The Curse of the Romanovs

by Staton Rabin

  “Gilliard, is my family cursed?”

  “What nonsense! Where do you get such silly ideas?”

  “Gleb‡ told me. He said Mama came to Russia walking behind Grandpa Sasha’s coffin, and brings us bad luck. And on the day Mama and Papa were crowned, everyone rushed in for free souvenir mugs. A thousand peasants got crushed to death. Like ants!”

  “And what did you say when Gleb told you this?”

  “Nothing, I punched him.”

  “Alexei! You are older than Gleb, bigger than he is. What would your mother say?”

  “I know what Papa would say. He would say, ‘Good for you!’”

  After the war with Japan and our revolution in 1905—and Uncle Serge getting blown up—we Romanovs mostly stuck close to home. Safe in our little nest at Tsarskoye Selo, in the Alexander Palace. Only one hundred rooms—we live like peasants! We are rarely seen out in public. They say we Russians are too serious. Da, maybe so! But even Romanovs know how to play. When I am sick in bed, the girls take turns clowning in my room. “Who am I now, who am I now?” Anastasia says, making a face—imitating one of the servants dropping a tray when they tripped him, or Dr. Botkin’s worried squint. Botkin wears so much cologne that my sisters can find him anywhere in the palace, just by running down hallways sniffing the air!

  When Father Grigory fixes me up again, the Romanovs build snow mountains—even Papa! After morning lessons with my tutors of French, English, and Russian (Gilliard, Gibbes, and Petrov), my sisters skate while I play Winged-S biplane—“zoom, zoom!”—my diadkas watching me like hawks in case I take a spill. We make photographs of each other, then of ourselves in the mirror, and play Nain Jaune. At night we read ghost stories, or howl at Charlie Chaplin in two-reelers projected onto a white sheet. Or the girls act in plays. Fat Mashka, our faithful little “bow-wow,” always plays the boy—in a tricorne hat!

  And sometimes under cover of darkness we all sneak out to the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. Once, we even got to see Nijinsky and Pavlova, the greatest ballet dancers in the world. That night I sat overlooking the balcony railing, with the Big Pair to one side of me, the Little Pair‡ on the other. The Imperial Guard made Papa sit in the darkness behind us. To make him a harder target for assassins. Mama had sciatica again and stayed home, embroidering shirts for Father Grigory.

  On the ride over to the Mariinsky, I was alone with Papa in one carriage. We do not often get to be alone! My sisters rode together in the carriage that followed.

  “Did you remember to kiss your Mama good-bye?”

  “Yes, Papa. But I think I am getting too old for it.”

  “You see me kiss Grandma Minnie. Yes, every time I go away. Never too old! Always remember.” He looked out the carriage window at the streets of St. Petersburg as dark shadows fell across the steps of the Winter Palace, and he sighed. “You never know what God has in store. … Each kiss may be the last.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  He turned back to face me. Now staring intently, with moist eyes as clear and blue as the Neva.

  “I will not be here forever. You must always take care of your sisters, Alexei. And your mama. She is not strong. She wants everyone to think she is! Your mama has many crosses to bear.”

  “I know, Papa.” One of those crosses was me.

  He looked down at his hands—at his golden wedding ring.

  “Alix was only twelve when I saw her for the first time at Peterhof. She was visiting Russia for Aunt Ella’s wedding to Uncle Serge. And I knew right then—yes, I knew! ‘I’m Nicky,’ I said, trembling like the schoolboy I was. ‘I’m Sunny,’ she said—that was her nickname. And I felt the touch of her soft hand like rose petals in mine. ‘Yes, I know,’ I replied, my wits deserting me. The people say she doesn’t smile—but they don’t know Alix like we do. It is only because she is shy! Your mama smiled that first day for me. I asked Grandma Minnie for a diamond brooch, to give to Alix. We danced that night at the children’s ball. Alix stabbed the pin into my hand!”

  “Heavens! On purpose? Why would Mama do that?”

  “Oh, I was being much too forward. Who could blame her? But I was in love!”

  “And was Mama in love too?”

  “We carved our names together into the window glass at Peterhof. The very week we met. I will show you next time we visit—it’s still there.”

