by Laura Rose
Anya was gathering her clothes and possessions.
Mama turned on Dr. Botkin in a fury. Her eyes were blue fire again; she was at her fiercest. “How could you declare her fit?” she confronted him. “How could you betray us? You have children!”
She held this grievance against Dr. Botkin for a long time; it was only during our recent troubles in Ekaterinburg that she seemed to soften, counting all his many noble deeds against this single failure. My parents and I now think perhaps Dr. Botkin sought to protect Anya, that he foresaw more clearly than we did that members of the suite would be separated from us later and that in Anya’s case, it would be best for her to remain in Petrograd, even in prison, rather than be shipped out to the more Bolshevik districts where she might have been killed on sight. Now that so much has happened, I wonder if Dr. Botkin gave his prognosis with the intention of initiating a separation. He knew all too well that Anya drew the people’s rage toward us.
Then my father and mother had to turn their attentions to their own situation and to that of the family and suite. When Mama had calmed, she and Papa related the strange details of their interview with Kerensky in the schoolroom.
“He presented himself,” Papa said. “His first words were, ‘I am Kerensky. You probably know my name.’”
“We were silent,” Mama said.
“But you must have heard of me?” Kerensky had persisted.
“We did not answer,” Papa said.
“Well,” said Kerensky then, “I’m sure I don’t know why we are standing. Let’s sit down—it’s far more comfortable!” He seated himself at the children’s worktable.
“And then we did also,” Mama related, “but I still refused to speak, so he said, ‘I will be alone with the former emperor.’”
At this point in my parents’ account, the Skorohod messenger reappeared—with better news. Kerensky had left the palace for the Town Hall. The new Commandant Korivchenko was then presented to Mama. Korivchenko was one of our own, a former nobleman, and immediately granted permission for Mama to say a swift farewell to Anya.
The moment Mama left, we all ran to a chamber known as “Orchie’s room” next door. Orchie’s room is the oddest in the palace. The bedroom belonged to Mama’s old Governess, Miss Orchard, “Orchie,” who had been so dear to Mama. Mama had kept her there until the woman died of old age in the palace. Her room had been left undisturbed since her death. We ran to Orchie’s room by instinct because it was the only room which afforded a clear view of the entrance to Anya’s apartments. But we saw nothing.
Mama reappeared, tears in her tired eyes, and she took Lili’s hand. “At least God will allow you to remain.”
But we were again interrupted—first by Count Benckendorff who said there had been a delay of some sort in removing Anya, then, a moment later by Korivchenko who demanded Lili Dehn.
Oh no, I thought, not Lili. I could part with Anya, though I would never have decreed such a fate for her—but my Lili to prison?
No! I wanted to cry. But there was no use. Lili too was arrested and told that she also would be going to Petrograd to the prison.
Mama hastened to call a maid to pack a suitcase for Lili. Mama gave Lili a special medal, and hung it around her neck. Tatiana, weeping, gave Lili two miniature portraits of Mama and Papa to take with her into prison, that “they shall console you.”
Tatiana then burst into a torrent of tears, at which point, Lili, who had held hers in restraint, also broke down and sobbed. It was the only time I ever saw Lili Dehn lose control, and it shook me. I half collapsed and went back to my bed, falling at once into a delirium, in which it seemed Lili Dehn returned to bestow her final goodbye kiss.
Later, Mama told me that was not a dream—Lili had made her final rounds, kissing all of her charges one by one, and whispering, “I shall never forsake you.”
Olga and Tatiana accompanied Mama and Lili Dehn as far as they were allowed, down the Great Staircase. They all gave in to the grief of parting and unabashedly clung to one another. How I wish I could have been well enough to be amongst them, to add my cries. That was perhaps the moment when the others sensed what was in store, but I missed it and Anastasia, my Shvybz, missed it too and so we would have to learn these harsh lessons later.
Olga knew then; she never smiled afterward. It was Olga, the eldest, who came to my bedside and repeated Mama’s final words to Lili:
“Lili, by suffering we are purified for Heaven. This goodbye matters little; we shall meet in another world.”
