The Kitchen Boy (2 page)

It was as warm as only Siberia could be in the summer – humid, buggy, stifling. You’d never expect such a warmth in Siberia, but the northern sun, which had only set for a few brief hours, was already rising high, and in a couple of hours it would be hot, so very hot, in the Ipatiev House. To make matters worse, all the windows on the main floor had been painted over with lime and we hadn’t been allowed to open a single one, which greatly irritated Tsar Nikolai. In the past few days it had been like an oven, really, all of us crammed in there without any fresh air blowing through. And it smelled so… so stuffy. That wasn’t just from the samovar or from our cooking, either. No, it was the guards who roamed our rooms at will, the guards who perhaps bathed only at Easter and on their birthdays. They were so stinky, I say kindly. Greasy and filthy. For two weeks the former Emperor had been asking – just a single window, just a little fresh air, that was all the former Tsar wanted for his family, but the
Bolsheviki
have always proved inept at making the simplest of decisions, except of course when it comes to purges and murder. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for him, for Nikolai Aleksandrovich. One day he commands one-sixth of the world, the next he isn’t even in charge of a single pane of glass. Plus the Tsar had been suffering from hemorrhoids – he’d been in bed one whole day earlier that week. I’ve been told it was hereditary.

Sure, my sweet Katya, we know many intimate things of those last weeks. In the dossier – the one I’ve made for you – I have part of his diary, in which Tsar Nikolai himself wrote:

Thursday, June sixth. My hemorrhoids gave me terrible pain all day, so I lay down on the bed because it is more comfortable to apply compresses that way. Alix and Aleksei spent half an hour in the fresh air, and after they returned we went out for an hour.

Aleksandra – his Alix – was more circumspect, less trusting, but not Nikolai. He wrote everything in his diary, including their plans to escape.

So that was the way it was when the first of the four notes came, all of us stuck there in that stuffy house that smelled of unwashed guards and soup that had been reheated too many times. And that was how I became involved. After all, the Tsar of all the Russias – even if there’d been a revolution – never opened his own milk bottle.
Konechno, nyet
. Of course not. That was my job, me, Leonka, the kitchen boy. Sure, and my morning duties also included getting the samovar going and greeting the nuns who brought us additional foodstuffs. For a long while no sisters had been permitted into The House of Special Purpose, which was how the
Bolsheviki
had rechristened the Ipatiev House, but then all of a sudden they were bringing us milk and eggs and bread a few times a week. Komendant Avdeyev, who was in charge before Yurovksy took over, changed his mind out of the blue. I think he was bribed. I think Rasputin’s daughter, who lived in a village not far away, gave him money.

The Ipatiev House was fairly new, but constructed in the style of old Muscovy with an elaborate facade and exaggerated cornices. It sat on the side of a small hill, with the main living quarters on the upper floor facing Ascension Square in the front, and the service rooms in the lower level opening onto the garden in the rear. Built of brick and big stone that was whitewashed, the house was topped with a low, green metal roof. It wasn’t like the governor’s house in Tobolsk town, where the Romanovs and all of us had first been kept in Siberia. That was more like a summer palace, while this, the Ipatiev House, was more like the home of a well-to-do merchant. Yet even though it was supposed to look like the home of a boyar – an old nobleman – it was in fact a modern house with indoor plumbing and even electricity, including electric glass chandeliers that came to life with the turn of a switch. This house stood, as a matter of fact, all the way until the 1960s, when a young Boris Yeltsin ordered it demolished because it was becoming a secret shrine for monarchists.

And so, early that morning of the twentieth I was going about my duties not in the main kitchen down below, but in the makeshift kitchen that had recently been set up for our use on the main level. I was as thin as a reed and fairly tall for a fourteen-year-old, and yet I was still not big enough for my large feet, which caused me no end of awkwardness. My cheeks were large and rosy with youth, and after I had stuffed the center chimney of the brass samovar with charcoal and pinecones and bits of straw I huffed and puffed on a glimmer of fire. I was just getting it lit, just attaching the vent to the outside, when in walked our Sister Antonina and her young novice, both of them dressed in a waterfall of black. A good share of the nun’s face was swathed – the black head cloth covered her forehead, went around her eyes, and the folds of her wimple came up just under her mouth, so that even her chin was covered. A pink, plump windshield of a face – that was all you could see of our sister, a dumpling of a nun who was not only a good deal shorter than me, but who seemed so terribly ancient. The novice, on the other hand, was not so severely dressed; she wore a black gown and black head cloth, but her face was not covered.

