Parts of this chapter were inspired by a book I will only mention in the endnotes so as not to spoil.
Trigger warnings at the end too.
The Kodak Brownie camera was like a black or dark brown box that was not as big or hard to use as previous cameras (It wasn't as small as a modern camera can be but it could be held in one hand). It was first released in 1900 and it was relatively easy to use for non-photographers all over the world. The Romanov children and their family were big fans.
St. Petersburg. March, 1907.
While hardly the best of students, Father Boris Borisovich Popov can see that Dmitri Ivanovich Sudayev is a smart boy, a smart boy who simply has trouble reading and writing.
The child understands everything he is told. When left to his own devices instead of being forced to follow the exact same procedures the arithmetic teacher has instructed his students to use, Dmitri can multiply, divide, and do sums and subtractions better than most children from upper grades. He can memorize dates, names, and facts without a problem. He can understand complex concepts, explain them, and speak about them in a clear and concise manner. He just can not put these things on paper without taking hours to do so, or without making an excessive amount of mistakes in the process, and he would not be able to put anything on paper at all if it weren't for the extra time Father Boris has made him spend practicing almost daily after classes.
The priest thought he could mold Dmitri into a good student by simply helping him learn how to read and write, but his efforts have somehow had almost the opposite effect.
The Orphanage of St. Paul is divided into two main areas, one for children from the ages of five to fourteen, and a nursery for newborns, babies, toddlers, and other children under five. Likewise, older boys and girls have different dormitories and bathrooms, and occasionally different classes too, especially as they grow older. When the Sudayev siblings arrived at the orphanage, they were naturally split apart.
Dmitri did not take this lightly. That was his baby sister they were taking away from him. He wanted to be able to see her whenever he pleased in order to make sure she was alright. The orphanage had, and still has, strict rules, however, and the only way for Dmitri to visit his sister was to get a special permit from management after having requested one from a warden.
Obtaining this permit would prove tricky for the precocious Dmitri, as he was quickly on bad terms with all of the institution's teachers, wardens, nuns, priests, and prefects. When he arrived, he simply had no filter. Whatever crossed his mind, he openly said out loud, and he thought little of the God who had allowed most of his family to die before depriving him of his father and uncle.
Then there was also the fact Dmitri couldn't stop talking about his freedom-fighting father and how much he admired him. This inevitably caused the boy to get into lengthy debates with the teachers who dared to insult his precious papa, as well as physical fights with the students doing the same. On one occasion, he even went as far as throwing rocks at the chief warden's office windows. Father Andrei's offense had simply been stating the fact that according to the laws of the Russian Empire, Ivan was nothing but a criminal.
As it was to be expected due to his consistently bad behavior, none of the permits the child requested were ever granted, but Dmitri was smart. He is smart. Father Boris doesn't know exactly how, but the boy found a way to falsify a permit. The nun who received the deceitful document and thus allowed Dmitri to see his sister for the first time since Christmas later swore that it had looked exactly the same as an authentic permit would have. The piece of paper had been cut the right way, sealed the right way, and even the difficult signature belonging to warden Igor Ruslanovich had been duplicated with tremendous accuracy.
Yes. Dmitri is clever. He is among the smartest boys Father Boris has ever met, but Father Boris doesn't tend to like the smartest boys, or even the best of students. He never has.
The smartest boys can misuse their intelligence. Dmitri's grades have not yet improved. In fact, he may have to repeat the year. He has used his intelligence not to better himself but to steal documents from the chief warden's office and con his way out of needing to rectify his appalling behavior. He does not have the patience to copy what he needs to copy from the blackboard, to learn his letters and numbers, or to write down the arithmetic procedures he is using when answering tests in a legible manner, but he has more than enough patience to sit down for hours with pen, ink, and a magnifying glass at hand just to be fully certain that a fake document contains the necessary letters, signatures, and seals to pass as authentic, this despite the difficulties doing so presents to him.
The smartest boys take pride in their ability to remember the answers. Dmitri can remember any answer he sets himself to remember. Father Boris does not want his students merely to remember the answers. He wants them to find the truth.
The smartest boys tend to question the will of God. Dmitri not only questions God's will, but he is also capable of defending his position by using witty mockery disguised as argumentation. He is starting to corrupt the other students as well.
"God has killed more people than the devil!" He exclaimed when Father Boris told his students the story of the flood.
"Why didn't Jesus use His God magic to heal everyone in the world instead of doing so one by one?" He asked when Father Boris told his religion class the story of Jesus healing the blind man. "Why doesn't He heal everyone now?"
"Why did God kill all of Egypt's first-born children instead of killing the evil pharaoh?" He asked after Father Boris finished telling the story of the exodus. "And why is the Tsar His anointed one now when he is as bad as the pharaoh?"
"Why is He so jealous? I thought that was a sin", Dmitri pointed out when the class was taught about the Ten Commandments.
To that question, Father Boris replied that envy is when you want to steal that which rightfully belongs to someone else, while jealousy is when you guard what is yours from those who wish to take it. God is entitled to jealously guard the devotion of His people the same way the Tsar is entitled to the loyalty of his subjects. Thieves and troublemakers such as Dmitri's father, on the other hand, are behaving themselves in an envious and wicked manner by stealing and trying to steal that which does not belong to them.
Dmitri didn't like this answer, and Father Boris was not surprised. "The Tsar cannot be entitled to anything if God does not exist", is what the boy replied. "God is supposed to have anointed the Tsar, is He not?"
The debate continued till the end of the class.
There is a difference, Father Boris thinks, between memorizing facts by heart or outwitting your elders, and truly understanding the truth. Too often the best and smartest students confuse these skills. That is why small children can oftentimes see the truth in ways that learned scholars can't. But Dmitri is not an ordinary child. Not only is he gifted, but he was also raised by a dangerous, dangerous man. Not necessarily a bad man, perhaps even a good one, but still a dangerous one, with ideas just as dangerous.
Father Boris cares for the boy nonetheless, and he has vowed to turn him into a proper little Christian, as well as a good and loyal subject of the Tsar, perhaps the best of the best. That doesn't mean he enjoys having him as a pupil though.
The ordinary students appeal to Father Boris much more. Most children can not remember dates, procedures, and facts quite as easily, so they are forced to compensate by making an effort to understand. The smartest children develop an arrogant pride in themselves that the priest considers most unpleasant to deal with. This pride and unearned confidence furthermore leads the rest of the students astray.
Smart students like Dmitri have a conceited view of themselves. Father Boris has noticed that the child confuses his good memory with intelligence, which he does admittedly possess as well. Because of this, every time Dmitri is asked a question to which he gives the correct answer, he seems to conclude that there is little left for him to learn and much to teach.
Dmitri Ivanovich Sudayev will know the right answer to any question as long as the topic has been previously examined during class, and Father Boris finds the manner in which he often responds quite insolent, especially when the previous student has failed to do so accurately. It has been hard to make Dmitri understand that the smirks and brash stares he directs at his classmates can be hurtful and belittling, but the educator will keep trying. He already suspects that all the bragging about the things that come easy to him is a way for the boy to drive attention away from that which he is insecure about. Reading and writing.
Father Boris is preparing for yet another weekly religion lesson, another lesson during which he will have to deal with Dmitri. He has just entered the classroom, a quadrangular space painted light yellow where three dozen students, both boys and girls, sit on wooden seats arranged in neat rows, laying their heads or arms on the desks before them.
When the students become aware of their teacher's presence, they immediately straighten up and look forward towards the blackboard.
They are all wearing second-hand clothes donated by wealthy benefactors, but few have any that properly fit them. There are simply way too many abandoned and orphaned children for such an underfunded institution, more now than ever before following Russia's disastrous war with Japan and subsequent disorders and economic crisis. Millions of fathers died in the Far East, and thousands of mothers and fathers were sent there or fell victim to Stolypin's necktie as a result of their involvement in the 1905 uprisings, that is if they were not killed during skirmishes, plagues, and terrorist attacks, or executed without trial, so in this, the little Dmitri is not alone. Many other parents have dropped off their children because they simply cannot afford to feed them any longer. Desperate single mothers have always existed as well. The institution is, all in all, increasingly and hopelessly overcrowded.
There are no doctors except for those brought from the closest hospital when a child is already dangerously ill. The numerous tall bunk beds have no mattresses or pillows, only old thin blankets that barely keep out the cold and that the children are made to wash just once a month. The pipes of the bathroom are old and only produce freezing water, the faucets are rusting, and the toilets are barely ever cleaned. This is also the children's responsibility, but they never have enough soap to both bathe and clean.
The food is not too scarce, but it is objectively bad. The children live on canned stew and hard bread that is only edible when dipped in water. This is enough to keep them alive and relatively healthy, but not enough to make those who arrive undernourished gain weight quickly enough. Dmitri arrived so thin that many of his bones were visible through his skin. His condition has improved somewhat, but he is still among the thinnest children his age in the orphanage.
The older children, not left sated by their meals, often steal them from the younger children under threats of violence. Dmitri doesn't really have this problem, because he tends to eat or hide his food really fast. If anything, Father Boris saw him steal from an older boy's bag on one occasion in a rather sneaky way. He didn't scold Dmitri for that, as the older boy was known to have frequently done the same.
To make matters worse, the staff of the orphanage has grown so disillusioned with their poor salaries and the lack of resources they have to work with that many of them take out their pent-up frustration on the children. Even the nuns and the other priests do so. It is not always evident to see, as the beatings are, it can be as relatively harmless as a scream, as inconsequential as eye-rolling or grimacing, but Father Boris knows what this means to a young, impressionable child. You do not really matter to me. Don't count on my help. I am not your mother or father.
The school is the only element of the orphanage that is relatively well-funded, if one ignores the scarcity of books and utensils, and the little the teachers have to work with is mostly owed to the monthly donations sent by the parish of Father Boris's son. By the age of eight, the children start learning a trade, and the orphanage begins procuring apprenticeships for them. The lucky girls end up working as maids in nice homes by the age of fifteen. The least so tend to impulsively marry the first older gentlemen of means catching sight of them, all in order to escape the poor conditions of the orphanage. It breaks Boris's heart, as he firmly believes that the holy sacrament of matrimony should not be taken as lightly, especially not at such a young and vulnerable age. It should also, at least preferably, be for love. The boys tend to go work at small shops, factories, restaurants, or hotels, but there are a few who sadly fall victim to a life of criminality after leaving or even escaping the institution.
The priest intends to make the most of the precarious situation. The unfortunate children depend on him.
He begins talking about Xenia of St. Petersburg, a woman who, according to tradition, gave all her possessions to the poor after her husband died. For 45 years she wandered through the streets of St. Petersburg, destitute and homeless, and usually wearing her late husband's military uniform. Father Boros believes that she may become a saint someday as St. Seraphim of Saratov did.
"Wasn't she insane?" Dmitri asks loudly without raising his hand. The children around him laugh. He is lucky he arrived recently enough to still have clothes that fit him.
"No, Dmitri", Father Boris replies calmly, having grown used to his comments. "Xenia of St. Petersburg was a fool for Christ, that is what we call it when someone acts intentionally foolish in the eyes of men for the sake of God. This behavior is caused neither by mistake nor by feeble-mindedness. It is deliberately irritating."
"Like mine?"
The laughter reverberates even louder throughout the classroom, and Father Boris allows himself to smile for a moment.
"No", he says. "A Holy Fool is an almost perfect person in the eyes of God, but they take up the guise of insanity in order to conceal this and thus avoid praise. It is an act of humility."
Dmitri decides to raise his hand for once. "Why doesn't the Tsar sell or give away all of his possessions like Xenia did if that is such a great thing to do?"
"That is actually a very, very good question, Dmitri", Father Boris decides to ignore his irreverent tone. "It is true that in Luke 18:22 Jesus called on the rich young ruler to give away everything, but the command to the rich young ruler was not a command to all His followers. In many instances, Jesus commends those who give away fewer portions of their wealth. Zacchaeus is praised for giving away half of his riches to the poor, Barnabas was admired as a son of encouragement in the early church, and though he gave away a field that belonged to him, it is not said that he gave everything.
"Lastly, in Corinthians, Paul instructed the faithful to put something aside for the poor, not everything, just more for those who earn more, less for those who earn less. Put something aside, God knows your heart."
"The Tsar puts nothing aside", Dmitri asserts with zeal. "Papa says he has a palace in his train while the poor work every day for tiny flats that don't even belong to them."
The other children keep silent. Many of them, if they remember their parents, relate to having seen them struggle. A few even lost their parents as a direct consequence of the Tsar's actions, several of which Father Boris himself feels ambivalent about. He needs to deal with this carefully.
"And how would you know that, Dmitri?" Father Boris settles on asking. "Have you met the Tsar?"
"Papa has", the boy replies.
"Perhaps he didn't tell your father about what he has put aside. That is between God and the heart of each person, but it is known among the well-informed on such matters that the Tsar does finance a great number of charities, and when the ungodly socialists led those poor workers to the slaughter by making them walk like a huge, angry mob towards the Winter Palace, the Tsar gave a generous pension to those who were shot by the soldiers defending his properties."
"You are a liar!" Dmitri cries, making the other children gasp. It is not safe to call the teachers or wardens liars. If it were any other but Father Boris, they would have already taken out their belts, shoes, rulers, or wooden sticks. "My papa and I went to ask the Tsar for help, but he had his soldiers shoot at us because he was so stupid, and he didn't give us anything afterward!"
"You are mistaken, child", Father Boris says softly yet firmly, noticing that the boy's eyes have filled with tears that he is struggling to hold back. "You may want to ask your father about what happened to the pension if you ever see him again. He might have spent it helping his little anarchist friends make bombs or print blasphemous books."
Dmitri doesn't reply, he just wipes his tears before they fall and gives his teacher the meanest glare he has ever conjured. None of that is true, it is not, but he dislikes, in particular, the way Father Boris just said "if you ever see him again" when referring to his papa, because he will see him again, he has to. He can't stand it any longer…
"All of this reminds me of another story", Father Boris continues, walking between the rows of desks and ignoring Dmitri's death stare. "In John 12:3, Mary of Bethany took a very expensive bottle of perfume and poured it on Jesus's feet. The man who would betray Jesus was there, he was named Judas Iscariot, and he asked why the perfume hadn't been instead sold and the money given to the poor. Does anyone know what Jesus replied?"
The priest pauses, hoping that someone other than Dmitri will participate, but his hopes are immediately crushed when the boy replies, yet again, without raising his hand.
"Jesus said 'you will not always have me, but the poor will always be with you because there will always be a Tsar to keep them poor'", Dmitri jokes, grinning triumphally. His earlier urge to cry is completely gone.
The other children burst into laughter after hearing this clever remark.
Dmitri has the quick wit and talent required to turn any teacher's serious question into a punchline. The five, six, and seven-year-old boys tend to look up to him as their leader despite his short and skinny frame, but Father Boris knows that most of his so-called friendships are fleeting, superficial, and based on convenience, useful mainly to prevent boredom and to have someone do his homework in exchange for stolen chunks of bread. He can play with them one day and withdraw the next one, usually to cry alone and without anyone noticing. His temper can get the best of him as well, causing him to get into bloody fights with his provisional "pals" and then cease to talk to them for weeks. Someone always ends up getting hurt, and there is no doctor in the orphanage to give the children ice to put on their swollen eyes and bleeding lips. At least he is starting to learn, slowly but surely, to keep his mouth shut and avoid trouble around older students and staff, though not for the reasons Father Boris would prefer.
The priest can scarcely fault the children for their many sins. From the age of seven onwards, they are all made to come to him for confession once a week, so he knows that their anger and raucous behavior comes from years of grudges and despondency, and Dmitri is no exception.
When the laughter in the classroom subsides, Father Boris looks at the boy and states simply: "Your answer is incorrect."
Dmitri's smirk disappears. He is still angry at the priest for having dared to insult his father.
"Your answer is incorrect", Father Boris repeats, "because we will not always have a Tsar."
The children gasp audibly before breaking into whispers of surprise. Even Dmitri's mouth remains open for a few seconds. Has Father Boris become a revolutionary? Has he secretly been all of this time?
It is difficult to believe considering how he speaks about Dmitri's brave father, but if any of the grown-ups at the orphanage were working for the revolution, that would probably be Father Boris.
When Dmitri attended his first class the morning following his and Sophia's arrival, he was tired after having spent the previous night weeping, heartbroken over Valentina's abandonment, missing his father, worried about his sister, and in no mood to attempt and inevitably fail to write anything. The Russian language teacher, Mr. Andreev, was far from understanding, and as punishment for the boy's lack of attention and obedience, he made him walk up to the front desk and put his hand on the surface before striking him hard with his steel ruler five times. That was the first time Dmitri had been hit by an adult, and the brutal nature of the punishment took him by surprise. Before he was able to remember that there were dozens of eyes staring at him, he burst into tears and screamed like a baby.
Over the course of the next few months Dmitri would learn the true meaning of pain. He now doubts that working at a factory could be any worse.
The wardens hit at the slightest provocation. Being late for a meal, taking too much time to wake up or in the shower, and even using tones or expressions arbitrarily deemed disrespectful are considered serious enough transgressions for any unfortunate orphan to be beaten senseless.
Dmitri has undergone punishment for these and even lesser offenses. He has welts on his arms, legs, and buttocks that hurt when he moves or sits, most of them obtained through warden Igor Ruslanovich's favorite rod, which can draw blood if Dmitri is made to pull down his trousers or take his coat and shirt off before the beating.
The boy no longer fears crying out in pain in front of other children, not like he does crying in front of them over other things, particularly missing his father. Everyone cries in pain when faced with the horrid canes used by the staff.
What he does dread is the suffering those sticks elicit when striking his bare skin, as well as their sound, which he has come to be haunted by every night.
He worries that they will beat everything his father stands up for out of him too. That is why during the few first weeks, Dmitri would boldly challenge any and all authority he deemed to be acting unfairly towards others, both the older kids bullying the little ones and the grown-ups hitting everyone under their charge over the tiniest things. After Mr. Andreev hit his hand, Dmitri took the ruler and tried hitting him back. This only earned him five more strikes. When he was first told he would be caned for a prank, he fought back against the older boy who had been tasked with administering the punishment.
For months, Dmitri would calmly measure the cost of any words or acts of rebellion he wished to say or partake in and then endure the subsequent punishments bravely, like his father.
The situation has changed. Dmitri is starting to give up. Being caned hurts way more when he already has fresh bruises and cuts, visiting Sophia ended up with him bleeding, sore, feverish, and bedridden for a week, and all he wants right now is for the pain to stop, for his papa to come and save him and teach all of those mean people a lesson, maybe kill them too. He idolizes him so much still that he has started hating the world with a burning passion.
No one acts the way papa said they should. No one.
Adults don't treat all children the same. They care more about their own children, so much so that they are willing to hurt other people's children for the sake of their own.
Everyone takes orders from someone else if they are thought to be "better", because there are, apparently, "better" and "worse" people in the real world, or at least everyone seems to think there are. "Better" can really mean anything, taller, bigger, older, richer, or even more rude, like the older kids who rule over the boys' dormitories. It can sometimes mean having a name and a uniform that makes all others obey anything you say, like "policeman", or "officer", or "warden."
Papa said that no one could force him to do anything he didn't want just because they were more powerful or better, but that is not true. They do, they do force him all the time. He has to wake up early, go to class, wash the bathroom, clean the tables and floors, and do his stupid homework or they will beat him. The only rest the boy has had since he arrived was around Christmas time, when the lessons ceased and the staff became slightly less strict with the rules. He got to sleep and play a bit more, and he was allowed a short, impromptu visit to his sister, without a permit, as all the children, big and small, would later get to celebrate Christmas together anyway. Something similar won't happen during the upcoming Holy Week though. Dmitri has already been told that Father Andrei is cruelly punishing him for having dared to see Sophia earlier without permission.
So few people Dmitri knows hate the Tsar and his soldiers despite all the bad things they have done. So many hate his papa, who only wants everything to be fair. And even his papa wanted to look nice for the Tsar the day he went to meet him… but why? The little boy has trouble reconciling the brutal hierarchized society he lives in with the dream his father is fighting for. They are just so different.
Poor papa, the child thinks, he and his valiant friends are going to have to fight so hard when he gets out.
Father Boris doesn't hit the children. Dmitri has never seen him do so. That is why the boy doesn't hold back his jokes and opinions around the elder. That is why he now wonders if his religion teacher is secretly a revolutionary who believes in fairness like his father, who once said that some anarchists work undercover.
Likewise, Dmitri has listened in to the priest arguing with the chief warden and objecting to the brutal beatings inflicted upon the children of the orphanage, this without much success. So… could it be?
Indeed, Father Boris does not think that such demonic violence is going to lead the children to the truth of God's love. He knows that Dmitri had a bad experience with the previous priest who taught him. While not violent or abusive, that man was humorless, overly strict, and lacking the Holy Spirit's gifts of joy and patience. This has left the child with the wrong impression of God, further than ever from the truth. The priest does not want this to happen to the other children.
Some of the brutal punishments used by the staff are in fact illegal now, and Father Boris has made this known to them several times. Horrendous rod beatings used to be very common in schools, especially gymnasiums. Few balanced children emerged from that abused flock.
The institution's staff have hardly felt moved or threatened by these facts though, and he can sadly see why. They are not afraid of being reported by the meek priest who always looks for peaceful solutions first, and in the unlikely event that the orphanage were to be penalized by the government for the mistreatment of a few unwanted and destitute children, some of them offspring of criminals and revolutionaries, it is the unfortunate orphans themselves who would suffer the most. They would be simply sent to similar or worse underfunded institutions, overcrowding them even more. Many others would have to fend for themselves, seek dangerous factory jobs, or worse. Remaining silent is thus the lesser evil.
But though Father Boris does not want his pupils to be beaten, he does want them to love God, and he wants them to obey their teachers for the correct reasons, not out of fear. He wants them to understand what the importance of hard work and obedience is.
"What do you mean, Father Boris?" A boy in the classroom raises his hand, for once not Dmitri. "Why will we not always have a Tsar?"
"Ah, I have caught your interest!" Father Boris turns to look at the child, touching his long white beard with delight, as well as the cross hanging over his neck. "Does anyone here know the story of the Sibylline Oracles?"
Father Boris looks around the classroom, and when he receives no answer after a few seconds, he approaches Dmitri again. "You boy, who seems to know everything, do you know the story of the Sibylline Oracles?"
"What are the Sibylline Oracles?" Dmitri frowns, looking confused for the very first time since Father Boris met him.
"You answer a question with a question?" Father Boris challenges him, intent on teaching him a lesson on humility. "I asked a question first. Do you know the answer, Dmitri?"
"No", the dark-haired boy replies sourly, with contempt, almost belligerently, and clearly resentful of the old man's insistence that he should acknowledge his limitations. He may not hate him as much as the teachers who hit him, but he does hate him.
