The Last Tsar (49 page)

“So that I can walk in at any moment and see what is going on.”

Volkov tried to object: “How can you … they are young girls, after all.”

They had grown up before his very eyes, and he had always looked forward to seeing them marry. He had always tried to guess
which king they would wed. And here—the former grand duchesses were now to sleep with their doors open at night.

“If my order is not carried out, I have the authority to shoot them on the spot.” The policeman-revolutionary was enjoying himself.

His time would come. The spirit of the timeless Russian institution would triumph.

Meanwhile the rivers opened up and Alexei began to recuperate.

Olga reported in one of her last letters from Tobolsk:

“Little One is better. But still in bed. As soon as he is better we shall join our people. You, dear heart, understand how hard it is. It’s grown lighter. But there is no green yet at all. The Irtysh is running as far as Strastnoi. Summer weather.… God be with you, my dear.”

At Easter the Tobolsk Soviet learned that during the procession Archbishop Hermogen, having pronounced anathema on the Bolsheviks, intended to take his parishioners to the governor’s house and free Alexei.

(Was this another ruse of the Soviet, to obtain grounds for handing the family over sooner to Ekaterinburg? Or had the pastor indeed decided to do as the dowager empress had written? Just as three hundred years before his namesake had dreamed of driving out the Poles, had he conceived a wish to drive the Bolsheviks out of town?)

The Cheka took steps: during the procession, Chekists intermingled with the parishioners. A heat wave had descended on Tobolsk, much in advance of any expected date. The sun beat down mercilessly, and the parishioners—none of them young—gradually abandoned the procession. As the believers drifted off, the Chekists pressed closer and closer to the archbishop.

Finally they surrounded—and arrested—him.

“Then I took him out to the middle of the river and we tied on iron gratings [from stoves]. I pushed him into the river. I myself saw him go to the bottom.” Thus, according to the Chekist Mikhail Medvedev, Pavel Khokhryakov told him what happened.

Finally the day of departure arrived.

They took the endless Romanov suitcases on the steamer
Russia—
the same one that had carried them to Tobolsk. Now it was carrying them back—to Tyumen, to the train.

A motley crowd boarded the steamer—the suite, the people, and the guard. They were assigned cabins.

Rodionov’s strange whims continued on the
Russia
. He shut Alexei and his companion Nagorny into his own cabin for the night.

The doors of the former grand duchesses were opened, however. They were strictly, most strictly, forbidden to lock their doors at night. Guards were posted at their doors. Merry sharpshooters by the girls’ open cabin doors.

Tegleva (from her statement to Inspector Sokolov):

“On the steamer Rodionov forbade the duchesses to lock their cabin at night, but Alexei and Nagorny were locked in from the outside. Nagorny even made a scene: ‘What effrontery! A sick boy! He can’t even go out to the washroom.’ All in all he was valiant with Rodionov and predicted his own fate.”

The
Russia
sailed merrily on, although the revolutionary soldiers’ behavior rather shocked the old soldier Volkov. The Red Guards fired their rifles at passing birds. They also fired machine guns.

Seagulls fell, machine guns chattered: the lads were having a fine time—freedom! Thus, in the second year after the birth of the revolution, to chaotic firing, past quieted banks, sailed this insane, this crazy steamer called the
Russia
.

From a letter of Alexei Saltykov in Kiev:

“I read your story about Ekaterinburg [one of my articles in
Ogonyok
]. I read it in two sittings—my heart was so weary from all those horrors.… I want to inform you, true, I do not know whether all this is so, but you can verify it. In our house there lived an old man, a soldier from the Red Guards, Uncle Lyosha Chuvyrin, or Chuvyrev.… He died in 1962, at the latest. He used to say that as a young man he was on the steamer from Tobolsk with the tsar’s children. He was a sentry when they were moved. He said something that I don’t even know whether it’s worth writing. The grand duchesses had to spend the night in open cabins and at night the sharpshooters got the idea of going in to them. He always told the end to this story differently: either someone forbade them, or they passed out drunk first.… Whether he wasn’t telling everything or was simply bragging, I don’t know.”

Oh well, the young sharpshooters liked to brag. The young Red sharpshooters.

Might this be our “spy”?

I keep thinking about him.

