The Passion of Marie Romanov

by Laura Rose

  I was five years old when he was born. “The heir at last! A tsarevich!” I remember the triumphant tolling of the bells, the three-hundred-and-one-gun salute, and oh, the fetes and banquets. The celebration was short-lived. Only a bit more than a month later, the fearful knowledge was evident: Alexei was still bleeding from his navel, the birth connection never healed. He suffered the cursed blood disease, hemophilia, for which there is no cure.

  Now, as an almost grown woman, I can begin to understand my mother’s hysteria upon seeing that blood knot where once her baby had been connected to her. Here was the son she prayed for, whom she had struggled to conceive, and her own bloodline would doom him to an early death. In the years since, Alexei had his intervals of good health, when he seemed robust and ran and played as any twelve-year-old might, but these were only brief reprieves—his usual existence was invalidism.

  When the twinned catastrophes of siege and measles overtook us, Alexei had already been ordered to bed. He was still recovering from his last hemorrhage, his right leg propped upon two pillows. The swelling was visible even beneath the poultices. His knee seemed fixed in a right degree angle. This was not as severe as the attack he suffered five years before while we vacationed at Spala, our hunting lodge in the Polish forest. That time, his knee was raised to his chest, and he lay fixed in that awkward position on his bed; we all feared it was his deathbed. Yet he recovered and I believed he would recover from the measles also. His skin, as Olga’s had, burned as I touched his cheek. His fever registered the same awful figures—the number we knew could bring on death. One more degree and irreparable harm would occur. Nagorny recited his temperature and told me Alexei was holding fast at the precarious 40 degrees Celsius.

  I took comfort that my brother’s breathing was measured, the most even-paced of all the children’s. Even in sleep, Alexei seemed to muster a smile, his arm around his spaniel. Beside him, Joy lay stretched out full length, one silken ear spread on Alexei’s pillow. My own pet, the Siamese cat, Silina, had defected, as she often did, and lay purring at Alexei’s feet. She was the image of vibrating contentment, her cream-colored belly rising and falling. She opened her violet eyes and gave me that feline stare of all-knowing prophecy. Silina narrowed her cat gaze, almost like Mama’s. I could not restrain the thought that my cat appeared defiant toward me; she had transferred her loyalty to my baby brother. Seeing this, I sensed that she would be his from this night forth, a prediction that proved correct. Alexei cherished the cat as he did all his animals—they shared his convalescence and offered him a simple love, an unquestioning comfort. I often thought, even then, that Mama’s concern for Alexei was so acute that he sometimes suffered more in her presence. This was the case on his sickbed with the measles—Mama looked in more agony than Alexei. When he opened his eyes, and looked at her, he moaned and writhed.

  “If our friend were here, he could heal us all,” Mama whispered. I knew the friend to whom she referred—Grigory Efimovich, known to the public as Rasputin, which means “the Dissolute.”

  I said nothing, but a wave of anger, hot as the fever which assailed my sisters, rose and scalded my cheeks. I could never say aloud what I secretly thought of “our friend.” On this matter, I didn’t dare disagree with Mama, so I nodded and kept silent. I conceded that “our friend” had possessed mysterious powers and perhaps he could have healed the children’s measles as he had halted so many of Alexei’s hemorrhages. I could not suppress a silent, blasphemous prayer—I gave thanks that “our friend” Grigory Efimovich was dead.

  Later, when I had more knowledge, I felt no guilt in that gratitude. Later, with the enlightenment, I came to appreciate the ironies, how our touted “savior” had doomed us. But at that time, I begged the dead man’s forgiveness and touched the amulet Mama had given me, which I always wore, at her instruction, at my throat. Within the amulet case was a picture of “our friend” and a scribbled prayer for our salvation. Without effort, I summoned his visage—the heavy features, eyes clear as Siberian water and piercing, staring out from under the strands of greasy, long hair that fell across his face.