"No", Father Boris nods. "Remembering is not the same as understanding, Dmitri, and understanding is the key to knowing God and making yourself better than your circumstances, remember that the next time you feel tempted to boast about your good memory to the students who lack similar abilities."
"I hate you", Dmitri snarls under his breath. We make ourselves better than our circumstances, that is what his papa says. Dmitri told Father Boris about this once during confession, and now Father Boris is mocking him.
But the truth is that the priest wasn't trying to mock the child. He was trying to motivate him by bringing his beloved father's words to his attention. While Ivan is undeniably a criminal troublemaker, he is still the person the boy loves and looks up to the most. It would be good for Dmitri to follow his good advice, the teacher thinks, rare as it might have been.
"Neither do any of you know the story", Boris says to all of the students now. Being hard of hearing, he failed to take notice of Dmitri's vicious declaration of hate. "It is time for you to know though. This story will be good for you to keep in mind the next time you hear troublemakers like your classmate Dmitri complain about the Tsar, which is bound to happen. The Sibylline Oracles declare the destiny of Russia", the old man remarks ominously, pointing a finger at the ceiling briefly before continuing. "In pagan times, before the birth of our Lord, the Sibyls were prophetesses or oracles that received prophetic visions, either from God or malicious spirits, we simply don't know. What we know is that they often foretold the things to come.
"These oracles were famous all over the world, and many great men, even kings, would come to the Sibyls for aid before making important decisions. The days of these oracles came to an end with the coming of the gospels, of course. Since people could pray to God directly, they were no longer in need of an intermediary. It is, in fact, greatly discouraged by the church to seek knowledge of the future. While it is true that our Lord can work in mysterious ways and reveal the past, the present, and even the future to his children if He so pleases, many evil-doers obtain the power of clairvoyance and fortune-telling through the practice of witchcraft, which is a serious sin."
Dmitri rolls his eyes at the silly things Father Boris is lecturing the class about. He likes stories, even fantastic stories, but serious talks of the supernatural do not impress him anymore.
He spent many months wondering why God hadn't saved Uncle Kostya or Aunt Maria and the baby, wondering if they had done something to provoke the Tsar's wrath and thus God's. He prayed many times, asking for God to give him a clear sign, to talk to him, but He never did. He never had back when Aunt Maria and mama prayed with him either, not that he remembers much except for some happy feelings having more to do with spending time with his mother than anything else. This confused him, because Aunt Maria had often claimed that she spoke to God as if He were a friend.
His first religion teacher, the one at his previous school, told him that God's plans were hidden from the prying eyes of mortals and not to be questioned. This just confused him even more. What would God gain from Aunt Maria's death? What exactly was He planning? When Dmitri asked these questions, the teacher just warned him about hell for the rest of the class, a frightful place full of pain and torture that neither his mama nor Aunt Maria had ever mentioned.
Dmitri did fear hell for a while, a lot, but then his father came to visit with Uncle Ilya one day and casually told him about a book written by a foreign man called Charles Darwin that all the other anarchists were discussing. It explained where all the animals and the little bugs and the pretty birds and the plants and the different people came from.
Everything made sense to Dmitri then. His cousins back in the village often talked about ghosts and spirits as well, but he never saw or heard any. It is better to worry about things that are real, such as men who viciously beat children.
"As Christianity grew, fewer and fewer people kept going to the Sibyls", Father Boris keeps going, "until one day, these oracles disappeared altogether."
"That sucks!" Dmitri exclaims. "They sound much more interesting than church." Some of his classmates laugh for a moment, but others hush him, feeling drawn by the story.
"It would interest you to know then, Dmitri, that before their disappearance, one Sibyl gave a great prophecy about the last days before the return of the Lord", Father Boris says serenely. "At the end of time, the anti-Christ will arise and persecute those faithful to Christ.
"Who is the anti-Christ? And why is he so bad? This you might ask. According to many Bible scholars, he will fool many into following him out of desperation during a time of great crisis and bring about a period of peace and prosperity."
"Yeah, what is so wrong about that?" Asks Dmitri.
Father Boris shakes his head in disapproval before replying. "The answer is in the name. The anti-Christ shall stand against everything our Lord preached, truth, love, compassion, charity, repentance, forgiveness, and temperateness. He will lead his followers to commit all sorts of wickedness instead. He will preach lies, hatred, indifference, selfishness, remorselessness, mercilessness, and debauchery. He will make people see good in evil and evil in good. Many of his opponents and detractors will suffer under his yoke, as well as anyone whose pain or death he and his followers deem necessary for their own satisfaction."
"Like we suffer under the Tsar."
Father Boris ignores the boy's mouth and continues. "We know all of this from the Holy Scripture. What the oracle also foretells, however", he raises his finger for a moment, "is that the forces of the anti-Christ will drive the emperor of Rome from the throne and that the anti-Christ will reign over the city for a time. The emperor will disappear along with those faithful to God, with the exception of a few saints who will be tortured and murdered, becoming martyrs for worshiping the Lord despite the anti-Christ's defacement of the city. There will be rivers of blood flowing through the streets and families turning against each other as the servant of sin persecutes the saints."
A girl raises her hand. "Do you mean Victor Emmanuel III? Would he not be the emperor to disappear when the anti-Christ comes? He is the King of Italy and rules over Rome."
"Ah, dear child!" Father Boris is pleased by his student's display of interest. "You forget that when the original Rome fell to the barbarian Odoacer, who then became the first King of Italy, the Roman Senate sent the imperial insignia to the Easter Roman Emperor Zeno, symbolically bestowing upon Constantinople, the center of Byzantium, the title of second Rome."
"But Constantinople also fell in 1453, did it not?" Another child says.
"Oh, yes", Father Boris nods. "Dark times indeed. The Turks captured the city of Constantinople, renamed it 'Istanbul', and killed the emperor of Rome. The Hagia Sophia Basilica became a mosque for the Muslims and many Christians were martyred for their faith. People thought that the end was near, and based on the calculations of many monks and scholars studying the Bible's book of Revelation, it was determined that the Lord would return in 1492. So certain was everyone of this that the Russian Orthodox Church did not even bother to prepare the calendar for the feasts of that year, but then 1492 arrived… and the Lord did not come."
"What a shock", Dmitri rolls his eyes.
"What did it mean?" Father Boris proceeds dramatically. "How could the world go on when Rome had just fallen? Then the monks and scholars of the church realized what had happened. God had aided the armies of Islam and granted them His favor against Constantinople as punishment for Byzantium's many sins, as well as the emperor's alliance with the papist heretics of the old Rome. The title of Rome had been transferred again, this time to Moscow."
"How could the monks even know that?" Dmitri objects. "What about the right of conquest? Why did the title of Rome not go to the Ottomans? You once said that the Tsars were not land thieves for making Russia become very, very big because the right of conquest had made all the land they took rightfully theirs."
"There was a sign, Dmitri", the priest replies, "for in 1472, the Rurik Moscow ruler Ivan III married the last Byzantine princess, Sofia Paleolog. She brought a throne along to Russia from the Byzantine Eastern Roman Empire, and that is the throne, my dear boy, where Her Imperial Majesty Empress Alexandra Feodorovna sat on during her and her husband's coronation. That is how Moscow became the third Rome and the Grand Duke of Moscow became Tsar, Caesar."
"So who is the anti-Christ?" Dmitri asks again, more for fun than anything else. The right of conquest seems more valid to him than some stupid chair and some stupid princess marrying a ruler from an old dynasty that doesn't even rule Russia anymore. "When is he coming?"
"Later on, some yet again claimed that the end was coming after the Romanov Tsar Alexei I allowed Patriarch Nikon to reform the liturgy, but the Old Believers who split apart from the Russian Orthodox Church for that reason were only superstitious fanatics. They called the Tsar 'anti-Christ', and after that Peter the Great was called 'anti-Christ' for his many reforms, but how could the Lord's anointed be the anti-Christ?"
"Why not? Satan could fool people better that way." What the Tsar's soldiers did to Aunt Maria and her baby, Dmitri reckons, is something that an evil anti-Christ would definitely do.
"No", the priest states firmly. "We still await the coming of the anti-Christ, and we have no way of knowing when exactly he will come. Some scholars say that there will be not one, but many, each defined by a different age and place, each promising different things, what each nation wants to hear, but never the truth. All of them preaching the opposite of love, charity, repentance, mercy, and redemption. What we know is that when one of them arises, the Tsar's reign will end for a time.
"But let's get back to the oracle, the most important thing she ever said. Though the power and evil of the anti-Christ will be so great that he shall slay the Tsar and his family and rule over the streets of the third Rome, making a mockery of God, in the end, the Lord will raise up a new Tsar. It can be safely assumed that this new ruler will be a descendant of the last one, for nothing is impossible for God. He will miraculously save the Tsar's family from complete and total annihilation and protect the precious survivor the way He protected Christ during the massacre of the innocents ordered by the evil King Herod. A protector will be needed to guide the survivor to safety, just as Joseph the Betrothed took the Virgin Mary and the infant Christ to safety in Egypt. That will be no problem, of course, as God can use both the holiest saints and the most unrepentant of sinners to fulfill His purposes", as Father Boris says this, he looks at Dmitri in a strange way that amuses the boy, an intense way, but only for a moment before proceeding. "And so, the descendant of this survivor shall appear from where divine mercy has kept him safe and hidden. According to Sibyl, the true Tsar shall emerge from obscurity and overthrow the reign of anti-Christ before the return of our Lord Jesus. This Tsar shall be the greatest monarch who has ever reigned over the Holy Russian Empire and even the Earth, and he shall establish peace and justice, bring about prosperity, and lead his people to the worship of the true God.
"So, as you see, we shall not always have a Tsar", Father Boris repeats with great emphasis. "Be grateful that we have a Tsar. He may be a wretched sinner like all of you, he might have made many mistakes, some of which have caused you unthinkable harm, little ones, but I assure you, acts of wrathful envy can be much more vicious than those of mere fearful jealousy, and when the Tsar is gone, when the time comes that we do not have him, it will be an even more dreadful time to live."
The children stay silent as they take in the story. Dmitri must admit that he enjoyed it, but he enjoyed it the way he used to enjoy his mother's fairytales. He also enjoyed hearing the stupid Tsar being referred to as a "wretched sinner."
The priest is right about the future overthrow of Bloody Nicholas, but that will not be done by the forces of the anti-Christ. Dmitri's father and his brave anarchist friends will overthrow the Tsar, kill all his mean soldiers and policemen, and put him in jail, and after that there will not be any need for another one to return, because the revolution will create a perfect world where everyone is happy and treated fairly, and no one is better or worse than anyone, and no one can beat or force anyone to do anything, not even homework.
Jesus can stay if He truly does come back. Sometimes Dmitri has trouble remembering whether a famous utterance was said by Jesus or one of papa's anarchist friends anyway.
The children of the Tsar can stay too. His nice papa wouldn't kill them like God killed Egypt's firstborn, which was so very mean… especially not Anastasia, who does pranks on the Tsar.
In the meantime, Dmitri will have fun toying with his teacher. "I liked your story", he says.
"I am very glad to hear that, my boy", Father Boris approaches Dmitri's desk and smiles, looking pleasantly surprised.
"I will remember it", Dmitri adds smugly, putting emphasis on the word 'remember.'
"You would do better to understand its meaning," Father Boris replies with a smile that doesn't leave his face.
The bell rings, signaling the end of the class, and as the children leave, the priest notices that Dmitri is still limping from last week's beating over breaking Father Andrei's windows.
Father Boris looks at the leaving child with sadness and sighs. He still has a long way to go.
God bless you and keep you, Dmitri.
Oo
1906 provided Tsar Nicholas II with an ally who could have saved Imperial Russia and kept the Sibyl's prophecy from ever needing to be fulfilled.
Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin was born to a prominent aristocratic family in 1862, going on to have a rather typical youth for someone of his station. He grew up in the family state and attended a prestigious school with his brother before studying agronomy at St. Petersburg University, an atypical choice for a wealthy aristocrat, as most nobles sought law degrees. Agriculture was Pyotr's real passion though.
At 22, he married a fellow aristocrat by the name of Olga Borisovna von Neidhart, the Empress's maid of honor and the former bride-to-be of his brother Michael, who had been killed in a duel and later avenged by Pyotr himself. The happy couple ended up having five daughters and one son.
After university, Stolypin worked for three years in the Department of Agriculture, and during his fourth year he was appointed leader of the nobility in the city of Kovno, which he governed for thirteen years. While in power, he took an interest in improving the education of the peasants and introducing new crops and technology. The conservative local nobility opposed these efforts by refusing to fund his projects, but since Pyotr had inherited a lot of money from his old aristocratic family, this wasn't a problem for him.
Kovno began to prosper despite the fact it had been considered poor and rebellious before, arousing the fear and jealousy of the other nobles, who tried getting Pyotr in trouble with the government. Instead of being punished, however, Stolypin was assigned another province, Grodno.
When Stolypin arrived, Grodno was a starving province with a shattered economy due to the constant Polish uprisings in the region. Pyotr showed himself to be a skillful manager. He began to fight the Polish insurgents while also reforming agriculture as he had done in Kovno, introducing land reclamation and artificial fertilizers, and changing the main crop to potatoes. Pyotr Arkadyevich also reformed the area's public education system, opening free schools for all of its residents. This caused the nobles to complain about him again, and one in particular to attempt to overthrow him. Stolypin stopped him successfully though, and the man was arrested.
Pyotr achieved economic success for Grodno, but immediately after this, he was promoted to Saratov, not because of his agronomical talents, but due to the unrest in the province, which he had managed to cope with before.
During the height of the 1905 revolution, Pyotr was Governor of Saratov, where the local peasant uprisings were among the most violent. Stolypin managed to suppress these revolts with a minimum loss of life. Often, rather than using shelling, trialless executions, property burnings, and other violent reprisals against the insurgent villages as many different government officials and the so-called "Punitive Expeditions" were doing, Stolypin himself would simply walk into the peasant lodges alone to talk to the rebel leaders and persuade them to have their men lay down their arms. If they surrendered, Stolypin would not even arrest the revolutionaries, but if, on the other hand, they did not comply, he would order his soldiers to kill every last one of them.
Pyotr's experience managing country states and later on as a terrific wartime governor easily earned him a position within the St. Petersburg bureaucracy. In April of 1906, he was made Minister of Internal Affairs of Russia, and merely months later, he would also start serving as Prime Minister of Russia.
Direct, outspoken, brimming with impassioned patriotism, and overwhelming in his physical energy, Stolypin would need to grapple with the fundamental causes of Russia's troubles. A passionate monarchist, he hated the revolutionaries and wished to ruthlessly crush the last outbursts of the revolution. But Stolypin was also a realist who sensed that the monarchy would survive only if the government and the structure of society itself could adapt to the times.
By 1906, the still handsome 44-year-old Stolypin was a big, burly man with dark brown receding hair, elegantly styled beard, and twirled mustache.
No Russian statesman of the era would ever be more admired. Dressed in a frock coat with a watch chain across his chest, he spoke with so much eloquence and sincerity that even his adversaries at the Duma would grow to respect him, and his big, bearlike figure attracted every eye.
In May of 1906, the First Imperial Duma was convened. The existence of anything resembling a parliament was so new and alien to Tsarist Russia that no one involved knew how to behave and everything had to be created almost from scratch, the constitution, the parliament, and the political parties.
The elections were carried out amidst political assassinations, strikes, banditry, and the burning of states belonging to the nobility. The Bolsheviks had advised their followers to boycott the Duma, but this only led to the triumph of the so-called "Constitutional Democrats", also known as Kadets, a party mostly made up of professors, journalists, doctors, and lawyers headed by admirers of the English Constitution.
On April 27, 1906, 10th of May according to the Gregorian calendar, the Dowager Empress, her youngest son Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, his sister Grand Duchess Xenia, and her husband the Grand Duke Alexander escorted the Tsar and the Tsarina from Peterhof to the Winter Palace for the opening of the Duma.
The Tsar received his new parliament at the throne room of the Winter Palace, the same decorous hall where eleven years before he had advised the representatives of the zemstvos to "forget their senseless dreams", a patronizing offense not yet forgotten.
The event did not seem promising. Masses of police and soldiers waited outside at the palace square for the worst to happen. The newly elected deputies, some in their best evening clothes, others wearing simple peasant blouses, stood on one side of the room, several gaping with resentment at the huge throne of crimson and gold and the court officials wearing gold braids over their uniforms and fine attires.
All male Romanovs present were wearing full-dress uniforms, and the females, the Empress and her ladies among them, had been styled in the most elegant formal court dresses.
Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, the Tsar's cousin and brother-in-law through marriage to Grand Duchess Xenia, reckoned that mourning garments would have been more appropriate. Following the unavoidable Te Deum prayer service, Nicky read a short speech, outlining the problems Russia faced. Everyone stood quietly and listened, Alix without ceasing to involuntarily grimace at the men who had, in her eyes, stolen her baby's birthright.
The Dowager Empress and Grand Duke Vladimir had tears in their eyes as well, and Grand Duke Alexander would have even cried had it not been for the apprehension that came over to him when he noticed the burning hatred in the faces of some of the parliamentarians. He thought it would be more prudent of him to be strong, keep his guard up, and watch over his cousin Nicky carefully lest one of them should attempt to come too close to him.
Minnie also sensed that hatred. It was the reason for her tears.
Opposite from the new elected deputies stood the ministers, among them Count Fredericks, a 67-year-old Finno-Russian statesman with a long head and a big mustache who served as Imperial Household Minister, and as such was the man responsible for the administration of the imperial family's personal affairs and living arrangements.
The old man thought of the deputies as a gang of criminals waiting for the signal to throw themselves upon the ministers and cut their throats.
Fredericks was hardly the only one feeling uncomfortable. Count Vladimir Kokovtsov, the Minister of Finance, couldn't help but stare at one of the deputies in particular with suspicion, a man of tall stature, dressed in a worker's blouse and high oiled boots, who examined the throne and those surrounding it with a derisive and insolent air.
"We both seem engrossed in the same spectacle", Stolypin whispered in Kokovtsov's ear. "I even have the feeling that this man might throw a bomb."
Not entirely pessimistic at first, Nicholas read his speech with eagerness, sincerity, and a clear resounding voice, controlling his emotions and concealing his ambivalence.
"I sincerely hope that you will commence your work in an atmosphere of pious diligence, inspired by a sincere desire to justify the confidence of your sovereign and of our great nation", he finished. "May God's blessing be with me and you."
The shouts of "hurrah" were vociferous on the side of the Imperial Council and perfunctory among the parliamentarians of the Duma, the feelings of which were quickly manifested. Scarcely had the hundreds of members taken their seats when they got to work preparing an "Address to the Throne" that to Nicholas's horror demanded universal suffrage, radical land reform, the release of all political prisoners, and the dismissal of ministers appointed by the Tsar in favor of those acceptable to the Duma.
With trembling hands and in a scarcely audible voice, the old and gray-haired Ivan Goremykin, Prime Minister at the time, rejected everything the Duma had requested. There was a moment of complete and tense silence after the aged politician sat down, but this didn't last long.
"Let the executive power bow before the legislative!" A Duma member suddenly leaped to the rostrum. A deadening applause greeted his cry of outrage. More and more speakers followed, each of their attacks on the government more stinging than the last.
When the ministers present rose up and attempted to speak, they were immediately shouted down.
"Retire!" The Duma members screamed. "Retire!"
Nicholas was so appalled by this behavior that he became eager to use it as an excuse to dissolve the Duma. He recognized that the frail senior Goremykin was not going to be able to ride out the upheaval that would inevitably follow dissolution though. It was then that Prime Minister Goremykin was replaced by Stolypin.
Merely two days following his ascension as new Prime Minister, Stolypin locked the doors of the Tauride Palace, where the parliamentary sessions had been held, and posted an imperial decree dissolving the Duma. Refusing to accept this, a number of elected parliamentarians met at a different location and declared that the sessions of the Duma were resumed, encouraging Russians to refuse army recruitment and the payment of taxes until the Duma was restored.
This appeal, however, had little to no effect, as Russians were tired of the violence and economic instability that had been exacerbated by the 1905 revolution.
Sensitive to such forward criticism after years of court protocol dictating how anyone could refer to him and mostly forbidding the raising of any voice in his presence, Nicholas felt wronged and attacked by the clamors of the Duma, and Alexandra felt, of course, wronged on his behalf.
Not only was it a humiliating trial for him to be merely yelled at, but his workload and worries had continued to increase around the time of the creation and subsequent dissolution of the Duma. Even before the Russo-Japanese War and the revolution, Nicholas had already started getting the sense that suffering lay ahead of him, this in no small part due to the prophecies he had become acquainted with through the years, but the hunch grew stronger following these unfortunate events.
"It was not for nothing," he once told Stolypin, "that I was born on the day of Job the Long-suffering."
On another occasion, Nicholas said to his Prime Minister: "I have more than a presentiment that I am destined for terrible trials, and that I shall not be rewarded for them on this earth…
"Nothing that I have undertaken succeeds for me; I have no successes. Man's will is so weak...
"How many times have I applied to myself the words of the holy Job, 'For the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me.'"
Having prayed a little before making one of the many important state decisions of those crucial months of 1906, the Tsar turned to Stolypin and declared:
"Perhaps an atoning sacrifice is necessary for the salvation of Russia. I shall be that sacrifice. May the will of God be done!"
He had used a simple, calm, and even voice, and there had also been a strange mixture of decisiveness and meekness in both his tone and his facial features. He had been unshakeable and passive at the same time, unclear and well-defined; as if he had been expressing, not his own will, but rather bowing to some external power. Providence. Destiny.
Oo
While temporarily back home from his duties as a navy officer in order to care of his son Feodor and his daughter Irina, who had fallen ill with scarlet fever and were in a dangerous state, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhaelovich received word from one of his servants that the crew of his ship "Almaz" had mutinied and was awaiting his return to seize him as a hostage.
"I am very sorry, Sandro, but under these circumstances, you will have to quit," Nicholas said to his sister's husband. "The government cannot take the chance of delivering a member of the imperial family into the hands of revolutionaries."
Alexander simply bowed, as he had no strength to put up an argument. He could not believe what was happening. His sailors wanted to seize him as a hostage! An actual hostage! This despite the 24 years he had given to the navy, despite everything he had sacrificed for the glory of Russia's fleet.
Alexander knew that some officers were brutal with their physical punishments, but he had never even raised his voice when dealing with his sailors. He had instead fought for their cause with the admirals, the ministers, and even his cousin the Tsar. He had cherished his popularity with the sea men and foolishly thought himself their friend and confidant.
A hostage! Alexander couldn't take it anymore. None of his attempts to advise his cousin Nicholas on matters of state had borne good fruit. The Tsar often ignored him or changed his mind, always listening to the last person he spoke to.