——

Four charming girls in captivity. And this man. Quite young. After all the filth, all the reprisals against the peasants, the cellars of the Cheka, these pure, enchanting young girls. The coquettish Anastasia. She must certainly have liked him. And Lukoyanov? Just as the iron revolutionary-comrade Maratov would be expected—Tatiana, of course, who hated the revolution. The proudest and most beautiful. He tried to run into her in the hall. And her majestic, contemptuous look.

The story developed. They were good, ordinary young girls living in an ordinary girlish world. The strange young carpenter with his student coat and intellectual face, of course he could not have been missed among the jolly, fat-faced sharpshooters. Anastasia, “good, marvelous Tiutka,” teased her older sister for being sympathetic to the “horrible revolutionary.”

He made a board for Alexei (planing it neatly), which was put on the sick boy’s bed. Alexei ate, read, and wrote at this board, using it as a table.

They would take this board to Ekaterinburg, and it would remain standing in the room when the boy was gone.

The “spy.” No, no, he had carried out his mission. He had not let himself go. For him they remained “the tyrant’s daughters.” He conquered himself!

They sailed away from Tobolsk on this insane steamer with the Red Guards firing at birds, with the bleeding heir. With the suite, which was already awaited at the Ekaterinburg Cheka. Oh, our bitter, bitter revolution. On the ship Lukoyanov overheard the sharpshooters from the detachment agreeing to make mischief with the tsar’s daughters. What did he care about a tyrant’s daughters when thousands of soldiers, torn away once from hearth and home, were being drained of their male strength and daily committing terrible excesses? Nonetheless, at the last moment he could not resist: he ordered Rodionov to forbid the sharpshooters. He closed the cabin door for the night.

In Tyumen a special train awaited them. The girls, Alexei, his companion Nagorny, former Adjutant General Tatishchev, the old court reader Schneider, and the lady-in-waiting Countess Gendrikova, were put in a second-class car.

All the rest—the tutors Gilliard and Gibbes; the tsar’s lackey Trupp; the parlormaid Tutelberg; Countess Buxhoeveden; the nurse
Tegleva and her helper Ersberg; the cook Kharitonov; the kitchen boy Leonid Sednev, Alexei’s friend; and others—in a fourth-class car. The train arrived in Ekaterinburg on the night of May 21–22.

The train immediately moved onto a siding. It was drizzling, and the lamps barely shone.

Nicholas’s diary:

“9 [22] May. We still do not know where the children are or when they shall arrive? Tiresome uncertainty….

“10 [23] May. This morning for an hour they announced first that the children were a few hours from town, then that they had arrived at the station, and finally, that they had arrived at the house, although their train had been here since 2 in the morning.”

In the morning droshkies were brought up to the train. Those sitting in fourth class were forbidden to get out. Gilliard and Volkov watched out the window.

The grand duchesses themselves dragged their suitcases through the drizzling rain, their feet swallowed up by the mud. Tatiana brought up the rear, making sure no one dropped behind. She truly felt like the eldest, dragging her two suitcases and her little dog.

Then Nagorny quickly bore the heir past the train car to the droshky. He wanted to go help the duchesses carry their suitcases, but he was pushed back: they must carry them themselves! Nagorny could not restrain himself and said something. Another mistake for the former sailor: the new authority did not brook insult. The authority was nervous. And touchy. The only payment recognized now was a life, which is what people paid for an incautious word, too. It may have been Upper Isetsk Commissar Peter Ermakov himself whom he replied to. In any event, within a few days poor Nagorny would be taken away.

In the 1930s, by a Pioneer campfire, the former commissar, Comrade Peter Ermakov, would tell the young Pioneers how in the Cheka he had shot “a tsarist lackey—the former heir’s companion.”

Nicholas’s diary:

“10 [23] May [continued].… Great joy to see them again and embrace them after four weeks of separation and uncertainty. No
end to the mutual questions and answers, the poor things endured much moral suffering in Tobolsk and during their three-day journey.”

While Nicholas was greeting his children, his people and suite were led out of the train cars—Tatishchev, Countess Gendrikova, Volkov, Sednev, Kharitonov, the lady-in-waiting, the nurses, and so on—and put into droshkies.

