by Laura Rose
For me, the time was first spent nursing the others. Alexei, to our surprise and relief, rallied first. Despite the bleeding disease, he had a strong constitution. At first, Olga and Tatiana worsened—Olga’s head became infected and Tatiana became entirely deaf. Shvybz lay red and restless, but her spirit returned.
“Do not let them keep me in this bed!” she implored.
I tried to quiet her. There was no way that, dotted scarlet and still hot to the touch, my little sister would be allowed to leave her bed. In fact, as I became increasingly fatigued, I had the urge to lie down beside her and warm myself against her scalding body.
Anya remained the sickest and the most vocal of our patients, shrieking and crying, especially as her retinue decreased, reduced to only Lili, Mama, myself, Nyuta and the few underservants who had chosen to remain. We were told that the Provisional Government had recommended moving Anya. Anya Vyrubova was especially hated by “the people,” who were now a “voice” we must hear. To “the people,” Anya was the emissary of Rasputin. Mama refused, of course, to allow Anya to be removed from the palace, though she was the most problematic of our patients.
My primary duty remained Mama; I continued to assist her and Lili Dehn as we tended to burning invalids and burning books. It is amazing how the human being can adjust to anything; within a few days, I was accustomed to this new existence, even the sound of the boot steps in the hall and the ribald singing at night. I had almost forgotten any bed but the draped Imperial bed I shared with Mama, and I venture to say that it was those nights, brief as our sleep was, that brought us closer than we had ever been in the past. I believe it was the shared sleep, the return to the animal warmth of mother and child which accounted for Mama’s continued selection of me to assist her when later, there were other choices. During those nights, I inhaled her Verveine scent so constantly that she became, in every sense, the air I breathed.
I felt all her symptoms, her heart flutter in its palpitations, the tremors which seized her body in the dark of night, and I became adept at nursing the nurse. On the bedside table, we kept an assortment of powders to revive, and composing draughts to calm her. Verveine, Veronal and Violet became the main factors in our interior climate—the scented world of my mother’s bed. Of course, we both remained aware that my place in this bed should rightly be filled by Papa, and often, in her light sleep, Mama called out for him. And I, in my half sleep, would murmur, “He will come home to us soon.” But would Papa come home?
Was it only a week after the abdication? We had word that Papa was indeed returning to the palace although we would never believe this until we saw his dear face once more. In the interim, Mama decided it was time to tell Alexei of the abdication, as he was well enough to hear the news. On the predawn of the seventh day of the occupation of the palace, as we lay in her bed, Mama told me that Papa had surrendered. I could almost mistake her words in the darkness (our room was lit only by her votive candles) for another troubling dream.
“We must tell Baby that the empire is no more. Papa is abdiqué, and…” Mama could not even finish this sentence—and Alexei will never be tsar.
Yet, Mama could not find the right moment to relay the news that would shatter Baby’s future and officially strip him of his legacy.
“He must know before Papa returns,” Mama told me, when we walked to his room after breakfast. It was the twenty-first of March and Papa was expected within a day’s time. “Papa must not have this sad task.”
But at the door, Mama paused.
“I cannot,” she said. “I cannot tell Baby. Please tell him what has happened…”
I looked at her—my mother could not expect me to be the bearer of such news? At that moment, our French tutor, Pierre Gilliard, appeared to administer to Alexei. He carried one of his French texts under his arm. Pierre is one of our dearest tutors; he is younger than the others and so caring and kind. Slim and graceful in his hound’s-tooth European suit and even now nicely barbered (his moustache, unlike the rebels’, was trimmed and elegant) Pierre managed a semblance of his usual jaunty manner. I know he summoned this energy and smile for our sakes, and it was appreciated. We all adored him, Baby especially.
Still I was surprised when Mama took Pierre Gilliard by the elbow and implored him, “Please, I find I am unable to impart such news, or even to observe. I ask you to tell the tsarevich, tell him about the abomination, the abdication, before the tsar returns.”
“Bien sûr,” Pierre answered. I turned to escort Mama back to the Red Room but she waved me away and indicated I should go into Baby’s room and assist Pierre should Alexei take a bad turn upon hearing this news.
