Adrienne Sharp - The True Memoirs of Little K

In late September of that year, the tsar and his suite traveled, as usual, to Poland for the hunt, to his estates at Skernevetski, Bielovezh, and Spala, and my brother Josef, now chairman of the Northerner, a hunting society, and who had been, through my influence, you remember, put in charge of the tsar’s hunting lodges after his dismissal from the ballet, traveled with him. It wasn’t long before rumors about matters in Poland began to make their way to Peter. People were saying the tsarevich had taken ill with typhus or cholera. The London Times had written the heir had been wounded by a terrorist’s bomb. Of the truth, Sergei knew nothing. If the rumors were true, Niki was not speaking of them yet. And then, on the ninth of October, Josef sent me a terse telegram instructing me to come to Spala at once at the tsar’s request and to bring Vova with me. I carried the telegram around in my hand so long that afternoon the paper began to disintegrate. What did the tsar want of me and my son after so long? What he wanted back in 1904? But when I answered my brother’s message, Josef would give me no details other than Don’t use Sergei’s railroad car . I was to call him at the lodge when I arrived at the station in Warsaw. Josef the revolutionary as the tsar’s servant? See how poverty and need can change a man!

I told Vova only that we would go to Poland to visit my brother who was serving the tsar at his hunting lodge. Yet at the train station I saw the gazeta with the black-bordered bulletin that announced the tsarevich was gravely ill, and though the bulletin did not specify the affliction, I knew the family would not allow such an announcement unless the tsarevich was near death. All the way south and west from Petersburg Vova chattered, could he go hunting and would we hunt elk and stag and would there be European bison there, too? Would he have his own gun or would Josef have to hold his for him? Could he take the antlers home and mount them on the wall of his bedroom, or, better yet, over the mantel in my White Hall so our guests could see them and demand to be told the tale? He wanted to practice with me the few Polish words I had taught him, but I was distracted and kept pulling out Josef ’s telegrams to read and reread as if some new information might appear there to explain away my dread. Eventually, in disgust with me, Vova wandered the aisle of the compartment. At each station he asked me to buy him strawberry-flavored kvass or tea or roasted nuts. He kept the vendors busy all along the route. At the Warsaw Station while we waited for the car Josef sent for me, I fussed over Vova, smoothing his hair, straightening and buttoning his coat, at one point drawing him close, but he was old enough now to be embarrassed by all this and so he squirmed away from me to kick at the leaves that blew about the station, and I pulled up the collar of my chinchilla coat.

Spala, once the hunting seat of the kings of Poland, was now the hunting seat of the tsar of Russia, who entertained the remaining subjugated Polish nobility there during his autumn visits. It was already dark by the time a car took us to the gates of the estate. Here in the forested countryside we were accompanied by a great, deep hush. A carriage brought us along a sandy road through the spruce and pine and fir trees to the lodge park. Josef, holding a torch, met me and Vova at the edge of the circular drive before the lodge, but Josef would not look at me directly; it was only after the carriage let us out and disappeared that Niki himself stepped from the shadows, holding his own torch like a weapon. The breath he blew toward me in the cold mingled with my own and his aging face confronted mine. His hairline had greatly receded, and beneath his beautiful eyes another color washed there, a purplish blue. The skin of his face was the texture of paper that had been folded again and again at every possible angle and then smoothed out. His moustache seemed to thrust from his sober mouth, or perhaps it was just the light or the grimace he made that had his moustache bristling so, and his eyes glittered far too brilliantly. Behind him on the grass lay a row of dead stags in two lines on their sides, back and front legs bound, branches thick with fall leaves pressed to their bellies like a garnish to hide where they had been gutted, their beautiful antlers lifted to the sky. At the sight of all those beasts, Vova cried out in delight, Look, Uncle Iouzia , and pulled at my brother’s hand, but Josef shushed him and Vova fell silent. Niki’s great sheepskin coat fell in folds to the grass and his tall black papakha made him a dark crown. He looked like the king of the underworld in full costume amid this carnage. Niki raised his free hand and gestured that Vova should approach, and beside me in his own little coat Vova began to shake. He was small for ten, with a delicate face, and people when they saw him on the street often called out to him, Look here, pretty boy! With a backward glance at me, my son took small steps toward Niki in the cold, stiff grass. Do you know who I am? Niki asked. Josef answered for Vova, This is the tsar , and Vova bowed and said, Highly pleased, Your Majesty . At this, Niki put his hand on Vova’s shoulder and peered into his face. Did he see himself? No, he saw my son’s brother. He looks so much like Alexei , Niki said to me, and then he held out his hand for my own. Forgive me, Mala. You’ve had a long journey . His palm was warm and rough, and it had been a long time since I had felt his skin against my own. Come . He walked not beside me, but slightly in front as we headed toward the lodge, leading me like a horse, Vova, the hound, trotting slightly behind, and my brother, whom I had forgotten, trailing us at the discreet distance of a servant.

The lodge at Spala did not look like much of a palace, being long and aging and ugly, the bottom story measured off by evergreens clipped into pyramids, the top by tall windows, side by side by side. The forest appeared to be penned back from it by a scalloped hem of clipped brush. As we drew closer, Niki, with a wave of his hand, sent Vova back to walk with Josef. When they were out of earshot, Niki gestured upward to a curtained balcony at one end of the lodge above a veranda. Alexei is dying up there . I believe I began to bite at my nails while he went on, those eyes scintillant, that face such a fine mesh of lines. It was the second week of Alexei’s suffering, he said. Blood had begun to fill the cavity between his groin and his left leg to the point where the child had no choice but to draw his knee to his chest, but still the bleeding did not cease. The doctors alternately raised and lowered the springed frame of his bed to help him sit up or lie down, but in neither position, in no position, Niki said, could the tsarevich find comfort, and the blood began to press on the nerves, causing Alexei spasms of pain so great that he had begun, between shrieks, to beg to be allowed to die, crying, Bury me in the woods and make me a monument of stones . But the worst was the hemorrhage in the stomach, which the doctors could not stop either and from which he would soon expire. He was feverish and delusional, his heart was feeble, and he was so white-faced it seemed there was no blood left to circulate about the rest of him, but as he was a child and they did not want to give him morphine, his only relief was to faint. All this was the result of an unfortunate poke by the oarlocks when Alexei had jumped into a boat at Bielovezh, causing a small swelling that they thought had healed until he took a carriage ride here at Spala on one of the bumpy, sandy roads like the one we had walked together.