  Was all life and death fated or by chance? If Grigory Efimovitch had never entered our lives, would this terror have been averted? On what coincidence and idiocy, then, do life and death hinge? Through what series of random events? An introduction to a “holy” man through a naïve lady-in-waiting? Séances held for a gabble of convinced women, superstitious devotees, who believed in all manner of black witches and rapping tables to summon spirits? One so-called spirit audience after another, one hysterical lady-in-waiting, led us to a filth-covered self-proclaimed “holy” man who in turn led us to possible death and certain imprisonment. Such a turn of events would seem accidental, even silly, were it not true and tragic. In Russia, perhaps truth and tragedy were always intertwined. I see this now, but I did not see it then. Hindsight may be the only true vision. Perhaps I know the truth only when it is too late.

  Even this measles, which could have killed all of us, was an accident of social frivolity. Two weeks before, a boy invited to play with my brother at the palace brought with him an invisible companion—the contagion. Another such meaningless coincidence? If we had not been so sick, would we have fled the palace, been able to flee Russia herself? Would we, as some of our suite have suggested, been able to find sanctuary in another country? If our lives hang on such an accidental balance—that Anya Vyrubova, the gullible lady-in-waiting and Alexei’s cursed blood weighted our fate—then what chance do I have now when there are real forces at work?

  It is in the genuine interest of the revolutionary government to kill us, I know that now. As I write this journal, the remaining hope lies in two possibilities—that the loyal White soldiers might rescue us, or that we might somehow escape our captors.

  But during those early days of the first captivity at home in the palace, I was innocent of the ordeal ahead. I imagined the rabble beyond the gates and the measles within the palace were all we had to fear. That night, as the thirteenth of March turned relentlessly toward the fourteenth, I suffered every stroke and toll of the bell, and stopped again in the alcove at Anya Vyrubova’s bedside. This act, unlike my visits to my sisters and brother, was not inspired by genuine concern but out of obligation to Anya Vyrubova as the dear friend of my mother and by the rules of court etiquette. The service of court attendants is mutual—it is we, the royals, who serve them if they are indisposed.

  Anya Vyrubova had become our responsibility; she was dependent upon us for everything. I had always mistrusted this woman, this “friendship,” but never suspected that she might cause our doom. But whenever I looked at Anya Vyrubova, I suffered a clutch in my belly and my secret thought was, you will bring harm to us with your foolish superstitions and hysterias. Ignorance can be as treacherous as malice. In Anya’s case, her desire to help, her near-slavish devotion to our family, may have been as lethal as the revolutionaries’ hatred. For so many years, my parents had included Anya as a member of our family. At times, Mama was jealous of Papa’s attention to her although we all knew Anya had no physical attraction for anyone. Mama mocked her in private as “the Cow,” a nickname that suited Anya’s shapeless heavy body and large dewy but uncomprehending gaze. Anya had arranged the many meetings between my mother and “our friend;” it was Anya who provided her salon for his strange sessions. Too late, I learned that the people, the revolutionaries regarded Anya as Rasputin’s mistress and a witch in our home. She was regarded as a spy and there were many who demanded her imprisonment and even her execution. Even now, I doubt that Anya had any truly sinister role but her presence with us in the palace added to the danger we could not yet fully comprehend. Grand Duke Paul had begged Mama to force Anya Vyrubova from the palace, to create some distance. Mama would not forsake Anya but she kept her lady-in-waiting confidante in a shadowed nook, far from the most traveled corridors of our home.

  Anya lay in bed in that secluded alcove, attended to by her assigned nun. I found the lady-i
n-waiting tossing and fitful, her wide pudding face scarlet with sores. Her eyes peeked out from under her lids, swollen like raisins. Anya suffered the most severe case of measles. She had other physical problems as well. Crutches rested beside her bed—Anya had needed these sticks for support for a year, after she was almost killed in a train accident on her way to see us. It had been “our friend” who prayed over her broken body and brought her back—a miracle?

  I tried to summon sympathies for the plump, broken and now blotched Anya, but in my heart, I could not muster much feeling for “the Cow.” I never dared to say so, but I had long ago taken an acute dislike to Anya Vyrubova. I had my reasons, best left unsaid. I murmured false reassurances. “Don’t worry, Anya, you will recover. You look much improved.” In fact, Anya Vyrubova looked worse, her puffed face disfigured by the virulent raised rash. I itched just looking at her.

