by Staton Rabin
“Hah! Very funny. Romanov family trust me someday to run whole country. I think you can trust me with telephone.” I pointed to a symbol on it. “What is this here? Three letters and two ladders twisted together.”
“It’s my personal icon: my initials—V-E-R—plus a double helix, the symbol for DNA.”
“Icon? You mean like holy icon?”
“Uh … not exactly. It’s more like my signature so I know it’s my phone. I’ll leave both phones’ video switches on. When you call me, I’ll see a moving picture of you, and you’ll see me talking too.”
“Everyone here walk around with telephone! Why do you stick like glue to telephone?”
“Somebody may be trying to reach me. It could be something important.”
“Someone always trying to reach my father. He does not walk around with telephone. You are more important than tsar?”
“Listen, we’ll talk about that another time. I’m going to be late for school. One more thing: This phone is also a text messager. You just type in words on this little keyboard, press this button, and I will receive them. Like sending a letter. Okay?”
I nodded. She handed me a piece of paper.
“Here’s a list of text message codes. It’ll give you short ways to type certain words. It saves time and money. Uh … I mean, rubles.”
“Da. Time and rubles. Good.”
I looked at the list.
”‘IMHO’ mean ‘in my humble opinion.’ ‘ILUVUWAMH’ mean ‘I love you with all my heart.’”
“Right,” Varda said. “Memorize that list. I gotta go; I’ll see you tonight.”
I tapped out some letters on the little telephone: ICU2NITE. “Is almost like typewriter I have at home!”
“Great! You’re getting the hang of it!”
After Varda left, I went into the other room and sat at the eating table. Her mother came into the room carrying wet clothing.
“I found this in the hamper. Alexei, is this your … uh … uniform?”
“Da. Hello, Varda’s mother.”
“Please—call me Mrs. Rosenberg. Wow! All you kids dress like rock stars these days. Well, I’ll just put these clothes in the dryer. What do you want me to do with the medals?”
“You keep. I have no use for them now.”
“Uh, thank you. That’s very thoughtful of you, Alexei. But I think you should keep them. By the way, I left some clothes for you on the chair outside your room—I borrowed them from a neighbor boy who is about your size.”
“Spasibo.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Better. Bed is soft. Better than home. I sleep on metal army cot at home.”
“Army cot? They are drafting twelve-year-olds in Russia?”
“Nyet. But I go with my father when he is with army”
“Your father is in the army?”
“My father is head of whole army!”
“Really. And he finds time to run a chain of movie theaters, too. You know, we really must telephone your parents. They must be terribly worried about you.”
“Da. And I worry very much about them. But your telephone will not reach so far.”
“Homesick?”
“Excuse please?”
“I mean, you seem very sad. Are you missing your home?”
“Da. Very much.”
“Where’s Varda?”
“She left already for school,” I said.
“Without you?”
“I am suspended. I am very bad exchange student.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Can I get you some breakfast?”
“Nyet. I am not hungry.”
“Please—you must eat!”
“All right. Blinis. Borscht.”
“Uh … How about bacon and eggs?”
“Good. Spasibo, Mrs. Rosenberg”
“You’re so polite! That’s so rare in a young man these days.”
She mixed up some eggs for me at the stove.
“Mrs. Rosenberg, is Varda healthy?”
“Healthy? You mean, does she have hemophilia?”
“Da.”
“No, she doesn’t. But she’s a carrier because her father had the disease. Why do you ask?”
“I wonder if she have healthy children.”
“Oh. Well, we can’t know for sure in advance. Do you want to marry my daughter?”
“Even more than I want to be tsar! Why do you laugh?”
“I don’t mean to laugh. Here are your eggs…. Slow down, Alexei! You eat like you haven’t eaten in a century!”
“It is very difficult to have family that is sick, da?”
“Da,” Mrs. Rosenberg said sadly. “It was very hard on Varda when she lost her father. I don’t think you ever get over something like that. I—I try not to lose my temper with her—I do! Really. But it’s been very hard on me, too. Sometimes—sometimes I think I’m a terrible mother!”
She put her head down on her arms and wept. I didn’t know what to do. I patted her on the hand.
“Mrs. Rosenberg, I do not think you are terrible mother. You are good mother to me.”
She looked up at me with grateful eyes.
“Thank you, Alexei,” she said, wiping her tears. “And, Alexei?”
“Da?”
“I think you are a very good exchange student.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I STOOD IN MY ROOM at Varda’s house, looking in the mirror at myself. The clothes her mother had borrowed for me were very strange. There was a little fabric tag sewn inside the shirt that said: LANCE ARMSTRONG. The mother of Lance, the boy who owned these clothes, must have sewn his name into them so he wouldn’t lose them. The shirt had a word on the front in big letters: LIVESTRONG—spelled backward in the mirror. But the shirt and trousers fit as well as if they’d been made for me by our imperial tailor.
I looked at the titles on Varda’s shelf of books. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. That one, of course, I knew before. But: Captain Underpants? Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants? Lots of Pants. Rich Dad, Poor Dad. That one must be about revolution. Hmmm…. The Slow-Carb Diet. I wondered if the Diet in the city of Slow-Garb was anything like our Duma.
