The Kitchen Boy (9 page)

“My babies!” cried Alix, poring over her three other daughters – Olya’s hand, Tanechka’s head, Mashka’s cheek. “My precious babies!”

The Tsar turned the wheeling chaise around, pushed his son to this mass of family, and they all melded into a heap, mother and daughters on the floor, son slightly higher on his chaise, and father standing firmly above them. They all clutched and grabbed for one another, Alix hanging onto her Nicky’s leg. For the first time, the only time, I saw amazing pain boil in the Tsar’s body. He closed his eyes, bit his bottom lip. Strong, he had to be strong for family, for Russia, for God. But he couldn’t. No more. He had reached his limit, and for fear of totally falling apart, he dared not move; he simply let his terrified family drape from him like a defeated flag. With every bit of courage he had left, he pinched his lips lest he cry out, clenched his eyes shut lest he spill his fear, and his face passed from white to crimson. And yet there was only so much he could control. A tear emerged in his right eye. Two tears. They were huge and round, and slowly, quite slowly, they began to travel down his cheek and into his beard.

Everyone came flooding into the room, Demidova, Trupp, Kharitonov, the guards, and, of course, finally the
komendant
himself.

“What have you idiots done!” Avdeyev yelled at the family. “You, Citizen Romanov, were you trying to escape? We open a window, and what do you do a minute later, try to run away? Is that it, hey, Nikolashka, you coward, trying to get away from us?”

I thought the Tsar was going to rip off the man’s head. I saw his body quiver, his fists curl into knots of rock. But Nikolai Aleksandrovich didn’t move. No, ever-fatalistic, he silently bore the insult as he had always carried everything, crown and all.

“I… I…” he said, barely able to speak, let alone control himself, “would never… never leave my family.”

“Well, that’s not what the guard down below said. He said he looked up and saw one of you ready to jump out!”

“That fool nearly killed my daughter!”

“They have strict orders to shoot upon-”

The Emperor flung his arm out, pointing at the doorway as he screamed, “Leave us!”

“Shto?”
What? coarsely replied Avdeyev. “Let me remind you that you blood drinkers are the prisoners here! In case you don’t yet understand, I am the
komendant
and I give the orders around-”

“Get out!”

“But-”

The Tsar’s eyes flared, his entire face flashed red with fury, and, fired with the spirits of his ancestors, he shouted, “
Get out now
!”

Such a moment I will never forget. For the first and only time did Nikolai Aleksandrovich seem like a true Russian tsar, an ironfisted one. He was Ivan and Peter and Catherine all in one, and Avdeyev crumbled in a second. The
komendant
all but started shaking, all but bowed to the ground, for in the end of ends this was his Tsar, and at the very least he would grant him this, the few square meters upon which the august family was now huddled, as their territory and theirs alone. With no further protest, Avdeyev withdrew. And so did we, the rest of their meager attendants. Kharitonov fell away. Demidova. Trupp. Even Botkin, who had come at the last moment, ill though he was. I made my way out of the room as well. I slowly walked to the passage to the dining room, the door of which had been removed, of course. And the last I looked back, Nikolai was dropping to his knees. They were all coming together. All seven of them. Holding hands, they formed a tight circle, bowed their heads in prayer. Aleksandra and Tatyana started chanting a hymn, Nikolai spoke a prayer and… and…