SHAVED HEADS
As it was, we had enough troubles in this world. I finally recovered enough to return to my true bed and rejoin my darling Shvybz, who was further along in her recovery. My legs still wobbled and my skin was scaling off in sheets. All of us had this symptom—it was as if the surface of us had died. We shed, Papa said, rather ungallantly, like baby snakes that have outgrown a skin. Worst of all, our scalps were mangy, like the hide of sick dogs, and our hair began to fall out in clumps. I looked upon my pillow and my hairbrush in horror. I had been proud of my honey hair, the masses and masses of it that I had always let loose, to hang to my waist (another Russian trait). “You could be a beautiful peasant,” Papa had always teased.
Mama, now always dressed in her white Sister of Mercy nursing headdress and Red Cross pinafore, examined us each morning with a frown which also became permanent; wrinkles etched between her brows, and on each side of her mouth. One morning, some weeks after the dreadful disease had officially been cured, Mama lined us all up in the Big Pair’s room.
“Your heads must be shaved,” she announced.
Alexei, in a wheeling chair, as was Mama that morning, was the only one to cry out. “Not me too?”
His hair was the most like mine—thick and flecked with gold. The other three had fine, slightly frizzy hair, like Mama’s.
Mama gave him her infamous squint that meant no argument.
“Everyone’s head must be shaved,” she repeated.
She and Nyuta lined up the wash basins, and one by one, we sat in a throne-like chair in Papa’s great bathroom, while Nyuta worked Papa’s straight-edged razor blade over our scalps.
We underwent the head shaving in birth order. First, Olga’s golden hair fell to the floor, light as dandelion fluff. Her head, always described as large and round, appeared even more so without the familiar blonde tresses. She looked like a great angry baby. We did not dare laugh, however, for Olga fixed us in her blue glare.
“It is not important. It will grow back.”
Tatiana took the seat next, a prayer book on her lap. She never looked up as Nyuta first cut her waist-long chestnut hair, and then ran the razor over her delicately shaped head. Tatiana might have resented the loss of her hair more than Olga, Shvybz or I did, as her beauty surpassed ours.
“I don’t mind,” was all she said when Nyuta held up a hand mirror.
In fact, Tatiana was still the stunning beauty—her azure eyes were, if anything, even more noticeable and the slant of her high cheekbones appeared even more pronounced; she could have been Nefertiti, a goddess of an ancient empire who forsook hair centuries ago.
I was next to be shorn, my scalp shaved. And I confess, I was also the weakest and resisted. My hair was my vanity. It had hung long and heavy down my back for so many years, I was accustomed to the compliments and stares. When I felt the shears and then the razor, I shut my eyes. After, when I opened my eyes and saw all of my hair lying in clumps on the floor like small dead animals, I cried so loudly Papa came running in to see if I was hurt. When he saw the situation, he said, “You are still so beautiful. Look at your well-made skull.”
And he did make me feel better. Olga, Tatiana and I were still pretty.
Shvybz, I will admit, did not fare well as a bald girl. Her curling hair had covered a multitude of irregularities—the bumps in her skull, the asymmetry of her face, the too-close eyebrows and small eyes. To me, she will always be a beauty but I can see how others might call her plain
or impish at best. It is her smile which illuminates her; lights flash in her eyes as she laughs—her diamonds, we call them. When Shvybz looked into the mirror, she burst out laughing, and said: “What an ugly boy I am! Let me be Peter Pan next time!”
“Or Hook!” countered Alexei, who loved playing Pan and was not about to give up the role. “With that bump on your nose, you could be Captain Crooked Beak!”
Shvybz just laughed.
“See how you look!” she said and stood by in expectant glee as Nyuta ever so carefully shaved my brother’s head, with Mama bending close to watch every flick of the razor. One cut could kill Alexei. We all held our breath. Nyuta, poor girl, developed the shakes—her hand went into a spasm before she could even touch Baby’s head.
“I can’t,” the big girl cried, setting down the razor and strap.
