The Kitchen Boy

Actually, it wasn’t Aleksandra but Lenin himself who dealt secretly with the Kaiser. It was the Germans who secretly smuggled Lenin back into Russia in a sealed train car, it was Lenin who signed away all of Poland and a third of European Russia in the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, it was…

Ouf, what’s been spilled by buckets cannot be retrieved by droplets.

Now where was I? Ah, da, the rat and the komendant. The gray rat was chasing the red pig, and the black and white dog was… was…

What a delicious scene!

Well, soon thereafter cook Kharitonov, the maid, Demidova, and I put out the tea. Kharitonov had made the tea concentrate, which he poured into each cup, then added the hot water from the spout of the samovar itself.

“Nice, hot, black chai.” Tea. “Again, no sugar. Again, no limon. But the children will love this!” said cook Kharitonov, reaching for a small bowl of fruit preserves.

“Strawberry jam – what a delight,” exclaimed the maid, a woman with a round face and big body who was most devoted to her mistress. “Wherever did you get it?”

“Sister Antonina brought a jar a few days ago and I’ve been saving it as a surprise. One of the sisters made it from their own fruit. Now, go on you two. On your way.”

Demidova carried a tray with the teacups, while I followed behind with the small bowl. Once she served the tea, she took the jam from my hands and placed it on the table with great flourish.

“What a nice treat we have for you this morning!” she said.

“Sweet preserves! Me first!” pleaded Anastasiya.

Aleksandra issued her dictum: “That will be fine, dear, but you must wait until everyone is seated.”

As we took our places, we were overcome with awkwardness, for the komendant had ordered that we must all sit at one table, master and servant alike. The family and Dr. Botkin were already seated at the large, oak table, and one by one we sat, Demidova, Trupp, me, and cook Kharitonov, who came in bearing eggs for the Heir. The Romanovs accepted the brutal affront to rank more quickly than we, the last of the thousands upon thousands of attendants who had formerly waited upon them hand and foot. And even though we’d been doing this for weeks, it didn’t feel right, the likes of me sitting right across the table from Nikolai Aleksandrovich, even if he was now the former Tsar.

Once we were all at the table, we waited for Batyushka, the Dear Father, to make the first move, signaling the start of our meal. When Nikolai Aleksandrovich reached for his spoon, however, he found nothing.

“Here, Papa,” said Olga, the eldest daughter, unable to hide a smile.

But that’s the way it always was. We were always a spoon, two forks, or a few knives short, because in addition to banishing silver and linen from the table as too decadent, the komendant had purposely ordered a deficit of cutlery.

“Thank you, my dear,” said the Tsar to his daughter.

I thought the shortage of utensils very mean, very humiliating, but Nikolai and Aleksandra dealt with such rudeness without complaint, they did. Nikolai simply accepted it as his fate, for his saint’s day was the day of Job, the long suffering, while Aleksandra found it her duty to follow her husband’s example. And those five royal children likewise complied, never once complaining.

After the Tsar stirred his tea, we all began. That morning we were minus not only one spoon, but one knife as well, and soon the cutlery and the bread and the bowl of jam were going this way and that among us.

“Tatyana,” commanded the royal mother, “make sure that Leonka gets some of the jam as well.”

“Yes, Mama.”

It was only for us children, that sweet heavenly mixture of fruit, and I was not to be excluded, nor was I ever, even though I was born of such lower state. They treated me with fairness and kindness at every turn that morning and every other.

Hardly a word was spoken during breakfast, and after we finished and were excused, I as usual assisted in the cleaning up. I was just wiping the crumbs from the table when Dr. Botkin appeared on the edge of the dining room.

“Leonka,” he said, beckoning me with a slight tilt of his head.

Once I was sure no guards were watching, I headed after the doctor, and was led into the drawing room, a long spacious room with heavy furniture. The Emperor and Empress were seated by the two windows, and as soon as I approached they turned their attention upon me. The Empress even stood, rising from her chair.

By then Nikolai’s beard was speckled with gray, and yet there was still a hint of blond or red around his mustache. He had recently turned fifty, and he was unusually fit, a firm believer in exercise, which I hasten to add had been curtailed. I mean, their walks and wood sawing and such. And while he had terrible teeth, all crooked and tobacco-stained, it was the eyes that I remember the most. The Emperor had the most amazing bluish eyes, and when he held you in his gaze he gave you the feeling that there was nothing more important than his conversation with you. And at that moment, right then and there, I suppose nothing was.

“Izvolite-li vyui, molodoi chelovek, Would you be so kind, young man,” said the Tsar, his voice hushed, “as to tell me the entire story of how you came upon this note? Only keep your voice low so as not to be overheard. Agreed?”

“Absolutely, Nikolai Aleksandrovich,” I replied, my voice faint and trembling.

Nikolai was very good at that, at making his subjects feel comfortable and not the least bit threatened. So I told them how Sister Antonina and the Novice Marina had come and had brought the milk and things.

As soon as I finished my story, the Emperor asked, “And do you know, Leonka, what it says, this note?”

“Nyet-s.” So that he wouldn’t think me ignorant, I quickly added, “I can read, Nikolai Aleksandrovich, but that is a foreigner’s language.”

“Exactly.”

Aleksandra, her hands grasped nervously together, stepped closer, and eagerly, rather desperately, said, “Nicky, it’s from her, it has to be.”

Of course Aleksandra was supposing that the letters were the doings of Rasputin’s daughter, the one who eventually left Siberia and became a lion tamer in California, the very one who lived out her final years in a little house beneath the Hollywood Freeway. And it was under this belief – that the daughter of their sacred monk was organizing a group of soldiers to rescue them – that the Empress grew so excited, so hopeful.

“We must respond at once,” she said. “But who knows if we’ll ever see any of the nuns again?”

“Leonka,” said Dr. Botkin, who towered over me, “who was this soldier? The note says something about a soldier that we may trust, yet you say the note came in the stopper of the milk bottle from Sister Antonina?”

“Da-s, da-s, Yevgeny Sergeevich,” I replied. “Sister Antonina brought the milk and eggs. As usual, she was accompanied by Novice Marina. There was a guard in the hall, but that was the only one I saw.”

“And which guard would that be?”

“The one with the blond beard.”

Of course there were many guards in and around The House of Special Purpose, but they all knew who I meant, for there was one guard whose beard in particular was very light in color. He was also the youngest, twenty at most. Just last week he’d made Tatyana Nikolaevna sit down and play revolutionary songs at the piano.

“Nyet-s,” said Nikolai Aleksandrovich, brushing at his mustache. “Trusting one of them – it’s too dangerous. We simply can’t.”

“But-” the Tsaritsa began, her skin turning red and somewhat blotchy, because she was very strong willed, very determined.

“Absolutely not. I forbid it. What if it’s a trap of some sort?”

This didn’t please Aleksandra Fyodorovna much, for she was quite eager to make contact with the letter writer, and she said, “But, Nicky, if you don’t think we can trust any of the guards, then surely we must find someone else to take our reply to them.”

There’s been much speculation as to how these replies were smuggled out of The House of Special Purpose. Some have suggested that there was in fact a guard loyal to the Tsar working in the house – some have