And so, I stood at bedside while Pierre attended to this unenviable duty. We found my brother, as usual, in bed with his toys, his kitten, Grushka, my cat, Silina, and his dog, Joy. Alexei’s knee was still propped high, but not as high as it had been—a sign the leg and vein were healing. His face was clear of the dreadful spots. I did notice one thing that was odd—only Nagorny stood guard over him. Where was Derevenko, the other sailor? The two sailors were like bookends—I had never seen only one in charge.
I asked Nagorny, who did not answer. Alexei looked up, his round, childish eyes lit at the pleasure of seeing Pierre.
Pierre said in his soft voice, “Your Papa will be returning tomorrow morning from headquarters, but he will never go there again. Much has changed with the military force; your Papa can never be in charge of the troops again.”
“Why not?” Alexei asked.
“Your father does not want to be commander-in-chief anymore.”
Alexei’s smile drooped. He liked to go headquarters, wear his own uniform, ride with his father and review the troops.
Why would this end?
“Your father does not want to be tsar anymore, Alexei Nikolaevich.”
“What! Why?”
“He is very tired and has a lot of troubles lately.”
“Oh yes, Mama told me they stopped his train when he wanted to come here. But won’t Papa be tsar again—afterwards?”
I then told him that the tsar had abdicated in favor of his own brother, Grand Duke Michael, who then also renounced the throne.
“But who is going to be tsar then?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps nobody now.”
Then he asked the precocious question: “But if there is no tsar, who’s going to govern Russia?”
Pierre stumbled through his answer regarding the Provisional Government and said, “Perhaps there will be an election later.” Alexei did not appear alarmed but the cloud of uncertainty filled his room, mingling with the incense. I felt relief at Baby’s response; never did my little brother wail or cry out over his great loss. He seemed at first incredulous and later, bemused. His perplexed expression gave way to radiance that filled his young face when we told him that at last, Papa was expected home.
“Tomorrow morning then!” he ended the conversation, without lament for his lost empire. I felt the same—I didn’t want the empire so much as I wanted the emperor to come home.
At this point, the other sailor, Derevenko, appeared. I could not smell liquor on him but he was weaving in a manner that suggested he was drunk. He lurched into the room in a most rude way. Nagorny, at his post, tensed; I could see a muscle in his jaw twitch.
Derevenko knocked a toy off Alexei’s bed—whether by intention or accident, I could not tell. I tensed, waiting for Derevenko to bend and pick up the small toy gun that was so precious to my brother.
Instead, Derevenko ordered Alexei: “You pick that up, boy! You can’t be knocking things down all the time and expecting us to clean up after you!”
I thought Nagorny might punch Derevenko for his new insolence. What was this? Derevenko had been devoted to Baby all his life. That devotion was apparently short-lived in the new regime. Derevenko was now a “New Son of Freedom,” which explained why he swung his ham fist onto my brother’s bed, scattering the cats, the dog and the toys. The animals, wisely, fled.<
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RETURN OF THE TSAR
Mama was like a schoolgirl. She was flushed and eager; she stood at the window, watching the courtyard. In a way, I was so sorry that she did, for Mama witnessed the spectacle of Papa’s humiliation.
Papa returned, driven in a motor car. At first, we assumed this meant he was being treated with respect. Then the guard called out in a loud voice, “Who goes there?”
Papa must have spoken his name and perhaps his title. We could not hear Papa’s reply, only the guard’s insistence that he say his “correct” name.
“Louder! Louder! I cannot hear you! I don’t know who you are. Who are you? I cannot admit you until I know who you are! Say your name, fellow!”
And so, we all heard poor Papa bellow, “Citizen Nicholas Romanov!”
I turned to Mama, expecting to see her in a near swoon. Instead, it was I who swayed, not only in shock. She stood tall.
“Marie,” Mama said. “You must go to bed at once.”
“Why?” I asked, as a wave of heat seemed to wash over me.
“Look in the mirror.”
I turned away from the window and gasped at my reflection in the gilded mirror on the damask wall—I was as scarlet as the silk wall hanging; even the whites of my eyes were red.
