The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar

5

There are so many things, Katya, that I have never told you nor even my very own son – your father – but I had been with the Romanovs since shortly before they were exiled to Siberia. My own father – your great-grandfather – was off to war, and the food situation at home in the Tula province was difficult, so when my Uncle Vanya wrote to my mother and suggested I come to work at the Aleksander Palace in July of 1917, I was sent right away. We were a poor family, and my mother was only too glad to have one less mouth to feed, particularly during such horrible times.

I arrived by the end of the month, a fortnight before the Romanovs were sent from their home in Tsarskoye Selo, a suburb of Sankt-Peterburg. The Tsar and his consort had many years earlier decided to make this their principal home, for there the air was clean and fresh, the gardens lush, and of course they were far away from the capital and decadent society. In essence, overwhelmed with the poor health of the Heir Tsarevich, they withdrew, which in the end actually precipitated their fall.

Of course, another reason they withdrew from Peterburg was fear for their safety. Since the uprisings of 1905, political assassinations had been all too common. Indeed, during those times the whole of the House of Romanov feared for its life, realizing that the anarchists were intent on exterminating the dynasty. In retrospect, I often wonder how Nikolai could not have foreseen so dark a storm as 1918 – almost everyone else did – but again I’m sure he was blinded by religion.

For as rich and all-powerful as they were, the Emperor and Empress decided not to make their home in the Great Palace of Tsarskoye, an enormous palace built by Catherine the Great herself. That one had hundreds upon hundreds of grandiose rooms all decorated with gold and marble and crystal chandeliers. Instead, Nikolai and Aleksandra wanted a family home, so they chose the nearby and substantially more modest Aleksander Palace, which Catherine had built for her favorite grandson, the future Aleksander I, the one who trounced Napoleon. Nikolai II himself was born there, and the last Tsar and Tsaritsa chose not the entire palace, but only one wing for their apartments. Sure, they still had many rooms, and spectacular they were, for they gutted the left wing and redecorated a number of rooms in the stijl moderne, otherwise known in the West as Art Nouveau. It was there too, in a vitrine in her mauve boudoir that Aleksandra kept her Fabergé eggs, which along with all her pearl necklaces and diamond tiaras and her bejeweled this and that totaled so many millions upon millions of dollars. In today’s dollars a billion, I think. Perhaps a bit more, perhaps a bit less. I should add that when they were exiled to Siberia, the Provisional Government, which ruled for eight months before being toppled by the Reds, allowed Nikolai and Aleksandra to take everything but the Fabergé objets with them. They took two suitcases full of gems, to be exact. And it all disappeared, all of the jewels except the nineteen pounds of diamonds and things found hidden on their bodies when they were killed. While the Romanovs were under arrest in Tobolsk – months before they were brought to Yekaterinburg – many nuns visited them, and these sisters of God smuggled everything else away. Stalin initiated a big search in the 1930s, and after torturing a few nuns and such the Reds found one of these suitcases buried beneath a hut. It contained one hundred and fifty gems, including a 100-carat diamond brooch and a 70-carat diamond crescent. Alas, the second suitcase has never been located. It’s supposed to contain one pood – about thirty-six pounds – of diamonds and rubies and emeralds. As far as anyone knows, it’s still buried somewhere in the taiga of Siberia.

It was during my short time at the Aleksander Palace that I came to understand several fundamental things about Tsaritsa Aleksandra Fyodorovna.

My work was in the kitchens, and I was never allowed close to the Imperial Family until the night before we departed the Aleksander Palace, when so much was being packed up for the long train ride – to where, no one at that time knew. Because their English cousins proved to be nothing but ninnies by withdrawing their offer of asylum – which would have saved the Romanovs – we knew we weren’t being sent abroad. In truth, actually, that was a relief to the family, all of whom hoped and prayed that we were being exiled to their favorite palace, Livadia, in the Crimea. But that was not to happen, of course, because between Peterburg and the Black Sea stood the raging mobs of Moscow. As it was, we didn’t realize we were being sent to Siberia until the train was hours underway.

