The Last Romanov (20 page)

After Five Years of Turmoil

Darya stands close to Avram, snuggling into the scent of paint and canvas that is part of the fabric of the man she admires and loves with a passion that has not diminished over the eleven years she has known him.

The artists have collected their paraphernalia, cleared their areas, covered their stations, and left for the day. In half an hour the help will arrive to wash and dust and polish, remove all traces of the day's work in the Portrait Hall.

Avram wipes his hands and drops his brushes into their wooden case. He wants to touch his lips to the translucent shell of Darya's ear. She is lost in thought, tense, a tear glistening in her eye. “Why are you sad, my Opal-Eyed Jewess?”

“It's the salon, Avram. I'm so disappointed.”

“Disappointed! You should be proud. Its universal success has prompted the Tsar's cousins to establish salons like ours. They've invited our country's best artists to England and Germany.”

At the mention of the British king and the German kaiser, the Tsar's cousins, Darya's tongue puckers with the taste of ash. That she is not fond of the two men, finds them indecisive and weak, is undeniable. What she is unaware of is that in less than a year, their loyalty to their cousin will be tested. And they will both fail miserably.

She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “I've something to tell you, Avram, and I don't want you to be angry with me.”

He lifts her chin to gaze into her eyes. “When have I ever been angry with you?”

“When we argue about politics.”

“But not for long. What grand scheme is cooking in your head now?”

“Not a scheme, Avram. I have bad news. I'm devastated.”

“Nothing can be this bad!” he says, touching her on the cheek, his gaze reassuring.

She casts her eyes down, reaches out to touch him, steals her hand back. She is churning inside, every muscle in her body aching, even her brain.

It is a gloomy afternoon, and the low gray clouds are creeping into the room. The light filtering through the sheer drapes is the color of stained silver.

“This was our last salon meeting, Avram.”

“No! But why? You worked so hard for its success! I don't believe it.”

“Things have changed, Avram. The salon has changed.”

He looks her in the eyes with a razor-sharp gaze that slices through her heart. “And why is change suddenly bad? This is our only remaining sanctuary these days. Don't do it, Darya. Don't be foolish.”

“Avram, please, it's not entirely my decision. But it's the right thing to do. We can't expect the Imperial Family to tolerate a forum for political debates in their own home. The salon has become a den of antimonarchist sentiments. Dimitri, whose promonarchy caricatures earned him a place in the salon, has gone wild. Have you seen his last one? The Tsar and Tsarina in the lap of Rasputin! No shame left, Avram, none. And I'm told that Igor Vasiliev's last ballet has been sold to the Bolsheviks, some subject about a German spy becoming a Russian Empress and falling in love with a bearded madman.”

Why in the world did she not heed the subliminal message of Igor's ballet
The
Red
Aurochs
? It was there, right in front of her eyes, the hated Bolshevik color red, the violence, the war between the red and white factions. Did it have to take her nine years to acknowledge the seed of suspicion that was planted in her mind that evening at the Mariinsky Theater?

Avram's fingertips tease out the baldachin ruffles around her collar. “You chose popular artists, encouraged them to speak out. Now you want to shut them up.”

“I was naïve, didn't think they'd turn against the monarchy. Please understand, Avram. We've suffered five terrible years.” Darya thinks of how only twelve members remain in the newly formed provisional government, ruling by default. How they continue to draw new legislatures to further curtail the Tsar's power and freedom. Internal uprisings are tearing the country apart. The army was forced to call fifteen million farmers to the front. The war began with twenty thousand locomotives. Ten thousand or less are left. It is one of the most brutal winters Russia has suffered. Twelve million men have been mobilized. One million, perhaps two million, have perished. The wounded are too many to count. “The last thing we need, Avram, is another group of insurgents inside the palace.”

“It's tragic, Darya, tragic! But if we won't have art to remind us of our human side, what will? Send Dimitri and Igor away, if you have to. They are the radicals, the ones inciting hysteria! Don't punish everyone. Alexandra wanted us to achieve great honors for Russia. We kept our side of the bargain. Keep yours!”

