The Kitchen Boy

by Robert Alexander

  Following the Tsar’s lead, we rose to our feet, held hands, and bowed our heads as he intoned, “Gracious Lord, look down upon our dearest Maria with all of Your infinite kindness and wisdom. We beseech Thee to bestow upon Maria good health, long life, and great happiness.”

  “What about a husband, Papa?” interjected Anastasiya. “She wants to get married, you know, and have scores of children!”

  “Anya, don’t interrupt your father,” chided her mother.

  “But it’s true, she wants to get -!”

  “Anya!”

  Nikolai Aleksandrovich crossed himself. “Hear our prayers, O Lord, and in these trying days protect our cherished daughter. Ah-min.”

  All of us, even the one guard who stood in the doorway, likewise followed the Tsar’s example, crossing ourselves and muttering a solemn chorus of, “Ah-min.”

  Nikolai embraced his daughter, wishing her birthday greetings, followed by Aleksandra, who made the sign of the cross over Maria and kissed her as well.

  Usually birthdays were observed at a luncheon with many distinguished guests, a lavish table of much food, entertainments, and great gifting, for Russians are among the most generous sort, particularly when it comes to their children, whom they love to spoil and do so endlessly. In earlier times a young girl of the nobility would be showered with sable hats and coats and muffs, pearl necklaces and diamond earrings and so on and so forth. And even though such a celebration was impossible that summer day, hardly anyone seemed to notice.

  The Empress poured the tea by her own hand, an event once seen as a great compliment to a guest but was now commonplace. Since the fine china was long gone, Aleksandra filled tall, thin glasses perched in metal standards with handles. There was no lemon, no cream. The cunning Empress, however, had secretly managed to preserve a few cubes of sugar, and that morning we were all issued one. I followed Aleksei’s lead, pinching the cube between my front teeth as I sipped the tea, something that caught his mother’s glare, to be sure, for it was a peasant’s habit, something Aleksei had seen one of the guards do.

  The krendel was cut and served. And then the gifting began.

  Olga presented a novel in French, Tatyana a bookmark that she had painted with her own hand, Aleksei a rock he had polished like a sultan’s jewel. A tablet of drawing papers came from Botkin, hand-knit stockings from Demidova, and a small bunch of flowers from Trupp. The baked delight, of course, was the gift from cook and me. And after all of us had made our presentations came the finale, several packages from Maria’s parents.

  “Here, my love,” said Aleksandra. “Open this first.”

  The young woman did, finding enclosed a religious title, Complete Yearly Cycle of Brief Homilies for Each Day of the Year. Maria opened the volume, silently cherished the inscription, and then read it aloud.

  “To Our Dear Darling Daughter from Your Very Own Loving Parents, Mama & Papa +, 27 June 1918.” She folded the book shut, and leaned forward and kissed her mother. “Spacibo, Mama. Ya ochen tebya lubloo.” Thank you, Mama. I love you very much.

  “And what about me?” asked her father.

  “Papa, of course!” she said, jumping up and planting a kiss upon his bearded cheek.

  Nikolai embraced Maria, kissed her, and held forth a small box. “Here, my child. You must have something beautiful too, you know, otherwise good fortune will not follow you in the year to come.”

  “Oi!”

  It was this gift that Maria had been waiting all morning to receive, for she was not simply a Romanov, not simply a Grand Duchess, but most importantly a young woman, who was well schooled enough to know how these things worked, that the prettiest gift always came last. And while what Maria found was no Romanov treasure, it was most certainly a thing of beauty, particularly during such dark days of imprisonment. The other daughters crowded around, and Maria lifted out a fine gold bracelet from which hung a simple charm of love carved from green stone.

  “Oi, kakaya krasota!” Oh, what beauty, exclaimed Maria.

  “Do you like it?” asked her father.

  “I love it and I shall never, ever take it off!”

  Maria jumped up and kissed first her father, then her mother, who fastened the bracelet on Maria’s left wrist.

