by Laura Rose
One guard who had led the procession turned back, and I saw his horse was wet to the belly. Spring, which I had so longed for, might be the greatest danger. The gushing thaw was worse than the hard ice.
The guards said that we must wait, that men from the town would assist the crossing. Even as we stood, more ice shattered and a glaze of water coated the surface, turning the surface slick and even more perilous to traverse. The river itself seemed animate, moaning and groaning, stretching from its long and uneasy winter sleep. I was thinking of childhood stories of water demons when a man appeared, hooded and masked.
He was walking on the ice with great care—I heard the guards shouting to him and the man, bundled in fur and pulling a sledge, announced himself as an ice fisherman and said he could guide our caravan across the rest of the river where the ice might be thickest.
Papa thanked him and Mama blessed him.
“For one hundred rubles,” he replied.
Commissar Yakovlev walked across the ice and handed the man the folded notes. “Let us proceed.”
The fisherman gave the soldiers two planks of wood from his sledge, and they set these planks down before the carriage wheels—this made a stronger support, and we tiptoed single-file across the boards. I worried, watching Mama cross ahead of me, and marveled that weak and crippled as she was, she maintained her balance. The fisherman took us on a crooked route he insisted was the safest. Bit by bit, we were able to come within several feet of the opposite shore.
Again, I was holding up Mama—I could feel Mama’s heart pound against me as we clung together. A guard was leading our empty carriage behind us and, sensing Mama was at the end of her reserves, I held up my hand.
“Stop!” I called out to him. “My mother must complete this crossing in the carriage or she will die on this ice.”
The wind blew my coat and the long skirts beneath it. I knew what I was saying was true. I felt Mama’s heartbeat—it was erratic. Yakovlev and Papa walked back toward us. Papa went direct to Mama and scooped her up into his arms—I admired Papa’s strength. Even though I knew he was a legend for his physical power, I had not seen him perform such a feat. Papa is built like an athlete, a fighter—though his legs are short, his upper body is heavily muscled and his arms long and strong.
“I will carry my wife the rest of the way,” Papa announced.
Everyone seemed shocked—even Mama. But no one objected to this and so we proceeded. I followed my parents.
When we were almost at the shore, I could see that matters were worse there—the last yards of ice had already broken, and it would be necessary to wade through the knee-high, half frozen grey water which exhibited the beginnings of its spring current. I placed a tentative foot in, and was almost swept down and away,
I watched as Papa, undaunted, strode through the rushing frigid water and clambered over the rocks at the shore.
My feet, soaked and then refrozen, struck the rock shore as if they were themselves stones.
Once across, we were directed to a house that stood only some yards away, to dry ourselves and take shelter from the gusting winds. This house, a glorified hut, beckoned through the grey mists with a dull yellow glow repeated in the squares of the six windows. I prayed it would be warm inside, as Mama’s body actually seemed to stiffen in Papa’s arms and her head hung back, a deathly grey pallor upon her cheeks. She did not complain; I saw her lips move in prayer. She recited the names of her own long-dead family—her mother, sister and brother.
Inside we found a peasant couple with their soup bowls before a roaring fire. The rest of our suite was already inside, their feet in buckets of water, to thaw. It was a comical sight but no one laughed. Already old Chemurodov’s toes were blackening, a sign of frostbite. If this process was not reversed, the toes would have to be chopped off.
Though I wished for a bucket of warm water, Vasily Yakovlev said, “Hot water will finish your feet—the cure is cold water.”
And so, over the next hours, we sat, all crammed together, before the poor peasant’s hearth, our feet defrosting like fish that had been stored.
My shoes, alas, the precious grey kidskin high-button boots were destroyed—they had to be cut from my feet, the leather useless anyway—wet and frozen, muddied and torn. My stockings peeled away like dead old skin—I remembered the stockings— silver silk, from Paris also, purchased for my Name Day Ball last spring. I was given a pair of man-sized fur-lined boots in exchange. They must have belonged to the peasant—the boots were many sizes too large but lined in caribou fur and over the next several hours, my numbed feet came back to life within them and I was never so glad to wiggle my toes.
