"The Kitchen Boy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Alexander Robert)4But again, I anticipate. Forgive me, my dear granddaughter, there’s simply so much I wish to tell you. Back then, during the horrible times of the revolution, Yekaterinburg and the Ural Mountains were a real hotbed of Red activity. The Red Urals, that was how it was known, and this was the worst place for Nikolai and his family. Nikolashka, that was how the And there we were in that fateful house. “Crammed in like herring in a barrel,” laughed the Tsar one evening. The “At least we can see the top of the church tower,” the Empress said any number of times. “At least they haven’t taken that away from us.” What still surprises me most was how well the Tsar and his family coped, how easily they accepted their imprisonment. Maybe Nikolai understood that his fate was to be a martyr tsar. Perhaps. But toward the end, during those last few weeks, he grew terribly depressed, for he saw how much worse things had become. I think he was beginning to realize his mistakes, that all of this could have been avoided if he’d only made a few simple concessions. And yet they were a kindly family, those royals. During those last months and even last weeks I recall no outbursts among the family members, no screaming or tantrums. There was no fighting, not even among the children. And never once did I hear a raised voice between Nikolai and Aleksandra. No, never. How do I explain this? Nikolai – well, he found his wisdom too late to save his family and the House of Romanov, but all along he was a tender man. Really, I must say he was much too nice to be a Tsar of All the Russias. And Aleksandra – how could such a caring person have alienated so many? How ever you choose to fault Nikolai and Aleksandra – and they had many faults, to be sure – the most honest thing one can say about them was that they had a warm, devoted family. And the truest thing one can say about them was that nothing was more important to them than the well-being of their Mother Russia. That these two things ended in utter disaster is their tragedy, to be sure. So perhaps in the end that is how they will be judged, on their love of family and country. Yes, perhaps… Frankly, from the one side that seems as it should be, but on the other it seems too generous, too simplistic, for they lost Russia, and I for one, no matter how badly I feel about what took place, no matter how terrible I feel for what I did, can never forgive them for that. One must understand that they lost her because they never truly realized that Russia was not a seventeenth-century empire, but a twentieth-century industrial power and society, which meant that every step they took to help their country was in fact a misstep. Simply, Nikolai and Aleksandra were desperately out of touch with the modern world, they just couldn’t comprehend that he wasn’t semidivine, they couldn’t separate the problems of their family from those of the country. Perhaps they would have survived if Aleksandra hadn’t meddled so terribly in the affairs of government. And Nikolai, well, he made an enormous mistake by taking control of the armies during the Great War. You see, he went to the front, which in turn left the Tsaritsa in complete control of the government, and then things went to hell in a handbasket, they did. But… but it is always easy to judge, harder yet to comprehend. So, yes, the notes… All the rest of that morning I heard nothing more about any plans. It must have been close to noon when cook Kharitonov exploded. I hurried in from the hallway. “What is it? What’s happened?” “Those stupid Reds!” he cursed, though not too loudly. “They come in here and help themselves to anything they want. What pigs! Just look, they’ve eaten all the cutlets we were to have for dinner.” “Now what will you prepare?” “I don’t know. There’s nothing… nothing! I’m going to have to request permission for you to go again to the Soviet.” And with that I shrank away, leaving cook Kharitonov to rant and rave. Wanting to alert the Tsar that I might be sent out of the house, I snuck from the kitchen in search of Botkin. Entering the drawing room, however, it was very quiet, meaning that the Emperor, his four daughters, and the doctor were still outside in the scruffy garden, where today they’d been allowed thirty minutes to pace in the fresh air. But what about Aleksandra Fyodorovna, who so seldomly went out? Not too long ago I’d seen the maid, Demidova, straightening up the dining room, but where was she, the Empress? I passed from the living room, through the dining room, and directly into the room shared by all four girls, my eyes glancing over the nickel-plated cots they had brought with them from their palace in Tsarskoye. I’d heard Demidova say they were exactly the same kind of camp beds their great-grandfather, Aleksander II, had used in the warring he had done against the Turks, and that’s what they looked like too. Army cots. Each bed was perfectly made by the grand duchesses each morning, yet each bed was slightly different, one with a flowered shawl placed squarely in the middle, another with a red and white Ukrainian coverlet neatly arranged. The metal footboard of each cot was