The Curse of the Romanovs

by Staton Rabin

  “Yeah, right,” she said, in a tone that told me she still did not believe me. “No, I mean like what talents and abilities you might have. Intelligence, being good at playing the violin, things like that. That’s partly something you inherit from your parents. Hemophilia is one of only a handful of diseases that come from a defect in just one of those thirty-five thousand genes. We just have to fix one gene, and we’ve got it licked. I mean, scientists already know how to make white rabbits glow in black light by injecting them with genes from phosphorescent jellyfish. So, in theory, curing hemophilia should be a nobrainer!”

  She took a small glass bottle half-filled with clear liquid from a shelf and showed it to me.

  “Now, here’s a potential cure. This is adenoassociated virus, and scientists are trying to use this virus to help replace the broken gene with a healthy one. It’s a virus that causes nothing—but it’s similar to viruses that cause the common cold. So it’s a good way to ‘infect’ somebody with whatever you put in it. See, first you take the genes out of this virus, then you plug in a healthy gene that will make blood clotting factors. Next, you inject the virus containing the healthy gene for factor VIII or IX into a hemophiliac. And, presto! The virus replicates and carries the good gene throughout his body, making up for his defective one—and he’s cured.”

  “A cure? Do you think is really possible?”

  “Of course! At least that’s the theory—I’m going to attend a science conference about this in about a week. But in practice it hasn’t worked very well yet. Because most people’s bodies react to a foreign virus by producing antibodies to it, and getting inflamation. A kid even died from gene therapy!”

  “Oh. This is very sad that he died from … what you said.”

  “I’m trying to come up with a pill that can replace the damaged genes for factor VIII or factor IX so that the body won’t reject the cure.” She handed me a large pink pill. “Here’s one of the prototypes. Of course, since it’s only experimental, I can’t test it on people—that’s too dangerous, it’s against the law.”

  “What made you interested in this bleeding disease?”

  The expression on her face changed and she looked down at her hands.

  “Someone I knew died of it.”

  “The man whose clothing I am wearing.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Your papa.”

  “Yes.”

  “I am very sorry to hear this. I can imagine how terrible it must have been for your family.”

  “No you can’t.”

  Her words stung me, but I said nothing.

  Varda shrugged, as if talking about this was not painful for her. But I was not fooled.

  “Anyway, I was so young when he died, I barely remember him. He had the disease before they could make clotting factors through genetic engineering. Before the blood supply was safe. So he got AIDS from contaminated factor products.”

  “’AIDS’? You mean he got sick with some other illness?”

  “Yes.”

  “You will be great woman scientist, like Poland’s Marie Curie, da?”

  “Well, maybe someday …”

  I took her hand.

  “Little Peasant, if anyone can cure this terrible illness of the blood, I believe you can.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Varda, there are some things about me I must tell you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re the emperor of Russia.”

  “There is more.”

  “You’re the queen of the Nile?”

  “Nyet, no joke. Is important. I must tell you that—”

  Varda looked at her watch, which had big numbers, no hands.

  “Damn!—I’m already late for school. And I didn’t even have time to do the reading for social studies last night!” She started stuffing papers into a bag. “We’ll talk later.”

  “But, you must know that—”

  “Later! Look, I can’t leave you here by yourself. You’ll have to come with me.”

  “No! I must go home! My mother is in much danger.”

  “In danger? Why?”

  “Father Grigory—he may try to hurt her.”

  “You got a priest problem in Russia, too? Look, after school we’ll try to phone your family. Maybe they can wire you money for a plane ticket.”

  “Uh …”

  She’d put on her coat and was already halfway out the door.

  “Come on! I don’t have time to gab.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  WE TOOK A STREETCAR with no wires to Varda’s school.

  The girls at school had very short dresses and looked like painted ladies.

  I kept trying to hold up my big pants that were nearly falling down. But the parents here must be very poor because all the boys’ pants didn’t fit them, either.

  “God, we missed all of first period!” Varda said, looking at her watch as we hurried through the hall. “We’ll make it to social studies, though …”

  We saw a girl leaning against a wall, laughing.

  “Hey, Blanche!” Varda said to her. “What’d I miss?”

  “See that guy?” she said between laughs, pointing to a man whose back was to us. He was mopping the floor. “New janitor. He was cleaning the girls’ locker room—while some of the uptown girls were still changing for gym! When they spotted him, the girls ran out of there, screaming their heads off. Pretty funny, huh?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Did anyone report him?”

  “Nah. Probably just an accident. He doesn’t speak English very well—must have read his schedule wrong. Who’s your cute friend here?”

  “Just follow my lead,” Varda said, whispering in my ear. She turned back to Blanche. “He’s Alexei, my cousin from Russia. Alexei, this is Blanche.”

  “Da! Zdravstvuite!” I said.

  “You’d better sign him up quick for ESL,” Blanche said to Varda.

  Before I could say anything more, Varda grabbed me by the sleeve and pulled me down the hall.

  “Bye, Blanche, gotta run!”

  Then she brought me to her teacher in a classroom. “Talk English,” she whispered to me.

