The Kitchen Boy

by Robert Alexander

  With the help of God and your sangfroid, we hope to succeed without taking any risk. One of your windows must be unglued so that you can open it at the right time. Indicate which window, please.

  The fact that the little Tsarevich cannot walk complicates matters, but we have taken that into account, and I don’t think it will be too great an inconvenience. Write if you need two people to carry him in their arms or if one of you can take care of that. If you know the exact time in advance, is it possible to make sure the little one will be asleep for one or two hours before the escape?

  The doctor must give his opinion, but in case of need we can provide something for that.

  Do not worry: no attempt will be made without being absolutely sure of the result.

  Before God, before history, and before our conscience, we give you this solemn promise.

  An Officer

  Although at that time I didn’t know what was said specifically in the second letter, it soon became apparent that our rescuers were progressing with their plan and circling ever closer toward our salvation. Sure, I perceived this because the entire Imperial Family took on an air of near gaiety, a lighter tone such that was otherwise seen only when the Heir was in good health and spirits. And just as I was not witness to the Tsar reading the note, nor was I witness to him replying to it. I assumed then, as I still do to this day, that they commenced a reply almost at once, because for the rest of the morning, while I busied myself helping Kharitonov, all the Romanovs were busy with their books and their diaries and their letters. Da, da, they wrote a good many letters from their captivity to Nikolai’s mama, the dowager or as she was referred to, the older empress, who was under house arrest in the Crimea, as well as letters to Aleksandra’s sister, Grand Duchess Ella, the nun, who was under arrest not far away in Alapayevsk, and to their friends like Anna Vyrubova and the such. That was how things appeared for the rest of the morning, business as usual. They went to great lengths to make it appear so. Several of the children even studied too, including Olga Nikolaevna, who at one point took her writing tablet, a French novel, and her French-Russian dictionary to her father for his assistance.

  “Papa, I’m having trouble with this translation. Would you help me?”

  “With pleasure, dochka moya.” My little daughter.

  It seemed so natural that the Tsar would help his daughter with French. Nikolai, of course, spoke beautiful, proper Russian, and very nice English and French. But never German. No, I never heard him or his bride speak the language of her native land.

  So Nikolai and his eldest daughter disappeared into his bedchamber ostensibly to study her French novel but surely to compose a speedy reply to the officer’s note. Aleksandra was there too. Having returned to bed after the morning inspection because her head ached, she sat propped up, stitching away on her “medicines” as they composed their response, which was complete by one, when luncheon was served. This I know, because as the Tsar came into the dining room he sought me out, resting his hand on my shoulder, which he squeezed in a kindly, most fatherly manner.

  “Leonka, would you be so kind as to assist me after the meal?” To distract attention, he quickly added, “I would like to move my writing table in order to take better advantage of the evening sunlight.”

  “Da-s,” I replied with a slight bow of my head.

  We were all present for the meal, including Aleksandra Fyodorovna, whose head had cleared, not because of a decrease in barometric pressure but most likely because of the uplifting news. As always we shared the same table, master and servant, and we all did our best to ignore rank.

  Well, our midday meal was indeed a thin cabbage soup, followed by a second course of vermicelli sprinkled with dillweed. And after we had eaten and Demidova and I had cleared the table, I immediately went to the Tsar’s bedchamber, finding it occupied by both my master and mistress.

  “How may I assist you, Nikolai Aleksandrovich?” I asked, standing in the doorway with my hands folded before me.

  “Ah, Leonka. Excellent.” He gazed at me with those remarkable eyes, then winked, which gave my heart a start. “I just realized this morning that the evening light would be much better for writing if I situated my table a bit to the left. After all, the electric lamps have not been so reliable as of late.”

  No, they most definitely hadn’t. Not only was the power supply from the city dam most unreliable, so was the wiring of the house itself. Just last week several electricians had spent two whole days trying to correct the problem.