Following the Khodynka stampede, Alexander and his brothers had demanded the immediate dismissal of Grand Duke Sergei, whom they had considered partially responsible for the tragic event due to his role as an organizer. They had also insisted on calling off all future coronation festivities for a while. Nicholas hadn't listened.
Alexander experienced the sudden urge to leave Russia with his wife, daughter, and sons, and Nicholas allowed this. The worst had come to pass, but the country still seemed to be falling apart and nothing mattered any more. He hated Russia.
Oo
The departure of Alexander, Xenia, and their children from Russia deprived the little Grand Duchesses for weeks and even months at a time from much-needed playmates, increasing their isolation. Their grandmother Minnie too was abroad often with the grandchildren from her daughter Xenia, and she had Danish relatives to visit as well. In 1906, she and her sister Alexandra, Queen of the United Kingdom in 1901, purchased the Danish villa of Hvidøre to spend time together.
Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia missed their cousins and grandmother a lot when she was away. They often wrote the Dowager Empress letters telling her how much they longed and wished to see her.
In January of 1906, when her father Christian IX of Denmark died, ten-year-old Olga wrote to her grandmother on behalf of herself and all of her sisters telling her how sorry they had been upon hearing the news.
"I think it will be very dreary and hard for you without him, because you saw him every day and were with him all the time", she sympathized. "I am thinking so much of you. When will you come to us?"
Earlier, during Christmas, Olga, Tatiana, and Maria had written to her wishing her a happy Christmas and describing their holidays, during which they had ice-skated, sled down a snow mountain, and learned a little German. They had learned poems in this language that they could sing and play.
During the Christmas party, the four girls, ten, eight, six, and four years old at the time, had presented their parents a fable, and numerous presents had been given to them by their loved ones.
Their beloved Babushka had gifted them toy kitchen and school sets which Tatiana had loved very much. Nicholas and Alexandra had given them a camera and lots of toys, as well as a big gramophone. The girl's dear "Uncle Mimi" had gotten them a wooden fold-up house, their Aunt Ella, a game where you put pictures together, and their cousins Maria and Dmitri, the children of Grand Duke Paul, had gifted them a toy rocking horse.
Though Minnie also missed her grandchildren when she was away, she could not avoid spending time abroad. She was a free spirit with family and friends to keep in touch with and places to visit. She didn't know how much she would come to regret this.
Anastasia was beginning to enjoy the reputation of being the most mischievous of Minnie's grandchildren. The Dowager Empress had accepted the fact, at least to herself, that she favored her, the one she called "malinkaya", meaning little one, perhaps in part because the tiny girl's free spirit was so similar to hers as a young girl, before the death of her dear betrothed Nicholas.
Anastasia can be lazy and rebellious almost solely for the sake of it at times, as if disobedience itself were a sort of game to test the limits of the adults around her.
During one of Minnie's birthday celebrations, all of the imperial children were made to arrange gifts for their grandmother. Though fond of her, Anastasia determined not to take any part in these arrangements or to select any gift. She simply wanted to know what would happen.
She even refused to learn a simple piece of poetry to recite to the Dowager Empress as all the other children were doing.
When asked if she was going to give her grandmother a bouquet of lilies of the valley tied with a bow of mauve ribbon, she replied:
"Oh, yes, I will gather a bouquet in the morning."
But the following day, when all the children dressed in fine clothes and went into the carriage to offer their congratulations to the Dowager Empress, Anastasia, alone, appeared with empty hands.
"I thought we were going to walk so that I could gather some wild flowers for grandma; now I shall have none", she said.
"When people go to offer congratulations, they go in carriages," her disappointed governess explained.
When the nursery arrived at the palace, the other children gave their grandmother gifts and recited pieces of poetry to her. Anastasia hung her head when her turn came, and her sisters turned away with shame and chagrin for their sister.
"Have you nothing for grandma?" Maria Feodorovna asked, staring at her granddaughter with a look of sadness.
"Yes, I have brought this, grandma", Anastasia gave her a small toy that she had taken with her on the ride.
"But have you made nothing for me with your own little hands?"
"Nothing, grandma", the little girl began to feel ashamed.
"Well, dear, you are a very little child," said the Dowager Empress, "but perhaps you have learned a piece of poetry to say to me."
Anastasia began feeling more mortified than ever, but, unwilling to confess her negligence, she decided to deceive her grandmother by reciting the following lines:
I have a pretty doll,
Her name is Miss Rose,
She has two pretty blue eyes,
And a very small nose.
She can't stand long,
On her tiny little toes,
She just makes a curtsy,
And then, off she goes.
"That is very pretty", Minnie smiled, "but isn't that what you said to your mother last week?"
Anastasia started coughing from nervousness. She couldn't stand it any longer. Her dear Babushka would be disappointed in her, and all for being lazy and silly.
The little girl burst into tears and fled the room, but she soon got the urge to go back to her grandma to tell her how sorry she was and to beg for her forgiveness. The Dowager Empress accepted her favorite grandchild's apology very sweetly, but not without telling her that she would not receive a bonbon as the other children had.
The little Anastasia couldn't have cared less. All she wanted was her grandmother's love, and Minnie definitely noticed and appreciated this.
The Dowager Empress also knew that the little girl would fare better being cocooned, well cared for, and molded into a proper young lady by her parents and tutors, but she couldn't wait for her to grow old enough so that Alix would allow her to fly away with her old Babushka to Europe. Anastasia had too much energy to remain locked up. Minnie wanted to make something out of that youthful spirit, to lead it to mature and with time become strength of character and determination, important traits in politically minded women.
The Dowager Empress could perhaps even train her granddaughter up to be the perfect queen consort. Open, amusing, and friendly with the people, unlike the poor, unpleasant Alexandra. After all, Minnie's great-nephew Frederick was destined to become King of Denmark someday, and he was only two years older than the little Anastasia.
Oo
The absence of Alexander and his family was, though sad and unfortunate, evidently the least of Nicholas's problems in 1906, even regarding solely family matters.
Though still heartbroken over having been thwarted in his efforts to marry his beloved first cousin Beatrice, the Tsar's romantic younger brother Michael, whom his devoted nieces and nephew affectionately called "Uncle Mimi", had fallen in love again. The new object of his affection was even less suitable for a Russian Grand Duke than the previous one.
Three years older than the 27-year-old Michael, Alexandra Kossikovskaya, also known as "Dina", was merely his younger sister Olga's lady-in-waiting. Dina was a commoner.
Michael didn't care though. He loved her deeply, and he rejected the notion, proposed by his fellow army and aristocratic friends, that he keep her as a mistress. The mere idea of doing that to someone he loved so much disgusted him.
Dina loved him back, so in July of 1906, he wrote to Nicholas asking him for permission to marry her. Nicholas and Minnie were shocked and appalled.
They firmly believed that royalty should only marry royalty, people within their station and level of prestige, pedigree, and education, who could even secure diplomatic connections with other houses.
Furthermore, according to Russian law, any children born from a marriage between a royal and a commoner would be ineligible for the succession.
In order to prevent him from marrying a commoner, Nicholas threatened to revoke Michael's army commission and exile him from Russia if he did so without his permission. Maria Feodorovna would take further precautions by having Dina dismissed as her daughter Olga's lady-in-waiting and taking Michael to Denmark for a time.
The Tsar didn't understand why his brother insisted on acting like a lovesick schoolboy when the precarious times demanded him to sacrifice his fancies for the sake of duty. Now more than ever the imperial family needed to stick together.
Stressed and disgusted by his first and only experience with an elected parliament, Nicholas would have been more than happy to end the representative government "experiment." Stolypin was the one who insisted that the Tsar's signature on the October Manifesto constituted a solemn promise to the nation, a world of honor that couldn't be broken. Grudgingly, Nicholas held on to his flexible code of honor, abandoned his plans for eliminating the Duma altogether, and gave permission for the election of a Second Duma.
Oo
When he first came to power, Stolypin meant to start up by attacking the root causes of the public discontent, such as the peasants' long-suppressed thirst for land of their own, but nothing could be done about this or other matters promptly and efficiently until order had been restored, and the assassinations continued at a steady pace.
In August of 1906, General Vonlyarlyarsky, the Russian military governor of Warsaw, was assassinated, as was General Min, commander of the Life Guards regiment, who was gunned down by a female revolutionary at Peterhof Railway Station in front of his wife.
The Tsarist police struggled to cope with the many dangers threatening Nicholas and his family, leading to the organization of a ridiculously complicated system of spying and tattling. As spies were set to watch and catch spies, and revolutionary organizations attempted to infiltrate the family's security, the air became filled with whisperings and cross-currents of fear and mistrust.
The 32-year-old General Alexander Ivanovich Spiridovich, a successful Okhrana agent who had himself survived a terrorist attack in 1905, was made the head of the Tsar's secret personal bodyguard, becoming one of the few people in the imperial entourage with close access to the family.
While the imperial family never walked out informally through public streets, every eventuality had to be covered by the police, such as those rare occasions when they went out for drives or attended public church services and ceremonies surrounded by crowds.
The press was banned from announcing anything related to the imperial family's whereabouts and daily activities due to these security concerns, so no happy anecdotes about them were published for years. The Russian people had absolutely no understanding of a "sweet family life" in regard to their Tsar and Tsarina. They were cut off from any sort of information humanizing them.
A few bulletins and official photographs and postcards where both the sovereigns and their children wore their most expensive gowns were sporadically released for public consumption and available for sale, but that was the sum of everything. The Russian imperial family was becoming famous for its dazzling inaccessibility. They were thought of as snobbish, aloof, and unapproachable.
Four different security networks began guarding the Romanovs' every move, among them the Tsar's escort and a special police force at Tsarskoe Selo that watched the surrounding streets and vetted all visitors to the palace.
Any person who approached the Tsar or a member of his family was bound to be immediately interrogated by a member of his security.
All railway routes taken were closely guarded by cordons of troops positioned along both embankments, and guards on board provided additional protection.
Even then, the fearful Alexandra would insist that the blinds be drawn, and she refused to allow the girls to go to the windows to wave at the people passing by. She lived in constant fear for her husband's life and the safety of her children, and the assassination of General Min had occurred close to their Lower Dacha residence at Peterhof, unnerving her and Nicholas greatly.
But Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia often pressed their faces against the slits on either side between curtain and window frame, hungry for sight of the world beyond, about which they were growing increasingly curious.
Even foreign newspapers commented on the growing isolation of the imperial family. A May article on the Washington Post headed "Children Without a Smile", featured the Grand Duchesses' latest set of official photographs. It remarked on the sweetness of the Romanov sisters' expressions, but erroneously concluded that theirs was a sad life, as the family lived almost as prisoners in their own palaces, surrounded by servants and guards whose allegiance could surely be distrusted.
The family was, in fact, surrounded by numerous loyal servants, maids clothed in light green uniform dresses, nannies, and ladies, princesses and noblewomen among them, whom they considered close friends and even extended family in some cases. Though generally deprived of friends their own age, the four Grand Duchesses barely ever lacked company.
Princess Obolensky, Sonia Orbeliani, the young Anna Alexandrovna Taneeva, called "Anya", and the motherly 50-year-old Catherine Schneider, called "Trina", were only some of many of the Empress and her children's constant companions.
Like Catherine Schneider, Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden was a Baltic German who had become an honorary lady in waiting for the Empress in 1904, at around 21 years of age.
Sophie, nicknamed "Isa", was tall, dark-haired, and full-figured. A chain smoker in private, Isa wasn't an attractive woman, but she was quite intelligent and had a very friendly manner that the little Grand Duchesses appreciated. She also managed to somehow be deferential to the imperial family without it seeming forced and also casual with them when the situation was appropriate for it.
Upon her arrival at the imperial family's residence, Alexandra had asked her if she was comfortable in her rooms and told her that she hoped she would dine with the family that night.
As the Empress and her newest lady talked, the youngest Grand Duchess, a chubby little three-year-old at the time with bright, curious eyes twinkling with humor that would forever characterize her, had broken into the conversation.
"Will you play with us, new lady?" The little Grand Duchess Anastasia had inquired. "And can you run?" She had looked at Sophie questioningly out of the corner of one eye, sniffing a little from time to time, for in her babyhood and early childhood Anastasia had been somewhat sickly.
"Anastasia, you monkey", Alexandra had laughed, "it is not polite to ask people questions while they are talking to someone else."
"But I want to know", the baby had persisted in her slightly imperfect English.
"Let's play blind man's buff!" Tatiana had enthusiastically suggested.
"Well, if Isa doesn't mind, perhaps you may, just for ten minutes," the Empress had pushed back the furniture with a smile, and Sophie had played with the girls for the first time.
Blind man's buff is a variant of tag where the one chasing after the others is blindfolded. On that particular occasion, a silk scarf lying handy had been bound over Tatiana's eyes first, and the girl had slyly peeped in Sophie's direction to catch her.
When the time came for the lady in waiting to be blindfolded, excited shrieks betrayed the little princesses. But whenever she made a grab in their direction, they invariably escaped with shouts of glee.
When the little Maria suddenly pulled at Sophie's belt, the lady turned quickly in the unfamiliar room and would have collapsed into an armchair had not the Empress's laughing voice warned her: "Stop! Danger! Turn to the left." That is when she had finally caught Grand Duchess Olga, and the first of many games had come to an end.
The girls continued playing with their nannies, their parents, and their mother's ladies on a daily basis. Soon after their Uncle Sergei's death, the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich became the Emperor's ward and would for a time live at Tsarskoye Selo, to the great joy of the girls, who were fond of their cousin. The Emperor and Empress treated him as another son, and though he was four years older than Olga, Dmitri had no problem occasionally joining the Grand Duchesses in their childish games too.
As had been the case the year before, the Emperor was asked by his ministers not to travel by land during 1906, this for security reasons.
The family spent those years between Tsarskoye Selo and Peterhof, the palace by the sea of Finland where the court led a simple life in which the officers of the imperial family yacht "Standart" took part and all possible formality was dispensed with.
The Standart was equipped with every comfort. Electric lighting, steam heating, and hot and cold running water. Its luxurious formal staterooms featured chandeliers, the private chapel was complete with its own iconostasis, and the dining room could seat 72. Only the family rooms were relatively modest, as the girls shared small cramped cabins on the lower deck with their maids. The children had no problem with this though.
They loved to talk to the officers, play deck games, and rollerskate on the smooth wooden surface. Each of the Romanov children was always appointed their own personal bodyguard or dyadka, uncle, from among the crew to take care of their safety at sea. That summer of 1906 the children had been rather shy in front of the new Standart crew at first, but soon warmed to their "uncles" who would sit for hours regaling them with seafaring stories and telling them about their homes and their families. Each child soon had a favorite officer or sailor to hold their hand when they went ashore and sit alongside them in the rowing boats helping with the oars.
Most mornings, the children would be up and on the deck at 8 a.m. to see the crew gather for the formal raising of the flag to the sound of the ship's band.
The crew, on the other hand, relished the prestige of serving the imperial family. They loved the four sisters and found them enchanting. Such was the informality on board that the sailors addressed them by name and patronymic rather than by title.
The little Anastasia would give everyone on board a hard time, rushing around the yacht from dawn to dusk, climbing up to the bridge when no one was looking, always disheveled and difficult to control, only to be finally carried off kicking and screaming to bed at the end of the day.
Her phlegmatic sister Maria had a rather more relaxed approach to life on board. She liked to sit a little, have a read, and eat sweet biscuits, getting ever plumper in the process and increasing her sisters' liking for calling her "fat little bow-wow."
And so, the girls spent their days playing tag with the sailors on deck and looking at the ocean while Alexandra lay down on a couch nearby and watched them, one of her daughters always staying with her when she did not feel well enough to go ashore with her husband and the gentlemen of his suite to walk or play tennis.
During autumn there was some shooting that the officers of the yacht joined, and the young Grand Duchesses often walked and hiked with their father on the many rocky islands of the Finnish archipelago that they visited.
The girls loved exploring Finland. Tall pines grew in the chinks of the grey granite, with few to no houses in sight. Dark forests stretched far into the mainland, and hidden amongst them were only a few lonely fishermen's huts.
The transparent waters were still and quiet during the wonderful "White Nights" and "Midnight Suns" of May and June, when the light of one day lasted till the dawn of the next. The Empress loved those long, still days, and so did her daughters, especially the older three, who were mature enough to appreciate the beauty of the bright, moonlight nights on the water, the evening prayer of the sailors on deck before the lowering of the flag, when the last rays of the setting Sun rested on the sea.
While sailing on the Standart, the girls usually wore long black stockings and short leather boots, pretty black sailor skirts, each one with white stripes close to the hem, striped white and dark blue shirts with long sleeves, black sailor coats with two vertical rows of golden buttons each, and black beret hats.
The little Tsarevich Alexei, younger than three, still dressed the same as his sisters, with skirts and dresses.
During one of these happy journeys sailing the Gulf of Finland, having already gone ashore to pick up flowers for their mother, hunt for mushrooms, and simply play in the forest, the four Grand Duchesses had a lot of fun playing on deck with their little brother as they often did.
First, they ran from one end of the deck to the other, racing each other whilst giggling and screaming with joy. Alexei always arrived last, as his short little legs could barely keep up with those of his older sisters. The happy baby didn't seem to mind though, and his devoted siblings let him win on one occasion, cheering him as he toddled before them.
The four girls were delighted, as usual, to be playing with their little brother, to be making the sweet tiny bundle of joy and energy even more happy and buoyant than usual, and their attention often shifted protectively between him and the camera, as their proud parents had decided to film them as they ran, holding each other's hands, laughing, and enjoying themselves in the simplest way possible, in a manner only achievable to innocent children.
Having sprinted joyfully for a long time, the five kids made a circle and held each other's hands to play Ring a Ring o' Roses, one of their favorite games. The cheerful girls spun and fell to the ground when the song demanded so, carefully making sure that the frail little Alexei didn't hurt himself in the process, and after that, Olga carried her baby brother and laid him on top of an officer's back as the man goofily crawled on his arms and legs like a pony to amuse the children. None more than Anastasia was greatly entertained by this. She would jump around from one place to another with a huge smile on her face and frantic giggles as her baby brother "rode" forward, Olga and Tatiana lovingly holding him still so that he didn't fall.
This was only one of many happy moments that the children's voyages through the sea were constantly filled with, though merriment for the four little Grand Duchesses and their little brother was not exclusive to the Standart.
The parks of Tsarskoye Selo were also a constant scenery for their mischief and joyous laughter. Alexandra took them out to play on one occasion, all of them wearing simple white sailor dresses with dark blue stripes at the collar as well as tied red handkerchiefs. Baby Alexei was wearing short white socks under his small black leather shoes, unlike his sisters, who were all wearing long black stockings that made it hard to tell where their same-colored shoes ended. Other than that, the five children had been similarly attired, with identical round beige straw hats of different sizes that their mother thought looked adorable on all of them.
Alexandra herself sported a simple dark long dress and a bun, ready to play with her five impish children, and she had brought a Kodak Brownie camera to take them pictures.
The day was filled with romping, laughter, posing for silly pictures, and playing under the sun. Alix constantly watched over her five happy children fondly, and Maria too would spend most of her time following the little Alexei a few steps behind as he toddled around on the grass. The young child was endeared by her baby brother's curious restlessness and urge to explore the world around him.
The loyal footman Alexei Trupp had also come holding a donkey by the reins and wearing his uniform and tall black hat.
Anastasia was very insistent that she should get to ride the dark brown donkey first, and her mother and older sisters indulged her, Olga and Tatiana even helping her mount the animal.
"Go! Go!" The little Anastasia yelled at the donkey, but it did not move. "Go! Go, stupid!"
"Anastasia, my sunshine, language!" Alix gasped, but Olga laughed at her youngest sister's exasperation.
"I am sorry, donkey", Anastasia apologized, petting the creature tenderly. "But move, go now!"
While the big pair was busy holding the reins of the donkey to make sure it didn't move too fast, if it ever willed itself to move, Maria kept following and looking at her baby brother with tenderness as he ran around the grass nearby in circles, chasing butterflies. Eventually, the tiny boy's attention turned to Anastasia and the seemingly lazy, unmoving donkey. He understood the situation and felt sorry for his fun sister, something he barely ever did. Since birth, Alexei had received every possible care and attention from his nannies, parents, and sisters, who coddled, overprotected, pampered, and doted upon him without end or restrictions. He was invariably supervised closely by numerous servants and nannies in order to prevent accidents. The seemingly excessive precautions had borne fruit though, for the young heir's life had not yet been threatened by his malady.
Whenever his little self wanted or asked for was granted, from simple, innocent hugs or cuddles to more milk and food than usual or being handed any toy happening to catch his attention regardless of whether it was being used by someone else. When the guards and soldiers saluted him, he was filled with a young version of arrogance and excessive pride. Nicholas, Alexandra, and the nanny Maria Vishnyakova, in particular, always obliged, giving him whatever he wanted. They spoiled him very much, fulfilling the slightest of his whims in a way they had mostly avoided doing with the imperial daughters. The baby had grown especially attached to his mother and would often cry when she went away after having spent hours cuddling and pampering him.
But this all had a reason, one best exemplified by the French tutor Pierre Gilliard's first meeting with him. Alexei was a baby of eighteen months old when this happened. Pierre had gone to the Alexander Palace, where his duties called him several times a week. He was finishing his lesson with Olga Nikolaevna when the Tsarina entered the room, carrying the heir. She came towards the Swiss teacher and her eldest daughter, evidently wishing to show Pierre the one member of the family he did not yet know.
Gilliard could see that Empress Alexandra was transfused by the delirious joy of a mother who had at last seen her dearest wish fulfilled. She was proud of and happy with the beauty of her child, for Tsarevitch Alexei was certainly one of the handsomest babies one could imagine, with his lovely fair curls and his great blue-gray eyes under their fringe of long curling lashes. He had the fresh pink color of a healthy child, and when he smiled, two little dimples formed in his chubby cheeks. When Pierre went near the baby, a solemn, frightened look came into his eyes, and it took a good deal to induce him to hold out a tiny hand.
At that first meeting, the Swiss educator saw the Tsarina press the little boy to her with the convulsive movement of a mother who always seems in fear of her child's life, yet with her the caress and the look which accompanied it, revealed a secret apprehension so marked and poignant that Pierre was struck at once. He had not very long to wait to know its meaning.
Though the young boy's life had not yet been seriously threatened, the effects of his secret disease had already manifested through big, swelling bruises on his little arms and legs, indicating internal hemorrhage, whenever he accidentally hit himself on the furniture while walking, running, or playing. It was very difficult for his parents or even anyone around to see and hear the suffering of the little patient, a baby who did not yet understand what was happening to him, why it was hurting so much. The only comfort he had was the neverending devotion of those around him during times of both sickness and health, it was knowing that they would always be there to help, pick him up, and hold him, that he was the center of the universe. He didn't truly know what love was yet, but he was indeed very much loved, and he sensed and appreciated this immensely.
