by JG Hampton
needs to stop smoking because his beard is turning yellow from the nicotine and Mama thinks he should cut down as she is. His fingers are yellow, so he's switched occasionally to a pipe or using chewing tobacco. I tried it once when he wasn't looking, but it made me cough and spit.
9 January 1914, 22 January 1914 – I hopped out of bed with my good leg and placed a hot coin on the stove in my room and melted a peek hole in one of my icy windows. The Snow Queen had visited etching her crystal flower garden covering the glass with a magnificent hoary design, but I long to skate with my Papa and robust sisters on our lake, but I've been forbidden from doing so by both doctors. Through my peephole I watched papa and Tatiana skate together. Papa had to stride out to keep up with her long legs and I saw him puffing heartily, his white breath forming a cloud above his head. Anastasia, the show off, performed an elaborate figure eight while Olga skated backwards. My sisters looked like snow queens themselves in their beautiful white fur jackets, furry hats and muffs. Would Anna hit Marie in the head again with a rock embedded in a snowball like she did last year? Sometimes, she's a little devil like the hellion in the Snow Queen who made the magic mirror bringing misery to the world. Perhaps a wicked fairy put a curse on her when she was born. Try as she might or promises, Anna often breaks her oaths. Mama made her apologize to Marie and told her never to throw rocks again unless our palace was under siege by the enemy, but I knew that she was a hoyden, a valkrie or Mama’s favorite word for me: a hooligan. I would never do something like that, because I have become a young gentleman like my Papa. My rough edges are being polished away daily by my sisters, and my suffering.
The huge bonfire in the distance looks so inviting; I long to join them instead of sitting here helpless as a trussed piglet knitting socks for the poor and scarves for the soldiers with Mama. I've completed enough stockings for a small regiment by now and have calluses on my fingers to prove the fact. It's all so boring. Sometimes I beg Anastasia to stay with me rather than go out driving in the carriage or sleigh with my favorite auntie, fun loving Olga..
I’ve begun to imagine that I hear the sounds of the death watch beatles in the wood of the attic, but Mama told me it was only the ticking of our pendulum clock. My life was ticking away. Must I spend it knitting socks for the poor? I longed to have an adventure so I planned a great train wreck with the new toy train Mama ordered for me for my birthday from Germany. Smoke from the high speed engines filled the room as they raced to their destruction on the track. One of the trains flew off the track into the air upon impact. Mother rushed into the room when she heard the noise and was not amused, neither was Auntie Anya nor Olga. "Mama," asked my eldest sister, "perhaps Auntie Olga can teach the czarovitch water color lessons so that he has something better to do than destroy things"
Mama lured me back into bed with the promise of a cherry chocolate and she put on my favorite golden record about a wolf and a young boy on my music box. I knew that she would play the one about the dying swan next which just happened to be her favorite. I picked up my slingshot and began to fling marbles at the target across the room. I was becoming a deadly shot and hit the bull’s eye nearly every time. Practice makes perfect and by now, I’ve had plenty of practice and so have all of my sisters, especially Anastasia. The birds had better watch out come springtime, especially the large black raven which terrorized our black and white swans which swam in the lake.
Papa has promised to take me hunting if I remain in bed and get better. I’ve a picture of Papa with a herd of dead deer that Cousin Willy, the German Kaiser, and he killed on a hunting trip in Germany. I've never seen so many dead things at once, unless one counts the photograph of the trampled peasants. Someday, I’ll be a great hunter, and give the meat to the poor so that I can stop knitting stockings. I'll put a haunch of venison in every peasant's pot.
10 January 1914, 22 January 1914 – Doctors Derevenko and Botkin say that I’m improving, but still not enough to get out of bed. My knee is bent in a frozen position and I continue the treatment of hot packs and then cold packs put on my knee along with the painful massages. Mama hums ballads to me and sings to me while I soak in Papa’s solid silver bathtub. Mama has built a tent over me with a sheet to keep off the chill in the air.