  I whispered to my sister Anastasia as a girl in a tutu and pink ballet slippers spun circles onto the stage of the Mariinsky. “It’s Pavlova! Beautiful—like the Snow Maiden! Look! She has silver fairy dust in her hair!”

  My sister cocked her head at me, raising an eyebrow—as always when she is ready for mischief.

  “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree! Papa had an affair with a ballerina, you know.”

  “What?”

  “It’s true! Before he married Mama, of course. Grandma Minnie and Grandpa Sasha pushed the ballerina on him. They didn’t want Papa to marry Mama, but he never gave up. The dancer’s name was Mathilde Kschessinska.”

  “Liar!”

  She shrugged, turning away, and looked back toward the stage. “Ask Olga or Mashka if you don’t believe me.” She knew that Tatiana was Mama’s favorite and too “good” to gossip.

  “Shhh!” My other sisters leaned over, hissing at us like angry geese. We got angry glances too from the St. Petersburg society ladies, staring at us over their lorgnettes.

  Then Nijinsky made his entrance. His tights were very tight—you could see everything, almost! All the ladies went “Ahhhhhhh!”—and even a few men! He was half man, half animal—all genius. I had to pry the opera glasses away from Anastasia to steal a better look.

  Then Nijinsky leaped. The dancer rose straight up, up from the stage—two meters, three, four—more! Then he hung absolutely motionless at the peak. Impossible! Hundreds held their breath. Nijinsky stayed suspended in the air like mountain mist. Frozen in time. Then at last we exhaled as he sailed back down slowly to earth, like a leaf on an autumn breeze.

  If only I could fly like Nijinsky! No one to stop him, or tell him nyet. No nervous diadkas to catch him if he falls.

  After the ballet, Papa took us to meet Nijinsky backstage. The dancer was still in his theater makeup, so his eyes were sharply outlined in black, his skin was painted bronze, and his cheeks were rosy. Long, furry-pointy faun’s ears sprouted from the sides of his head. He was just buttoning his shirt over his bare chest as we walked in. My sisters stared at the dancer, like a pack of she-wolves who hadn’t had dinner in months. He winked at them, then turned to me.

  “Ah, you must be Tsarevich!” Nijinsky said in his funny Polish-Ukrainian accent, bowing. Then he reached to shake the hand I held out to him. “So tall and strong, already—grrrrr, what a grip!” Nijinsky held his arm limply, pretending I’d broken it, to amuse me. “Maybe you become dancer like the great Nijinsky, yes? Come tour Paris with Mr. Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and me—and kiss French girls. Shall I teach you dance?”

  “Yes, yes!”—how I longed to say. “Let me fly with you! We’ll even take Anastasia, if she is good. Anywhere—anywhere! We shall fly together like Peter Pan, Michael, and Wendy!”

  But I could not tell Nijinsky the truth. No flying for me.

  Ashamed, I looked down at my feet and said nothing.

  “So very kind of you, Mr. Nijinsky,” my father jumped in. “But you see, I’m afraid my son Alexei is very busy studying to be tsar.”

  “Ah, too bad, Your Majesty. The boy would have made fine dancer, no? But of course, I understand. He will make even better tsar! Please, call me Vaslav. Both of you.”

  Papa let me hand a bouquet of flowers to Pavlova. She smelled of baby’s powder, pancake makeup—and nicely musky like sweat. But I couldn’t stop dreaming of flying with Nijinsky.

  Not long after that, even the thought of walking again would seem like a hopeless dream.

  ‡Gleb is one of Dr. Botkin’s sons.

  Big Pair: my eldest sisters, Olga and Tatiana. Little Pair:
the younger ones, Mashka (our nickname for Marie) and Anastasia.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT HAPPENED AT TSARSKOVE SELO, just a few weeks later.

  I awoke in the half-light of morning, exhausted from pain. Dr. Botkin’s mud-bath treatments had done nothing for me. I’d spent a hard night. Through the first light of morning I could just make out in the hallway the dark form of a man wearing a sable overcoat. He was leaving the room of the children’s nurse, Maria Vishnyakova, closing the door quietly behind him. When the man turned back, I saw a flash of gold—from a heavy gold cross, which I recognized as a gift from my mother. Father Grigory! Maria, still in her nightdress, ran out after him into the hallway. She clutched at his back, sinking slowly to her knees. Her shoulders shook with her sobs.

