The Passion of Marie Romanov

by Laura Rose

  It was funny the meals we “resurrected” in this manner—Olga, like Papa, longed for the “simple” food of the true Russian.

  “Now you have it,” I could not help telling her, hoping to make her laugh as in the “old” times.

  She gave me that blank blue stare that she retreats to, most days since she arrived here.

  What happened to her? What did they do to her on the Rus?

  I said that to ease matters. “I meant only that it doesn’t get simpler than this—or more authentic! The hard-black bread, the tea, simple beet soup? The wonderful old potato dumplings? Red cabbage and pomegranate slaw?”

  Nothing worked, and without a word, she rolled to her side, faced to the wall. My eyes met Tatiana’s. Surely Tatiana knew more? Perhaps she even saw or suffered the same? There could be no secrets between the Big Pair. No matter how horrible—I know they served as nurses together when Mama ran the hospital. Tatiana sometimes mentioned the worst of the wounds Olga treated. We all believed Olga loved one soldier; he had lost his right leg. Surely Tatiana knew?

  But Tatiana shook her head, and held that finger to her lips. She was sworn to secrecy, I was certain of it.

  “Do you know what I wish for?” she said, resuming our game.

  Shvybz was such a child—she always missed the unspoken messages—they went over her head—like balls we tossed at tennis.

  “What? What, Tatiana? What do you miss most?”

  Her answer did not surprise me—the fruits from Crimea. The sweet wild loganberries, the small bright oranges.

  Then we were lost in our summer memories and we chased the chill from our room taking turns summoning special summer memories.

  For me, the best were the islands we sailed to every August… If I closed my eyes, I could transport myself on board the Standardt and even catch the salt scent…We could swim to shore and sunbathe—pick the berries, lie back and doze against a haystack. We played a secret game of spying—as the men swam nude off the boat. Shvybz even carried a spyglass and we had quite an eyeful!

  “You didn’t see that!” I cried, grabbing the spyglass from her.

  We both laughed, as it was obvious; I kept looking.

  ANASTASIA’S BIRTHDAY

  My baby sister, my adorable Shvybz Anastasia, turned seventeen! Our constellations of birthdays kept us spinning. We all could not help recalling the great fetes at Tsarskoe Selo. Yet, we had the most intense celebrations here, at the Ipatiev house.

  For her birthday, I brushed Shvybz’s hair—it was growing fast, faster than my own, and, for the first time, I pinned it back, in a grown woman’s style. I gave her my own jeweled pins and a charming necklace I had saved. She was very gay, and Kharitonov proudly displayed the most beautiful meringue as her cake! This was a triumph as eggs had been scarce.

  We all sang and recited poems.

  Alexei was sad, joining Olga in her brown study, so to speak. I knew he was finding the confinement hard—he still could not walk well, and was carried out to the garden. But the garden was becoming our walled paradise—Papa found the old plantings, cleared away the weeds and debris. Flowers were blooming, and our favorites, the lilacs, had begun to bud—and offer their intoxicating scent. The dogs ran and barked, and acted like puppies.

  We were allowed only an hour, two times a day – but we made the most of the time. Papa couldn’t bear to be idle, so he cleaned with great diligence, and set every stone back in the small decorative arrangements; he collected all trash…and requested it be burned, rather than be allowed to lie and rot on the ground. Peter helped as much as he dared in this regard.

  THE ESCAPE PLAN

  This little walled patch of earth was reclaimed. Even Mama came outside, in the wheeling chair to sit and sew, and inhale the perfumed breezes. If we could have remained outside longer, our confinement here would have been so much easier. One hour in the morning, and another in the afternoon—daylight and air, rationed.

  Papa worried about the shed. He saw the guards go in and out, then re-padlock. All our goods were inside, the best chests.

  “They are being rifled again,” he said. “I know it.”

  In fact, there were too many unexplained entrances and exits that we observed—what were they doing inside, if not stealing?

  We were reduced in our allowance, and Papa told me that we had only six hundred rubles a month now, for all our provisions, for everyone in the suite. We rationed our own sugar, then.

