Darya covers her eyes with her hands. So it was not a conspiracy, after all. The Tsarevich himself had shoved his amulet into the ambergris, where it remained buried for decades, right under her ignorant nose.
Suddenly his eyes light up and the mischievous boy of another era reappears. “You know what I did that night?”
“What night, Loves? There were so many nights.”
“No! There’s only one night. The night of bullets. I snatched a bit of ambergris out of the pillow you gave me and hid it in my fist for a very long time, until Avram gave me this locket for my ambergris.” He holds up the locket that had been hanging around his neck.
An icy wind stirs in Darya’s heart. She opens her purse, snaps it shut, then opens it again, digging her hand in. She can hardly bear to think of Alexei suffering as he has. She finds the kerchief-wrapped ambergris in her purse and hands it to him. “Here, Loves, replenish your locket. There’s more in my suitcase, more than you’ll ever need. You’ll never run out of ambergris again.”
He fumbles with the latch to unlock his locket. He does not ask how she survived that night or how she managed to find him. His world is enclosed in his head and in the four small rooms in which he wanders, his camera in constant frenzy as he searches for knickknacks—metal sheets, electrical wires, copper coins, nails, and pieces of rope to fashion primitive toys. On rare instances when unsolicited snatches of memory emerge, he locks himself in his room and sucks on a piece of ambergris until blessed amnesia takes over. The mind of a thirteen-year-old resides in the body of an old Jewish man who remains imprisoned in the cellar of the House of Special Purpose on the hot, humid night of July 16, 1918, when his family was slaughtered.
Chapter Forty-Six
Darya tosses the blanket off and, in the same clothes she traveled into Biaroza the day before, sits on the edge of a bed and rubs her eyes. She did not sleep all night, although the Bensheimers made every attempt to make the guest room comfortable. A vase of wild flowers and a jug of water stand on a coffee table in front of a sofa. A portable heater warms the room. Extra blankets and pillows are piled on a reclining chair. But such amenities mean nothing when decades of search have led her to this bitter truth.
Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov is a damaged man.
He is not up to the task of ruling Russia.
And she is not up to the task of redirecting her loyalties.
She, too, remains a hostage to her dreams and nightmares, to bathing rituals that take her back to her youth with Avram, to berries that keep her hope alive and her will steadfast.
She spent so long trying to find the Tsarevich that it never occurred to her that he might not want to be found.
The cold wind in her heart develops into a blizzard, and she fears she is about to die. Die at the worst time and in the last place she wants to be buried.
She tidies her clothes in front of the full-length mirror, then steps closer to examine the fan of wrinkles girthing her eyes, the sad turned-down corners of her lips, the burst of tiny lines around her mouth, and for the first time in her life, sees herself as the old woman she is. Did the deterioration begin decades ago when she left Tsarskoe Selo and entered the House of Special Purpose, a week ago when she left Ekaterinburg for the Sheremetev Estate, or yesterday when she came face to face with Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov?
A hesitant knock at the door startles her. She checks the green fluorescent numbers on the clock on the bedside table. Five a.m. She crosses the room and opens the door.
Wearing yellow checkered pajamas, uncombed hair falling over smoky eyes, Alexei offers her a timid smile. “Can I take your photograph?”
He sets on the coffee table a clothbound portfolio tied with twine, the cover embossed with the image of Moses. He directs his attention to the black focus knob on the camera, concentrating with the seriousness of a mathematician, fully engrossed in the process of manipulating the universe enclosed in the frame of his viewfinder, a tiny world over which he rules as he once had over the Alexander Palace. He begins to snap one photograph after another, capturing her forced smile, then her impatience at the consecutive flashes of light that startle her eyes shut, the frantic clicking of the camera that rattles her already frayed nerves, and her annoyance with pointless, expensive cameras that deliver immediate photographs like some sort of easy birth.
One by one, he pulls photographs out of the Polaroid and arranges them on the coffee table. First three, then six, eight, on and on. Every now and then, he locks his puzzled gaze with hers, wondering why she has stopped smiling, whether she is sad or upset at him.
