The
Past: Feliks, a poor Russian
teenager, and Lydia, daughter of a Russian aristocrat, fell madly in
love when they first met. A tempestuous affair lasting weeks
followed, before it was terminated by her enraged father who had
Feliks arrested and tortured. Along comes Stephen Walden, a British
prince waiting for his disliked but titled father to die. He gets
news of the father’s death and needing a wife urgently,
approaches Lydia’s father. He had only met Lydia once at the
British embassy. Lydia’s father seizes on this and gives his
daughter one condition to stop the torture of Feliks, she must marry
Stephen and relocate to England with him. After recovering from his
torture wounds, Feliks has a hard life culminating in being sent to
Siberia where he had to fall to savage animistic habits to stay
alive. He manages to escape and continues life as a fearless and
violent anarchist, opposed to the rule of the Russian aristocrats and
working hard towards seeing a revolution happen, killing and robbing
at will.
The Present:
Lydia’s and Stephen’s only child, Charlotte is about to
turn 18 and become presented at the court of the King and Queen as a
“debutante.” Stephen and Lydia’s cousin Aleks, a
nephew of the Russian Czar, now a prince as well as naval officer,
are about to negotiate a treaty between England and Russia. Feliks
has joined up with a group in Switzerland and when they learn of the
plan for England and Russia to secretly sign a military treaty that
would have Russia fighting wars alongside England against Germany,
Feliks decides the best way to stop the future alliance is to
assassinate the Russian envoy in England who was saddled with the
treaty negotiation. So to England Feliks heads and as soon as he
arrives he sets to the task of finding and killing his prey.
At a point a big change
comes over The Man, Feliks, on realizing that Charlotte, the
female relation of Aleks, the Russian prince he’d gone to
England to assassinate, should in fact be his daughter, the product
of his only romance with Lydia from the past. He doesn’t rush
to tell her his rightful guess though, but he no longer was his old
fearless self that cared not if he died. He gets her to assist him
find where Aleks has been hidden away, but as he travels to the place
the police are also on his trail.
The Conclusion:
The Man From St Petersburg did succeed against all odds in
assassinating Aleks, the Russian prince at the end. But his victory
was in vain as he himself died in a fire he’d caused and then,
because Aleks and Winston Churchill had already signed the treaty
between England and Russia hours before, Churchill decided on the
spot that his death be reported to the Russians as an accident in the
fire and no reference should ever be made to Feliks the assassin.
This cover up achieved the main aim of not jeopardizing the treaty.
Another result of the
cover up was that the integrity of the Walden family remained intact
as well, Lydia’s past and Charlotte’s real father not
coming to public light. Lydia had confessed everything to her husband
at the dying minutes, and he’d been magnanimous. He’d
recalled that he too had married her not because he loved her just as
she had agreed to marry him because she was forced into it by her
father. With no more need to hide her sexuality, they even go on to
have a much desired son the following year. Though that son could
also have been Felik’s child as he’d had sex with Lydia
one last time before he died, but this was never alluded to by the
author.
January
11, 2015 (2nd reading completed on August 19, 2014. Novel first
published in 1982 by William Morrow and Company.)
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