The Kitchen Boy

suggested it was indeed him, the young one with the blond beard – but they’ve never been able to identify him by name. And that doesn’t make any sense, because if there’d been such a hero wouldn’t he have presented himself to the Whites once they took over Yekaterinburg? Of course! Others have suggested that it might have been the Heir’s doctor, Dr. Vladimir Derevenko, who took these notes out. After all, Derevenko was virtually the only person authorized to come and go at the Ipatiev House, which he did – he came every day to check on Aleksei. You see, there wasn’t enough room in the house for all of us, so Dr. Derevenko and his young son, Kolya, lived across the street. So since Derevenko could come and go, many have assumed it was he who carried the secret notes, that it could have been no other. But this too is false. One hundred percent false.

At first Botkin did in fact suggest, “What about Doctor Derevenko?”

“Nyet-s,” replied Nikolai Aleksandrovich. “That wouldn’t be wise. Derevenko is our friend and is therefore always suspect to them. Two days ago the guards at the gate even searched his medical bag and the pockets of his coat. Furthermore, he is always accompanied by the komendant when he visits our rooms, so it’s impossible to say anything to him. We must find someone… someone totally innocent, someone they wouldn’t even think of searching.”

To me it was instantly obvious. In any history book, I, Leonid Sednyov, am nothing but the smallest footnote in the remarkable story of the murder of the Romanovs. There have been some absurd speculations, but to serious historians I am still to this day nothing more than the “little kitchen boy.” Even to Nikolai Sokolov, the investigator the Whites brought in to try to determine what happened – they couldn’t find the bodies, so no one was really sure if the Tsar was truly dead or if perhaps the entire family had been smuggled away. But even this Investigator Sokolov fellow didn’t bother to search me out for an interview. Can you imagine anything so stupid? Such an idiot. He should have tracked me down, for I was with the Romanovs right up until a few hours before their end, so as far as the world knows I am the only survivor of The House of Special Purpose. In Investigator Sokolov’s book, however, I was just the kitchen boy, as I have been all these years to the historians. The insignificant kitchen boy. And that is exactly how the Bolsheviki saw me as well – harmless! – which is why they decided to move me to the Popov House just hours before the Tsar and his family were killed.

Of course it’s true that the Heir’s doctor, Dr. Derevenko, was the only one to come and go, but that’s not to say others weren’t allowed out of The House of Special Purpose for specific tasks. Namely, me. On the main floor of the house we only had a makeshift kitchen where a few things were prepared. Everything else was prepared for us a few blocks away at the local Soviet of Workers’ Deputies. And who did they send once or twice every single day to pick up the solyanka and kotletti, their soup and meat cutlets? The komendant himself? Konechno, nyet! Of course not. They sent me, the kitchen boy, that’s who! They sent little Leonka, they did!

So I said to the Tsar, I said, “Nikolai Aleksandrovich, once or twice a day I am allowed to go to the soviet for your food. And once or twice a day I pass the church there. Perhaps…”

The Tsar, the Tsaritsa, and the doctor each saw the simple logic of it all. They knew me, they trusted me. To them it was a beautiful plan – that their kitchen boy, who the whole world would forever overlook, should be their secret courier. And I think we would have succeeded. We nearly did, actually, we very nearly did. Over the next few weeks we received a total of three additional secret notes, and I carried a total of three replies. The replies to three of the four notes. We very nearly succeeded in saving the Romanovs, and we would have, I truly believe we would have, if only…

Oh, I was so young. And they were such awful times. In short, I must confess that I did something very foolish. Would that I could change one thing… just that one small thing. Oh, such a mistake I made!

Gospodi Pomilooi – the Lord have mercy – the Romanovs all died because of me.

4

But 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 Bolsheviki so disrespectfully called him. The Blood Drinker. The Blood Sucker. The Number One Capitalist.

And there we were in that fateful house.

“Crammed in like herring in a barrel,” laughed the Tsar one evening.

The Bolsheviki were constantly afraid that the Tsar would try to signal someone on the outside, which is why the windows were painted over with lime and we weren’t allowed to open a single one of them. It was like being surrounded by thick fog. Only the very top pane was left untouched, and through that you could see daylight. As a matter of fact, you could also see a bit of the Church of the Ascension across the square.

“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.

“Radi boga,” for the Lord’s sake, he shouted. “Those idiots have been at it again!”

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?”