The Kitchen Boy (15 page)

An Officer

And here I must ask, Is the wisdom of my years clear now? Have I not seen things that no human should?

“Wait for a whistle toward midnight…”

Such enticing words. To the ends of the earth Romeo could have thus enticed his Juliet, Heathcliff his Cathy, even Zhivago his Lara. Such promise lies in those words, such hope, such beauty. Aleksandra, herself, whispered how she hoped for three hundred loyal officers to come charging into town, whooping and hollering and whisking us all to safety. So excited, so agitated was she, that in those final days the Empress scarcely rested or slept, fidgeting and turning with every sound. The Tsar, meanwhile, never stopped pacing. In the dining room, in the drawing room, in the garden he paced his soldierly step, back and forth, back and forth, waiting, praying, hoping. And eventually despairing, for he understood that his fate, which had long been waiting on the horizon like a black storm, was finally and at last set to arrive.

True, just then and for a few days that followed, our candle of hope burned so bright, so strong. We found hope in everything, from the heavy evening rains that cooled the air, to our dinner table, which was spread with more plentiful food than we had seen for months.

The nights of July 5 and 6 we were again secretly advised to sleep fully clothed, which in fact we did. And again none of us slept well, listening as we did for that blasted whistle, which was never to come, not ever. I don’t know quite what happened, why this attempt to rescue the Romanovs never materialized. Perhaps the tsarist plot was discovered. Perhaps the officers lost their nerve. Perhaps their leaders were killed. Or perhaps they simply ran away with the pile of money sent by Anna Vyrubova. But something went terribly awry.

That night I lay on my bed, my ears stretching for midnight hope, yet only hearing the stomp of the guards outside and fighting cats and a woman screaming at her drunk husband.

“Borya, get inside at once!”

Once I was awakened by the report of a gunshot, a sharp blast that split the night. I sat up in my makeshift bed, a pile of blankets on the floor, and saw cook Kharitonov stir as well. Was this it, the beginning of the loyal officers’ siege upon our prisonly house? Were we about to be carried away by faithful Cossacks? But then there was nothing. Kharitonov just rolled over, tumbled back into sleep. And I just sat there, staring at the room’s lone window that was veiled in lime. The minutes crawled past, and I lay back down on the floor, overcome with a sense of hopelessness and eventually exhaustion.

Toward morning came the sound of war. And it increased every day from then on. Of course we could see none of this, not simply because of the double palisade surrounding The House of Special Purpose, but because of the limed windows. But like blind people we became particularly attuned to noises from beyond. Each time there came the sound of something momentous – the sound of hooves, the rumble of a motor lorry or two – a great pause passed through the house. The Emperor would cease his pacing, the Empress her secret stitching, Demidova her cleaning, and Kharitonov his chopping. What was that, a military or civilian wagon? Red soldier or White savior? Was it the time of our rescue or the time of…

We heard nothing more, not ever again, from these so-called Officers. The Empress became so nervous and the Emperor so frustrated, that he finally wrote a note begging for information. It was this note, entrusted to me by the Tsar and discovered by Yurovsky that provided the excuse the
Bolsheviki
had been searching so hungrily for.

But why was there no rescue?
Why
? Earlier, that past winter in Tobolsk town, the Romanovs could have easily escaped. The troops assigned to guard them had been nearly all won over by the Imperial Family’s charm, and Nikolai could have effected escape by simply and quickly leaving town, fleeing to the great north and into the depths of Siberia. But the Tsar nobly felt an obligation not to stir up trouble, not to leave Russia, and so… so by the time they’d been transferred to that Red hotbed, the city of Yekaterinburg, it was too late.

But… but why did no rescuers appear by the light of the summer moon? By that July there were only several hundred Red troops in all of Yekaterinburg. The Whites, only twenty miles away, had seized towns all around and were poised to attack from any number of directions. We all knew the city was destined to fall any day. So why was nothing attempted? In those few days that followed there came through our single open window only tidbits of normal life and no whistle. Locked in The House of Special Purpose we waited. And as the time went by our hope fell away. It was on Thursday, July 11, that we finally realized just how desperate, even hopeless, our situation truly was.

To break the tremendous boredom, the Heir and I were once again playing, not troika or English tank, our two most favorite games, but elevator. One of the doors off the dining room was a pocket door that, much to our amusement, slid sideways in and out of the wall rather like an elevator’s. And Aleksei, seated in the wheeling chaise, and I, by his side, pretended we were riding all the way to the top of one of those new American buildings that rose so high above the ground – twelve floors! – and, they claimed, scraped the sky. We weren’t even to the fifth floor when we suddenly saw the grand duchesses and Dr. Botkin hurrying through the dining room.