He arranges the photographs on the tabletop, observes the developing images as they come into focus. Slowly, carefully, he shifts them around as if he is assembling a puzzle and it’s of utmost importance that each piece fit properly into the other.
She traces the growing rows of pictures, arranged in some order that eludes her. The collage seems to highlight a slow, inexplicable deterioration at the corners of her eyes, dark crescents under them, a sagging of her once round chin, a slight drooping of her arched eyebrows.
She slumps back on the sofa, holds her head in her hands, feeling faint and disoriented. “I am confused, Loves. Tell me what your pictures are about.”
“About you, Darya.”
It occurs to her that just as Avram’s paintings had introduced her to the young evolving Darya, these photographs, brutal in their bluntness, reveal the desperate woman she has become. Her hand plunges into her purse for a bit of ambergris to drop in her mouth, but finding none, she throws her shoulders up in resignation.
“Tell me, Loves. Are you happy here?”
“Happier now that I have the amulet and more ambergris.”
She shuts her eyes to ponder the profound simplicity of his reply. It never occurred to her that happiness could hinge on so little. A sense of peace she has not experienced for a long time washes over her. She wraps an arm around his shoulders and shuts her eyes to better enjoy a feeling of warmth that permeates her opal eye.
“Darya, are you still angry with me?”
“Don’t say that, Loves. I’m never angry with you. Do you remember our ritual? Good. Bend your head. Just like this. Now, repeat with me. You’ll grow up to live a long, healthy life. You’ll become our Tsar and rule until you are a hundred years old. I’m impressed. You remember every word. And here’s a kiss to keep you doubly safe.”
He smiles, a perplexed smile, as if not certain whether he is allowed to give free rein to his joy, to his sense of unexpected euphoria.
“What are you thinking, Loves? Do you want to say something?”
“Will you take me with you?” he asks.
“Oh, Loves! Nothing would make me happier. Nothing in the world!”
She suffered the Bolshevik Revolution, civil wars, and seventy years of Communist rule to hear these words from the Tsarevich. Yet she opens her mouth and says, “But this is your home, Loves. And I’ll have to go back to mine. An old woman like me can be a great nuisance. I can’t take care of you.”
“But look at the photographs, Darya. You are not old at all.”
She is taken aback by yet another developing scenario spread out on the tabletop, the closeup of her eyes that stare back at her from the photographs. A look of gentle acceptance floods her right eye, yet it is the left that makes her realize that what she felt in her opal eye just now is connected to the photographs. She holds one picture up to the light, places it back on the table, and leans over to scrutinize the rest. She rises to survey the reflection of her eye in the sheen of the lacquered tabletop, in the windowpanes, and one last time in the mirror. “Am I going mad, Loves? Is this true, or am I imagining this?”
“Your eye?” he asks without a shred of surprise.
“You see it too?”
“Of course. It happens all the time.”
“People change in your photographs?”
“For real. See, you’re not broken anymore.”
“Thank you, Loves.
It’s wonderful to see myself and you…well…everything in a way I didn’t before.”
She unclasps her necklace, strokes the enameled Fabergé egg, and snaps it open to inhale the sweet and bitter scent of her joys and sorrows, the ups and downs of her two lives. She locks it around Alexei’s neck. “Here, Loves. Now you have two lockets.”
She digs out the pouch of jewels from her purse and plants it in his hand. “Give this to Viktor and Greta. They raised you well.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Clad in the Tsarina’s once white tulle gown that had inherited the dusty shade of the roads she traveled, Darya sets her valise down and leans on the Tsar’s cane, the double-headed eagles, the shaft smooth with the patina of time and polishing oils. She is home at last. Tired from days of traveling from Ekaterinburg to the Crimea to Biaroza and back again. A month away from home seems like an eternity, and she expects to find her Entertainment Palace surrounded by a hostile army, even razed by one or another political faction. Instead, a few birch and linden saplings and a handful of cedars raise their emerald shoots out of the earth, startling the gray landscape of her coffee bushes.
She inhales deeply, surprised to find the air laced with the sweet vanilla and chocolate scent of the coffee Little Servant brews for her, rather than the stink of rot that the hallucinogenic berries have a way of scattering in all directions.
