Nicholas and Alexandra (75 page)

Upstairs, just as the Empress heard the sound of the arriving automobile, the door flew open and a servant, in a tone which ignored the events of recent days, boomed out: "His Majesty the Emperor!"

With a cry, Alexandra sprang to her feet and ran to meet her husband. Alone, in the children's room, they fell into each other's arms. With tears in her eyes, Alexandra assured him that the husband and father was infinitely more precious to her than the tsar whose throne she had shared. Nicholas finally broke. Laying his head on his wife's breast, he sobbed like a child.

PART FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY

Citizen Romanov

In the afternoon, the Tsar reappeared, walking alone through the hushed rooms of the palace. In the red drawing room, he met Lili Dehn. Taking her hands in his, he said simply, "Thank you, Lili, for all you have done for us." She was shocked to see how much he had changed. "The Emperor was deathly pale," she observed. "His face was covered with innumerable wrinkles, his hair was quite grey at the temples, and blue shadows encircled his eyes. He looked like an old man." Nicholas smiled sadly at Lili's expression. "I think I'll go for a walk," he said. "Walking always does me good."

Before going out, Nicholas spoke to Count Benckendorff, who explained the arrangements made with General Kornilov. At first, Kornilov had wished to keep the Imperial family locked inside the palace, but Benckendorff, knowing the Tsar's intense need for outdoor exercise, had arranged for a small section of the park to be used. Nevertheless, it was required that every excursion be arranged in advance so that sentries could be posted. On this first afternoon, none of these arrangements had been made, and Nicholas was forced to wait for twenty minutes before an officer appeared with a key. When at last he did go outside, the Empress, Lili and Anna Vyrubova were watching from an upstairs window.

They saw Nicholas marching briskly across the park when a soldier stepped up and blocked his path. Surprised, the Tsar made a nervous gesture with his hand and started in a different direction. Another sentinel appeared and ordered him back. A moment later, Nicholas was surrounded by six soldiers armed with rifles. Anna was horrified: "With their fists and with the butts of their guns they pushed the Emperor this way and that as though he were some wretched vagrant they were baiting on a country road. 'You can't go there,
Gospodin Polkovnik
(Mr. Colonel).' 'We don't permit you to walk in that

direction,
Gospodin Polkovnik.'
'Stand back when you are commanded,
Gospodin Polkovnik.'
The Emperor, apparently unmoved, looked from one of these coarse brutes to another and with great dignity turned and walked back to the palace." In the window above, Alexandra said nothing, but reached out and tightly clutched Lili's hand. "I do not think that until this moment we had realized the crushing grip of the Revolution," said Lili. "But it was brought home to us most forcibly when we saw the passage of the Lord of all the Russias, the Emperor whose domains extended over millions of miles, now restricted to a few yards in his own park."

Still, the long, tumultuous day was not over. At dusk, three armored cars packed with revolutionary soldiers from Petrograd burst through the palace gates. Leaping from the steel turrets, the soldiers demanded that Nicholas be given to them. The Soviet had unanimously resolved that the former Tsar be removed to a cell in the Fortress of Peter and Paul; this detachment had come to seize him. The palace guard, surly and disorganized, made no move to resist, but their officers hurriedly mustered to defend the entryway. Rebuffed,
the
invaders backed away and agreed not to take the Tsar if they were allowed to see him. Benckendorff reluctantly agreed to arrange an "inspection." "I found the Emperor with his sick children," recalled the Count, "informed him of what had happened, and begged him to come down and walk slowly along the long corridor. . . . He did this a quarter of an hour later. In the meantime, the Commandant, all the officers of the Guard . . . and myself, stationed ourselves at the end of the corridor so as to be between the Emperor and . . . [the invading band]. . . . The corridor was lit up brightly, the Emperor walked slowly from one door to the other, and . . . [the leader of the intruders] declared himself satisfied. He could, he said, reassure those who sent him."

