Robert Alexander: The Kitchen Boy

“No, of course not. I worked for the sisters at the other monastery.”

“Or as we would call it in English, the convent. And you didn’t simply work there, but you studied there, correct?”

“ Da, da, da . I was a lay sister.”

“So you’re not the milkmaid Marina from the men’s monastery, but the Novice Marina from the Novotikhvinsky convent, or as you would say in Russian, the Novotikhvinsky woman’s monastery.”

“Yes, my child.” The old woman took Kate by the hand, leading her into the tiny kitchen. “Here, come sit.”

By the simplicity of Marina’s words, Kate knew she was telling the truth. And as she sat down on a small stool, Kate sensed there were but only one or two more truths in this nesting doll of deception. She was, at last, that close. Yes, thought Kate, this old woman now putting on a kettle of water for tea, now shuffling for two chipped teacups, was most certainly the daughter of an Englishman and Russian woman.

In her bones, in her soul, Kate knew the truth, but her mind, so weary of deception, threw out a test. “Who did your father work for?”

“Papa? He was a diplomat. He was posted out there in Yekaterinburg at the consulate.”

“Under whose tutelage were you at the monastery?”

“Sister Antonina.”

“What did you do first thing in the morning? What were your primary responsibilities?”

“My responsibilities?” She pulled a small sugar bowl from the shelf. “Oh, I see. You test me, do you not?”

Kate said nothing, just sat there.

“Well, sometimes they had me assist in gathering the eggs, but yes, this is truth – I always, always milked the cows because, of course, my hands were then young and nimble.”

So it was all just as Kate thought. And now that she had the truth, or the most of it, she started to cry not out of grief, but fear. Meanwhile Marina went about making tea, as any good Russian did upon the arrival of a guest. She even put out a plate of three meager biscuits.

Finally sitting down opposite Kate, Marina asked, “Who else knows? Have you told anyone?”

“No, not even my husband.”

“Excellent. And you mustn’t, my child. For your own safety you mustn’t ever. Have you any children?”

Kate nodded. “Twins, a boy and a girl. They just turned two.”

“How wonderful,” beamed Marina. “But you must protect them, do you understand? Your grandparents put snakes between you and the truth to protect you, and now you must do exactly the same for your young ones. Am I clear?”

“Absolutely.”

“I read in the magazines about you. I read that your father died in a car accident, and I wondered if you knew. How much did your grandfather tell you?”

“Not everything, of course. As I said, he told me some stories – or rather he recorded on tape what he said was the truth. And at the time I believed it all. Then something happened, which in turn caused me to doubt him, and not much later I began to look for you.” Kate looked up, looked right into Marina’s foggy eyes, and said, “You see, my son is a bleeder.”

“Gospodi.” Dear Lord, gasped Marina, yet again crossing herself.

Overwhelmed with the responsibility of taking care of her aged grandparents, explained Kate, she’d put off starting a family of her own.

“I’ve only been married five years.”

It was odd, she continued, how she shied away from kids until the deaths of her grandparents. After that, she wanted a family right away, and a mere year later she’d given birth to her Andrew and Melissa. The twins at first appeared beautiful and healthy, but then Andrew bumped his head, which resulted in a horrendous bruise.

“When he was diagnosed, I grew suspicious of everything that my grandfather had told me.”

“But what about him, the boy child?”

“He’s okay. It’s still a serious condition, of course, but there are treatments now for hemophilia. There’s even talk of a cure using genetic engineerng. So there’s no immediate critical problem, not really.”

But the discovery of her boy’s affliction led Kate to do her own research. It was just too much of a coincidence. And her initial studies led her away from her mother.

“I was told that Dad died on his way back from the club when his car swerved off the road and hit a tree. I always assumed he was drunk. At least there were those hints. And he probably was. But when I found his death certificate it stated that he died of a brain hemorrhage due to a lack of clotting, so it’s obvious now that he was a mild bleeder, that he swerved off the road, struck a tree, hit his head on the steering wheel, and died before help arrived.”

Marina, her eyes wide, sat crossing herself.

“That’s when I really knew,” continued Kate. “Hemophilia is caused by a defect on a single X chromosome, which is why women are almost always only carriers and not sufferers, since we have two X chromosomes and therefore a double copy of the clotting factors. The healthy one can make up for the other. So my son inherited a defect on his X chromosome from me, because as the daughter of a hemophiliac I’m an obligate carrier. And my father inherited it from his…” Kate stopped. “I can’t even say it out loud. It’s too frightening.”

“And you mustn’t ever, my child. This is a brilliant truth that must be buried away like a terrible evil.”

“When I first started researching all this, you know, I thought it meant that my grandfather was him, their son. But that’s impossible, because genetically hemophilia couldn’t follow that path, right?”

She stared in surprise at Kate. “Your grandfather was most definitely no Romanov, I can assure you that.”

“But if you’re the real Novice Marina, not my grandmother, and my grandfather was Leonka, then-”

“Ach… the newspapers claim your grandfather said such things. Did he really?”

“Of course he did. On the tape he told me all about how Sister Antonina and you carried the rescue notes, hidden in the cork of a milk bottle, into the house, and that he, the kitchen boy, delivered them to-” Terrified by the look on Marina’s face, Kate suddenly stopped. “Wait a minute, don’t tell me that’s a lie too? You and the nun did sneak the notes into The House of Special Purpose, didn’t you?”

“Why… why, no.”

“But… but then who did? There really were rescue notes, and they still exist, I’ve seen copies of them. So if you didn’t smuggle them in, who did?”

Marina hesitated before saying in the quietest of voices, “Why, your grandfather of course.”

“What? But that’s not what Misha said. He told me someone else snuck the notes into the house and that he found them in the corks of the… the milk bottles. He said that was his job. As the kitchen boy, it was his duty to… to…” A horrible thought struck Kate. “Oh, my God, my grandfather was their kitchen boy, wasn’t he?”

“Heavens no, not at all,” mumbled Marina, shaking her head. “There was a young kitchen boy, this Leonka, but I have no idea what happened to him. He was removed from the house just hours before the execution, but after that he vanished into the oblivion of the revolution.”

Suddenly Kate felt ill. She had thought she finally held the truth, the complete truth, of her family. But, no, her grandfather’s deception was as deep as it was insidious. And yet if Misha wasn’t Leonka, the Tsar’s kitchen boy, then who the hell was he?

“Wait a minute…” began Kate, desperate to piece it all together. “My Grandfather Misha was there, I know he was. I mean, he had to have been. How else would he have known all those things, all those details?”

“Oh, yes, my child, he was most definitely there…” said Marina with a sad sigh.