In any case, I was enlisted to help carry the luggage and trunks and crates, a parade of things that went on through the night. It was only then that I entered the Emperor and Empress’s private bedchamber. It was a large room with soaring ceilings, white wallpaper covered with pink garlands of the Empress’s favorite flower, hydrangea, the design of which was carried onto the curtains and the chintz fabric covering all the painted furniture. Very bright. Very elegantno. I didn’t know it then, for I was so young and unworldly – a mere lad from the provinces – but this was pure English style, the Empress’s favorite, a taste acquired, of course, at the court of her granny. Yet all of this beauty was not what impressed me so. What first astounded me was the number of photographs, pictures of aunts and uncles and cousins and children that covered the walls and virtually every tabletop. Such was the importance of family to her. But then I saw her obsession, her sickness – all the icons. The walls of their sleeping alcove were covered from floor to ceiling with hundreds of religious pictures. Pictures of the Virgin Mary. Saint George the Dragon Slayer. Saint Nicholas. Saint Michael. Big, silver-covered icons. Little jewel-encrusted portraits of every saint imaginable. On and on. There was not a square inch that was not covered with an icon through which God was supposed to work, a window for him to reach from the high heavens to the lowly earth. Aleksandra was continually arranging and rearranging them too, as if she only had to get the order correct for God to hear her fervent prayers. Nyet, nyet, not normalno. Not at all. Even I recognized this, young as I was. She was more than a fool for God. She was a fanatic. Why, after giving birth to four daughters she was desperate to bear a boy, an heir, and to achieve this she had the monk Serafim of Sarov canonized. And after that grand ceremony Nikolai and Aleksandra crept down to the spring where the monk was known to have worked miracles hundreds of years earlier. And there, in the dead of night, they bathed naked, just the two of them. The next day there were a number of known miracles – children healed of terrible maladies, a blind woman who regained her sight, an invalid who walked for the first time in ten years – and soon thereafter Aleksandra became pregnant with Aleksei. Some say it was an act of God Himself, but why would he do such a dark thing, give Russia such a troubled heir? Rather, I think it was this inescapable Russian fate.

But, sure, while our Empress was cold on the outside, she was at the same time wildly passionate on the inside, and in this way so very, very Russian. In the carnal sense, she and the Emperor were the most loving of couples; in their early letters to one another there is even mention of their pet names for their genitalia. And this, from a granddaughter of that tight Victoria! Radi boga – Dear Lord – Aleksandra must be rolling in death, knowing that those pet names for their privates have been published around the globe!

Late that very same night my uncle and I were carrying a trunk marked N.A. NO. 12 – ALBUMS, meaning it was Nikolai Aleksandrovich’s twelfth trunk, the one filled with photo albums. We proceeded from the maple living room, a very attractive, two-story room covered with bear rugs and filled with mementos – it was here the family often lunched together in private – and passed into what was known as the corner living room. It had not been redone in the stijl moderne, but rather left in the older classical style. And as Uncle Vanya and I carried the trunk around a small gilt table and two chairs, I looked over and saw Aleksandra Fyodorovna herself staring up at a large tapestry of a woman, her three young children gathered around her. It was after midnight, and despite the chaos swirling around the Imperial Family, the Empress just stood there, not so much as flinching.

“Why does the Empress stare at that rug on the wall?” I asked my uncle as we passed through the main doors from their apartments, the very doors once guarded by their faithful Negroes, the huge men dressed in turbans and colorful dress. “Who is the woman pictured?”

“Marie Antoinette,” he replied in his deep voice, leaving it at that, as if I should know.

Of course I didn’t have the faintest idea. We continued down the long hall to the rotunda, where all was gathered, but later, as I carried baggage from Aleksandra’s infamous mauve boudoir I saw a painting of the same woman hanging on the wall. As it turns out, this was the second thing I learned that night about the Tsaritsa, her obsession with violent death, which took the form of her fascination with Marie Antoinette. It seems that the Empress, so mystical, so fatalistic, had suspected for years what awaited her own family, though never in all of history has an imperial brood, the symbol of a nation, been so crudely butchered, children and servants and pets, all liquidated, all except a young kitchen boy. To hell with the kommunisty!

