The Kitchen Boy

Sure, it had cooled somewhat, but I was completely clothed down to my socks. Within moments I was broiling. I started tossing and turning, and grew all the hotter. I dared not cast aside my blanket, however, lest one of the guards make a sudden check. My mind began to spin, and so did Kharitonov’s, I could tell, for on the other side of the tiny room the large man tossed and rolled as much as I.

So how would it happen? Would a band of loyal Cossacks ride into town, hooping and hollering, screaming and shooting into the sky? Would monarchist officers appear out of the woodwork and slit the throats of the Red Guards, one by one? I tried to imagine the scenario, if our secret rescuers would first take out the machine gun positioned on the roof, next storm the house, or if they would first attack the Popov House across the alley way, killing all the reinforcements. Then again, maybe an airplane would appear out of nowhere and the pilot would lean out, take careful aim, and let drop a bomb on the Popov House, blowing all the Bolsheviki to bits. A surprise from the air like that might be best, particularly since The House of Special Purpose had been rigged with an electric warning bell to summon all the guards.

Whichever way it happened, I was sure there would be much blood, and I pictured myself the hero, leading the grand duchesses out the window and down a rope of bed linens. On the other hand, the window might be too dangerous, for it overlooked the side yard and the Popov House. So… so I might have to lead the girls down those twenty-three steps and to some waiting horses or a motor vehicle of escape. I might even get a gun, I might even have to kill one of the Reds. And I imagined the Romanovs and me escaping with our lives – perhaps I’d be wounded, but not terribly so – and then the Tsar would make me a count or a prince or something. Sure. All night I stirred with the possibilities. All night I imagined killing someone. And all night I heard the handful of guards posted in the cellar directly below, heard their shouts, their laughter, their drunken bouts. Each time I thought it was the beginning of the end and my heart was fully roused, making it impossible to get any rest.

None of us slept. Or slept little. Once I heard a distant dog howl to the moon. Or was it a wolf who’d ventured as close as the city dam? Eventually Kharitonov began to snore and the guards below fell into complete silence, while outside the night slowly returned to the dead. I had no idea what time it was – only the landed gentry and the aristocracy carried watches – but it must have been close to two or three before my eyes fell shut.

While I later learned from a book that the Romanovs had all slept fully clothed and fully bejeweled that night, I have often wondered what they were thinking when darkness finally came. The girls, the boy, their parents – did they lie in their beds and pray for salvation? Did they smile at the thought of what might soon come their way? Did they weep with anxiety? I’m sure that Aleksandra, always plush with anxiety, spent the whole of the night worrying about her babies, her husband. If an escape attempt was made, would the guards pounce first and foremost on their hated Nikolashka, killing him dead? If the family fled in a mad rush, would The Little One bump a knee or an arm, thereby plunging himself into nightmarish pain and even death? Playing through every scenario from successful escape to hellish failure, the Empress recorded in her diary how sleep was not of interest.

Colossal heat tho’ rained a little… I went early to bed, but slept only 3 hours, as they made so much noise outside.

To this day I imagine the Romanovs lying there sleepless as they drank in every step, cough, word, bark, and stir of wind. I’m quite sure they tossed all night long, wondering, hoping, fearing. And a horrible night it was, followed by a long, horrible, hot day, which was in turn followed by another terrible night of heated worry, for on the twenty-seventh she recorded:

8:00 Supper. 23 degrees in the room. Scarcely slept.

Perhaps it was Aleksandra’s bitter dealings with the aristocracy of Sankt-Peterburg that made her paranoid – high society thought her much too prim and constantly mocked her – but she was quite correct not to write all in her diary. In the old days, everything that could be used against her certainly had been. Consequently, she understood the dangers of writing a diary that was too specific. She had to be most careful, and for this reason it had become not so much a personal account, but a logbook of day-to-day events. Hence she recorded her work with her pounds and pounds of diamonds as “arranged medicines,” and her mention of scarcely sleeping, of so much noise outside, refers to those nights when we all waited for the rescue that did not come.

At the same time, Nikolai Aleksandrovich proved himself not as savvy as his wife:

27 June. Thursday. Our dear Maria turned 19 years old. The same tropical weather held, 26 degrees in the shade and 24 degrees in the rooms; one can hardly stand it! We spent an anxious night and sat up dressed.

All this was because we had received two letters in the last few days, one after the other, in wh. we were told that we should get ready to be abducted by some sort of people loyal to us! The days passed and nothing happened, but the waiting and uncertainty were quite torturous.

But why? Why in the name of God would he have recorded such things for the Bolsheviki to find and read? Was Nikolai Aleksandrovich so naive? That… that stupid? Or was he simply too much of a gentleman, too much an aristocrat of the Old World, too much of a tsar to even imagine that such a personal intrusion and affront was even possible?

So there we were, the morning of the twenty-seventh. The day was sunny and hot – twenty-two degrees by early morning – but there was no summer brightness from any of us. Nyet, we’d just woken from fitful dreams of hope and were still groggy with disappointment. For better or worse, our emancipation had not been attempted during the depth of the night and the waiting was, as Nikolai wrote, torturous. Whatever was to come, we all clearly understood it was the beginning of the end. Of course Nikolai and Aleksandra wanted their family to be rescued and carried to safety, but when they were faced with that very possibility they realized how utterly foolish and dangerous such a rescue would be. And when it didn’t take place in those first few days, Nikolai could see the darkness rumbling toward them, so much so that within a week or so he stopped writing his diary altogether, the very diary he’d faithfully written every day since boyhood.

We gathered under a gloomy cloud for our morning inspection and ate our bread and drank our morning tea with few words, but all of that was shoved aside for Maria’s birthday celebration at eleven. The Tsar insisted, for both as a good father and a good soldier he was concerned about the morale of his little troop. Seeing how heavy our hearts were, he recognized that our spirits needed attention. Hence he issued a decree, beckoning Romanov and servant alike to wish the Sovereign’s number-three daughter everything sweet and beautiful.

“A tea table in the late morning… how unusual,” said Aleksandra Fyodorovna, surveying the spread before her in the drawing room.

“And why not?” pressed a beaming Maria, her eyes as big as saucers.

“That’s right, why not?” seconded the Tsar. “After all, there’s been a revolution.”

“Oh, believe me, I know that.” Aleksandra shook her head in bemusement. “Just imagine, everyone else used to have such interesting afternoon teas, but not us. We always had the same tea with the same breads, served on the same china, presented by the same footman. And it all happened precisely at the same time everyday. Why, I don’t think anything had changed since Catherine the Great.”

“No, I think you’re quite right, my dear,” replied the Tsar. “The palace ran on tradition alone.”

Demidova, who stood next to me, volunteered, “I quite remember, Madame, when you tried to change a few things.”

“I do too. Only too well, as a matter of fact. And wasn’t that a disaster?”

“Wasn’t it though!”

Later that day Demidova went on and on about all this, explaining that before the war the Tsar’s tea, like everything else, had been an amazingly regimented thing: the doors opened at five, the Tsar came in, buttered a piece of bread, and drank two glasses of tea, not one more, not one less. On the other hand, Demidova had heard from other maids that the teas of the nobility had been infinitely more creative and extravagant, for it had been all the vogue to have a minimum of six different cakes at the tea table – chocolate, nut, berry, meringue, and so on.

Now looking down at the large knot-shaped sweet bread on the table, the Empress smiled in delight, and asked, “Tell me, cook, where on earth did you get such a beautiful krendel? Did the good