The Last Tsar (36 page)

“8 August. Went up the Irtysh and after about 10 versts [6 miles] landed on the right bank and went for a walk. Passed bushes and crossed a stream, then climbed a high bank which had a very beautiful view.” Happy days.

On August 13 they moved into Freedom House. Tatiana and the empress rode in a carriage; the rest walked.

“We examined everything in the house from the bottom to the attic. Occupied the second floor.… Many rooms … have an unattractive view. Then we went into the so-called garden—nasty! Everything has an old, neglected look. Unpacked our things in the study and in the washroom, which is half mine and half Alexei’s.”

Freedom House reminded them of Noah’s ark: the emperor and empress of a nonexistent empire, the aide-de-camp to a nonexistent emperor, the marshal of a nonexistent imperial court, and the ladies-in-waiting of a nonexistent empress gathered in the large dining room in the evening and called each other nonexistent titles: “Your Highness … Your Excellency.”

The servants were well matched to their masters. These accomplished liveried people passed silently from one generation to the next. The menu was written on cards with the tsar’s seal: it did not matter that modest dishes were inscribed. As in the Alexander Palace, the gentlemen of the suite were invited to the tsar’s table.

A dance of shadows, a fantastic masquerade, unfolded in this Siberian house. The last outpost of a three-hundred-year-old empire.

“14 August.… Spent all day sorting through photographs from the cruises of 1890, 1891.”

He was still trying to live in a vanished world—in that round-the-world trip when he saw Tobolsk for the first time. And here he was again in Tobolsk. Full circle.

Life in the Tobolsk house proceeded peacefully.

“9 August. In the morning we sat in the garden for an hour, and in the afternoon for 2 hours. Set up the trapeze there for myself.”

This was the same trapeze that would go with him all the way to Ekaterinburg. In the morning he swung on it, in the afternoon he played
gorodki
, a game similar to skittles, or sawed wood.

“After all, is this any worse than the Time of Troubles?” Nicholas said to Valya, chuckling, over his sawing.

“A lot worse, Your Highness. A prince is sawing wood.”

Tatishchev and Dolgorukov took turns joining in the tsar’s sawing:
when one got tired the other took over. Nicholas was indefatigable. How he loved movement and thirsted for his beloved walks.

“22 August. What a marvelous day. One gets frustrated at not being able to take walks along the riverbank or in the woods in weather like this. We read on the balcony.”

They had a favorite spot.

“16 August. Now every morning we have tea with all the children.… We spend a great part of the day on the balcony, which is warmed by the sun all day.”

Freedom Street opened out from the balcony. And from Freedom Street there was a good view of the family seated on the balcony: an average-size man in a military tunic, girls in white dresses, and a majestic lady, also in white, holding a lace parasol.

The appearance of the family on the balcony was a favorite spectacle and the principal theater in quiet Tobolsk.

From a letter I received from Andrei Anuchin in Magnitogorsk after my article about the execution of the tsar’s family was printed in
Ogonyok:

“They would come out on the balcony. Especially, I remember, we were all amazed at the girls. Their hair was shorn like little boys. We thought that was the fashion in Petrograd. True, later people said they had been sick, but I don’t know for sure. Still, they were very pretty, very clean.… The empress was an imposing lady, but not young—my father kept wondering, What, he said, did Grigory see in that old woman? My father had worked with Rasputin in the rooms in the Tobolsk hotel. And Rasputin had been our guest.”

So went this monotonous life, where everything was an event.

“24 August. Vladimir Nikolaevich Derevenko arrived with his family. This made the event of the day.”

Dr. Derevenko was Alexei’s physician, but at this time the boy was healthy—a rare period in his life when he had been in good health for quite a while. The doctor brought his son Kolya along—he was allowed to come on Sundays to play with Alexei.

A quiet, quiet life, but….

“25 August. Walks in the garden are becoming incredibly tedious, here the sense of sitting locked up is much stronger than at Tsarskoe Selo.”

What about her?

Upstairs and down the hall, the first and largest room was Alix’s.

She spent the greater part of the day there, or on the balcony. Rarely did she go downstairs, even before dinner. She had her favorite books. She read her Bible—in its brown binding and with its many bookmarks—and her “good books,” the multitude of spiritual books she had brought along.