  From the cushioned chair where she sat, needle in hand, Aleksandra Fyodorovna said in a distinctly loud voice, “Leonka, I have a small present for the father who gave us the obednitsa yesterday.” She held up a small handkerchief on which she was stitching the twice transversed cross of Russian Orthodoxy. “I wonder if you would be so kind as to drop it by the church the next time you go for food?”

  “With pleasure, Madame. I am to go this afternoon.”

  “How convenient. I shall be finished within the half hour.”

  The Tsar glanced toward the door, saw no guard, then reached for a book on his table. He flipped through the pages, coming to the very note the sister had brought earlier, and withdrew it.

  “Hide this well on your body, young man. Our response is written on the same note,” he said, his voice low. “Do it now, place it in your undergarments.”

  I did as ordered, opening my clothes and hiding the note on my body. As I buttoned up my pants, I looked up.

  “You know what to do?” he asked.

  Speaking words that the Yekaterinburg Soviet had strictly forbidden, I replied in a hushed voice, “Da-s, Vashe Velichestvo.” Yes, Your Greatness.

  The Tsar and I then played out the charade of moving the writing table, a fine piece of polished wooden furniture with a green leather top. And then I retreated. Toward two-thirty they all went out into the garden, including Yevgeny Sergeevich, who was greatly improved. They all went out except the Empress and one of her daughters, the second, Tatyana Nikolaevna. They remained indoors, where they conducted their spiritual readings, Daniel 16 to the end, as well as Hosea 1-5. This I know because the Empress herself told me, whispering that she would be praying for me.

  And so it was that after I helped the Tsar’s footman, Trupp, carry the wheeling chaise down into the garden, and after the Tsar himself carried down his fourteen-year old son, I returned to the kitchen. Shortly thereafter, I was escorted out of the locked rooms, past the guards, through the double palisades, and out the gates into the square of the Church of the Ascension. It never occurred to me to run, to flee, not then, nor any other time. I don’t know why, but somewhere in my heart I felt my place was in there, with them, in that house that was so full of evil intent.

  Well, that afternoon I again fulfilled my task. I encountered no problems. As instructed, I stopped by the church and delivered the handkerchief embroidered by the Empress herself. And I handed over the note dictated by the Emperor and handwritten by his daughter, Olga Nikolaevna. I gave it to Father Storozhev, and it reads:

  The second window from the corner facing the square has been opened for 2 days – day and night. The seventh and eighth windows facing the square next to the main entrance are always open. The room is occupied by the komendant and his aides, who are also the inside guards – up to 13 at least – armed with rifles, revolvers, and bombs. None of the doors have keys (except ours). The komendant or his aides come into our room whenever they want. The one who is on duty does the outside rounds twice every hour of the night, and we hear him chatting with the sentry beneath our windows. There is a machine gun on the balcony and another downstairs in case of alarm. If there are others, we do not know about them. Do not forget that we have the doctor, a maid, two men, and a little boy who is a cook with us. It would be ignoble of us (although they do not want to inconvenience us) to leave them alone after they have followed us voluntarily into exile. The doctor has been in bed for three days with kidney trouble, but he is getting
better. We are constantly awaiting the return of our men, Ivan Sednyov and Klementy Nagorny, young and robust, who have been shut up in the city for a month – we do not know where or why. In their absence, the little one is carried by his father in order to move about the rooms or go into the garden. Our surgeon, Derevenko, who comes almost daily at 5:00 to see the little one, lives in the city; do not forget. We never see him alone. The guards are in a little house across from our five windows on the other side of the street, 50 men. The only things that we still have are in crates in the shed in the interior courtyard. We are especially worried about A.F no.9, a small black crate, and a large black crate no. 13 N.A. with his old letters and diaries. Naturally the bedrooms are filled with crates, beds and things, all at the mercy of the thieves who surround us. All the keys and, separately, no. 9 are with the komendant, who has behaved well enough toward us. In any case, warn us if you can, and answer if you can also bring our people. In front of the entrance, there is always an automobile. There are bells at each sentry post, in the komendant’s room, and some wires also go to the guardhouse and elsewhere. If our other people remain, can we be sure that nothing will happen to them??? Doctor B. begs you not to think about him and the other men, so that the task will not be more difficult. Count on the seven of us and the woman. May God help you; you can count on our sangfroid.