“Summon the doctor!” Mama ordered. Nyuta was only too happy to run from the room. We laughed but the truth was we all feared that razor on Baby’s head. We had never forgotten the worst of his episodes—the near fatal attack at the hunting lodge at Spala, then the hemorrhage at home in the Alexander Palace. The damage from that attack had still not subsided enough for him to walk long distances. He was just now walking about the palace, as far as we were allowed—inside our apartments and out to a small section of the grounds.
After that we clowned, and Pierre took a photo of us, doffing our caps. The picture revealed the five of us, bald as eggs. When we showed this picture to Mama, she screamed and required Veronal.
“You look like corpses,” she said as she emerged from her swoon.
Now, when I look back on our five months of captivity at home in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, I am nostalgic for that relatively benign imprisonment. But at that time, we certainly felt the restriction of our freedoms. At first, Mama was separated from Papa, except for meals and prayer, and we were allowed only a few walks in the immediate garden outside our wing of the palace.
Quite quickly, these rules were relaxed and Mama and Papa were permitted to resume their most longed for state of togetherness. Gradually, our radius of freedom of movement increased. At first, we could walk only a few paces in the snow-crusted garden. Later, our guards said that we could be useful breaking up the ice on the canals that crisscrossed the palace park and led to and from our private lake. Papa and I especially enjoyed this task. We used long metal poles to break the ice and allow the water to flow again. As we sat on the small verdigris bridge that arched over the main canal, Papa and I poked at the ice and exchanged a look whenever the current was released. I think we shared the thought that someday we might be freed, also. The activity helped us tolerate the long days and snowy nights. I felt the blood rush to my cheeks and my circulation pumped optimism into my spirit. Papa looked so sad though and sometimes, rabble-rousers gawked at us from the other side of the palace park fence and shouted insults to “Nicholas the Bloody!”
We persisted and obtained more freedoms. We did not know then what the future would bring although Kerensky told us that we would eventually be moved to another location, but that we would be allowed to remain at Tsarskoe Selo, for “the time being.”
“The time being” stretched from winter into spring and into the summer of 1917. We knew pain but we also had small pleasures. There were occasional humiliations. One afternoon, when Papa was enjoying a ride on his bicycle, a soldier poked a bayonet tip between the spokes, tipping the bicycle and Papa into a ditch. Papa was reddened with fury and gave the man a scolding. Papa was generally appalled by the look and laziness of the new “Sons of Freedom.” One morning, he instructed us to look out our window at the guard below—the man was asleep, his rifle lay across his lap! Other events were more outrageous. One morning, soldiers shot a swan; they routinely hunted our tame palace park deer. No one ever knew what happened to our pet elephant. We were living in a new world, yet on our old premises.
Gradually, our routines became more relaxed. At the end of May, the new Revolutionary Commandant Kobylinsky, who replaced Korivchenko, was assigned to Tsarskoe Selo, and was in sympathy with our situation and tried to repair the damage that had occurred. When the soldiers confiscated Alexei’s toy gun, Kobylinsky was able to retrieve it and personally brought the pieces back and laid them on my brother’s bed.
Kobylinsky gave us more and more freedoms in the park. We assumed a family routine. We children continued our studies. Our regular teachers, Pierre Gilliard, Catherine Schneider and Nastintka Hendrikova remained to tutor us; Mama also taught lessons. Papa asked to perform more physical chores around the palace park.
We progressed from breaking ice to plowing the earth. Papa dreamed of a kitchen garden. We dug and wheeled fresh earth to our chosen plots. Then Papa planted his favorite beets and cabbage. I could see the gardening helped him a great deal; he seemed to forget our woes as he dug and planted. Several guards became fond of Papa and expressed admiration.
“You are the hardest worker in the country!” one soldier complimented him. “You would have been tsar no matter who you were born. I have never seen a man work so hard for so long.” Papa would work until the sun set and would stop only when we were ordered back inside the palace. We all helped and enjoyed the outdoor air and exercise—we wished we had done this every year: Tatiana, Shvybz and I pushed wheelbarrows of soil; Alexei and Papa and Pierre plowed. Olga already had become somewhat withdrawn and she often stood or sat in silence on the sidelines with Mama. Mama herself, though in her wheelchair, was also industrious—she crocheted, knit and embroidered at a rapid clip. Her hands were never still. She sat in the sun and sewed as we plowed, sowed and weeded. Papa reveled in this outdoor project. One afternoon, when he paused for a cigarette, he told me that our current existence offered one benefit. “I am allowed so much free time with my family. It is sweet for me.”
