The Crown of the Romanovs

Wedding Preparations

She looked with some disappointment at the image of the city receding through the small window of the plane. Like many residents and visitors, New York had given her and then taken her away.

 "What?" She asked herself.

 "An illusion like she hadn't had before."

After the meeting with Thiago, she had rushed her pending issues in the United States and had announced her return to Spain and her village.

From a professional and commercial point of view, her stay in the US and canada had been a success, so she did not leave America empty-handed; but deep in her heart her wound still hadn't healed. Before leaving the apartment she had written a note to the boy and mail it.

The Iberia Airline pilot announced something about a meal that would be served as soon as the aircraft reached its cruising altitude but Nuria paid no attention to it. Only then did she notice the young man who had sat next to her in the aisle row. She remembered that he had shook her hand and introduced himself as Jordi without giving her his last name. From the name and accent the girl realized.

 "A Catalan." She immediately reflected that the issue of separation from Catalonia from would be an inevitable topic of conversation, since Nuria was an ardent defender of the region's permanence in Spain and predictably her traveling companion would defend the opposite position. She did not worry as the girl had always considered herself an active debater and she did not shy away from controversial issues. At least the trip wouldn't be boring.

She glanced at the young man and it seemed to her that he had a certain resemblance to Thiago, although he was shorter.

"Where should I pulg the headphones?" She asked him to open the conversation.

One of the immediate consequences of the decision to get marry had been Thiago's move to the luxurious apartment of his fianceé. This would allow the young man to save the rent of his apartment in Brooklyn Heights while allowing him to live much closer to his workplace, where he could even go on foot if the weather was good and he had enough time.

As for the lady, the arrangement allowed her to divide certain tasks that depended on being in the house, and at the same time allowed to see if unforeseen incompatibilities of character appeared in the daily coexistence, which did not happen.

The biggest change took place in Irina's daily activities. Indeed, the Russian put aside a whole series of things that she usually did, often with the participation of Farah or other people from the same circle.

Instead of them, she began to develop a series of activities, at times frantic, which had to do with the preparations for the wedding, which was planned for two months later, at the beginning of spring, considering this a favorable season.

Thiago watched her and listened somewhat surprised at the intensity of her activity. He was not aware of the consequences of the formal request for the woman's hand that he had made, actually a somewhat old-fashioned and unusual event at the time and in the environments in which the young man habitually moved.

Instead of hiring a professional expert on the subject, Irina had deployed all of her energies to resolve the issues raised by the wedding herself. She did it because she was excited to dedicate herself to the subject, which was decidedly one of the few great unfulfilled wishes of her life, and also because despite her existence was surrounded by comforts, she hated unnecessary expenses and in her private heart hers was a kind of Spartan comfort. She did not involve her fiance except to the extent necessary, in part because she noted his absolute inexperience in matters related to the protocol issues of her social group, of the traditions of the Russian community in New York, and also because she had respect for the boy's work and the high dedication it demanded of him. She only asked him to select the family members and relationships from Buenos Aires who were to be present at the ceremony. Irina was a prominent member of the ancient and influential community of Russian residents belonging to families that a century earlier had belonged to the Russian nobility in the time of the Tsars, and that in that century were still linked to ties of blood, class and ideological . Indeed they all yearned for the utopian restoration of the monarchy in the Vieille Russie. Although they all spoke Russian, they still frequently used French to communicate with each other. Thiago saw a possibility to practice that language half learned in high school with her relatives, although of course he could always turn to English.

He then appreciated his mother's efforts to make him and his younger brother learn those languages in their childhood in Buenos Aires.

Part of a lower middle class of Italian and Spanish immigrant origin, the majority in Argentina, education, perhaps not excellent but acceptable and free at all levels in that country, was one of the greatest values in his family.

Irina was a full member of the Russian Nobility Association in America, a non-political and non-profit organization for charitable and genealogical purposes, which brings together the descendants of families registered in the lists of nobility of the former Imperial Russian Senate; the members with the right to vote are registered in it with their ancestral titles.

The woman participated in the Commission of Heraldic and Genealogical Affairs that studied the titles of the association's participants and qualified those who would be full members. She was therefore widely known in the spheres of the Russian nobility settled for decades in New York. Irina was also one of the organizers of the great annual ball that the association organized in hotels in the city.

"Do you have Russian citizenship?" Thiago asked somewhat puzzled.

"Yes, I got it a long time ago." "But were you born in Russia or in the United States?"

 "In neither of them. I was born in Vienna, Austria, where my family had gone into exile and remained during the time of communism. I came to New York when I was thirteen. "

 “I see that you treat some of your fellow members with their noble titles. I notice it when you speak to them in French. "

"Yes, to those who inherit those titles."

 "Would you like to know what I think of all this?"

 "I suppose you think its only purpose is to inflate the ego of some mediocre people."

 "It is all right if they are satisfied with this, but I think it is a great waste of time and money."

Irina stroked the young man's head and smiled understandingly.

 “I don't expect you to understand just because  you don't belong… for now. But I have my own opinions about you in this regard. "

"What do you mean?"

 "That you are not immune to the seduction of all the aristocratic splendor and that you enjoy the contact with it that from time to time you have through me."

"Are you calling me fake?"

 “I prefer to think that you are a project in development; that you are in a stage of transformation. "

 Despite the fact that he flatly rejected the claim, Thiago was left thinking. He knew that Irina was a fine observer of human psychology and that he was a preferred object of that observation.

The woman was a member of the Russian Orthodox Church and a regular attendee at worship; she therefore intended to marry in a religious ceremony in that faith. She consulted that intention with Thiago assuming he would be a Catholic and could have his own preferences.

“I think I was baptized a Catholic when I was still a baby. The event among us is more social than religious because my family is not a practitioner. I have no recollection of going to church as a child. "

 "How do you say you think you were baptized? Not even sure? Don't you know where you have been baptized? "

"No, not at all, maybe if I ask my parents they will know."

Somewhat scandalized Irina she consulted with a priest named Kirill with whom she habitually communed and who acted as her religious advisor.

“In that case I strongly recommend that your boyfriend be baptized in our church, at least in order to be sure that he belongs to Christianity. Do you think he will be willing? "

 "I guess so."

"But are you also telling me that he has no knowledge of the Christian faith?"

 "As far as I could determine, very little."

“Then it is necessary for him to take a short introductory course on the foundations of our faith and our traditions. Can you convince him of that? "

 "I think so."

 "Well, I will ask Father Vassily to take over this issue in his hands."

Another of the tasks that Irina took in charge of  was the organization of the wedding party, which would take place in a hotel with which the Russian community had relations.

"I can't get the number down from the one hundred and fifty guests." The woman said resignedly.

"Only my parents and my brother will come from my family." Answered Thiago.

 "Are you planning to invite a co-worker or other acquaintance in New York?"

"No."

"Anyway that does not change the total figure."

 "It will cost a fortune!"

 “Don't worry, it won't be your money. My family from Europe willo come en masse and they should receive an impression commensurate with our position. On the other hand, they will help me partially with the expenses. "

"People who hardly know you?"

 "You do not understand that this is not only a wedding between you and me but also the event of the Fiódorovs around the world in at least a five-year period, and therefore an opportunity to meet and mark our validity."