Not knowing how else to occupy myself, I sat down in a chair and stared at the wall. Thoughts came to me that I had tried so hard to push from my mind. What in the name of Saint Serafim would my family think had happened to me? What would Cousin Felix tell them? Certainly not the truth! That he had poisoned and shot Father Grigory, and I mysteriously vanished when they were dumping his body in the icy Neva. My poor mama and papa would be half-crazy from worry about me! They’d think Felix must have killed me, too!
Where would the revolutionaries take my family? Would they hurt them—God, I pray not torture them!—before they killed them? What would these cruel beasts do to my beautiful sisters? The Bolsheviks and their like! They had thought nothing of blowing Great-grandpa Sasha to bits—and Uncle Serge, too! They would stop at nothing—nothing!—to destroy my family. And I had no power to save them!
I looked out the window and watched the boats going calmly by on the gently flowing river. A world away from the Neva. A world away from my world.
Suddenly an idea came to me. Hand trembling with excitement, I pushed the button on Varda’s telephone. Her voice answered, and her pretty face appeared on the telephone’s little screen.
“Hi, Alexei. What’s up?”
“I think I figure out how I can return home!”
“Huh? I can only talk a minute. I’m in the school basement, and my cell might cut out. I’m waiting for the janitor. We had a great talk at lunch yesterday after you left school. He was really curious about you, because you both come from Russia and he saw us together.”
“Da?”
“I promised him I’d look over some boxes of chemicals in the basement for bio class today and tell him which ones are safe to store near the heating pipes. What did you need to tell me?”
“Varda, I look at river today, and is flowing backwa
rd again!” She sighed.
“Is that all? I already explained that to you. It’s an estuary. I gotta go—”
“Nyet! Don’t you see? Hudson River can flow both directions. Maybe so can river of time!”
“What do you mean?”
“If I imagine red river in my mind flowing other direction—backward—maybe it will take us back in time to my family!”
“Alexei—are you sure?”
“Nyet. But we must try! Come home, Varda. Now!”
“I can’t come now. Mr. Efimovich will be here any—”
“Efimovich?”
“I told you—the new janitor. What’s the matter? You look as pale as—”
The phone dropped from my hand. I picked it up and put it back to my ear.
“Varda! You still there?”
“Yes.”
“You must tell me! Quickly! What does this Mr. Efimovich look like?”
“What difference does—”
“Please, Varda! Is important!”
“Well … a little weird, actually, but he’s a nice man. He’s got this long, ratty-looking dark beard. His face has scars all over it—he told me that he was in a terrible plane accident. And his eyes … well, they’re hard to describe. But when he looks at you, they seem to be staring right into—”
“Varda, leave basement immediately! Do you hear me? Now!”
“But—”
“I command you to leave! You are in danger!”
“Don’t be silly!” Varda’s face looked annoyed. “You ‘command’ me, do you? Well—”
Varda’s face disappeared from the telephone’s little screen. I heard a muffled scream.
“Varda? Varda!”
“Twinkle, twinkle, little tsar…”
Mother of God!
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
FATHER GRIGORY’S MANGLED FACE, like a grinning demon from hell, replaced Varda’s on my telephone screen. He threw back his head and laughed till his gold teeth showed.
Then the screen went black.
I limped as fast as I could toward the door and down the hall.
“Alexei! Where are you going?” “I am sorry, Varda’s mother! I must go!”
Outside I waved frantically to those yellow automobiles that had taken me to Varda’s house. Many went by. They would not stop for me.
“Stop!” I shouted as another one went by slowly. “I am Tsarevich Alexei, heir to the Russian throne!”
The automobile stopped.
I limped to the front door where the driver sat. The man rolled the half-open window all the way down.
“This one,” the driver said, shaking his head, “I gotta hear. Get in, kid. Where you want to go?”
“Bring me to Varda’s school! She is in danger! Hurry!”
“Listen, buddy. There are twelve hundred public schools in New York. Work with me here. Which one?”
“I do not know.”
The driver shook his head. “Sorry. Can’t help you.”
He started to roll up the window.
“Nyet! Wait! School was called P. S.!”
The driver shook his head again. “Sorry, kid. All of them are P. S. Gotta go.” He rolled the window all the way up.
“Please, do not go!” I shouted through the window as he started to pull away. I pounded on the window. “I remember—school had number on building!”
He stopped the car. “Huh?” The man couldn’t hear me.
I held up the fingers of both hands.
“P. S. 10?”
I nodded my head up and down quickly many times.
He rolled down the window.
“Okay, kid, that’s more like it. Get in.”
We stopped in front of Varda’s school.
“Look, buddy, I know New York is the melting pot and all.” He looked at the coins I had handed him. “But I got no use for this kind of money.”
“Is all I have! Kopecks is good money!”
“Yeah, I’m sure it must be good someplace. But it ain’t any good here. Pay up or I’m taking you down to the police station.”
“Police? No, please! I must go! My friend is in danger! My father will pay you. He has bank account in England, can get American money!”
The man sighed. “All right, kid. Write down his name and address on this pad.”