That image of myself with face and eyeballs the color of fire, was the last memory I have before I slumped into the delirium of the disease. The measles, which I had resisted for so long, had finally claimed me. I do not even remember being put on a guest bed, set up in Mama’s dressing room. I was the first Romanov girl in three generations to be allowed her own adult bed before marriage, but Dr. Botkin decreed I have a bed under these special circumstances.
Later, I learned from the good doctor, that as severe as the Big Pair’s illness had been, it was I who suffered the most drastic form of measles. Having resisted so long, when my body surrendered, my constitution collapsed and came near to eclipse.
The next memory I have is so sweet. I awoke looking into the gentle azure-blue gaze of my adored and adoring father. Forgetting his own woes, Papa had donned the male nurse’s white smock and knelt, praying and administering to each of us children.
“Masha,” he whispered, calling me by the most Russian form of my name. This was the custom between us—Papa prided himself on being a simple Russian man. He liked to be as plain as possible—a truth which his preferred diet, peasant gruel, game, borscht and black bread, and favored pastimes, chopping wood, hunting, plowing the earth, proved. I was much the same, my father’s daughter in all respects—my “Russian” appearance, the roundness of my full figure, the high color of my cheeks, and the deep joy I took in domestic arts, embroidery, painting, cutwork. Amongst my sisters, I was certainly “the Russian girl.” Tatiana could have been Parisienne in her reed-thin elegance; Olga (we dare not say this) is Germanic in appearance—the protuberant forehead, milky-blue eyes and stubborn set to her squared jaw, her phlegmatic moods. Anastasia? My Shvybz is without any identity but that of an elf! Her spirit is too light for earth; she came from faeries. When we play Peter Pan at the Wendy House on our Children’s Island, Shvybz is well cast as Tinkerbelle. Alexei, of course, was always Pan. Mama, we joked, was Mrs. Darling. For all her love of Russia, Mama dresses, sounds, and decorates like an Englishwoman.
Papa and I are Russians to the heart and bone.
As soon as I looked into his eyes, I felt Papa’s deep soul and his fatherly love and worry. Oh, what you have suffered, I wanted to say but he held his fingertip to his lips: Hush.
I descended into writhing fevers and I was aware of intermittent shaking fits and soaking sweats. A wretched cough seemed to draw my insides up to my throat and I ached inside and out. I have always been the strongest of the children, the healthiest, so “uneventful” that at our periodic physicals, Dr. Botkin usually tapped my breastbone with his stethoscope with a kind of Morse code for “on your way, young lady.”
Whenever I did waken, Papa was beside me, his hand on mine. As my fever broke, I was able to observe my father and I was shocked by the change in his appearance. Papa was gaunt; heavy bags doubled the folds of his skin below his beautiful eyes, ringing them with bruise-like lavender discoloration. His hair had grayed; even his moustache. I noted too that he too was imbibing the composing draughts prepared by Dr. Botkin and often sniffed from his pouch of cocaine powder, which was prescribed for deep fatigue. I wondered if he ever slept? Whenever I awoke, he was always there, in his nurse’s smock.
I learned later from Lili that Papa was always careful to let go of my hand only after I had descended into the deepest slumber. When I was well enough to speak, albeit weakly, I begged Lili to watch over Mama, for this had been my assignment.
“Oh, Marie,” Lili said, as she sat with me one afternoon, as a brighter sun slanted through the window of the Pallisander Room, to whence I had been moved to continue my convalescence.
The Pallisander was my favorite room—it had been Mama and Papa’s sitting room before the children were born. The room was sweet and simple, furnished as was the rest of the family apartment, in my mother’s favored English chintzes and silks. The room was convenient for my parents as it nestled in the womb-like warren of the interconnected bedrooms, dressing rooms, toilets, baths and intimate receiving salons that made up our true “home.” The rest of the Alexander Palace existed for official receptions; always more like a museum, and now as a stage set for this “bloodless” revolution.