  And here I must pause in my story…

  8

  Misha pushed the stop button on his tape recorder, listened as the little machine clicked to a halt, and then sat back in his leather desk chair. The old man took a deep breath, held it, and finally exhaled. From this vantage – Lake Forest, Illinois – and this time – August 1998 – it was all going fine, wasn’t it? He was telling the story just as he should, right?

  Oh, how he wished May were here. She would know. His wife who always had a word on her tongue would tell him whether or not he was saying too much, too little, or if he was getting it just right. Bozhe moi, my God, how he couldn’t wait until this life was over.

  He pushed back his chair, grabbed ahold of the edge of his desk, hesitated, and pushed himself to his feet. Then he just stood there. Everything used to be so automatic, now he had to think about every little step. He started to move his left leg, but then a bolt of pain stabbed his bad knee. Wincing, he leaned on the desk with one hand, hesitated, tried again. It was always like this, at first walking seemed impossible, but after the first few steps he seemed to be able to walk out of it. And so he proceeded.

  He’d always been amazed that the slaughtered bodies of the Romanovs had remained hidden for so many, many years, and in fact he had often wondered if they’d ever be found, particularly within his own lifetime. And it wasn’t until July 11, 1991, the day after Boris Yeltsin’s inauguration, that a squadron of detectives, colonels, epidemiologists, and forensic experts headed out of Yekaterinburg toward the village Koptyaki. It was there, behind a fence, underneath a tent, and in the glare of all these lights, that the herd of Russian officials pulled more than a thousand smashed and crushed bones out of the mud. Even then they weren’t sure what they found. Seeking the truth but lacking DNA technology, the Russian scientists developed a sophisticated technique of computerized superimposition, whereby their mathematicians matched photos of the Romanovs to the skulls they found. And that was how, Misha had read, they determined that skull number four – the very one that contained a desiccated brain shriveled to the size of a pear – was none other than Tsar Nikolai. Skull number seven, meanwhile, proved the easiest to identify because of its extensive and beautiful dental work. It was that of the Empress Aleksandra.

  Ach, thought Misha, crossing the broad living room, as the saying goes, There exists no secret that will not be revealed. And those broken and bizarrely crushed bones found in that shallow grave quickly told the story that the deaths had not only been violent, but grossly brutal, which was absolutely correct because of course Misha had seen it all with his own eyes. The most shocking thing the Russian specialists discovered, however, was what they didn’t find: the bodies of both the Heir Tsarevich Aleksei and Grand Duchess Maria. And so that was his job, Misha’s. Now it was up to him to tell why the bodies of two Romanovs were still missing. His story, his truth, was what he would leave behind and it would be, he was certain, the definitive truth that would stand for decades if not centuries.

  So sad, thought Misha as he hobbled along, so terribly sad. Not just the murder of the Imperial Family, but that the hatred of the Russian Revolution proved so barbaric and violent. Slava Bogu, thanks to God, that at least the Romanovs had finally been laid to rest in an Orthodox service just last month in Sankt-Peterburg. Misha had procured a videotape of the funeral, and May and he had watched it over and over, all of which filled them both with a sense of peace. And then a mere three weeks after the funeral in Peterburg, May herself had died, content with the knowledge that the revolution that had burned across their homeland was done and over.

