The Kitchen Boy

by Robert Alexander

  The driver swerved over some tram tracks, around a park, past the city’s only mosque and its pair of towering minarets, then crossed Kamennoostrovsky Boulevard and turned into the dumpy courtyard of a building. Puddles and broken bricks littered the space, two children played on a pile of dirt.

  “Priyekhali?” We’ve arrived? asked Kate.

  “Da,” replied the driver, pointing to the door.

  Kate paid in dollars, which the driver was only too glad to accept, and climbed out. This was the real reason she’d come to Russia, not the opening of the exhibit, not all the grand celebrations, but this, perhaps her very last chance to peel away the final layer of the many truths and mistruths fed to her.

  The half-rotted door to the crumbling apartment building flapped open, though it was obviously meant to be bolted. Kate pushed it back, proceeding into a dingy lobby of sorts that was lit by a single, naked bulb. A row of heavy wooden mailboxes hung on one side, and she checked. Yes, the name was there. Dear God, thought Kate, she’d been so scared, so frightened that she might be too late.

  Kate swatted a mosquito from her neck – she’d read somewhere that they bred year-round in the water-logged basements of these two-hundred-year-old buildings – and headed up the worn stone steps, which were low and easy. The cast-iron railing was half-broken away, the window at the top punched with a hole, and she mounted the second flight and came to the first door. Once again Kate looked at the address, and then pressed a buzzer, which rang so loudly she could hear it inside. As if in reply Kate heard a television inside being turned down. When there was no further sound, Kate pressed the buzzer again, and a moment later heard shuffling feet. A few moments passed before the inner door was opened with obvious difficulty. The outer door, however, remain solidly locked.

  Finally a frail woman’s voice inside, said, “Kto tam?” Who’s there?

  Kate was about to reply in Russian, but stopped herself. If it were really her, she would understand English.

  “A friend from America.”

  For the longest time there was nothing, no reply, virtually no sound of movement from within. Kate, finally sure that this was all a folly, was about to call out in Russian, when finally she heard a heavy bolt unlatched. The thick, padded door swung open, revealing a hunched-over woman, her gray hair skewing this way and that. Her eyes, foggy with age, studied Kate for a long, suspicious moment. Finally the old woman’s eyes bloomed with tears and she reached out and grasped Kate’s hand with every bit of her pitiful strength.

  Oh, dear God, thought Kate, her eyes likewise filling with tears, it’s her, it’s really her. “Perhaps you don’t realize who I am, but-”

  In hesitant but excellent English, the old woman said, “I know who you are, dear Katya. Of course I do, and not just from what they write of you in these newspaper stories, either. Da, nyet.” Of course not. “No, you should not have come… but I prayed with all my heart that we would somehow meet, which of course, was so very selfish of me.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Yes, it’s really you, and yet… yet how did you even think to come looking for me.”

  With a trembling hand, Kate reached into her purse and pulled out a cassette tape. “My grandfather left this for me.”

  “I see… Now come in, my child. Come in quickly. We have much to discuss and you can’t be seen standing out here.”

  The old woman, frightened by the ghosts of Stalin and the like, all but yanked Kate inside. As the woman bolted shut the door, Kate stepped into a tiny, windowless living room, no more than six feet by eight. One door led to a minute kitchen with a table and stools on one side, a bathtub on the other, while another door led to a slender bedroom with a single bed and the apartment’s only window.

  Suddenly the old woman was before Kate, taking Kate’s hand, then touching Kate on the shoulder, the cheek, the forehead, all the time muttering in Russian.

  “Gospodi, eto’vo ne mozhet byit…” Dear Lord, it can’t be…

  And then she was crossing herself, bowing her head, and kissing not only Kate’s hand, but the cuff and next the sleeve of her sweater. When the diminutive woman started to drop to her knees, Kate took her by her thin shoulders and pulled her back to her feet.

  “No,” begged Kate. “Please don’t.”

