XXII. In the end, I'll say : what is private is political
I. Vladimir Menshikov
"Why is it, every time I leave you alone for five minutes, you end up doing something stupid?"
"I've been asking myself the same question for a whole century," sighed Anna beside her.
- I don't know what went wrong with your education…
- What education? chuckled Sergei. We both lacked one.
-… but survival instinct is supposed to be innate. "
Breakfast table, Menshikov Palace, Petrograd, and in front of me, a scene that I had already experienced a million times at least. Nina, a good older sister, had kind of raised us, as our father had died very young, our mother was overwhelmed. Even though we were all now approaching two hundred years or so, she had never really changed her behavior. At this hour, the children were all in class, and she seized the opportunity to lecture me far from the prying ears of my magicians.
My sister was tall, muscular, with translucent blue eyes and short brown hair. As always, she wore her military uniform, that had quite changed over the years. Under Catherine II she dressed in the green cloth of the Preobrazhensky regiment, during the Patriotic War, she had worn the hussar jacket of the Imperial Guard. By now she had put on the brown uniform of a Red Army lieutenant colonel (which she was).
"Priests of Amun…
- Don't act like idiots, we sang along with Sergei.
- Let's go for another ride! He hummed.
- Don't make fun of me! You, tell me, can we consider that: One: getting inside a labor camp to find a guy who has nothing to do with us, two: smuggling in some foreigner, that is to say an enemy of the people to help you, three: getting caught like some loser and sailing the Duat in a totally suicidal way, four: summoning cheese demons in the middle of the arctic, five: making pacts with Lapp gods in a Karelian forest, while having the militia after you is something stupid?
- Yes, I sighed.
- Well, what do you have to say for yourself, Vladimir:
- He was he a good guy? If we had succeeded, he would be safe at Mount Athos by now.
- Выключи сердце и думай блять башкой! yelled Anna.
- Thanks Anna. So what is the conclusion that we can draw?
- Vladimir is unworthy of his blood and should be disinherited. Can we eat breakfast in peace now? Sighed Sergei. What do you want Vanya? Toast? "
He grabbed a piece of black bread and buttered it for my brother. We took turns to feed him, but Sergei was probably the one who took care of him the best. He had more free time and was the closest to him. Meanwhile, Nina continued her momentum:
"Wait a minute. I'm not finished. Since when do we take care of priests? Did you think you were Orthodox?
- He wasn't just a priest, he was a philanthropist, and a philosopher too.
- "Here lies Vladimir Menshikov, complete moron, leader of the Eighteenth Nome: he was a philanthropist. Beside him, his wife, Anna Menshikova, his daughter, Zinaïda, his brothers and sisters: they did not know how to say no to him. "
- You know that, by now, all of this is show not really effective anymore? "
She ignored me and resumed:
"The priests of Amun are the guardians of ancestral traditions which are:
- Obedience, piety, respect for divine laws, respect for ancestors, loyalty to your family.
- Sorry ? Did we mention family? I misheard…
- Since when are we guardians of obedience? Sergei reacted.
- Why did I even marry a Menshikov? Anna complained.
- Otherwise you wouldn't have had the immense privilege of attending Nina Menshikova's mythical sermons to her little brothers, I told her.
- Talk about a myth," my wife muttered.
- Have you see what reputation you're giving us? Laughed Sergei.
- Alright comedians, another problem now. Desjardins ! One : what in Amon's name is he doing here? Two: when is he leaving? Three: when will this farce ever end?
- Nina, stop! "
I wanted to get mad, but to tell the truth, I was just laughing out loud. Ivan was laughing too, his great childish laughter.
"I remind you that he's from the Fourteenth Nome. The Fourteenth Nome.
- Napoleon, the come-back : part II, I ironed.
- Oh, but wait, Anna added with a mocking grin, the French Empire is no joke. You may very well bury the stinking murderous mummy, its little strips are still on the move.
- We'll see if you'll laugh when all the Nomes from America and the Middle East come after us because he won't be able to shut his big mouth.
- Ninochka, could we avoid paranoid crises at breakfast? Complained Sergei. I am calling for a truce until at least noon.
- Don't you dare call me that.
- I'm sure you have plenty of things to do, constructive things, others than being a pain in everyone's ass at eleven in the morning. "
She thought of it for a moment.
"I am going to try once again to locate Alexandra, she's preparing us a stab in the back, I can feel it ..."