But on this occasion, it was Alexei who got the urge to help his dear older sister, the one who was always playing with him, ride her lazy donkey. He wanted her to be happy, that is all the not-even-three-year-old knew. He started heading toward them, Maria staying behind to see what her brother intended to do, and when he got close to the animal, he grabbed its front reins with his tiny hands and pulled hard, making adorable grunting noises signaling the effort he was putting into trying to coax the horse to move.
Alexandra, Olga, and Maria watched this with wide grins of amusement.
Anastasia laughed out loud and then cheered for her brother. "Yes, Alyosha!" She tried to jump on her seat. "Move the donkey! Move it!"
The footman Alexei Trupp, on the other hand, got closer to the scene and sabotaged the boy's efforts by holding the donkey's reins from the opposite side. While he was endeared and amused by the boy's endeavor, it would have been dangerous for the animal to move forward with the child in front of it. Tatiana too was worried.
"That is enough, my sunbeam", Alexandra said after a while as she picked up her baby. "Leave that poor thing."
Following a simple command from Alexei Trupp, the donkey finally moved forward, delighting the little Anastasia, who screamed with joy and thanked her brother, thinking it was he who had finally made the creature walk. She was a unique character. Pierre Gilliard had met her around the time of his enigmatic introduction to her baby brother.
He was alone in the study hall at Tsarskoye Selo, and having just finished a lesson with Olga, he was awaiting the arrival of his second student, Tatiana. The door opened, and he saw instead a way smaller girl coming toward him with a big, heavy picture book which she laid down with difficulty on the table in front of him.
"I also want to learn French", the young child told the man in Russian, giving him her hand. Without waiting for his response, she climbed up a chair, sat on her knees, opened her book, and placing her tiny index finger on the enormous elephant, asked him:
"What is that called in French?"
Then came the turn of the lion, the tiger, and the rest of the animals of Noah's Ark. Pierre joined in her game, amused by the imperturbable gravity that she was bringing to this first, improvised lesson, but the door soon opened again to make way for Tatiana. The little girl, whose finger was fixed on the boa constrictor, abruptly closed her album and jumped to her feet. She extended her small hand to the Swiss professor and told him in a low voice: "I shall return tomorrow", as she left with her album pressed against her breast.
Gilliard had thus made the acquaintance of Anastasia, then four and a half years old. Needless to say, the lesson did not continue on the following day.
But one of the happiest days of 1906 for the girls was when their little cousin Vera Konstantinova, Grand Duke Konstantin's youngest and final child, was baptized at Pavlovsk. Nicholas, Alexandra, and their daughters attended the ceremony along with the Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna the Younger, nicknamed as such to distinguish her from her same-named Aunt Miechen, and her brother the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich.
Olga and Tatiana wore spectacular kokoshnik headdresses and court dresses again, slightly longer now that they were ten and eight years old respectively, and Maria and Anastasia got to see themselves in similarly elegant garments as well, only theirs were shorter. The four girls greatly enjoyed twirling and giggling together and appreciating the beauty of their and everyone's best attire.
The years had forged an incredible bond between the four sisters, who likewise doted on their baby brother and were always looking out for him, but despite the fact that the five Romanov siblings spent time together from time to time, Olga and Tatiana, the "big pair", could often, if not always, be found around the same place, reading, knitting, sewing, playing the piano, or simply chatting about interesting topics, lessons, books they had read, their daily lives, and increasingly, their hopes and dreams for the future. The places they would visit and the things they would see. Sometimes even the happy families they would create, just as happy as their own.
Maria and Anastasia, on the other hand, stuck together in a similar fashion, still having fun with their dolls half the time, something their older sisters no longer did as often. The "little pair" was also the one that played with their younger brother the most. They would make their dolls act like soldiers and make them join his stuffed animals in "parades." They would partake in games requiring little thinking so that the two-year-old could participate, games involving lots of running outdoors, rough-and-tumble play with pillows, and plenty of laughing and yelling.
Nicholas and Alexandra allowed these wild games, as the young girls were aware of their brother's condition and knew how to be gentle.
Playing pretend was the favorite activity of the two youngest girls, and the loyal sailors and soldiers who made toy forts for them with whatever they had at hand were of great help when it came to playing at being brave warriors with their brother, one of his most beloved things to do with his sisters already. Maria preferred to play at being Alexei's mommy though, especially in the pretty blue playhouse of Children's Island. The little boy was too young to mind his sister's constant petting and babying, or the way she hugged and kissed him, brushed his golden curls, pretended to give him his food or milk, prayed with him and tucked him in at night along with their mother, and tried to carry him. He even appreciated it.
While Tatiana showed Alexei love in more practical manners, such as helping her mother, Olga, or the nannies take care of him in genuinely useful ways, Maria felt that love in a more spiritual manner, deep in her heart, and showed it through effusive displays of affection. No one was more endeared by Alexei than her, so when she daydreamed and talked with her little sister about the future, it was a world with more little babies like her brother that she imagined, lots of them, for she already hoped to be a mother someday.
"When I grow up, I am going to marry a soldier and have 20 children!" Little Maria once declared, because she also loved soldiers very much. Those nice men were always playing with her and her siblings and helping and saluting her and her family, and they wore very pretty uniforms. Besides, if she married a soldier, she would not have to leave her dear mama and papa, and she would get the babies too!
On one occasion, when her mother was feeling ill and couldn't see her children, the innocent little Maria wrote to her: "Mama, try and give birth to a baby, I really want it, since usually it's so painful for the mother to give birth and you are now ill, so maybe this means you are having a baby. I will swear on it to everyone on the yacht from you, especially Kiki."
"Kiki" was the affectionate nickname that the girls used to refer to Nikolai Pavlovich Sablin, an officer of the Imperial Russian Navy who served on the Imperial Yacht Standart. The 26-year-old had been born into a naval family, graduated from the Marine Cadet Corps, and served during both the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion and the Russo-Japanese War. The imperial children considered him another one of their uncles.
"Darling Mama", the letter continued, "take care of yourself and lie in bed peacefully and go to bed early. I kiss you affectionately. Your Maria. P.S. I will pray for you."
As the letter had said, before spending some time praying for her mother, Maria went around the yacht happily telling everyone that her mother was having another baby. Sadly for Maria, this was not to be, which was slightly disappointing, not because her sisters and the little Alexei weren't enough siblings for her, but because she loved babies so very much. More would always be better than less.
As anyone who knew them would therefore understand, the newspapers were wrong. The four Grand Duchesses were not unhappy or excessively lonely, at least not too much more than other princesses of Europe, but they were indeed largely ignorant of the outside world, even the curious and intuitive Olga, and they were incredibly sheltered as well, though perhaps the latter was for a good reason.
Oo
"Level-headedness comes first, reforms second" was Stolypin's slogan, and to bring back law and order, he established special field courts-martial in which within three days of their arrest, assassins swung from the gallows instead of being sent to Siberia. Many innocents were undoubtedly victims of these rushed trials.
Before the summer of 1906 even ended, 600 men had been strung up and Russians had begun calling the hangman's noose "Stolypin's necktie", a term coined by a liberal Russian politician. In response, Stolypin challenged him to a duel, but the man decided to apologize instead. The Prime Minister's aiming skills were legendary after all, for he had already won a duel against his brother's killer.
Though the carnage being caused by these field courts-martial was great, the number of men hanged was still considerably smaller than the 1,600 governors, generals, soldiers, and village policemen killed by terrorists' bombs and bullets so far.
Furthermore, these drastic actions, along with those of other courts that continued sentencing even more assassins and revolutionaries to Siberia, began stabilizing the country enough for the Prime Minister to shift his focus to the plans he had for the countryside.
As it was to be expected, Stolypin himself eventually became the target of assassins. On 25 August 1906, three assassins from the Union of Socialists-Revolutionaries Maximalists, a radical wing expelled from the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, put on military uniforms in order to blend in and then bombed a public reception Stolypin was holding at his second home, or dacha, on Aptekarsky Island. A wall of the house collapsed, killing 28 people, including visitors and servants.
Stolypin himself was only slightly injured by flying splinters, but as he was dug out of the wreckage, he cried over and over again: "My poor children, my poor children!"
His fifteen-year-old daughter Natalia was gravely injured on both legs and sent to the brink of death, and his three-year-old son Arkady, who had been playing on an upstairs balcony, was seriously hurt when he broke a bone.
Only a day and a half after the explosion, the Ministers' Council resumed its work as if nothing unusual had happened, and Stolypin's stoicness and self-control despite his personal tragedy won the admiration of everyone.
"You will not intimidate me!" He ended a furious speech. There had been attempts against his life before, as Governor of Saratov, and they did not faze him.
As parents, Nicholas and Alexandra were profoundly shocked and horrified by the injuries to Stolypin's children, especially because Stolypin and his wife had finally produced a son after the birth of five daughters.
The harrowing events of 1905 and 1906 along with the burden of knowing about Alexei's hemophilia had taken a heavy toll on Alexandra. She and her husband had received several delegations of workers and seen the badly hidden hatred in their eyes. The Duma opening had been nightmarish. The condition of her friend Sonia Orbeliani was not improving. When Irene and Victoria went to Russia to visit their sister during the summer of 1906, they thought she looked aged and were alarmed by how frequently the sciatica would incapacitate her. Alexandra was also complaining about shortness of breath and pain in the heart, which she was convinced was "enlarged." Victoria was greatly saddened by her youngest sister's state, as well as the fact that only in the faces of the four little girls had she seen any real happiness at Tsarskoye Selo.
It is no coincidence that Rasputin decided to slip back into Alexandra's life in 1906. He knew he would be needed. He knew when.
Upon his return to St. Petersburg, Rasputin sent Nicholas a telegram asking if he could present his "little father" with a gift. He met with Nicholas and Alexandra on the 18th of July and then again in October, when he visited the family, at his own request, to give them a wooden painted icon of St. Simeon of Verkhoturye, one of the most celebrated Russian saints from Siberia.
Carrying a plain linen bag full of gifts, the starets was received by Count Fredericks, and the two men walked into the formal reception room of the palace, where they found the stunningly dressed and jeweled Empress Alexandra waiting for them. The Tsar was there too, as usual sporting an army uniform with epaulets. The couple was sharing a series of jokes as they played dolls with their four daughters, two of the nannies standing nearby, when Count Fredericks walked in with their guest.
"Your Imperial Majesties", the Imperial Household Minister announced. "Father Grigori is here."
Nicholas and Alexandra took each of their daughters by the hand and approached the newcomers. The girls were wearing white shapeless dresses with long sleeves and black shoes and stockings.
"Oh, little father!" Rasputin exclaimed as he looked between Nicholas and Alexandra. "Little mother! I am so happy to see you again!" The starets was, as always, wearing long black robes with similarly long sleeves the way a priest would, though he was, and is, no priest.
"As are we, Grigori", Nicholas stepped forward with a smile and shook his hand.
"And who are these lovely young forest fairies?" Rasputin looked down at the four little girls, causing them to burst into giggles. Anastasia also started acting like a fairy, flapping her arms as if they were wings and causing Maria to imitate her.
"These are our daughters", Nicholas smiled, looking down at his girls and then back at Rasputin. "Let me introduce you to them."
"Olga, stand up straight!" Alexandra whispered as she directed a slightly stern look at her four daughters, her eldest in particular. Olga obeyed, but not without first grimacing, and her sisters soon followed suit.
"My eldest, Olga", Nicholas put a hand on his daughter's back and prompted her to walk forward.
"Hello, Father Grigori", she said shyly.
"Tatiana."
"Pleased to meet you", the second eldest Romanov daughter approached Grigori without coaxing and did a little curtsey before offering her hand to be kissed as if she were a proper young lady.
These mannerly gestures still come easy to Tatiana, the only one out of her sisters who has had little trouble learning to avoid playing with her food and picking her nose, the last one being a nasty habit that the four girls have fun accusing each other of.
Rasputin took up Tatiana's offer and kissed her hand before turning to the remaining girls.
"Maria", Nicholas looked down at his third child with an encouraging smile.
"Hi!" The seven-year-old waved her hand enthusiastically at the visitor.
"And lastly", Nicholas said, "our youngest, the little Anastasia."
"Are you a wizard?" The little strawberry-blonde girl of five asked with a tiny jump as she opened her eyes wide. Nicholas and Alexandra smiled at her.
"Much better than a wizard", Grigori replied with a grin as he looked at her, his eyes also wide open. "I am a horse whisperer."
"A horse whisperer?" Anastasia gasped in wonder.
"I can talk to them pretty well to know they like to be petted."
"Oh, I love petting ponies!" Maria gushed.
Grigori went on to amuse the four young girls with stories about the things he would make his horses do back in his village. Stand up, count, and trot in circles, among other tricks.
After that, Nicholas, Alexandra, and their daughters sat on a large sofa in the living room as Rasputin made himself comfortable on a separate chair across from them. That is where the starets presented the family with several gifts, blessed bread and religious icons among them.
"It is very beautiful, Father Grigori, thank you", Alexandra said, referring to one of the holy images he had just given to them, which she was holding. The rest of the gifts had been laid on the table. "We are always keeping it."
"Splendid decision, little mother!" Rasputin expressed his agreement with childish delight. "St. Simeon of Verkhoturye was a nobleman who loved to feed the poor and guide the local people towards faith in Christ, did you know?" He looked at the young girls. "Now from his home in heaven, he cures those sick of body and soul, as I am sure he will do for you."
"I am too", Nicholas smiled.
"St. Simeon will make sure that your girls grow into beautiful and charitable young ladies, just like him", the starets knocked on the wooden table before him three times.
"Why did you do that?" Olga asked.
"I am communicating with the angels that live inside the trees", he replied. "Did you know that they survive when they are transformed into furniture?"
"Wow, really?" Tatiana put her open hands on the surface of the table, staring down at it with awe. She was not one to be easily taken by fantastic tales, she rarely is now, but this was someone her mother had said she respected, a man of God.
"Oh, yes", Rasputin nodded. "If you hear or say something good is going to happen, you should knock on the closest wooden object three times so that the good spirits listen to you. Otherwise it is better not to frighten fate by talking about the future in an excessively optimistic way."
"Very interesting", Nicholas said, trying to hide his skepticism from his fascinated wife.
Rasputin was cleverly behaving like a true Holy Fool, naive, faithful, credulous, and childlike. That is what Tsarina Alexandra, already well acquainted with the Russian Orthodox concept of "Holy Fool", saw and would forever see in him, and also what he wanted to be seen as. An almost perfect being hiding his virtue.
But Rasputin wasn't hiding perfection for the sake of humility. He was hiding solely cunning and knowledge, and for one purpose only. Ambition.
Oo
Grigori Rasputin continued telling the girls about his life and journeys throughout Siberia, charming them with peasant legends and superstitions along the way.
"What are the names of your children?" Maria asked him.
"Let's see, Dmitri is the oldest, he is nine. My youngest, Varvara, is six, and my daughter Maria is the same age as you, Maria", Grigori grinned.
"Oh, the same name as me!"
"Exactly", his smile widened.
"And do you have siblings?" Olga inquired further.
Rasputin told the girls about all of his siblings, leaving the little Maria, whom he had named his daughter after, for last.
"She was epileptic, you see", he said with sadness, "frail like your little brother is."
"What happened to her?" Maria asked with a tiny voice.
"She sadly passed away", he replied, and all those present in the room stared at him with sadness. "I had been jealous of her, you see, as her illness made my parents very attentive to her. I prayed to God every day that they would spend more time with me, and the day she died, they started doing so, but I was not happy.
"That is why you should not begrudge your little brother if he needs more attention than you from mama and papa someday."
The four girls would remember the strange visitor's words, though they wouldn't really understand their significance yet. They knew their brother had a "condition", of course, but so far they hadn't personally felt deprived of anything because of this.
Following this and other conversations, Rasputin was led by the family to Alexei's room, where the two-year-old baby heir slept in his crib.
The starets pronounced a series of blessings and prayers over the boy as the little girls watched closely and attentively. "May God bless you and keep you, little Alexei, and may you grow healthy, good, wise, brave, and strong with the years."
The four Romanov sisters were left with different yet overall positive impressions of their mother's new friend, whom she soon started advising them to call "our friend."
Olga thought him interesting, a window of the outside world. She, like her mother, also loved the way he spoke of God.
Tatiana thought him a wise man who could help them solve their troubles, particularly those of her mother. She was also relieved to have a healer around who could perhaps pray for Alexei to get better if he ever fell victim to his ailment.
Maria was particularly interested in his stories, all of his stories, as was the little Anastasia, who also found him and his long black beard amusing.
As for Alexandra, she now trusted the starets to be a true Holy Fool and man of God, enough to ask Nicholas to request his presence at the hospital where Stolypin's daughter was still perishing, dangerously wounded.
When Rasputin came to the hospital, he did not touch the child. He just stood at the foot of her bed holding up another icon of the miracle worker, St. Simeon of Verkhoturye, and prayed.
"Don't worry, everything will be alright", he said upon leaving. Natalia Stolypina's condition improved soon thereafter, and she eventually recovered fully, though she would always limp as the result of having had one of her heels blown off.
Alexandra became much calmer regarding her son's condition after that, and Prime Minister Stolypin was able to get back to business with peace of mind. He met Rasputin to thank him soon after her daughter got better though, and the starets took that opportunity to reveal something to him:
"We will both be killed for trying to help the Tsar save Russia", the Siberian peasant asserted solemnly, sounding certain, yet calm. "I have seen it."
Stolypin was unnerved at first, but he didn't put much importance on the grim prediction. The Prime Minister believed in God, otherwise, he would not have been such a loyal monarchist, but he wasn't as easily taken by those who claimed to be in contact with the supernatural. His daughter Natalia had been and was still being cared for by capable doctors, so her improvement wasn't that impressive, and besides, he was more frightened of the darkness he had seen in the bright blue eyes of the starets. There was something in them that did not fit the image he was presenting to the world. Stolypin decided that day that he did not trust him.
Oo
As the terrorists kept dangling from ropes, the new Prime Minister started attacking the basic problem of land.
By 1906, three-quarters of the Russian population still subsisted on agriculture, mostly living in village communes, a system that was somewhat inefficient for anything more than subsistence level food production.
Stolypin overturned this communal system, introducing the concept of private property and declaring that any peasant who wished to withdraw from the commune and claim a share of ground to farm for himself was free to do so. The peasant was then expected to pass this property to his sons.
Stolypin also began to resettle peasants in Siberia, where there was more space they could make use of. He offered them free land, interest-free credit, and an exception from taxes and military service. Under this program, three million people would move to Siberia in three years.
Nicholas strongly approved of Stolypin's program and wished to help him make more land available, so he proposed that four million acres of his crown lands be sold to the government, which would then sell them again to the peasants, only cheaper.
The Tsar needed the rest of the imperial family's consent to carry out this plan, and both his mother and his uncle Grand Duke Vladimir refused to cooperate. The Dowager Empress, in particular, was hard to deal with. In a fight, she was harder than anyone in the family.
This didn't stop Nicholas, who eventually had his way. Several lands were sold, and full of hope, he waited for members of the nobility to follow his lead. None did, but Stolypin's law still had a huge impact. A new class of small peasant landowners had been created almost overnight, and the future of these millions of farmers was heavily dependent on the stability that the imperial government could offer, consequently providing the establishment with allies.
The most vociferous former rebels were sometimes the first to claim land, unexpectedly becoming supporters of law and order.
From 1906 to 1911, luck would smile upon Russia for the middle and upper classes, numerous peasants now among them. Food would become plentiful, turning famines as severe as that of 1891 into a thing of the past and making government tax revenues rise. The country's railroad network would also expand rapidly with the help of French loans, and mines would break records for production, though this certainly on the backs of overworked and underpaid laborers.
The Duma would introduce and pass bills raising teacher salaries and promoting free elementary school education. Press censorship was mostly lifted, and the government became slightly more liberal in the sphere of religious tolerance.
The fiercest opposition to Stolypin's programs came from both the extreme right and the extreme left. The conservative reactionaries immediately opposed any and all reforms meant to remake or even slightly alter the old, traditional ways, no matter the improvement on people's lives that they would represent.
Stolypin advocated for the amelioration of the living conditions among Russia's Jewish population through the lifting of the legal restrictions on their freedom of movement, access to education, and economic opportunities. The Prime Minister argued in their favor mainly to placate foreign investors repelled by the government's harsh policies and to drive Jews away from revolutionary movements, but also on moral grounds. The right-wing extremists supported by Nicholas, however, prevented any sort of beneficial change regarding this issue, and the same held true for several other reform proposals. The Tsar did, however, allow Stolypin to order an investigation on the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", which exposed the manuscript as a fraud. Few people stopped believing its contents though.
The left-wing extremists, on the other hand, were nervous about the potential improvement to the system that Stolypin's reforms could represent. After all, their very hope for a revolution depended, in no small part, on popular discontent.
The Stolypin era would be a time of languishing hope for Lenin and other exiles, Stephen Vaganov and Vladimir Gorlinsky among them. Unless they were actively engaged in plotting terrorist attacks, exiled figures were considered such a weak threat now, if any, that the camp guards serving also as censors at young Gleb Vaganov's prison hadn't even thought to stop the harmless, almost apolitical correspondence between father and son or report the letters to the police.
Convinced that the essential conditions for a revolution to arise no longer existed in Russia, Lenin and his followers began to wander almost aimlessly from library to library through Zurich, Geneva, Berne, Paris, Munich, Vienna and Krakow, reacting with gloom to the successes of Stolypin's land reforms and with happiness to their failures.
Oo
Alexandra might have always experienced anguish for other people's suffering in a deep manner, but the same was true for the joys. 1905 had been dreadful for her. Her baby boy had been deprived of his birthright, and the country, and therefore her Nicky, had gone through uncountable sufferings. 1906 had, so far, been no better in terms of state matters. That horrid Duma had served no purpose but to cause trouble, and those evil socialists had tried to kill Prime Minister Stolypin, injuring two of his poor children in the process.
Regardless of this, Alexandra was a happy woman, because her children were immensely happy. Everywhere they went laughter and merriment followed.
Her dear daughter Tatiana was such a help with Alexei, she was so responsible already, and yet could also be so funny sometimes. Last summer, Pyotr Vasilievich Petrov, the girls' Russian teacher, had showed Alexandra such an amusing letter sent to him by Tatiana:
"Why did you write that I was not good? You mustn't do that, you must write that I was a very good girl. Your devoted naughty girl Tatiana."
That August, during a sunny day at Tsarskoye Selo, Nicholas and Alexandra had walked and fumbled with the children on a new raft on the pond. Poor little Maria fell into the water, but was immediately pulled out. The whole family ended up laughing about the incident.