  “It’s a miracle!”

  Kate glanced to the side, saw an old black-and-white TV, the volume turned down but the picture still flashing. On the old couch Kate saw two magazines, which not only featured pictures of the soon-to-open exhibit of Romanov gems, but Kate’s own photograph as well.

  “So it’s really you?” asked Kate.

  “Yes.” And touching Kate’s wrist and finding the gold bracelet with the jade pendant, the old woman gasped. “Your grandmother gave this to you?”

  “I received it upon her death three years ago.”

  “Peace at last.” She crossed herself. “How did you find me?”

  Kate shrugged. “After my grandfather died, I cleaned his office. I went through everything, and I was just about to empty his trash can when I found an article speculating what really happened the night the Romanovs were killed. There were several different theories, but one thing in particular struck me – it talked about some survivors from a nearby monastery.”

  “Ah, I see…”

  “I saved the article, and then when my grandfather’s story started to fall apart, I looked it up again. I called Esquire, the magazine that had originally published the article, and tried to track down the woman who had written it. But I couldn’t find her – she’d left the magazine years earlier – and so I started doing some research on the Internet.”

  “The what?”

  “I used my computer.”

  “Wh… what…?” She gazed at Kate with confusion. “You have to forgive me, I so seldomly speak English.”

  “I started doing some research using my computer, but I couldn’t find mention of any monks who might have survived until even as recently as the sixties. In fact, the only thing I could find about a monastery in Yekaterinburg was this.”

  From her purse Kate pulled a short article, the headline of which read, “Ancient Yekaterinburg Resident Attends Romanov Funeral.”

  The old woman took it and shook her head. “My eyes are no good anymore. What’s it say?”

  “When the Tsar and his family were reburied here in Saint Petersburg, a British man wrote about it for a London paper. He also did a short side piece about a milkmaid who claimed to have worked at a Yekaterinburg monastery when the Romanovs were under house arrest. He wrote how she attended the Orthodox burial of the Imperial Family here in town.”

  “I should never have gone. I… I… was just going to watch the procession from afar. It was right across the park, just here at the fortress. And when I saw it all, I fell to my knees and started to crying. They were ordering me away, but in my weakness I begged. One of the fathers took pity on me and allowed me to attend.”

  “So it’s true, then?”

  The old woman nodded. “This man, this British writer – he was there, writing about the funeral, and then he followed me back here to my apartment.”

  “I know. I looked him up. He’s the one who gave me your address.”

  “I knew I shouldn’t have talked to him!”

  “You didn’t tell him that your father was British, did you?” pressed Kate.

  “No, of course not. I only told him part of the truth.” She hesitated before confessing, “I… I told him I worked as a simple milkmaid at the monastir.”

  Finally understanding how it all fit together, Kate said, “At first I didn’t quite get it. The story on the Internet said your name was Marina, and I knew right away that it was just too much of a coincidence. I kept reading and rereading the article, and then I realized I didn’t understand because he didn’t understand, this man who wrote the article. He thought you worked for some monks at a monastery, but you didn’t, did you?”

  “No, of course not. I worked for the sisters at the ot
her monastery.”

  “Or as we would call it in English, the convent. And you didn’t simply work there, but you studied there, correct?”

  “Da, da, da. I was a lay sister.”

  “So you’re not the milkmaid Marina from the men’s monastery, but the Novice Marina from the Novotikhvinsky convent, or as you would say in Russian, the Novotikhvinsky woman’s monastery.”

  “Yes, my child.” The old woman took Kate by the hand, leading her into the tiny kitchen. “Here, come sit.”

  By the simplicity of Marina’s words, Kate knew she was telling the truth. And as she sat down on a small stool, Kate sensed there were but only one or two more truths in this nesting doll of deception. She was, at last, that close. Yes, thought Kate, this old woman now putting on a kettle of water for tea, now shuffling for two chipped teacups, was most certainly the daughter of an Englishman and Russian woman.