How strange is history. The Aleksander Palace was preserved as such, just the way the Emperor and Empress left it when they walked out the door. It was kept that way until World War Two, when the Nazis used it for their headquarters and the nearby Great Palace for a stable and garage. This was during the nine-hundred-day siege of Leningrad, as Peter – Sankt-Peterburg – had been renamed by the Bolsheviki, and those were the days of utter hell on earth. It was during this time that the Gestapo assumed the basement beneath the Tsar’s wing as a place of torture, and to this day the gardens of that stately palace are filled with an untold number of bodies. At the end of the war the palace and its rooms were damaged, but not horribly so – the German booby traps were found and defused just five hours before they were to blow – and Nikolai and Aleksandra’s apartments could have been easily restored. Instead, some Soviet general decided to wipe away any memory of Nikolai the Bloody and Aleksandra the nemka, the German. And so today, only two of Nikolai’s rooms remain, his gorgeous, stijl moderne office and his cozy, warm reception room, which the hypocritical Red general kept for his own personal use.

One other odd thing, and this concerns Rasputin. Late in the fall of 1916, before my time with the Romanovs, that mysterious monk with the long, greasy hair and sharp nose finally began to understand the hatred against him, that many powerful princes and grand dukes believed he was leading the dynasty and country to ruin. In fact, he correctly supposed that he would soon be dead, or more precisely murdered. With this in mind, Rasputin wrote a note to his Tsar and Tsaritsa, which was only delivered to them after he was killed by young Prince Felix Yusopov, who was married to the Tsar’s own niece, a pretty young thing who died just a short while ago, actually, in ’67.

In his prophetic letter, Rasputin wrote:

Tsar of the land of Russia… If it was your relations who have wrought my death, then no one of your family, that is to say, none of your children or relations will remain alive for more than two years. They will be killed by the Russian people.

Strange, is it not? Rasputin was murdered in December of 1916 – poisoned, stabbed, shot, and finally drowned. It took all of that to kill that powerful peasant, and he was right. Nikolai and Aleksandra, their children, and many other Romanovs – in total almost twenty – would be dead within the predicted time. How in the name of God did Rasputin, the holy mad monk, know this? It’s almost enough to make one a Believer.

So Aleksandra knew well what had happened to Marie Antoinette, just as Rasputin’s words reverberated in her chest with each beat of her weak heart. But let me make one thing very clear, the Romanovs never gave up hope. To the very end itself – even as they descended those twenty-three steps in the depth of that night – they never stopped praying, hoping, believing that they would be rescued by a storm of three hundred officers. Yes, there were many depressing hours in each one of those days, but Nikolai and Aleksandra kept praying to their God, kept hoping for dear friends to save them… friends, who in the end never appeared, which is perhaps not that surprising. After all, while 90 percent of the Russian people did not want them dead, the same 90 percent did not want them back on the throne either. Such was the horrible paradox – saving them would have meant restoring the autocracy, which was at that point untenable to almost all of Russia.

And so the long wait for the second note…

I found the first note to the Tsar and his family on the morning of the twentieth, and then carried a reply to Father Storozhev on the afternoon of the twenty-first. I think all of us were expecting, or at least hoping, that Sister Antonina would bring a reply on the twenty-second. Instead, she failed to appear, leaving us awash in anxiety.

How did the time pass?

Well, for starters, that morning of the twenty-second the weather on the street was glorious, sunny and pleasant, about sixteen degrees of warmth, but soon it was more than twenty Celsius inside.

“Dear Lord in Heaven,” moaned Nikolai Aleksandrovich, sweat beading on his brow, “it’s been two weeks now – two solid weeks – and they still haven’t decided whether or not we can open a window. It’s absolutely inhumane!”

“Of course it is, my sweetheart,” said Aleksandra Fyodorovna, standing behind him, a pair of scissors in her hands. “Now be still before I do you serious damage.”

“Better you than them.”

“I’ll hear no such thing.”

She’d cut his hair for the first time ever a month earlier; this was the second attempt. Just fifteen minutes earlier, Nyuta, the Tsaritsa’s maid, had laid a sheet in a corner of the dining room, then placed a chair atop that. And now Nikolai Aleksandrovich sat there trying to be still, which wasn’t his nature. Already he had paced for an hour around the dining table. He needed more time outside; a half hour once in the morning and once in the afternoon just wasn’t enough.