During another day of August, Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, his wife Mavra, and their children, sixteen-year-old Tatiana, fifteen-year-old Kostya, thirteen-year-old Oleg, and twelve-year-old Igor went to pay a visit to the Tsar and his family at Peterhof, where Alexandra's sister Victoria was currently staying, also on a visit.
While sitting with Victoria, the Grand Duke and his family were all invited to have tea with Nicholas and Alexandra. The four little Grand Duchesses came to the dining room, delighted to be about to eat and play with their cousins. To the great joy of the Konstantinovich children, the two-year-old Tsesarevich was also brought.
The little Alexei went around the tea table, and having greeted everyone, he climbed onto his mother's lap. Igor was sitting beside Alexandra, and he easily caught the little heir's attention as someone new and unfamiliar.
"New!" Alexei exclaimed as he happily moved onto his cousin's lap. "New!" The older boy was very amused and delighted. Strangers rarely ever fazed the little boy anymore. They all seemed to like him. They all seemed to do whatever he wanted them to.
Kostya, Oleg, and Igor went on to play with the Tsar's girls and the baby heir merrily on the floor. Everyone was delighted.
All throughout the year, the Romanov family had received delegations of army regiments and schools and made bonfires in the Finnish forests. The charming little heir loved watching these uniformed men deliver him and his family gifts and march to the beat of the drums. The baby was once brought to one of these occasions in his father's arms, hair curled and dressed in a white Russian shirt embroidered in silver and trousers that left his knees bare. The little one was not at all shy and walked freely, saying hi to the soldiers with great delight. Being almost fully potty trained by now, he had begun wearing trousers early in 1906, though only once in a while. This process of baby boys moving from dresses to trousers was known as breeching.
Now, following his heart-wrenching personal tragedy, Alexandra's dear brother Ernie shared her joy of parenthood once again, making her feel his joy as deeply as if it were hers.
In February 1905, the Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine Ernst Luis had remarried in Darmstadt to Princess Eleonore of Solms-Hohensolms-Lich, a woman just a couple of years younger than him nicknamed "Onor" by loved ones. Unlike his previous marriage to Victoria Melita, this new union had proved harmonious and happy, and on the 8th of November, the couple had welcomed their first child, a boy they were about to call Georg Donatus.
On November 29th of 1906, Alexandra sat down before her desk and started writing her brother a letter.
"My darling Ernie dear", she began. "Ever such loving thanks for your dear letter I was delighted to receive, and for asking Nicky to be godfather. Of course the joy is the same, as we are so utterly one, joys and sorrows are equally shared. My poor boy, I can imagine what anguish you must have gone through those first days, thank God that all ended so well, and I am sure you adore that precious little being after having had to fight to keep it with you. Do make a wee photo for me of him, and what are you going to call him? Where will the christening take place? After a week of warm weather, it is beginning to snow again. Tomorrow we go for a day's shooting, to freshen oneself up, we leave at 8:20 and return for tea, as it gets so dark early. We go by rail beyond Gatchina.
"As I am sure you will be hearing nasty gossip…"
The "nasty gossip" Alexandra referred to was that regarding the divorce of her friend Anastasia, also known affectionately as "Stana", one of the two Montenegrin sisters responsible for introducing her to Philippe Nazier-Vachot and later Rasputin.
"She is divorcing", Alexandra explained. "It is only natural for her, poor creature, and one must admire her for having patiently born her hard, solitary life so bravely, all these years. But Youry's immoral life abroad has reached the climax."
Youry was the nickname of George Maximilianovich, the nobleman Stana had married years ago and was about to divorce.
"For ten years he has been untrue to her", she continued, "only has spent a few weeks with her in the summer, has utterly left the children to her to look after and bring up. All difficulties, money affairs, those concerning their properties he left her to settle and worry over alone. She has had to save up and spare for his expenses lavished upon a lady, and to cover her stepson Sandro's yearly heavy debts. Youry's sisters perfectly agree to this step she takes.
"Vile Petersburg gossip has already married her to Nikolasha, before the divorce has come out. They cannot marry, as it is against the laws, two brothers marrying two sisters, absurd law, and the two never would do anything against an existing law. You can tell Irene this, in case she hears remarks from Berlin."
The "Nikolasha" she talked about was Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, the Tsar's 50-year-old cousin and a grandchild of Nicholas I. Nikolasha was that tall and imposing figure who during the 1905 revolution had convinced the Emperor to accept Witte's proposal in a rather drastic manner, by threatening to shoot himself in the head.
Nikolasha was also the brother of Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich of Russia, Princess Militza's husband. As sisters, Militza and Stana were not allowed to marry another pair of siblings.
Alexandra went on to complain about "Empress Miechen" in her letter, claiming that she and those around her were spreading filthy stories. "God will punish them sorely one day", she remarked before moving forward. "Misha's story is a great worry, he continues wishing to marry Olga's former lady, they are capable of doing it secretly, he has no feeling of duty or real love for Nicholas, so utterly selfish. I pity him with all my heart, as his love for her is very great, she holds him tight, and is older and cleverer than him, but Nicholas's only brother must sacrifice his love for his country, many have had to do the same before, his own father for instance."
Alexandra finished the letter by asking her brother what he wanted as a present for his baby. "Now goodbye and God bless you. Very fondest kisses from me and the children. Your old sunny."
She attached several pictures of her children to the letter for Ernie to see, among them the beautiful 1906 formals, taken in September.
Almost eleven-year-old Olga, nine-year-old Tatiana, seven-year-old Maria, five-year-old Anastasia, and two-year-old Alexei had been photographed at the Lower Dacha in Peterhof.
The nursery room selected for the photo session had been specially prepared for the occasion, with elegant furniture, vases of flowers, and pretty patterns on the walls.
The four girls and Alexei were wearing long white tights, white Mary Jane shoes, and white dresses of different lengths, Olga's being the longest and reaching just under her knees.
The dresses had several pretty lace ruffles on both the skirts and the bodices, each with small embroidered floral patterns, and on their shoulders, they had light pink ribbons tied up in knots. There were thick ribbons the same color tied back around their waists as well, and beautiful pearl necklaces around their necks.
Every year on their birthday, Alexandra presented to each of her four daughters a single pearl and a single diamond, so that by the time they reached sixteen, they each had sufficient jewels for two simple, adult-sized necklaces, one made of pearls, and another made of diamonds.
During the 1906 formal photo session, the little Alexei was the only one to hear his curly golden hair loose. His sisters wore their long hair half-up.
Sitting on a group of different chairs by order of birth, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia stared at the camera with serious expressions that didn't truly match their mood, as they had been struggling to keep themselves from laughing the whole session.
In the first picture, Anastasia appeared resting her head on Maria's shoulder, while the latter stared ahead with her big round eyes. Tatiana's features were relaxed, while Olga gave a look of pride and poise. A second picture showed both the big pair and the little pair tilting their heads slightly towards each other, while a third pictured the profiles of the four girls.
They looked truly beautiful, and had the pictures been added color, this would have been even truer. Olga's cheeks were bright pink, and her blonde hair glimmered in the light of day like a crown. Tatiana's pale skin, dark gray eyes, and dark auburn hair accentuated her beautiful and unique features, among them her wide-set eyes. Maria's huge eyes could best be appreciated with their deep dark ocean-blue color, and her darkening gold hair and full, light pink lips made her look like a real little angel. Finally, Anastasia's small, fine, and regular features could best be thought of as beautiful when combined with the fairness of her slightly freckled skin, cornflower blue eyes, and pretty strawberry-blonde hair.
Each of the girls had individual pictures of themselves taken as well. Olga was photographed mainly standing up and holding a bouquet of flowers, whereas Tatiana stared sideways as if in a trance, looking lovelier than ever. Maria was simply made to sit on a chair and look forward, and after much scolding from Alexandra, who was present during the photo shoot, Anastasia was eventually allowed to have her pictures taken while standing up on a chair.
Following their group and individual photographs, the girls sat down again by order of birth to be photographed with their baby brother Alexei.
Olga held the little two-year-old with the same look of pride, only now the reason for that pride was more than evident, it was pride in the future of the dynasty she was part of best exemplified in the child with curly hair smiling in her arms, one of them protectively wrapped around him. Next to Olga and Alexei, Tatiana and Maria stared at the camera while holding hands, their heads touching affectionately. To the right, Anastasia sat nearby, her expression for once serious.
Nicholas and Alexandra, with an army uniform and a white dress adorned with pearls respectively, later joined the photo shoot, but the most famous official Romanov photos that year would be those of the four young Grand Duchesses.
Oo
Alexandra ended 1906 playing in the snow with her four daughters, all pain and worry in her body gone during those happy moments.
The isolation of the girls would be somewhat alleviated that winter by regular visits from their Aunt Olga, Nicholas's younger sister. Almost every Saturday, starting from late 1906, Olga Alexandrovna would, for many years to come, take the train to Tsarskoye Selo from her home in St. Petersburg. The four Grand Duchesses were always awfully pleased when their aunt visited them, as she brought some change into their daily lives.
The first thing Olga Alexandrovna did was run upstairs to the nursery where she generally found Olga and Tatiana finishing their last lesson before lunch. If she arrived before the professors had finished the morning's work, they would frequently be pleased to be interrupted for the sake of the girls.
Olga and her four nieces would then rush down the staircase leading from the nursery to their mother's room, after which they would all have lunch before sitting to chat and sew in the Mauve Room for a while. A walk in the Alexander Park would follow, and having changed out of their coats and boots, Olga and the girls would often indulge in a spate of high jinks on the stairs. The lights would be turned off as they descended, some of the little Grand Duchesses would lie down on the steps, and when Olga trod on them, she would be grabbed by the ankle and tickled. There was much laughter and screaming as they all rolled down to the bottom of the stairs in a heap, knocking their heads against the bannister on the way.
Over the years, the girls would become closer to Aunt Olga than any of their other female relatives save for the Dowager Empress. She was like an older sister and frequently filled the gap when their mother was ill, accompanying them to public functions, as someone always had to ensure that the children behaved properly, stood up when necessary, and greeted people as they should.
Olga Alexandrovna was closest to her eldest niece and namesake, Olga, who was only thirteen years younger than her. Aunt and niece resembled each other in character, both free thinking and at times rebellious, and that was perhaps the reason why they understood each other so well.
As time went on, however, she would begin growing especially fond of the seductively engaging Anastasia, whom she would nickname "Shvibzik", a German colloquialism meaning "little mischief", in recognition of her incorrigible behavior.
Anastasia loved to climb trees up to dangerous heights, and only the threat of her father being called or his stern voice demanding her obedience persuaded her to go back down.
The child had such courage from an early age, such a fierce love of life, that it was hard not to love her. Anastasia embraced everything as a great, exciting adventure, and her aunt had no doubt that she was the most intelligent of her sisters, though perhaps not as book-smart as Olga.
Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia would treasure the Saturdays with their aunt, when they would appear at the tea table happy, laughing, and squabbling.
Sometimes, before the real fun began, Olga Alexandrovna took the girls to have lunch with their grandmother, Maria Feodorovna, at the Anichkov Palace, where even Anastasia would be on her best behavior, but they would then go to Aunt Olga's to meet their favorite officers from the entourage, have tea, play games, and enjoy the music and dance before one of Alexandra's ladies came to take them back home.
1907 too started with joy and merriment. The five-year-old Anastasia sent her beloved father a sweet little note congratulating him on the new year, and that particular winter, the imperial children had the pleasure of a newly constructed hill with an artificial toboggan run.
A group of red-coated officials, who were covered with so many medals that they overlapped, made sure to inspect the construction solemnly, followed by the girls' nannies, who tested the run. After this, the three older girls, wearing thick bearskin coats, appeared in such a tremendous hurry that they nearly upset the officials. Olga, Tatiana, and Maria screamed so loudly in Russian that their governesses reprimanded them. They then took their seats without regard to precedence, and while the officials' attention was momentarily distracted, they gave the toboggan a push and whizzed down the hill without any attendants. The governess screamed with fear and horror as the little Grand Duchesses did so with delight.
The officials insisted on keeping hold of the toboggan after that, much to the displeasure of the girls, who kept trying to slide down unguarded.
The four girls would often go on walks in the snow with Alexei and even slide down the snow mountain of Tsarskoye Selo with him. They would sometimes tie him behind Olga so that he wouldn't hurt himself. The oldest Grand Duchess loved this pastime, and the four of them loved making their little brother happy, hearing him laugh and scream with joy.
Alexandra would often walk or drive through the park with the children and one of her ladies, usually Baroness Buxhoeveden, "Isa", or Trina Schneider. During winter she and the children would often go out on a large sledge.
Already an irrepressible clown, the little Anastasia would slip down under the thick bear rug and sit, clucking like a hen or barking like a dog, imitating Ara, Alexandra's nasty little dog that was noted for biting people's ankles.
Sometimes the girls would sing Christmas carols and traditional Russian songs as the sledge moved, the Empress giving the key-note to which from under the bear rug Anastasia would offer up an accompanying "boom, boom, boom."
"I am a piano", the youngest girl asserted, making everyone laugh.
Everything with Anastasia was a battle of wills. She was an impossible pupil, distracted, inattentive, and always eager to be doing anything other than sit still. Despite not being as academically bright as her sister Olga, however, she was incredibly curious and had an instinctive gift for dealing with and observing people. Whenever a visitor sat next to her, they had to be prepared to be asked the most amusing questions by the little girl.
No punishment stopped Anastasia from being the major instigator of naughtiness, and she got away with far more than her sisters, this in part due to the fact that the boisterous little Alexei was often yelling, playing, or simply being naughty by her side, and as their parents, servants, and nannies more often than not refused to scold him, the same was true for Anastasia almost by proxy. As she grew bigger, she would be at times rough and even spiteful when playing with other children, scratching and pulling hair, leading to complaints that she was nasty to the point of being evil. Every emotion was expressed to the fullest, and when she was particularly happy, ashamed, or angry, red blotches would even appear on her face and neck.
The Tsar was watching his children play one day when Anastasia, in a burst of temper brought about by a childish disagreement, slapped Tatiana on the face. The Emperor promptly sent for the nursery governess and told her to take Anastasia upstairs and make her hear reason.
"Aren't you ashamed of yourself for slapping your sister?" The governess asked Anastasia once she and her young ward were alone.
"I am not ashamed at all", replied the little Anastasia, "because I did not really hurt Tatiana."
"But you hurt Tatiana's feelings," the governess told her, "and you hurt your father's feelings."
"I did not hurt Tatiana, so I won't say 'I am sorry' to her, but I am sorry I hurt poor daddy's feelings."
Anastasia proceeded to go tell her father how sorry she felt.
"Daddy, I am sorry I hurt your feelings", she said, but to Tatiana she would not say a word. After a moment, however, she suddenly threw her arms around her sister's neck and kissed her. Her anger was intense yet fleeting. Her love was only intense.
Every morning, Anastasia hurried to Alexandra's room and embraced her in bed, and when the Tsarina was ill, the little pair sometimes went to keep their ailing mother company by sitting down next to her.
In March, Anastasia sent her dear grandmother a letter expressing how much she missed her:
"Dear Babushka, How are you? I want to see you soon. Please kiss Aunt Alix", she wrote, referring to the Queen of England, who was Minnie's sister, "and Aunt Toria too", she added, referring to the queen's daughter. "And Uncle", she mentioned King Edward VII. "Alexei kisses you. I want to go to you, to where you are staying at the moment. How is Aunt Alix now? And Aunt Toria? I haven't seen you for so long and I want to see you and Aunt Alix. Can we go to where you are now or not? I love you so much, you are so nice. You always give us toys at Easter and I am so happy. Tatiana kisses you and Olga kisses you too darling Babushka. Are you coming to us at Easter? Your little Anastasia."
Oo
By mid-1907, the girls were beginning to miss Margaretta Eagar more than ever, and their mother missed the skills of the governess too, for ever since her departure at the end of 1904, the absence of her enforcement of discipline had begun to have a detrimental effect. With so much natural energy and curiosity, the girls were growing increasingly boisterous.
Alexandra was often too busy or ill to supervise her daughters properly, so she often left them under the supervision of Catherine Schneider, but though modest and devoted, the 51-year-old Trina was feeling strained, as too was the girls and Alexei's exasperated nursemaid, Maria Vishnyakova. The two women were constantly made to run around from one place to another in failed attempts to stop the rambunctious children's mischief, from 1907 onwards mostly that of Anastasia and Alexei.
In March 1907, therefore, Alexandra made the decision to appoint 37-year-old Sofia Ivanovna Tyutcheva as governess to the girls, with the responsibility to help them prepare their lessons and chaperone them on walks and other excursions. Sofia had come on the recommendation of Grand Duchess Elizabeth. The woman had an impressive pedigree, as she was the granddaughter of a famous Russian poet and had a strong conservative streak.
When Sofia arrived at Tsarskoye Selo, the children's quarters were located on the second floor of the Alexander Palace, occupying a number of adjacent rooms. Two bedrooms and classrooms, a bathroom, a playroom, and a dining room. Other than Maria Vishnyakova, and Alexandra Tegleva or "Shura", there are two younger girls who help take care of the children. For Alexei, in addition to the nannies, a robust sailor of dark hair and mustache, Andrei Derevenko, had recently been assigned to take care of him and make sure he didn't bump himself anywhere.
The two older girls still slept in one room with Shura, whereas the two younger girls and the heir shared another one with Maria Vishnyakova.
The children usually got up at 7:30 in the morning and received breakfast half an hour later. At 9 o'clock, Sofia went for the girls and they went for a walk before or after saying hello to their parents. They returned at 10 o'clock, which is when the two elder Grand Duchesses sat down to study, the youngest two doing so slightly later.
The four girls had lunch with their parents past midday, after which they either went for a drive or walked before tea. After this, if there was no homework or music lesson, they could do what they wanted. The three oldest girls enjoyed the music lessons, especially Olga and Maria. Anastasia only liked fooling around with the piano, attempting to play military marches, and pretending to be very good at it.
The daily routine of the girls would of course change with time, for classes would start taking more and more time as they grew older.
Sofia Tyutcheva got along great with the Russian teacher, P.V.P., a very conscientious man who the kids adored. The religion teacher was Archpriest Alexander Rozhdestvensky, Rector of the State Council Church, but Sofia didn't think he had the knowledge required even for classes with little girls.
His students, especially the lively, bright, and clever Olga, constantly entered into debates with him, and he usually ended up all mixed up, unable to find convincing enough answers to the girl's many challenges, much too similar to those of a certain orphaned boy from St. Petersburg who does not yet know that he is, in fact, an orphan. Consequently, Archpriest Alexander Rozhdestvensky would eventually be replaced with Archpriest Alexander Vasiliev in years to come.
The girls all hated math, and none were good at this discipline. Olga preferred subjects she could easily picture in her mind, such as history, geography, and natural history. Music she adored. The other girls preferred easier subjects they could succeed at just to get it over with, and math was not one of them. The only thing they all loved to learn was dancing, even the clumsy little Maria.
The German language would be taught for years by the unsympathetic German Kleinberg, whom the girls did not like. This was reflected in what they would end up learning of this language, which is not much despite the initial genuine interest they had shown.
When Sofia and the children went for a walk, they sometimes went to Pavlovsk, where they met and played with Oleg and Igor, the sons of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich.
The Tsar was very fond of all types of physical exercises, the best rest from state affairs for him. While the little Grand Duchesses skated and sled down the ice mountain, their father busied himself going for walks and clearing the paths of snow. On one occasion, Sofia saw him do this while passing nearby. He was so focussed on his work that he did not notice her, and thus he blew his nose in his fingers.
When he finally took notice of the new governess, he tried to shake the embarrassment off with a joke. "Do you think, Sofia Ivanovna, that I am a good janitor?"
As soon as the ice started to break considerably on the water canals of the Alexander Park during spring, the Tsar and his children would arm themselves with hooks before going on to catch the ice floes. The entire staff of the children's quarters was invited to partake in this beloved activity, among them, invariably, the sailor Derevenko. Sofia would not lag behind them, more than once receiving the Tsar's approval. "It is clear that you lived a lot in the village", he would once say.
The pastime was fun for everyone, and much noise was made. The water splashed and the children laughed, flushed and delighted.
During the spring of 1907, the two-year-old heir ran along the canal shore and screamed wildly, loudly expressing his immense joy with every new surge of water. He would for many springs to come.
Alexei was already fully out of his baby skirts, smiling proudly and widely, thinking of himself as a big boy, every time he was made to wear his little trousers. His girlish curls were also turning smoother and darker, a light shade of auburn, but he was still an engagingly beautiful child, similar in looks to all of his sisters in different ways. He was a child of many prayers.
With little information to feed on, the foreign press was full of fanciful stories about plots to kidnap or murder him. Accidentally closer to the truth, it was also discussing rumors about his ill health, but the first stories about the Tsesarevich to emerge focused on his rather spoilt behavior, for it was real, the little Alexei had a mind of his own and a strength of personality equal to Anastasia's. Their sometimes cruel sense of humor was the same, the loudness of their laughter was similarly intense, their love for life equally great.
Alexei loved attending army inspections and maneuvers with his already deeply beloved and admired father, strutting around in his miniature uniform, complete with toy wooden rifle, and playing the despot, this even at the tender age of two. He loved imagining himself as one of the soldiers who marched in colorful uniforms to their regiment's music, those nice men who smiled when he arrived. He loved it when they shouted "Hurrah!" at his father. He often dreamed of it.
On one of these occasions he escaped supervision to run in front of the cadets his father was visiting and watch them closer. The young men had cheered for him with another mighty "Hurrah!"
Whenever he knew that a military review or parade was taking place that day, the little boy would burst into his parents' chambers and make them hurry up having a wash and getting dressed.
At two and a half he already had a perhaps ugly liking for the praise and respect shown to him as heir and at times exhibited a marked air of impertinence. He rather loved the antiquated ritual of being kissed on the hand by the officers of the Standart and didn't miss his chance to boast about this or give himself airs of superiority in front of his sisters. Tatiana and Maria didn't mind, they found everything about their brother adorable, and Anastasia shared some of his impertinence, so she would deal with that of her masculine and younger counterpart by competing with him, directing cocky stares in his direction when her hand was also kissed, but Olga didn't find this behavior at all cute or endearing. In this, she was still alone.
When the canals of the Alexander Park were finally freed from all or at least most of the ice, kayaks were placed on the water, and Nicholas and his excited children would row along the canals, the little Alexei usually with his father, who felt better, happier, and calmer than he had in years.
Oo
St. Petersburg. April, 1907.
Dmitri can't sleep. He hates the boys' dormitory. The metal beds are cold, hard, uncomfortable, and without pillows. He is so tired of this place, the constant cold in the rooms even in spring, being yelled or even kicked awake before sunrise, the beatings, the quarrels and fights in the dormitories, corridors, and lines for the bathrooms he often has to clean, the boys who mock his father or try to steal his boots from the pile of shoes at the corner of the room, the marching to the boring prayer services every day, and the bland food. He is sick of it all.