She lifts her suitcase and takes a few steps toward her home, a breeze sighing about the treetops. She gazes up at the scattering of white clouds overhead. A change is in the air, a damp drift that foretells rain. The chatter of birds reminds her of the birds of paradise, and she wonders whether they, too, were forced to readjust their loyalties.
She is startled by the sight of two people walking out of the gateway to her back garden, a swirl of white butterflies on their trail. Her butterflies are not social creatures. Why, then, are they out en masse as if drawn to some fragrant nectar? Who are these strangers with wide-brimmed hats concealing their faces, a veil tossed over the face of one?
Darya retreats into the tree boundary surrounding the vast grounds of her palace and shades her eyes against the sun to take a better look.
The outlines of the intruders move seamlessly under loose, capelike coats with flowing sleeves as they continue to glide ahead, one adjusting the veil, the other waving a hand in front to clear their field of vision. They amble through the bushes, cats and wild civets weaving in and out of their legs. They stop to study the crumbling façade of the palace, gaze up behind them to appraise the gathering clouds on the horizon, then take their time to stroll around, as if surveying the grounds.
Are they waiting for her, Darya wonders? She pinches her cheeks to instigate a blush, pats her hair into place, and brushes leaves off her skirt. What a useless act, she muses, to tidy herself in case of company. Avram is dead. Alexei is imprisoned in his own world. The Ancient One has abandoned her. Who else is left to pay her a visit?
The strangers come to a stop in front of the house, and as if on cue, the door opens and out walks Little Servant, wrapped in a blanket and shivering uncontrollably. A metal watering can in hand, he glances this way and that as if to make sure his mistress has not returned and is not watching him. The two flank him like angels or thieves, collaborators perhaps in a plot as he kneels down, pries the can open, and places the lid at his feet. He pours liquid from the can over a bush. He plunges his hand under the folds of his blanket and pulls out a small box, strikes a match, holds up the flame like a miniature beacon, the breeze transporting the smell of phosphorous. He drops the match on the gasoline-saturated bush. He empties the can, striking match after match while the couple fan the growing flames with their flowing sleeves.
Darya sits on her suitcase, concealed behind the gathering of trees. She stares into the fire as if she is young again and gazing into Rasputin’s unforgiving eyes, which had the power to thrust her into her past life and into a fire of death and renewal. The steady rhythm of her heart drowns out the chirping of birds, the yowl of cats and wild civets. All she hears is the blood running strong in her veins.
Little Servant picks handfuls of coffee cherries off the bushes, tosses them on the sputtering fire, upends the can of gasoline, and steps back. A sudden flare blooms like a corsage of red roses, and the plump cherries melt like sugar in hot tea, the sap snaking in and around shrubs, stumps, and saplings, making its way toward the foundation of the Entertainment Palace.
Darya is startled into action. She steps out from behind the trees to hurry ahead and stop the fire from consuming her home. She hesitates, settles back on her suitcase. She sees no reason to save a home that has inherited the stench of her memories, neither is she in a hurry to retrieve the rest of the Romanov jewels that remain concealed under the wooden floor planks in the cellar. What use would these jewels be to the Tsarevich now? She thinks of her friends, the beady-eyed rats that have grown fat on stolen provisions. She thinks of the ambergris, thankful she had the foresight to deliver a large part of it to the Tsarevich. But most of all she thinks of her portrait on the mantelpiece in the upstairs salon, a gift of love from Avram. This she will certainly miss.
The silence is broken by an explosion of slick, golden flames that illuminate the surroundings, the crackle of bushes, the wails of cats and wild civets, the cacophony of birds, and the squeal of squirrels. A flock of birds bursts out of the branches and soars overhead, disoriented in the fragrant smoke and flames that hiss and dance in concert.
Her butterflies, wings rainbows of livid colors, soar to unimaginable heights and disappear from her field of vision. Are they gone, her butterflies? Left without a flutter of a farewell? And then she sees them appear from behind a low cloud, a flurry of white snowflakes floating down toward her, adorning her ermine collar, enfolding her arms and shoulders, crowning her hair, and cascading over her curls like dazzling bridal veils.
