The Last Romanov (26 page)

She is lifted up from a sticky pool of blood, squeezed hard against a rough coat, the buttons pressing into her breast, coarse beard bruising her cheek, her ear, a hand digging into her hair.

“Put me down!” She yells to the man with the yellow beard, unkempt hair, and wild eyes. “Alexei! Answer me. Loves! Where are you, Alyosha?” She directs her rage at the man, slapping him, kicking him.

She frees herself and lunges toward a bayonet leaning against the wall.

He grabs her around the waist and pulls her back. He is crushing her against him, his powerful hands imprisoning her in their grip, his breath on her neck. She spins around and pounds on his chest with her fists, her head, biting his neck.

“My love, my love,” he cries into her hair, his tears wetting her neck. “It's me, Avram. What did they do to you! I came to save you. Come! I'm taking you away.”

The moonless night rattles with the nearby pound of artillery. Now and then, the black skies overhead ignite with a burst of cannon fire. The sound of marching boots, vehicles, gunshots, and troops grow louder, the rotting smell of refuse stronger.

Avram Bensheimer carries Darya over one shoulder as he maneuvers the city's back alleys and byways to avoid roadblocks, armored vehicles, and dangerous thoroughfares. He steps over something slippery and loses his balance, crashing against a nearby building.

She lets out a cry of pain.

He regains his footing and continues to sprint ahead, his breath coming fast, the impact of his steps on the asphalt underfoot constant in his chest.

She grunts, clawing at the air, at herself, at the world. “Where is Alexei, Avram? Where is he?”

“I don't know, Darya. I really don't,” he murmurs into the dark. “I'm taking you to safety. I knew you'd be in Ekaterinburg with the Romanovs. So I joined the White Army regiment that made its way here.”

“Alexei!” she cries out in her raw voice. “Alyosha!”

“Shh,” he warns at the sound of approaching boots. “Keep the jewels in the pillow.” He slips around a sharp turn and into an alley, ducking into a doorway.

A battalion of soldiers march by, a heavyset man at the head waving a red banner that otherwise hangs limp in the stagnant heat. A blast of artillery from somewhere nearby casts an eerie glow on the men's faces, blood-veined eyes, spit-dried lips, sweat-matted hair. A blood-splattered dog limps behind the passing soldiers, attempting to keep pace with a riderless horse.

A gray dawn is settling on the surrounding hills when Avram, at last, sets Darya down and doubles over to catch his breath.

She recognizes the birch, linden, and cedars surrounding acres of breathtaking beauty, which in the grip of this sinister dawn appears more forlorn than a ghost ship in a mist.

“You'll be safe here,” he says. “At least for now. Come, don't stand here. It's dangerous.” Finding her weak and unable to walk, he pulls her closer and leads her toward the Entertainment Palace, kicks the heavy door open, and helps her in.

A moldy smell meets them at the threshold. It is a long corridor, almost empty now. The Fabergé eggs in the glass cabinet are gone. The Persian carpets too. For now, a few paintings, a tapestry, and portraits of the Imperial Family remain in place. As does the entire collection of the family's books: a biography of Peter the Great, volumes of Chekhov,
Les
Fables
de
La
Fontaine
, a volume of
Tales
of
Shakespeare
, and the children's favorite fairy tale,
The
Fire
Bird
. These too, in the near future, will be plundered in front of her eyes, when she is still young and green and has not learned to use her opal eye and cursing tongue to scare away the enemy.

Avram gestures toward the pillow she clutches against her chest. “Put the jewels away.” He turns a light on. Stepping closer, he holds her by the shoulders. He gasps at the sight of her cracked eye. “Who did this to you? Who? Tell me!”

She covers her eye with one hand. “It doesn't matter, Avram. Not now!”

“The Bolsheviks did it, didn't they? I'll kill them! I'll shoot every one of the bastards!”

“Don't bother, Avram. I said it doesn't matter now.”

He kisses the tip of his forefinger and presses it to her eye. “I'm going, Darya. I hate to leave you alone, but you'll be safe here. Everyone thinks you are a witch. They'll keep their distance. Listen to me. I'll go back to the House of Special Purpose. I'll look for Alexei.”