Such a kind man was Nikolai II. So sweet. So tender. And gentle. He loved nothing more than his family and his country. He hated disagreements, either within his vast, squabbling house or among his ministers, both great and small, or anywhere else, for that matter, within his enormous realm. That was the Tsar I knew then, and the Tsar I’ve since grown to know in my books. Bloodshed was not at all what he wanted… and yet any fool would admit that that was his legacy. When
Batyushka
, the Dear Father, departed this world, he left behind a vast sea of blood, his own, his family’s, his country’s. Up until the ironfisted, totalitarian rule of the Red tsars – the
kommunisty
, who made the terrible Ivan look like a choir boy – his reign was one of the most violent in all the history of Russia. One must not forget that it was during the reign of Nicholas II that two disastrous wars, two bitter revolutions, and countless pogroms befell Holy Mother Russia. And though Tsar Nikolai wanted nothing more than to avoid violence, though many of the disasters were not of his doing, virtually all of them were his fault because he was Tsar, Russian Tsar, absolute Tsar, Orthodox Tsar. When you look back through the decades, it now seems utterly obvious that there was no way it could be done, no way an autocrat could rule so vast a country, at least not without complete terror and oppression. Why, during his arrest the former Tsar read the anti-Semitic,
Protocols of the Elders of Zion
, which he found “very timely reading matter.” He never learned, however, that the book was an entire fabrication, composed by his own tsarist secret police, whose duty it was to maintain order for their master, but who instead incited the hate and riots that toppled him. So in the end this is how Nikolai II must be viewed: a very caring man of moderate abilities who, although utterly devoted to his country, was unable to transform the unworkable autocratic system thrust upon him. Period. That simple.

You know, Tsar Nikolai and Comrade Lenin were like two great trains running toward each other at a colossal speed. The closer they came, the faster they went. They were traveling, however, on two entirely different sets of tracks, and so they should have passed by each other. They should have missed completely and zoomed on, racing toward their remarkable but very different destinations and goals. And yet… yet they collided head on with a great, terrible force, killing millions upon millions around them. And do you know why these two trains that were on two different sets of tracks collided so terribly? Because it was their fate, their destiny. And not just theirs alone, but all of Russia’s.

Forgive me. It’s true. I wander. I wander in my heart and my thoughts. Such is the curse of any emigrant, to abandon one’s home and never find another, to always flounder in a sea of remorse. Your dear grandmother handled it much better than I, but then again she was a far superior person in so many ways.

Well, then, fate marched on…

Later that day the Romanovs had a real
obednitsa
, a liturgy without communion, their first in three months. Aleksandra arranged a small altar all by herself, draping one of her shawls on a table, setting out her images – her treasured icons – and then surrounding them with birch tree branches. It was lovely in its simplicity. And she and the daughters sang quite nicely. Father Storozhev in fact came, and while we all wondered if he might bring a note or news of some kind, there was nothing. Nor could there have been, because the priest was escorted in by Komendant Avdeyev, who never left his side.

And then?

Well, later in the day the girls darned various linens with Nyuta, then helped their mother arrange their “medicines,” for this was an ongoing affair, their hiding of the last of their jewels. While the two suitcases of larger gems had been secretly left with the nuns in Tobolsk, you only have to peruse the last pages of Aleksandra’s diary to see evidence of their clandestine stitching of the smaller diamonds. “Arranged things all day, tatted.” “Tatyana sowed my j.” “Arranged medicines with Yevgeny Sergeevich.” “Arranged things, tatted, heart enlarged.” “Arranged things.” “Arranged things, tatted, read.”

Finally, on the morning of July 16, slightly more than twelve hours before they were all slaughtered, the long, secret task was complete. In the final journal entry of her life – the very one where she mentions how I was taken away – Aleksandra simply noted, “Olga & I arranged our medicines.” You see, it took the careful hands of all six women – the Tsaritsa, the four grand duchesses, as well as the maid – weeks to finish with the 42,000 carats, and doing so with precious little time to spare. As if they had sensed the hour of death was upon them, by noon of that day all the jewels were wrapped in cotton wadding, then packed and stitched ever so tightly into the double corsets of those beautiful girls, which of course proved such a horrible mistake.

The Tsar spent the rest of the day reading, pacing, and smoking at the open window. Later he had a sitting bath – I, myself, brought him hot water from the kitchen. Later yet he played bridge with his girls and bezique with Yevgeny Sergeevich. And thus, shortly after ten, concluded the twenty-third, a day which ended much more quietly than it had begun.

Did I say it was a Sunday?