“Good morning, my son,” said the nun, coming in with her usual basket.

With my right hand I tamed my brown hair. “Good morning to you, Sister Antonina.”

“I believe you know my charge, Marina.”

Of course I did, and I bowed my head slightly to the girl. She blossomed the color of a soft rose petal, which in turn caused my cheeks to flush with warmth. She was about my age, the daughter of a local Russian woman and an Englishman who had worked for years at the English consulate there in Yekaterinburg. They said the girl was very well educated, that she spoke both perfect English and perfect Russian, even some French, though she hardly ever said anything to me.

Sister Antonina said, “We have brought more fresh goods for…”

She glanced out the door and down the hall, spying a guard, a young fellow with a blond beard, who had been recruited from the local Zlokazov Factory, where not long ago the workers, infected by the Reds, had revolted and killed their bosses. This young man carried his rifle over his right shoulder – not his left, of course, for that was the rule of the evil “formers” – and had a hand grenade hanging from his belt, and Sister Antonina, taking note of him, dared not finish the sentence.
Nyet, nyet
. As far as she was concerned, Nikolai Aleksandrovich was still her Tsar, but she dared not refer to him as
Y’evo Velichestvo
– His Greatness – for she’d be thrown in jail for that. Nor could she bring herself to call him something ridiculous like
Tovarish
or
Grazhdanin
– Comrade or Citizen – Romanov.

Setting the basket on a small table, Sister Antonina said, “The milk is still warm from the cow. The eggs are just as fresh too – Marina herself gathered them only an hour ago.”

“Spacibo bolshoye, sestra.”
Thank you very much, sister, I replied.

“The butter is very good. You must try some butter on the bread. It’s so nice and sweet.”

“Da, da, da.”

It was then that I noticed that Sister Antonina was still leaning against the edge of the table, her eyes fixed on me, her body not moving a centimeter. I stared back. What, had I done something wrong?

Again I said, “
Spacibo bolshoye, sestra
. I’ll take care of everything.”

“The eggs are for The Little One,” she said, referring to Aleksei Nikolaevich, the Tsar’s son, who suffered so terribly from what we called the English disease, hemophilia.

“Certainly.”

Turning around, Sister Antonina nodded ever so slightly to Novice Marina. The girl edged slightly out into the hall, looked one way, the other, then offered a small nod in return. Sister Antonina, satisfied that the guard with the blond beard was no longer nearby, reached into her basket and lifted the glass bottle of milk.

“Take this,
molodoi chelovek
.” Young man.

Her eyes were fixed on mine, and I stepped over and took the bottle from her, which contained a
chetvert
of milk, something like two liters. And just like she said, it was still warm from the cow.

She whispered, “Open this bottle at once. God willing, we will be back in a few days.”

I was young and clumsy in many ways, but I understood. Since the ancient Time of Troubles, which preceded Tsar Mikhail, the very first of the many Romanovs, we Russians have used our eyes to say what our mouths cannot speak. And Sister Antonina did this, staring at me and then blinking both of her eyes. I dared not move. Rather, I just stood there, clutching the warm
chetvert
as the sister moved into the hallway, the antechamber that separated the kitchen from the dining room. There she said a few kindly words to one of the guards, who in turn gruffly escorted her to the front of the house and out. Later on, of course, the Reds killed her for that, for being part of the plan to save the Romanovs.

Well, so, once the
sestra
and novice were gone, I turned my back to the hallway and stared down at the bottle of milk. There was something special about it, of that I had no doubt, but just what I certainly couldn’t tell. I stood there in my worn, brown pants and white shirt of coarse cotton, then swirled the milk around in its container. Everything, however, looked, well,
normalno
. I decided to take a whiff of it, perhaps even taste it, so I tugged at the cork stopper, pulled it out, and smelled the rich, creamy milk. And that was when I saw it. Rather, I felt it first – the slip of paper. A tiny pocket had been cut into the side of the cork and a small piece of paper had been tucked in, which is what I felt – the sharp edge of the paper. Knowing the danger, I glanced over my shoulder and saw no one. There were some noises in the house as the Tsar and his family started to get up from bed, but I was alone there in the kitchen, just me and the samovar, which was starting to rattle as it warmed. I tugged at the paper, pulled it out, and unfolded it. Although I could read and write back then, I couldn’t make out a single word, for it wasn’t in Russian. Rather, I recognized the letters of the Latin alphabet, but just what language I couldn’t tell – French, German, English, they were all the same to me.