  I hurried back to my dear Shvybz and our sisters in the Green Room. How I longed to return to my bedroom next door, its reassuring painted pink skies and butterflies. I could not resist peeking inside the doorway; the rose chintz landscape of my room greeted me with its familiar hillocks of cozy upholstered chairs and ottomans. Just seeing my own room, I felt as winged as the butterflies, the gossamer creatures painted by court artists with a delicate hand, who flew forever across the ceiling above our beds and heads.

  Anastasia and I had matching white camp beds, the same as our sisters’ in the next room. These beds were the least comfortable furnishings in the room; it was Mama’s belief that a hard bed strengthened character, just as our cold morning baths in the solid silver bathtub fortified us against infections. These rolling camp beds followed us wherever we went, shipped by the Imperial train when we traveled to our more distant estates. When we were older, we could look forward to softer mattresses, wider beds—that was a reward for growing up, and marrying. The changing of the bed.

  But one’s bed is still one’s bed—the ultimate refuge, a personal heaven. I looked at my camp bed with utter longing. The faces of our family portraits and icons of the Holy Mother and Child reassured me from the walls. How tempted I was to crawl into my own bed and pull the pale blue duvet over my head. Of course, I could not. I looked in on my sisters and then went downstairs to fetch more of the sweet Crimean oranges, hot tea, and poultices.

  And so, we passed the night, on this spiral course from bed to bed, with only an hour or two stolen in relay to rest on the settees in the Red Room. It was on the last of these midnight runs that I was again assailed by my phantom. The unseen fleeting creature, which had until then scooted round the borders of the rooms and ahead of me through the doors, seemed to close in on me with such suddenness I almost screamed. The shadow swooped behind and to my left. I felt a hand upon my shoulder and I cried out. I turned—only to see Mama’s valet, old Volkov, doubled over a large tray.

  Down below in the palace kitchens, the cook, Kharitonov, had somehow managed to reheat last Sunday’s stewed beef and Mama’s macaroni, the single food she could tolerate other than her English tea biscuits, and the good valet had carried the heavy tray up through the darkened stairs, to serve to us, still warm.

  THE GATES HAVE CLOSED

  The gates have closed—until now, they had been guarded but open. Some time in the night, someone locked the gates. From this time forth, those of us who were inside would remain for the duration.

  Before the gates closed, Dr. Botkin, who often attended Mama for her heart condition, moved into his rooms in the palace to nurse the invalids. How good it was to know this dear man was still with us, to see his worn, bespectacled face as he bent over each child in succession. When I look back, I am amazed that he chose to enter the palace. Had Dr. Botkin no fear for his own life? He was not a young man and his face was seamed by his recent grief—his son killed at the German battlefront. Ever since he had news of his son’s death, Dr. Botkin’s face had changed—the look of shock imprinted as if he too had been shot. His eyes, magnified by his spectacles, shone with unshed tears and a sorrow he converted to compassion. He had a distracted air, save when he examined us and then he bent forward in the most acute attention, raising and lowering his spectacles as he inspected every pore and listened to every breath.

  Dr. Evgeny Botkin spoke in a soft voice with an odd sibilance; I could hear his dentures whistle, sliding as he spoke. Like his tweed suit, the dentures were of high quality but ill-fitting as though they belonged to the man he used to be. In his despair, Dr. Botkin had shrunken. I could remember him as heavier and heartier before he lost his son and, incidentally, his wife, who did not die but left him for another man, in a scandal. Dr. Botkin was close to us, almost a member of the Imperial family. His father had also been a physician and cared for our grandfather. His daughter, Tatiana, was our dear friend and his surviving son, Gleb, amused us with his jokes and clever cartoons.

  Dr. Botkin was a man who cared little for worldly things or even for himself. He carried only a black leather medical bag, packed with all imaginable remedies: poultices and syringes, powders and vials, cocaine, Veronal, Laudanum. But against measles he could offer little but solicitude and cool compresses for the scalding rash.

  He frowned as he studied my dear little sister’s face and listened for her pulse.