Volkov later recounted:

“Rodionov walked up to the car: ‘Get out. We’re going now.’

“I got out, grabbing a large tin of jam, but they told me to leave the tin behind. I never did get that tin.” He survived so much—and forgot it all! But he did not forget that tin of jam.

The droshkies set out. In the first sat the head of the Red Urals himself, Alexander Beloborodov.

The droshkies drove through Ekaterinburg.

But what about Volkov?

The old servant outlived his masters: shortly afterward he was moved from one prison to another. When the Whites took Ekaterinburg, he was already in a prison in Perm.

One day he was called into the prison office with his things. There he saw his old acquaintances from Tsarskoe Selo—the young Countess Gendrikova and the old lady Schneider. They made up a group of eleven people—all “formers”—and they were led away from that prison and told they were being taken to a transfer prison and then to Moscow.

Oh that “to Moscow.” We shall see more than once what that meant.

They walked for a long time, and old Schneider could barely move her feet. She was carrying a handbasket, which Volkov took from her. In it were two wooden spoons and some bits of bread—the entire worldly goods of the teacher of two empresses.

They passed through the town and came out onto a highway. Their escorts became very polite and offered to help carry suitcases. It was already nighttime, and obviously they had already been thinking ahead—they did not want to be splitting up the loot in the darkness. That was when Volkov understood. He made a leap into the darkness and ran. Lazy shots rang out in pursuit, but he ran and ran … and got away, the old soldier Volkov.

His acquaintances from Tsarskoe Selo—young Countess Gendrikova and the old court reader Ekaterina Schneider—were destroyed. The Whites later found their corpses. The enchanting Nastenka
had a crushed skull—she had been struck with a rifle butt. They had not wanted to waste a bullet.

Nicholas’s diary:

“10 [23] May [continued].… Of all those who arrived they only let the cook Kharitonov and Sednev go. We waited until night for them to bring the beds and necessary things from the station.… The girls had to sleep on the floor. Alexei spent the night on Marie’s cot, in the evening he had bruised his knee, as if on purpose, and suffered terribly all night.”

Thus on his first day in the Ipatiev house the boy was taken to his bed. He would not get up until his very last.

Meanwhile, Gilliard, Gibbes, Baroness Buxhoeveden, and Liza Ersberg spent the night in the train car on a siding. Thousands of homeless gathered here in heated cargo vans. Why were they spared? Some were saved by their German surnames. After all, there was the Treaty of Brest with the Germans. Others—Gilliard and Gibbes—were also foreign born.

But why did they spare Tegleva?

She was on fond terms with the Swiss Gilliard, and evidently whoever spared her knew that. Yes, I think this is again our “spy.” Naturally, knowing French, he must have made friends in Tobolsk with the talkative Swiss. So he decided not to break up the couple. But enough of conjectures.

In a heated cargo van, amid thousands of sacks, in a mass of humanity, were these remnants of the court.

The strange Gilliard, loyal to the Russian tsar, kept trying to obtain permission to return to the family. But they repeated: “Your services are no longer needed.” Gilliard appealed to the English consul, who explained that for the good of all those arrested it was better not to attempt anything. The favorite explanation of foreigners when they are afraid to intervene in Russian affairs.

At night a locomotive was coupled to their van, and the car with the court remnants was pulled out of Ekaterinburg to Tyumen. The Ekaterinburg Cheka was toying with them. After the Whites freed him, Gilliard would return to Switzerland, where he would marry Tegleva.

Nicholas’s diary:

“12 [25] May.… The children sorted out some of their things after an incredibly lengthy inspection in the commandant’s room.”

So the family had arrived. As had the “medicines.”

The jewels were in cases. They were also on the hands, ears, and necks of the Romanov women. Jewels “created by the people’s labor, sweat, and blood.” Now they had only to be taken away and put back into the hands of the people. From that moment events began to speed up.

Nicholas’s diary:

“13 [26] May. We slept well, except Alexei, whose pains continued.… Like every day of late. V. Derevenko came to examine Alexei. Today he was accompanied by a dark gentleman, whom we identified as a doctor.”

The “dark gentleman” who appeared that day in the family’s room and whom they “identified as a doctor” was the Chekist Comrade Yakov Yurovsky.