  We received more messages. June twentieth, note from the officer—was he “my” officer?

  Friends are no longer sleeping and now that the hour so long is almost here, Samara, Chelyabinsk, and all of eastern and western Siberia are in the hands of the Provisional Government. The army of the Slavic friends is eighty kilometers (50 miles) from Ekaterinburg. The soldiers of the Red Army cannot effectively resist. Be attentive to any movement from the outside; wait and hope.

  But at the same time, I beg you, be careful, because the Bolsheviks, before being vanquished, represent real and serious danger for you. Be ready at every hour, day and night. Make a drawing of your three bedrooms showing the position of the furniture, the beds. Write the hour that you will all go to bed. One of you must not sleep between 2:00 and 3:00 on all the following nights. Answer with a few words, but, please give us all the useful information for your friends from outside. You must give your answer in writing to the same soldier who transmits this note to you, but do not say a single word.

  From someone who is ready to die for you,

  Officer of the Russian Army

  ***

  Nuns appeared, with baskets, and almost always under the produce or eggs—once baked into the bread—were more notes from the unknown man who signed himself “an officer” or “your friend.”

  The second note raised our expectation. Oh, if only we could figure out a way to hoist Mama and Alexei from the bedroom window, perhaps it would be possible to do as he instructed.

  Meanwhile, I was perplexed. Was he a stranger, hiding in one of the houses or even living amongst their police, the Cheka, at the America Hotel? Or was “the officer” a code name Peter was using in order that he might correspond with my family in anonymity?

  I felt his goodwill, but Mama said, “Trust no one here.”

  We had come to know these men of the Cheka. Papa said they were to be feared, and I would testify—they had dead eyes. The eyes of killers.

  There were three men here, all of the Cheka. I especially loathe and fear Ermakov. He is the tall, wild man. I conceded he was handsome, if one looked at him from a distance and missed his eyes. He always looked like a buccaneer—hair and coat flying, high boots. He stomped into the house. The walls shook, and glasses broke. He was known to have beheaded a man. He served time in prison, a fact that today made him a hero in certain quarters. He was tall, a foot taller than poor Papa who shrank in Ermakov’s presence.

  Beloborodov, I knew from the train station—the “master” who claimed his “baggage.” Beelzebub, he would always be to me. His eyes were dirty ice, without color other than grime. And the dead eyes popped forward. Oh, he reminded me of a hideous fish. He even had cold, scaled hands—he touched mine at the station and I cringed. He had a family, here in Ekaterinburg—how sad for them.

  And then there was the rodent-like man, Philip Goloshchokin. In a way Goloshchokin was the worst, for he feigned some interest in us “children.” Goloshchokin looked like the rodent he was—bony face, lipless, pointed incisors, and long, sniffing nose. He made scurrying motions, and had a habit of templing his dirty fingernails together, in a sacrilegious mockery of a prayerful gesture. Ugh. I felt he lusted after us, especially for Tatiana and me. Goloshchokin’s slit eyes darted to study our bosoms, waists. I would die before I felt his filthy hands upon me. He too had a wife and many children. Pity them.

  Olga stared at this Goloshchokin with such hatred—she was seeing someone else, something beyond him. She still refused to speak of the night in her stateroom on board t
he Rus. Tatiana confided a bit to me, one night when everyone else was asleep.

  Once the steamer began to move through the thawing waters of the Irtysh River, parting slush with its prow, anarchy ruled below deck in the staterooms. The soldiers locked our men, Nagorny, Gibbes, Gilliard and the little boy, Leonid Sednev, in two cabins. The Bolshevik soldiers, drunk before the boat even left the dock, nailed the men’s compartments shut, so that our protectors could not prevent what happened. Meanwhile, the same foul soldiers left the girls’ door ajar. The worst of the sailors and the soldiers went into the cabin that Tatiana, Olga and Anastasia shared. Tatiana says she defended herself, but they locked her and Anastasia in the loo.

