Chapter Five
:04 p.m., 31 August, a Saturday, Aleksandr Dmitreevich Dumatskoy was born at 120 Novokirovskaya, Moscow. Zina's water broke at 5:30 that morning. She woke Dmitri and he went immediately to get his mother, Tatiana Andreevna, who lived only about a five-minute walk away. After he returned with his mother, he had to quickly leave for work. She had been trained as a midwife during the war. After the Revolution, the Bolshevicks recruited her to teach Russian grammar to Proletariat children. She was 57 years old.
Zina's relationship with Tatiana was strained, but slowly improving. The emotional distance between the two women was significant. Zina had no real desire to have a close relationship with Tatiana. Dmitri felt that Tatiana might fill a maternal void that could be present in Zina's life since her own mother died when she was only six years old. She suggested at one point that Zina try calling Tatiana "Mummy," or something of the sort. Zina could not do that. She was not a child, she protested, and she did not need to be "mothered". She would do her best to deal with Tatiana, woman to woman, as cordially as possible. For her part, Tatiana was trying to become more tolerant of Zina's world-view. When Tatiana Andreevna first met Zinaida Sergeevna, the older woman was quite intimidated, and rather fearful of the younger woman's spirit, independence, and talent. Zina was then eighteen. Tatiana at first thought Zina to be quite wild, perhaps even immoral to have run away from home when she was sixteen, to have been living on her own in Moscow for two years. Tatiana feared that her son had made a terrible choice for a wife. She hoped and prayed that motherhood would change Zina for the better. The experience and comfort that Tatiana provided for Zina during her pregnancy helped to bring the two women somewhat closer.
Things moved quickly along for Zina and Tatiana. By half-passsed noon, labor began. Intense contractions, with no more than 10-15 seconds between them started around 2:00 p.m. and continued until about 4:00 p.m. when Zina was fully dilated. Zina pushed the baby out for a little over two hours. There was much tearing from little Sasha's left shoulder. Tatiana did what she could. But Tatiana was no surgeon. Later, when Zina lay in bed with her baby, Tatiana went to get one of the doctors from the district and then returned to stay the night with Zina and baby Sasha.
The day was eventful for Dmitri was well. Not only was he under extreme stress worrying about Zina and the baby-to-be at home; but at work, he was to be called on the carpet to explain to Olga Shpion why the project on Ivan Grozny's library was not yet completed. Luckily, when he arrived at his workstation in the Senate Building around 8:00 a.m., Olga was not in the facility.
Yes, the project was stalled. Dmitri had been waiting for weeks for a document to arrive from Germany from Andrey Sigfridovich Holtz, Professor of Philology at Marburg University. Holtz was the leading, living authority on the reign of Ivan IV. His monumental study on the Tsar and the Muscovite world of the 16th Century was published in Russia in 1904. Of German descent on his father's side, he was born in Russia in 1848 in the Dvina river town of Polotsk. He graduated with a doctorate from St. Petersburg University in 1873. He traveled extensively throughout Russia, writing and publishing small volumes of poems and historical narratives. After two years, he won a teaching appointment at Kazan University where he remained until 1904. The brutal Russian Tsarist reaction to the attempts at reform in early 1905 convinced Holtz that he could not work in an atmosphere that volatile. He was further convinced that events in his homeland would eventually become even more chaotic. He resigned his position in March and emmigrated to Germany. The following year he began teaching and writing at Marburg University.
From his past studies, the research he had done and continued to do, and the large amount of books and articles he routinely read -- around the first of the year, 1921, Dmitri Dumatskoy began to become interested in the infamous library of Tsar Ivan IV. Dmitri's initial letter to Professor Holtz in Germany was an inquiry to determine if Holtz felt it would be worthwhile for the new government's education ministry to devote time and money for an exposition of the phenomenon of the library - and a follow-up study to possibly explore where the location of such a treasure might be. Holtz's return letter to Dmitri was an ecstatic "Yes!" Holtz first of all connected on a kindred spirit level with Dmitri. Then he waxed eloquent and philosophical about the importance of such a project. Being an academic, he had no conception nor concern for the financial aspects. He was like an artist in that respect, oblivious to economics in the face of beauty.
It was about time for the noon mail to arrive at the Education Department. While he waited for any correspondence meant for him, Dmitri contemplated Blok's poem, "Ravenna," from the Italian Poems. Ravenna, the city of the poet, Dante's exile and internment. How like Ravenna was Ivan's library, sleeping like a baby in the drowsy, everlasting arms of its hidden resting-place. Out loud, Dmitri recited Blok's first stanza:
"Everything fleeting, all the mortal,
Has been interred by you in time.
You, like a baby, sleep, Ravenna
In drowsy everlasting arms."
Dmitri's thoughts traversed the distance of the ages, soaring through the times of Ivan, Dante, and Blok. And into the earth where the past worlds spend eternity:
"The age-old kiss of loving dampness,
Has given tender hues to tombs,
Where the sarcophagi are showing
A greenish home for monks and queens.
Now the sepulchral halls are silent,
Their thresholds, shadowy and cold,
So blessed Galla's blackest glances
Will not awake and burn through stone."
