by Laura Rose
His eyes looked blank. That was as far as he had gotten in his plan…His voice sounded lame, even, I think, to him—we would hide in the woods. It was summer; we could survive. We would make our way to the troops approaching Ekaterinburg. They would shelter us, and together we would join the assault on the city and free my family.
As if in argument, the lightning cracked, illuminating Peter’s white face. I could see him plainly.
If we were seen leaving, we would be killed on the spot, shot. And what of my family? Killed also, certainly, in reprisal.
Even if we somehow escaped, surely, they would be killed as retaliation.
Yet, we could not let go of each other or the shred of hope.
“It’s your only chance,” Peter whispered, “our only chance.”
I leaned into him. Above us, a faint silver glow edged the sky—even in this storm, the dawn would come soon. The night would end, and we would be exposed.
I had only seconds to choose. I looked up at the house, and saw a light go on—my parents’ room. Papa would be waking. With a shiver, I realized our roll call would begin in minutes. Papa would enter the bedroom, waking my sisters, and see I was gone…
The thought of Papa, Mama, Shvybz and Olga, Tatiana all seeing my empty bed, and realizing I had fled, abandoning them to a now certain fate… This was unbearable. I longed to remain with Peter but I could not betray my family in this way.
I could not speak. I shook my head; I had not a second to spare even to whisper goodbye. I let go and pushed away from Peter, and prepared to dart back across the garden. At that moment, a roar such as I have never heard, the thunder, sounded, and the very ground seemed to shudder…He understood, I think, for he said, “Then run, run now into the house before it is too late.”
MY GUILT
I ran, half slipping on the wet stones, through the slashing curtains of rain. I saw Mikhail L. standing, his face pale, with the door opened just a few inches. I wedged through and he pulled me inside. How long had he been watching? I wondered. His freckled face seemed to color. Oh, Holy Mother, what shamelessness I’d shown in my desire. He said nothing and gripped my elbow and steered me up the steps, and almost pushed me into the drawing room, where Botkin and Nyuta lay. Were they asleep? It seemed to me that Dr. Botkin stared at me, but he did not wear his spectacles and of course, I realized, he could barely see without them…
I tried to slow my steps, though my knees knocked, my legs shook. I imitated a usual gait, as if I were returning from a routine visit to the lavatory, but when I entered the bedroom, Tatiana and Olga were already awake, and preparing to enter the main room for the commandant’s roll call. Shvybz lay asleep, her arms around Jemmy. Ortino maintained his position, hind quarters splayed out, but he bared his lower teeth and growled—my scent? Peter’s scent? I was not the sister who had slept in this room with them last evening; I returned this dawn as someone else.
I did not need to see myself reflected in the cheval glass to know what I looked like, but there I was reflected in shameful detail—hair wet and disheveled. I didn’t know what to say. I knew that they knew. OTMA thought and felt as one. As I knew that Olga had been defiled on the Rus, she knew I had given myself to a guard. I was still half under the spell of my desire. How sick and dangerous was I?
A wave of shame, hot as boiling water, rose to my face, scalded me. The horror of what I had done burned.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, “forgive me.”
Olga, who had been so silent since her arrival here, appraised me with her pale eyes. She was still the eldest, our authority. She eyed me with a look which I interpreted as contempt.
“Just dress yourself…” She opened the armoire and pulled out a dress. “We are all wearing the blue.” I was stricken. I could not “match” my sisters—it was my blue dress that hung wet upon me. Today, my difference would be marked. I could not appear in my soaked, stained dress. I accepted the new soft dress, a pale yellow, and pulled it on, not bothering to remove my heavy wet bodice. There was no time. Papa was already knocking on the door and asking, were we ready?
“Don’t tell Shvybz,” I begged the Big Pair.
Tatiana’s porcelain features hardened in a look of disdain. This hurt more than any whiplash. For a moment, I simply wanted to die, to be shot.
“Please,” I whispered. “I couldn’t…I couldn’t stop.”
