Read Metronome, The for Free Online

obediently moves on, but not before giving me a sorrowful look. He looks vaguely familiar.
    Vakunin continues, “Pavel Vladimirovich, the department will put up a memorial stone with a star, your father’s name, and the years 1934 – 2006. Let me know if you want something different.”
    “It’s 1924, not 1934” I automatically correct him.
    “But of course, I misspoke.”
    Vakunin moves on. Pemin also says goodbye, and it’s just me, Govrov, and a freshly covered grave.
    I stand in front of it, trying to comprehend what just happened. Heart-wrenching loneliness momentarily overcomes me. Govrov carefully taps me on the shoulder. “Pavel Vladimirovich, would you like me to take you back to the apartment?”
    “Yes, please, let’s go back to the apartment.”
     
    At the apartment, I change into jeans, a T-shirt, and a comfortable jacket. I deliberate for a minute whether I should have created some cover story, but it’s too late for that. I grab my backpack and run out. Instead of going through the main entrance to the building, I sneak into the courtyard, find an open door in one of the neighboring buildings and come out onto Karavannaya Street. I look around, don’t see anyone paying attention to me, turn left and briskly walk to Manezhnaya Square, figuring I’ll find taxis there. I am right, a few private taxis are parked there. I go to the first one in line, show him a $20 bill and say “Pulkovo One.”
    As we make our way to the airport, I wonder if I will be arrested there and brought back as a primary suspect trying to escape. At the airport, I buy a ticket for the next Aeroflot flight to Moscow, exchange $200 into rubles, and get a quick lunch all the while nervously checking things around me, expecting a tap on the shoulder. But my shoulder is not touched, and I board the Airbus, squeeze into my middle seat, and breeze a sigh of relief as we take off. I try to take a nap for the duration of the short, just over an hour, flight.
     
    We are approaching for landing from the East, over distant suburbs and green fields. From my window seat, I can see Moscow proper in the distance. Moscow and St. Petersburg, the two poles of Russia. One dates to a small 12th century fortress built by Prince Yuri Dolgoruki. Two hundred years later, after the Mongolo-Tatar devastation, Moscow emerged as the leading Russian city, sometimes by its leaders aligning with the Tatars to subdue the city’s rivals. All’s fair in love, war, and politics. From the victory over the Mongol-Tatar forces in 1380, Moscow’s reach grew and grew, primarily to the East, until it reached China’s borders and the Pacific Ocean. Moscow – the “Third Rome,” the “Second Constantinople,” the defender of the Orthodox faith, protecting it from “barbarians” in the East and in the West. As the Russian monk Filofey wrote in 1510, “Two Romes have fallen. The third stands. And there will be no fourth.” 
    Until the upstart in the north rose out of empty marshes. St. Petersburg: majestic, imperial, haughty. Proclaiming that Russia’s future was not in the footsteps of Constantinople and Byzantium, not in Asia, but in Europe. Peter the Great wanted St. Petersburg to be the beginning of new, European Russia.
    And for two hundred years the upstart reigned, Moscow relegated to a noisy, dusty has-been. But the city that Peter founded as a leap of faith became a capital of mammoth bureaucracy. In the end, Russia rejected this implant in favor of its natural focus in Moscow. And then the curtain fell between Russia and the West.
    Two cities, three tzars: Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Stalin. Should it be Stalin the Murderous? Three tzars that fought to modernize Russia, each in their own way. All left behind fields filled with the bones of their subjects, not caring how many had to die in their cause. All ruled with an iron fist, believing that their ends justified the means. All, directly or indirectly, killed their own,