  “Shhhh! Get up, woman! It is no sin,” Father Grigory said in his rough but soothing voice. “Not when it is a holy act that cleanses the spirit.” He pulled Maria to her feet.

  Then I recognized my mother’s footsteps—not as rapid as they’d been before her leg pain from sciatica. She was coming around the bend in the hall. Father Grigory pressed a guiding hand on Maria’s shoulder, and she quickly disappeared back into her room.

  “My darling!” Mama said, approaching, kissing Father Grigory’s hands. “Thank God you have come!”

  “How is the boy?”

  “Worse every minute! He bumped his hip getting out of the bathtub—for days, Alexei hid this from me! His fever was over one hundred and four last night. And the pain! Grigory, Grigory, he begged me to take his life again! Can you imagine that for a mother to hear? I stayed with him, praying to the Holy Mother till he cried himself to sleep.” She glanced nervously from side to side. “Did anyone see you come in?”

  “No one.”

  “Good.” She led him into my room. I quickly shut my eyes and pretended to be sleeping.

  I smelled Father Grigory’s hand—smoke, leather, ladies’ perfume—before I felt its familiar gentle roughness touch my forehead.

  “Peace, Alyosha,” he said, whispering my nickname in his coarse Siberian accent, as comforting to me as a Tchaikovsky serenade. “Father Grigory is here.” I smelled vodka on his breath.

  He must have taken off his coat, because I felt a silk sleeve brush my cheek.

  “Still has high fever” Grigory said to my mother. “Go—leave us now. Do not worry your head anymore.”

  My mother, obedient, left us.

  Father Grigory gave me a couple of love-taps on the cheek.

  “Hah! You think you fool Father Grigory?” he said after my mother had left the room. “How long you listen? You are awake like the sparrows in May! Open them.”

  I opened one eye, squinting in the now-bright morning light streaming through my window.

  “Go on. Both!”

  I opened my other eye.

  “I wasn’t listening, I just did not want to worry Mama. How did you know I was awake?”

  He smiled at me. “Father Grigory sees past, he sees future, sees even things he doesn’t want to know. How do you feel?”

  “I can’t bend my leg! It’s all twisted up like—” “Bah! Never mind. Father Grigory fix. Look at me, Alexei.”

  I looked up at his face and found his eyes. Or, rather, they found me.

  I never wanted to look into Father Grigory’s eyes, but could never stop myself. They belonged to a creature of the forest, not one who walks on two feet. Some found their souls in those clear, steel blue eyes, others lost theirs. Most saw the fires of hell in them, but a few, like my mama, saw only heaven. Only Father Grigory’s eyes could tame my bleeding. But people said they made women wild—and drove brave men mad. He took my hand.

  As he mumbled a prayer, Father Grigory’s face turned yellow and waxy like a corpse. Suddenly he was struck by invisible lightning—trembling, moaning. Vibrating energy shot up one arm, down the other—right to my hand where it joined his. I was holding a bare electrical wire with my feet in water. I couldn’t let go! I screamed from a hundred fathoms deep inside my soul, too deep for anyone to hear me. Father Grigory went rigid, his eyes rolled back in his head. Then he slumped over my bed—a rag doll.

  Slowly he raised himself, like Lazarus rising from the dead.

  “It is done,” he said, and made the sign of the cross.

  And soon I could walk again—at least till next time. But even Father Grigory’s great and mysterious power had its limits. He could heal me, but not cure me. He could stop my bleeding, but not bombs or bullets. And, next to my illness, these were what my mother feared the most.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  GILLIARD ALWAYS WRITES IN RED PENCIL on my papers: “Alexei, how many times must I tell you? Relate events in their proper order! First this happened, second that, third—something else.”

  But I say that this is my life, I shall tell it in any order I please! Gilliard scowls when I say this and scolds me. But the Tsarevich does not follow rules; he makes them.

  So now I will tell you about something important that happened to me a few years ago.

  It was 1913—our family’s three-hundredth anniversary. Three hundred years since Michael, the first Romanov, had taken the Russian throne.

  “We must let the people see us, my dear,” Papa said to Mama. “The mouzhiks, who work hard and till the soil, they love their tsar like a child its mother! It is only a few troublemakers. Only a few bad apples who try to make the people discontented.”