Aleksei said, “Hey, something’s going on.”

The Heir pointed with his right hand and I, the consummate companion and lackey, immediately obeyed. I pushed him off our make-believe lift, steered him quickly through the dining room, through his sisters’ room, and into his parents’. There we found the Emperor and Empress, all the girls, and the doctor staring at the one open window, a look of great grief upon all of their faces.

“What is it, Papa?” demanded Aleksei. “They’re not sealing the window again, are they?”

The Tsar silently came over, rested his hand on Aleksei’s shoulder, and softly, almost painfully, replied, “No, they’re putting some kind of covering over it.”

In a kind of shock we watched as two ladders were thrown up against the side of the house and three workers lifted a heavy metal grating. With no small effort, they attached the bars to the outside of the window frame. The limed-over windows were terrible enough, but this was worse, for within a matter of ten minutes we were securely behind bars. Wasn’t it through this window we were supposed to flee? Wasn’t our path to freedom now completely blocked? Was rescue now impossible?

“Oh, Nicky,” gasped Aleksandra as she clung to her husband’s arm.

Bit by bit, day by day, our world was shrinking. No longer did it seem as if we were merely under house arrest. Now, looking through those black iron bars, we all realized we were imprisoned, locked in a kind of grand cell from which there might well be no escape.

Nikolai, stroking his mustache, said, “And with no warning…”

“You don’t think our… our friends on the outside have been discovered, do you?”

“There’s no way of telling, though the guards certainly seem afraid of something. In any case I’m starting to like this Yurovsky less and less!”

Behind us came steps, and the
komendant
, entering the room, said in that nasally voice of his, “Do you have a comment, Citizen Romanov?”

The Tsar turned around, and asked, “Do you really have such fear of our climbing out or getting in touch with the sentry?”

“My orders are to guard the former Tsar.”

“As I’ve said, I would never leave my family.”

“I have my orders.” Yurovsky then held up a small leather box. “I found this in the service room, stolen I believe from your trunk.”

Nikolai took the box and opened it, revealing his gold watch. “Thank you for returning it.”

“I will allow you to keep it in your possession, but for security purposes I suggest you wear it at all times.”

Yurovsky turned and departed, and the Tsar took his watch and fastened it around his left wrist. A beautiful gold watch it was, naturally of the finest quality, and he wore it unto his death, when it was taken as a brilliant souvenir from his dead body.

“Oh, Nicky…” said Aleksandra.

The Tsaritsa felt the pains of the world in her head, her back, and in her legs. And Nikolai helped his beloved back to her bed, where she reclined and stayed for the rest of that day and, actually, almost for the short remainder of her life.

It was about then that our dear Dr. Botkin began his prophetic letter, the famous one found after the night of treachery. He began it at about this time and was still working on the wording all the way to the end. In fact, he was still writing it that night when they were all called down to the cellar.

In retrospect it was clear that the end was rapidly approaching. Dr. Botkin foresaw that. I, on the other hand, never stopped believing that we would be spirited away. Then again, I was but a lad of fourteen, as naive to the depravity of mankind as I am wise today.

And so it is with great sadness that I proceed to Sunday, July 14.

A Sunday it was, just two days until the end.

For days we had not been visited by Dr. Derevenko, the Heir’s physician. And for days now the Tsar had been requesting his presence.

“My son needs the attention of our Dr. Derevenko, who possesses a unique electric device. He uses this to massage my son’s legs, you understand, and the results are quite good.”

“And as I’ve told you before,” countered Yurovsky, “this is not permitted.”

Likewise the Tsar had been asking for a religious service, which had not been permitted for quite some time. Then all of a sudden that Sunday, the fourteenth, we were informed at morning inspection that we would be allowed a service to be performed by none other than Father Storozhev himself.

“He and the deacon will be here at ten this morning,” said Yurovsky. “No conversation will be permitted.”

“Understood,” curtly replied the Tsar.