She does not turn away when he wraps his arms around her. She feels fragile in his arms as if the slightest pressure would shatter her into a million pieces. “I'm coming with you,” she says.

“No! It's too dangerous. I'll have to do this alone.”

She gazes at the door he shuts behind him, not caring to lock it, left behind in a palace she knows well, every corner, every room, the vast grounds she and Alexei once roamed, discovering miracles around every corner, the sweet-smelling herbs they crushed against their palms, the voracious squirrel they tamed with handfuls of walnuts, the banya they once converted into a grand pool of sailing toy ships, the sweet almond tree they climbed to scare away the mean-eyed cat that had a way of springing up from nowhere to frighten Alexei.

The need to wash off the blood, the visions, the stink of gunpowder is overwhelming. She wills her legs to take tentative, reluctant steps to nowhere. Her feet entangle in her skirts. She loses her balance, stumbles like a drunkard. She enters the guest bathroom opening to the garden, a shortcut to the banya. The alabaster sink is stained with the remnants of melted candle, shaving cream, hair. The sconce above the sink robbed of its crystals, the naked bulbs reflecting sorrow in the mirror below.

She confronts her image in the mirror, which she has been avoiding since their exile from Tsarskoe Selo. She stares at her unhinged, terror-stricken eye. Gazes hard and long at the opal, cracked like her heart and framed by a splattering of dried blood.

Their blood.

Two days pass and Avram is at the door, his arms loaded with two sacks he sets down at her feet. From one of the sacks, he plucks amulets, smashed icons, a broken emerald cross, bits and pieces of a lock, items of clothing, copper coins, nails, foil, and a Bible. “I found these in the Ipatiev House, thought you'd like to have them.”

“Alexei?” she asks, the ache of his absence replacing the taste of ash in her mouth.

“I didn't find him,” Avram lies, intent on protecting her, knowing she will not rest until she sees him for herself. “But I'm not giving up. I promise. There are rumors in town that Nicholas was killed by order of the Provincial Soviet and the rest of the family whisked away to different hiding places.”

She folds into herself like a broken fan. “They shot the Tsar and Tsarina in front of my eyes. Olga too. Didn't you see?”

“No! They might have removed the bodies before I got there.” He attempts to embrace what is left of her. “Shh, darling. Come, eat something. You've lost too much weight.”

Her stomach lurches at the thought of food. She goes down on her knees and reaches out to leaf through the Empress's Bible, some pages torn, others heavily marked, dried leaves and flowers pressed between the pages.

“I found this too,” he says, retrieving a pouch from his pocket.

She recognizes the packet of seeds Rasputin sent her. Useless, she muses fleetingly, the acrid stench of guilt in her mouth. Why did she care to carry it from place to place? She has no intention of planting anything, giving birth to anything, not now, not ever.

“And this,” he says, pulling Alexei's pillow out of the sack.

She snatches it out of his hand, turning it this way and that, checking it for a long time. The pillowcase is riddled with bullet holes. What did she do! Why? Why did she listen to the Ancient One? She should not have exchanged pillows with Alexei!

She presses her hands to her eyes. A thought occurs to her. She grabs the pillow, pokes a finger in each hole, pulling and tearing the pillowcase to reveal the ambergris inside.

She raises the ambergris to the light, turns and checks it from all angles.

“Lord Almighty!” she cries out. “Look, Avram, come see. Alexei Nikolaevich is alive! A miracle! There are no bullet holes in the ambergris. It saved him! Remember this day, Avram! I swear on the souls of my parents that I will not rest until I find Alexei Nikolaevich and lead him to his rightful place as the autocrat of all the Russias!”

She suddenly jumps back screaming. One of the sacks, forgotten at her feet, is wriggling its way toward her.

Avram grabs the sack and unties the rope with one quick motion.

The Tsarevich's spaniel scrambles out.

