Adrienne Sharp: The True Memoirs of Little K

Unexpectedly, Niki laughed. Yes. He remembered Taras Bulba , and he laughed. And when he turned from me, decisively, still smiling, it was to grasp Vova by the shoulders as he stood on the running board of le grand Son Impérial Majesté, to guide him away from the car. And then, after a triple kiss to my son’s cheeks and an embrace, he whispered something into his ear and pushed him along in my direction, saying aloud, Go . But to my frustration Vova did not run toward me, but moved vaguely, like a somnambulist, so that I began to wonder if he, too, had not been drugged by the dispensary of Dr. Botkin, and I clapped my hands at him as if he were a dog— hurry, hurry —even as the weeping girls, their faces contorted, had the girls become so attached to my son in this short time?, began now to climb from their seats, while Niki tried to hold them back. I had disrupted the entire convoy! Vova looked over his shoulder at Niki as if hoping to be called back. What madness was this?

Through the tall thin trees I could see the tiny figure of Sergei watching helplessly from the road. I turned back. Vova had neared the last Cossack, the one with the big fist, a hulking man with a beard that spread across his chest like a shield, and just as he was almost within reach of me, the soldiers, infuriated that their fellows had not impeded this decision of the tsar, recovered themselves and shouted out orders of their own. Prisoners were not to give orders. Nicholas Romanov was no longer tsar. The boy would come with them. The Cossack reached down and gripped Vova, mid-step, by the neck, and I could see Vova’s features twist in pain; with this, he seemed, finally, to wake. He took in my small shape, my dark hair beneath my babushka, my brown eyes, and when I smiled at him, encouragingly, the distinct outward tilt of my dog teeth: the peasant woman in front of him was his mother, and his mouth opened. I thought he might speak, but whatever word he thought to say became a wince as the Cossack, still holding Vova, began to turn his horse around to lead him back. Seeing this, Niki barked, Ostanovites! —Stop!—with such authority that all these men, the Cossacks still enough the tsar’s servants, the soldiers still so much the peasant with their hundreds of years of subjugation at the hands of the squire, paused. Even the Cossack’s horse paused, one hoof in the air to await the pleasure of the master.

And Niki marched uncontested down the line of them toward my son, the revolutionary soldiers stepping back involuntarily in deference, cowed, their insolence abruptly evaporating, as well it should in the presence of the tsar. Still, a few followed after him, calling ineffectually, Gospodin Polkovnik —Mister Colonel— Colonel Romanov! until Niki whipped around abruptly and thrust his face to these soldiers’ faces, one breath apart, and, uncertain, off-balance, the men backed away. I have only one son , Niki said, his voice a scythe. And I know who he is . And with a flat gesture of his hand, without taking his eyes off the men, Niki signaled the Cossack to release Vova, which he did at once. Vova stepped away quickly, rubbing his neck as the Cossack looked back and forth from the commander to the tsar, his big hand still open as if surprised by itself. The tsar at that moment could have done anything, could have called the Cossacks to charge, could have ordered the Cossacks to hang these soldiers from the trees, could have sent them to the Winter Palace to drag Kerensky and his ministers off to the Peter and Paul Fortress. But he did none of that, as he had done nothing on the train in March of last year in Pskov. Perhaps he was now afraid of further endangering us all, as he had been afraid of endangering his country and his subjects.

And so, he made Vova the only subject of his orders, telling him, Go to your mother , and then Niki strode back to his family, and the group of soldiers behind him rallied, shrugged, and waved their rifles to corral everyone back to their various places, Niki having snatched from them, temporarily, their precious authority, a humiliation for which the soldiers would later make the family pay. Vova and I stumbled back as the cavalcade of horses and trucks passed in a cyclone of wind and sand; as the first black car flew by I saw Niki staring straight ahead, Alix, beside him, head down. But in the middle seat, there was a face turned toward Vova, the small white sad face of the tsarevich Alexei, who raised one hand to his friend in farewell.

In Siberia, they killed everyone with the imperial family, you know—Dr. Botkin, the valet Trupp, the cook Kharitonov, the maid Demidova.

We’re not going back to the Alexandrovsky Station , Sergei said when we reached him, and so after he embraced Vova and kissed his cheeks, he hurried us onto the cart and we drove it and the horse all the way back to Petersburg. At first, Vova wanted to marvel at how the tsar had stood up to the soldiers, Did you see his face when he looked at that Cossack? And then he told us how the tsar had once used his walking stick to whip at the ankles of a soldier who had followed him too closely around the palace park and who had stepped on the heel of the tsar’s boot. But other times the tsar had done nothing when the soldiers behaved with insolence, signaling the empress to do nothing also, and Vova’s face grew dark to recall this. In a voice that rattled, careening between the high thin treble of childhood and the lower register of young manhood, he told us how they had stayed awake that last night at Tsarskoye, sitting on their suitcases for hours in the semicircular hall, then going up to the playroom to nap until the guards called out again, The cars are coming , and then, when it appeared the train cars had still not been coupled because the surly railway men had refused to couple cars for the tsar and the motorcars were not coming either, the children wandered back up to the green room. The last few months the soldiers had followed them everywhere, Vova said, and they listened at doors, refused to let them speak any language but Russian, which was the only language the ill-educated soldiers could understand, and this made it difficult as the empress always spoke to her daughters and her husband in English; Alexei was terrified of them, Vova said. They once took a toy gun away from him and some afternoons came to the doorway of his room just to look at him and to whisper about him and about his many-paneled, elaborate iconostasis, an oddity in a child’s room, which usually hosted only a single candle and icon. And you? Sergei asked. Did the men want to look at you? Not so much, Vova said, though he wished they had and ignored the sensitive Alexei. But everybody knew Vova was not the heir but the ward of Sergei Mikhailovich and that as the grand duke was at Stavka, the tsar had temporarily made Vova his ward. So that was the story Niki had cut and pressed for the family, and I exchanged glances with Sergei. All spring, Vova said, when they were better from the measles, they had amused themselves by watching one of the movies given Alexei by the Pathé film company at Christmastime— Atlantis , Luke’s Double , Fantômas —which the boys would set up on the projector in Alexei’s room. He and Alexei lined up chairs and then invited the family in, guiding them as if they were theater attendants to their seats and then introducing the films, which Alexei would rate Excellent, Very Good, or Satisfactory. Or they played outside with Vanka, an old donkey who had once performed at Cinizelli’s Circus, who pulled them on a sled when there was snow and would chew the rubber balls they fed him, one big eye closed with pleasure. The girls showed him how to embroider a row of swastikas, the empress’s favorite symbol of good luck, across a handkerchief, and at embroidery Tatiana was the best. And we had lessons , he said. The tsar taught us history and geography and from the newspapers he read to us about the war, about the street violence, about Kerensky and the Provisional Government. The tsar did not like the way the soldiers who guarded them didn’t polish their boots. The tsar knew all his family had left Petersburg except for his brother. Vova would read Sergei’s letters to him before putting them in his valise, and at night Vova would take one out, read the line that said, Your mother is well and sends you her love , and put it under his pillow. In Siberia, the tsar had said, they would hunt and fish, and I thought, In the Siberian exile of the past the tsars used to order, perhaps, but not in this one , and then Vova wanted to know when he could rejoin the family, because he and Alexei had planned to erect a tent in their bedroom and to build a trap for wolves. So Vova had relished his captivity, where he had been a part of a family I could not give him, with a mother and father, with sisters and a brother, and the family had all been together every hour—held there by force, yes, but still.