11 January 1914 24 January 1914 - Papa read some of my diary and said that I write better than he does. He usually writes about the weather. My personal descriptions of events are living history he says and intends on adding a few more details. I'm glad I that my style of writing has inspired him. He let me read some of his pages. They were rather dull, but Mama's comments in the margins were anything but. M. Gilliar would have given him a poor grade and told him to use more of his imagination. Now I enjoy writing in my diary thinking it has become a friend. Mama says that if I do anything nine times, it will become a habit. Diary writing is a good habit unlike Anastasia's bad habit of biting her nails.
12 January 1914 22 January 1914 - Papa is busy every day. He gets up early and has some toast and tea and then disappears for hours into his library doing state papers. Mama says that he needs to delegate some of his work to others. There is to much work for one man, but Papa thinks he must handle every situation including domestic affairs between his people. Papa changed a man's name at his request from pig keeper to something more dignified. Mama thinks she should be allowed to help him with the lesser paperwork like the changing of names and the granting of divorces so that he would have more free time to spend with the family. His life as the czar has become a burden. Is Mama ambitious? Grandmama Dear thinks so and so do some of Papa's advisors. I wish that he had more time to spend with me. It must be difficult being prayed to and worshipped like the czar, even Papa's shadow is considered holy. I am practicing improving my posture with Anastasia. One day we walked with books on our heads. She won the contest. My dictionary fell off immediately, probably because I couldn't straighten my leg and hobble about. Papa walks very straight and tall. In fact, though he's not more than five foot seven inches tall, he always appears to be the tallest man in any room he enters. Mama says he has presence. My Mama is taller than he is by one inch, but especially when she wears spooled heeled shoes. Being the tallest woman in Romanov history is something to be proud of, but now Tatiana has grown even taller. Mama thinks that I will be tall, perhaps even taller than Grandpapa Alexander III, but not quite as tall as Papa's Uncle Nicholas who leads the military. He's almost seven feet tall like Peter the Great was. Papa is the shortest one of his brothers, even poor dead Georgy. Uncle Mischka is taller, but Papa is the nicest male in the family.. Mama says that Papa is too gentle and should be more commanding and fierce. Will bellowing and hollering put some fear into those he leads? It worked for my paternal Grandpapa who was always sounding off. Somehow, I can't picture Papa bellowing. He's too refined, dignified and genteel, aspiring to be nothing more than a country gentleman even though he is one of the most powerful men in the world. How did such a gentle man descend from Ivan the Terrible? Yet some call him Nicholas the Bloody. I think they are bloody fools in English jargon. Mama does not approve of the use of that word.
14 January, 27 January 1914 - Uncle Ernie, Mama's brother, has written to Mama and says that Cousin Willy, Kaiser Wilhelm, is requiring Hesse-Darmstadt, his small German principality to rearm and practice military maneuvers. The Kaiser is taxing them heavily in order to build up the German Navy. I hope that he comes to visit and brings his daughter. I love company because they always come bearing gifts and German toys are the best in the world. My toy cannon from Germany shoots cannon balls and terrifies my sisters much to Papa's chagrin. Mama will not let me shoot it at them, or in the family rooms, or in my bedroom, but she does let me shoot it in the tall empty hallways where nothing can be broken.
I shoot it off where our black palace guards can watch, just outside the entryway so that I'm not lonely. I like an audience appreciating my military maneuvers. I can tell that the sentries find it amusing. Their job must be so boring standing there stiff and stra
ight. I'm glad that I'm going to be the czar because I would not make a good sentry and I prefer giving rather than receiving orders.
15 January 1914, 18 February 1914- I am pasting my photographs of Vanka my donkey in my album. Alas his old gray hide looks moth eaten and flea bitten. I think he really must be a prince in disguise because he’s so obedient and faithful to me perhaps he's really a cursed prince caught in a spell just like some of the fairy tales my sisters have read to me which have enchanted bears and trolls in them. Anastasia laughed when I told her that perhaps Vanka’s her enchanted prince from far off Egypt.
“Yes, Alexei, and possibly your future czarina is the elephant the King of Siam sent Papa and Mama when you were born.” Everybody started laughing when they heard this, somehow, Anna can always make us laugh, even staid Mama and humorless Countess Buxhoeveden chortled and dropped a stitch or two in their knitting. I laughed until I had a stitch in my side.
"Do you think Father Grigory and my Uncle Michael will want to kiss my lovely bride?" I asked coyly. Will