The Kitchen Boy

by Robert Alexander

  He was a rascal, that boy. A real imp. He’d been deathly ill, but he’d also been deathly bored, just lying around in a hot, stuffy house in Siberia, the windows painted over with lime so that he couldn’t even look out. What could be worse for a child? And this rat was surely the most exciting thing Aleksei had come across in months.

  Following my orders, I shoved the wheeled chaise along, charging around the heavy oak dining room table. Everyone was yelling, the dog was barking, the girls screaming, and this rat… well, I drove the chaise as if it were the wildest of troikas, dashing this way and that, following each and every order of my young master – turn to the left, the right, there over by the sideboard, Leonka! Wait, no, next to the fireplace, go! Charge! The Empress didn’t budge – she wasn’t terrified of the rat, she just stood there, hands clasped to her cheeks, terrified lest anything happen to her beloved son, that I might crash him and an entirely new bleeding episode would begin.

  After a few short moments we had this fat, juicy rat cornered, Aleksei and I did. The dog was ready to bolt forward, but Aleksei leaned from his vehicle and grabbed Joy by the scruff of its neck, and we all stood staring at the big rat, and it curled back its teeny lips, exposed its little teeth, and snarled back at us.

  And then Aleksei, Naslednik to the House of Romanov and the throne of imperial Russia, released his dog, screaming, “Get him, Joy!”

  And what did the rat do? Well, it took off not toward the Tsar and Tsaritsa, but toward Komendant Avdeyev, who stood on the other side of the room. Avdeyev – big, old, fat, sleepy, hungover Avdeyev – yelped like a pig and turned and bolted into the hall, the rat chasing after him, the dog chasing after them both, all the way down those twenty-three steps and into the courtyard out back.

  Aleksei burst into hysterics – can you imagine, a rat chasing away the Bolshevik pig? It was too perfect. In fact, I had never seen the Heir laugh so long, so carelessly, and that in turn started a chain reaction. The Empress was only somewhat amused by the scene, but she was overjoyed at seeing her sickly son so… so vivant. And then the Tsar started laughing, as did Botkin and the others. We all started and then we just couldn’t stop.

  “Bravo, Aleksei Nikolaevich!” called Botkin in a hushed voice so that the guards in the hall wouldn’t hear.

  It was the one and only time that I ever saw the Empress just let loose and laugh and laugh. And when she did she was so beautiful – that pure skin, those radiant blue-gray eyes. Before the war, all the best society and almost everyone at court had grown to disdain Aleksandra, calling her haughty and aloof. But that just wasn’t so, that wasn’t the Empress I knew. Instead, from what I saw back then and from my readings since, I’ve come to understand not only how nervous Aleksandra became in public, but how shy and reticent she was with anyone except her immediate family. In truth, I think, she was horribly depressed and insecure, for her soul was damaged, having lost her parents at a young age, and she was ever fearful of losing her son from a bleeding attack or her husband from an assassin’s gun. But right then she clasped one hand over her mouth, one around her waist, and she rocked back and forth with such mirth. It’s my guess that that was the last true laugh of her life.

  “Nicky, can you believe it?” she managed to say in Russian, because of course those were the komendant’s orders, that they speak in the language understood by the guards.

  Almost always the Tsar called her “Alix” but right then he said, “ Solnyshko,” Sunny, he said, using his pet name for his wife, “I… I…”

  But lacking words, he came over and bussed her. He wrapped his strong arms around her and kissed her ever so passionately.

  And even though there were others present, she spoke her heart, saying, “I love you. Those three words have my life in them.”

  Yes, this I know without a doubt: never have a king and queen loved each other more than Nikolai and Aleksandra.

  3

  Katya, do you know what is as asinine as kommunizm? Autocracy. One man, one person, cannot rule the hearts and minds of millions. Liberty, freedom, truth – this America can be such a silly place, so fickle and naive – sometimes so childish! – but it saves itself because of those first three things.

  If only Nikolai hadn’t so ardently believed in divine rule. If only he’d loosened the reigns. If only Aleksandra’s first child had been a healthy boy. The whole country was waiting for an heir, and when she finally gave birth to a boy, her fifth child, and he turned out to be so sickly, it all but killed her, it truly did. You know, it’s really so odd they called her nemka, the German. True, she was born a minor German princess, but after her young mother’s death Aleksandra was raised primarily by her “darling Granny,” as she called her beloved grandmother, Queen Victoria. So she was essentially English. And then during the Great War there was so much gossip and slander against the Tsaritsa. The newspapers printed such terrible things, they threw so much gas on the flames of discontent. Why, they wrote that she, the most prudish of all tsaritsas, slept with Rasputin, that mystical monk from Siberia whose hypnotic eyes alone eased the pain of Aleksandra’s sickly son. Yes, Rasputin was a scoundrel of the first degree – his debauchery ruined the reputation of the Imperial Family and, no doubt about it, his horrendous advice to the Tsaritsa hastened the revolution – but did she ever have sexual relations with that tall, brutish man with the animalistic stare? Absolutely not. The papers also wrote that Aleksandra kept the Tsar perpetually drunk and had a direct telegraph cable line from her mauve boudoir to her relations in Berlin. And the Russian people – both the nobility and the masses – came to believe it all, that not only was she Rasputin’s mistress, but that she was a traitor to the war and the fatherland. In fact, nothing could have been further from the truth. Why, after her husband’s abdication they dug up her rooms, searched for that cable, and what did they find? Nothing! Aleksandra hated the Prussians, thought her cousin, the Kaiser, a fool, which he was. Her truth is revealed in a letter to her dearest confidant, Anna Vyrubova:

  What a nightmare, that the Germans are supposed to save everyone and establish order. What could be worse and more degrading than that?… God save and help Russia!

  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 a
nd 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 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…