Only much, much later did I learn that it said: “
Les amis ne dorment plus et espèrent que l’heure si longtemps attendue est arrivée..
.”

All the notes, even the replies from the Romanovs, were to be in the French. I didn’t memorize any of them back then. And of course I thought them lost forever, so I was greatly surprised when a few years ago I opened up a book and there they all were, every single one of the secret notes, completely reprinted. All this time, all these years, the original note that I had pulled from that cork – as well as the next three – had been carefully stored in the Gosudarstvenyi Arkhiv Rossiskoi Federatsii in Moscow. Sure, as incredible as it may seem, these notes are still there in the State Archive of the Russian Federation, proving beyond a doubt that there’d been a plot to save the Imperial Family.

Da, da
, Katya,
vnoochka moya
– granddaughter of mine – for a brief while there’d been a candle of hope in the note that read:

Friends are no longer sleeping and hope that the hour so long awaited has come. The revolt of the Czechoslovaks threatens the Bolsheviks ever more seriously. Samara, Cheliabinsk, and all of eastern and western Siberia are in the hands of the provisional national government. The army of Slavic friends is eighty kilometers from Yekaterinburg. The soldiers of the Red Army cannot effectively resist. Be attentive to any movement from the outside; wait and hope. But at the same time, I beg you, be careful, because the Bolsheviks, before being . Be ready at every hour, day and night. Make a drawing of your three bedrooms showing the position of the furniture, the beds. Write the hour that you all go to bed. One of you must not sleep between 2:00 and 3:00 on all the following nights. Answer with a few words, but, please, give all the useful information for your friends from the outside. You must give your answer to the same soldier who transmits this note to you, .

From someone who is ready to die for you,

An Officer of the Russian Army

Ever fearful, I carefully folded up the small note and slipped it in my pocket. This was something important, something dangerous, something for the Tsar, but I just went about my business, unloading the basket. I took out the eight eggs – brown and not so terribly big – and the pale butter, which was in a little billycan covered with a torn piece of oil cloth. And as I waited for the large brass samovar to boil, my face beaded with sweat, my heart raced, and my mind struggled for a course of action. I couldn’t just barge into the Tsar’s bedroom while he and Aleksandra Fyodorovna were getting up.

Suddenly a voice behind me boomed, “Well, Leonka, so the fire’s lit and the water is heating?
Ochen xoroshow
.” Very good.

It was cook Kharitonov, all groggy and yawning, his shirt a mess, his oily hair sticking up. He hadn’t shaved in almost a week, but then I hadn’t had a bath in almost a month. Komendant Avdeyev didn’t allow us to make that much hot water, although Nikolai Aleksandrovich had been granted a bath of nine liters just the day before.

I thought I should tell him, but I remained quiet, for even then I understood the importance of the note.

And so I lied, “Yevgeny Sergeevich has asked for a glass of water.”

I was referring to Dr. Botkin of course. Dr. Yevgeny Sergeevich Botkin, the Tsar’s personal physician, who had voluntarily followed the family into exile and imprisonment.

Kharitonov puffed out his lower lip. “So do as the good doctor requests, lad, and take him his glass of water.”

The drinking water was in a large crock covered with a cloth, and I took a dipper and ladled water into a thin glass with a chipped rim. Saying nothing more, I headed out, clutching the glass in both hands because I was shaking so. As I skirted the dining room, I saw one of the
Bolsheviki
leading the Tsar’s second daughter, Tatyana Nikolaevna, to the water closet on the far side of the house, because that was the way it was, none of the Romanovs could use the facilities without being escorted by an armed guard. Tatyana Nikolaevna, so thin, so pretty, her light brown hair put up, glanced briefly at me, smiled slightly, and hurried on as a guard with a rifle and hand grenade followed immediately after her. She had turned twenty-one just the previous month.