Mama too was relieved—and also now wearing great bulky peasant boots. We sat, warming ourselves and my thoughts returned to the Governor’s Mansion in Tobolsk. What were my sisters and Alexei doing?
I imagined my sisters and brother, gathered round the crackling fire of the Governor’s Mansion parlor. Or had they already retired to the upstairs bedroom we shared?
I am only frightened when I am alone—the instant I see my sisters or my parents, I feel strong, able to confront what I must and prevail. It is like being in dark woods at night. Alone, the terror would be unbearable. In pairs, we can clutch and scream, and even dismiss our responses as comedic. Nothing will hurt us if we can be together. I longed for my sisters, for Shvybz especially, for Tatiana, for Olga, our family, together. That was all that mattered, wasn’t it?
We were allowed to sleep in the peasant’s house. The guards ordered the old babushka and her husband to make room. We were given a hot cabbage broth and warm black bread, fresh-baked. I think I have never tasted anything so wonderful. I thanked Christ again, for such comforts and the kinder eyes of this peasant couple, who, I think, might have been among the many in Siberia who still loved Papa, and gave him their unspoken allegiance.
We were given real beds—three all together in the main room beside the wonderfully hot porcelain stove with its leaping flame belly. The bedding was rough but clean. Two guards stood by the door. They needn’t have worried—we were too cold and weak to plot any escape. However, when the guards themselves seemed fall to sleep, half sliding down against the wall, Mama rose and motioned me not to speak. A finger to her lips—Silence! She moved to the window and reached into the bodice of her dress. She produced a small diamond cross.
Wherever we went, Mama scratched out her lucky symbol, the Hindu cross. Here, she used the diamond pendant to cut the insignia on the peasant’s window. As the dawn light filtered through, the etched glass sent rainbow-hued sparks. Luck? Or the sign from Christ?
Papa woke for a moment, and his eyes met mine. He said nothing but the look he gave me was profound.
Thank Christ, Our Father, we were given a respite at this second hut, but I had no idea for how long. I heard the officer say, “Prepare to stay awhile longer.” I believe the guards were as frozen and exhausted as their prisoners from the travails of the ice and rutted path.
This peasant home was only a stop en route to our eventual and as yet unnamed destination. Papa said, “Be grateful for this house; it is warm and clean. The food is excellent, my favorites,” and I was grateful though again I wondered at Papa’s enthusiasm and apparent lack of fear. No one would tell us where we might have to go next, or when. We were embarked on a journey, the most dreadful aspect of which was that even the guards did not appear to know where we were going. I overheard their complaints, their own fears. Mama prayed for Moscow; Papa yearned to go south to the tropical gardens and palace at Livadia, and I longed only for home, for my sisters and brother, our dogs, for Tsarskoe Selo, for my room in the Alexander Palace.
When I lay awake as all slept (and some snored) around me in this strange bivouac, I held my own cross and prayed. I prayed we could find the relative peace we had in the Governor’s House and that we could be together before Easter.
I concentrated my prayer that we would be together for Papa’s birthday in May. It was only
two weeks, yet even the sound of “May” chimed like a far-off bell, another season. His next birthday was the birthday Papa feared most—his fiftieth. I knew he was thinking his own father died at forty-nine. “The Day of Job,” as he always intones, in his most mournful voice.
If we could all be together again—I knew we would survive any harm, all evil. The spirit of seven is more than the sum of parts. Every night of the journey, in my heart, I kissed my sisters, my baby brother. I saw them all…amongst the icons. Their sweet faces drifted into my dream—I felt Shvybz nearing me. I kissed her thrice.
STOPPING BY RASPUTIN’S HOUSE AT POKROVSKOYE
We were bone-tired in the morning but were roused, as usual, before dawn and forced from the new warm beds. The horses rebelled; they too were exhausted, and it was decided to change them at the next village.
