hunts were brought in on the search for the Ravellis, and now were provided with an excellent opportunity to realize their distant dreams.
Several Ravellis, nibbling at the bait, whose biographies excited particular