She stormed out. We let out a great collective sigh.
"Put a lock on your Frenchman's door, or she'll drown him in the Neva, Sergei advised me.
- Already done, I muttered.
- I actually like this guy, he added. Sometimes, he's a bit weird, like totally out of it.
- Yeah, me too, defended Anna. He sucks, but he's funny.
- I thought he was making progress?
- Yes, well, he not as bad as he used to. Then, since he was a real disaster, it doesn't change much. And he's still even capable to give me a single fireball.
- Assoulmiratovskaia mentality: fire = good, other elements = lame. Such a Setian thing to think.
- Never say that in front of Nina, begged Sergei. That water is a lame element.
- Hey, the Amon priests convention, it's you guys who are supposed to be fire elementalists, must I remind you ? Why is none of you good enough to summon a decent blaze?
- Welcome to the family, we were waiting for you to fill this gaping void.
- I always have to save your asses, yes.
- The honor of this dynasty is in your hands. Pass me the jam, Volodya.
- If you are speaking again of Menshikov's honor, I'm going back to bed, threatened Narguiza, entering the room.
Narguiza had been Sergei's wife for at least seventy years. Of Uzbek origin, she had Asian features, and a deceptive sweetness; she was made of steel. And by now, she had got used to our fuss.
"No, no, don't worry," Anna sighed.
- We have no dignity, no honor, and we'd like to eat our breakfast in peace, my brother summed up.
- What have you done to Nina again?
- Nothing, let her cool down a bit. Katya didn't get up? I asked.
- Not yet she answered me. "
Catherine was my brother Mikhail's widow. Since the revolution and the death of her son, she had sunk into a kind of melancholy.
"I'll drop by to see her, I promised.
- What have you been doing in Karelia again? She asked in return.
"It's even better than you think," Anna grumbled, "that idiot showed up in the Solovki Islands to help a priest. He would have stayed there without the help of his Marshal Ney! "
Boats had to be specially enchanted to cross the Duat. Desjardins had just had time to carve a few hieroglyphics on a fishing boat, while I was holding back the militiamen. The fact that we reached Karelia in one piece was quite a miracle. Anna continued:
"Not to mention that afterwards they got caught by a Karelian demon, you know, the cannibals one."
- The Stallö is a Sami, not a Karelian, I corrected. Even though if he is a cannibal.
- Nobody cares !
- Oh, come on,it's okay, he's used to it! " My brother came to my rescue. "Do you remember the time you almost got eaten by Baba Yaga?" He added.
- No, come on ! We just said we'll try to enjoy one calm moment, protested Anna. And you are starting over again!
"We were just recalling some funny childhood memory," Sergei began.
- Your family history is censored! shouted Narguiza. As a whole!
- Here ! All you had to do was not to grow up in Siberian Izbas in a family that had a history of advanced psychopathy. " Anna had the last word.
She poured herself a cup of tea again. I watched her do. The Assulmiratovs were of Tatar origin, but Anna and her two brothers had Yakut blood from their mother. From her, Anna had received her slanted almond-shaped eyes, a round, lunar face, a short stature. Though she usually wore brightly colored dresses, this morning she had put on her old red cherkeska that of the imperial guard's Cossacks. She was a North beauty. But above all she was the most formidable magician that I have ever met.
I could have continued to watch her for hours, but I had work to do. I reluctantly got up. Vania gave me a big smile as I passed by. I kissed him on the top of the head before leaving the room.
II. Michel Desjardins
It was already dark when I woke up. The clock read six o'clock. I couldn't remember exactly how we left Karelia. My head ached and my stomach was crying out for hunger. Someone had washed and folded my clothes at the end of my bed.
So I got dressed and strolled through large deserted corridors, adorned with moldings and baroque paintings. The vast rooms I passed through were empty. The decor was sumptuous but conveyed a muffled sadness, like a sob of regret that would have remained trapped in the gilding. In one of the boudoirs, a Venetian chandelier was broken on the floor. Pseudo-ancient statues accompanied my steps with their large, frozen eyes. I found a hidden staircase that went down to the utility rooms.
I met Menshikov in one of the large kitchens in the entresol. The room was large, a solid wood table took up half the space. Copper dishes and pans hung on the walls next to the huge stove. Pots were heating on the fire, the smell of food twisted my stomach. Vladimir was kneading a dough on a corner of the table. He looked up as I approached.