While the Empress was trimming his hair, my duty was to entertain the Tsarevich, and as such we were playing troika. He sat in the wheeled chaise, and I pushed, obeying his every command.

“Off into the woods – faster!” ordered Aleksei Nikolaevich.

“Alyosha!” beckoned his father. “Alyosha, I want you two to be careful. Am I clear?”

“Of course, Papa.”

As I slowed the vehicle of Aleksei’s imaginary escape, one of the girls appeared, the front of her frock all dusted white.

“Look at me, look at your Nasten’ka!” proclaimed Anastasiya Nikolaevna.

“What ever have you gotten into, dorogaya?” asked her father, entirely amused.

“Cook Kharitonov is teaching us how to bake bread.”

“Really?” said her mother, unable to hide her surprise.

“Yes, he showed us how to knead it, and it’s rising right now. I’m sure it’s going to be delicious.”

Nikolai Aleksandrovich smiled and said, “I have no doubt about that. Pretty soon you girls will know how to do everything in the kitchen.”

“I love you all and kiss you a thousand times!” she said with her usual flare as she spun and hurried off.

Aleksandra Fyodorovna smiled after her, and said, “In spite of everything, they’re growing up.”

“I suppose they are,” agreed her husband.

“I do hope Anya keeps growing, though. Her legs are too short, her waist is too thick.”

“That’s the least of our worries.”

“Yes, of course…”

Again the Heir ordered me off into the woods, and I turned the troika and started our pursuit of wild Siberian tigers and bears. Suddenly, however, a real monster appeared in the form of a guard, who blocked our route into the living room. He was tall, big-shouldered, had a long greasy mustache, and he wore a filthy tunic and rumpled, baggy pants. From his shoulder hung a long rifle with a rusty bayonet on the end, and hanging from his belt, of course, was a hand grenade.

“Get back,” he ordered.

I halted the chair and looked from the guard to the Tsar, then back to the guard.

“The women are here,” said the guard, his voice as deep as it was abrupt. “You must return to your rooms. They will wash the floors.”

“But can’t you see I’m cutting my husband’s hair?” protested Aleksandra Fyodorovna, glaring imperiously at him.

“By order of the komendant all of you must return to the far room.”

“Just five more minutes,” she said, not as question, not as a request, but as a statement of fact.

“Now!”

“But-”

Nikolai Aleksandrovich, brushing off his shoulders as he rose from his chair, calmly said, “Actually, Alix, I think you’re finished. If you take any more off I’ll be bald.”

I watched as she looked momentarily into the soft eyes of her husband, then, her eyes burning, turned her attention on the guard. Her lips trembled as if she wanted to lash out at him, her skin got all blotchy and red. And then in one quick swoop, the Empress threw her cutting shears on the dinner table, gathered up her long skirt, and stormed out of the dining room.

“You must forgive my wife – she slept poorly last night,” said Nikolai Aleksandrovich, starting after. “Come, Alyosha. Let’s get out of here so the charwomen can clean.”

I followed after my master, pushing the wheeling chaise and Heir out of the dining room, into the girls’ room, to the left, and into their bedchamber, where Aleksandra Fyodorovna stood, her face bowed into both hands. Weeping quietly, she shook, and I witnessed the Tsar go up and embrace her from behind. In the flash of a second, she spun around, throwing herself into his arms.

“There, there, my Sunshine,” he said, kissing the top of her head.

“Forgive me, Nicky. Forgive me, please, my darling. I know my greatest sin is my irritability. You know how hot-tempered I am. I want to be a better woman, and I try, I really do. For long periods I am really patient, and then out breaks my bad temper. It is not so difficult to bear great trials, but these little buzzing mosquitoes are so trying.”

“Of course they are, my dearest.”

“I long to warm and comfort others – you know I do – but I don’t feel drawn to those around me here. I am cold toward them, and this too is wrong of me.”

“All that matters is that we seven are together and safe.”

“Yes, yes, of course, my love. You’re right. Always right. Oh, how I love you, my treasure, my life. What bliss you have given me.” She sighed, pressed her cheek against his, and keeping her voice low, said, “But where is the sister today? Why didn’t she come with another letter? Oh, Nicky, I’m so scared. We will hear more, won’t we? Promise we will!”