Little Servant is astonished at the ferocious determination of the blaze to clear everything in its path. His intention was to light a small bonfire to warm himself, but this beastly fire seems to have a will of its own, spreading uncontrollably in all directions.
He flings his blanket into the flames and flees toward the city.
Darya’s gaze follows her servant’s flight into Ekaterinburg, a city of cement and concrete, a city of shame teeming with an amnesic generation that keeps igniting mindless wars that will devastate for centuries.
The strangers, with their cloaks as graceful as diaphanous wings, continue to amble around the grounds, as if enjoying the vista of burning saplings, flaming birch, the smoldering of every blessing and sin in their path.
Darya lifts her suitcase, steps into the open, waves, and calls out, “Who are you?”
They beckon to her as they stride toward the flames, their flapping cloaks and sleeves scattering delicious warmth her way. One raises an arm and gestures toward her with open palm. The other flings the veil back with one fluid motion. Darya recognizes her mother’s face that is dazzled by the flames and her father’s inviting smile, before the two hold hands and walk into the fire.
A delicious breeze strokes Darya’s cheeks as if the blaze has opened a door. She is hesitant, uncertain what she might find on the other side of the door, whether it will be better than what she will leave behind. Rasputin had prophesied that she would be doomed to come back again and again until she rights the wrongs committed in her other life. Has she? Did she turn her back on Alexei? She is not certain.
She snaps her purse open and rifles inside for any cash. Enough to purchase a train ticket back to Biaroza. She lifts her suitcase and raises a hand in a gesture of farewell to her parents.
Then he emerges. Avram Bensheimer. As if summoned by some incantation, he ambles toward her with that feline stride that challenges gravity, staring into her face with those green-flecked eyes, tall and defiant as she had seen him for the first time in the St. Petersburg court. His shoulder-grazing hair reflects the colors of his palette; his crooked smile appears
the instant he catches sight of her. He comes closer, nodding his salutations, gesturing to the opal wedding band on her finger, promising her that this time is different and that he will not lose this last chance to be with her.
Author’s Note
When I embarked on writing my first two novels, Harem and Courtesan, I did not know where and how my story would begin, nor did I know when and how it would end. Yet, I was intimately familiar with my main characters, with their looks, their likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, and their many eccentricities. I also knew they were determined individuals, even if I was unaware yet of the extent of their bullish tenacity. Having been blessed with a colorful cast of eccentric family members, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends, I’ve gathered a treasure-trove of fodder to draw from, all types of traits that would find home in my protagonists, men and women, who led me through the ups and downs of their lives, surprising me at every page. And I utterly enjoyed the element of surprise, the excitement of not knowing what they would do next and how their story would unfold.
But the way I came to write The Last Romanov was quite different.
I was introduced to the shattered, acid-drenched, and burned bones of my main characters, the last Romanovs, on July 18, 1991, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the fall of Communism. The advent of Perestroika by Gorbachev and the policy of openness enabled the government to announce to the world that the remains of the Romanovs were discovered after seventy-three-years. Yet, the mystery surrounding the 1918 Bolshevik executions of the Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, and their five children remained unsolved. About one thousand bone fragments were exhumed, but only nine skulls discovered, whereas eleven people—the Romanov Family and four servants—had been murdered in the cellar of the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg. Russian scientists began the lengthy process of skeleton identification. With the help of photographic superimposition, initial tests concluded that the missing bodies were those of the Grand Duchess Maria and the Tsarevich Alexei. Another forensic team, this one American, travelled to Ekaterinburg in 1992 to analyze the dental and bone specimens. This time, it was concluded that the missing daughter was Anastasia. To make sure, a Russian DNA specialist took some of the bones to Britain for genetic testing. The mitochondrial DNA—passed down only through the female line and sharply dissimilar from one family to another—from the remains of the Tsarina and three children were compared with that of Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, whose maternal grandmother, Princess Victoria of Hesse, was Alexandra’s sister. The match was identical.
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