Papa planted five hundred cabbage, rows and rows of root vegetables. We looked ahead to our harvest. In the same spirit, he sawed so much wood we had no fears of being cold the next winter. I actually looked forward to our cozy evenings in the Mauve Room, with the fireplace and stove hot and crackling. The water could be heated again for Papa’s swimming pool, which had yet to be revived—the soldiers had refused to restore the pulley system that transported the five hundred pails of heated water that were needed to fill that great bath.
As we entered the summer season, we begged to use our lake, as we were accustomed to swimming. Alexei especially loved the water and from the first hot day, he dreamed aloud of diving in the cool water and swimming out to the Children’s Island. Swimming was a special treat and even a treatment for Alexei, whom we teased as being “amphibian.”
We were all so happy and relieved when the guards permitted him to dive into the lake. We girls were allowed to play in our “Wendy House” and were permitted to use our dinghy to row to and from the Children’s Island. Alexei swam with his dog, Joy, paddling alongside, his freckled brown and white snout above the water.
“Lucky Joy,” Alexei remarked one languid July afternoon, when we sat picnicking and berrying beside the lake. The dog was diving into the water in ecstasy and bringing sticks back to Alexei. “Joy doesn’t know we are prisoners,” Baby remarked. “Joy thinks he is still a free dog.”
“An Imperial dog!” Shvybz joked, catching his tone. “He doesn’t know he is “an ex-dog.”
I laughed at that and so did Papa, for by then he was relaxed enough to joke too. He often said, “Well, I am ex-tsar, a former tsar. We are all exes here.”
We began to nourish hopes. So many privileges and possessions had gradually made their way back to us that we let ourselves believe that our former lives could return in some semblance. The most significant good news came with the quick release of Lili Dehn from the prison in Petrograd. In June, it was announced that she had been found not to have any incriminating evidence and was set free to return to her little son and home in Petrograd. Lili was not permitted to visit but her letters reached us and we all looked forward to a re
union, as soon as possible. Despite her sufferings, Lili vowed to rejoin our suite. Anya Vyrubova remained in prison but we heard that she was trying to establish her innocence. As Lili Dehn had been released, we began to believe that Anya would also be freed.
As the summer heat shimmered over Tsarskoe Selo, we actually began to relax. We were not beatific as we had been in previous summers but we savored what pleasures we were permitted. By then, we were all experiencing what we called “snapshots”—flashes of memory of our old life.
One afternoon in August, I sat on a fallen log alongside Papa and we half dozed, the sun warm on our faces. He offered me a puff of his cigarette and when I inhaled, I was transported into a sunstruck dream memory of a similar afternoon on a Finnish island in the Skerries.
Was it only the summer before that we sailed across the Baltic Sea? It seems centuries ago we disembarked from the Imperial yacht and Papa and my sisters and brother had picnicked on one of most enchanted of the islands. We rested our backs against the haystacks. The field had just been harvested. I remembered the sensations—the scent of fresh grass and hay, the rich taste of Papa’s tobacco and the pleasure of exhaling smoke rings, just the way he did. We dreamed and dozed, then reboarded the Imperial yacht, the Standardt, for a shipboard dinner and dance with the handsome officers. My sisters and I wore gauzy white dresses and the officers wore white uniforms. The northern lights played across the heavens. As I sat smoking with Papa on that fallen tree trunk in Tsarskoe Selo, I imagined myself on the last cruise to the Finnish islands. I fell deeper into that dreamscape. In our filmy dresses, dancing under the heavens, my sisters and I joined the swirling incandescence above.
A guard approached us as if to signal the abrupt end of my reverie.
“The commandant has an announcement,” the guard said.
Papa and I stared up at him. The guard was a black silhouette against the noonday sun.