“I am on your side, Avram. Please, please don't be angry with me.”

“Then show some backbone. Let the truth win, not the Tsar and his cronies.”

“But I am one of them too. I can't turn my back on them. I'm sorry, Avram.”

He steps closer, the feline lines of his body menacing. “Leave them, Darya. Come away with me. I don't want to hide forever, meeting you like a thief in the dark.”

“You are breaking my heart, Avram. You know I can't do that.”

A muscle in his left cheek jumps. His stare is like a cold slap. He seems to be edging darkly away from her and there's nothing she can do.

He yanks out a box from his pocket, tears the wrapping, and snaps the top open. He tosses it at her feet. He holds her by the shoulders, tattooing her in his mind, turns his back to her, and storms out the door.

At her feet, nestled in the box, is a magnificent gold band of twenty-four translucent opals. The promise of a life with Avram Bensheimer. She slips the band on her left ring finger. She reaches her hand toward the door to demonstrate the perfect fit of the ring as if he is standing there, waiting for her to say yes, of course, I will.

The door swings open on its heavy brass hinges and in runs the Tsarevich, his cheeks trembling with the effort to check his tears.

“What's wrong, Loves?” she cries out, rushing to him.

“Where have you been, Darya? I looked for you everywhere. Mother is upset. Very sad. You have to tell Papa to come back.”

“We are all sad, Loves, very sad.” How is she to explain to a twelve-year-old-boy that a two-year war with Austria and Germany has caused a shortage of food, fuel, ammunition, and the failure of the railroads to transport much-needed supplies. How is she to explain to the boy that his father, intending to raise the morale of his soldiers, has abandoned the capital to go to the front, leaving his people to fend for themselves. How is she to explain that every developing disaster is attributed to him now?

Internal peace has eluded the country since the inception six years ago of the Duma, the elected parliament that the Tsar so reluctantly granted. The Right remains furious about the weakening of the autocracy, the Left fears that the revolution will lose its momentum, the liberals do not trust the Duma, the masses are hungry and confused, and the police, having been stripped of power, encourage violence.

In the absence of the Tsar, the politics of the country are in the hands of the Empress and her wandering moujik, Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, who evaluates ministers and provides baseless, ineffective political and military advice.

And the country, unaware that the Tsarevich suffers from hemophilia and that the Empress regards Rasputin as her son's savior, sees only a drunken imposter and womanizer who is allowed free access to the palace.

Darya gathers the Tsarevich in her arms. “Promise to take good care of yourself, Loves. You will rule our country one day. Will you promise me? Good! Come, I need your help. Your mother will listen to you. You must convince her to send Rasputin away. He's causing too much trouble. Once that's done, she has to send a telegram to your papa and ask him to come home. Are you up to the challenge?”

The Tsarevich buttons his jacket. “I'm ready, Darya. Let's go.”

The Lilac Boudoir is dark. Drapes are drawn. The odor of putrid flowers and burning wood is overwhelming. A single floor lamp casts insipid shadows over the furniture, the vacant sofa, the Empress's curiously tidy writing desk, not a single half-written letter, not a pen or inkwell in sight.

They hurry out the door and take the grand staircase down, trailing the acrid odor leading them into the Red Living Room. The room is half-dark, silent, the unlit chandelier swinging like a bejeweled ghost. Flames roar to life in the fireplace, licking the blackened walls of the enormous grate. Morbid shadows flatten themselves on the ceiling and dance around the chandelier.

The Empress is hunched in a chair by the fireplace, huddled inside a powder blue robe, a heavy shawl wrapped around her shoulders.

Darya runs to her side. “Your Majesty, what are you burning?”

Alexandra Feodorovna leans back in her chair. She wipes her red-rimmed eyes with an embroidered handkerchief, gestures toward a pile of letters her husband sent her throughout the years. “Setting fire to my memories. I read and re-read them a thousand times, and then…” She tosses another letter into the flames, watches it curl back, the edges bursting into tiny fireworks, into ash. “There! Another memory. Gone!”

