Although it beggars belief, official sources and reports allege that no more than three dozen people died that day. But for the Russian people, it was the last straw. The day goes down in history as Bloody Sunday. The petition they were bringing to the tsar, their letter, their prayer, goes undelivered.

26. What on Earth Was the Tsar Thinking?

26. What on Earth Was the Tsar Thinking?

If we go by his various biographies, it’s impossible to know exactly what the tsar was doing when the masses attempted to approach the Winter Palace with their petition letter. Some say he was dining and even specify the menu, but those are lies like so many others.

We have it on good authority that he was keenly aware of the demonstration and that to calm his nerves he was bathing in the imperial bathroom.

The bubbles were a variety of colors. Beneath the foam, the monarch was squeezing his thighs with his hands, anxious despite the effect of the soap. Because at times like this, soap realizes it can fly when given half a chance. The heaviest bar of soap, the greasiest, the most difficult to dissolve, they all take off in situations like this.

Beneath the airborne soap bubbles, the tsar thinks. Not about the silent multitudes. Not about the prayers they sing from time to time. Not about the petition. Not about his childish delusion that he can fix everything. Thanks to the soap, he’s not worrying about the war with the Japanese, despite the fact that it’s a daily (and nightly) preoccupation. He’s not thinking about his wife or his children or about the meal some say he was eating at this very moment. He thinks without thinking, as if the soap bubbles have entered his head through one of his ears and gotten stuck inside his skull, unable to find an exit, perhaps because they’re too embarrassed to retrace their path, or because they don’t know how to get to the other ear. His thoughts are like the elusive bubbles, fragile, empty; like the contents of the bubbles—pure air.