Morning tea and bread were served immediately after the inspection, and the announcement of the religious service caused a great stir at the table, albeit a quiet one, for a guard stood at either end of the dining room. That left us not much to talk about except the weather, and a beautiful summer’s morning it was, the sky having cleared after another night of heavy rain and the temperature now a cool, pleasant twelve degrees. As soon as breakfast was concluded, however, everyone scattered. Kharitonov, Demidova, and I went about cleaning the table and doing the dishes, while Aleksandra and the two younger girls, Maria and Anastasiya, set up a small altar in the drawing room. They cleared the large desk and decorated it quite nicely, spreading one of the Empress’s shawls over it, then arranging their favorite icons, including Saint Feodor’s Mother of God, perhaps the Empress’s most treasured possession. Adding a nice homey touch, Anastasiya placed a few birch branches here and there, for whether of high or low estate Russians are a mystical sort, bound like pagans to the wild nature of their motherland.

At this time the Tsar retired to his bedchamber, presumably to sit with the Heir, perhaps even to read to him. This, however, was not the case. A few minutes later Olga slipped into the room, and it was then that they wrote the final letter to the “Officer.” It had been ten entire days since we’d last heard anything from the outside, ten entire days of waiting for that bloody midnight whistle, and the Tsar wished to inform those on the outside that the conditions within The House of Special Purpose were deteriorating, rapidly so. Of course the Tsar, always cautious, controlled, and particular, was not a quick writer by any means, and it took him a good long while to draft the six or seven lines. Then, of course, Olga had to translate it into the French, so this entire process took all the way up until the service itself.

Shortly after ten the servant Trupp brought the brass censer with burning coals, handing it to me in the kitchen and requesting, “Please deliver this to father, who is in the guard’s room.”

I did as told, carrying the brass censer, suspended as it was by three chains. A rich plume of heavenly smoke billowed out as I walked through the house and to the guard room, where I found Yurovsky and a guard, plus the two from the church, Father Archpresbyter Storozhev and Father Deacon Buimirov. The two religious men were already vested, their gold and red brocade robes flowing to the ground, and Father Storozhev was in conversation with the
komendant
himself.

“So what is the matter with your hands?” asked Yurovsky with a small smile. “Why is it that you keep rubbing them?”

“I’m trying to ward off a chill, for I fear the return of pleurisy, from which I have only recently recovered,” replied Father Storozhev.

“Ah, now of these things I know, for not only am I a trained medic, but I myself have had an operation on my lungs.”

Yurovsky proceeded to dole out his free advice, and when he was finished we were told to proceed into the living room. First went Father Archpresbyter, then Father Deacon, Yurovsky, and finally me. Just as we entered, Nikolai Aleksandrovich, dressed in his khaki field shirt, khaki pants, and his high leather boots, came through the doors from the dining room, the two younger daughters behind him.

“Well, are all of your people present?” asked Yurovsky.

The Tsar nodded toward those at the front of the room. “Yes, all.”

The Tsaritsa, wearing the same dark blue cotton dress she’d worn for weeks, was seated next to the Heir, who was in the wheeling chaise and wearing a jacket with a sailor’s collar. The older daughters stood nearby; all four girls had changed and now were dressed nearly identically in dark skirts and simple white jackets, the same simple jackets that usually hung at the foot of their cots.

The Tsar took his place at the head of the family. On the edge of the living room stood Dr. Botkin, Demidova, the tall Trupp, the short and stocky Kharitonov, and me, the youngest and the last. Once we had assumed our positions, the
obednitsa
– a liturgy without communion – began, but here I should take care to add that there was one more person present: Yurovsky. In a complete affront to rank and etiquette, the
komendant
took great care to stand right up there at the front.

Severely tested as they were, the Romanovs were not simply more pious than ever, they were more grave and serious. The last time they had been allowed a religious service, the Empress and Tatyana had sung along with the priest. Even Nikolai Aleksandrovich had sung, his bass voice lively and vibrant as he had intoned “Our Father.” This time, however, none of them sang along, not even the Empress with her beautiful contralto, and when Father Deacon chanted instead of read “Who Resteth with Saints,” the entire family dropped to their knees. Standing behind them, the rest of us, from Botkin on down to me, immediately followed their example.

Afterward we lined up according to rank to kiss the holy cross that Father Deacon held in hand. Nikolai Aleksandrovich went first, but he hesitated, which even I, way at the end, took note of. Peering around, I tried to see why the Tsar seemed to be taking such a long time with Father Storozhev, to whom he was offering his thanks. And then I understood, the Emperor wanted to pull his note from his pocket and ask Father Storozhev to deliver it to those loyal to him. But this he could not do, for Komendant Yurovsky had so positioned himself to oversee and overhear
everything
.

And so this, unfortunately, was how the last note fell into my young hands.