“Your memories are in your head and your heart, Your Majesty. But why are you burning your letters?”

“I have news from our friend. It is not good.”

An icy tremor scurries up Darya's veins. She steps farther away from the fireplace, wraps her arms around herself. Her past life was revealed to her five years before. But awareness failed to bring relief, shield her from punishing fires. Was it not enough that she was blinded for her sin, burned at the stake? Does she have to suffer anew with every fire, suffer this agonizing chill in her bones? And now, to add to her misery, the survival of the monarchy itself is threatened. “Save some letters, Your Majesty, in case—”

“Of a trial? Yes. Sad, isn't it, that we need to prove our patriotism with these.” She carefully stacks a handful of letters from her grandmother and from the Tsar and tucks them in a leather-bound folder.

Alexei rests his hand on her shoulder. “Mama, ask Papa to come home. We need him here. He will make everything fine again.”

“Good advice, Your Majesty,” Darya encourages. “The Emperor is needed in the capital.”

The Tsarina smiles at her son, strokes his hair. “I've been trying to get in touch with Papa. I'll send another telegram and hopefully we'll hear from him.” She reaches out a trembling hand for an envelope on the side table and hands it to Darya. “Take a look, my dear, this just arrived. Our world is coming undone!”

Darya pulls out a yellow sheet from the envelope. She recognizes the boastful title, the cluttered script:

The
Spirit
of
Grigori
Yefimovich
Rasputin-Novykh of the village of Pokrovskoe.

I
write
and
leave
behind
this
letter
at
St. Petersburg. I feel that I shall leave life before January 1. I wish to make known to the Russian people, to Papa, to the Russian Mother and to the Children, to the land of Russia, what they must understand. If I am killed by common assassins, and especially by my brothers the Russian peasants, you, Tsar of Russia, have nothing to fear, remain on your throne and govern, and you, Russian Tsar, will have nothing to fear for your children, they will reign for hundreds of years in Russia. But if I am murdered by boyars, nobles, and if they shed my blood, their hands will remain soiled with my blood, for twenty-five years there will be no nobles in the country. Tsar of the land of Russia, if you hear the sound of the bell which will tell you that Grigori has been killed, you must know this: if it was your relations who have wrought my death then no one of your family, that is to say, none of your children or relations will remain alive for more than two years. They will be killed by the Russian people…I shall be killed. I am no longer among the living. Pray, pray, be strong, think of your blessed family.

Grigori

The Empress folds the letter and slips it back into the envelope. “I am beside myself with worry. I sent dear Anna to deliver an icon to our friend. She tells me that he is invited for supper to Prince Yusupov's, to meet his wife. But there must be some mistake. She is in the Crimea, I am certain. Here, Darya, this is for you. Father Grigori sent it.”

The Empress gestures to a small packet tied with rough twine on the table.

Darya considers leaving the pouch unopened, tossing it away in the Empress's absence, but the Empress's gaze is upon her, and the Tsarevich is peering from behind her shoulder. She pulls the knot open and rips the brown paper to find a small, roughly sewn bag, secured with a safety pin. She undoes the pin, widens the mouth of the pouch.

It is filled with some type of seeds.

What is Rasputin up to now, she wonders. What need does she have for seeds?

“Flower seeds,” the Tsarevich offers.

“Lilies,” the Empress suggests.

Darya pokes a finger in, stirs the seeds around. She finds a small, tightly folded note at the bottom.

“Read aloud,” the Tsarevich insists.

Darya
Borisovna
Spiridova!

I
wish
for
you
to
have
these
seeds
for
your
garden. For your mind. And for your soul. Do not share them. Keep them somewhere safe until you need them. You will know when.

Grigori

“Let's plant them,” the Tsarevich says.

“Alyosha, no!” the Empress admonishes. “Didn't you understand the note? They must be planted at the right time.”