“Oh, Joy, my precious little darling,” she exclaims. “Why are you so quiet? Why aren't you barking, wagging your tail? You saw everything, didn't you? You've gone mute, Joy, yes, you have.”

She turns to Avram standing over her, the empty sacks in his hands like two limp carcasses. “Thank you.” She gestures with her left hand as if to send him on his way. His opal band flashes on her finger. “Go find Alexei now.”

His eyes light up. “You are still wearing my ring?”

“Don't talk to me about rings,” she replies, stuffing her hand in her pocket.

He nods toward the scattered objects around them. “I'll put these away.”

“No! I will.”

“I'll help you then,” he replies, following her into Alexei's bedroom, where she has spent the last two days, avoiding the rest of the palace, every corner a reminder of her loss.

The bedroom is large, with tall windows overlooking the garden. The sun is shining through the glass, casting a golden mantle over everything. Pamphlets and newspapers the revolutionaries left behind flutter in the breeze. A torn page settles on a lower branch. A raven alights on the newspaper and begins cawing until a stray cat appears from nowhere and scares the bird away.

A mechanical toy train remains lodged on the rails, its red engine lying on its side. The Emperor's cane dangles by its double-eagled handle from a hook. A round table displays photographs of the Imperial Family: Nicholas II with his officers; Alexandra at the piano in the Lilac Boudoir; the family during an outing on the coast of Finland onboard the imperial yacht; Nicholas and George V, who, in the end, refused to give asylum to his Romanov cousins.

Darya deposits her load on the bed. One by one, she lifts Alexei's pants, the blue sailor one with the piping, the cuffed gray flannel trousers, touches them to her cheeks, smells them, folds them with the utmost care. She presses her lips to his formal uniform, the two small holes in the right sleeve, his tuxedo coat, the pants missing, the collar having lost its sheen, inhales his innocent child's scent, gazes at the two pairs of socks the Empress had to mend several times. She doubles them into each other, strokes them with the tip of her fingers.

“I didn't leave you,” Avram says as she walks to the closet, carrying Alexei's clothing like a child in her arms. “The Bolsheviks arrested me. It was a mistake to question our traditional statehood. I didn't know the alternative would be far worse. I fell prey to certain artists, believed they'd reform our stale ways. Little did I know that the tide would change and the same artists would start preaching nonsense like Dali's surrealism cultivates madness and encourages decadence, impressionism is antisocial and distracts citizens with fantasy…on and on until my own perception of things became distorted.” He slaps himself on the forehead as if to force some sense into his head. “What was I thinking? Suddenly Igor's choreography, Belkin's paintings, even Dimitri's caricatures seemed to project the reality of our political state.”

One by one, Darya lays Alexei's belongings in precise order on the closet shelves where a complete wardrobe of Alexandra's ball gowns—creamy velvet gown stiff with pearls, flowing peach-colored silk gown with all types of embroidery, mantles rich with brocades and studded with semiprecious jewels, all styles of taffeta, silk, and grosgrain—remain hanging.

“A year, perhaps even a few months after you ended the salon, my work came under attack for betraying the common people. I was ordered to direct my talent toward antimonarchist themes. I didn't know whether to laugh out loud or spit in their faces. I did both. Dimitri Markowitz reported me to the authorities. I was locked up for nine months with thousands of prisoners of war. And then we were freed one night. We were needed to reinforce one of the many anti-Bolshevik White Army regiments. There were reports that the Romanov family was transferred to the Ipatiev House. I knew I would find you there. So I joined the regiment that marched into Ekaterinburg.”

Darya gazes up at Avram, haggard and reticent and so different from the man she once loved. She is changed too, unwilling to forgive, a dying woman hoarding the fuel of resentment for survival. She brushes her unkempt curls back from her face, goes to him, and rising on her toes, drapes her arms around his neck. She presses her mouth to his, hard. A savage force that surprises them both.

Having moaned and creaked for two months and twelve days, the palace begins to settle around Darya. Rats have taken shelter in every nook and cranny, snoozing in their holes and nibbling on anything they can get their teeth into. Like her, they survive on stale food the White Army left in the kitchen. After licking every last scrap clean, pattering paws and greedy eyes follow her everywhere.

