The House of Special Purpose

by John Boyne

  ‘Peter Ilyavich,’ I said, striding up to where he stood, trying not to be unsettled by the disgruntled manner in which he stared at me as I walked along, as if I was nothing more than a minor irritation in his morning. He held his cigarette in his mouth for a long time before allowing himself one final drag and tossing it to the ground, where he stamped it underfoot.

  ‘My friend,’ he said, nodding at me, his voice laden with sarcasm. ‘Good morning.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked. ‘Where is everyone? The train is deserted.’

  ‘They’re all up front,’ he said, glancing along the tracks towards the foremost carriage. ‘Well, those who are left, anyway.’

  ‘Left?’ I asked, raising an eyebrow. ‘What do you mean, left?’

  ‘Didn’t you hear?’ he asked me. ‘Don’t you know what happened last night?’

  I began to feel a great sense of dread build within me, but didn’t want to anticipate what he meant. ‘Just tell me, Peter,’ I pleaded. ‘Where is the Tsar?’

  ‘There is no Tsar any more,’ he said with a shrug, as if this was the most natural thing in the world. ‘He’s gone. We’re free of him at last.’

  ‘Gone?’ I asked. ‘But gone where? You don’t mean—’

  ‘He has renounced the throne.’

  ‘I know that much,’ I snapped. ‘But where—’

  ‘They sent a train for him in the middle of the night.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Our new government. Don’t tell me you slept through it! You missed a wonderful show.’

  I felt an immediate rush of relief – he was alive, then, which meant it was unlikely that any harm had come to his family either – but this was quickly replaced by a desire to know where he had been taken.

  ‘Why do you care, anyway?’ Peter asked me, narrowing his eyes and reaching forward to brush some dust off my collar, an aggressive action from which I reeled back.

  ‘I don’t care,’ I lied, sensing how the world had changed overnight, where the new dangers lay. ‘I’m just interested.’

  ‘Interested in what’s happened to Romanov?’

  ‘I want to know, that’s all,’ I insisted. ‘I went to bed and … I don’t know, I must have been exhausted. I slept through it. I didn’t hear any train.’

  ‘We are all exhausted, Georgy,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘But it’s over now. Things will be better from now on.’

  ‘What train was it?’ I asked, ignoring the obvious pleasure he was taking in the Tsar’s abdication. ‘When did it come?’

  ‘It must have been two, three o’clock in the morning perhaps,’ he said, lighting another cigarette. ‘Most of us were asleep, I suppose. I wasn’t. I wanted to watch as they took him away. The train came from St Petersburg, it stopped a mile or so along this rail. There were a group of soldiers on board with a warrant for the arrest of Nicholas Romanov.’

  ‘They arrested him?’ I asked, perplexed, but refusing to rise to the bait of his mocking name for the Tsar. ‘But why? He had done what they asked of him.’

  ‘They said it was for his own protection. That it would not be safe for him to return to the capital. There are riots everywhere there, it’s a mess. The palace is infested with people. The shops are being broken into in search of bread and flour. There’s anarchy throughout the city. His fault, of course.’

  ‘Spare me your editorial,’ I hissed, furious now and grabbing him by the collar. ‘Just tell me where they took him.’

  ‘Hey, Georgy, let me go!’ he cried, staring at me in surprise as he wrenched himself free from my grasp. ‘What’s the matter with you, anyway?’

  ‘The matter with me?’ I asked. ‘The man we have served has been taken into custody and you stand here smoking cigarettes like it’s any other morning.’

  ‘But it’s a glorious morning,’ he said, clearly astonished that I did not share his sentiments. ‘Haven’t you longed for this day?’

  ‘Why didn’t they take this train?’ I asked, ignoring his question and looking around at the Imperial transport, all fifteen carriages of it, which was stranded on the line now. ‘Why send a different one?’

  ‘Romanov is not to be allowed his luxuries any more,’ he told me. ‘He’s a prisoner, you understand? He owns nothing. He has no money. This train does not belong to him. It belongs to Russia.’

