Kovsh

At the priest's last words, all who hear him, as is the custom, cross
themselves thrice and whisper Amen! Turning on his heels, the priest
rushes into the back of the hall with quick, small steps, as if his legs
were tied short. He gets out of sight as quickly and mysteriously as he
appeared. The Emperor smiles and nods approvingly, looking after the
priest. Dyedov stares at his silver cup and, almost imperceptibly waves
his head ever so slightly left and right. The adjutant, like everyone else
around him, stares after the magus in confusion.
‘What was this, my general?’ asks Nikita quietly, so that the emper-
or would not hear him, as they are moving aside.
'I'm telling you: crazy priest, nothing else. He is a conniver!' and,
after getting far enough from the tsar, he continues. 'He was quick
to concoct that fictional prayer and make a commotion. Tomorrow,
the whole court will recite what Rasputin said, and speculate what he
meant... who drank, who did not drink, who is blessed, who isn’t and
other such nonsense! There, you can see now, that's what those two
brought upon us! They brought him to the Empress, those two Monte-
negrin sisters.'
THE GREAT WAR WAS sneaking up slowly, from afar, towards a
hungry and dissatisfied empire. Everything was shuddering with dem-
onstrations and unrest, and General Dyedov was sitting nervous and
anxious at dinner across from Natalia Rubayevna. Shoving absent-
mindedly food across the plate with his fork, unpleasant thoughts were
running through his head, each one fouler than the other. The Emper-
or is incompetent and that is why we have been losing on all fronts...
I was aware of this for years but I have done nothing... Our people
deserve a better ruler and better conditions for existence... this court
is rotten through and through and there’s no helping it... but these that
are coming after the Romanov’s – they will, alas, be even worse...
He coughed abruptly and violently and felt a wild chest pain. His
woman looked at him worriedly and even rose slightly from her chair.
At first she thought he just swallowed wrongly, but Vladimir Ser-
geyevich's head dropped suddenly and he collapsed to the floor, next
to the vitrine. He reflexively tried to cushion the fall, clutching at the
damask tablecloth, pulling a crystal glass full of red wine and some
porcelain plates with borscht, caviar and pancakes, down with him.
The last thing he sees, lying on his side as his soul is abandoning him,
is a distorted reflection of himself in the curved surface of the kovsh
in the vitrine. Last heartbeats drum in his dimming mind and, before
he finally passes on, he hears from within the forthcoming darkness:
'There have been deaths ... and here they are now!'
Natalia Rubayevna screamed and, as is usual in such moments, as
various spontaneous thoughts compete to emanate to a startled con-
sciousness, first lamented her decimated signature porcelain set as well
as the smeared Persian rug, and only after that, regretted her – appar-
ently dead on the spot – husband.
Kovsh did not belong to General Dyedov's private property because
it had been paid for from the regiment's coffers, so Natalia Rubayevna
could not keep it. Against her will and with a heavy heart she gave
up those ten kilos of silver, which she would have very gladly, soon
after the death of Vladimir Sergeevich, turned into money. With it she
would have loved to buy herself something far more useful than that
drunkards’ device! A tearful look followed the Guards, that carried
the mahogany casket from her house to the Cavalry-Guard Regiment's
office the very next day.
As bad news travel slower than gossip, Nikita Semyonov did not
hear the news that morning, but as soon as he saw the Guards carry-
ing the casket, the adjutant of the then-already-passed General Dyedov
realized what had tragically transpired. What was that crazy Raspu-
tin saying? Was it a curse, or good fortune uck for those who drank
silver from silver? He opened the casket and made an official note of
its contents and handover. The next day, the new commander of the
Cavalry-Guards Regiment, Count Shevchenko, initialed the note.
He was from a respectable, hundred-year-old Petrograd family. The
chubby and stiff general, in love with his uniform, neat beard, and ruf-
fled shirts, liked to comb his thin hair with a split down the middle. He
pressed it against his skull at night with a silk apron, and fortify it with
sugar-water in the morning. Major General Felix Shevchenko could
not have known that in the coming decades many lives would be taken
away and others saved by the kovsh.
Continuing the regimental tradition, every convenient opportun-
ity was used to honor the regiment, to drink from the famous vessel.
Punch was slowly going out of fashion; it is complicated and expensive,
it takes a long time to make, and even longer for a man to get drunk.
Punch was gradually replaced by vodka. Soldiers of inferior character
and long, swift fingers had many opportunities for theft. With years of
service, Nikita was given other tasks, his controls weakened and the
number of litte cups gradually decreased, about one per year. Before
the October Revolution itself, their numbers had already halved. The
reddish casket, encased in silver with a burgundy silk lining, has long
since disappeared in numerous moves through various cellars, dress-
ing rooms, regimental warehouses and private pantries. The bowl,
slightly indented, slightly scratched and twisted in a few places, served
as a role model for several more that Fabergé made for other court
dignitaries, in exchange for heavy gold coins. Mrs Faberge's papers
state that he made and sold seven more large silver kovshes. None,
however, as grand, as expensive, and least of all, as glorious as the first
one, made for General Dyedov.