  In her bones, in her soul, Kate knew the truth, but her mind, so weary of deception, threw out a test. “Who did your father work for?”

  “Papa? He was a diplomat. He was posted out there in Yekaterinburg at the consulate.”

  “Under whose tutelage were you at the monastery?”

  “Sister Antonina.”

  “What did you do first thing in the morning? What were your primary responsibilities?”

  “My responsibilities?” She pulled a small sugar bowl from the shelf. “Oh, I see. You test me, do you not?”

  Kate said nothing, just sat there.

  “Well, sometimes they had me assist in gathering the eggs, but yes, this is truth – I always, always milked the cows because, of course, my hands were then young and nimble.”

  So it was all just as Kate thought. And now that she had the truth, or the most of it, she started to cry not out of grief, but fear. Meanwhile Marina went about making tea, as any good Russian did upon the arrival of a guest. She even put out a plate of three meager biscuits.

  Finally sitting down opposite Kate, Marina asked, “Who else knows? Have you told anyone?”

  “No, not even my husband.”

  “Excellent. And you mustn’t, my child. For your own safety you mustn’t ever. Have you any children?”

  Kate nodded. “Twins, a boy and a girl. They just turned two.”

  “How wonderful,” beamed Marina. “But you must protect them, do you understand? Your grandparents put snakes between you and the truth to protect you, and now you must do exactly the same for your young ones. Am I clear?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I read in the magazines about you. I read that your father died in a car accident, and I wondered if you knew. How much did your grandfather tell you?”

  “Not everything, of course. As I said, he told me some stories – or rather he recorded on tape what he said was the truth. And at the time I believed it all. Then something happened, which in turn caused me to doubt him, and not much later I began to look for you.” Kate looked up, looked right into Marina’s foggy eyes, and said, “You see, my son is a bleeder.”

  “Gospodi.” Dear Lord, gasped Marina, yet again crossing herself.

  Overwhelmed with the responsibility of taking care of her aged grandparents, explained Kate, she’d put off starting a family of her own.

  “I’ve only been married five years.”

  It was odd, she continued, how she shied away from kids until the deaths of her grandparents. After that, she wanted a family right away, and a mere year later she’d given birth to her Andrew and Melissa. The twins at first appeared beautiful and healthy, but then Andrew bumped his head, which resulted in a horrendous bruise.

  “When he was diagnosed, I grew suspicious of everything that my grandfather had told me.”

  “But what about him, the boy child?”

  “He’s okay. It’s still a serious condition, of course, but there are treatments now for hemophilia. There’s even talk of a cure using genetic engineerng. So there’s no immediate critical problem, not really.”

  But the discovery of her boy’s affliction led Kate to do her own research. It was just too much of a coincidence. And her initial studies led her away from her mother.

  “I was told that Dad died on his way back from the club when his car swerved off the road and hit a tree. I always assumed he was drunk. At least there were those hints. And he probably was. But when I found his death certificate it stated that he died of a brain hemorrhage due to a lack of clotting, so it’s obvious now that he was a mild bleeder, that he swerved off the road, struck a tree, hit his head on the steering wheel, and died before help arrived.”

  Marina, her eyes wide, sat crossing herself.

  “That’s when I really knew,” continued Kate. “Hemophilia is caused by a defect on a single X chromosome, which is why women are almost always only carriers and not sufferers, since we have two X chromosomes and therefore a double copy of the clotting factors. The healthy one can make up for the other. So my son inherited a defect on his X chromosome from me, because as the daughter of a hemophiliac I’m an obligate carrier. And my father inherited it from his…” Kate stopped. “I can’t even say it out loud. It’s too frightening.”

  “And you mustn’t ever, my child. This is a brilliant truth that must be buried away like a terrible evil.”