I shall pass quickly over the twenty-fourth, which was fraught with tension only insomuch as nothing happened. Yevgeny Sergeevich remained in bed the entire day, as did the Empress, complaining yet again of an enlarged heart and aching eyes. Later, actually, she moved nearby the open window, where she read and played cards with Maria Nikolaevna. About this time, toward one o’clock, the rest of us were allowed into the garden. There we paced for forty minutes. The heat was tropical. Outside, in the full of sun, the temperature rose to thirty-seven and a half degrees, while inside the thick walls of the Ipatiev House it climbed only to a warm twenty-one and a half. Otherwise, we waited and hoped, but once again Sister Antonina and her novice failed to appear. I couldn’t help but think that either the nun had been discovered, or the supposed friends of the Tsar and his family had lost their nerve and abandoned us. Although no one else spoke of such doubts, I am sure everyone else felt them, for anxiety hung in the air like thick fog.

Tuesday, the twenty-fifth, began as the other recent days, warm and monotonous. Yevgeny Sergeevich was feeling better from his attack of the kidneys, but he remained in bed nevertheless. After breakfast I wheeled about the Heir, room to room, as was my usual morning duty. We were just passing from the main parlor back into the dining room when both Aleksei Nikolaevich and I heard voices from beyond the double closed doors. The guard room lay there, and I could hear deep, distrustful voices of the men and a single, small one that was full of morning brightness.

Unable to contain his excitement, the Heir twisted in the wheeling chaise, looked up at me, and whispered, “That’s Sister Antonina.”

“Da-s!”

I turned the chair around, aiming it toward the double doors, and the Heir clasped his hands in his lap and eagerly bent forward. I half-expected Jim – the huge Negro from America who’d been a fixture at the Aleksander Palace right up until the first days of the revolution – to swing open the door with his usual great pomp. Instead, however, one of the guards shoved open the door with his foot.

“
Pyat minut
.” Five minutes, one of them ordered. “No more.”

“Of course, my son.”

Draped from head to foot in folds of black, the sister entered, her head bowed slightly as she tried to conceal a smile. She carried an open, woven basket, in which were nestled brown eggs, a good ten of them, and immediately behind her trailed Novice Marina, who clutched two
chetvert
of milk in her arms.

Upon seeing the Heir, both women stopped still, crossed themselves, and the sister, her head bowed, said, “
Dobroye ootre
, Aleksei Nikolaevich.” Good morning.

Until recently, Aleksei had always been greeted so reverently, and he thought nothing of it. With a great deal of enthusiasm and curiosity, he looked upon them and nodded to the basket.

“I see you’ve brought me more eggs.”

Sister Antonina, her eyes fixed firmly on the ground before her young master, gave a polite, “
Da-s
.”

“And milk? Did you bring-”

I heard not a sound from behind, for his worn, brown boots moved with great stealth. Before I knew it, Nikolai Aleksandrovich stepped in, scooted me aside, and took hold of the wheeling chaise. In a single, gentle movement, the Tsar spun it and the Heir around.

“We must not interrupt their work, Alyosha,” said father to son.

“But-”

“We’ll let Leonka deal with the food. After all, he is the cook’s assistant. Now, how about a game of dominoes?”

Only after the Tsar and Tsarevich disappeared into the dining room and beyond did Sister Antonina and the Novice Marina raise their eyes and heads. Looking upon me with a proud, beaming smile, the sister stepped forward and kissed me peasant style, that is to say, three times on my cheeks. As she embraced me so warmly, I glanced over her shoulder, and saw that Marina was looking on, staring at me as if I were some kind of godly hero.

At the tail end of the third kiss, Sister Antonina whispered into my ear, “
Molodets
.” Excellent.

The diminutive sister was musty with the unmistakable perfume of Orthodoxy, so smoky and sweet, and I pulled back, took the basket from her hand. “Here, allow me.”