  We all finished our sweet treat and single glass of tea. Conversation dissipated, and we servants, knowing our places, retreated. Only Dr. Botkin remained with the family in the withdrawing room, and soon we heard the sounds of the piano. It was a little program, first featuring the voice of Anastasiya as well as the Empress, whose contralto was so beautiful that she might have pursued a career in singing had she not been of such high estate. That was followed by the older pair, Olga and Tatyana, who played fourhand a beautiful piece, so sweet, so melodic, that it washed away any ill purpose from that house. Hearing the flow of the keys, the gush of the tune, I froze in the kitchen, gazed out the window, and thought for a few brief moments that maybe everything would be fine. Da, da, even the guards momentarily lost their anger, their burning zeal, for I noticed a few of them pause in their random patrol and gaze off in uncomplicated thought. All at once, and only that once, did things within The House of Special Purpose seem at peace.

  But there were important duties to be done, namely there were “medicines” to be dealt with. And looming in everyone’s mind was the essence of time, as promising as it was threatening. In short, the celebration of Her Greatness Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna’s nineteenth birthday soon concluded and the feminine hands of the house resumed their deceitful needlework. By noon the rooms took on the air of a sweatshop, albeit a secret one.

  Meanwhile, I wheeled about the Heir Aleksei, driving him from room to room. We played troika for hours, finding everything of interest when in fact there was nothing. Given our common age we were able to see things others could not, however, and as such the route around the dining room table became a troika track, the large potted palm in the drawing room became an oasis in the Sahara, and later the dogs, Jimmy and Joy, chasing and barking after us, were transformed into rabid wolves. Truth be told, we occupied ourselves for hours with a talent I have long since lost.

  During all of this the Tsar negotiated a victory of sorts. Claiming that the hall where Kharitonov and I slept was insufferably hot, he successfully petitioned and received permission for the two of us to move to the other side of the house – to a room initially occupied by the Heir Tsarevich, who had since moved into his parents’ room. While this small room was notably cooler than our little hallway, our comfort was not the Tsar’s motive.

  “It won’t do to have me and all the women on this side of the house,” whispered Nikolai Aleksandrovich with a wink as we carted our few possessions to our new chamber.

  Sure, the Tsar needed all the muscle he could gather. And while I assumed that we were preparing for a fight or battle, we were instead retreating. After lunch the Tsar quietly pulled me aside.

  “Hide these envelopes as you did before, molodoi chelovek,” young man, instructed the Tsar with a soft smile. “One is a reply, the other contains letters to be carried on to Sankt-Peterburg. Deliver them as you did before and you will have served us well.”

  So that was what I did. I hid the two envelopes in my undergarments, and when I went to the Soviet for more food from the cafeteria, I stopped briefly at the Church of the Ascension. Meanwhile, the Empress remained indoors with her oldest daughter, Olga, the two of them madly stitching their corsets, and the Tsar and others descended into the rear yard where they paced in the tropical heat of the Siberian summer. And I… I went out, delivering the envelopes to Father Storozhev. One contained letters to their dear Anna Vyrubova, while the other contained the reply to the loyal officers, in which I much later learned the Tsar tried to call off the liberation attempt:

  We do not want to, nor can we, escape, We can only be carried off by force, just as it was force that was used to carry us from Tobolsk. Thus, do not count on any active help from us. The komendant has many aides; they chan
ge often and have become worried. They guard our imprisonment and our lives conscientiously and some are kind to us. We do not want them to suffer because of us, nor you for us; in the name of God, avoid bloodshed above all. Find out about them yourself. Coming down from the window without a ladder is completely impossible. Even once we are down, we are still in great danger because of the open window of the komendant’s bedroom and the machine gun downstairs, where one enters from the inner courtyard. If you watch us, you can always come save us in case of real and imminent danger. We are completely unaware of what is going on outside, for we receive no newspapers. Since we have been allowed to open the window, surveillance has increased, and we are forbidden even to stick our heads out at the risk of getting shot in the face.

  And so it was that the Tsar, the Orthodox Tsar, put the squash on the rescue plans not simply because of worries for himself and his close family, not simply for we who served them, but for those thugs who guarded them and were soon to kill them. How could he have been so stupid? Couldn’t Nikolai, didn’t Nikolai, see the tidal wave of blood flooding toward them, toward all of Rossiya?