Even when the armored cars had rumbled off into the night, Fate was to add a lurid epilogue to this extraordinary day. Sometime after midnight, another band of soldiers broke into the tiny chapel in the Imperial Park which had become Rasputin's tomb and exhumed the coffin. They took it to a clearing in the forest, pried off the lid and, using sticks to avoid touching the putrefying corpse, lifted what remained of Rasputin onto a pile of pine logs. The body and logs were drenched with gasoline and set on fire. For more than six hours, the body burned while an icy wind howled through the clearing and clouds of pungent smoke rose from the pyre. Along with the soldiers, a group of peasants gathered, silent and afraid, to watch through the night as the final scene of this baleful drama was played. It had hap-

pened as Rasputin once predicted: he would be killed and his body not left in peace, but burned, with his ashes scattered to the winds.

The small group which had ignored the offer to leave and remained with the family in the palace seemed, in Anna Vyrubova's words, "like the survivors of a shipwreck." It included, besides Anna herself and Lili Dehn, Count Benckendorff and his wife; Prince Dolgoruky; two ladies-in-waiting, Baroness Buxhoeveden and Countess Hendrikov; the tutors Pierre Gilliard and Mlle. Schneider; and Doctors Botkin and Derevenko. The two doctors were coping as best they could with Marie, who had developed pneumonia on top of measles. Dr. Ostrogorsky, the Petrograd children's specialist who for many years had made regular visits, had declined to return, informing the Empress that he "found the roads too dirty" to make further calls at the palace.

Inside the palace, the little band of captives was entirely isolated. All letters passing in and out were left unsealed so that the commander of the guard could read them. All telephone lines were cut except one connected to a single telephone in the guardroom. It could be used only if both an officer and a private soldier were present and the conversation was entirely in Russian. Every parcel entering the palace was minutely examined: tubes of toothpaste were ripped open, jars of yogurt stirred by dirty fingers, and pieces of chocolate bitten apart. When Dr. Botkin visited the ill Grand Duchesses, he was accompanied by soldiers who wanted to come right into the sickroom and hear everything that was said. With difficulty, Botkin persuaded the soldiers to wait at the open doorway while he examined his patients.

The attitude and appearance of the guards grated on Nicholas's precise military sensibilities. Their hair was shaggy and uncombed, they went unshaven, their blouses were unbuttoned and their boots were filthy. To others, such as Baroness Buxhoeveden, this crumbling discipline offered moments of comic relief. "One day," she remembered, "the Grand Duchess Tatiana and I saw from the window that one of the guards on duty in front of the palace, struck evidently with the injustice of having to stand at his post, had brought a gilt armchair from the hall and had comfortably ensconced himself therein, leaning back, enjoying the view, with his rifle across his knee. I remarked that the man only wanted cushions to complete the picture. There was evidently telepathy in my eye, for when we looked out again, he had actually got some sofa cushions out of one of the rooms,

and with a footstool under his feet, was reading the papers, his discarded rifle lying on the ground." In time, even Nicholas saw the humor in this behavior: "When I got up," he told Alexandra one morning, "I put on my dressing gown and looked through the window. . . . The sentinel who was usually stationed there was now sitting on the steps—his rifle had slipped out of his hand—he was dozing! I called my valet, and showed him the unusual sight, and I couldn't help laughing—it was really absurd. At the sound of my laughter the soldier awoke ... he scowled at us and we withdrew."

Off duty, the soldiers wandered freely through the palace. Baroness Buxhoeveden awoke one night to find a soldier in her bedroom, busily pocketing a number of small gold and silver trinkets from her table. Alexis attracted the most attention. Groups of soldiers kept tramping into the nursery, asking, "Where is Alexis?" Gilliard once came on ten of them standing uncertainly in a passage outside the boy's room.

"We want to see the Heir," they said.

"He is in bed and can't be seen," replied the tutor.

"And the others?"

"They are also unwell."

"And where is the Tsar?"

"I don't know; but come, don't hang about here," said the determined Swiss, at last losing patience. "There must be no noise because of the invalids." Nodding, the men tiptoed away, whispering to each other.

Gilliard became even closer to the Tsarevich at this time because Alexis had just been abruptly and cruelly deserted by another of the key figures in his small, intimate world. Derevenko, the sailor-attendant who for ten years had lived at the boy's side, catching him before he fell, devotedly massaging his injured legs when he could not walk, now saw his chance to escape this life which apparently he had hated. He did not leave without an act of petty but heartless vengeance. The scene was witnessed by Anna Vyrubova: "I passed the open door of Alexis's room and ... I saw lying sprawled in a chair . . . the sailor Derevenko. . . . Insolently, he bawled at the boy whom he had formerly loved and cherished, to bring him this or that, to perform any menial service. . . . Dazed and apparently only half conscious of what he was being forced to do, the child moved about trying to obey." Derevenko immediately left the palace. Nagorny, the Tsarevich's other sailor-attendant, was outraged by the betrayal and remained.