"How are you sleeping beauty? You look alright.
- Where are we ?
- At the Menshikov Palace. "
Grabbing a fruit from a bowl, I sat down on a bench. Vladimir took the opportunity to give me a little history lesson:
"My grandfather had it built. It is the first large stone building ever to be built in this city. After his exile in 1727, it housed the cadet school. It was recently reassigned to us, as a sign of goodwill on the part of the authorities, to house our magicians. Accommodation has become impossible in Petrograd, and the Nome has no residential rooms, only rooms dedicated to the practice of magic. "
Menshikov would always say Petrograd or Saint Petersburg, never Leningrad. "
"It's pretty generous of them," I noticed.
- Not so much! The place is full of microphones. It took years to find them all, and there may still be more. And above all, it's a way for them to keep us together in one place. They don't hear us, but they still control our presence.
- Wait, but they can see me if ...
- In your pocket. "
I pulled out of my pocket a piece of shriveled flesh with a red star tattooed on it.
"You bear the mark of a dead man. "
A shiver of disgust seized me. I quickly replaced the piece of human leather in my pocket. Then of course, I had seen worse. A kid then burst into the kitchen, babbling in Russian. She ran to the table and hugged her father's neck.
"Zinaïda Vladimirovna! Where are your manners!
- Good afternoon, sir." she said to me then with a little reverence, without any accent.
"Are you teaching them French?" I noticed.
- I am still a князь, and I spent all of my youth under the reign of the great Catherine, so...
- Maybe it's time to enter the new era then?
- Never. "
I often forgot how much older he was than me. What seemed to me to be ancient history was for him only a memory of his youth. I stole another apple.
Zinaida was about four year old. To say the least, she wasn't easily scared. She climbed onto the table, stole a piece of dough to play with, then ran back to stick it in my hair. I caught her, sat her on my lap and tickled her on the ribs. She writhed in laughter as she wriggled. I stopped when I saw the pots starting to shake.
"Why do you talk funny?" She asked me, smearing flour on my eyebrows.
"Zina, you can't ask people why they talk funny," her father sighed. "I'm sure Michel speaks French better than you. "
I burst out laughing. My Dauphinois accent must have come out with my exhaustion. Working in my old Nome, I used to hide it. It was driving Arsene absolutely crazy. He had given me a "French language course" when we were in Nice, before letting me approach high society, and had been left with a disappointment: I had lived in Paris when I was ten years old, but Grenoble's thick accent stuck to my palate. "It's bloody unbelievable. When you speak any language you keep your French accent, except when you do speak in French! What's with your vowels, start over. You have to let go of the Dauphinois accent now! First off because it's super ugly, it looks like a wild mix between Swiss and Southern accent, then because it discredits you!" Zinaida probably spoke Parisian better than I did.
I let her play with my face for a few minutes, then pushed her aside and started removing the paste stuck in my hair. At that moment, Nina Menshikova entered the room. Vladimir began to grumble:
« Так ! У меня сегодня нерабочий день, Нина !
– Это важно.
– Напоминаю ! Единственные случаи, когда можно беспокоить меня : 1. конец света. 2. Сталин приказал уничтожить Ном. 3. Джабари притащил свою задницу через Aляску, чтобы домогаться до меня. Вот гад страшный !
– А то что наша милая сестра опять связалась с какими то подлецами?
– Не моё дело ! »
– C'est important !
In translation, it looked more or less like this:
"So ... Today is my day off, Nina!"
- It is important !
- Memo. The only times you can disturb me are: 1. The end of the world. 2. Stalin orders the annihilation of the Nome. 3. Jabari brings his ass through Alaska to harass me. What a fucking asshole!
- And the fact that our dear sister made contact again with some scoundrels?
- This is not my business. "
Nina gave me a penetrating look before leaving the room in a draft of cold air. I never quite understood whether she hated me or not. She always had a neutral or angry facial expression. When I trained with Anna and other elementalist wizards, she would sometimes pay us a visit, then volunteer to personally beat me up. Yes, because the result of my weekly clashes with Vladimir's elementalists was usually a hell of a bunch of bruises and scrapes, and cramping muscles that I hadn't even known existed.