  Oh, as the tragedies of Shakespeare have revealed, the fall of kings is but fodder for the richest of entertainments. The tumble of this Tsar and his consort was the grossest, however, and the conclusion of this story, I regret to foreshadow, was all the worse. In those days as the Imperial Family sat unknowingly waiting for their own executions, the Tsar’s younger brother, that sweet, dashing Grand Duke Mikhail, was taken out into a field and shot like a dog. And the Tsaritsa’s sister, Grand Duchess Yelizaveta? She and a handful of other Romanovs were thrown alive down a mineshaft, with hand grenades and burning brush tossed in atop them. Unfortunately, they lived through it all, singing praise to the Lord, until hunger itself took them days later. This we know to be true, for dirt was found in their stomachs once their bodies were exhumed.

  Such were the times, so black, so crazy. Kakoi koshmar… what a nightmare.

  12

  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… for history shows that it was my grave error that precipitated the murder of the Tsar and his family. Yes, my dear granddaughter, Katya, I confess that it was my stupidity, an ignorant decision by a lowly kitchen boy, that gave the Bolsheviki the excuse they had been seeking…

  By July 5 the revolution was collapsing in all directions. The Bolsheviki were terrified, for their defeat seemed but days away. The Germans controlled the Ukraine, the English had landed in the north, the Japanese had invaded the Far East, and the American marines were on their way, albeit slowly. Why, even in Moscow itself there was a revolt of the Social Revolutionary Party against Lenin and his depraved cronies. In other words, Lenin and the Bolsheviki were not only cornered, but desperate, which naturally made them more dangerous than ever.

  It was a Friday, not hot, not like the days before, but a pleasant thirteen degrees. The rains resumed, which would pose a problem for the night of July 16-17, yet on the fifth things seemed ready to burst with hope and promise. Not only had the vulgar Avdeyev and his crew been replaced by a new komendant and new guards, but Sister Antonina and Novice Marina arrived, their arms laden with a bounty of wondrous supplies. They had not come for days, and suddenly they appeared, smiles beaming upon their faces as they carried in foodstuffs, the likes of which we hadn’t seen for months, not since we’d been carried off from Tobolsk. Instead of just milk and a meager basket of eggs, now there were two chetverts of milk, one large basket containing a chertova dyuzhina – a devil’s dozen – of fresh, warm eggs, not to mention a glass bottle of thick cream, a generous amount of tvorog – farmer’s cheese – and even enough meat for six day’s soup.

  “Oi!” I gasped, as I helped the good nun and her novice into our little makeshift kitchen. “Tak mnogo v’syevo!” So much of everything.

  Sister Antonina, tiny and round as she was, squinched up her nose like an old hedgehog, and said, “During Avdeyev we brought this much and more every time. But there was a toll, per se.”

  “What?”

  “Da, da, da. At the outer gate, at the inner gate, as we walked past the guards’ room – they all took as they pleased.”

  Novice Marina, her voice small, asserted, “It’s true – they wouldn’t let us pass otherwise.”

  “Now that we know the way is clear,” beamed the good sestra, “next time we will bring even more!”

  When we walked into the tiny kitchen, cook Kharitonov saw the goods and was beside himself, putting aside his boiled potatoes and immediately bragging about what he would make.

  “Maybe even some meat pierogi!”

  I placed the larger of the baskets upon the kitchen table and fetched a bowl for the eggs. As I unloaded them, the young Novice Marina stepped forward, clutching dearly one of the chetverts of milk, which she lifted unto my hands. I gazed into her eyes, perceived the most subtle of nods, which sent a rush of excitement up my spine.

  And, yes, the tiny pocket cut into the cork did in fact contain a note, the fourth and final one the Tsar was ever to receive. No sooner had Sister Antonina and Novice Marina departed, than big Dr. Botkin appeared in the kitchen doorway. Everyone was hoping for more news from the outside, and he pushed up his gold spectacles and studied me quite eagerly.

  “Would you be so kind, Leonka, as to fetch a glass of water for Aleksandra Fyodorovna?” he requested, his dentures oddly clicking as he spoke. “Her eyes are aching, and I have prescribed valerian drops to calm her nerves.”

  “Certainly,” I replied.