They would later be found in the cesspool of the Ekaterinburg house.

The usual scene: a fire in the fireplace, although it was still warm outside, the little dog resting on its knees. The sounds of the piano: Tatiana playing in the drawing room.

Alix was writing another letter to Anya.

“Often I scarcely sleep.… My body pains me, my heart is better since I live so tranquilly. I am terribly thin.… My hair is graying quickly too.”

(She paid a high price for this “I live so tranquilly.” That year her hair turned gray and she wasted away.)

“We have settled far from everyone, we live quietly & read about all the horrors—but let us not talk about that. You are living in all that horror, that is enough.”

The “horrors.” Anya wrote to her about them in detail. The tension was mounting around the unhappy Romanov family. Misha had been arrested. Savinkov, the former terrorist and one of the organizers of Sergei Alexandrovich’s murder, was now running the War Ministry. It was on his demand that both Misha and his wife—“that woman,” the smug Countess Brasova (now Alix had forgiven her, now Alix only pitied her)—were arrested. And poor Paul Alexandrovich (she had forgiven him as well for all the nasty things he had written in the papers immediately following this horrible revolution).

History had come full circle: yesterday they were locking these bomb throwers up; today the bomb throwers were locking them up. It was a new world. Although Kerensky did free Misha and Paul soon after, they were both eventually killed by the Bolsheviks, Misha in 1918 and Paul in 1919.

In this time of “horrors,” the tsaritsa began to dream of moving to the Ivanov monastery. Their dynasty had begun in a monastery, and it ought to end in one as well.

Late in 1904, while Russia was being defeated in its war with Japan, Nicholas had had an amazing idea. The question had arisen in the Holy Synod about restoring the ancient Orthodox patriarchy in Russia. After long reflection and conversations with the empress, Nicholas decided to abdicate the throne, take monastic vows—and
become patriarch! As once, during the Time of Troubles, his ancestor Filaret had been patriarch. The Synod, however, had taken a dim view of this idea.

Now in 1918, during the triumph of the new Time of Troubles—how he wished he could live in a monastery.

The spiritual master in Tobolsk was Archbishop Hermogen. Once he had been a jealous admirer of Rasputin, but when he became Rasputin’s sworn enemy he had been persecuted and sent into exile. For all those oppressions, the new authorities had appointed him archbishop of Tobolsk, and he had become the family’s hope and support: the Lord’s slave Hermogen had forgotten his oppressions and was prepared to serve God’s anointed.

Hermogen greeted their idea with enthusiasm.

Volkov was sent to the mother superior. A new building was under construction at the monastery, and the mother superior joyfully prepared to receive the family. But this idyllic change of fate was not destined to be.

In September Vasily Pankratov, a commissar of the Provisional Government, arrived, and the idea was buried then and there.

“1 September. A new commissar arrived from the Provisional Government, Pankratov. He settled in the suite’s house with his assistant, some disheveled ensign who looks like a worker or a poor teacher. He will be censor of our correspondence.”

The “suite’s house”—that was the pretty name he gave to the merchant Kornilov’s home. There, opposite Freedom House, lived the suite—Tatishchev, Dolgorukov, Dr. Botkin, and Botkin’s daughter, who would later describe all that had gone on.

Commissar Pankratov had been sent to Tobolsk in the evolution of that same striking game that Kerensky had dreamed up: Pankratov had served fourteen years—the greater part of Nicholas’s reign—in the infamous Schlusselburg Fortress. So Kerensky sent him to guard Nicholas himself.

In all this Alix saw one and the same thing: the world had been stood on its head—a convict was guarding God’s anointed. She did not favor the strange man in the big fur cap with so much as a glance. He saw the contemptuous disdain on her face when he stopped in to return letters, the letters that she had written to Anya and that this revolutionary had now read (dared read!).

This correspondence was her life.

——

In Petrograd Anya, who had been released from the Fortress of Peter and Paul, was feverishly beginning to gather funds to free the family. It is ridiculous, but in this whole enormous empire, Anya was probably the only true conspirator trying to free the tsar’s family. Back in August Anya had sent one of the empress’s young ladies-in-waiting, Rita Khitrovo—a friend of Nastya Gendrikova and Grand Duchess Olga—to Tobolsk with some letters. Anya was furiously energetic, as ever, but she was an inexperienced conspirator. She explained to Rita the importance of the letters. Young Rita caught fire: the romantic aureole of the conspirator turned her head. Her imagination started working, and soon utterly trusting Rita was telling her friend about a certain organization. They were going to save the family! But then Rita’s friend told.… And then….

