Robert Alexander: The Kitchen Boy

The driver swerved over some tram tracks, around a park, past the city’s only mosque and its pair of towering minarets, then crossed Kamennoostrovsky Boulevard and turned into the dumpy courtyard of a building. Puddles and broken bricks littered the space, two children played on a pile of dirt.

“Priyekhali?” We’ve arrived? asked Kate.

“Da,” replied the driver, pointing to the door.

Kate paid in dollars, which the driver was only too glad to accept, and climbed out. This was the real reason she’d come to Russia, not the opening of the exhibit, not all the grand celebrations, but this, perhaps her very last chance to peel away the final layer of the many truths and mistruths fed to her.

The half-rotted door to the crumbling apartment building flapped open, though it was obviously meant to be bolted. Kate pushed it back, proceeding into a dingy lobby of sorts that was lit by a single, naked bulb. A row of heavy wooden mailboxes hung on one side, and she checked. Yes, the name was there. Dear God, thought Kate, she’d been so scared, so frightened that she might be too late.

Kate swatted a mosquito from her neck – she’d read somewhere that they bred year-round in the water-logged basements of these two-hundred-year-old buildings – and headed up the worn stone steps, which were low and easy. The cast-iron railing was half-broken away, the window at the top punched with a hole, and she mounted the second flight and came to the first door. Once again Kate looked at the address, and then pressed a buzzer, which rang so loudly she could hear it inside. As if in reply Kate heard a television inside being turned down. When there was no further sound, Kate pressed the buzzer again, and a moment later heard shuffling feet. A few moments passed before the inner door was opened with obvious difficulty. The outer door, however, remain solidly locked.

Finally a frail woman’s voice inside, said, “ Kto tam ?” Who’s there?

Kate was about to reply in Russian, but stopped herself. If it were really her, she would understand English.

“A friend from America.”

For the longest time there was nothing, no reply, virtually no sound of movement from within. Kate, finally sure that this was all a folly, was about to call out in Russian, when finally she heard a heavy bolt unlatched. The thick, padded door swung open, revealing a hunched-over woman, her gray hair skewing this way and that. Her eyes, foggy with age, studied Kate for a long, suspicious moment. Finally the old woman’s eyes bloomed with tears and she reached out and grasped Kate’s hand with every bit of her pitiful strength.

Oh, dear God, thought Kate, her eyes likewise filling with tears, it’s her, it’s really her. “Perhaps you don’t realize who I am, but-”

In hesitant but excellent English, the old woman said, “I know who you are, dear Katya. Of course I do, and not just from what they write of you in these newspaper stories, either. Da, nyet .” Of course not. “No, you should not have come… but I prayed with all my heart that we would somehow meet, which of course, was so very selfish of me.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Yes, it’s really you, and yet… yet how did you even think to come looking for me.”

With a trembling hand, Kate reached into her purse and pulled out a cassette tape. “My grandfather left this for me.”

“I see… Now come in, my child. Come in quickly. We have much to discuss and you can’t be seen standing out here.”

The old woman, frightened by the ghosts of Stalin and the like, all but yanked Kate inside. As the woman bolted shut the door, Kate stepped into a tiny, windowless living room, no more than six feet by eight. One door led to a minute kitchen with a table and stools on one side, a bathtub on the other, while another door led to a slender bedroom with a single bed and the apartment’s only window.

Suddenly the old woman was before Kate, taking Kate’s hand, then touching Kate on the shoulder, the cheek, the forehead, all the time muttering in Russian.

“Gospodi, eto’vo ne mozhet byit…” Dear Lord, it can’t be…

And then she was crossing herself, bowing her head, and kissing not only Kate’s hand, but the cuff and next the sleeve of her sweater. When the diminutive woman started to drop to her knees, Kate took her by her thin shoulders and pulled her back to her feet.

“No,” begged Kate. “Please don’t.”

“It’s a miracle!”

Kate glanced to the side, saw an old black-and-white TV, the volume turned down but the picture still flashing. On the old couch Kate saw two magazines, which not only featured pictures of the soon-to-open exhibit of Romanov gems, but Kate’s own photograph as well.

“So it’s really you?” asked Kate.

“Yes.” And touching Kate’s wrist and finding the gold bracelet with the jade pendant, the old woman gasped. “Your grandmother gave this to you?”

“I received it upon her death three years ago.”

“Peace at last.” She crossed herself. “How did you find me?”

Kate shrugged. “After my grandfather died, I cleaned his office. I went through everything, and I was just about to empty his trash can when I found an article speculating what really happened the night the Romanovs were killed. There were several different theories, but one thing in particular struck me – it talked about some survivors from a nearby monastery.”

“Ah, I see…”

“I saved the article, and then when my grandfather’s story started to fall apart, I looked it up again. I called Esquire , the magazine that had originally published the article, and tried to track down the woman who had written it. But I couldn’t find her – she’d left the magazine years earlier – and so I started doing some research on the Internet.”

“The what?”

“I used my computer.”

“Wh… what…?” She gazed at Kate with confusion. “You have to forgive me, I so seldomly speak English.”

“I started doing some research using my computer, but I couldn’t find mention of any monks who might have survived until even as recently as the sixties. In fact, the only thing I could find about a monastery in Yekaterinburg was this.”

From her purse Kate pulled a short article, the headline of which read, “Ancient Yekaterinburg Resident Attends Romanov Funeral.”

The old woman took it and shook her head. “My eyes are no good anymore. What’s it say?”

“When the Tsar and his family were reburied here in Saint Petersburg, a British man wrote about it for a London paper. He also did a short side piece about a milkmaid who claimed to have worked at a Yekaterinburg monastery when the Romanovs were under house arrest. He wrote how she attended the Orthodox burial of the Imperial Family here in town.”

“I should never have gone. I… I… was just going to watch the procession from afar. It was right across the park, just here at the fortress. And when I saw it all, I fell to my knees and started to crying. They were ordering me away, but in my weakness I begged. One of the fathers took pity on me and allowed me to attend.”

“So it’s true, then?”

The old woman nodded. “This man, this British writer – he was there, writing about the funeral, and then he followed me back here to my apartment.”

“I know. I looked him up. He’s the one who gave me your address.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have talked to him!”

“You didn’t tell him that your father was British, did you?” pressed Kate.

“No, of course not. I only told him part of the truth.” She hesitated before confessing, “I… I told him I worked as a simple milkmaid at the monastir .”

Finally understanding how it all fit together, Kate said, “At first I didn’t quite get it. The story on the Internet said your name was Marina, and I knew right away that it was just too much of a coincidence. I kept reading and rereading the article, and then I realized I didn’t understand because he didn’t understand, this man who wrote the article. He thought you worked for some monks at a monastery, but you didn’t, did you?”