carefully covered with a striped slipcloth, and at the foot of each bed stood a simple chair on the back of which was carefully draped a light blouse. The blouses were identical, I noticed, because the girls so often wore identical clothing. Though their clothes had more than likely come from the fashionable dressmaker, Lamanova of Moscow, nothing they ever wore was very racy, never for a daughter of Aleksandra. Losing my nerve, I hesitated, for I had not been invited into these rooms. As I stood there, my eyes glanced over their things – next to each cot stood a small bedside table on which sat books and Bibles, an assortment of icons, and a few glass bottles filled with, I assumed, perfumed waters. The orderliness of the room ceased at the walls, however, for on the wall above their beds each great princess had tacked a jumble of mementos, primarily photographs. The snapshots were mostly of their mama and papa, their dogs, a favorite soldier or two, the Livadia Palace – a large white palace overlooking the Crimean Sea, which Anastasiya Nikolaevna had told me was their favorite home – but there was also a handful of sketches and watercolors the girls themselves had done. Sure, the An attractive electric chandelier hung from the ceiling – it looked like a bouquet of flowers hung upside down, with the blooms fashioned in colored glass. That was where the electric bulbs were, in those glass blooms, and I passed beneath this fixture. Even though I was being extremely bold, even brazen, by entering these rooms uninvited, I pressed on, my feet shuffling across the brown linoleum that covered the floor. “Aleksandra Fyodorovna?” I called, my voice quivering with nervousness. This next chamber – their room, where the Emperor, the Empress, and the Heir Tsarevich slept – occupied the front of the house, with two windows facing Voznesensky Prospekt and Ascension Square, and two windows on the side facing the lane. It was a fairly good-sized room, certainly befitting a well-to-do merchant, and it was filled with some polished wooden desks and tables, a wardrobe, a few chairs, one of them soft and upholstered. The walls were covered in pale yellow striped wallpaper, with a frieze of flowers at the top. There was one larger bed, and there to my right- I was as surprised to catch him as he was to be discovered, for Aleksei Nikloaevich was not only out of bed, he was standing on his own and holding a small wooden box. We’d all been told that he couldn’t walk, that if he went anywhere he either had to be carried or taken in the rolling chair, yet… “You won’t tell anyone that I’m up, will you, Leonka?” he pleaded. “Especially Mama – she would be very angry.” Before I could say anything the pallid boy aimed the wooden box at me, looked down into it, and pushed a button. I said, “I thought the “All except mine. I have a secret place where I keep it hidden.” To be sure, he didn’t walk well, and the Heir quickly hobbled over to his bed and jumped in. He wore a white nightshirt, and when he pulled a white blanket over his legs he was like a ghost disappearing into a cloud. Working as quickly as a thief, he took hold of a wooden table that stradled his bed and brought it closer to himself. He pushed aside a couple of books and some paper that lay on the table, and then removed the glass plate from the camera and put in a fresh one. “Now you take my picture,” he said, handing the apparatus to me. “But…” “Don’t worry. It’s easy.” As he sat there in bed, propped up by several pillows, he quickly told me how to do it, take a photograph, which I had never done before. Photography was still very much a folly of the nobility, and I’d rarely seen a camera, let alone held one. The Romanovs, on the other hand, were fanatics. They’d all had cameras. They’d always been snapping away. Because of this and their extensive diaries and letters, the Tsar and his family were better documented than any of today’s most famous people. And these things – their writings and something like one hundred and fifty thousand family snapshots – are still kept not only in the archives in Moscow, but also at the libraries of Harvard and Yale. Once the young Tsarevich explained, I stepped back several feet, aimed the thing, and repeated what a photographer had told me when he’d taken my one and only portrait, “Now say Rather than saying “raisin,” Aleksei Nikolaevich remained silent, staring oddly at me and raising both hands, palms out. I operated the shutter, made it open and close, and then just stood there, afraid to move. “It’s done. You took the picture,” advised the Heir. “Here, now give me the camera.” I did as the Heir asked, of course, passing him the wooden Kodak. Wasting no time, Aleksei Nikolaevich took it, turned, and reached around the white, metal railings of his bed’s headboard. I moved forward, watched as he leaned over and plied away a piece of the tall mopboard, revealing a secret hiding place. Inside the dark wooden compartment sat the Heir’s treasures, pieces of wire, some rocks, coins, a few nails, and a few folded pieces of paper. “This is where I keep my special things,” whispered the Heir as he pushed his camera into its hiding place. “You never know when we might need some of