Yet, during the civil war, she had been the who taught me how to track down Sekhmet thanks to the energies prints, or the tiny upheavals of Ma'at, she left in the landscape. It was she, at last, who had given me this useful advice: "Iskandar, the more you give him, the more he asks. Never do something for free, it further reverses the balance of power you have with him." Nina knew the First Nome well, she had long been one of the greatest godhunters in the House of Life. A water specialist, she had used her specialty as a weapon against the deities. I really admired her.
Vladimir sighed, and went to check the pot. He filled a bowl with a thick, steaming soup.
"She has been under house arrest in Petrograd for a few months," he apologized. "She's overheating there, she has to distract herself.
- She's never happy, тётя, Zinaida saw fit to clarify.
- Here, taste it.
- Do you cook often?
- When we were young, Nina and I had four siblings to feed. Sergei and Alexandra are walking stomachs.
- How many years apart?
- Two with Nina, our eldest. Three with Mikhail, five with Ivan, eight with Sacha, nine with Sergei. Take I tell you. It's not poison.
- It's purple.
- It's beetroot. "
I ate three bowls of it. I was terribly hungry. For some magicians, an intensive use of magic could cause nausea, headaches, drowsiness. In general, I just had the munchies. Meanwhile, Anna went downstairs to look for Zinaida and sighed when she found her covered in flour.
"You are raising her like a little savage!" She protested.
He rolled his eyes.
"It's just a little flour. And from what your brothers told me, you were much worse at the same age.
- Fair enough, but children are supposed to be better than their parents. Зинаида, пошли мыться!
- Нет! " She yelled.
She put her arms around my neck and hung down on my shoulders.
"Look at how smart she is. She found herself a human shield, laughed Vladimir. "
Anna tried to grab her, but she jumped under the table and took refuge out of her mother's reach.
"She has good reflexes, I admired.
- In a few years, she will end up with her mother and her uncle, hunting bears, Vladimir told me.
- Is that true ? the kid asked from under the table.
- No, Anna replied, then addressed me. Do you think I look like I hunt bears?
- Honestly? A little. "
She groaned, then put her hands through my hair to brush the dough off. She quickly got angry and started ruffling my hair all over the place.
" Are you done ?
- You are full of flour! It makes your hair gray.
- Let me eat my soup.
- You eat a lot, she observed. I have never seen anyone eat so much. How do you manage to stay so slim?
- I have a good metabolism, I replied. "
She rolled her eyes and looked annoyed.
"And that is really injustice. "
Zinaida, thinking her mother distracted, took the opportunity to get out from under the table, bud, by bad luck, was caught by her father. She struggled, and started to laugh when he breathed on her neck. Anna smiled, went to kiss her husband and took his daughter from his hands. Finally, Zina under her arm, she left the room. Vladimir removed the remaining flour from his hands then addressed me:
"I have to go to the Nome, are you coming? Afterwards, I'll send you home.
- I can do it on my own.
- I'll open a portal for you.
- You're not going to take the risk of opening a portal !
- You, you are not going to navigate Duat in such a state! And then, I already took a lot of risks.
- Exactly, no need to add some more. "
I protested a bit more, though I knew it was in vain. We walked through Leningrad as the very first snow fell.
The Hermitage Museum was closed to the public at this time. It was quite unbelievable to have the Winter Palace to ourselves. "Come on, let's go see the Rembrandt's." We went up the main staircase, through the Feld-Marshals room, then the 1812 gallery and the old throne room. Vladimir smiled contemptuously as he walked past the gems-engraved map of the USSR that had replaced the sovereign's throne under the canopy.
"Подлецы! He whispered.
We then wandered through the New Hermitage's rooms, in the department of Flemish paintings. Catherine II had this building built so that "only the mice and I could admire the artworks. " Somehow I understood her. The works were of such beauty that one was tempted to keep them to oneself, to hide them from coarse or blind eyes. I was not of a jealous temperament, but I recognized that there was something touching about this desire to keep our treasures under lock and key, this delirious fear of losing loved ones, this fragility in fact. Or maybe I had just read a little too much of Proust.
"Can you post a letter for me?" suddenly asked Vladimir. They open them systematically, it's annoying. It's for the other dummy, Kane.
- Is that an insult letter?
- Sort of. It's a threatening letter, if he doesn't calm his guys in Alaska with their sensors and their khopesh.
- Are they all like that?
- No, not all. Well, there was one in particular that I couldn't stand. Abdias Kane, did you know him?
- By name.