She will have to dare the hostile streets or the rats will devour her alive.

Fetching her ambergris, she climbs the steps and walks down the hall toward the salon, glares at the mounted aurochs head above the door, all her misfortunes reflected in its glassy gaze. She shoves away shards of glass from the broken bottle of vodka she found in the salon yesterday or the day before, pulled out the cork, drained it, and smashed it against the fireplace. She turns away from the gold-framed mirror on the mantelpiece that projects the cheerless face of a thirty-one-year-old woman who has lost the will to live.

She kneels to gaze up the fireplace shaft. Despite the rats and not having been cleaned for years, the hearth is in good shape. Still, she wraps a cloth around a broom and wipes remnants of soot left from the last time the fireplace was used to celebrate the Imperial Couple's anniversary three years ago.

What an evening that was! The Imperial Couple and their 150 guests were dressed in robes from the reign of Catherine the Great. Wearing lightly powdered wigs and weighted down by ermine-trimmed robes studded with semiprecious jewels, women sailed ahead in glittering silver-threaded gowns imprinted with eagles. Replicas of the chain of the Order of St. Andrew shimmered across ample bosoms. Men sported helmets with rich plumage, gold-braided uniforms heavy with medals, epaulettes announcing high ranks. A thirty-one-gun salute from the Vladivostok Fortress rattled Ekaterinburg. Cheering crowds flocked to gather around the palace in hope of catching a glimpse of the guests as they arrived in open carriages drawn by horses wearing costumes of the same era. A concert was held, followed by dancing, choreographed by Josef Kschessinski of the imperial ballet.

What remains now is the forlorn chandelier above the stage, the sound-making machine for wind, thunder, and rain, and the device that raises the orchestra pit so the salon can be used as a ballroom. The Louis XVI sofas and armchairs, upholstered in Aubusson needlepoint tapestry, are here too, plus the French goblin and the silk carpet, a gift from Sultan Abdul Hamid II of the Ottoman Empire.

She drapes the two blocks of ambergris in layers of cloth, crouches in the hearth, and conceals them in a niche inside the fireplace. She checks around as if searching for intruders, spirits in the shadows perhaps, before locking the door behind her.

She returns downstairs to the kitchen, disturbing layers of dust on the balustrade. Opening one cabinet, then another, shifting a packet of dry beans, empty jars of marmalade, a jar of moldy pickled mushrooms, she passes a flat palm over the shelves. What is she looking for? Why is she in the kitchen? Yes! She remembers now. She pulls out a drawer and riffles through a collection of knives of all sizes. She chooses the largest, a hunting knife she had seen the chef sharpen and use to dress game.

The cellar that once held the family's provisions of rice, potatoes, onions, dried mushrooms, and imported canned goods is cluttered with empty crates now. She shifts the crates, searching for what she concealed here some days, or months before, she is not certain since time has lost all meaning; days and nights neither pass nor matter as she wanders the rooms. There it is! The pillow of jewels she is looking for. She fishes it out from behind a crate. A cockroach scrambles away. She flattens it under her slipper.

She settles down cross-legged and forces the tip of the knife between the floorboards, loosens them one by one. The moist soil beneath the planks reeks of worms, mildew, and decay. She tosses the knife aside; it falls flat on top of a crate. She digs with bare hands, peels off clumps of earth that settle under her fingernails.

Widening the top of the pillowcase, she pulls out one jewel after another, buries each piece as if conducting a religious ceremony, not a funeral, not that, because she is certain she will return them to their rightful owner one day.

She buries the pearl necklace the Tsarina wore on her wedding day, a gold bracelet she wore when the Tsar returned from the eastern front, the good-luck ruby ring, a South Sea pearl belt, the pink diamond necklace Olga wore on their trip abroad the
Standart
, when the family traveled from Peterhof along the Baltic coast, the opal bracelet she gave Grand Duchess Maria on her twelfth birthday, and an emerald cross the Empress was especially fond of and wore to religious ceremonies. One by one, she buries her memories for safekeeping in the shallow grave, presses her palm on top, and keeps it there like a promise, then lays the wooden planks flat and piles the crates back on top.