them.” Aleksei Nikolaevich had to give the Kodak a good shove, but it fit, just barely, and then he set the mopboard back in place, tapping it with his hand. He loved collecting little pieces of things, small bits of tin, rusty nails, wine corks, rocks. And in that regard he was just like any other little boy, curious, energetic, always fiddling. Of course, in every other respect he was entirely different. Before his father’s abdication lackeys were always falling over him because he was the Heir Tsarevich, and his family, too, was loath to deny him because he was so sickly. So he was indulged, rather spoiled, and also not as well educated as he should have been because he’d lost years of study due to his bouts of bleeding. On the other hand, he was compassionate because he knew pain, real pain, and real suffering too. Yet even in those bouts when it looked for sure as if he would die, he was never given morphine, not even as his screams of pain rattled the palace windows. That poor child had traveled to the bottom of life and back again, and naturally that had had a profound effect on him. I liked him. In another world, in another time, we would have been true friends. Rasputin had predicted that if Aleksei lived to age seventeen he would outgrow his hemophilia, a brilliant dream the Empress lived for and perhaps the only one that kept her alive. Had this happened, had he matured into a healthy young man and become tsar, he would have been one of the greatest, for while his father found his wisdom too late, Aleksei Nikolaevich had found his much too early. “You can’t tell anyone about our hiding place. It’s our secret. Agreed?” said the Heir, studying me with a naughty grin. “Agreed.” From the side of his bed he grabbed a game board. “Do you want to play I shrugged, a bit ashamed to admit, “I don’t know how.” “I could teach you.” “Well…” “It would be fun, I promise. Really, it’s not too hard. It just takes some practice, that’s all.” Staring down at him, I couldn’t help but pity this sickly boy whose empire stretched barely beyond the limits of his bed. “Everyone should know how to play “Perhaps, but…” Just then I heard heavy, firm steps. Boots. It was one of the guards heading this way. “I can’t, not right now,” I said. “Please… don’t say anything.” “I won’t.” Even as I ducked out of the room, the boy was deflating, falling back onto his bed, where he all but disappeared beneath his sheets and into his despair. As it turned out I wasn’t sent out after more food. Had we any force meat, cook Kharitonov would have prepared We served lunch at one, just as we always did; life for the royals had always been and was still terribly regimented. I must say that no one starved, not by any means, but toward the end the food was very plain. That day we had watery bouillon first and then the macaroni tart. Bread, butter, and tea as well. Actually, vermicelli and macaroni were nearly all that the former Empress could or would eat, and honestly, she partook of so little that I don’t know how she managed to stay alive. Toward the end she had grown so terribly thin that even her tea gowns hung like sacks on her. Yet neither she nor any of the others ever complained. They suffered well, those Romanovs, they truly did. They read their Bibles and their religious works, they prayed to their icons, and they suffered very well indeed. As Aleksandra wrote to her friend Anna: The spirits of the whole family are good. God is very near us, we feel His support, and are often amazed that we can endure events and separations which once might have killed us. Although we suffer horribly still there is peace in our souls. I suffer most for Russia… but ultimately all will be for the best. Only I don’t understand anything any longer. Everyone seems to have gone mad. I think of you daily and love you dearly. It was that day too that Kharitonov made a compote for lunch, a stew of dried fruits – apples and raisins – which greatly pleased the Tsar. “Just delicious. There’s nothing better than honest Russian food – so wholesome. Honestly, I tell you, people always used to serve me fancy French food with rich creams and sauces, and I don’t miss any of it at all. Give me good, solid Russian food any day!” I heard nothing more about the note the rest of that afternoon, nor the rest of the evening, as Nikolai deliberated what to do. On the one hand, a response to the letter meant taking a large risk – what if they were caught? Would that give the As it turned out, no action was taken until the afternoon of the following day, the twenty-first. As usual I assisted cook Kharitonov in cleaning up after lunch, and no sooner was I was done than the woman servant, Anna Stepanovna Demidova – Nyuta, we called her – came to me in the kitchen. “Leonka,” she said, staring at me as if she were peering into my very soul, “would you be so kind as to help me? I need some assistance.” “He’s finished here!” bellowed Kharitonov. That’s the way it was. Any time anyone needed to take care of a lowly task, they called me. “Leonka, help us wheel Aleksei Nikolaevich into the other room, please.” “Leonka, be so kind as to bring some water.” “Leonka, fetch some wood.” “Get this… get that…” “Start the samovar.” So none of the