Adrienne Sharp - The True Memoirs of Little K

Soon after that, Andrei bought his own palace on the English Embankment, No. 28, so that we would have a place to meet privately, out of the sight of Sergei and out of the sight of Andrei’s mother—who had been horrified enough by my friendship with her husband and was enraged now by his forbearance at my friendship with their youngest son. Andrei’s palace had belonged to Baron von Dervis, who had made his fortune in railroads, and his widow, in the few years left to her, had remade all the rooms in high style alternately rococo and Gothic, reminiscent of the Winter Palace. Andrei changed nothing about the mansion, did not even remove the von Dervis monograms and coats of arms, did not, in fact, even live there, but used the place as a stage set for our parties and our trysts. Yet Sergei, of course, knew about this purchase and knew also that I visited Andrei secretly there, and he endured this as penance. He had abandoned me when my son was one hour old, still coated with yellow wax, and he had heard me cry after him as he galloped through my garden and jumped my hedge. It had taken three years and my father’s death for Sergei to offer me a word. Did I think of the deceit I offered him the day I told him I carried his son and all those days after when still I kept silent? Conveniently, I did not.

Andrei and I were nevertheless discreet. We conducted our affair in a different neighborhood or we went abroad, to the French Riviera, where Andrei, in a gesture to rival Sergei’s, bought me a villa in Cap D’Ail. In Russia, too, we stayed out of sight, as the von Dervis mansion stood where the English Embankment faced the Neva as it curved south, away from the Winter Palace and the New Mikhailovsky Palace, and from it one had a different view, that of Vasilievsky Island. The Rumyantsev Mansion stood at No. 44. The Vorontzov-Dashkovs at No. 10. Countess Laval at No. 4, where Pushkin himself read aloud his Boris Godunov in 1828. Diaghilev lived at No. 22. All of these mansions serve some other purpose now. The great noble families are long gone—some of their houses are museums. The Laval mansion is a historical archive. Andrei’s home became first a Ministry of Agriculture under the Provisional Government. I hear in 1961 it became the USSR’s first Palace of Weddings. I like to think of the young couples arriving there, perhaps the girl with orange blossoms tucked behind one ear, a little unsteady on her heels. Perhaps out of some prescience of what this palace would one day become, Andrei was driven one late afternoon to announce he wished to marry me, and he threw off our sable coverlet to dress and, leaving me there in the bed, rode immediately home to announce his intentions to his parents. And I thought, How delightful, how perfect. Let me make trouble in the palace of every Romanov!

Miechen, of course, railed at him that he had been bewitched into destroying his future. She was already maneuvering for her daughter, Elena, to marry a king and for her son Boris to marry Niki’s eldest daughter, and she did not want Andrei to throw away his chances of a great match, as had his brother Kyril, who just that past year eloped with the divorcée Victoria Melita and as a consequence had been stripped of his titles, income, and country. Perhaps Kyril’s recklessness had inspired Andrei? Grand Duke Vladimir admonished him that I was a pleasant enough diversion but nothing more. He should know. No, he could not marry me, Andrei said, returning to me, sheepishly. I laughed and snapped my fingers at him. How very like the young tsarevich! I knew I was unmarriageable. It was not only Andrei who could not marry me. No man of any real rank could, nor would one of lesser rank want to, I had been so well used. No, the tsar could not marry me, Sergei could not marry me, even Andrei could not marry me. When Princess Radziwill congratulated me later that year on having two grand dukes at my feet, I forced myself to laugh and reply, And why not? I have two feet.

What I did not have was the tsar, who had turned his face from me and my son no matter what trouble I stirred up in the beds of his capital.

When Vova saw me going off those afternoons to Andrei’s, he was jealous and, as he assumed I was going off to rehearse at the theater, he said he was old enough now to come with me. He wanted to see the stage, he cried, he wanted to see me dance, he wanted to take lessons at the theater school, and as I had once done to my father—until, exasperated, he took me to Lev Ivanov, who watched me pose and dance and said, All right. Let her come to the school straightaway! —I was seven!—so Vova also launched an elaborate campaign. He would live at the school, he said, and I could be his teacher. They will not take you until you are ten , I told him. Until then you will study with your tutors . By the time he was ten, I figured, he would forget all this, and so I hoped, for at ten or twelve, boys could enroll not only at the Theater School, where I had no intention of enrolling him—where my brother Josef ’s children Slava and later Celina attended—but also at the prestigious Corps des Pages, where, just before Vova’s birth, Sergei had, at my urging, placed his name on a list. For after all, the young tsarevich still lived—Alix’s uncle, Leopold, had lived to thirty-one before a hemorrhage from a minor car accident claimed him—and Vova must have a life. The Corps des Pages admitted only the sons of grand dukes, lieutenant-generals, vice admirals, and privy councilors, and my son, as far as they knew, was the son of Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich. The old Vorontzov palace, designed in the 1790s by the same Rastrelli who had created the Catherine Palace and Peterhof for Empress Elizabeth, had housed the school for over a hundred years, and on its grounds were both an Orthodox and a Catholic church. Within the palace were rooms for dormitories and classrooms and a ballroom with a great gallery where the school hosted its seasonal balls.

The young cadets who decorated those rooms were given day uniforms, full-dress uniforms for court appearances, evening clothes of black broadcloth with gold lapels, and standard ball uniforms, with weaponry to be removed while dancing, though the disasters that occurred when spurs and swords met taffeta and satin were legion. In their final years, the top students in the class were appointed pages to the court. The emperor was assigned a page, as were the grand dukes and duchesses. The dowager empress and Alix had four apiece. If Vova—when Vova—was appointed a court page and assigned to one of the imperial family, he would be given a court uniform of white doeskin breeches, a red-and-gold tunic, and black Wellington boots and driven in a court carriage to the Winter Palace, the pages all covered with sheets to keep their uniforms spotless en route. And when Vova completed his service he would be awarded a gold watch engraved with the monogram of the imperial personage he had served and commissioned as an officer, assigned as an adjutant to one of the men of the imperial family to begin what would be, I was certain, a brilliant career at court. I could see already his initial appearance there, where he would be formally presented to the imperial family, including Alix, whose hand he would kiss and with whom he would exchange pleasantries in French to the extent of her ability to deliver them. My son had a French tutor already, so by eighteen, he would speak the language fluently. What would she think of him? Would she note some imperial resemblance? See in him Niki’s eyes, perhaps, Niki’s likeness in the face, his gait, his bearing? Or would Vova be to her merely another of the many, many beautiful young men in uniform? Family, wealth, beauty, loyalty—those were the requirements for the Guards.

Yes, my son would get to his father in the Winter Palace one way or another, but for now my boy would remain at home with me, doted on by my family and cosseted by Sergei, who placated him for not attending the theater school by having a playhouse built for him at our dacha. And later when Vova complained, indignantly, that he had to stand in the garden to relieve himself into the rosebushes, Sergei added a working bathroom to the playhouse. He bought him a miniature motorcar that really drove, a fireman’s hose that shot real water, a stuffed llama that towered above his bed. At night, beneath the llama, Sergei and Vova knelt to whisper their prayers together. When Vova was sick, Sergei brushed his thin hair up into a ribbon to cool his fever and telephoned his brother the hypochondriac to send his personal doctor to come and treat Vova; Sergei even had a camp bed set up in Vova’s room so he could sleep by him until he was well. Though Sergei never rebuked me for my dalliance with Andrei, it seemed because of it Vova had supplanted me in Sergei’s affections and the two of us were turned by it from each other to Vova, who became quite spoiled from all the attention. And so, this is how it all was until 1912.