She rifles through the closet in the upstairs room, strokes the formal gowns the Empress kept here for special occasions. She selects an embroidered dress of voile with ruffled sleeves, the beaded belt she bought for the Empress in one of the antique shops, and a hat with lavender feathers.

Armed with the Tsar's cane, hat pulled low over her brows, she steps out into the soot-covered Ekaterinburg streets.

She recoils at the sight of the bullet-riddled buildings, army trucks parked on Malysheva Street. Red flags everywhere. Red armbands. Posters with threatening fists lifted like so many curses. Posters of the Red St. George, Leon Trotsky, slaying the counterrevolutionary White dragon. Salutations that hurt her ears: “Hello, comrade.” “Good morning, commandant.” Is she the only one left to mourn the death of an empire? Russians will eventually wake up, too late and orphaned, not knowing what has destroyed them and for what purpose.

Her mouth puckers at the sight of the Ipatiev House, perched atop a hill, the fortlike fence still there. “Doom and damnation!” she shouts out to no one in particular, releasing a plume of ash from her mouth that curls up in spirals to float overhead like a halo and then rain down and settle on her hat, shoulders, lips.

She enters the neighborhood grocery. “Give me a loaf of bread, boy. A block of sheep butter and a can of sour yogurt too,” she commands as if she were still Tyotia Dasha of the Tsarevich and the grocer, a thick-lipped youth with a fuzz-covered chin, was her servant.

“Right away, Your Eminence,” he stutters, scrambling to wrap up the order, unable to take his eyes off her. He has never seen a more striking woman with such a strange, translucent, golden eye. Her plump mouth flecked with silvery ash, yet so frail she seems on the verge of melting in front of his awestruck gaze. He has an inexplicable urge to fall on his knees and press his face to the rich folds of her dress. Instead, he reaches out a reluctant palm to accept her money.

She drops a sliver of broken emerald from the Empress's cross onto his palm. “Keep this against my account! It's emerald, not glass, use it wisely or it will bring you bad luck.” She is certain that the instant she steps out of his shop, he will open his loose mouth and blabber about a young opal-eyed witch being in the neighborhood, exaggerated tales of her supernatural powers, which will prove a blessing, since they will cast fear in the heart of the populace and keep them away from the Entertainment Palace, where not so long ago, crowds gathered around to enjoy the exquisite music wafting from its windows.

Darya steps out of the shop, gazing straight ahead, impatient to flee the blood-soaked streets and alleys, the flags and armbands like so many bloodstains, the buildings that are shameful specters of their old selves.

“Incantations, Madame, love potions, seeds for magic,” a shabby, long-haired peddler screeches in her ear, following too close.

She raises her cane and smacks the pubescent boy on the shoulder. “Let me be, boy. Go somewhere else.”

She continues on her way, a nagging thought at the back of her mind. Where else did she hear “seeds for magic” or such similar words? The thought bores into her brain like an insistent worm as she navigates through the somber lanes and streets to the palace and straight into the kitchen.

She upends the bag of groceries on the counter. Standing at the sink, she tears a piece of bread and chews it without tasting. Fills a glass of water from the sink and washes the bread down. “Seeds for magic,” she repeats aloud. “Seeds for magic.” And then she recalls the bag of seeds Rasputin gave her with a note:

I
wish
you
to
have
these
magical
seeds
for
your
garden
and
for
your
soul. Keep them somewhere safe. Do not think about them until you need them. I shall not tell you when that day is. You will know.

Where did Avram leave that packet? She searches the palace, one room then another, returns to the kitchen to rifle through drawers, shelves, inside ovens, behind blinds and drapes, on window ledges. Didn't Avram bring the packet with the family belongings he had found in the House of Special Purpose? She enters Alexei's room. The packet of seeds is sitting on the table next to photographs of the Imperial Family. She grabs it and goes out into the garden.