- Filthy bastard. Handsome, charismatic, popular, and a gigantic shithead. I took the lead of my Nome, after a ritual duel in 1801. A few months later, this пиздун invaded me from Persia.
- Why ?
- A campaign of extermination of Setians, it happens sometimes. The principle: the fighting families seek, on any pretext, to decimate the Setian magicians who remain. And there are three places in the world where you can still find plenty of chaos magicians: Italy, Vietnam and here, in the former Russian Empire.
- Where it's all messed up.
- It's a bit of simplification ...
- Barely.
- I hate it when you tell true truths, he sighed.
- True truths?
- I have a poetic license. "
We stopped in front of the entrance to the Italian painting rooms and Vladimir resumed:
"Most of the Nomes are under the thumb of the Warring families, or at least try not to make enemies out of them. We are priests of Amun, we have always had a neutral attitude, even good relations with the men of Sobek or Set. Obviously, many Setians have settled in our Nome. I was young at the time, you see, in my forties, no older. No sooner had I settled in than they mistook my Nome for a Swedish buffet.
- Mmm… That's nice. "
It reminded me of a lot of things actually, the Swedish buffet.
"It's typical of them. Pharaoh's blood sees itself supra national. They confuse their own interests with those of the House of Life. A weak Nome is an opportunity for them to do make their little deals: they walk around, I kill those who annoy them, promoting their allies ... Should they find out what's going on here, they would try to put us under trusteeship. The first time Abdias didn't even declare war on me. He just came to get what he considered to be rightfully his. Just imagine, you are the leader of a Nome, and overnight, you find yourself invaded by foreign magicians who seek to slaughter half of your men. It's bad enough when they're Iskandar's agents, and they at least have some legitimacy to interfere. "
He sighed again:
"Well, of course the father was an asshole, who raised his sons the hard way. They have always fought for his favors.
- Why this obsession with Setians? I asked. Horus is also banished from the House of Life.
- It's simple, they do what they have always done: divide the world in two, attribute to a part of the universe and to the gods what is best, and to the rest, the responsibility for evil. They are fanatics. I am a pragmatist. "
A thin smile spread over his lips. We took the direction of Egyptian Antiquities on the ground floor. He added with a mischievous air:
"And then, you know our motto too: фараон охуиевает, Верховный жрец всем возглавляет! "
I tried to translate, "The pharaoh… uh… doing shit? Kidding? And the High Priest rules everyone. "
- Basically. I believe it dates back to Akhenaten's era. "
The formula was a bit too well adjusted to the Russian language, to date back to the XVIIIth Dynasty, but whatever. As we left the rooms dedicated to paintings, a thought occurred to me:
"The Venetian painter, Giovanni Bellini. Is he from their family?
- Not a magician, but I believe he was indeed a cousin of Bernardo, Lucrezia's late husband. You should ask your Bellini. Here, Caravaggio, that one was definitely a statuary magician, of the Per Ankh. What he did as such was radically different from his painting's themes. Some say that, torn apart between his art and his magical practice, he would have gone mad. Or was it after trying some experiments mixing the two ? In any case, he died young. "
He gave a despondent sigh.
"A good statuary magician is worth a hundred others. I had three in my Nome, two went to the Bolsheviks, the other died. You can see the effects immediately. No more transport, no more communications, poor protection, and a lack of shabti librarians. Your Nome becomes deaf and blind. "
He paused a little and continued: "Statuary magicians are respected, but they are rarely given responsibilities. Generally, they are more suited to research and specialize in theory. They are very bad at fighting too. Well, there are some exceptions too.
- Iskandar, I answered immediately.
- Yes. Friedwald as well. I believe it had never happened in a great Nome in Europe. It doesn't actually surprises me besides, they are all a little crazy around the edges.
- Statuary drives you crazy?
- Easily yes, looks at Iskandar. "
I found it hard to imagine Iskandar as a moody artist. He seemed to me much more like a cunning politician. Afterwards, thinking about it, maybe he did have a little demiurgic complex, between his way of considering us as manipulable pieces, or his shabti with human faces.
This last thought made me shiver. The very idea that human beings could actually be statues, hiding inside crowds, undetectable, gave me goosebumps. Maybe it was a little too much power for one man. It had quite an unhealthy side also, kind of like Pygmalion and Galatea meet Frankenstein.