I did what the man said, then hobbled quickly up the stairs of the school. As I opened the big metal doors, I heard the driver shouting after me.
“‘Emperor Nicholas II, Alexander Palace, Tsarskoye—’ Hey! Come back here!”
I limped quickly down the hallway, and ran right into a girl who was carrying books in her arms. The books tumbled to the floor.
“Watch where you’re going, you dweeb!” I helped her pick them up.
“Sorry! Where is basement?”
“Down there,” she said, pointing.
I scrambled down the stairs.
“Alexei!” I barely heard Varda’s strangled shout.
Father Grigory’s arm was wrapped tightly around her throat. Her eyes sent out a desperate plea for my help.
“Dobryi den’!” Father Grigory said to me calmly, bowing his head slightly. “You must be tired. Sit down, make comfortable.” He pointed to a chair in the corner of the basement. “Young lady and I expecting you. You forgive if we have no plate of bread and salt to welcome tsarevich.”
“Let her go!”
“Patience, Alyoshenka, patience. Not just yet.” He ran his finger down Varda’s cheek. “I am enjoy conversation with this pretty girl.”
“If you hurt her, I’ll—I’ll—”
“You will—what? Guns and poison do not finish off Grigory. But you? Pinprick is enough to kill Alexei! Right, pretty girl?”
He squeezed her neck more tightly. Varda made a noise like she was choking.
Desperate to help her, I stumbled toward them.
“Take off socks and shoes,” Father Grigory ordered.
“What?”
“Do what I say!” Father Grigory ordered. “Or pretty girl’s face not be so pretty anymore.”
Keeping one eye on him and Varda, I took off my socks and shoes and tossed them aside.
With his free hand Father Grigory reached inside an open cardboard box.
He grabbed a few glass chemical bottles.
SMASH!
He shattered the bottles on the hard cement floor.
I cringed, trying to protect my face and eyes.
CRASH! SMASH!
“You want to save pretty girl? Go ahead! They say the fakirs in India walk across hot coals. Let’s see tsarevich walk across this!”
He threw more and more bottles, until the whole floor between me and Varda was an ocean of broken glass.
“Let her go! I am your sovereign. In the name of the Russian crown, I command you!”
Father Grigory made a clucking sound with his tongue. “You forget, Alyoshenka. We are in America, now. Land of free, where even humble peasant from Siberia can rule! You are not tsarevich here.”
“You want to kill me? Let go of Varda, and you can have me!”
“Ah!” Father Grigory said. “A trade—like rabbit for mule. It is deal! Are you mule? … Or are you frightened little rabbit?”
There was no time to listen to my fears. I knew what I had to do. I took the first steps toward them across the field of broken glass.
“Alexei—don’t! You’ll bleed!” Varda said.
But I kept on walking—slowly, step by unbearable step. I could see my blood seeping between the shards of glass like rose petals falling on ice.
As I walked, I secretly slipped my hand into my pocket and pressed the button on the telephone.
Varda’s telephone, which was on the floor where it had fallen, began playing loud music. The same notes, over and over again.
Confused, Father Grigory swiveled his head around.
“What? Where—where is horrible music? Stop noise!”
I caught Varda’s eye and winked. She understood that I
had a plan. She winked back.
“It’s nothing, just my telephone,” Varda said to Father Grigory. “I’ll shut it off. Just let me bend to get it.”
“Da!” he said. “But make quick!”
Father Grigory loosened his grip on Varda only enough so that she could pick up her telephone. I hoped that she knew what I wanted her to do: press the receive button.
“BldofZar,” I typed on my telephone with my thumb, “on 321.”
I watched Varda’s face as she glanced at her telephone. I could see her nod slightly, ever so slightly. She understood!
Gritting my teeth against the pain, I continued my unbearably painful journey across the floor of broken glass, counting backward from desyat. Now only a half-dozen feet separated me from Varda! Just a few more steps, and …
“Very good, little mule,” Father Grigory said to me. “You are braver than I thought. But Father Grigory change mind.” He ran his rough fingers slowly through Varda’s hair as she cringed. “Seems such a waste to free pretty girl. I think I kill you—and keep her!”
Holy Mother, please let this work! I shut my eyes and pictured in my mind the red river of time—flowing backward.
“Three … two … one,” I said soundlessly, my lips barely moving. I knew that Varda could see my face on her telephone screen. Quickly, I reached out my hand to her, and she grabbed it.
“Mother of God, Blood of the tsar, I have no fear, Now send me far!” we shouted together.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“MOVE ALONG THERE. STAY IN LINE!”
“Ow!”
A man wearing a strange uniform pushed me with the butt of his rifle. The red river I’d pictured in my mind seconds before was replaced by something real: the red flag he carried on a pole. Varda and I found ourselves outdoors, at the end of a long line of peasants.
“Leave him alone!” Varda said to the man, who scowled at her.
“They say that even their toilet seats are made of gold!” a woman wearing a babushka said to the old lady standing next to her in line.
“Where are we?” Varda asked me.
I looked around, hardly daring to believe my eyes.
“Home. Tsarskoye Selo.”
“Then why are all these people here?”
“I—I don’t know,” I said.