  “Is she worse?” I whispered.

  He tapped a silver instrument near her ear. She did not stir. Her stillness was more alarming than her occasional thrashing.

  “Her eardrums may have already burst. She may not hear a word you say.” The doctor confided that Tatiana had already lost her hearing; her ear canals had abscessed. Olga, he told me, suffered another serious complication—the lining of her heart was inflamed, and her heart itself might fail. He repeatedly held the stethoscope to Olga’s chest—her breathing was so labored.

  “Many still die at this stage of the disease,” Dr. Botkin warned. “We must give them every comfort and remedy for the side effects. Against the measles, themselves, we have only our prayers.”

  Mama initiated a procession from our church, the Church of Znaminie, which stood just outside the palace doors. From there, the Sisters carried the holy Icon of Znaminie through the rooms, waving incense chalices and singing. This was a sacred tradition in times of pestilence and Mama credited the intervention of the Holy Mother with the fact that the girls had not already died. As we prayed over her, my poor Shvybz murmured a few inarticulate sounds and tried to adjust to the unadjustable, to find a comfortable way to lie in her bed. I felt a wave of near hopelessness engulf me—what if I lost her?

  Dr. Botkin saw my distress and said, “Anastasia is young and vital. They are all strong girls. Your mother’s regimen has made you all healthier than most children. And your father’s athletic strength is also in your constitution, and he is a powerful and healthy man. Your father survived typhus, a disease that almost always kills. Your sisters and brother have inherited his fortitude. With our vigilance and prayer, they will have a chance which other invalids would not.” Dr. Botkin picked up his bag and walked with slow steps toward the next bed and then the next and then back again, to the start.

  At last, before dawn, we agreed we would try to sleep for a few hours. Lili lay down on the bed we had made up for her but Mama announced a change. “Marie come with me. We will leave Lili to her privacy, and you shall sleep with me.”

  I had not shared a bed with my mother since my infancy, but of course I could not refuse. I followed her through the curtained doorways into her bedroom. The valet Volkov had set a fire in the bedroom’s porcelain stove and though it burned low, down to orange embers, the small fire cast light and heat. Mama’s small personal chapel, contained in her bedroom, was ice-cold and dark but nonetheless Mama and I went inside together and offered our final prayers for the night to save the sick and bring Papa home to us.

  Then Mama climbed into the great canopied bed she shared with Papa and where she had, against custom, nursed us all as babies. I started to undress and she said, “No, no, keep on your co
rset and dress, and place your shoes by the bed… We don’t know when we might have to rise.”

  That predawn was the first of my fully dressed nights. How I longed for the comfort of my soft nightdress, but I said nothing and unlaced only my shoes. Mama, I noted, still wore her own shoes. Her feet dangled off the edge of the bed, her fine black kid high-button boots pointing downward.

  Mama held up the heavy violet-colored satin duvet and I ducked under it as I had as a small child. Even through our clothing, I could feel the warmth of my mother’s body and I inhaled the scent of Verveine, her eau de cologne. She instructed me to draw the canopy’s tasseled drapes closed and we lay together in the encapsulated satin “room” within the room. I feared I would not sleep at all, and at first, I lay stiff on my back until Mama indicated with a gesture that I should roll onto my side, against her. I was surprised when her arm encircled me and drew me close, my back to her belly. I waited to hear her say, “Marie, you did well tonight. You showed courage,” but she was silent.

  I fell down the steep cliff of fatigue into a whirlpool of troubling dreams. In the midst of these dark visions, I found succor. My unconscious mind retrieved my infancy, the feel and taste of my mother’s breast. In my dream, I drew hard with my lips; fastening on, I relived the exchange of need for nourishment from so long ago, which occurred in some dim cavern before memory began. I awoke to find the corner of my pillowcase wet and twisted between my teeth; I had sucked out the starch.

  I turned and saw Mama’s sleeping face, cut like a marble Madonna—perfect but remote. Had she loved me so much once? Why was I always now the supplicant? Please, Mama, my dearest darling Mama. I was forever if silently entreating, Say I am a good daughter.