His arms and neck are awfully sore from another one of Mr. Andreev's beatings too. That morning, the Russian professor made Dmitri stand in front of the whole class to read a book fragment as punishment for having made a joke out loud in the middle of the class that some of the other students laughed at.
Dmitri was not able to read even a sentence, of course, but Mr. Andreev didn't believe him. He thought that the boy was joking again. There was simply no way he had not made any progress. What would that say about him as an educator?
The child's secretly feigned self-assurance and the confident smirk that had crossed his face as he said "I can't do it, sorry" with a dismissive shrug had not helped dissuade the teacher from the idea that by denying his ability to read at least a little, Dmitri was merely trying to be funny again.
The 25-year-old underpaid teacher was fed up. He abruptly grabbed the seven-year-old by the neck, dragged him to the back of the classroom, slammed him against the wall, and still squeezing his neck, hit him with the metal ruler countless times in both arms.
The pain was immeasurable, and the bruises still hurt too much to fall asleep.
To make things worse, two of the older boys have stolen Dmitri's measly blankets. They are such bullies. Dmitri feels so embarrassed when they taunt him in front of his peers. It makes him feel like a little child, not like a leader, not like his papa, though he tries hard to act like he doesn't care.
The last time he was hit in the face by a tall fourteen-year-old, Dmitri noticed that most of the other boys were watching.
"What the hell are you looking at, morons?!" He snapped at them. They didn't ask him any questions or even stare at him with pity, and for that he is grateful. He handles these sorts of things better than the others by now, so perhaps he will keep the respect of those his own age and younger at least. He cried a lot when Mr. Andreev hit him though. It would have been impossible not to. He was so scared as well. Not since Bloody Sunday, the day that still haunts him with nightmares of evil sword-wielding Cossacks and disfigured children lying still on the snow, had Dmitri feared for his life so much. He thought that Mr. Andreev was going to choke him to death.
The only good thing to come out of today's ordeal, Dmitri thinks, is that he managed to impress Katya, the pretty red-headed girl, by wiping his tears as soon as the danger was over and then pulling his tongue out at the teacher while his cruel eyes laid elsewhere. Dmitri saw her smile when he did that, he truly saw that!
The child may cry himself to sleep silently sometimes, but he is trying to be strong. He is trying not to lose hope. His papa will come back soon, he is sure of that. His papa will find a way to escape and then come to save him and Sonya, and even if not, Dmitri will endure. He is counting the days till his father's sentence ends. He has a surprisingly accurate calendar in his mind. It will take a long time, but it will happen eventually, the days left are already becoming fewer and fewer…
Oh, but the wait would be so much easier if Andrei were still alive... Dmitri misses him so much. Andrei would have stuck up for him, he would have protected him from the older boys, joked and laughed with him, kept him company, and cuddled him when upset or in pain.
Dmitri would sleep on the floor back in the flat he shared with his family and neighbors, as the bed was only for the sick, elderly, or injured, but there were many pillows and thick, warm blankets, and his mama and Aunt Maria always cleaned. It was so much more cozy and comfortable, it was home, and he had his family. He was safe and loved. Now he is only a problem child. That is all everyone says, even Father Boris, and his mama… his poor mama. He is forgetting about her. He can barely picture her face in his mind with color. He can only think of her as the photograph.
The seven-year-old's eyes fill with tears at these thoughts. He is so alone.
Dmitri takes out his mother's picture from one of his pockets and uses the moonlight and street light coming from the window closest to his bunk bed to stare at it with longing.
As it was to be expected, he remembers how the prayers and lullabies she would sing to him sounded like even less now. This makes the tears roll down from his eyes. He focuses on the picture and tries to see her again, hear her again, as she was. His favorite song, the one she would sing every night to him so sweetly, so tenderly, it is almost there, so close… but it is not the same.
The boy sniffles. He no longer believes in God or fears hell, but the idea that his mama, Andrei, Aunt Maria, and her baby are completely gone instead of somewhere better as they believed existed makes him so upset that he chokes down a sob before putting the picture back in his pocket. He will never know what his mother looked and sounded like, not as clearly again. He misses believing in heaven.
The boy misses his sister too. He hasn't seen her in weeks, and a couple of days ago, a girl who had gone to visit her little brother gave him the scariest of news.
"I saw Sonya", she said, "the nuns and nurses tell me that she is sick, very sick."
Dmitri is so worried for her…
A dangerous idea suddenly occurs to him, a terrible idea, and yet he feels so alone, unhappy, and scared for his poor sister that refusing to follow through soon becomes unthinkable. What if she too, like Andrei, dies? What if she does so alone while wondering where he is? What if she is suffering or in pain? Papa wouldn't abandon her. He would not. His papa is a hero, he cares. Dmitri wants to be like him more than he fears pain.
Oo
Dmitri's plan seems doomed to fail already. The three little boys tiptoe barefoot through the dark corridors of the orphanage slowly and silently, very, very silently, guided by the feeling of the walls on their fingertips and the floor on their toes. They are on their way to the kitchen, holding their breaths and hiding behind partitions and furniture from the occasional, rare warder passing by with a flashlight, awake to guard the orphanage at night.
Dmitri didn't invite the two other boys to come. They both invited themselves. Also unable to sleep, Boris was already awake when Dmitri left his bed. Anatoly, on the other hand, was awakened by the black-haired boy's thud as he accidentally fell to the floor when about to finish climbing down the stairs. Luckily enough, both seven-year-old boys are friends, or at least the closest thing Dmitri has to friends these days.
They both wanted to follow Dmitri, to see what the hell could compel him to risk a beating in such a way. Fearing that they would start asking questions even louder and thus wake everybody up, Dmitri had no choice but to reply.
He was going to visit his sister without permission for a second time, for she was very sick, but on this occasion, he would get her something to eat first, something to make her feel better.
The boys were in awe of their classmate's bravery, and the prospect of stealing food from the kitchen felt worth the risk at the time, so the two other boys have been following him ever since.
They finally arrive at their destination, the huge cooking area of the orphanage, which to the small boys seems bigger than it actually is. Boris is the one who finds the light fixture.
The space is dominated by a large, wide metal stove on top of which there are many cauldrons, frying pans, pots, and casseroles. Next to the stove is a sink with several unwashed plates piled up inside, and the rest of the kitchen is a muddle of pieces of unpainted wooden furniture used for the storage of food, silverware, glasses, plates, and other commodities.
There is also a big refrigerator, an insulated cabinet with space for both small and giant ice blocks to help keep the food cool. Dmitri has seen the iceman delivering big chunks of ice to the orphanage almost every morning, keeping them on the back of his big carriage. The child thinks that he could perhaps become an iceman too once he grows older.
"Wow!" Anatoly whispers.
"Where should we look for food first, Dmitri?" Boris follows.
Dmitri starts looking inside the cabinets instead of replying to them. At first, they find only hard bread and canned stew, what they already eat almost everyday, but inside the refrigerator they find a surprising amount of fresh meat, fruits, and vegetables, and in one of the cupboards, a great number of delicious-smelling and almost newly made loaves of bread.
"Those bastards!" Anatoly exclaims with a frown. "Look at all they keep only for themselves!"
"This is so unfair!" Dmitri agrees, for a moment being careless enough to raise his voice. The teachers, warders, nurses, nuns, and priests all think they are better than everyone else.
The incensed boys have just discovered that the staff of the orphanage has a better diet than them, though they are unaware of the fact that this is not necessarily because the adults want to deny them better meals. The number of children in the orphanage is just so great that there are simply not enough resources to provide them all with adequate nourishment.
The greatest discovery comes, however, when the children find three big tin cans full of vanilla ice cream at the back of the refrigerator.
"The same one they gave us on Easter and Christmas!" Boris opens his eyes wide.
"Those liars!" Dmitri shakes his head with indignation. "They told us that it was only brought during special occasions!"
Having turned the lights back off in order to avoid detection, the three boys spend a few minutes silently looting the place, which they have already memorized. They eat up some tasty chunks of bread and put a few smaller pieces in their pockets. They take a couple of oranges and apples too. They put their fingers inside the cans of ice cream and eat the delicious dessert with their hands. They had no idea how hungry they had been.
Boris soon decides to go back to the boys' dormitory, fearful that one of the warders may suddenly burst in. Anatoly too is very scared, but he is also grateful for the food and especially the ice cream, so he has decided to be brave by helping Dmitri find his sister.
Like those few parts of the boys' dormitory that are close to the windows, the central yard is narrowly illuminated by the moonlight and the distant city lights. The two boys observe the area from behind the back door in search of wardens before going out, careful not to be noticed. They hide in the spots where total darkness reigns produced by the shadows of the buildings just as a precaution, but for some reason there are no wardens out there. After crossing the square, they enter the building housing the smaller children.
Having already been there once, Dmitri knows the way to the dormitories, so he and Anatoly arrive fast and without problems, though the ground is uncomfortably colder on the way, so much so that for a moment Dmitri regrets not having brought his boots. They look through the window first to make sure there are no adults in the room and then carefully open the door, cursing in their heads when they hear the hinges squeaking. They enter the room quickly and quietly. Then, they look at each other.
"Wait here and warn me if anyone comes", Dmitri tells Anatoly. "I am going to look for her."
Dmitri doesn't know if the smaller children are fed better or worse, but he has brought some bread and an apple in his pockets for Sonya just in case she is hungry. He would have brought her ice cream too, but if she is truly sick, ice cream would just make things worse.
The boy makes his way across the giant room, which is more like a long hall with hundreds of cribs lined up in several rows, but it is so dark that he cannot see if any of the children sleeping is Sonya. There is only one thing he can do, and that is turn on the lights, but what if a nurse is in the building and immediately becomes aware of his presence that way?
An idea occurs to him. There are matches in the first drawer of one of the kitchen's cupboards, and there are plenty of candles too. He informs Anatoly of his plan and then carefully walks back to the kitchen.
When Dmitri returns carrying a lit candle by its metal holder, however, he is horrified to see after searching desperately for a long time that Sophia is not among the children sleeping in the cribs. His eyes fill with tears, and his breathing quickens so much that it starts becoming troubled. Is she dead? Is his baby sister dead and no one told him? Oh, his papa is going to be so sad. Dmitri promised him that he would take care of her. Why did this have to happen? Why Sonya too?
He tries not to make a sound as the tears roll down from his face in a fit of panic. She is dead, the boy thinks as he weeps, she was sick and now she is dead like mommy…
Mommy. Dmitri opens his eyes wide before wiping them. Papa helped mommy stay away from everyone after she got sick. Dmitri even felt a bit mad at him for that. Earlier memories can be experienced so differently when seen in hindsight...
At his last school, Dmitri was taught the meaning of quarantine. It is possible that Sonya too is being kept away from the other children to prevent the spread of disease… but where? It may take Dmitri hours to find her, he can't force Anatoly to tag along! He is not gonna want to!
After explaining the situation to the other boy, who decides to go back to the dormitory, Dmitri resumes his difficult search. At least now he has a candle… though that may only make him easier to spot.
Oo
The boy searches only two more of the smaller buildings across the yard before finally reaching a tiny shed at the back of it, behind the installation housing the infants. The place is a wooden warehouse beneath a tree, and from there comes the sound of small toddlers crying. The awful stink of dust, mold, urine, and excrement permeates the air. The boy can feel his heart thumping in his chest as he pushes the door open.
Inside, he finds a pitiful scene, the gravity of which he may still be too young to fully understand. Dozens of little children, toddlers, and even babies lie on the dirty ground, some of them crying, some others coughing, and when he kneels to see if any of them is his sister, Dmitri is shocked to realize that many of them are no longer moving, and that the skin of a smaller number is already cold to the touch. He panics again, even more this time, but as he approaches the back of the shack, tears of relief flood his eyes when he sees a little girl of three with the same flaming red hair of their father, a breathing little girl of three.
Looking vulnerable and devastatingly exhausted, Sophia slowly sits up from her spot on the floor and manages to produce a weak smile the moment her tired eyes meet those of her brother.
"Dima!" She exclaims with an incredibly soft voice, so low that it is barely audible.
Dmitri bursts into sobs. The poor little Sonya looks so awful that he can't help himself. He pulls her into his arms, squeezing her little body tightly without caring or even thinking about catching her disease.
"Dima, my throat hurts", Sonya complains, her voice sounding even weaker. "Tell papa to come, I don't like it here."
Dmitri sobs harder. Sophia looks as if she were dying. There are strange red holes on her hands and forearms shaped like circles, her throat is swollen like a balloon, and her skin is warm too. She must have a fever.
"Is a doctor taking care of you?" The boy asks her after a couple of minutes holding her whilst choking with sobs. He had missed her so much.
The little girl's eyes express confusion at the question, causing Dmitri to grow scared. Nobody is helping them. Nobody cares. They don't matter to anyone, they can't count on anyone.
"Wait here", Dmitri pulls away and stands up.
"No, don't leave!" Sophia cries before bursting into a fit of coughs. His brother's heart breaks for her, so he slaps her on the back until she stops coughing before picking her up, blowing the candle out, and taking her back to the kitchen, where he carelessly turns on the light, takes out all of the ingredients from both the cupboards and the refrigerator without being cautious with the noise this can make, fills a pot with water, and silently hopes that he will remember all of those times he helped Mrs. Smirnova in the kitchen.
Oo
Dmitri ends up cooking a fairly decent stew, which he shares with Sonya by serving it in two bowls after turning the light back off. He helps the little girl eat with unwavering patience and tenderness, as her sore throat is giving her trouble swallowing.
He then helps her eat the bread and part of the apple he had brought her, and when he sees her struggle with both edibles, he cuts everything into tiny pieces for her.
At some point, Dmitri starts getting the sense that his efforts are hopeless. Sonya's breathing sounds incredibly troubled still, and she coughs louder and louder every minute or so. It is a miracle that no one has yet walked in.
She eventually settles in Dmitri's arms, and the boy holds her for minutes and kisses her dear face as if her life depended on it. He truly fears that she is dying, which is why he eventually decides to allow her as much ice cream as she pleases.
Oo
Kira Alexandrovna is alerted to the intruder's presence by the sight of a small light shining from the inside of another building, a light she sees through one of the facility's windows. The nurse is about to tend to the recently dropped-off newborns though, five more to be precise, so she does not go examine the strange glow. Sometimes she thinks that the orphanage should reject just a few children. They have more than a thousand now. At least the newborns and babies get adopted really fast, unlike those other brats.
A few minutes later, the woman goes to check on the sick children. There are hundreds now, so many of them that the orphanage staff have done little more than separate them from the healthy children, place those with relatively light symptoms in a separate room, and leave the sickest to rot inside the shack. They are given water and fed, sometimes, but that is the extent of their care.
When Kira finds the three-year-old redhead missing from the shed, she infers who is responsible almost immediately. It is clearly her brother, the same boy who falsified a permit to see her months earlier.
The woman rushes to the older boys' dormitories and turns on the lights, ignoring the children's complaints, but she doesn't find Dmitri anywhere. Once she gets help from the wardens, the lights are turned on everywhere, the corridors are searched, and several boys are interrogated.
Through a boy named Boris, the staff learns that Dmitri has, among other things, gone out to steal food from the kitchen, but when the wardens search there, they only find a half-empty tin can of ice cream and a cooling stew inside one of the pots.
Dmitri has evidently seen the lights turn on in the distance and heard the commotion caused by those searching for him and Sophia.
Kira is beginning to grow stressed again, so she lights up her fifth cigarette tonight and starts smoking, a way too common habit of hers nowadays, one she is sometimes admonished for by the priests and nuns, but what are those sanctimonious hypocrites who do the same and worse going to do about it? Find someone else willing to work here cleaning asses all day for more than three months? She truly hates her job, but at least she gets it done.
Warder Igor Ruslanovich eventually finds both siblings huddled together under a classroom desk, shaking in fear. His footsteps made only a moderate amount of noise, and he turned on the room's light quite suddenly, without a warning, causing Dmitri to scream for a second before clinging harder to his sister.
"Well, well, what do we have here?" Igor grins widely, almost with pleasure from having yet another excuse to take out his frustrations on two defenseless children. He bends over and takes Dmitri by the ear, forcing the boy to stand up and walk out from under the desk, leaving his sister there.
Kira arrives immediately after. "Perfect, you found them!" She exclaims, blushing slightly at the older warder.
The nurse is dragging Boris along by the arm for further interrogation, an interrogation meant to incriminate Dmitri. The many questions she asks are answered while the accused party standing in front of them is still being held painfully by the ear.
Though Boris is looking down as he discloses in great detail what he, Anatoly, and Dmitri did earlier, clearly ashamed of rattling out his friend, Dmitri still experiences a deep sense of betrayal, a wound to his willingness to trust that won't heal for many years to come. The fact Boris feels the need to repeat over and over again that it was all Dmitri's idea sure doesn't help. People truly care only for themselves. They are so selfish.
"Thank you, Boris", Kira says with a cruel, fake smile once she has all the information she needs. "You can go back to the dormitories now, just remember to repeat what you said to Father Andrei tomorrow."
Kira lets the boy run away before moving to pick Sonya up. The little girl bursts into tears the moment her small body leaves the ground.
"No! My sister is sick!" Dmitri struggles against Igor Ruslanovich's grasp as the man grabs him by the stomach and carries him away from the classroom. "She is sick!" He cries, more scared for her than himself. "She needs a doctor! Let me go! Help her! Help her, please! Don't leave her there again, please!"
Oo
Having left Sophia crying inconsolably back in the shack, Kira makes Dmitri take off his shirt before instructing him to thoroughly wash and disinfect the whole kitchen. Igor and several other wardens and nurses stand in a corner and supervise the boy as he works, shouting corrections at him to make sure that he does the job properly.
When Dmitri is done, Kira makes him wash everything again. "And when you are done, you will clean everything a third time, you little criminal, and then a fourth time. You might have brought a terrible infection down upon us all by taking that bratty little infected demon here."
The seven-year-old boy is in tears, and not only because he is more exhausted than he has ever been, but also because he hates the demeaning ways in which he and his sister are being referred to. "Little criminal", "bratty little infected demon", "little pest", "young scoundrel", all epithets he cannot stand. But worst of all is being compared to his beloved father as if that were a bad thing.
"Trash, nothing but vermin like his father", Kira often mutters with disdain as the other nurses and wardens murmur in agreement. "A menace to society."
As Dmitri washes dishes and mops the floor, a couple of wardens taunt him by pointing at his work and telling him that he has missed certain spots. They also give him a kick or two in the ribs if he tries to say something smart or funny back, but Kira is his worst tormentor. Whenever the chain-smoking woman feels like he is not working hard or fast enough, she puts out her cigarette on the pale bare skin of his back and forearms. It hurts more than any beating has, Dmitri thinks with shocked horror as he sobs uncontrollably, but knowing that the burns look much like those red circles on little Sophia's forearms hurts almost as much. He told his papa that he would take care of her, but he can't, he truly can't.
Only a half-empty tin can of ice cream and the little cool stew that remains in the pot are left intact as evidence of Dmitri's thievery, but the rest of the kitchen is left shining.
The torment is not over though, for a nurse insists that the other rooms and corridors where Sophia has been should also be cleaned by sunrise.
Oo
The entire orphanage staff that was inside the installations during Dmitri's mischief goes to wash themselves immediately after they are done making him disinfect the affected rooms, though not before making sure a couple of them stay to scrub the boy raw. The whole process is unbearably excruciating and humiliating for the child, already used to showering and bathing on his own, not like this, not as if he were a baby. He screams so loudly every time his cigarette burns are touched that no one in the building is able to remain asleep.
Dmitri is not able to sleep what remains of that night either. He can't stop crying. Every single muscle in his body is sore, the burns hurt even more, and his heart and mind are too agitated by what just happened, even more so knowing that Sonya is back with those evil nurses.
The worst punishment comes in the morning, however, when the chief warden is informed about Dmitri's actions, and all of the students aged five and older are made to gather up in the yard, surrounding a wooden bench before which Dmitri, naked as the day he was born, is made to kneel.
Before today, Dmitri had done a good job pretending that he didn't fear Father Andrei, going as far as breaking his office windows, but he does fear him.
Father Andrei is the opposite of Father Boris. Father Andrei doesn't pity anyone. There isn't a trace of warmth or tenderness for the children under his care in his heart. They are almost like beasts to be tamed.
Dmitri can sense some of this.
A couple of days ago, at the end of Holy Liturgy, when people are supposed to kiss the cross and then the priest's hand as customary, a recently orphaned little girl of five made a tiny mistake. Dmitri saw her kiss the feet of Jesus and then His chest instead of going for Father Andrei's hand.
The chief warden didn't react with any sort of patience or understanding whatsoever. Instead, he swung the golden cross at the little girl and struck her right in the face, drawing blood from her lower lip. The poor tiny thing had cried out so loudly, and Dmitri hadn't done anything to help her as he would have before. He had been too scared. He had already begun fearing the beatings. He had been shamefully selfish as never before, thinking only of himself like Boris and everyone does. He knows that his father would have been truly disappointed.
When Dmitri broke Father Andrei's windows, the chief priest had another warder beat him and wasn't even present. Not so today.
Father Andrei is walking slowly and menacingly from one side of the yard to another, lecturing the students about the evils of theft and disobedience.
Dmitri can't see him. His head is down on the surface of the bench in front of which he is kneeling. He has never been so embarrassed. He doesn't actually care about being called a criminal, at least not that much, but this… this is different. Nothing he does after this to prove how fearless and awesome he is will make the others forget that they saw him shaking and crying before the punishment even commenced, without any clothes no less... he lets out a gasp and tries to make himself as small as possible at the mere reminder. He can hear murmurs and giggles already. So embarrassing, so very embarrassing… he wants to sink into the earth right now.
"Never in my life had I been made aware of such blatant disrespect for those who have fed, clothed, and sheltered you", Father Andrei says coldly, without acknowledging the boy he is actually referring to, "and yet here you are, stealing from me, contaminating the place with your filth, reminding us of that which the Lord said, 'for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me'", his voice is loud, clear, and powerful, resonating through the whole area. "We haven't punished this sinful creature though", he finally points at Dmitri. "No, we have only cared for him and ignored his father's heinous, heinous crimes against God's anointed. Our mistake, for look what ignoring the Lord has brought us", he pauses to stare at the children, warders, teachers, nuns, and nurses, watching them with his dark, unfriendly brown eyes. The man's beard and hair are black, but patches of gray hair dominate his roots. "What do you think, children, that is to be done? How do you propose to teach this delinquent in-the-making some respect for us?"
No one answers the chief warden's question, and this causes Dmitri to pant in fear. The children have grown too scared to reply, and the staff respect the priest too much to assume that they understand what his intentions are.