  I did as requested. As before, I removed the cloth covering the crock of water, ladled a glass of fresh, cool water, and set upon my way to the bedchamber. As I traversed the dining room, I fell under the stern eyes of one of the new guards. Did he know? Could he guess? Nyet, that would be impossible. I just had to maintain a certain composure, and I continued through the doorless passage into the girls’ room, finding the three older grand duchesses on their beds reading and Anastasiya on the floor playing with Jimmy, her little King Charlie. Next I proceeded into the corner chamber, that of Nikolai and his consort. The Empress herself was reclined atop her bed, one hand over her closed eyes, while Aleksei sat in his nearby bed, making a chain out of a piece of copper wire. The Tsar was there too seated in a comfortable chair by the window, reading another volume by Saltykov.

  “Ah, Leonka, spacibo bolshoye.” Thank you very much, said Nikolai, rising to his feet, at the same time brushing back his mustache with the back of his hand. “Here, let me take that.”

  I approached him, handing him the glass of water.

  In the most quiet of voices, he asked, “Did Sister Antonina bring something today?”

  “Da-s.”

  I immediately reached into my shirt, where I had hidden the small folded note. Just at that particular time came frightful coughing from the room of the grand duchesses. We all knew what that meant.

  The Tsar whispered, “Bistro.” Quickly.

  I heard them now, the heavy steps of a guard marching our way, and I nearly panicked. Finally my fingers found the small, folded paper, and I ripped it from my clothing and stuffed it into the Tsar’s hand.

  “Ah, good morning, komendant,” said Nikolai, palming the note to his side and into his pocket. “The heat has finally broken, has it not?”

  I turned around, saw the new komendant, Yakov Yurovksy, who just the day before had replaced Avdeyev, the Red pig. This new keeper was a trim man, not too tall. He had thick black hair, a black goatee, nice eyes, small ears, and a distinct, rather unpleasant voice that sounded as if he spoke through his nose.

  “Good morning,” said the dark one, so very matter-of-factly, as he held forward a wooden box. “I have here in this wooden casket the items of value that you gave me yesterday.”

  Aleksandra, never one to hold her tongue, gazed at him from her bed, and all but hissed, “We gave you nothing. What you have is what y
ou took from us.”

  That was yesterday’s incident. Yurovsky had arrived midday, and that very afternoon he and another had gathered the Imperial Family and demanded their personal jewelry “lest it tempt the guards.”

  “You took all the jewels we were wearing,” continued the Empress, “except two bracelets from my Uncle Leo and my husband’s engagement ring – things that cannot be removed without tools.”

  “I have done so for your own protection.”

  “Protection? From what, your people? I’m afraid you’re too late. Our trunks in the shed out back have already been looted.”

  “An unfortunate incident,” replied Yurovsky, his eyes spitting hate. “But it will not happen again. Comrade Avdeyev and some of the other house guards have been removed and sent to the front for actions unbecoming the revolution.”

  Ever the gentleman, Nikolai said, “I pity Avdeyev, but he is to blame for not restraining his people.”

  “Perhaps, but that is not your concern.”

  “In any case, we appreciate your attempts to restore order.”

  Yes, even the Tsar loved to feel the whip of authority and control. He disdained slovenliness and disorder, and in those first few days he appreciated the soldierly conduct of this new commandant, Yakov Yurovsky. Little did the Tsar or any of us know that Yurovsky was totally committed to one thing and one thing only: the “difficult” duties of the revolution, that is, murder.

  Along with Yurovsky came an entirely new interior guard made up of “Letts.” These guards, these emissaries of the underworld, however, were not made up only of Latvians, who played so strong a role in the Cheka, the forerunner of the KGB. No, this new group of burly men comprised a strange mixture of Magyars, Germans, Austrians, and Russians, a vile mixture of men divorced from God and country and certainly Tsar. In spirit they were all true revolutionaries, men who had thoroughly justified killing as a means to an end. The only consolation I have found is in my books, where it is written that all these men died the most hideous deaths, including Yurovsky himself, who died from a wonderfully painful cancer that curled up his throat in 1938. Not only that but he lived and suffered just long enough to see his beloved daughter, Rima, tossed into one of Stalin’s gulags, where she languished for another twenty years.