The sun is high in the sky, brutal in its brightness, melting the last few patches of snow. The sound of the city can be heard from somewhere far away. A bird flaps, squeaks, shits down on a tree bark. What will happen to the birds of paradise, she wonders.

She squats close to the damp earth, taking her time to dig holes that do not need to be deep, hoe earth before its time, haul pails of water back and forth when the hose nearby will suffice. As long as she keeps moving, rage replaces despair.

She plants Rasputin's gift, one seed at a time, all day long, dreading the inevitable arrival of night, deep and dark as her grief.

When the sun sets and the buzz of insects replaces the drone of the city, she seeks her bed, her complexion mottled with the sting of insects, red and raw from the sun. She drowns herself in a fitful sleep that repeats the sounds and images, the crack of bullets, snap of bones, shattering skulls, sigh of resigning lungs.

Startled awake, she sits up with the anxious gesture of a woman who has experienced horrors in her dreams. She shades her eyes against the sunlight slashing through the window. A plump, mean-eyed, wailing cat is perched on the windowsill. Its receptive tail is held high, its mottled fur covered with tiny butterflies.

What a strange creature, she muses, unaware yet that the uninvited guest caused Joy such alarm the dog fled into the streets. She tosses a cover over her shoulders and goes to the window. She lets out a faint sound of surprise.

Swarms of butterflies have invaded the garden she planted the day before. Their opalescent wings fluttering over a carpet of berries, they hop friskily, dodge and soar, skip and whirl, turn belly up, their wiry legs kicking in drunken ballets.

Overnight, Rasputin's seeds have yielded a crop of plump, juicy berries that pop out of the earth like tiny white balloons.

She goes outside and cuts a path through the shimmering cloud of butterflies, raising a faint smell of decay. She likes this invasion, this disturbing of the false balance of nature. She pulls a berry from the root, flicks the stem away, and squeezes the flesh between her thumb and forefinger. A milky sap stains her fingers. She licks off the pungent, sticky residue, tastes it under her tongue, sensing the puckering on the roof of her mouth.

Rasputin had predicted that one day she would cherish a gift to end the nightmares, the despair. She could not have asked for a better gift than poisonous berries.

She squats among the berries, hundreds of butterflies fanning her with tender wings, alighting on her lashes, burrowing into her curls, sighing in her ears. With giddy recklessness, even joy, she pulls out one berry after another and tosses them in her mouth.

She sighs, shuts her eyes, and lies down, her mouth filled with the sweet taste of earth and amnesia. She no longer hears the crack of gunfire, does not see the Tsar's skull explode, the Empress's hand rise to make the sign of the cross, Alexei thrusting his face into the pillow.

Her eyes raised to the heavens, she cries out, “Thank you, Father Grigori!”

The sun is forcing its way up. The air smells of rot and gasoline. Her back is slimy with crushed berries. Everything aches, her face, her bones, but especially her chest as if it has been left open to the elements all night. She is sprawled out on the carpet of berries that temporarily blunt the edges of her pain, the addicted cat with the mean green eyes snoring at her side.

She lifts herself to her feet, brushes her damp clothes clean, and goes inside.

Everything is different. Butterflies cover the silk-flounced lamp shades, the mantelpieces, and the Berger chair. They flutter under her skirt that hangs from a hook at the door, fluffing it up as if with tissue paper. She makes a few halfhearted attempts to shoo them out, flick a towel to direct them toward the open window. She throws her arms up. “Oh, what's the difference? You stay too. Invite the entire insect and animal kingdom if you must.”

Three raps on the door send her heart into panic. Did she hear thumping boots, the click of a pistol? It took the bastards long enough to find her. Well, here they are, at last. She walks to the door and opens it as wide as a welcome.

Avram stands there, offering her an apologetic smile. His soldier's coat is the color of mud, the frayed collar pulled up to conceal his pale face, cap shading his eyes. The thought occurs to her that despite all the hardships he suffered, his green-flecked eyes have retained some of their spark.

“I want to be with you,” he says. “Hide with you in the palace.”

“If you want to,” she says, “but you'll miss fighting for whatever you believe in.”