Father Andrei doesn't wait for an answer though. He just swings the small wooden rod he has in his right hand through the air, causing it to whistle. Dmitri begins shivering more and more violently than ever before. He had not been aware of the fact that Father Andrei already had the rod at hand.
"It will be 20 for the crimes of your father", the priest decides, "and 30 more for your personal insolence."
Nervous gasps reverberate throughout the school grounds, and Dmitri's heart stops. The most any child has been beaten is fifteen times. That evil man is going to kill me, the boy thinks with horror. He will never see his dear father again, because he is going to die. Forever. Because heaven doesn't exist.
The first blow causes him to let out a short scream and jump. The second one opens old wounds inflicted upon him during previous beatings, drawing blood. The third, fourth, and sixth bring fresh and greater pain to his already damaged skin, worse than ever before, worse than even the shocking cigarette burns, and by the tenth blow, the little boy is screaming in pure agony without interruption, countless tears running freely down his cheeks as abundant blood pours from his back, arms, buttocks, and legs. Snot and saliva come from his nose and mouth involuntarily as well, and so does the pleading and begging.
"Papa!" He calls for his father too. "Papa, help me! Please! Daddy!"
Dmitri cries out so loudly and so often that the air stops flowing to his lungs completely by the time Father Andrei finishes with the nineteenth hit. He can barely hear the sound of the voice demanding an instant stop to his torment.
"Stop this!" Father Boris raises his golden cross with fury in his eyes. "Stop this outrage! This amounts to sacrilege!"
But Father Andrei doesn't stop until he has hit the young, shrieking child 25 times. He has to at that point though, when he comes face-to-face with the sight of Boris's crucifix. For a moment, the holy object and the meek God it represents seems to be silently judging him. He shakes that idea off instantly though.
"How dare you?!" The chief warden growls, grabbing the cross hanging around his own neck defensively. "I could have you fired for this impertinence, I could report you for blasphemy! 'Whoever spares the rod…'"
"The devil himself quotes scripture, Father Andrei", Boris interrupts him, eyes wide open and voice soft yet full of indignation. "'Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger', Ephesians 6:4", he says in his firmest tone. "This cannot stand! I too could report you! Do not touch him anymore!"
The chief warden is left speechless, and so is everyone else watching.
Father Boris lets the cross hang over his chest again and then takes off his phelonion, the large liturgical vestment that the Orthodox clergy wear over all of their other priestly shirts and garments. He approaches the bleeding and terrified boy slowly and carefully. "It is over now", he soothes him, "be still."
Dmitri is no longer screaming, but he is choking with sobs. He barely understands what is happening around him, and for a moment before gathering up the courage to merely turn his head around to see Father Boris, he thought that his father had finally come to save him.
A loud yelp escapes the child the moment Father Boris covers his naked little body with the phelonion and picks him up.
"I know, I know", the priest whispers sympathetically. "It is over, it is over, my boy."
Oo
Father Boris takes Dmitri to one of the two rooms of his small and modest apartment, a building separate from the orphanage that is located just across the street. The priest tends to the child's wounds there.
"Ouch!" Dmitri yelps.
"Be still and it will hurt less", Father Boris says calmly yet firmly as he cleans the last of the boy's small leg lacerations with a soft washcloth dipped in soapy water. One of those tiny injuries would be no cause for concern, but they and dozens of welts are all over the back of his body, so much so that the washcloth is already red with blood. "You will have to learn how to control your impulses, Dmitri", he warns him. "You could have exacerbated the epidemic by making the older children catch the disease too. Furthermore, you still have at least seven years left in the orphanage, and that is only if you manage to find an apprenticeship, which you will have difficulty doing if the teachers don't say good things about you."
"Ouch!" The child cries again, louder this time.
"I am almost done", Father Boris begins bandaging his injuries, including the awful-looking cigarette burns the man was aghast to discover.
"What do you mean by seven years?" Dmitri asks in a tiny, broken voice, still crying from the pain and now also horrified by the prospect of another year in the orphanage. "Most of the older boys leave at fourteen, and I will be fifteen then. I have six years left." If he weren't in so much pain, he would have also straightened up, but his whole body is aching. Better to remain as he is, face down on the bed.
"I am sorry to be the one to tell you this, Dmitri, but all the teachers, myself included, agree that you will be repeating the year", the priest replies.
The boy stays silent for a while, trying to remain calm, trying to be hopeful.
"I don't care", he eventually sniffles, sounding distraught and bitter despite his best attempts not to. "Papa will have come for me and my sister by then."
"Dmitri", Father Boris sighs. "Your father would want you to succeed in school."
The child knows that too well, and it does trouble him, but he doesn't want any of his teachers, not even Father Boris, to know that the thought of repeating the year makes him upset.
"What do you know about papa?!" The outraged seven-year-old sobs. "You hate him, you are always complaining about how awful he is even though he only wants to help the poor, and if God existed, He would hate papa too. He would hate me also, but I don't care. I don't love God if God doesn't love papa."
"What gave you such a preposterous idea?" The elder frowns.
Dmitri doesn't reply, and after the sound of his sobs becomes louder, Father Boris finishes dressing up his wounds in silence. The old priest then stands up and searches through the drawers of the dresser, where he finds the little nightshirt he was looking for. It will do for now.
He goes over to the weeping child and begins dressing him, careful not to cause too much pain.
"Whose nightshirt is that?" Dmitri asks as he wipes away a few tears from his face, using his palms to do so.
"My great grandson's nightshirt", Father Boris replies. "My granddaughter and her husband came to spend the night here with their children a couple of days ago. They forgot to pack everything."
The child's momentary curiosity fades, and the tears keep streaming down his face. Father Boris helps him lie face down on the bed again, tucking the blanket around him.
"Do you feel better now?" The priest asks gently, and the child nods slowly, though he keeps whimpering softly. The old man sits beside him, muttering a few prayers as he waits for him to fall asleep.
"What is going to happen to her now?" Dmitri whispers after a while, still weeping.
"Who?" Father Boris looks down at him, puzzled.
"Sophia", the child replies, his voice becoming higher. "My baby sister. Will she die with all the other sick children?"
The elder looks down and sighs, ashamed of his complicity with the orphanage staff's negligence. "We weren't expecting as many children this spring, much less the outbreak that occurred, but I will talk to Father Andrei again and make him see the light this time. I will convince him to get a loan or ask for more donations in order to get those children hospitalized, including your sister, I promise." If Father Andrei refuses, Boris will use the little money he has saved for an emergency or borrow from relatives if he has to.
This is incredibly relieving for Dmitri to hear, but there is still something troubling him deeply. "Please don't make me go back there with Father Andrei and the others", he pleads with another sob.
"I will ask him to allow you to stay here until your wounds heal", Father Boris assures him, "or perhaps till the end of the summer, after all, there is nothing you can do now to save the school year."
"No!" The seven-year-old cries, drenching the pillows with his tears. "I don't want to go back, ever! Please!"
Father Boris feels powerless. He doesn't have many years left on Earth, and his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren are incredibly numerous and of modest means. As harsh as it may seem, the orphanage is also the boy's best chance at life, and Boris can't take in every child having a hard time there. That is most of them.
The elder can't think of what to do now other than stroke Dmitri's hair, hoping that the gesture will calm him down. It does, somewhat. The boy eventually stops sobbing, and his breathing steadies.
"God does not hate you, Dmitri", Father Boris says.
Dmitri frowns, though he doesn't open his eyes. "But Father Andrei said…"
"Father Andrei does not understand. Children are not to be blamed for their patients' crimes, ever, but they often do suffer the consequences. That is merely a fact of life revealed to us in the Holy Book, something even you understand now, is it not, Dmitri? A parent must not put their children at risk in order to fulfill what they believe is their fate."
"Papa did nothing wrong", the boy replies defensively, secretly thinking that Father Andrei's words do make sense. "I only hope the Tsar's children will not suffer any consequences when the time comes for him to be punished", he declares sarcastically.
"Oh, Dmitri…" Boris shakes his head.
"And God does hate me", Dmitri insists, "how could He not hate me after what Father Andrei…?" The child's frightened voice breaks. "He doesn't protect me or my family anymore, not even mama and Aunt Maria, who prayed everyday", he laments.
"But God did protect you, child", Father Boris argues, "the sight of the Holy Cross is what made Father Andrei realize that he was committing a grave sin."
Dmitri stays silent, for he is not easily won over by that argument, not when he also saw Father Andrei beat a little girl with a similar cross. The boy reckons that God, who doesn't even exist, had nothing to do with either one of those things. There are relatively good people like Father Boris and bad people like Father Andrei, and they both can use the cross as a weapon to get what they want. Truth be told, Father Boris does not give himself enough credit for saving him. It was his bravery that made the chief warden stop, not God's. Dmitri does not want him to know how grateful he is though, not with the awful way he speaks about his precious papa.
"Did God withdraw His protection from the Byzantines?" The child asks after a while, remembering one of the man's religion classes weeks ago. "Was He really trying to punish them for doing things He didn't like?"
"Oh, you remember that!" Father Boris is pleasantly surprised. "Well… yes, Dmitri, and there were many signs of this. A few days prior to the fall of Constantinople at the hands of the Ottomans, strange signs from God were witnessed throughout the sky and the city. For example, Constantinople was covered by a strange layer of thick fog even though this was rare in May, and so, many of the people living there compared the phenomenon to the darkness during the crucifixion.
"That same night, though the Moon should have been full, a New Moon appeared instead for about four hours, frightening everyone.
"A mysterious light was also seen shining throughout the entirety of the city, especially above the dome of the Hagia Sophia Basilica. A large flame trailed to the outside, surrounding the dome of the church during the Ottoman siege.
"Sultan Mehmed himself was afraid of this inexplicable bright light, so much so that he wanted to put an end to the siege, as he feared that God was on the side of the Christians. He called all of his prophets in search of an explanation, but none was given.
"After some time, however, and at the very moment when the Ottomans were making the decision to lift their siege and retreat, the light flew away towards the sky. Darkness fell over the land, and the Turks took the city soon after, as the divine grace of the Byzantines embodied in that light was no longer with them. God had taken it away."
"He always does that, so very mean of Him", Dmitri moans tearfully, stunning the old man, who did not mean for the story of Constantinople's fall to be taken as a metaphor for the unfortunate boy's life, as it evidently seems to have been understood. "And then He sent all of the poor Ottomans He used to punish the poor Byzantines to hell."
"How do you know that?" Father Boris asks, slightly amused now.
"Father Anatoly", Dmitri replies, referring to his first religion teacher. "He told me that all of the Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Protestants, Old Believers, pagans, and other godless heathens and heretics go to hell when they die."
"I think a true Christian should be more focused on their own salvation than on foolishly trying to do God's job for Him, don't you think? Every fellow man's final resting place is God's judgment and God's alone."
"Just be selfish then, got it."
The priest shakes his head in disapproval as he smiles down at the boy almost fondly, this without meaning to.
Seconds later, when Dmitri has finally fallen asleep, Father Boris rises from the bed and leaves the room.
Oo
The bruises and small lacerations were hell to live with the first week. Dmitri couldn't sleep on his back, the most comfortable way for him, he could barely move without crying out in pain, and having the dressings changed everyday was also kind of annoying. To make matters worse, he was sick and injured at the same time.
Dmitri ended up catching his sister's disease, which the doctor that Father Boris brought to his room immediately diagnosed as diphtheria, an illness that the priest had had before during childhood and thus was not at risk of contracting.
Though the symptoms were truly painful and uncomfortable at the beginning, especially as they coexisted with the burns, bruises, and small lacerations from the abuse suffered, the weeks Dmitri has spent being nursed back to health by Father Boris in his small apartment are genuinely the best he has had anywhere near that awful orphanage.
He has a bed, an actual bed. He has warm, cozy pillows and blankets. He hasn't had to wake up early a single day. There are no older bullies anywhere around him. No one beats him or says mean things to him. No one tells him what to do. He can shower alone and with warm water. There are no chores. He doesn't have to read or write. He has actually rested and slept.
Even the food is better. There is more of it, and it is always something other than hard bread and canned stew, which is already saying something.
Now that Dmitri is getting a lot better, he entertains himself by solving Father Boris's puzzles and looking through his books, magazines, and newspapers, the ones that have pictures in them that is. Always busy at the orphanage, the man is barely ever around to keep him company, but the child doesn't really mind, as he prefers peace and quiet. He doesn't miss his selfish, treacherous friend Boris either and is hardly looking forward to seeing all of those other peers and older children who saw him in a pitiful state again. He is embarrassed just thinking about it, and Katya… pretty red-haired Katya. She probably thinks that he is pathetic and stupid now.
Dmitri doesn't like thinking about his classmates and how they see him now. It is too horrifying to contemplate. He prefers looking at the magazine pictures and imagining himself as one of those rich guys with top hats.
On one occasion, the boy found a newspaper article containing several official pictures of the imperial family. He stuck his tongue out at the Tsar who had taken his dad away, unimpressed by the whole thing. One of the photographs was the exception though. Five years old at the time, the short little Grand Duchess Anastasia stood on a chair with a beautiful lace dress, staring at the camera with a sweet smile. The seven-year-old was instantly enchanted without realizing it. Not only was Anastasia very, very pretty, prettier than Katya even, and Natalia from his previous school, but the little princess was also smiling. None of the other Romanovs were smiling as widely, save for the two-year-old baby heir in Olga's arms.
Dmitri had identified the Tsar's youngest daughter by the letters "A" and "N" underneath her photo, those he had managed to read. It was just as his papa had said, that Anastasia was the funny one who played pranks on the Tsar. Oh, how he missed his father's stories! And he loved how Anastasia had a little sibling too! Like he did! They were so similar!
The child ripped off Anastasia's picture from the newspaper, hoping that Father Boris wouldn't mind… at least not that much. There would certainly be no beating.
Dmitri doesn't steal food, money, or anything valuable from Father Boris though. His papa used to say that one should only steal from those who have a lot of things, and from the way the small apartment looks, the priest seems to be almost as poor as Ivan and his family were. On one occasion, Dmitri even helped him cook dinner.
"It is not bad", the old man nodded, "a little bit too salty and watery, but not bad at all, Dmitri, maybe you should seriously consider seeking an apprenticeship at a restaurant. I heard that you also made a stew for your sister the night you looted the kitchen. Very impressive, boy."
Sophia is getting better too. Father Boris kept his promise, and she has miraculously recovered from diphtheria at a hospital, the only one to survive among those children left to rot in that shack, considered too ill for anything else.
Though Dmitri is happy to know that she is alive and well, knowing that she will soon be discharged and sent back to the orphanage does not make him happy at all. He fears what Kira may do to her.
"Who did this to you, Dmitri?" Father Boris took the opportunity to ask the boy while changing his bandages. He was referring to one of the many ugly cigarette burns on the child's back and forearms. These small wounds are all covered in scabs now, and they should fully heal in a few days without leaving exceedingly noticeable scars, but back then, during Dmitri's second night at the apartment, they still looked like bright red circles.
The mere reminder of what Kira had done made Dmitri burst into tears. Father Boris did his best to calm him, and the child easily opened up. He couldn't help but trust the elder.
The priest promised the boy that he would try to get the woman responsible fired, but so far, this hasn't been achieved. Getting the chief warden to agree to transfer the numerous infected children to a hospital was hard enough.
Dmitri fears what will happen to him too. He has been trying to prolong his stay at the flat by secretly putting the thermometer in hot water right before his temperature is taken every day, but the old man isn't buying it anymore, and it is easy to see why. The child's small cuts have fully healed without leaving noticeable scars, or even any scars at all, his diphtheria symptoms are all gone save for a mild cough every few hours, and the only few bruises he has left are a subtle shade of fading yellow. His mood is also better, only turning gloomy at night, when he has time to think about all of the things he fears, when he has time to miss his father. Sometimes he will cry himself to sleep begging him to come back.
"Papa", he whimpers, "come back, please, I don't want to go back to that place, papa, come for me, please."
But the days and the nightmare-infested twilights go by and Ivan does not return. On one occasion, Dmitri even forces himself to pray again. "Please God, make him return, I will like you back again if you do, I promise, I will make papa like you back, please… I will never make fun of you again, and I will be a good boy, not treacherous to the faith like the Byzantines, God, please!"
Bargaining is not necessarily the correct way of praying, or so Father Boris would say, but it is the only one Dmitri is good at.
Oo
Peterhof.
The way of life at the Peterhof Palace for the imperial family was almost the same as in Tsarskoye Selo, though to the great delight of the children, there were fewer lessons, and the remaining few stopped in July. Olga rather enjoyed life in Peterhof. Her position as the oldest sister was respected there, for she had an entire small room all for herself. The remaining four siblings slept in another room with their nanny Maria Ivanovna Vishnyakova.
Sometimes the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna came to Peterhof to visit her grandchildren, staying in her small palace, called the "Cottage." At 10 o'clock the children went to greet her.
The Grand Duchesses loved having tea and talking with her, though this sometimes could grow boring, as Minnie wanted them to be on their best behavior at all times, acting like proper young ladies.
This was especially hard for the rambunctious Anastasia, who could barely sit still and loved sneaking around to explore everything around her, including her grandmother's house. On one occasion, the little girl wandered away while her sisters and nannies talked and went into Minnie's room unnoticed. That is where while looking at all of the items lined up on the vanity, Anastasia found a very expensive bottle of peppermint scent, an oil for the hands, and opened it. As the young girl smelled its contents with great pleasure, a maid walked by outside the room, frightening and causing her to drop the bottle. The liquid soaked the entire carpet.
Initially scared that her grandmother would become furious, Anastasia tried to clean up the mess with toilet paper, but this did little to conceal the smell that the peppermint would leave in the room for decades to come.
That day, the little Anastasia tried to play innocent as she had tea with her grandmother and sisters, but the next time they had tea at the Cottage, Minnie asked her granddaughters if any of them knew the reason why her room smelled like peppermint.
Anastasia's nervous coughing betrayed her before she dared tell the truth.
"I am sorry, Babushka", the child eventually said innocently as she looked up at Maria Feodorovna with a pout. "I opened your peppermint bottle and spilled it", she coughed, "I am sorry, I know you are going to be sad, but it makes me sad too because your hands on longer smell like peppermint, and I liked it when they did."
While the Dowager Empress did lecture the little girl and told her to be more careful, she failed to remain displeased with her for too long, especially not with the sincere and endearing way in which she had apologized.
Indeed, Anastasia loved smelling the peppermint on her beloved grandmother and the hair products on Aunt Olga. She loved the smell of cigarettes on her father, and her mother's perfume too. She loved the smell of home.
That is why the young Anastasia also loved the smell of orange blossoms on her dear Babushka's neck, which she would feel only when she hugged her tightly. On one occasion, Anastasia asked her grandmother about the oranges in her neck, whether she had made juice with them, and if she could have some. They ended up talking about Sicily, the beautiful place Minnie had ordered the scent from. One day, they promised each other, this would be one of their many places to visit. The Dowager Empress also showed her granddaughter the specially designed pretty little box of polished inglewood inside of which the orange scent had come.
Minnie would soon get herself a new peppermint oil bottle for her hands, but for many years to come, she would occasionally smell the scented carpet with her granddaughter and recall the amusing memory.
The children preferred to go mushroom hunting with their Babushka at the Peterhof Park rather than merely having tea with her, as they had a lot of fun doing the former. The five of them constantly picked up these fungi, but when Minnie, who was also very fond of this entertainment, came over, they were not allowed to go mushrooming without her. She couldn't miss the fun. At high society parties, she was nothing but prim and proper with just a touch of humor and friendliness, but while hunting for mushrooms with her grandchildren, she sometimes became a completely different person, lively and childlike. She was the sweet-natured Babushka who sliced apples for her little grandson Alexei and gushed about flowers with her granddaughters. She was a young, mischievous Minnie.
Oo
St. Petersburg. May, 1907.
The coughing, the bruises, and the scabs from the burns are completely gone by the time Father Boris comes into the flat one day and tells Dmitri to put on his day clothes and boots for the first time in several weeks. The old man made sure to bring all of the boy's belongings to the apartment and give them a wash on the day of the beating, but he had never made him wear anything other than different underwear and nightshirts since the incident.
This can only mean one thing, the boy thinks in distress as he dresses, tears rolling down his cheeks. He is being sent back to the orphanage.
Dmitri decides not to beg Father Boris to be allowed to stay. It is clear to the boy that the elder doesn't want him around any more than Valentina did.
No, he won't beg. Dmitri wipes away his tears and tries to hold back those that are coming. He must maintain his composure and dignity, and besides, Sophia was sent back to the orphanage the day before. He doesn't have any idea how, but he must try to protect her in any way he can, perhaps even improve his behavior to be allowed visits, as horrible as the prospect seems to him. If that fails, he will escape the orphanage with her and then wait for their father to come somewhere near their old flat. His papa doesn't want him panhandling on the streets, but he would understand if told the reason why.
Dmitri has had his rest, it is time to be brave now. He can't be selfish, at least not when it comes to his baby sister.
Oo
Father Boris terrifies Dmitri by taking him straight to the chief warden's office.
"Is Father Andrei mad at me again?" The child panics. "Is he still mad about the windows? What did I do now?!"
"Worry not, child", Father Boris replies. "The windows have been fixed, and he knows you have been staying with me, you haven't had the chance to wreak havoc in weeks, luckily so."
When the two arrive at the orphanage's headquarters, a sad little gray place full of icons on the walls and documents piling up on the floor, they find the chief warden sitting behind his desk, a woman with bright green eyes taking a seat on the chair before him, a very pretty young lady wearing a long sleeveless white dress with small yellow flowers and an abundantly flowered summer hat the same color on top of her pinned up dark hair. Face full of chocolate, the three-year-old Sophia is happily sitting on top of the strange young woman's lap.
"Sonya!" The boy cannot help himself despite knowing that the dreaded Father Andrei is watching. He rushes towards his little sister, picks her up, and spins her around in circles as he plants kisses all over her face. "Are you good? Are you hurt?"
The little girl giggles uncontrollably at the sight of her brother and the sound of his voice. She is thankfully unharmed, the old burns having long healed. She is also wearing the same long-sleeved gray dress and leather boots with which she came, although her little legs are bare, without stockings, and the brown coat and violet scarf and mittens are nowhere to be seen. As it is summer, that is probably for the better. Dmitri made a terrible mistake by putting on his uncomfortable itchy woolen coat, it is just that he didn't want to carry it around.
"This woman says that she is friends with your criminal father, boy", Father Andrei says.
Still holding Sophia, Dmitri cocks his head in confusion. He has never seen that awfully pretty lady in his life.
"I don't just 'say'", the young woman retorts, her chin up high, "and I have a name, Anya Igorova, I was friends with the children's father, and I am taking them with me. I have their documents, as well as my own", she takes out several papers from her big brown suitcase and shows them to the chief warder, "their birth certificates, pictures, everything."