She took a cloth, a layover sham, and wiped at my face and hair.
Without speaking, she pinned my hair flat, and placed one of the little perouke head-scarves we wore when our hair was growing in. She stood back and said, “I don’t know…that is the best I can do.”
Papa was reciting our names, and we walked, single-file, out to the hall. Papa’s face was grey, his eyes ringed in shadow. I cringed, waiting for the accusation.
“Something has happened in the night…”
My belly clutched.
“Baby has had another episode. He is bleeding again, through the bandage, but I think Mama and I have been able to stem the worst of it…”
He walked with some difficulty himself, and I thought of the mysterious cold compresses Dr. Botkin was applying to him as Papa lay in bed the last few days. I knew this was a most private health matter, so I could not question.
How did I dare think I could leave here? Leave them?
My life was a death sentence.
I offered to assist Mama and went past Papa to their bedroom. Alexei lay face up, with compresses on his raised knee. Mama knelt by the bed, reciting from her prayer book. She appeared more distraught than usual, her hair flying loose from her pins. Her left eye was more inflamed than I had seen it. I went to her, and began to work with her hair. Mama was instantly on guard, and I realized I must not have disguised my demeanor—or she could, with her acute sense, pick up the scent, my disordered appearance and suspect the cause.
She turned and looked at me.
“Marie,” she said, and her pronunciation was my indictment.
I felt near faint then—they all knew, knew something. How could I reappear here, soaked and sullied at dawn? It was so obvious.
We filed into the dining room. I could smell the porridge boiling, the scent of tea. These usual aromas of breakfast did little to comfort me. Would Yurovsky see what was obvious to my family? My body began to shake, as I realized the danger I had placed us all in by my impulses. Who could look at me and not know?
Under the guise of escorting Mama, I held on to her as we lined up, and Yurovsky eyed us—he walked up and down the dining room, staring at each and every one of us. Papa explained that Baby was in bed, that he was unwell.
Mama again requested fresh eggs for him.
My shame flamed; my face felt scalded; I knew I was the lowest creature on earth.
I felt as if seizures would work my body; that it would be obvious.
But Yurovsky walked past me. Mama, however, had now turned her gaze toward me, as if seeing me for the first time, and I saw full recognition in her inflamed eyes. She knew.
The day that followed was the most painful of my life. Except for Shvybz, who was oblivious, everyone knew I had done this terrible thing, dishonored our family and endangered all our lives. I stayed as much to myself as possible, and went into the outer lavatory to scrub at the skirt of my dress. I dreaded the night shift and the return of Peter Malakovich.
Yet, as the day passed and Peter didn’t appear, I fell upon my camp bed in deepest disappointment. Was it an accident of the guards’ schedule? Or was he too frightened to return to this house? Had he been assigned elsewhere? Sent to the front? He would not leave me, would he? He would return tonight, surely?
When I napped alone, as the others took the constitutional, I tossed and sweated upon my bed. I entered dreams that reprised my night of love. In my unconscious, I had no conscience—I regretted nothing.
I wanted more. I wanted him again.
Could we tiptoe again on another moonless night across the garden? Was it too dangerou
s to hope that we could tempt our fates a second time?
I have learned too well to savor my moments of joy, to revel in minutes rather than anticipate months and years. Had we not lived a marriage last night? From his questioning eyes to my mimed, “Yes, I do” consummation. I understand the word now. It’s silly to think my tutor would be pleased, but the meanings of so many words have now come clear.
What risk to write of this, yet I am entitled to note the most joyous night of my life. So there! I say to fate. I do not die, as I have long feared, a virgin.
There was a real possibility that Peter and Mikhail L. could be shot and I more seriously punished and incarcerated for what we had done. The scent of flowers from the garden was now even more overpowering.
Oh, the blood rushes to my head and back again! I will never stop shaking.
I kiss you masses of times, our love begins.
June 26 (my birth date and my birth as a woman).