Nicholas’s diary:

“18 August.… In the morning Rita Khitrovo appeared on the street, having come from Petrograd, and spent some time with Nastenka Gendrikova. This was enough that in the evening they conducted a search of her room. The Devil knows what this is!…

“19 August.… Nastenka has lost the right to walk in the street for several days, and poor Rita Khitrovo has to go back with the evening steamer.”

She did not simply “go back.” She was taken to Petrograd for interrogation. The charges were the gravest; they were looking for a “Cossack organization.” Naturally, they did not find one, but Rita did not betray Anya.

Anya would manage to quit perilous Petrograd: Vyrubova was deported. She took the train from Petrograd to Finland. Soldiers and sailors surrounded the train at Helsingfors, Finland. Someone had spread a rumor that there were grand dukes on the train.

“Give us the grand dukes!”

“Give us the Romanovs!” the furious crowd raged.

What hatred! Yes, Blok was right: the future of the tsar’s family could have been read then, during the period of the Provisional Government.

The Helsingfors Soviet arrested Anya and sent her to the
Polar Star
, which had been seized by revolutionary sailors. She was put into the hold, which was teeming with parasites. She was led along the spat-upon, butt-strewn deck to be questioned in the same drawing room where once she had played four hands on the piano with the tsaritsa. In Petrograd her mother went to see Trotsky, the leader of the powerful Petrograd Soviet, who alone could influence the
Baltic sailors—“the pride and glory of the Russian revolution.” Trotsky honored her request, and the “pride and glory” released Anya. Once again she was in Petrograd, and once again she corresponded with the tsaritsa.

Alix’s diary:

“Sept. 7th.… I heard that Ania was taken with the others on her way to Sweden, seized at Helsingfors and ended up on the
Polar Star.”

Alix’s elegiac letters to Anya:

“My dear.… Yes, the past is over, I thank God for all I had & was given—& will live in my memories, which no one can take away. My youth is over.… My near and dear are all far far away.… & am surrounded by their photographs and possessions … a robe, slippers, a saucer, an ikon.… I would love to send you something, but fear it would be lost….

“You know I am with you in my heart & soul, I share all your sufferings & pray for you fervently.… The weather is changeable: frost & sun, then it melts & dims.… Terribly boring for those who like long walks & cant have them.… How time flies.… Soon will be 9 months since I said goodbye to so many … & you are alone in your suffering & loneliness.… All are generally healthy excepting for slight colds & my knee & wrist swell, tho’ thank God, without any great suffering. My heart has hurt me lately. I read much & live in the past, so full of rich & precious memories.… Dont lose heart, I wish I could send you something tasty.

“… I left all the albums in a trunk & am sad without them, but its better that way because it would be painful to look & remember.… I drive things away, they destroy me, all too fresh in my memory….

“I remember Novgorod & the terrible 17th.… Russia too suffers for this, all must suffer for this, what they have done, but no one understands.”

(The “17th”—the day of Rasputin’s murder. She was certain that “no one understands”: the country had had a revolution in punishment for the “17th.”)

After writing about her murdered spiritual pastor, she told Anya about the country’s captive pastor—the tsar, who was devoted: “He is absolutely stunning, such fortitude of spirit, tho’ he suffers endlessly for his country.… How old I am, but I feel like the country’s mother & suffer as if for my own child and love my Homeland despite all the horrors & sins.… Despite its black ingratitude to the sovereign which tears at my heart.… Lord have mercy on Russia and save her.”

——

Anya’s indomitable energy. The lesson of Trotsky’s might did not pass unappreciated. She continued to improve her ties with the new world, this time with the famous “stormy petrel of the revolution”—the writer Maxim Gorky.

Poor Alix with her firm principles could not understand Anya’s new acquaintances, and she branded Gorky in her letters. But Anya knew: new times, new names. And those new names could come in handy in her risky affairs.