The Last Romanov (28 page)

“Yes, Madame. I lied to be kind to him. Alexei Romanov is alive.”

A volley of curses and questions crowd her mouth. “You lied! You lowly son of a one-kopeck whore! I will see the Tsarevich. Right now! Right away!”

“But he doesn't want to be found, Madame.”

“He wants to be found by me! Listen, young man, I am old and tired and don't have much time left. One way or another, I
will
find him. We need each other, the Tsarevich and I.”

“I'm not certain he needs you, Madame. He is settled down into a calm life. It would be cruel to rattle the foundation of everything he's become used to. I made a mistake. I shouldn't have revealed—”

“Let me tell you something, young man, you are in no position to decide who needs whom. So don't insult me. Although I don't want to hurt you, if it comes to it, I'll turn you inside out to spill the truth out of you. So let us make a pact. Take that paper and pen on the desk and jot down where I'll find Alexei, and I'll show you the secret way out of here. Go on! Don't keep me waiting.”

“But I can walk out of here whenever I want. I'm not a prisoner.”

She bursts into laughter, slapping both thighs. “Maybe not a prisoner, but certainly under strict surveillance. The grounds are dotted with plainclothes security guards hired by the Russian Nobility Association to monitor whoever enters and leaves the premises. In addition, Grand Duchess Sophia and Rostislav, a dangerous forensic anthropologist whom you don't want to cross, expect me to step out of this room to announce your candidacy to the throne. And, most important, a coup d'état is already in the planning. Too much is at stake for you to just walk out of here without giving them a convincing explanation. And that I forbid you to do.”

“But I don't intend to walk out, Madame. Not when the throne is rightfully mine.”

She curls her mouth in amusement. “No, Pavel, the throne belongs to Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov!”

“But I'm much younger, Madame. More able to reign.”

An irrational affection for this stubborn youth is taking root in Darya's heart, and she tries to dismiss it. “My dear Pavel, you could never claim the throne. There's something else about your grandmother you need to know. Here, have some tea, something to calm you. I'd give you one of my berries if I had any left. All right! Are you ready? Your grandmother, my dear Pavel Nikolaevich, was a Jew. Yes, Jasmine was Jewish. I see your shock. She kept it a secret up to the very end. I don't need to tell you that the Russian people will never, ever accept a Jewish ruler. And if it becomes necessary, I won't hesitate to reveal the truth.”

“No, Madame, I don't believe you. My grandmother couldn't have been Jewish. She would have told me if she was.”

“I'm certain she did, in her own way. You must be circumcised, Pavel Nikolaevich, as all Jewish boys are at birth. Aren't you? Of course you are! That was her way of telling you the truth.”

Pavel turns pale. A drop of sweat trickles down his forehead. His hand creeps up to his cravat. He folds it, twists it, rolls it in his hand. He lets go and the cravat falls limp and creased like his linen suit.

“All right, son, I believe we have a pact. There's paper and pencil on the desk. Write down where I can find the Tsarevich.”

“I hope I am doing the right thing, Madame, and you'll be good for him.”

She presses the folded paper between her palms. The air around her stirs as if Alexei followed her into the room as he used to in the past, when she felt his presence without having to look. All she wants now is to tuck away her jumbled emotions and go to Alexei. She drops the note into her purse, opens the French doors, and walks onto the terrace, gesturing for Pavel to follow her. Before them, a lavender-covered hill slants down to the sea and toward neighboring mansions on the lower slopes. The disk of a fat moon hangs low in the velvet sky. An owl alights on the balustrade and begins to hoot a melancholy tune.

Darya squeezes the young man's shoulder. “Don't worry, son, one day you will look back on this night and remember me with fondness. You have a bright future ahead of you. You might be sad sometimes, but never lonely.” She retrieves the pouch from her purse and plants it in his hand. “Here, this will help. Enough jewels to support you for a long time. Bribe the security guards with a charm or two if they catch up with you. They'll let you go.”

“No, Madame. I cannot accept what belongs to Alexei Nikolaevich.”

“Take it. There's more for him. Listen to me well, son. Walk down the hill and out of the compound. When you reach the shore down there, keep to your right. You will pass a deserted dock, then an abandoned skeleton of a ship at which point, on your right again, you'll find a narrow staircase hewed into the hill that leads to a thoroughfare, where you'll find a taxi station. Lose yourself for a few months until you are forgotten. Go, before they come looking.”