KEEPSAKES
I must preserve memory, cherish every keepsake. I have saved the clothing I was wearing—my old white camisole, the blue dress, the petticoat, the charcoal cotton stockings, and my leather shoes. Also, the headscarf. The headscarf has a moth hole—insects may yet devour my memories.
I have hidden these items of clothing I regard as sacred, in the box intended for the large sunbonnets that we wore last summer. I don’t know what has become of my sun hat, but this large round box, with its flecked violet pattern and blue silken ribbon ties, remains. In this box, I have stored the clothing, even the undergarments that I wore when he held me. I swear I will never wear these clothes again, or discard them.
I touch the sleeve, and think, His hand was here. I press my face into the white blouse, the waist, and relive that moment—the most joyful of my life. I must not let anyone else know what has happened, yet the desire to confide the miraculous events of last night is, I confess, irresistible. But he could be killed for what he, what we did.
What a comfort and a torment, both—these clothes, dumb witnesses to our first embrace. Now, it is as if the embrace itself is somehow preserved in this hatbox, with all my yearning, contained. Hidden below my sacred clothing, tucked within my camisole from that day, I hide this diary. I should destroy it now, but something prevents me—I treasure it as I do my life.
I cannot see beyond this morning. There is no sky, no tomorrow…only now, and my life ahead is as blank as the whitened window glasses.
I shut my eyes. Do not look ahead to the blank pages, the dates that lie ahead, I tell myself. I am not the starets, the holy seer, Grigory, who could see the future.
Tonight, we all startled at the loud cracks and booms—more thunder or gunfire? We gathered in Mama and Papa’s room. The summer heat had been trapped inside all day, and we felt near suffocating, even with the one window nailed slightly ajar. Through the small aperture and barred grate, we could see the stripe of moonlight, and hear distinctive firing, or bombing from some distance.
“Our friends?” I wondered.
All day, we had speculated that our own soldiers or the Czechs might be nearby. There was too much distant fire to be explained. Oddly, Papa took no hope from the sound. Ever since he cancelled the escape plan, he has been like this—defeated. I wish we had tried to squeeze ourselves from the window that night of my birthday and swung down on knotted bed sheets—whatever it would have taken to leave this house.
I know something has changed.
Peter has not returned to his post since our night together. Another boy, the Ivan who also loved me and gave me the birthday cake, vanished as well.
Our only accomplice, Mikhail Letemin, the young blond boy with the soft, downy cheeks and the wisp of a moustache—he must not be seventeen—stands guard, looking sheepish, in Peter’s place. I questioned Mikhail L. with my eyes. Where is my Peter? And he looked away. What was he hiding?
Has Peter been arrested? Transferred back to the factory? I must know. I can’t stand not knowing.
I am afraid I showed my emotion to Papa. Why did this have to happen? I cried, hoping Mikhail Letemin could not hear me.
Papa misunderstood and imagined I was referring to the entire debacle—the loss of the dynasty, his abdication, and our imprisonment.
“It was preordained,” he told me in his most doomed tone. “At this point, all we can do is accept our fates.”
The Book of Job again.
Papa is walking awkwardly. He has been in bed on and off, several days. I know his personal affliction that pains him terribly. He has asked for cold compresses. I am not supposed to guess the problem is hemorrhoids, but I heard the good Dr. Botkin discuss this. “The inactivity,” he was saying to Papa, “causes this painful condition.”
I know Papa curses the enforced idleness; he hates it. He begs, always for work, to cut wood, and they will not allow him. He digs in the garden, and the guards upturn his work, or urinate on it. For the first time, I saw him succumb to lethargy and his ailment. Today, Papa remained in bed, sat for a short while in a chair; he behaved more like Mama.
His mind wanders back in time. He speaks of old hunting parties—bringing down the great elk in Spala, in Poland. He curses his uncles for urging the abdication… “But what could I have done differently?” he asks. “I was surrounded by cowardice and deceit.”
Everything, I think, while holding my silence. You could have done everything differently…your passivity was worse than dangerous; it was inadvertently evil. I know you are a good man, but a weak one, and catastrophe does not discern the difference of its cause.