  For hours, until dawn, Olga was alone with them. Tatiana agrees—Olga made no sense when she discussed the voyage. It was as if she was fixed on the image she would repeat. “They had flowering plants on the dining tables…Imagine—as if they knew decency and manners. How does such a thing happen on board a ship that serves the meals nicely and with flowers?”

  She wouldn’t confess what occurred, but she could not stop talking about those potted flower centerpieces and the fact that the steamer galley maintained its menu of stroganoffs and stews, even chocolate, served hot.

  “Trust no one,” Mama repeated.

  Papa agreed. He had his own personal dislikes amongst the staff here at the Ipatiev house. We all tolerated Aveydev, but Aveydev’s assistant, Moshkin, was evil. We were fooled. Papa said at first, “This one Moshkin has the face of an artist; he is fine and kind.”

  Moshkin had emerged as Papa’s main tormentor—Papa suspected him too of burgling our trunks. We could no longer watch the barn, where they were stored. We knew our valuables must be stolen. Mama hated Moshkin—for another reason. As soon as Aveydev departed for his own home (the commandant has never slept here), Moshkin’s night games began. He smuggled in girls of ill repute. We heard sounds from the commandant’s room, which he took over for these sessions. I had heard a liquid sound, the slosh, slosh that must signal sexual activity. I tried not to imagine the scene that accompanied such noises.

  More dangerous was Moshkin’s interest in us. It was he who instigated the perverse parlor games at night. He forced Olga, already white and grim, to pound away on the Ipatiev piano—only revolutionary songs of course. She does so, stiff as a puppet. She is making an effort to appear unattractive—let us hope it is effective. I am too vain, I confess, to disguise myself as she does, but I concede she is probably wise, from experience. She has developed an odd walk, slumping her shoulders to minimize her breasts, and walking almost sideways, her face to the wall, as she moves down the corridor. She leaves her blonde hair unwashed. Mama would ordinarily insist on washing her hair, and applying comb and brush, but she seems to respect Olga’s lapse in grooming, understanding its intention. Olga never meets the eyes of any of the men; she speaks only with Papa and Alexei.

  I still trust some of the boys.

  They have changed the guard a few times…they take the young men as volunteers from the nearby factories. I hear the pay is good. At first the boys all appeared alike—skinny boys, my age, in mismatched greatcoats. A parade of Anatolys, Mikhails, Ivans, Konstantins and the one who stood out immediately—Peter. I almost wrote “my” Peter.

  Peter was too shy to speak to me, but one of the Ivans immediately declared his own love for me! And so, I have come to know them—two sets of brothers, the one Austrian—that white-haired, blue ice-eyed Rudolph Lacher with his frightening handsomeness and a group of Letts, men and boys from the Latvian countries. All these guards were grateful I suspect not to be fighting the Czechs and our own loyal Whites, who do battle only twenty kilometers from here. The boys have an aspect of being favored for an easier duty—essentially, they have no work. They only watch, and eat peanuts and smoke.

  It was inevitable, that some of these boys have become as restless and bored as we are—and so have befriended us. The good Christian souls amongst them have been sympathetic, in their silence—they have attended the services since Easter Sunday. These boys—at least three of the youngest men are good Russians, caught, as we were, in this bloodied chaos of a war not their doing.

  But the other men, the older guards, are the real Bolsheviks, and they see this as an opportunity to torment us. They are the rough ones, who painted drawings of genitalia and scrawl crude sayings in the lavatory, ogle or mock us, each time we must pass a sentry. Of these, several of these soldiers have the dead eyes, and I have marked them too—as men without conscience, who could kill. I look in those dead eyes only once. To return a stare is to invite more trouble.

  Yet, amongst all these men, there must be those who scheme to save us. But who are they, our secret saviors?

  Whoever is writing the notes to plan our escape, says that he can see us. Is he across the street then?

  “The friends are watching,” he wrote.

  “Trust no one,” Mama said. “It could be a trick.”

  Papa was open to the escape plan. Much more than Mama, he needed to break free.

  This is a secret I should not repeat—Papa has made a map of our rooms, indicating exactly where everyone sleeps. This is to be smuggled to “our friend,” who will use the knowledge to plan our breakout. Papa needs to escape. I know that.