Vladimir was lost in his thoughts, and started to mumble, more to himself I think:
"It's one of the more complex branches of magic, yes. But we find a lot of his debates throughout art history. Art is more permeable to the practice of magic than any other discipline. You know the difference between the Venetian and Florentine schools?
- The color and line debate, yes.
- There for example, the debate covers a problematic in statuary. I don't know much about it, but it's still about methods of fixing magic. Basically, for some, the shape, and therefore the design, is paramount. For others, the touch, and the type of material, including color pigments, are more relevant to bring the model to life. "
He frowned as if trying to remember something. We were standing in the Egyptian Antiquities Department.
"I think there was a guy, an elementalist, who thought that we could go from elemental magic to statuary, by working on the raw material rather than in the form we give it. In other words, rather than putting elementary magic at the service of sculptors as we always do, so that they impose a force on the material, he wanted to guide the artist through the material. Hi work was never developed.
- Who was he ?
- I don't remember the name. His contemporaries took him for an enlightened one. I don't know where his writings are either. Maybe Kathmandu or Jerusalem. "
I wondered how Menshikov had heard of it, but after all, his wife, sister, and sister-in-law were Elementalists.
He said a few words and opened the secret door leading to the Nome. The large hall with its malachite columns was dimly lit. Huge deposits of this stone were in the Ural mountains. The Eighteenth was selling it to all the other Nomes.
"I know," Vladimir suddenly remembered, "he was a Persian, Firdaws, I believe. "
I had heard that name somewhere before. I wrote it down carefully in a corner of my mind. It would be time later to go track down his work.
"Was he designing paradises then? This is what the Persians call their gardens, "I specified in front of his astonished expression.
Menshikov looked amused. "You and your plants… he mumbled.
- Egypt invented the gardens.
- I have no doubt about it. "
He went to his desk to retrieve documents. I thought of André le Nôtre's notebooks that I'd found in the Fourteenth library. Most of the notes were indecipherable, whitout the help of a druid. I had however succeeded in reconstituting some of his roses based on my experiences in elemental magic. Yet they aren't quite resistant. They are far from being perfect. My silver roses did not stand up to the cold, and all attempts at crossing them with winter flowers had failed. I had another project in mind, a bit trickier, for which I'd need more successful versions. But Menshikov interrupted the flow of my thoughts.
"You are quite interested in research. "
I didn't bother to deny it.
"Watch out, he just added.
- Don't worry, I don't really have time anyway; I have Serbs to deal with. "
He smiled : "You are too nice to your Serbo-Croats. Slavs must be beaten, they only understand that.
- Vladimir… you are a Slav.
- Did I say something else? Look at us: we get what we deserve, don't we? "
He didn't give me time to reply and closed the desk.
"Come on, he sighed. I'll send you home now. "
We left the Winter Palace. The snow outside was falling in large flakes now, swirling in the streetlamps's dim light. We walked along the Neva and its granite banks adorned with silent palaces. The frozen air took my breath away. It was with a sigh of relief that I stepped through the sand portal, with its hot whirlpools and strange incense smell.
Translation of the Russian parts:
Выключи сердце и думай блять башкой : Turn off your heart and think with your fucking head!
Князь (Kniaz') : Russian nobility title, equivalent of duke or prince
Тётя : aunty
Зинаида, пошли мыться! : Zinaida, let's go wash yourself!
Нет! : No !
Подлецы : Scoundrels !
Пиздун : Swine / jerk
Alexander Menshikov (deceased)
-Maria Menchikova, his wife (deceased)
-Nina Menchikova, their first daughter
-Vladimir Menshikov, their first son (Volodya)
-Anna Menchikova (born Assoulmiratova) his wife (Ania)
-Zinaida Menchikova, their daughter, born in 1926 (Zina)
-Mikhaïl Menshikov, their second son (died in 1918) (Micha)
-Ekaterina Menchikova (born Volkonskaya), his wife (Katya)
-Alexandre Menshikov, their son (died in 1921)
-Ivan Menshikov, their third son (Vanya)
-Alexandra Menchikova, their second daughter (Sacha)
-Irina Pesok, her bastard daughter (deceased)
-Sergei Menshikov, their fourth son (Serioja)
-Narguiza Menchikova (born Musayeva), his wife
-Andrey Menshikov, their first son (Andrioucha)
-Oleg Menshikov, their second son (Olejka)
-Youri Menshikov, their third son (Youra)
-Dmitri Menshikov, their fourth son (Dima)