Pale hairs flutter in the breeze. His nimble downward steps gather speed. He hesitates for an instant, opens the pouch, and selects a few small items with which to buy his freedom, then turns back, and tosses the pouch toward her before breaking into a trot at the foot of the hill to lose himself in the thick darkness.

Darya waves her cane in salutation at the multiple images of Grand Duchess Sophia and Rostislav in the surrounding salon mirrors. Gilded consoles are set with delicacies and scented vodkas, above which a portrait of the duchess looks down, demanding the truth.

The Sheremetev Salon is pregnant with unspoken expectations, with the weight of the unknown. The afternoon has stretched into evening while Darya Borisovna and Pavel Nikolaevich were sequestered in the study. In this wing of the estate, Rostislav and the duchess were served afternoon tea and supper as they awaited word from Darya.

“Good news?” the duchess asks as soon as she sees Darya approach. She reaches out her cigarette holder for her attendant to reload. She draws deeply, letting out a cloud of smoke that momentarily conceals her pensive face.

Her bones aching, Darya settles in a chair the attendant pulls forward. “Unfortunately, not. Pavel Nikolaevich is not the person he pretends to be. I asked him to leave.”

Rostislav jumps out of his seat. His burned profile is puckered in anger. “Why? Why in the world did you send him away?”

“I despise impostors, Rostislav! Either he had to go or I would have strangled him.”

“Alert the guards!” Rostislav shouts. “Right away! Before he leaves the grounds.”

The grand duchess points an accusing cigarette holder at Darya. “You were here to confirm or refute his authenticity. Other decisions were not yours to make.”

“And that's exactly what I did. He is a charlatan, your eminence, with no ties to the Imperial Family.”

Rostislav pours himself a glass of vodka, downs it in two gulps, upending the empty glass on the tabletop. “My dear woman, DNA tests have already proven his paternal ties. You must have insulted him. That is why he left.”

A sudden rumble originates from faraway, a startling sound like cannon fire in the distance.

“An earthquake!” Rostislav shouts.

“We're under attack!” the attendant hollers.

Darya leans back, crosses her arms over her chest, and allows the fear of nature to work its magic. In another half hour Pavel will be beyond the reach of the security guards. She snaps open the clasp of her purse and finds a weathered berry in the bottom, flicks away a petrified butterfly from the stem, the dried fuzz disintegrating in midair. She drops the berry in her mouth and allows herself to celebrate the miracle of Jasmine's grandson leading her to the Tsarevich.

“What in the world is this dreadful noise?” the grand duchess demands.

Darya rises and goes out to the terrace, nodding, gesturing, and bowing as if conducting a private conversation with a higher authority, expressing her thanks to a miserable whale somewhere in the sea, beyond the fire-laced horizon.

She taps her cane on the marble underfoot, crosses the terrace, and steps back into the salon to confront her stunned audience. For the first time since that night in the cellar of the House of Special Purpose, she attempts to make the sign of the cross, but her hand will not obey, and she drops it to her side. “What you hear out there is the Lord's voice informing me that the Tsarevich is alive.”

Rostislav's mocking laughter rises above the whale's thunderous interruptions.

The duchess's cigarette holder is poised as if to banish the intrusion from her realm.

“Call the guards!” Rostislav barks. “She's trying to buy time.”

“My dear Rostislav, I was invited here to decide whether Pavel is a Romanov or not. Well! He is not. Must I repeat myself?”

“Stop this nonsense! I put up with your old woman imaginings, certain the true contender to the throne will find his way to you. Now that he has, you act like a Bolshevik!”

Darya swings her cane and, without as much as batting an eyelash, aims the tip at the artery on Rostislav's neck. “I'll skewer you like a rat! Then we'll see who is a Bolshevik!”

He freezes in place. He has observed this woman wield her cane with the force and speed of a dueling master's sword. He is certain she will not hesitate to plunge the silver tip into his artery.

The grand duchess crushes her cigarette among other lipstick-smeared stumps, rises to her feet, and gestures to her attendant to remove himself from her path. She grips Darya around one arm, reaches out, and extracts the cane from her. “What has come over you, Rostislav? Let Darya finish what she has to say.”

“Stop jumping up and down like a monkey, Rostislav,” Darya bristles. “Would you rather an impostor ascend the throne or Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov? Call the Russian Nobility Association and explain that my prayers have been answered; the Tsarevich has been found!”

Rostislav passes one hand over his profile as if to iron out the creases. “Dreaming again, Darya? No hemophiliac would ever live so long. Stop deceiving yourself!”

