A gay story: Escape to Constantinople Chapter One: Kazan to Novorossiysk
As soon as he had seen the truck convoy start to pull into the courtyard of the makeshift main building of the Imperial Military Academy, Pyotr dropped the weights he was working with in the exercise yard and loped down the slope and through the grove of trees that bordered one side of the river park on the rise above Kazan’s river port on the Volga. As he broke through the trees, he threw himself to the ground and huddled there, arms encasing his knees, and contemplated the momentous change facing his life. He was a long way from the palaces of St. Petersburg.
He wasn’t afraid; in fact the prospect of being pulled even farther away from the academy’s original home in St. Petersburg, territory now firmly under the control of the Bolsheviks, excited him. Of course he would much prefer joining a regiment that would confront the Reds, but at nineteen, no one on the academy faculty was prepared to certify him as trained. Grigory Orlov, the equestrian professor, had made quite clear to Pyotr that he wasn’t ready for battle.
Of course Pyotr knew that Orlov had ulterior motives for not releasing him to the battle as so many of the academy cadets had already been since they had been evacuated here from St. Petersburg—or, as the Reds now called it, Petrograd—two years earlier.
Pyotr had never attended the academy in its original imposing buildings; he had been sent to the school here in Kazan early in the previous year, 1919, by his concerned family, which had been preparing to flee into the Russian interior themselves when they sent Pyotr to Kazan. They had thought, Pyotr knew, that he would be safer here than with them. He had not heard from his father, Prince Alexi Romanov, in months and could only hope that they were faring well. None of the Russian aristocracy was faring very well at the hands of the Bolsheviks. Orlov, a classmate of Pyotr’s father in an earlier Imperial Military Academy generation had been asked to take special care of Pyotr, and he most certainly had taken that charge seriously—if, perhaps, not quite in the spirit in which Pyotr’s father had made the request.
What had set Pyotr’s excitement and anticipation stirring was that the trucks had arrived in the courtyard to take the cadets farther to the south. This would be a new adventure for Pyotr. He had not fully enjoyed the stay in Kazan. Life had become so unsettled and confusing for him here. He had been sheltered—coddled as the youngest son in a prince’s palace. He had never been expected to take on any great responsibility as was expected of his eldest brother—and also the next eldest in case the older one faltered. Pyotr would normally have been free to play his life away or to dabble in the arts, if it so pleased him. With his facility for learning languages, his mother had foreseen a career as a professor.
The Bolsheviks had changed all of that. The lives of all of the Russian nobility had been tossed up in the air. Pyotr landed in Kazan, to join the evacuated Imperial Military Academy, not because he had been destined to be a warrior but to be in what Prince Alexi Romanov had deemed would be the safest place for his young son, under the wing of Grigory Orlov and surrounded by professional soldiers.
Alexi and Grigory hadn’t been close when they were in the academy together, though, and Alexi knew even less of Orlov’s true nature now than he had then.
Pyotr had learned much of life—and quickly—in his year away from the opulent imperial court life of St. Petersburg and in the more Spartan environment of the exiled military academy in Kazan.
Upon seeing the trucks arrive, he needed to break away and give his future some thought. Until now he had controlled nothing. He had moved directly from a carefree life, where he was indulged in everything, to a discipline-based life, where he had been controlled, dominated, and given no choices.
He had a choice now, though. Tomorrow, the trucks would load up and leave. Departure was inevitable and could not be delayed. If Pyotr didn’t show up for the mustering out, the trucks would have to leave without him. Chances were good he wouldn’t even be missed in the frenetic confusion of the pack out and departure until long after the convoy had been on the road south.
He could stay in Kazan. But Kazan was nowhere, and Pyotr had no skills. How would he survive? And when the Bolsheviks showed up, what then? What good was it to be a count, the son of a prince, distant cousin to the tsar, in a world of communist revolutionaries?
“Count Pyotr, here you are. I saw you run from the exercise yard. What are you doing at the river? Did you not see the trucks arriving. We all must hurry and pack.”
The large-framed Baron Vasily Bestuzhev-Ryumin, an upper-class student at the academy, a solidly built, burly young man who was truly at the academy to become one in a long line of family warriors, plopped down on the grass beside Pyotr. Like Pyotr, he’d been exercising in the yard when Pyotr had run off. Both young men were dressed just in sweat pants.
Vasily was the meatier of the two—but he was all hard muscle. He was heavily tanned, in contrast to Pyotr, because he reveled in showing his physique off and spent most of his free time in the exercise yard, working his body and competing, often roughly, for domination of the field—and he had the scars to evidence it.
He was ambitious, and rank and title conscious—and he had decided that he wanted Pyotr, who, as the son of a prince, not to mention being a beautiful young man, was a trophy worth owning. He had heard rumors that Pyotr was ripe for the plucking.
“Yes, I have seen the trucks,” Pyotr answered. “I was just spending a moment alone, trying to decide whether I would leave with the trucks.”
“You must, of course,” Vasily said, somewhat shocked that this would even be a decision to be contemplated—and perhaps more shocked that the shy, lithe, young, still-soft third son of a prince should consider that he had a choice. “You realize that the Reds are not more than three days’ march away and no one stands in their way? There will be no mercy for imperial cadets when they get here—and much less for royals such as you and me. And what would you do if you did not come with us?”
“I could perhaps learn to farm. Become someone else altogether and be productive. The Bolsheviks may be right about that—perhaps our families have not been productive enough, have not done their share in progressing society.”
Vasily gave a bitter laugh. “The peasants would be nothing without us. And look at these soft hands of yours—and the silky smooth skin. You could not become a peasant before the Reds discovered you for what you are. You are not at the academy because you were cut out to be a military man—you are here to be protected by men like me.”
The more powerful young man had come in close beside Pyotr and had gone from holding the younger man’s hands in his to running a hand over Pyotr’s chest. The hand settled on palming Pyotr’s belly. Pyotr was breathing heavily, but he tried to ignore Vasily’s possessive touch. He had known for some time what Vasily wanted from him. And he had contemplated whether he wanted that as well—and had yet to make up his mind. He was under no illusion that Vasily, as a senior cadet, couldn’t force that issue if he wanted to, though, and Pyotr half expected, half welcomed that.