  This confinement could kill him. He needs to be active. Thank goodness, they have allowed him to collect the dead branches in the garden, although so far, no double saw is permitted for cutting firewood as at Tobolsk. If he could cut wood, it would absorb what he calls his “terrible energies.”

  It is fortunate they allowed Trupp to stay on as valet. Trupp has been excellent in collecting the water, and overseeing the boiling buckets at the bathhouse. Papa is having four, sometimes five baths a day to calm himself. The Bolshevik complain of this—what they call his “waste” of the hot water.

  I admit I would relish this pleasure also but Mama was so upset at the idea that we would undress to bathe that we do not even tell her of our quick towel washes. She gives herself the sponge baths, and we help her, also, to stay clean and fresh. Because Mama remains stationary so much of the time, she doesn’t even seem to perspire, or soil her clothing.

  Mama embroiders, plays bezique, and arranges our icons. Other than the disturbing blindness toward the outside world as the whitewash obscures our views, Mama’s day is in actuality not so very altered from at home in the sitting room. Her immobility and unwellness has been a constant for so long.

  “Yes,” she says, “I am a prisoner first of my own body.” She eats little—only her usual favorite, some vermicelli noodles Kharitonov boils for her on a small stove.

  Mama has her usual habit of crunching the English biscuits in bed at night. Other than the biscuits, she seems to subsist on tea. Mama is moaning and calling out to me…

  “Marie.” It is a plea.

  THE DARK GENTLEMAN

  Papa was correct. The new commandant arrived three weeks ago, and Aveydev, whom we had come to accept if not like— “He is too lazy to be efficiently cruel,” Mama remarked—was dismissed.

  The new man, this “dark gentleman” was the fellow we had at first hoped was a doctor for Alexei. He carried a satchel. But he is surely no doctor. He has an evil look to me, all scowling black brows, a vulgar mouth, his body in a sloppy condition. But I will say that he seemed to wish to put an end to the stealing. First morning, he took an inventory of all our gold objects. He then confiscated them! But in a great surprise, he then marched back into our quarters the next morning and showed us all our jewelry and then placed all our necklaces and bracelets, a few rings, in a chest and locked it in front of us, assuring us that it would be secured. He said that he will allow us to keep these things, but will continue to recheck the seal, to see that we do not abuse this privilege.

  I do not like this man. I have checked his eyes, and they are stony. I too preferred Aveydev.

  Olga is saddened into sleep—some days, we cannot rouse her, even for meals.
r />   “What difference does it make?” she says.

  I cannot tell her my secret, the joy that wells up in me each time I see my Peter M. Oh, love changes everything. I can see he admires me so—it shines in his eyes. We are officially forbidden to speak, but he manages a whisper when he is near me…Oh, I cannot write what he says—it would endanger us both.

  I live for those moments, when I walk past him in the garden.

  His eyes promise me, and my eyes promise him. We speak the silent language of lovers—oh, and do we chat!

  My birthday approaches, and is more suspenseful than I am permitted to write. It is the date chosen by “our friends” to celebrate…and escape.

  I have birthday wishes—oh, will they come true that night?

  I know the power of visions—I see myself, descending from the window, running across the street. Peter will join with the friends, I know that, if indeed, he is not the architect of this plan.

  In any case, on the twenty-sixth, I shall be nineteen! Let this be the life-changing birthday I imagine.

  RISK

  If I had no hope of escape, could I breathe? The summer heat has entered our rooms, and is more unbearable than the chill that preceded it.

  We lie awake at night, sweating, turning. The days pass as in a stuporous fever. Yet we are alive. I am more than alive – I am experiencing what I have always longed for…

  I am the one Papa chose to remain awake on the key night. I will be the conduit to freedom. All this makes me believe that the one I love is also somehow involved with those who plan our escape. How else to explain the projected date? June twenty-sixth, my nineteenth birthday.

  I am the go-between for the messages, and when the nuns come with the additional food baskets, I slip Papa’s response under the false bottom.