  ‘Until yesterday, he was Russia.’

  ‘But this is today.’

  I had half a mind to challenge him there and then, to wrestle him away from where he stood and punch him four square in the nose, daring him to retaliate, in order that I could take out my anger on him, but it was pointless.

  ‘Georgy Daniilovich,’ he said, laughing as he shook his head. ‘I don’t believe it. You really are the Tsar’s bitch, aren’t you?’

  I curled my lip in distaste at the remark. I knew that there were those among the Imperial entourage who despised the Tsar and all that he stood for, but I felt a loyalty to the man that could not be assuaged. He had treated me well, there was no question of that, and I would not deny him now. Regardless of the consequences.

  ‘I am his servant,’ I said. ‘Until my dying day.’

  ‘I see,’ he muttered, looking down at the dust beneath his feet and kicking the ground with the toe of his boot. I looked away from him, desiring no further conversation, and stared into the distance, towards the north, towards St Petersburg. There was no way that they would have taken him back there. If the riots were as bad as Peter Ilyavich had said then he would be torn limb from limb in the centre of Palace Square, and the Bolsheviks could not afford such a public blood-letting so early in their revolution. I turned back to Peter, determined to get more answers, but he was gone. Looking up towards the foremost carriage, I could make out the sound of different voices talking together loudly, arguing, but not so distinctly that I could hear what they were saying. To the left of the train I noticed two cars that had not been there the previous afternoon – more Bolsheviks, I presumed – and felt a sudden rush of anxiety for what might be about to happen.

  I had been reckless with what I had said to Peter Ilyavich; he was reporting me, even then.

  Swallowing nervously, I turned around and began to walk slowly towards the back of the train, increasing my stride as the final carriage came into sight. Looking over my shoulder I could see no one there, but I knew that I had only a few moments before they came for me. Who was I, after all, other than some lucky moujik who had made a strange success of his life? They might keep the Tsar alive – he was a prize, after all – but what was I? Just someone who had saved one Romanov and protected another.

  The forest opened up before me to my left; I crossed the tracks and leapt directly into the conurbation of firs and pines, cedars and larches that stood tightly packed together in the dense woodland. Through the rush of my breathing and the sweeping of the branches, I was sure that I could hear the voices of the soldiers following me, their rifles in their hands, determined to hunt me down. I hesitated for a moment and gasped for breath – yes, it was true, they were coming. I had not just imagined it.

  I was no longer a member of the Leib Guard; that portion of my life had ended. Now I was a fugitive.

  It was almost October by the time I returned to St Petersburg. It was difficult to know whether I was still in danger, but the thought of being captured and murdered by the Bolsheviks was enough to keep me one step ahead of anyone whom I thought might be pursuing me. So I had chosen not to return immediately to the city, preferring to lie low in towns along the way instead, sleeping wherever I could find a sheltered, secluded spot, swimming in streams and rivers to rub the stink from my body. I allowed my hair to grow long and a rough beard to cover my face, until I was almost unrecognizable as the youthful, eighteen-year-old soldier I had been at the end of the Romanov dynasty. My arms and legs became muscular from constant activity and I learned to kill animals, to skin and gut them, to cook them on an open fire, sacrificing their lives to save my own.

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p; From time to time I stopped in small villages and was offered labouring work for a few days in exchange for food and a bed. I would quiz the farmers for political news, and it surprised me that a provisional government which so prided itself on belonging to the people allowed so little detail of its activities to be made public. From what I could discover, a man named Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov – known to all as Lenin – was now in charge of Russia, and, in direct contrast to the Tsar, had moved his headquarters from St Petersburg to the Kremlin in Moscow, a place that Nicholas had always detested and had rarely visited. He had been crowned there, of course, like all the Tsars who preceded him, and I couldn’t help but wonder whether this tradition had been in Lenin’s mind as he chose his new seat of power.