And so it was that the sister and novice followed me out of the parlor, through the dining room, back around, and into the little makeshift kitchen. Cook Kharitonov stood at the counter peeling potatoes, and he eyed us over his shoulder.

“Again we have brought you the freshest of eggs,” began Sister Antonina, “as well as milk still warm from the cow. Marina herself helped with the milking.”

With that, the young girl stepped forward, handing me one glass bottle in particular and placing the other on the table. She looked at me, blushing as her eyes caught on mine.

“We will be back as soon as possible,” said Sister Antonina.

I handed the novice the bottle they’d previously brought, now empty, of course, and escorted them through the dining room and into the parlor. Sister Antonina rapped once on the doors, one of which was opened, and the two women disappeared.

While Kharitonov, potato in hand, kept a seemingly loose eye on the door for a guard, I pulled the stopper from the very bottle Marina had placed in my hands. And that was where the second note from the officer was found, the note that to this day lies with the others in the
arkhivy
of the Russian Federation in Moscow. Later that summer, in an attempt to hide their crimes, the
Bolsheviki
frantically took all such documents – diaries, photo albums, letters, as well as the secret rescue notes – upon their evacuation of Yekaterinburg.

But back then, on the twenty-fifth, the morning thereof, hope seemed to be burning bright yet again. All of the Romanovs likewise supposed that there was a note in that milk bottle, and they were eager to know its contents. Within moments of the departure of the sister and her novice, the Tsaritsa’s maid was at the door of the kitchen.

“Would you be so kind,” said Demidova, “as to fulfill Aleksandra Fyodorovna’s request for a glass of water?”

“Certainly,” replied cook Kharitonov.

Of course, I was the one to fulfill the so-called request, because such trivial tasks always fell upon me, little Leonka. And so, clutching the folded note in my hand, I went to the crock of water that we always kept on the wooden counter. I gently pulled off the cloth covering the top and ladled a glass. And then turning to Demidova, I handed her the water. As I did so I slipped the note from my palm into hers. She smiled, her head bobbed in appreciation, and she quickly stuffed the note up the long sleeve of her dress. Immediately she turned to go, but just as quickly Kharitonov spoke out.

“Would you be so kind as to tell the others,” said the cook, gazing deep into Demidova’s eyes, “that only soup and vermicelli will be served at lunch? There will be no meat until dinner – the
komendant
himself told me that Leonka will not be allowed to go to the Soviet for more cutlets until three.”

“I see.”

Actually what she said was “
yasno
,” which has a very rich meaning in Russian because, of course, Russian is a much richer, not to mention more beautiful, tongue than English, which is so hard-sounding and so rigid in its complex rules.
Yasno
doesn’t simply mean “I see,” nor does it simply mean, “It’s clear,” or “I understand.”
Nyet, nyet
, that single word says something infinitely more profound. What it implies is that one understands not simply the meaning of the word, but also what lies beneath the surface yet cannot be spoken. It lays out, the true, complex dynamics of a situation. In other words, Demidova understood not the day’s menu – for that was not the message at all – but that she needed to convey to the Tsar and Tsaritsa that if they wanted to reply to this note, they needed to have that reply finished by three so I could take it when I went out for meat.

So the note was delivered to the Tsar and his anxious Empress. At the time I was not privy to its contents, nor to the discussions within the family thereof. I don’t know what Nikolai and Aleksandra talked of. Oh sure, I glimpsed the words of the note when I took it out of the bottle stopper, but this one was in French too. I could not make out a word. Translated, however, the June 25, 1918, note sent to the Romanovs reads thus:

With the help of God and your sangfroid, we hope to succeed without taking any risk. One of your windows must be unglued so that you can open it at the right time. Indicate which window, please.

The fact that the little Tsarevich cannot walk complicates matters, but we have taken that into account, and I don’t think it will be too great an inconvenience. Write if you need two people to carry him in their arms or if one of you can take care of that. If you know the exact time in advance, is it possible to make sure the little one will be asleep for one or two hours before the escape?