Adrienne Sharp: The True Memoirs of Little K

In February, through old friends from better days at the British consulate, Miechen found herself and Andrei a place out of this tumult on an Italian luxury liner, the Semiramisa , bound for Venice; Andrei trudged down to my car through the mud to tell me they would leave tonight, that he could not allow his mother to travel alone but that she had been unable to secure passage for me or Vova and what could he do about that? This was her lie, of course, but I’m certain Andrei believed it to be true. He handed us a small package of biscuits from the British canteen and then sat, awkwardly, on the springed seat opposite, one leg crossed over the other, showing us his empty hands. I pursed my lips at him. Of course, she did not want to secure passage for us—what better way to rid Andrei of me than to allow the nightmare that was Russia to swallow me whole. And my son. Vova opened the paper package and began to eat without offering Andrei a bite and I did not correct his manners. Once Miechen and Andrei left the Caucasus, Vova and I would sink into this crowd of refugees, our privileges lost. We had no connection to the British consulate and who among the sick and desperate aristocracy remembered or cared that I was once prima ballerina assoluta of the imperial stages? No, my power, what remained of it, extended only to the Romanovs I had bedded, two of them either imprisoned or dead and the third about to sail out of sight. And though I fantasized about Sergei’s escape from Alapayevsk, what if he never arrived at this dock and Vova and I were here waiting for him still when the Bolshevik cavalry rode up over the hills, ringed this small city, and began to imprison, execute, or starve any formers they could scoop up in their red caps? They might put me in a cage on a cart and drag me from village to village to dance like a monkey on a chain, the tsar’s former dancer, and my son they would take out into the woods and shoot straightaway. No, though I would like to say I waited faithfully for Sergei until certain death, until the Bolsheviks on horseback raced their way up those hills, I did not. No, I was more like the Messieurs Sabin and Grabbe and Leuchtenberg, members of the imperial entourage of Nicholas II who’d slunk away when the tsar’s train from Pskov drew into the Tsarskoye station in 1917 after his abdication, much more like Dr. Ostrogorsky, who, after years of treating the imperial children, who had even gone all the way to Spala for the tsarevich’s great hemorrhage!, told the empress that the roads to the palace were much too snowy and slushy for him to travel now that the family was under house arrest. No, I would not wait for Sergei in Novorossiysk. Vova and I must have passage out.

And so, while Andrei remained behind with my biscuit-eating son, I slogged up the muddy, icy path to Miechen’s battered train car, mounted the steps, and rapped on the door. One of her staff admitted me to her sitting room, which was hung with blue drapes looking a bit soiled now, as were the narrow frosted glass windows that alternated with larger, smeared ones, the carpet, the embossed leather lining of the compartment walls, the blue upholstery of the chairs. How difficult it was even for Miechen to keep up appearances—difficult for her, impossible for me! But still she held court here, her brass samovar steaming amid the grime, her tulip-shaped reading lamps aglow. She sat in the largest chair in the small room, three dogs in her wide lap, wearing a heavy black shuba and a long gray scarf which she had wound several times around her neck. Her face was a mushroom, heavy and bloated, her jaw now thick as a man’s, the nose broad, and clipped incongruously to her ears, as if to remind one of her original sex, were a pair of pearl drop earrings. At my entrance she lowered the fruit knife she had been using as she read to cut the pages of her book. She did not smile to greet me, not that I expected her to. She hated all her sons’ women and we knew it; she called us, Andrei told me, the harem —me, Boris’s mistress, Zinaida, even Kyril’s wife, Victoria—all odalisques. Miechen blinked those eyes, hooded like a lizard’s, at me. She showed no surprise at my appearance, although it was the first time we’d ever been alone together. Perhaps she knew I would come, knew that I would not accept my omission from the Semiramisa manifest without a fight—when had I ever allowed my name to be scratched off a list?—yet she gave not the slightest sign of pity or regret that my son and I would be left behind in this crumbling country to a fate that looked bleaker each day.

She said to me only, I have no time to visit .

If Miechen had spoken kindly, I might have lost my nerve, but the tiny tip of a smile she used to punctuate her remark acted like her fruit knife to cut the page from my imaginary script. And so I began, I began with my son, my son of suddenly, felicitously indefinite parentage.

Your husband was always a dear friend to me , I said, and her lips became paper thin. A very dear friend .

I stepped closer, taking care to use the small stage of this car. He visited me often, as you know. We shared lunches, dinners. Breakfasts. He interceded on my behalf many times. Why, he even arranged my performance at the coronation gala, over the protests of the dowager empress herself. But of course you know that, too .

Her face was flushing then and I moved to admire a portrait of the grand duke that sat, in its frame, on a console. There was no need to rush. Let the audience catch her breath. I straightened the portrait and let my fingers cling possessively to the frame for a moment before I turned back. Yes, I don’t believe her eyes had left me for one second.

I said, This is difficult for me , but it wasn’t, not at all!, not now that I had begun. There was one summer, a particularly lonely summer for me. And for Vladimir .

From what I hear, you had many lonely summers , Miechen said.

As did he. I paused. Her face reddened further. Perhaps she would have a stroke, in which case I would not need to go on. With the ridding of her, the ridding of my troubles. But no such luck. Though I waited a moment, she remained upright and sentient, so I was forced to continue.

Have you never wondered why my son’s name is Vladimir? I lowered my voice. My son wears a green stone cross around his neck on a platinum chain. Have you never noticed? It was your husband’s christening gift to him, along with his name .

It’s a common name .

Have you not seen the photographs of my son as a baby? He is the image of Vladimir at the same age .

I’ve not had the pleasure .

Vladimir himself often commented that he and my son had the same shape of the head .

You are saying my husband fathered your son. But if that were true, he would have told me .

No . I smiled, giving her the smile of pity that she had refused earlier to give me. He wouldn’t have. He loved you and he knew it would have pained you deeply, as did his earlier infidelities . I gave her this, though it pained me to do it. But, after all, this wasn’t a contest of wills. It would do me no good to crush her completely. I needed her. The grand duke is Vova’s father. I’ve told this to no one. I would have taken our secret to the grave, for his sake, if this unfortunate situation hadn’t arisen .

I took a deep breath. The final act. Vladimir would never have wanted his son to be left behind here. His blood runs through Vova’s veins. What will you tell him on that day you meet again in heaven? That you knew of his last son and abandoned him anyway?

Outside, a drunken chorus could be heard in the distance. A baby cried. In here, the samovar steamed, but I would not be offered a glass of tea. Miechen pushed the dogs from her lap and, ignoring their yelps of protest, stood to face me, her fruit knife a small dagger. You are a whore , she said.