The grand duchess lifts a fleck of tobacco from her lower lip. “He has a point. Even if the Tsarevich survived the carnage that night, it's improbable he would live to be—”

“Eighty-seven,” Darya offers. “Other hemophiliacs don't reach such advanced age because they can't get their hands on ambergris to stem their internal bleeding or keep them young.”

Grand Duchess Sophia strokes the frown lines between her brows. She chases away some cigarette smoke with one hand. “You did mention a pillow stuffed with ambergris that might have deflected bullets. Very interesting. Do you have some ambergris with you?”

“Not much,” Darya lies. “What about you, Rostislav? I gave you a generous chunk.”

His lips turn the color of curdled milk. “I don't recall you giving me any ambergris!” He pats his coat, thrusts his hands into his back pockets, makes a show of rising to his feet to check his pants pockets. “We both know you never gave me any, Darya. But now that the matter has come up, I'd like some ambergris too!”

“Search your suitcase,” Darya suggests, leaning back in her seat and thinking that Pavel must have made his way out of the compound and reached the Crimean thoroughfare by now.

Darya steps down from the taxi that transported her the twenty miles from the Warsaw-Moscow railroad to Biaroza on the banks of the River Yasel'da.

She sets her small suitcase down, leans on her cane, and gazes at the surroundings. Is it truly possible that this town is home to her beloved Tsarevich? Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov, who remains everything and everyone to her, who continues to temper the ache of her parents' loss, who replaces the sons she lost, who fills up the void of Avram's absence, which she will not call a loss because he is always with her. Is it possible that the child who once lived among unimaginable opulence is now living in one of these mostly decaying houses in this peasant town?

Part of the independent Republic of Belarus, Biaroza has witnessed its share of upheavals. The town was, throughout numerous historical unrests, tossed around like a rotting melon between Russia and the Red and Polish armies. During the Great War, the German army wiped out most of the town's population, seventy percent of whom were Jews.

She walks past the town hall and the ruins of the Biaroza monastery, which was looted and demolished in the distant past. The bricks were used to build the main prison. What is left of the monastery has been placed on the list of historic architectural heritage of Belarus to be renovated and restored, but little progress has been made. Pedestrians stroll around a fountain in the center of the marketplace. An emaciated donkey is tied to a tree. Shops display bolts of fabric, jars of spices, plastic toys. The scent of fresh bread emanates from a nearby bakery. The mix of old and modern surprises her. A few forlorn birches line the streets, a handful border the fountain.

Will Alyosha remember her? Will he remember the ambergris and its miracles? At the possibility of encountering an old, senile man who would turn his back to her, she settles on the ledge of the fountain, wipes her forehead, suddenly feeling the weight of the tiring journey from the Crimea.

A hydroelectric power station on her right comes to life, and her heart starts to pound like a mad woodpecker. According to Pavel's directions, the house in which the Tsarevich lives is on the far right side of the power plant.

She grabs her suitcase and walks ahead with the confidence of a young woman, savoring every step to cross the narrow street and circle the whitewashed wooden fence. Is this his home? This two-story building of fired brick with two balconies aflame with bougainvillea. Although modest, contrary to the surrounding houses, it is well tended. She pulls out the note, unfolds it, reads the directions again.

The air smells of grass and fire logs. The sky is a pure blue. A passing peasant with a thick kerchief on her head and a bundle in her calloused hand smiles at her. An emaciated donkey brays, clattering by.

She takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders, and climbs three steps to the front door that smells of fresh paint.

The thought occurs to her that she should have dressed for the occasion, purchased a new blouse, a pair of shoes. Wearing the Empress's old hat and maroon velvet skirt, she must look old and tired. “Nothing can be done now,” she mumbles, lifting the lion-shaped knocker and tapping on the door once.

A wind wails around the corner, a handful of pebbles smacks itself against her right leg. She rubs her leg, straightens up. Her back is aching.

She waits, knocks again. A face appears between half-drawn curtains at a side window. The swish of approaching slippers can be heard inside, then the clang of locks and bolts and a rattling of chains. Yes, she thinks, such precautions are necessary in a town with a history of numerous upheavals, but more so in a house that boards the Tsarevich.

The door is flung wide open, startling her. A tall, compact couple appears at the threshold. A man with an embroidered skullcap and coils of hair at his temples. A woman wearing thick stockings, with a flowered kerchief tied under her chin. The man grabs Darya's suitcase, the woman her hand, and almost pulls her inside. Their strange, synchronized movements unsettle Darya.