  “This is my cousin Alexei, visiting from Russia,” she told him. “Can he sit in on class, Mr. Brezhinsky?”

  “Of course!” he said, turning to me. “We’re studying your country now. I hope you’ll tell us all about it—the kids will be really fascinated to hear from a native Russian. What part of the country are you from?”

  “Tsarskoye SeIo, near St. Petersburg.”

  “You live in the old palace?”

  “Uh … he’s the gardener’s son,” Varda said, hurrying me to a seat.

  The teacher pulled down a map. I whispered to Varda.

  “Name of country on map is mistake.”

  “’Russian Federation,’” she read from it. “Did they spell it wrong or something?”

  Before I could say anything, the teacher spoke to the class.

  “Okay,” he said, “you all did the reading last night. Can anyone tell me when the Russian Revolution started?”

  I raised my hand.

  “Yes, Alexei? You’re our resident expert.”

  “1905.”

  “Uh—well there was a revolution that year, but we’re studying the one that came a few years after that.”

  I stood up.

  “After? Teacher is wrong! Revolution was in 1905.”

  “Uh—he’s just a little excitable,” Varda said nervously to Mr. Brezhinsky, nudging me back down.

  The teacher wrote some words on the blackboard: “Russian Revolution, 1917-1918.”

  When I left my homeland, it was December 1916. Holy Mother of God! What had happened to my country? To my family?

  I whispered anxiously to Varda: “What is this—this Revolution 1917?”

  “Hell if I know,” she whispered back. “I didn’t do the reading last night, remember?”

  “You—you have Russian history book?”

  “At home.”


  “Quiet back there!” the teacher said to us.

  I sprang to my feet again.

  “What happen in my country 1917? I command you to tell me!”

  The class burst out in laughter.

  “Oh, you do, do you?” Mr. Brezhinsky said. “Don’t they teach this stuff in your school in Russia? And they could use a course in good manners, too, I think…. Well, if you’ll just sit down and listen, young man, you might learn something. Can anyone tell me some of the causes of the revolution?”

  I snatched a book called History of Russia off a boy’s desk. But he made a face at me and snatched it back.

  A girl at the back of the room raised her hand. The teacher called on her.

  “The peasants and factory workers were starving and angry that a lot of them were dying in the war.”

  “Yes, Renatta! There’s a girl who did her homework. What else? Varda?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Brezhinsky. I didn’t have time to do my homework last night.”

  “Well, two points for honesty, at least. Do it tonight.”

  He pointed to a very big boy who had raised his hand.

  “Mitchell?”

  “Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra were vicious murderers. They didn’t care about the people’s suffering.”

  I sprang to my feet and grabbed the boy by the throat.

  “Liar!”

  “Crazy Russian!” the boy said, pushing my hands away and grabbing me by the shirt collar. “Let’s take this outside, paleface!”

  Mr. Brezhinsky bolted toward us and pulled us apart.

  “I won’t have this in my classroom! Alexei—go to the principal’s office! Now!”

  “Please!” Varda said. “He won’t do anything like this again. He’s just got… ADD. He didn’t take his Ritalin today. I’ll be responsible for him—I promise!”

  Mr. Brezhinsky shook his head at her, then stared at me and pointed to the door. “To the principal!” The teacher’s ears were red with anger. “Down the hall on the right!”

  Varda looked at me helplessly as I shuffled out the door.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “THE BIG MAN AT SCHOOL—‘principal’—he says I am ‘suspended’ This means what?” I said to Varda later that day.

  “Wow! Suspended! After only one day—you must have set some kind of school record!” she said. “It means they won’t let me bring you back tomorrow.”

  Varda and I were walking in a place she called “Rockefeller Center.”

  “I will not be here tomorrow,” I said. “I must go home.”

  “Oh,” she said, looking disappointed. “I know we’ve only known each other a short time. But … I will really miss you, Alexei.”

  “Me also.”

  “How will you get home?”

  “I do not know. Maybe I cannot go back the way I came. I—”

  She pointed to a big pine tree—the biggest one I had ever seen.

  “What do you think of the Christmas tree? Pretty cool, huh?”

  “Christmas tree?”

  “Yeah, you know, like, Christmas? December twenty-fifth.”

  “Russian Christmas is not till January.”

  “Oh.”

  “I miss Christmas trees. We do not have them in Russia anymore. It is German tradition, and we are at war with Germany.”

  “At war with Germany?” she said, looking at me strangely. “Russia hasn’t been at war with Germany since—”

  I did not want to explain. I had been planning to tell her all. But now I feared that if I told her the truth about how I had come to be here, she would never believe me. I would have to tell her soon, but the time was not yet right.

  Fortunately, she saw something that distracted her from our discussion.

  “Oh, look!” she said, pointing to a big pit below the street. “The ice-skating rink! Come on, we’ll rent some skates!”

  “I am sorry, I cannot.”

  “You don’t know how to skate?”

  “Da. I know how. My sister Anastasia teach. But I must not.”

  “What are you, chicken? Don’t be a baby!”

  I did not know what to tell her. She shook her head, looking bitterly disappointed.