others thought anything of it, not cook, nor even the guard who was lingering in the room just beyond. And yet I knew something was up, for again it was the look, the way Demidova spoke to me more with her eyes than her voice, and I quickly followed her through the service hall where I slept every night across two chairs. Entering the dining room, we found the youngest daughter, Grand Duchess Anastasiya, known simply to her family as Nasten’ka, sometimes Shvybz. At seventeen she was such a cute girl, always a twinkle in her eye. It’s no wonder, either, that it was she who spawned that cottage industry of silly speculation – did she really escape?! – for if any of the Romanovs had wanted to hoodwink the Anyway, that day young Anastasiya sat at the dining room table, dressed in the same light blouse and dark skirt that she’d been wearing for days. With a book open before her, she sat there pretending, rather poorly, to read. Her eyes darted over at me, and she grinned ever so slightly in conspiracy. I understood, but didn’t smile back. In silence I continued behind Demidova, who led the way into the doorless room of the grand duchesses. One of them was in there too, Maria Nikolaevna. “Mashka,” that was her nickname, though sometimes in English they called her “Little Bow-Wow,” because she had the blind devotion of a dog. She liked so to please everyone, to take care of everyone, to do exactly as everyone wished. She wanted nothing more in life but children, scores of them. Maria Nikolaevna was sitting on one of the metal cots, a Bible perched on her lap, but I could tell she wasn’t reading either. She looked briefly at us and then stared into the dining room. It was then that everything was perfectly clear: the girls had been set up like a warning system. I doubt it was Nikolai who had thought of something like this. He just wasn’t cunning enough, not the former Tsar. But she, on the other hand, well, surely this was the doing of Aleksandra Fyodorovna. I couldn’t tell for sure, but I had little doubt that Olga and Tatyana were stationed elsewhere in the house, ready to drop a book or cough or somehow telegraph the approach of one of the guards. And when I followed Demidova into the next chamber we found the former Empress standing right by the door, awaiting not only our arrival, but any signals as well. The Empress ushered me in, resting a hand on my back and gently steering me toward her husband, who sat at a desk. I glanced to my immediate right, saw the boy, Aleskei Nikolaevich, staring at me from his bed. In front of him was the same table, covered with various distractions, including some needlework, which the Empress had taught him, for she firmly believed that idleness was illness’s sister. That was the English side of her, I’m sure. Something she got from the old Queen. So upon my entry the Tsar rose from his small wooden desk, where I might add not a single item was out of place. During his reign he never had a personal secretary, which was a point of pride to him, but to me now seems absolutely foolish. After all, the Tsar’s duties concerned one-sixth of the earth’s surface, not filing, not addressing envelopes. The Tsar stood and pulled me into his sphere with those remarkable eyes. He cleared his throat, stroked once the trademark of his face, his beard. “Your idea turns out to be quite a good one, An odd noise came from the girls’ room and Alekesandra Fyodorovna hurried back to the doorway. A moment later, she turned to her husband and nodded the all-clear. For the rest of my audience, however, she remained thus positioned. He repeated, “Are you willing to act as our courier?” There really wasn’t any question in my mind simply because of what the Reds had done to my Uncle Vanya just a month earlier. My dear uncle, of course, had served the Imperial Family for years, and it was in fact he who had brought me to work for the Romanovs that previous year. He was deeply devoted to the Tsar, so that previous month when the soldiers’ committee decided that Aleksei didn’t need two pairs of shoes, just one, my uncle and Nagorny, the mansvervant who watched over the boy, loudly protested. And for this they were taken to the city prison. Right up until the end we thought the two of them had been dumped in a cell with Prince Lvov, the first minister president of the Provisional Government, who’d already been arrested for some other silly reason. It was only years later that I learned that my dear uncle and Nagorny hadn’t been sitting in jail all along, but had instead been shot just a few days after they were first taken. The prince, on the other hand, later escaped to France, where he wrote his memoirs. As I look back through all these decades it now seems obvious that the So in response to the Tsar’s request, I bowed my head and said, “ He said, “Now, Leonka, you understand the seriousness of this, do you not? You understand that I am entrusting to you the safety of my wife and children? Do you realize how dangerous this is not only for us, but for you and everyone else as well?” And how I wish they could have. How I wish they could have depended upon me to… to… ensure their rescue. The Tsar then asked, “When are you next scheduled to go to the Soviet