“I swear with my heart, all my heart.”

I stood silent and still behind the wheeling chaise, and both Aleksei and I, as if staring upon a silent film, didn’t flinch, only stared on as the Tsar whispered something in her ear, and she half laughed and half cried, her polished nails digging into his muscular back. A few moments later I heard the rustle of clothing and turned to the open doorway. All four grand duchesses, their hands and long skirts powdered with flour for the first time in their lives, were looking upon their parents as well.

Hearing them, the Tsar turned, his face reddening. “Well, so, all of us are here, are we?”

Tatyana Nikolaevna, the second daughter and the most responsible of them all, softly said by way of explanation, “The floors are to be cleaned.”

“So they are,” replied her father as he tugged at his collar. “Gospodi,” dear Lord, “but it’s hot in here, isn’t it, children? So… who’d like to play a game of bezique?”

Thus, for the next two hours, we passed the time playing a type of pinochle, not just the seven Romanovs and me in the bedchamber, but Dr. Botkin, Demidova, and the footman, Trupp, all of us day by day compressing into one unit. Only cook Kharitonov was allowed to carry on as before, and his meager cooking filled the whole of the closed-up house with its smells. Potatoes, beetroot, and more compote. That was the lunch we later took at one o’clock, though by that time it was so stuffy, the heat so intense, that no one much felt like eating. Really, it was broiling in there, not a movement of air. On the street it was thirty degrees, so God only knew how hot it was inside.

The Reds had evicted the Ipatiev family with barely any notice, and after lunch the Emperor found one of Mr. Ipatiev’s own books, Sea Stories by Belamor, which the engineer had left behind as he fled. Choosing a passage, the Tsar read aloud to his son until close to two-thirty when we were allowed into the garden for an entire hour on account of the intensity of the heat. All of us went out, including the Empress. As innocent, as unsuspecting as they would be on the night of July 16-17, the Romanovs descended those twenty-three steps, passed out the door, and into that untidy little garden. Dr. Botkin and Trupp managed the rolling chaise, and Nikolai Aleksandrovich himself carried his son down the steps. I followed the girls who followed their father as he paced a circle, while the Heir and his mother took refuge from the fearful heat beneath the branches of a lilac bush.

There was nothing to cling to in our lives but our regimen, and at four-thirty, just as punctual as ever, I helped serve tea in the drawing room, where all seven Romanovs and Dr. Botkin were gathered. Cook Kharitonov sliced some of the fresh bread, which was still hot, and I carried it out on a plate along with a bit of butter, handed it to Demidova, who in turn placed it on the tea table. This produced no end of delight for the grand duchesses, who were quite proud of their creation. It wasn’t white bread, the preferred sort of the nobility, for both Aleksandra and Kharitonov had been carefully hoarding what little white flour we had for Aleksei, thinking it more healthy, more digestible. Rather these princesses had made real Russian chyorny khleb, black bread that was dark and earthy and so deliciously sour. An endless stream of questions and comments and praise followed.

I was just returning to the kitchen when the door burst open and six unknown men stomped into the room, led by none other than the komendant himself. A flash of unspoken terror shot through us all: Had Sister Antonina been found out? Was the rescue plot so quickly dashed?

His voice trembling like a schoolboy’s, Nikolai Aleksandrovich quickly pushed himself to his feet, and said, “Good afternoon, gentlemen. May I-”

Avdeyev looked in Nikolashka’s direction, and muttered, “S’yad!” Sit!

“But-”

“Sit down and be quiet!”

Good soldier that he was, the Tsar sank back down, and all of us watched in terror as this group of thugs moved from the drawing room, into the dining room, and then proceeded into the bedchambers. Maria Nikolaevna and I, peering through the open doorways, watched and tried to discern what they were saying, but of course it was impossible. Their voices were low and deep, a lot of grumbling went on. For what purpose had they come? I looked over at the Tsaritsa, who was clutching the Tsar’s hand, her eyes clenched shut in fright. Would they search the rooms, tear apart their things in search of evidence against them? Might the “medicines” be discovered?

But then… then…

The group of men was going from one whitewashed window to the next, and I whispered to Maria, “It looks like they’re checking out which windows can be opened.”