Blok had seen paintings of Galla Placidia while in Ravenna in 1909. She was the wife of the Roman Emperor, Constantin III and regent for her son after the Emperor died. Galla died and was buried in Ravenna in 450 AD. Blok was enraptured with Galla's eyes, Dante loved Beatrice and wrote The New Life for her, Dmitri loved Zina's eyes and wished he could be with her at the moment. The last stanza of Blok's poem gave Dmitri hope that Zina and the child would be safe, and that the library would one day rise to a new life:
"And just at night above the valley,
Reviewing ages yet to come,
Does Dante's eagle profile shadow
Begin to sing of the New Life."
The clerk, Fyodor, scurried up to Dmitri's door. As was his custom, if Dmitri was at his desk, the clerk would toss the bundle of correspondence, if any, to Dmitri. Fyodor tossed the bundle. Dmitri caught it, untied the cord used to hold the letters together, and looked at the six pieces of mail. There it was! Dmitri picked it up and opened it, and began reading:
"Dear Dmitri Pavlovich Dumatskoy
I finally have in my possession a document of the utmost importance regarding the library of Ivan Grozny. My apologies, dear sir, for the length of time it has taken me to correspond to you! For this I am truly sorry. Circumstances beyond my control...but why bore you with mundane details and petty intrigues. 'To the point, my good man.' -- I know you must be saying out loud as you read this! Well, then: the document in question. First of all, is a copy, a very good one I might add, made by a certain Johann Fichte in 1855, of an alleged eye witness account, written in a curious mixture of German (mostly German) and French -- of the Tsar's manuscripts! This eye witness (the signature of said person is illegible on the copy) states that he personally viewed 'hundreds' of manuscripts at the invitation of Tsar Ivan in the 1570's. This person was purportedly a wealthy merchant or trader with vast connections in Western Europe, someone who Ivan would have found useful in disseminating his propaganda of Russia's burgeoning cultural might. If this weren't gloriously revelatory enough, Dmitri Pavlovich, - there's more! This brilliant person, Merchant X, we shall call him, (given the historical milieu, I might assume he is a man) made a list of the manuscripts he saw!!..."
Dmitri looked up from the letter. He was sweating with excitement and his heart was pounding. After several minutes contemplating what he had just read, he finished the letter. Holtz informed Dmitri that he would make a copy of Fichte's copy and send it to Moscow as soon as possible. Dmitri realized that much more time had to be allotted for the project in lieu of this priceless information. He had to bring this all to Olga Shpion's attention at once!
.G. Uchitelnitsky sat at his desk in his little office in the language wing of the Classics Building, Moscow University. He was writing out some notes for an upcoming lecture, which would ultimately be included in a monograph called, The Orgiastic Mysteries of Dionysos. Uchitelnitsky was 27, in his third year at the University. He was Moscow born, raised, and educated. He was of medium height, whip thin, and had thick black hair, a goatee, and black eyes. He walked with a limp, favoring the right side. He suffered from meningocele, open spine, a congenital hernia that had caused him life-long pain and a debilitating weakness of the limbs. He was, therefore, exempt from military service, and had spent World War and Civil War years at the University.
Uchitelnitsky chain-smoked and wrote: "Ritual is usually older than the myth by which people explain it. The maenads gathered in midwinter, once every two years, on the peak of the highest mountain. Dionysos, god of all people - queen and slave. Forget the difference and you will find identity. The mysteries of Dionysos - supreme exaltation and supreme repulsion, holy and horrible, a sacrament and a pollution, fulfillment and failure. Dionysos is the cause of madness and the liberator of madness. Liberation, where you can stop being yourself and therefore be free. To resist Dionysos is to repress the elemental in your own nature, the punishment is the sudden, complete collapse of the inward dikes when the elemental breaks through and civilization vanishes. Dionysos, the master of magical illusions, the maenads see the world as the world is not. After being so long the god of masquerade, he is now the god of theatre. The profound alteration of personality is demanded by Dionysos. It is with the muscles that people most easily acquire knowledge of the divine. The muscles that are used in dancing and the sexual act. The will to use these muscles takes possession of the maenads without the consent of their conscious minds. It is easier to begin than to stop. First, the dancing, the vehicle toward the goal, and the music, the music of the flute and the kettle drum. Hysteria leading to trance is the valued, abnormal mental state, like a poem composed with pure inspiration and a holy breath. The back-flung head and upturned throat - the outward sign of the possession of the god during dancing. All sensitiveness to pain is repressed. The stage is set for sexuality in the form of the handling of the snake, Dionysos the viper; and the eating of the snake. Eat god to be like god, and quick and raw before the blood had oozed from him. Add his life to your life. The blood is the life. The final release of all energies until the vessel of the maenad is drained."
Suddenly with those last words, Uchitelnitsky thought of Zina Dumatskoy. Zina as a maenad? Perhaps a dream he had had about a Dionysian ritual? Uchitelnitsky was puzzled. He decided to attempt to schedule a Greek lesson with Zina as soon as possible.