for food?” “I am to go within the hour, Nikolai Aleksandrovich, to fetch more food for this evening’s supper.” “Excellent.” He turned to his desk and pulled two pieces of paper hidden beneath a book. “Here is the note which you brought us yesterday morning. On it we have written our reply. I am sending that along with this.” He held up a sheet of lined paper on which was drawn a map. Or more precisely, a floor plan. Nikolai Aleksandrovich then folded it into three, took an envelope from the drawer of his wooden desk, and carefully placed the two pieces of paper in that very envelope. “You must hide this on your body, Leonka,” he instructed. Of course I had to. I hadn’t ever been searched leaving The House of Special Purpose, not ever, but I still had to be careful. So I started pulling up my shirt, then stopped. The Empress, who’d been watching me from her post in the doorway, quickly turned away. I glanced briefly at Aleksei Nikolaevich, who was playing with a toy boat with a little wire chain, and then I lowered my pants and stuck the envelope into my undergarments. No sooner had I buttoned my pants than Nikolai Aleksandrovich handed me a second sheet of paper, this one folded simply in two with no envelope. He said, “Now, Leonka, I want you to carry this letter in your hand, and I want you to show it to the guards should they ask. Open it up, go ahead, read it.” “Now?” I asked. Although I had received very little formal education, I was able to read, unlike most of the people in Russia at that time. Dear Sisters, Thank you for the May God be with you, A.F. Nikolai was a terrible smoker, he was. Always smoking. Frankly if the Oh, what a mistake, how they suffered because of Aleksandra’s devious needle… And the Tsar said to me, “On your way to the Soviet, I want you to stop by the Church of the Ascension. You might even tell the guards that you are taking this note there. Go right ahead and show it to them. Tell them that you are dropping this note off at the church so that one of the deacons will take it to the sisters at the monastery. When you reach the church, however, I want you to ask for Father Storozhev. You must speak to him and no one else but him, Leonka. And when you are alone with the Father you give him this note and also the envelope. He will make sure it is delivered to the correct people.” For a while, then, I was no longer Leonka, the kitchen boy, but the Tsar’s spy. And what did the note say? And the map, what did it show? Those have been preserved as well. They too have been kept all these years in the And the first reply reads: From the corner up to the balcony there are 5 windows on the street side, 2 on the square. All of the windows are glued shut and painted white. The Little One is still sick and in bed and cannot walk at all – every jolt causes him pain. A week ago, because of the anarchists we were supposed to leave for Moscow at night. No risk whatsoever must be taken without being As for the map, it was a penciled floor plan of the dwelling, done by none other than Aleksandra Fyodorovna who, like all women of the nobility, had received not a formal education, but the proper instruction in drawing, watercolors, piano, literature, foreign tongues, and, of course, needlework. Within the hour Komendant Avdeyev himself led me out the front door and through the two palisades surrounding the house. I crossed the muddy square, just as Nikolai Aleksandrovich asked, and I went directly to the Church of the Ascenscion, a big white brick structure. Only one small door was open, and I entered and was struck with the scent of the heavens, frankincense and beeswax candles. Searching the hazy church, I spied a nun on her knees in front of a golden icon of Saint Nicholas. Crossing herself over and over again, she dipped repeatedly, bowing her forehead against the cold, stone floor. As I approached, the prostrated woman paused in her prayers and stared up at me with sunken eyes. “What is it, my son?” “I come from The House of Special Purpose to see Papa Storozhev.” The nun quickly crossed herself in the Orthodox manner – using three fingers to represent the Trinity, she dotted her forehead, stomach, right shoulder, left – pushed herself to her feet and hurried away. Disappearing into a forest of icon-covered pillars, she slipped into the dark corners of the church. Within seconds Father Storozhev himself came out, his head and hair covered with a tall, black hat, his flowing, black gown dragging behind him. His eyes as dark as ink pots, he stared down upon me as if I were a Red infidel. I boldly said, “Aleksandra Fyodorovna herself asked me to deliver this note, with the request that you pass it on to the sisters at the monastery.” I handed him the note requesting thread and tobacco, and Father Storozhev screwed up his eyes, studied the paper. I started to speak yet again, but then hesitated and checked to make sure we were not being observed. Only when I was certain we were alone did I unfasten my garments and withdraw the envelope containing the map and the response to the officer’s letter. “Papa, this is from And then, of course, began our long wait in The House of Special Purpose. |
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