“They must be from the regional soviet.”

And so it became evident that they were in fact a soviet – a council, a committee – that had been formed to decide which, if any, windows might be unglued. For more than twenty minutes these Reds went from room to room, from window to window, discussing all this with the utmost intensity. They must have been terribly afraid of anarchists or conspirators – that is, worried that one group might take a shot at the Tsar through that open window, or fearful that another bunch might try to rescue their monarch via an opening. Finally, in the end they seemed to agree not to agree. Perhaps they had a report to make. Perhaps they were afraid of answering with their lives. In any case, this group of six men emerged from the bedchambers, staring at the Imperial Family as if they were circus freaks.

As they headed out, Nikolai Aleksandrovich rose again to his feet, pleading yet once more, “We would be most obliged for a single window to be opened. You can see for yourselves not only how hot it is in here, but how unhealthy it is. Please, I ask you to consider the health of my wife and children, all of whom are suffering.”

Komendant Avdeyev glared at his Nikolashka.

And the Tsar continued, saying, “On another matter, we would also be happy to be given any work. For example, we would appreciate the opportunity to clear the garden in the rear, which is quite a mess. I myself would greatly like to saw more wood – to cut and stack it.”

“At this point, nothing of that sort is permitted,” snapped Avdeyev as he and the others departed.

Depressed, forlorn, the Romanovs melted back into the heat, which could only be described as colossal. The family sipped at their tea and nibbled at the bread, which only minutes earlier had provided such joy, such pride, but was now only so much of nothing. After a few minutes Nikolai Aleksandrovich began to read aloud to his son, while Aleksandra Fyodorovna took out some cards and began to lay patience. Two of the girls played dominoes, but of course not for money, which Aleksandra, with her grandmother’s tight Victorian morals, would never allow.

Very little happened during the rest of the day, at least not until Vladimir Nikolaevich – Dr. Derevenko – came to check on the health of the Heir. By that time of day, nearly six, I was back in the kitchen helping Kharitonov with the preparations for the meager dinner that would be served at eight. Cutlets and leftover macaroni tart. It was Demidova herself, her face forlorn, who came into the kitchen.

“Vladimir Nikolaevich has arrived.” She tried not to say it, but could not restrain herself from whispering, “Neechevo.” Nothing.

So there was no news, no reply to our reply. Sure, even the Tsaritsa’s maid knew we were awaiting more news from the outside, for that was how the Tsar and Tsaritsa handled this. No one was excluded, which was very democratic of them.

“Leonka, the doctor requests hot water,” said Demidova.

“Da-s,” I replied.

A few minutes later, bearing a bowl of hot water, I walked into the bedchamber and found not just the doctor, but also Komendant Avdeyev himself seated at the foot of the Heir’s bed.

“Ah, thank you, Leonka,” said Vladimir Nikolaevich.

The doctor, who’d been using his special device to electrify Aleksei’s knee – and thereby stimulate circulation – placed the mechanism and tangle of wires aside. He then beckoned me forward.

“Come here, boy.”

And so I stepped toward him and held the bowl as he dipped in a cloth and wrung it out. For the next ten minutes, I didn’t move as the doctor applied warm compresses to the boy’s left arm. And during that entire time, Avdeyev just sat there, yawning, scratching his nose, not doing anything but making it impossible for the Emperor or Empress to pose a single question to Derevenko. Most disturbing, though, was that the doctor simply went about his usual business without any pretense that he knew something was going on. Not one of us spoke during his treatment of the Heir, and fifteen minutes later Vladimir Nikolaevich simply packed up his medical kit and departed without so much as raising an eyebrow. Or our hopes, for that matter.

Shortly before dinner the girls washed their parents’ pocket handkerchiefs. And later, after dinner, all of us gathered in the drawing room and listened to Nikolai Aleksandrovich read aloud. The heat and the lack of air continued to be intense, and I went to bed soon after Aleksei Nikolaevich. Sometime toward midnight a huge storm came upon us, the wind ferocious, the rain strong. The first crashes of lightning and thunder woke me, and then I lay awake for a long time, listening to the heavy drops beat against the metal roof of The House of Special Purpose.

Thus ended our first long day of waiting, which seemed extraordinarily calm in comparison to the next.