“Pavel Nikolaevich gave me directions to your home,” she stutters.

“Yes. We were expecting you.” The gentleman brushes yellow hair from a pale forehead shadowed with a network of veins. “I am Viktor. This is my twin sister, Greta. Come in, please. Pavel said you were coming. You must be tired.”

Darya is led into a small, low-beamed, well-lighted living room with peasant furniture upholstered with chintz. Sheer drapes flank two windows, facing the street. Outside, a stray dog sniffs at something in the middle of the road. A garbage can rattles in the wind. Dry leaves and bits of paper drift past. She is reminded of the first weeks, months, even years after she had settled in the Entertainment Palace, adrift like these leaves, certain and hopeful that the force of her grief would blow her away. Yet here she is, at last, separated from the Tsarevich by no more than a wall.

Greta fluffs a couple of cushions on the sofa. “Please, sit. You must have had a long journey.”

“No, thank you. I'm eager to see Alexei Nikolaevich. How did he react when he found out I was coming? He must be beside himself! Of course he is. I'll not keep him waiting another second.”

“But you must catch your breath first. I'll bring some refreshments,” Greta insists, stepping out.

“Tell me all about Alexei,” Darya tells Viktor when they are left alone. “How did he come into your care?”

Before Viktor has a chance to address Darya's question, Greta is back with a tray of hot tea, honey cakes, and two candles. “We'll light the Sabbath candles. Do you care to pray with us? We are Hasidic Jews.”

Darya struggles to harness her concern. How is it possible for Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov, born into a Christian Orthodox family and raised to rule Russia, to have been educated with beliefs so different from his? She gazes from sister to brother. Pray? She should know how to pray with these people, after all. Was she not a Hebrew queen in her other life? Why, then, is she unable to pray?

“Please,” Greta says. “Pray in your heart, if you prefer, in your own language.”

Darya joins the two in front of the lit candles on the mantelpiece, bows her head, and prays for a stronger, more patient heart to withstand all this waiting. She has endured seventy-three years of waiting, but another minute and she might die.

“I've prepared a room for you,” Greta says. “Please spend the night with us. You can see Alexei tomorrow. It's already past his bedtime.”

Darya's voice rises with alarm. “It's hardly seven. Why would he go to bed this early? Wake him up if you have to!”

Viktor rests a hand on Darya's shoulder. “Alexei likes photography. He wakes up at dawn to take advantage of the ideal light and works hard throughout the day. He's usually tired at this hour.”

“But doesn't he know I am here to see
him
?”

“He fell asleep, and I don't have the heart to wake him up.”

Darya slumps back in the chair, a million terrifying thoughts coursing through her mind. He has no recollection of her. She means nothing to him, less than a good night's sleep. How else to explain his lack of enthusiasm? She meets Greta's eyes with her own unwavering stare. “I'll wait right here, in this very room, for another eighty years if I have to, until I see him.”

Greta casts her eyes down, adjusts her kerchief. “I'll wake him up then. But be prepared to meet a man who, like all of us, has been shaped by the innumerable atrocities he endured.” She walks out and shuts the door behind her.

“How did the Tsarevich end up in Biaroza?” Darya asks Viktor.

“My understanding is that our uncle found him half-dead in a house during the revolution, concealed somewhere behind boxes. A dog was at his side. Maybe the dog dragged and concealed him, perhaps a sympathetic revolutionary did it, no one knows. Anyway, Uncle hid the Tsarevich with a family of peasants somewhere near Ekaterinburg. When it was safe to move about, Uncle brought him here to Papa and Mama. The Bolsheviks had their hands full in the big cities. Biaroza was the last place they were thinking about. Mama and Papa raised Alexei for twenty-three years. Greta and I were thirteen when our parents died at the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, when the Germans captured Biaroza. The three of us—Alexei, Greta, and I—were left alone. We went into hiding in a hayshed with the animals. At first, it was too dangerous to move around much, especially for Alexei. German and Russian soldiers were everywhere, and later, well, this is home, and we didn't want to leave.”

Darya struggles to sit still. She is a tangle of nerves, unable to deal with the seed of doubt hardening into certainty.

Viktor gestures toward the door. “Come with me, please. I want to show you something.”

She musters all of her strength to follow him across a narrow hallway. The walls on both sides are crowded with photographs: scenes of Biaroza engulfed in a desolate dawn, portraits of peasants carrying their scant wares, sad-eyed children playing in an alley, a shopkeeper dropping a coin into the outstretched hand of a beggar, a bald-spotted puppy. She slows down to better observe the forlorn photographs that seem to be layered in smoke.