  “When I first started researching all this, you know, I thought it meant that my grandfather was him, their son. But that’s impossible, because genetically hemophilia couldn’t follow that path, right?”

  She stared in surprise at Kate. “Your grandfather was most definitely no Romanov, I can assure you that.”

  “But if you’re the real Novice Marina, not my grandmother, and my grandfather was Leonka, then-”

  “Ach… the newspapers claim your grandfather said such things. Did he really?”

  “Of course he did. On the tape he told me all about how Sister Antonina and you carried the rescue notes, hidden in the cork of a milk bottle, into the house, and that he, the kitchen boy, delivered them to-” Terrified by the look on Marina’s face, Kate suddenly stopped. “Wait a minute, don’t tell me that’s a lie too? You and the nun did sneak the notes into The House of Special Purpose, didn’t you?”

  “Why… why, no.”

  “But… but then who did? There really were rescue notes, and they still exist, I’ve seen copies of them. So if you didn’t smuggle them in, who did?”

  Marina hesitated before saying in the quietest of voices, “Why, your grandfather of course.”

  “What? But that’s not what Misha said. He told me someone else snuck the notes into the house and that he found them in the corks of the… the milk bottles. He said that was his job. As the kitchen boy, it was his duty to… to…” A horrible thought struck Kate. “Oh, my God, my grandfather was their kitchen boy, wasn’t he?”

  “Heavens no, not at all,” mumbled Marina, shaking her head. “There was a young kitchen boy, this Leonka, but I have no idea what happened to him. He was removed from the house just hours before the execution, but after that he vanished into the oblivion of the revolution.”

  Suddenly Kate felt ill. She had thought she finally held the truth, the complete truth, of her family. But, no, her grandfather’s deception was as deep as it was insidious. And yet if Misha wasn’t Leonka, the Tsar’s kitchen boy, then who the hell was he?

  “Wait a minute…” began Kate, desperate to piece it all together. “My Grandfather Misha was there, I know he was. I mean, he had to have been. How else would he have known all those things, all those details?”

  “Oh, yes, my child, he was most definitely there…” said Marina with a sad sigh.

  “Tell me.”

  “Ach, there are some stones better left unturned, certain wolves better left unprovoked.”

  “You don’t understand – I have to know.” Kate, seeing a chink of weakness in the old woman’s eyes, pressed on. “For me to keep my silence, I have to know the all of it. I have to know the truth of both my grandmother and my grandfather, otherwise I’ll kee
p searching. If you don’t tell me, then I’ll keep asking around. I’ll ask all sorts of people and reveal things I shouldn’t, but I’ll keep hunting until I have it, the absolute truth.”

  “Oh, my child…” she muttered, now gazing at the floor, staring at nothing. “Please, I beg you, please… if your grandfather didn’t tell you, then don’t ask me.”

  “I mean it, I won’t give up.”

  “I worry that the truth will be poison to your soul.”

  “Tell me!”

  “So be it…” quietly said Marina, reaching out with a gnarled, bony hand and touching Kate on the arm. “However, please do not harshly judge your grandfather, for he repented. Agreed?”

  Kate blurted an expedient, “Agreed.”

  “Well, then…” The old woman hesitated one last time, finally spitting it out like bitter medicine. “Your grandfather was one of them, one of the guards. He was barely a man back then, and his name was Volodya.” She nodded. “I can still picture him, still see him quite clearly – young, cute Volodya with the blond hair.”

  Dear God, thought Kate, her stomach clenching horribly. Her grandfather was that devilishly clever to have so twisted the story? To make her see him as he was not? And yet… yet in an instant she understood it could be no other way. Yes, Kate was surprisingly sure of it. Her dear grandfather had been one of them, one of the Reds. The next moment everything came flooding in, finally making such perfect sense, and Kate saw it all in her mind’s eye, not just the truth, but an image of her grandfather back then, back there…

  Afraid of what she was asking but unable to stop herself, she said, “A beard… did he have a beard?”