And now, what will happen? The barometric pressure changed in this house—I feel it. So stifling hot; no air gets in but dust does.
Yurovsky brought in four housemaids from the town to wash the floors. The rose-cheeked maids eyed us with pity. We helped them move the beds, dust, shake the rugs. We were not allowed to speak to these girls or they to us, but I heard the girls mutter, amongst themselves, that it was “a shame” about us…
What did they mean? That we are trapped, perhaps forever? That we might never marry? Or something more ominous?
Just when we needed solace most, Yurovsky allowed the priest, a stranger to us, and the deacon to hold a shortened mass for us and we took comfort in the service. The good priest blessed us. But, without decision, none of us joined our voices to his—for the first time with clergy, we did not sing. We were not allowed communion either, although I know Papa begged them for that rite and the priest also requested the complete mass for us.
Oh, so hot and airless; I feel the sweat under my scratchy bodice, even between my toes. I wish to go to the lavatory if only to splash water over my face, and have a quick wash under my arms, between my legs. I can feel my eyelids are swollen but I have no memory of crying. Is this my life? For how long?
We all know there has been this change in the house; new guards appeared, boys with blank white faces, and blue eyes that choose not to look too closely into ours. They yawn on duty, and crack more peanut shells, and urinate openly on our fresh-cleared garden. This is our shared sentence—the guards and prisoners, both, serving for how long?
The new commandant, this “dark gentleman,” Yurovsky, inhabits this house as an animate shadow—I see him materialize in unexpected corners; he appears to be making lists. Yurovsky looks at us, his eyes black, without apparent pupils or expression. He sucks his tea noisily through a cube of sugar, from the glass. I hear him, sometimes, even in my room.
I am trying to remember now, that expression in my Peter’s eyes, when I last saw him… I did not understand the look then—now I do. It was good-bye.
I know. I know without being told. We know the truth by instinct—as animals know in the hunt—Peter was not transferred; he did not return to the Syssert factory to smelt metal. I know with certainty without being told—he ran away.
Was it only weeks or months ago, I prayed to find a man like Papa? I am afraid my wish came all too true. Like Papa, Peter too is a good man, worth lovin
g, but weak. I know without being told that he fled. And I can imagine…why.
July 16, 1918.
I cannot sleep again tonight. I walk, as a sleepwalker does, on an involuntary journey. I am not the only one awake all night. On my way to the lavatory, I see the good Dr. Botkin awake also, sitting on the divan, bent over his journal. Dr. Botkin is writing by candlelight. He looks up—his eyes meet mine in unspoken greeting and commiseration.
“Marie” he whispers, “you should not walk about at night…”
“I cannot sleep,” I whisper back. “It is stifling…”
I do not dare sit beside him on the divan. The sentry can be seen, slumped asleep in his chair, but he could waken at any moment.
“I can’t sleep either,” Dr. Botkin confesses, looking at me through those thick spectacles of his, his gaze magnified, sorrowful. “I am awakened by voices, calling to me… My son…”
He cannot complete the sentence. I knew the son of whom he spoke—the boy who died in the war last year.
“And something else, so strange—Tatiana,” he says. “My Tatiana. I distinctly heard her call out ‘Papa!’ yet I know she is still in Tobolsk.”
From the corner room, we both hear Alexei’s whimper, and the immediate hush, hush, as my parents attempt to soothe him.
I must keep control of my feelings, or I will collapse…
The White Armies are near—I can hear them shooting. They may be as close as the Koptyaki forest. They may be a day or a night away from rescuing us.
Are we to be moved again? A few minutes ago, I heard a truck in the courtyard. It is still there, the first of a series of lorries, for transport? Or did the driver bring more guards? I have a sense of covert activity in the house tonight, of unseen comings and goings; indistinct voices, arguments are taking place far below us. The house is built into the hill and there are semi-subterranean chambers below. Sound muffles but also travels as vibration and I am sensitive to it…