  When I finally returned, St Petersburg – or Petrograd, as it had been officially renamed – had changed considerably, but it was still recognizable to me. The palaces along the Neva had all been closed down, and I wondered where the princes and counts and dowager duchesses had made their new homes. They were related to royal families all across Europe, of course. Doubtless some had fled towards Denmark; others to Greece. The more resilient might have travelled across the continent and sailed for England, as the Tsar himself had planned to do. They were not here, however. Not any more.

  Where once the banks of the river would have been dominated by horse-drawn carriages, transporting their wealthy occupants to skate on the frozen lakes or to enjoy merry evenings at each other’s mansions, they were now empty, save for the peasants rushing along the pavement, desperate to get home, to escape the cold and eat whatever scraps of food they had managed to gather during the day.

  It was freezing that winter, I remember that much. The air in Palace Square was so frosty that every time the wind blew, it bit at my cheeks and ears and the tip of my nose, forcing me to dig my nails into the palms of my hands to stop myself from crying out loud. I stood in the shadows of the colonnades looking at my former home, thinking how different things had been when I had first arrived here two years before, so naive, so innocent, so desirous of an existence different to the one that I had endured in Kashin. What would my sister Asya make of me now, I wondered, huddled up as I was against a wall, my arms wrapped around myself for warmth?

  She would think it my just reward, perhaps.

  I knew nothing of what had happened to the Imperial Family and had learned precious little as I’d travelled from village to village along the way. I assumed that they had been held for a short time and then sent into exile, Anastasia’s worst fear, transported across the continent to England, where King George would no doubt have welcomed them with a familial embrace and wondered what on earth he was supposed to do with these Romanovs who expected so much from him.

  Of course, it was Anastasia’s face that lingered in my mind throughout every day, as I continued my journey and during the nights, when I tried to sleep. I dreamed of her and composed letters and sonnets and all manner of foolish poetry in my head. I had sworn to her that I would never desert her, that whatever happened, I would be there. But it had been almost nine months since we had last seen each other on the night that she had visited me in my room at the Winter Palace, distraught about her family’s unhappiness. We hadn’t imagined that that would be goodbye, but the Tsar had chosen to leave early the following morning, before his family had risen, and it had been my duty to accompany him. I could only imagine how upset Anastasia must have been when she had woken and discovered me gone.

  Did she dream of me as I dreamt of her, I wondered, as I lay in barns and stables, peering through the cracks in the wooden beams above me at the stars above? Was she falling asleep at the same time, perhaps, staring at the crackling bursts of silver in a London sky, wondering where I was, imagining that I was lying out under the same night sky as she, whispering her name, begging her to believe in me? Those were difficult days. If I could have written, I would have done so, but where to write to? If I could have seen her, I would have walked across deserts, but where to go? I had no clues and only here, only in St Petersburg – yes, it would always be St Petersburg to me, never Petrograd – could I find someone to answer my questions.

  I had been back almost a week when I found the clue I needed. I’d picked up a few roubles that afternoon helping to unload barrels of grain into the storeroom of a new government-sponsored warehouse and had decided to treat myself to a hot meal, the kind that I rarely allowed myself to indulge in. Sitting by the fire in a warm, cosy saloon, eating a bowl of shchi and drinking vodka, trying to enjoy a few simple pleasures for once, to be a young man again, to be Georgy, I noticed a fellow a few years older than me sitting at the table next to mine, who became more and more drunk as the night wore on. He was clean-shaven and wore the uniform of the provisional government, a Bolshevik through and through. But something about him told me that I had found what I was looking for.

  ‘You look unhappy, friend,’ I said and he turned and stared at me for a moment, examining my face carefully, as if deciding whether I was worth bothering with.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, waving his hand in the air. ‘I was unhappy, it is true.’ He lifted the bottle of vodka in his left hand and smiled at me. ‘But not any more.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said, raising my own glass to him. ‘Za vas.’