Papa asked what I wished for when I was well. I craved cherries from the Crimea, and alas, he had to say, “No more.” Even all the blood oranges, which Mama had kept by the crate, were now used up, hand-squeezed into the stream of scarlet juice that she had poured down our throats to combat the disease lodged within us. Now, I believe her ministrations, and of course, Dr. Botkin’s attentions, had helped us, for later, I heard that many people died during that measles outbreak of l917.
We were grateful to have survived. To an extent, our existence resumed a semblance of our former lives, with the distinct difference that we were not free to leave the palace park. Our imprisonment was overseen by the Provisional Government, and in due course, on the eleventh of April, the leader, Alexander Kerensky, at last appeared at the palace, an occasion which unnerved us all.
I was lying in the dark, recovering but dozing when I felt a sudden draft. The door swung open and a dark figure rushed into the room. I quivered under my covers—had my phantom at last come to claim me? I almost hid myself under the duvet, when a familiar voice whispered, “Ssssh. Give no sign. It’s me, Lili. I must hide here. Kerensky is in the palace. I have just seen him.”
And then she related the tale—Lili Dehn had gone to see Anya, on a mission which concerned me. Anya was determined to visit me—one invalid to another, I suppose, and Mama was desperate to forbid it. She realized that Anya’s continued presence was a danger to us all, yet she would not part with her. To “the people,” Anya was the licentious mistress of “Rasputin” (she was many things, poor Cow, but she was no one’s mistress—a fact that was finally proven in a humiliating medical exam which proved her to be a virgin, despite her annulled marriage and all the accusations of orgiastic demonic activity).
Mama had told me herself, “Anya is annoying; she is misunderstood and maligned, but to me she is a child and a loyal friend. I will keep her with me, but I don’t wish to draw more attention to her. She must stay in her quarters.” As ill luck would have it, the very day Kerensky chose for his surprise visit was the day Anya planned to have herself carried to my room. Lili, good soul, had gone to see her, to dissuade her, when there was a sudden knock on the door. A skorohod, who is the most confidential messenger in royal service, entered, still wearing his Imperial costume—distinctive yellow and black livery, topped off by a wonderful hat of black and yellow ostrich feathers, and handed Lili a note, scribbled in pencil by my mother. Mama had written in French, “Kerensky passe par toutes nos chambers, pas avoir peur. Dieu est la. Je vous embrasse tous les deu
x.” Kerensky is passing through all our rooms. Do not be afraid. God is present. I kiss you both.
Kerensky did appear—he burst into Anya’s room. Lili, and later my mother and father, described him the same way—as slight, almost aggressive in his ordinariness, with a tuberous nose. He wore the blue jacket of an ordinary workman. Though, it must be noted, and my father certainly commented on it, that Kerensky arrived in one of the Imperial motorcars, with a former Imperial driver at the wheel.
Just as Lili told me this, the man himself materialized in my room. Lili froze by my bedside. Kerensky was as they had described him—he would be hard to remember if he was not now all-important. He took no notice of me, but called out for my mother, “Alexandra Feodorovna!” He was so rude as to shout her name again and again. He went off down the corridor, screaming her name as he had no right to address her.
A few minutes later, Mama appeared—as she would at the most challenged moments, she had regained mysterious use of her legs. She walked, flanked by Olga and Tatiana, now both weak but ambulatory. Only I could detect the tremble in her knees.
Lili knew at once something awful had occurred. “What has happened?”
“Kerensky is with the tsar,” Mama said. “He insisted that I leave them alone together in the schoolroom. Kerensky shall most probably arrest me.”
At that, Lili fled from my room, intent on seeing my father as soon as Kerensky had finished with him. She found my father alone in the schoolroom, and together they returned to my room.
Papa carried mixed messages. No, they would not arrest Mama—at least not now. But they had gone to arrest Anya. At that, Mama rang the bell for Dr. Botkin.
“Dr. Botkin must tell Kerensky that Anya cannot be moved! She is far too ill.”
There followed one of the ghastliest scenes of our captivity—Dr. Botkin did examine Anya and report to Kerensky that she was too ill to travel but then, to our shock, the good doctor said the woman, who by then was weeping in a hysteria which surpassed her usual state, was fit to travel. At that, Anya was dragged from her bed to be taken to prison. Kerensky’s command was final. There would be no reprieve.