Mama and I slept in the tarantass, despite the discomfort. Exhaustion won over pain; it was a mercy. I had strange dreams that I was home in my own room but my bed was being carried by soldiers. I think the mind tries to explain all discomfort and this is a great trick!
It was no dream though when the tarantass halted so abruptly that I bolted awake. I was not quite conscious and I needed a moment to recall the upsets, the farewells with my sisters and Alexei, our departure from Tobolsk, the frights of the river crossing.
What was next in store?
***
The carriages stopped beside a carved wooden peasant’s house and Mama recognized the building before it was announced. “Grigory” she said in one breath, his name expressed as a sob. “That is the home of our friend Grigory.”
Mama was moaning—she whispered a prayer in my ear. I nodded. She prayed for Grigory’s soul, that he had found peace after death in the kingdom of heaven, that he had escaped the torments of our lives on earth. How strange, that we should stop here before the house of the man who so influenced our destiny.
I thought of “our friend” Grigory, who met his end under the half-frozen Neva. White-grey mists rose from the frozen snow and river ice. I could feel “our friend’s” spirit. It was the odd fate that we stopped here—at this exact and special place, to change the horses. “Our friend” Grigory lived here—Grigory Efimovitch raised his own family there in the plain wooden house, with its hand-carved shutters and green painted trim.
Grigory foretold that we would pass his home in Siberia, as he foretold so much that would befall us. Let us pray, that his other predictions—what horror they foretold—shall not also come to pass. I will not speak aloud the last of Grigory’s predictions, as I believe that the spoken threat comes true.
An even more mysterious event occurred as the exhausted horses were exchanged for fresh. Grigory’s family—his wife, widowed now, and two of his children appeared framed in the window —a family portrait of longing. They were ghosts as well. Could they recognize us from this distance? Their faces seemed to blanche before our eyes. Was this not another omen? That those who wished our salvation were, in fact, watching us—not only our captors but also those whose fates became entwined with our own?
Mama looked as if she might weep. Did his widow and children know of Grigory’s extended torturous murder? How was it that a man could be poisoned, stabbed, shot and still not die? I heard the guards whisper what Mama and Papa tried to shield us from knowing—that “our friend” Grigory was thrown into the river, still alive. He had been roped yet had freed his hand—some say he tried to make the sign of the cross as he died. The medical test proved he died slowly then, underwater—his wounds and the poison had failed to kill him. He had drowned. And the horrors done to his body were not ended. I shiver to remember what occurred later, at home, at the grave we prepared for him.
I stared at the pale faces of his children and hoped that they did not know that the grave we made for him at home was opened. The mob would not leave him to the rest our family secured for him at Tsarskoe Selo, under the trees. His body was unearthed, and pulled apart and burned. I shake each time I recall this. I lay awake that night, in my own bed, aware of the not so distant screaming, the wild cries of his enemies as they first dug him up and then pulled him apart. A reflected glow stained my ceiling, obscuring the beautiful painting there, of clouds and butterflies and angels. The flames, I learned later, devoured the flesh of the Holy Man.
The next morning, Mama and her dear friend Anya Vyrubova disobeyed father’s orders, and walked to the gravesite to view the desecration. Disobeying them, Shvybz and I tiptoed through the woods and watched but we soon became nauseated by the smell, not so awful if one did not comprehend it—the worst stink in the world if one knew it was the smell of cooked flesh and bone. These shudders which afflict me so began at that moment, and the fears, which I do not dare name, also seized me and worked my body in this near violent manner. I almost levitate, even now, reviewing these events.
What unnatural events continue in this unending mystery of Grigory’s life and death? I trust in blessings, not curses, yet I am not at peace, either, with the memory of “our friend.” Unbidden, my memories return, memories of nights at home, when Grigory was allowed into our bedchamber, allowed even to sit upon the edge of my bed. The outrage of the governesses! “No, not this man in here.” Already he was hated in many quarters, even inside the palace.