  ‘Za vas,’ he said, draining his glass and pouring another.

  I waited a few moments and moved across to sit opposite him. ‘May I?’ I asked.

  He regarded me warily for a moment, then shrugged. ‘As you please.’

  ‘You’re a soldier,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. And you?’

  ‘A farmer.’

  ‘We need more farmers,’ he said with drunken determination, banging his fists on the table before him. ‘That’s how we get richer. Through grain.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said, pouring more vodka for us both. ‘Thanks to you, the soldiers, we will all get richer in time.’

  He exhaled loudly and shook his head, an expression of utter disillusionment on his face. ‘Don’t fool yourself, my friend,’ he said. ‘No one knows what they’re doing. They don’t listen to people like me.’

  ‘But things are better than they were, are they not?’ I asked, smiling, for even though he was dissatisfied with his lot, his allegiances most likely lay with the revolutionaries. ‘Better than when we lived under the Ts—under Nicholas Romanov, I mean.’

  ‘You speak the truth,’ he said, reaching across to shake my hand as if we were brothers. ‘No matter what else happens, we are all better off for those changes. Bloody Romanovs,’ he added, spitting on the floor, which led to a cry from the bartender to act in a proper fashion or be thrown out on to the street.

  ‘So what is the matter?’ I asked. ‘Why do you look so unhappy? Is it a woman, perhaps?’

  ‘I wish it was a woman,’ he replied bitterly. ‘Women are the least of my worries right now. No, it’s nothing, my friend. I won’t bore you with it. I had expected something from a petty bureaucrat in Lenin’s government today but was disappointed, that’s all. And so I’m drowning my sorrows to get over it. I will still be disappointed tomorrow, of course, but it will fade.’

  ‘You’ll have a hangover, too.’

  ‘That will also fade.’

  ‘You are close to Lenin?’ I asked, sure that I could find out what I wanted by flattering him.

  ‘Of course not. I’ve never met him.’

  ‘Then how—’

  ‘I have other connections. There are men in positions of power who hold me in great esteem.’

  ‘I’m sure there are,’ I said, anxious to be agreeable. ‘It is men like you who are changing this country.’

  ‘Tell that to my petty bureaucrat.’

  ‘Can I ask you …’ I hesitated, anxious not to appear too desperate for information. ‘Are you one of those heroes who were responsible for the removal of Romanov? If you were, say so now that I might buy you more drinks, for all of us poor moujiks owe you a debt of gratitude.’

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nbsp; He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not really,’ he admitted. ‘The paperwork, perhaps. That is all I had to do with it.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said, my heart leaping within my chest. ‘Do you think they will ever be allowed to return here?’

  ‘To Petrograd?’ he asked, frowning. ‘No, no. Definitely not. They would be torn asunder. The people would never stand for it. No, they are safer where they are.’

  I breathed a sigh of relief and attempted to disguise it as a cough. This at least was my first sure sign that they were alive, that she was alive.

  ‘They will be unused to the climate there,’ I said, laughing in order to win his confidence. ‘They say the winters there are cold, but they are nothing like they are here.’

  ‘In Tobolsk?’ he said, raising an eyebrow. ‘I don’t know anything about that. But they will be taken care of. The Siberian Governor’s house may not be a palace, but it’s a finer home than you or I will ever know. People like that know how to survive. They’re like cats; they always land on their feet.’

  It was all that I could do not to let out a cry of surprise. So they weren’t in England, after all. They hadn’t even left Russia. They had been taken to Tobolsk, beyond the Urals. Deep within Siberia. It was far away, of course. But I could turn around. I could go there. I could find her.

  ‘Of course, that is not common knowledge, my friend,’ he said, not sounding like he cared particularly whether I told anyone or not. ‘Where they are being held, I mean. You must not say that to anyone.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, standing up and throwing a few roubles on the table to pay for both our dinners and drinks as I left; he had earned that much, at least. ‘I have no intention of talking to anyone about this.’