In the long imprisonment that followed, Alexis found happy distraction in a movie projector and a number of films given him before

the revolution by the Pathé film company. Using the equipment, he gave a number of "performances," inviting everyone to come to his room, where with grave delight he played the role of host. Count Benckendorff, a guest at these soirees, found himself thinking, "He is very intelligent, has a great deal of character and an excellent heart. If his disease could be mastered, and should God grant him life, he should one day play a part in the restoration of our poor country. He is the representative of the legitimate principle; his character has been formed by the misfortunes of his parents and of his childhood. May God protect him and save him and all his family from the claws of the fanatics in which they are at present."

Once all the children were well enough, the parents decided to resume their lessons, dividing their subjects among the people available. Nicholas himself became an instructor in history and geography, Baroness Buxhoeveden gave lessons in English and piano, Mlle. Schneider taught arithmetic, Countess Hendrikov taught art, and the Empress, religion. Gilliard, besides teaching French, became informal headmaster. After Nicholas had given his first lesson, the Tsar greeted Gilliard, "Good morning, dear colleague."

The tranquillity of Nicholas's behavior during his imprisonment, beginning with the five months he and his family were held at Tsarskoe Selo, has attracted both contemptuous scorn and glowing praise. In general, the scorn has come from those who, distant in place or time, have wondered how a man could fall from the pinnacle of earthly power without lapsing into bitter, impotent fury. Yet those who were closest to Nicholas during these months and saw him as a man; who had been with him during the years of supreme power and knew what a burden, however conscientiously carried, that power had been—these witnesses regarded his calm as evidence of courage and nobility of spirit. It was not a secret inside the palace that the Tsar's immense shield of reserve and self-control had broken when he returned to the palace; everyone knew that Nicholas had wept, and for a moment, for everyone, the anchor was gone. Then, he recovered and his bearing became once again the anchor which held everything and everyone else. "The Tsar accepted all these restraints with extraordinary serenity and moral grandeur," said Pierre Gilliard. "No word of reproach ever passed his lips. The fact was that his whole being was dominated by one passion, which was more powerful even than the bonds between himself and his family—his love of country. We felt that he was ready to forgive everything to those who were inflicting such humiliations upon him so long as they were capable of saving Russia."

Through the Russian newspapers and French and English magazines he was allowed to have, Nicholas followed military and political events with keen interest. At his request, the priest in church prayed for the success of the Russian and Allied armies, and when the priest offered a prayer for the Provisional Government, Nicholas fervently crossed himself. Above all, he was anxious that the army be kept disciplined and strong and that the country remain faithful to its allies. Having seen with his own eyes the collapse of discipline at the palace, he worried about the decay taking place at the front. Hearing that General Ruzsky had resigned, Nicholas said indignantly, "He [Ruzsky] asked that an offensive be undertaken. The Soldiers' Committee refused. What humilation! We are going to let our allies be crushed and then it will be our turn." The following day, he mellowed and consoled himself. "What gives me a little hope," he said, "is our love of exaggeration. I can't believe that our army at the front is as bad as they say."

Purely in a physical sense, the abdication and imprisonment at Tsarskoe Selo were a blessing for the fearfully weary man whom Nicholas had become. For the first time in twenty-three years, there were no reports to read, no ministers to see, no supreme decisions to make. Nicholas was free to spend his days reading and smoking cigarettes, playing with his children, shoveling snow and walking in the garden. He read the Bible from the beginning. At night, sitting with his wife and daughters, he read aloud to them from the Russian classics. Gently, by example, he tried to make easier for Alexandra the painful transition from empress to prisoner. After the long midnight service on Easter Eve, Nicholas quietly asked the two officers of the guard on duty to join his family for the traditional Easter meal in the library. There, he embraced them, not as prisoner and jailor, but as Russian and Russian, Christian and Christian.