  With a heaviness that had hung from his heart since that night so long ago, Misha went about his business. He visited the downstairs powder room just off the central hall, and then briefly headed into the kitchen, where he poured himself a glass of water. Carrying the glass, he returned via the butler’s pantry, a narrow room filled with stacks of fine china and rows of crystal glasses. As he pushed open the swinging door into the dining room and gazed upon the massive mahogany table, he was reminded of all the fancy dinner parties they’d hosted. Here had dined not only the crème de la crème of Midwestern aristocracy – the Wrigleys, Walgreens, Swifts, Cranes, Maytags, and so many more – but also such international luminaries as Walt Disney, Ella Fitzgerald, Katharine Hepburn, and even the Prince of Wales. But it had all been a lie. He’d convinced all of Chicago society that he’d not only bought an immense amount of stock for practically nothing at the very bottom of the Depression, but that he’d been one of the first investors in IBM, buying what would become a fortune in stock for just pennies. So that everyone would think him of good breeding, Misha himself had planted the rumor that his parents were minor aristorcrats who had been horrendously slaughtered by the Bolsheviki. And then Misha moved into a new life in America, going through the motions of great happiness, buying this huge house, playing golf at the exclusive Onwentsia Club, and throwing extravagant parties. Yet it had all meant nothing, nothing! No, everything that he saw was in the context of how ugly, how cruel, was this world and its human race. Try as he wanted, Misha could barely love even his own boy, that which his own seed created. He made an effort, sometimes with success, to care for his Peter, but every time he gazed into his face he saw but one thing: his own reflection. Absolutely, mused Misha, as he moved through the room. In his own child he saw living proof that he had survived, and it was almost more than he could bear, for Misha had never been able to escape from the belief that it should have been him who was shot in the basement chamber, it should have been him dead on that road to village Koptyaki.

  His head hung low, his shuffle slow, Misha crossed into the living room, muttering as he so often had, “Lord forgive me. But first make me suffer. I am the devil’s creation. Torture me and make me cry out for mercy, but make me suffer…”

  Entering his office, he paused and admired the wall of books on his Nikolai and Aleksandra, some three hundred volumes altogether. His will stipulated that these should be donated to Yale for their-

  Misha’s eyes suddenly caught a magazine wedged between two books. Oh, my dear God, he thought, his heart jumping in pace, didn’t I get rid of that? Apparently not. He placed the water glass on the edge of his desk, then pulled down a worn and well-read issue of Esquire magazine that had appeared five years ago. He flipped it open to a dog-eared page, and even though Misha had read and reread the piece, he couldn’t stop himself from once again studying the article entitled, “What Really Happened That Dark Night?” Nothing before had ever come so close to the truth. Nothing had ever scared him so much, and his eyes flew threw the entire lengthy piece, scanning ever
y paragraph, until he came to the last few.

  Although unlikely, one or possibly two of Nicholas and Alexandra’s children could have survived that horrible night of July 16-17, 1918. Between the time of the execution and their nefarious burial miles away, anything could have happened. Many suspect a guard discovered that one of the girls was alive and pulled her from the truck as it passed down that dark, dirt road to the Four Brothers Mine. After all, while the bodies of five Romanovs have recently been found and identified, the bodies of two of the children, Alexei and Maria, are still missing. Where are they? What happened to them? Yurovsky, the commandant in charge of the execution, later claimed to have burned them and scattered their remains, but this, say scientists, is doubtful, for it is impossible to completely cremate a body over an open fire.

  The theories abound, of course. Some say that Maria was later spotted on a train headed for China. Others, including survivors from a nearby monastery, claim she wandered Siberia until her death in 1973.

  While it is extremely unlikely that Alexei, a hemophiliac, could have survived the brutal events that took place in the basement of the Ipatiev House, one of the more interesting hypotheses is that he simply wasn’t there at all. Rather, a handful of people believe that he switched places with the kitchen boy, Leonid Sednyov, who was about his age and height. Disguised, Alexei was then, they say, spirited out of the house just hours before his family was murdered. If the young Sednyov was killed in his place, if Alexei did in fact survive, if he did in fact go on to live to the age of 17, was he, as Rasputin had predicted, completely cured? And if so, how long did he live and where? Was he, as some suspect, the mysterious hermit monk sometimes spotted lurking in the forest outside Yekaterinburg? Perhaps.