Angels and Flies 3: Sinner

“дала жару.” Jabok settled with the strange words. 

“That was the word we used. She 'gave off a lot of heat.'” 

“Откровенно так пошловато и как-то красоты снимков нет......” he uttered, guiltily laughed. 

“That were frankly so vulgar and strange and still somehow none of us ever forgot. We forgot our first times, our promotions, our egos, our petty strifes, the sordid details of places and quantities or how we feel about them, the seasons too...I watched all of them die old, some forgetting their children. 

But we still somehow remember Her exploits and her death. 

We did not choose the memories, but our brains and bodies did. I didn't know my total being could betray me through a profoundly selfish aperture.”

He mused, ghostly, not to anyone, not even entirely to himself and sighed. So deep in Russian that the two blondes had to lean in close. Yet he kept on talking as if in a private joke with the infamous object, which had it lived would have been his age. “I guess we were all perverts in hindsight.”

“восхитительная женщина.”

“She's from Ivan V's time is she?” Catherine cut curiously in.

“You dolt!” Dashkova gave an elbow blow to her friend, sending a shocked gasp from the Princess.

“Worry not. Luckily, I love history, and therefore humanity will have hope.” And grinned like some proud lumberjack off in the Urals after mowing down a forest in a day. Her hand sank inside her pelisse and fished out a silk laced notebook and a feathered quill.

“She's from Peter's time is it not?”

“Exactly, your Grace. Peter the Great”

“Tell us everything.”

~

“I was a rich peasant's son, we had a great manor and many serfs and servants equal to a Boyar but we were nonetheless peasants. 

I have thirteen brothers who were better suited for working on a farm, and ten sisters more worthy on managing one. My only remarkable talent was my schooling. His reverence the metropolitan owed my family a favors and instead of monetary payments chose to only pay for my schooling. My father struck me for that. I was seventeen when I received a Royal letter from Saint Petersburg. It was signed by the Tsar, the Tsar's hands!”

“Peter or rather his schoolmasters had sent for me from the exams I took, from Latin to Classical history. I took them purely for my interest, but somehow the eyes at the new capital found me and found use for me in the academy. 

I ran back home with the news but my father kicked me for a whole night, 'useless things,' he screamed, 'Pagan things, Italian, Catholic things! Sodomy and sin!' 

 I tried to explain to him that our nation's destiny, the imperial lineage of the Empire's twin headed eagle was intimately related to Rome, the Byzantines, then to our sacred Russia, because we are the second Rome reborn after Constantinople, and I had the grace to serve that legacy at its heart. A Tsar who wanted a modern Russia for the world. 

He only beat me more.”

“---But I thought the key quality for a gentleman is a good intellect,” Catherine's mouth was agape, uncomprehending as if witnessing someone burning his own fortunes in a furnace. “along with gentleness of manners that befits his breeding.” Dashkova opened her mouth to say something but Catherine remained indignant-

“Blood was the key quality for anyone, your Grace.” He uttered softly, “Back then at least.” then continued as the princess sat down, shifting her dress. “and my father was not entirely wrong.”

“He screamed that there I would get nothing but bruises from the clean shaven Boyar's sons. I would be no more than a cockroach that ran through their waxed floors, a slave never to be assured to enter heaven for all the sins I would have to perform for them. He cursed and told me if I leave the farm, I will loose all, I remembered the way my thirteen brother smirked. They were ecstatic. 

I left the next day with my only leather bag, kissed my poor mother and did not gave a thought back. It was to be my own Russian Odyssey.”