“Alexei's,” Viktor replies to the question she has not voiced. “He is quite a photographer.”

Viktor opens a door, ushers her into a dining room, stepping aside as if the room is not large enough to accommodate this woman's passions.

Darya's hand springs up to her Fabergé necklace. Her cane rattles to the floor.

There, facing her on the wall, is a rendition of the baby Tsarevich. His blue-gray eyes, fair hair, and dimpled-cheeks are a vision of health. Perhaps no other painting, Darya muses, managed to achieve its potential as well as this painting of the Tsarevich in the arms of White Thighs Paulina. Not only did the painting give the Tsarina great hope when she needed it most, but it also caused the revolutionary bastards to bristle with a million indignant questions.

Darya reaches for the cane, but Viktor fetches it for her. She gasps. In front of her unbelieving gaze, leaning on a simple wooden easel on the opposite side of the room, is another portrait.

In this small home in Biaroza where her Tsarevich lives, she has her face to the portrait Avram was most proud of and her back to the only portrait he was ashamed of.

She steps close, touches the canvas, the scar on her forehead that mirrors the scar Avram carried like a defiant introduction to the persecutions he endured. She is lounging on a satin-covered dais, her nipples swollen, the soft curve of her waist and chiseled hip half-lit by a chandelier. Her eyes gaze back at the painter with a blend of wonder and adoration.

Throughout the years, several of Avram's paintings were purchased by museums. Many found homes in palaces and aristocratic mansions. But this one he kept for himself. He believed this portrait, more than any other, revealed the energy, passion, and confrontations that transpired between the two of them, the artist and his model, during their hours spent together.

“You must have known Uncle Avram well,” Viktor says.

“Not as well as I should have. How in the world did he acquire this portrait, the Madonna and Child?”

“I don't know why he disliked this one,” Viktor says. “It's a lovely portrait, isn't it? He spent a great deal of time and energy searching for it. He bought it for an exorbitant price from a Bolshevik commandant, I understand. Someone named Vasiliev.”

That bastard Vasiliev! Darya curses under her breath. It was not enough that he invaded the Alexander Park, disinterred Rasputin, set fire to everything in his path, but he had to plunder the Lilac Boudoir too. “Have you more of Avram's paintings?”

“No. But he painted a lot after the revolution. He produced numbered lithographs, posters, and ceramic replicas of your portraits. They became very popular. He made friends in high places, ready to do him some small and large favors in return for one or another of his paintings.”

“I followed his success in the newspapers. He became rich.”

“But he was always lonely, up until he died in 1943.”

“Twenty-five years after we parted,” Darya murmurs. She crosses her arms over her breasts. “Maybe he wasn't that lonely. He certainly knew where to find me. I was waiting.”

“He tried. More than once. The first time, the newly formed Cheka arrested him as he was approaching your doorsteps. They were following Lenin's orders, imprisoning dissidents and confiscating right-wing bourgeois art. Uncle Avram fit the profile. And you, because of your loyalty to the Romanovs, were under constant surveillance. Uncle Avram tried to contact you a year later, when he was released from prison.”

“That was a terrible year,” Darya says. “Lenin's Red Terror was in full force, and people were executed in plain sight. I couldn't bear to go out.”

“Uncle Avram tried to see you again. I think it was his third or fourth attempt, I'm not certain. A bullet meant for someone else lodged in his lungs. Doctors decided to leave the bullet in place. It would have been too dangerous to remove it.”

Viktor Bensheimer takes a deep breath, adjusts his skullcap, and hands Darya Borisovna a glass of ice water. “He survived that incident too. He had survived wars and revolutions, prison, torture, and bullet wounds. He was sixty-three and had seen enough of the world. He decided to travel to Ekaterinburg again.”

***

Avram Bensheimer stands in front of the main entrance to the Entertainment Palace. He passes his hand over the massive door in front of him; the weather-beaten, cracked oak has lost all semblance of its past glory. The brass hinges are dull and rusted. Despite the heavy doors and thick walls that separate him from Darya, the eucalyptus and clover scent of her hair is all around him. He raises a hand, wincing at the pain from the bullet lodged in his lung, which left him with an imperceptible limp, compromising his feline walk. He lets his hand fall to his side, takes a long-drawn breath and knocks twice, harder the third time when no answer comes. He steps away from the door that remains closed in his face. Disappointment, rage, and sadness curdle within him.