“Yes, a fifth contribution: The burning of Moscow.”
The Count was taken aback.
“You mean in 1812?”
Mishka nodded.
“Can you imagine the expression on Napoleon’s face when he was roused at two in the morning and stepped from his brand-new bedroom in the Kremlin only to find that the city he’d claimed just hours before had been set on fire by its citizens?” Mishka gave a quiet laugh. “Yes, the burning of Moscow was especially Russian, my friend. Of that there can be no doubt. Because it was not a discrete event; it was the form of an event. One example plucked from a history of thousands. For as a people, we Russians have proven unusually adept at destroying that which we have created.”
Perhaps because of his limp, Mishka no longer got up to pace the room; but the Count could see that he was pacing it with his eyes.
“Every country has its grand canvas, Sasha—the so-called masterpiece that hangs in a hallowed hall and sums up the national identity for generations to come. For the French it is Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People; for the Dutch, Rembrandt’s Night Watch; for the Americans, Washington Crossing the Delaware; and for we Russians? It is a pair of twins: Nikolai Ge’s Peter the Great Interrogating Alexei and Ilya Repin’s Ivan the Terrible and His Son. For decades, these two paintings have been revered by our public, praised by our critics, and sketched by our diligent students of the arts. And yet, what do they depict? In one, our most enlightened Tsar studies his oldest son with suspicion, on the verge of condemning him to death; while in the other, unflinching Ivan cradles the body of his eldest, having already exacted the supreme measure with a swing of the scepter to the head.
“Our churches, known the world over for their idiosyncratic beauty, for their brightly colored spires and improbable cupolas, we raze one by one. We topple the statues of old heroes and strip their names from the streets, as if they had been figments of our imagination. Our poets we either silence, or wait patiently for them to silence themselves.”
Mishka picked up his fork, stuck it in the untouched veal, and raised it in the air.
“Do you know that back in ’30, when they announced the mandatory collectivization of farming, half our peasants slaughtered their own livestock rather than give them up to the cooperatives? Fourteen million head of cattle left to the buzzards and flies.”
He gently returned the cut of meat to its plate, as if in a show of respect.
“How can we understand this, Sasha? What is it about a nation that would foster a willingness in its people to destroy their own artworks, ravage their own cities, and kill their own progeny without compunction? To foreigners it must seem shocking. It must seem as if we Russians have such a brutish indifference that nothing, not even the fruit of our loins, is viewed as sacrosanct. And how that notion pained me. How it unsettled me. Exhausted as I was, the very thought of it could keep me tossing until dawn.
“Then one night, he came to me in a dream, Sasha: Mayakovsky himself. He quoted some lines of verse—beautiful, haunting lines that I had never heard before—about the bark of a birch tree glinting in the winter sun. Then he loaded his revolver with an exclamation point and put the barrel to his chest. When I awoke, I suddenly understood that this propensity for self-destruction was not an abomination, not something to be ashamed of or abhorred; it was our greatest strength. We turn the gun on ourselves not because we are more indifferent and less cultured than the British, or the French, or the Italians. On the contrary. We are prepared to destroy that which we have created because we believe more than any of them in the power of the picture, the poem, the prayer, or the person.”
Mishka shook his head.
“Mark my words, my friend: We have not burned Moscow to the ground for the last time.”
As in the past, Mishka talked with a fevered intensity, almost as if he were making his points to himself. But once he had spoken his piece, he looked across the table and saw the distressed expression on the Count’s face. Then he suddenly laughed in a heartfelt manner, without bitterness or irony, and reached across the table to squeeze his old friend’s forearm.
“I see that I have unsettled you, Sasha, with my talk of