  “It only takes one to take your life” Mama said grimly.

  “I was born on the day of the long-suffering Job, and am prepared to meet my destiny.”

  Papa rode out in front of the big anniversary procession in Moscow, down the street leading to the gates of the Kremlin. No Cossack regiment to guard him with their rifles and sabers. No carriage to shield him. Just Papa alone on his horse—slowly riding forward, sitting up straight as a samovar in the saddle, while the people on both sides of the Prospekt cheered him and sang, “God save the tsar!” Yes, cheering and singing! We rode behind in our carriages. I was never so proud of Papa as I was that day.

  How different this was from the days of the 1905 revolution, when the people sang:

  Nicholas, tsar, praise be to you!

  Our sovereign, devil’s son too

  Merciless butcher, be drowned in blood

  Let all Romanovs meet death in the flood

  Like maggots will perish all of your kin

  You will also die because you have sinned

  Kept people in jails, many are dead

  Millions of others have no bread!

  As for me, I was sick again during the time of our three-hundredth anniversary celebrations, and could not walk. My parents prayed to Saint Serafim that I would be well in time for the main ceremonies. But it was not to be.

  “Has His Majesty ever noticed,” Gilliard said to Papa, “that Alexei always seems to take ill just when he must appear in public?”

  Nonsense! Gilliard reads too much philosophy!

  Back in St. Petersburg, Nagorny carried me in his arms—into Kazan Cathedral behind my parents and sisters. The church candle flames bowed in a sudden gust of air as every head turned as one to look at us. Nagorny walked slowly—so terribly slowly!—down the aisle.

  “Hurry up, tortoise!” I whispered in Nagorny’s ear. But I knew his instructions from my parents were to not risk dropping me.

  “Poor lamb …” The people’s anxious whispers echoed off the church’s stone walls like a Byzantine chant. Their stares at me—unbearable!

  “Look, Anya—the tsarevich!”

  “The heir! What’s wrong with him?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  ”—touched the hem of his uniform! Yes, with this very hand!”

  “He’s an angel—”

  How I wished again that I could fly away—and go anywhere, anywhere but here!

  ”—the spawn of the devil!”

  “They say he’s not well!”

  “It’s his heart—”


  ”—his spleen!”

  “Rabies! A dog bit him!”

  ”—scarlet fever!”

  “The boy is a cripple!”

  “I sent him an icon from Kiev. It cost me fifty kopecks!”

  “The tsarina never smiles—this is why!”

  “I pray to the Holy Mother for him!”

  “Bloody Nicholas and his cursed German witch! Only got what they deserve!”

  ”—what they deserve!”

  “Dear God! What will become of Mother Russia?”

  At last we sat down in our row. I could breathe again!

  I spotted Father Grigory seated down in front. Raising my hand, I was going to wave to him. But Papa put his hand on my arm to stop me. We waited for the Te Deum to begin.

  Then, suddenly, Mr. Rodzianko, the president of the Duma, strode over to Father Grigory.

  “You are sitting in a Duma member’s seat. Clear out at once, you vile heretic!”

  Rasputin looked up at the man, as if calmly studying a fly that had landed on his picnic basket.

  Mama instantly grabbed Papa’s arm. I heard her whisper, “Nicky! Do something!” But Papa didn’t move a muscle. He knew that the people did not like Our Friend and that the tsar must not be seen defending him in public.

  “There is no place for you in this sacred house!” Rodzianko said, yanking Father Grigory up by the collar.

  Father Grigory struggled free of Rodzianko’s grip. Our Friend was as strong as a Siberian tiger, from all the hard labor he had done as a boy in Pokrovskoe.

  “Oh, Lord, forgive him such sin!” Father Grigory said.

  “Don’t look,” Papa whispered urgently into my ear. “Just stare straight ahead.” I was dying to see, but I did as I was told. The next thing I heard was the sound of Father Grigory’s patent leather boots stomping up the aisle. Then the heavy wooden door of Our Lady of Kazan slamming behind him.

  I was up half that night, moaning with pain. Begging again for Death to come take me.

  But it was not Death that came, but Father Grigory. The moment he walked into my room, my pain went away for a little while—like a bad schoolboy sent to sit in the corner.