  “Wuss,” she said. She walked away from me.

  “Varda! Wait!”

  “Yeah?”

  “I change mind. I skate with you.”

  Smiling, she walked back and pulled me by the hand. She borrowed the skates from a man in exchange for paper money, and quickly we were out on the ice.

  I clung to the rail, watching her skate with joy in my heart.

  “You dance like Pavlova!”

  “Like who?”

  “Great Russian ballerina. I have seen her dance at Mariinsky Theatre.”

  “Skate with me! You promised.”

  “No! I—It is forbidden!”

  “I will help you.”

  Slowly at first, she cured me of gripping the rail.

  “You don’t mind if I hold your hand like this?” Varda asked. “I mean, you’re not going to freak out on me again, are you?”

  “Nyet. I do not mind.”

  I looked into her blue eyes, searching for my courage, and found it there. Holding hands, we spun around the ice together making circles. We danced together, like Nijinsky and Pavlova. It was like flying! I felt free—maybe for the first time in all my life.

  “See!—you’re a natural!” she said. “You’re doing great!”

  “What is this English word you use before: ‘Wuss’?”

  She laughed. “Never mind.”

  I laughed too.

  And then it happened. The thing I had feared.

  I fell on the ice.

  I landed on one knee. I might be all right for a few hours, a few days. But I knew it was only a matter of time before the real trouble would begin.

  Varda helped me up.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “Everybody lands on their butt sometimes. Even me.”

  We returned the skates. A sound made me jump.

  “Your body—it—it is making music!” I said.

  “Oh, that’s just my cell,” she said, reaching into her back pocket. “You don’t have ring tones in Russia? That place is more backward than I thought!”

  She talked to the metal rectangle again.

  “Hi, Lanie. … Just ice-skating, with a guy who thinks he’s ruler of the universe…. It would take too long to explain. Can I call you later? … Thanks.”

  She turned back to me.

  “My friend,” she said, pointing to the metal rectangle—as if that would make it less strange that she talked to it. She folded it up and put it away.

  We walked down the street. I limped only slightly; Varda did not notice.

  I saw something that made me stop in my tracks.

  “What?” she said.

  “It’s—it’s the man with muscles holding up the world! From my dream!”

  She looked where I was pointing.

  “Oh, that’s the bronze statue of Atlas in front of the International Building. It’s been there practically forever. You saw it in a dream?”

  “Yes. I saw you in dream too. And you are more beautiful than I dream.”

  Varda blushed.

  “Hey, Romeo, you’re too young for me, remember?” she said.

  “What if I told you I am one hundred and six years old?”

  “I would say you’re pretty spry for an old guy.”

  It was getting dark. We took the streetcar with no wires back to Varda’s house.

  “Thank you for this day with you,” I said. “I will always remember. Even when I am one hundred and six.”

  “Me too.”

  “Varda, please tell me. What did your history teacher say in class about Russia after he sent me away?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, just some stuff about the 1917 Russian Revolution. You know: Rasputin, the Romanovs, it was really sad. And how the Bolsheviks assassinated the tsar and the whole royal family i
n 1918—even the children.”

  My heart froze.

  “Alexei! What’s wrong?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “STOP IT! JUST STOP IT!”

  Varda covered her ears and shook her head violently. She wept. We were back at her home now, and I had told her everything. My whole story.

  “I won’t listen to this anymore!” she said. “You know—you know, I was really starting to like you. And then you lie to me, and start talking crazy again!”

  “Is no lie! I am tsarevich. From 1916. You must believe me!”

  “Look, I admit you look a little like the Romanov kid in my Russian history book, but so what? Lots of people look like other people! If I can prove you’re not Alexei—I mean, without any doubt at all—will you stop talking crazy?”

  “You prove? How?”

  She showed me a book.

  “My biology textbook. See this photograph? It’s a DNA ‘fingerprint’—that’s a photograph of a person’s genetic code. In Russia just a few decades ago somebody dug up some old bones. They thought the bones might be from Tsar Nicholas II and the royal family. Scientists tested the genetic code from the DNA left in the Romanov children’s bones, and compared it to the code in living relatives of the Romanovs. They matched.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “If you are really a Romanov, your DNA—the gene code in your body—will be similar to the pattern in this picture. Do you believe me?”

  “Da.”

  She showed me what looked like a big X-ray.

  “See, here’s my DNA ‘fingerprint.’ Everybody’s DNA pattern is different—except identical twins—but people in the same family have similar patterns. I tested mine last week, so I’d have a ‘control’ pattern to compare other people’s DNA to.”

  Varda looked me straight in the eye.

  “If I test your DNA and prove you aren’t who you say you are, will you shut up about all this Alexei Romanov nonsense?”

  “Da, I promise. I trust you. But if you are wrong—”

  “Then I’ll bow down to you and believe everything you tell me. I’ll need a DNA sample. Here—take this Q-tip and rub it around in your mouth. That’ll collect some DNA from your cheek cells. Good. Now give it back to me.”

  She swished the cotton stick in a glass, and poured in some liquids from several bottles. Then she picked up a glass beaker.