Mama trusted him with us. I shut my eyes, willed myself not to remember more but an odor, foul as a breath from an animal who fed on carrion. This scent memory filled my nostrils with disgust, and, involuntarily, I heaved and suffered a dry retch. Don’t remember, I commanded myself, and I obeyed. I know the memory will assault me later; it always returns…all the worse for being indistinct, as memories of a half-sleeping child must by their very nature be…Did he? No, don’t think. Of course not. Mama would not allow such a debased man into our beds. It must be a trick, another nightmare. Not real. He must have been as she said—a good man, a Holy man. His touch healed my brother. My half-hazy memory must be false. I touched the necklace at my throat, fingered the amulet that hangs down between my breasts: The enamel image inside is Grigory. I swore to wear this amulet for the rest of my life. My sisters wear identical amulets, Alexei also.
I was grateful for the fresh horses, for the wagons to move on, and we passed the ghost-like faces in that window. Rasputin’s family vanished behind us, in the frozen mist, and I willed myself not to think of such matters, but to look ahead, with whatever hope I could muster, toward our unknown destination.
THE TRAIN
Commissar Vasily Yakovlev, the envoy whom we found so inscrutable, approached us at the next stop, where we again exchanged horses. The horses were suffering from the cold, the pace. Unlike us, the horses were given a chance to recover.
Mama leaned forward from the carriage to address Commissar Yakovlev in her most Imperial tone. “Is this journey almost at an end?” she asked. “I think it only fair to know the plan.”
Was it her voice or her pallor that made the envoy respond?
“We will stop at Tyumen to board the train,” he answered after a long pause.
“The train to…?” Mama inquired.
Vasily Yakovlev did not answer.
Even with this uncertainty, when I heard we would make the next leg of our journey by train, my spirit lifted—without logic, I imagined our own Imperial train, our private cars, the way we used to travel.
I was eager for the train, if only for a compartment, a berth, but this comfort was delayed. We stopped for a final change of horses at the village of Borki, and the good Dr. Botkin, stepping out of the cart to take some fresh air, collapsed and screamed in pain. I was told it was kidneys and he was taken into the town, placed in a bed, for several hours, until he somewhat recovered. By the time we set forth again, it was night. A full moon had risen but so had our spirits. The guards attached bells to the horses’ harness and the resulting tinkles rang out, recalling our merrier rides as we flew along the snow toward Tyumen.
I heard the name of our next destination, almost as a song, �
��To Tyumen, to Tyumen, to Tyumen.”
The train would be an improvement, I thought. Yet as we flew through the blue-white snowscape, past the houses nestled under drifts, I envied the peasants who slept within their huts. I imagined lives more secure than our own, boys and girls waking in a few hours to a usual day of school and chores.
A few miles from the town, we stopped, and I saw a strange sight—a unit of soldiers on horseback trotting toward us. I would have been afraid, but Commissar Yakovlev greeted them, “Good, you have arrived in time.”
In time to do what? I wondered. In time to prevent what?
The mounted unit escorted us to the train depot, where “our” train awaited. This train of course was not so nice as what we are accustomed to—our personal chambers, sitting and dining rooms, bedroom suites. There was no fine parlor with carved dining chairs and table, no crystal chandelier, or our cozy velvet settees or the deep bed we shared. Of course, this train was not our Imperial train; it was a humble train, dirtied, not even so nice as the train that carried us to Tobolsk last August. That train had a truly fine dining car, and Papa had remarked at how “delicious” he found the Asian food. Aboard this train, we were given old black bread so stale Nyuta cracked a tooth on it! —and a lukewarm tea.
The great mystery was where we were going. The guards lowered the green window shades at every station. We traveled blind. Each time we stopped, the shades dropped and a shadow, filtered green, descended upon us. In this gloom, we awaited the next jolt of movement, an answer to the question, where were we going? What was to be done with us? They shifted our arrangements—Papa shared a compartment with Mama, and I occupied the next one, with Nyuta, who, poor girl, was suffering. Yet I was glad to sit in a compartment with Nyuta—we were warmer, and the simple act of sitting and looking out the window between stations recalled less fraught journeys. Still, why did they withhold our destination? Where were we going?