Father Andrei takes the documents and examines them, putting on his glasses to do so. "Everything seems to be in order, but where did you get these? I wasn't aware that these children's documents had been kept safe."
"Valentina, the woman who dropped off the children here, left their identification papers with a next-door neighbor of hers. When I arrived and asked for the children all over the vicinity, I was given their documents and led here."
"Who is this Valentina?" The chief warder looks up from the papers with suspicion. "And why did she have the documents? Did that criminal leave them with her, and if so, why? Is she an anarchist too or complicit in that man's crimes? Because that is plausible when one considers the fact that she left the children outside of the orphanage undocumented and then ran away without showing her face, what was she so afraid of? Should I call the police?"
"None of that", Igorova responds loudly and firmly, shaking her head and sounding slightly nervous, "Valentina was just one of the many people who lived with the Sudayevs", she continues, lowering her voice noticeably to appear calmer. "The documents were simply there in the apartment, and as for why she left the children without introducing herself or giving you the documents, I can only guess that she felt ashamed of having abandoned them, but the economic situation was dire, you see. In fact, she and her family no longer live in the flat or even in the neighborhood, and neither do any of the other tenants. They were all evicted months ago."
"I see", Father Andrei nods dismissively, "I guess the little thief was too much trouble even for his delinquent father's former neighbors", he takes out a sheet of paper from a pile on the ground, grabs a pen that was lying on the desk, dips it in a bottle of ink, and begins writing.
"Well, well, well", Father Boris interrupts the exchange, stepping in front of Dmitri and Sophia protectively, "all of this is very convincing, very convincing indeed, but you should know that I can't let you take the children just like that. Who is to say you didn't steal those documents for some less than pure reason?"
Sophia makes an angry and disappointed noise. She seems to like Anya, or as Dmitri refers to her in his mind, the "pretty lady."
The boy too hates Father Boris for a brief moment. That stupid old man is trying to take away his only chance at escape! And what for? He doesn't even care about him! He said he couldn't take him and Sophia in because then all of the other children would want the same! He wanted to kick him out of the apartment and send him back to be burnt and beaten at the orphanage!
"Excuse me?" The woman raises a brow as she looks between the two men. "Do I look like someone who would steal children?"
"You are being ridiculous indeed, Boris", the chief warden says as he continues filling the form. "The young woman has evidence for what she is saying. What do you want these children here for anyway? They will only corrupt the others, as sin and rebellion are clearly in their blood, and besides, we already have enough orphans as it is. You know that better than anyone", he stops writing for a moment and looks up at the other priest grimly, as if giving a warning, "or are you growing attached to that little wretch?" He asks coldly, threateningly. "Because you are no longer fit to enact discipline in my institution if that is the case. You are old enough to have retired years ago anyway."
Father Boris sighs, a troubled and worried expression crossing his face as he looks between Father Andrei, the woman, and the Sudayev siblings. "Don't lie to me, Dmitri", he looks down at the boy with a serious expression. "Do you know this woman? Was she your father's friend? Remember that trusting strangers is a dangerous thing to do, especially in a big city such as this. I am sure that your father warned you about this, but I am doing so again."
Dmitri doesn't answer immediately. He just lays Sophia down and looks from one person to the other, taking some time to think things through. Father Boris has scared him badly by reminding him of his papa's warning during the aftermath of the Bloody Sunday massacre.
While lost on the streets of St. Petersburg that awful day, Dmitri found a nice friend who soothed him and told him that everything was going to be fine, but when Ivan found the two of them walking together to get candy, the man panicked for some reason and ran away. Ivan then told Dmitri not to trust or talk to strangers anymore, that they could bring him great harm, especially men. Dmitri doesn't know why men in particular, probably because men are stronger and can beat people harder. It only saddens him to know that the friend he made that day might have actually been just trying to harm him like Father Andrei.
Anya is not a man though, and the teachers, nurses, priests, and warders who beat him and burnt him were no longer strangers. How worse can the pretty lady really be? And what if she is really a friend of his papa, one that Dmitri simply hasn't had the chance to meet?
No. Unlikely.
"Do not believe anyone you don't know who says I am their friend", Ivan warned his son that day.
But the boy can't think of any harm worse than what he has already endured in the orphanage.
"I know Anya, Father Boris", Dmitri lies convincingly. "I used to call her 'auntie'."
The chief warden signs the form immediately, and before Anya leaves with the siblings, Dmitri gets the urge to hug Father Boris goodbye, causing the elder's eyes to water.
"Thank you", the boy even decides to say at last. He still believes that the priest doesn't care, at least not enough, but that like Valentina, the man did his best.
Oo
Dmitri finally takes off his itchy coat and gives it to Anya, who puts the item inside her suitcase along with Sophia's winter garments.
"Where are we going?" Dmitri asks the pretty lady several times as he, Sophia, and the woman herself walk side by side down the street. He is happy and excited to be leaving the orphanage and meeting a new person, although he is still scared as well. He tries to be the only one holding Sophia's hand at all times and avoids taking the pretty lady's hand in case he needs to escape with his sister.
"Oh, you are gonna love it, sweet thing!" Anya replies excitedly. "You are going to meet so many of your father's friends!"
"Is papa there with them?" Dmitri's eyes light up.
But Anya's mood seems to become sour, and she soon tries changing the subject. "Do you want chocolate, love?" She looks through her suitcase and takes out a candy bar. "Your sister loved it."
Though scared and confused, Dmitri can't reject a treat that he hasn't had in months. "Are you not papa's friend?" He asks before taking a bite out of the delicious chocolate bar and savoring every tiny speck.
"No, dear", she shakes her head. "I sadly never met him." Her wording worries Dmitri. "But I do know many of his friends. They couldn't come here to pick you and your sister up though, it would have been too risky, as they are all in trouble with the law or about to be, so it was very smart of you to lie, you have good instincts."
Oo
Dmitri, Sonya, and Anya take a carriage that drops them off at a fancy-looking apartment located in a "good" part of the city, at least when compared to Dmitri's old neighborhood. He can see a decent amount of people wearing nice Western-style clothes instead of solely simple peasant shirts and baggy pants, and all of the houses and apartments are clean and painted nicely, in different colors.
The place that the children will be staying at is a modest small blue-green house with two floors squeezed by two other houses, one on each side. The dwelling is not small or modest in Dmitri's eyes though, not small or modest at all. His excitement grows.
Anya rings the doorbell, and a young man who looks around her age, no older than 20, opens up to them. He dresses very simply, as Ivan would, with loose pants, a shirt with a long collar that opens to the side, a black cap, and leather boots. His hair is brown, but with light blonde streaks, and he wears it in an unruly style. He immediately takes Anya into his arms and carries her inside to the living room, where he kisses her passionately on the lips, making the children in front of them open their eyes wide in innocent dismay.
Dmitri and the little Sophia walk into the house slowly, moving their heads around shyly as they explore their new home. There are so many seats! Dozens of people as well, mostly very young and even teenage males, a couple of them just slightly older than Dmitri's late brother Andrei. There are also women and men of all ages though. They are all chatting in the living room or cooking back in the kitchen, which the boy can barely see, since the place is so very big! There are so many papers and maps on the dining room table as well. Dmitri wonders what they are.
When the young man finally stops kissing Anya, he looks down at Dmitri, and smiling pleasantly, holds out his hand for him to shake. "Hello, little friend, I am Viktor."
As Dmitri accepts the offer and shakes his hand, a different young man approaches them after closing the door from which they entered. "So these are Ivan's children!" He exclaims. His attire is similar to Viktor's, but his hair is black. "I am so happy to be getting the chance to meet you! My name is Iosif."
Dmitri blushes slightly as he looks down shyly at his feet. He had never been as nervous around strangers, but this is one of his papa's brave friends. He is tall and strong and everything a hero should be. Dmitri wants him to like him. Dmitri wants to be like him.
When the boy's gaze shoots back up, he notices that the other people have taken turns saying hello to him and his sister. One woman has even picked Sonya up and given her a kiss. Hidden among these many strangers, at the back of the living room, he is pleasantly surprised to see Uncle Ilya looking at him, teary eyed and with a sad smile on his face. Dmitri knows that he has seen his uncle cry before, but that didn't happen often, only when something terrible had occurred.
The boy is reminded of the extreme suffering his father's brother went through after Bloody Sunday and almost gets the urge to cry too.
"Uncle!" Dmitri rushes towards him, fear making his heart beat faster. Something awful has definitely occurred, and where is his father? Uncle Ilya wouldn't have escaped without him.
Ilya immediately clasps his nephew, picks him up, and bursts into loud, ugly sobs as he hugs him so tightly that the child starts having just a bit of trouble breathing.
"Oh, my boy!" The man weeps. "My babies! I was so scared! So, so scared! I almost passed out from fear when they told me that they had found our old apartment full of new tenants! And then we had so much trouble finding you! But you are safe! You are both safe!"
Dmitri is convinced that his uncle's hug feels different from the ones he has received from him before. His soft belly. It is gone. His uncle has lost an incredible amount of weight, and he smells awful too, like the alcohol Father Boris used to clean his worst and deepest laceration.
The child grows even more scared. "Where is papa?" He manages to ask when his uncle's grasp on him loosens.
Ilya's sobs cease. His very breathing has stopped. How can he disclose such awful news to his nephew? How?! Ivan was the boy's world, the person the child looked up to the most, perhaps the only one he truly looked up to. The news will completely break him.
Ilya lays the child down slowly, very, very slowly, and still in tears, begins shaking his head frantically, as if saying "no, he isn't here", as if the devastating message could be conveyed that way.
Oo
Peterhof.
The tiny Grand Duchess Anastasia had long wanted a pet, like her mother's dog Ara, but all to herself. A creature to take care of tenderly, but who also loved her back, unlike her favorite broken doll Vera. She also wanted it to be a cat, perhaps one of those stray cats she had heard some servants complain so much about. She would want that street cat that no one else did! She would! She would nurse it back to health and teach it to be good!
One day, at one of the gardens of Peterhof Palace, the nursery found a cat following the gardener. Anastasia jumped and squealed with joy so loudly that the other children, save for Alexei, covered their ears.
"Sir, will you please give me your cat?" She promptly said to the man, trying to sound more pleasant than she had been when demanding balloons as an even younger child.
"You may have the cat if you can keep it", the gardener replied.
Anastasia took that as a yes and carried the cat home, where she buttered its feet and shut it up in one of the rooms. She had been told that licking off butter distracted cats and helped them feel happy about their new homes. This was untrue, however, since putting butter on cats' paws only annoyed them.
Distracted with the many entertainments that the sea palace of Peterhof had to offer, Anastasia forgot about the animal for a while, and when she went back to look for it, she was terribly upset to see that it had escaped through the chimney.
The next day, the little girl went out to look for the gardener.
"You said I might have the cat", she complained most bitterly once she found him, "and I took it home, but she ran away."
"No", the gardener shook his head. "I said you might have the cat if you could keep it."
Anastasia begged the man to give her the cat again. "Please tell the cat to stay with me."
The gardener was reluctant to give up his pet, so a kitten had to be found for Anastasia elsewhere. The little Grand Duchess needed to learn how to take care of her pets better, and how to show love to those she adored as well. She still had a long way to go.
Oo
St. Petersburg.
Dmitri doesn't cry when he learns about his father's death. He can't even get himself to believe the news. The mere notion of never seeing his dear papa again is just too awful to contemplate, and the information is revealed to him so matter-of-factly and with such a lack of details and explanations that nothing seems real. He is in a state of total shock. He doesn't know if it is true, and though right now he can't find a reason why Uncle Ilya would lie to him, he is definitely searching for that reason in his mind. He doesn't want it to be true.
The boy does cry, however, when after giving him the news, his uncle implies that, like Valentina and Father Boris, he doesn't want him around either. It is just like right after Bloody Sunday.
"You two are staying here for a couple of days", Ilya says, "as I really wanted to see you and know that you are well, but these are the headquarters of our organization", he looks around the living room, "where we plan our attacks, no place for a child. Are they taking good care of you and Sonya at the orphanage? Is the school good? Are you getting better at reading?"
What follows is one of the worst tantrums Ilya has ever had the displeasure to witness coming from his nephew. The child sobs and screams so loud that he hurts the ears of those around him and scares the little Sophia. He slams his tiny fists against the ground and even tries to knock over a chair before Ilya stops him, restraining him by the arms.
"What the hell is going on, boy?!" He barks at the child. "I had never in my life seen you behave like this! What would your father say?! Or better yet, look around! Everyone is watching you!"
Dmitri looks down in shame and stays still, but he keeps crying loudly. Now Iosif and the pretty lady will never like him.
"There, there", Ilya tries to calm him by patting him on the shoulder. "Look now, you are making me cry too", his voice breaks. "What is it, Dima?" The man grabs his nephew's chin. "You can tell me."
Sniffling, Dmitri pulls back his sleeves and hopes that the burn scars are still somewhat visible. "Look", he says with a tiny voice.
"What is this, son?" Ilya asks, staring hard at the barely visible and small white-pinkish circles on the boy's arms. "Did you have the measles or something? Are you alright now?"
"No, uncle!" The child cries with desperation. He just realized that he hates having to talk about this.
"What was it then, son?"
"One of the nurses did it with her cigarettes", he sobs, "she did it to Sonya too, and that is not all they did to us there…"
Fury rages inside Ilya's chest like the hot iron of the forge he and Ivan used to work in, but he forces himself to remain calm. "You mean that you were mistreated there?" He asks with an incredibly soft voice, rare for Ilya to use.
Dmitri nods, his lip trembling, and several fat tears roll down his cheeks.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Ilya asks.
"I just did", the little boy chokes out.
Oo
When Ilya promises his nephew that he will take him and Sonya to live with their relatives in the countryside, the boy becomes a bit calmer. He spends the rest of the day familiarizing himself with his father's anarchist cell, both the members and the headquarters.
Dmitri soon decides that his papa's friends are truly different from the people he is used to meeting. They spend all day looking at glass tubes, small piles of dirt that Uncle Ilya claims are different explosive substances, and cords bundled up on top of the table, though sometimes they also read books about history and anarchism, or strangely enough, chemistry. They say it will help them make better bombs.
Viktor and Anya are not married, and yet they are always kissing. The same is true for another couple Dmitri has seen smooching around the house. He is so confused. Before today, he had only seen his papa and mama kissing twice, and now everyone is doing it out in the open as if it were normal, and unmarried too!
While exploring the house, the seven-year-old also makes the terrible mistake of not knocking on the door of one of the rooms before opening it.
"Yuck! Eww! Eww! Eww!" He cries out loudly with his eyes shut, closing the door immediately, and so fast that he almost damages it. Alarmed by his sudden outburst, the worried Ilya runs up the stairs to ask him what is going on, and when Dmitri dramatically describes the "so very awful" thing he has witnessed, his uncle laughs out loud so hard that he almost cries.
"They're making love, kid, let's leave them be", Ilya says while wiping a tear from his eye. "That is one of the many reasons why I don't want you here, but believe me, careless young people forgetting to lock their doors everywhere is only the second-best reason!" He chuckles. "Now get ready for dinner! Or do I need to talk to you about the birds and the bees?" He grins, raising his eyebrows expectantly.
"I know about the birds and the bees, uncle!" The child exclaims, embarrassed and frustrated. Valentina had to explain everything to him last year. The children of the apartment had always been made to play outside quite often and for no apparent reason, and Dmitri, a typical enthusiast of playing outside, had never truly minded or questioned why, but that one day, hungry and tired, he complained out loud about being forced to leave the warmth of his blankets and asked why for so long that he was eventually given the answer. "I just didn't know it was all so, so…" Dmitri shudders. "Valentina didn't really describe how horrendous all of it was, and she said that only married people could do it!"
"Well, I am glad that I am no longer burdened with the awful task of telling you", Ilya chuckles.
"But Viktor and Anya told me that they are not married!" The boy protests. "And they are doing it! Aren't you going to do something about it?"
Evidently amused, Ilya smiles down at the boy fondly as he ruffles his black hair. "It is none of our business, child, remember that your father fought for freedom as well as equality. Most people are just stuck in their old ways, but if we succeed, it is possible that those in love will no longer need papers or permission to show each other their affection if they really wish to do so."
The mention of his father is all the boy needs to leave the matter behind. If his papa said that it was fine, then it probably is, and the seven-year-old is glad that he can still be friends with Viktor and the pretty lady, though what she was doing was not so pretty…
"I still think it is gross though", Dmitri frowns, "and it doesn't look like affection or love to me… it is just weird."
"Don't worry, no one expects anything else from a kid", Ilya laughs again.
Oo
Dmitri and Sonya are given a room to share with the three youngest members of the cell, all of them teenage boys. They are not mean or violent like the boys at the orphanage though, and the nice Iosif is among them, so after a brief moment of apprehension, the little boy manages to relax on the mattress prepared for him and Sonya despite the fact that they will be sleeping in their day clothes at least for tonight.
The three-year-old girl still has tears in her eyes from being told about what happened to her father, although she doesn't quite grasp the fact that Ivan is gone forever. The last time she saw her loving and affectionate father, she was only two years old, so the few good memories she has of him are as foggy as those that Dmitri has of their mother, who she doesn't remember at all, but she understands that something awful has happened, that she has lost something important, something good.
Her older brother Dmitri is holding her tightly, trying to soothe her.
"It's alright now, it'll be alright", he says. "We will be living with Aunt Natasha and Uncle Georgiy very soon, eat Aunt Katya's blini and bathe in the lake and play with our cousins, and we will see papa again in heaven", he lies. Dmitri doesn't want her to miss believing in heaven as he does.
"You promise?" She sniffs. "And you won't leave me alone with that mean lady again?"
"Never!" He kisses her forehead tenderly. "I will never, ever leave you, and I will always want you around."
Dmitri feels guilty about not crying for his father like Sonya is doing. What kind of terrible person is he? He is as selfish as Boris, only caring about his own well-being. Happy that he is not going back to that awful orphanage all while his papa is dead, dead… dead!
It doesn't sink in, but Dmitri does miss him. The excitement brought about by the thought of getting to know his father's friends is gone. The place is heartless and soulless without him.
Dmitri wants Uncle Ilya to be lying.
Oo
Sonya has fallen asleep, and so have Iosif and the other two teenage boys. Dmitri decides that it is time to go to the bathroom again.
It is not that he needs to go to the bathroom right now, but he has come to learn that going as many times as possible right before actually falling asleep is the best way to avoid "accidents." He had several of them while at Father Boris's house, most following extremely frightening nightmares about Bloody Sunday and the day his father and uncle were arrested. The mean Father Andrei also haunted his bad dreams quite often.
Deeply ashamed, Dmitri would always try to wash the sheets in secret without Father Boris noticing, but this was useless. The old man inevitably found out every time.
It is good that Dmitri had never had these accidents before and that the priest was patient and understanding. The child doesn't know what he would have done if he had embarrassed himself in the boys' dormitory. He would have probably jumped out of the window from shame.
On his way back from the bathroom, Dmitri cannot help but listen in on a heated conversation full of screams and sobs taking place downstairs in the living room.
"He had to save everyone, that bastard couldn't just stay out of anyone's business!" His uncle cries. Curious, Dmitri walks midway down the stairs, confident that being barefoot is enough to cause no sound strong enough to reach the people below.
He looks through the railing to see who Uncle Ilya is speaking to and realizes that they are not in the living room, but the dining room. His uncle is facing two slightly younger men in their twenties as he speaks. They are both badly shaven and wearing simple peasant clothes. The strangers seem a lot calmer than his uncle, but they appear to be sad too, as Dmitri can tell by their red eyes.
"He had the most selfless revolutionary spirit I have ever had the pleasure of encountering", one of them nods, wiping away a tear before it falls. "We will never forget him."
"Oh, believe me, I will try to forget that pain in the ass!" Ilya responds angrily, confusing the boy. Why does he have to speak that way about his papa? Uncle Ilya sounds really strange too, his speech is slow and hardly understandable.
There is a reason why everyone eats in the living room. The dining room table is still full of cables and glass containers, but also on top of it now are ashtrays for the cigarettes the men are smoking, three glasses, and several bottles. Dmitri feels curious enough to make a good effort to read one of them. The lights are on, and the word seems short, so he can try.
Vodka.
Uncle Ilya is drunk.
"Don't speak like that about your brother", the other man says sternly, causing Dmitri to nod in agreement from his hiding place. "I know that you are upset, but what we do requires sacrifice."
"You weren't there, Sasha!" Ilya cries. "Only Maxim and Volodya were there in Nerchinsk katorga with us, the rest of you got off the hook! You lucky sons of a…!"
"Was that the name of the camp?" The man nicknamed "Sasha" cuts in.
"The system of penal labor", Ilya nods, wiping away a few tears from his face before continuing, his speech slurred and broken from the effects of both the alcohol and holding back tears. "They would whip someone bloody every day, but my stupid brother always took the blame for whatever the young lads did", he hiccups. "They still made him work with the rest of us, just like that, with his back wide open and bleeding…"
Ilya spares no detail describing his brother's ghastly wounds or the leather whip that the guards would use to brutally strike the prisoners' backs whenever they slowed down their pace of work, sometimes their bare backs if the alleged offense was serious enough. He then spends minutes trying to quell his sobs before moving on to talk about life at the work camp in great depth, though he remains difficult to understand at times.
The conditions were very poor. The prisoners lived on starving rations and worked in mines almost all day with little rest extracting ore, lead, and silver, though the Sudayev brothers spent most of their time in the lead mine.
There were often not enough men to keep up with the demand, so the prisoners were literally worked to death at times.
Not only did the brothers spend most of their time in the lead mine, but they also lived in cold barracks located near that same unventilated place.
Ivan was the first to start succumbing to lead poisoning. He suffered from muscle and joint pains, violent vomiting, and excruciating stomach pains and headaches that would leave him incapacitated and sometimes even unconscious from the agony, but it was not the poisoning alone that sealed his fate. Ilya is sure that the constant whippings had left his brother's body too weak to fight back against it.
By the time the escape plan Ivan, Maxim, Vladimir, and Ilya had agreed upon was ready to be put into action, Ivan was already gone.
Ilya wishes he could say that his brother died quickly and without suffering, but nothing could be further from the truth. Ivan agonized for days while begging out loud for death to come in the measly infirmary before finally perishing, his children's welfare the only thing haunting his feverish thoughts and nightmares.
Ilya's mournful and drunken rant is abruptly interrupted by the sound of Dmitri's loud sobs, screams, and desperate calls for his father.
What the seven-year-old just heard is not the simple fact lacking in details and explanations that his uncle initially gave him. It is not like Valentina's short and childlike answer on how babies are made. It is a thorough retelling of how much his father suffered for a better world, and for him.
Dmitri can see the injuries Uncle Ilya just described, so much worse than those he himself endured at the orphanage. The boy was seriously hurt, but he didn't have pieces of flesh flying off his body. He was sick, but he never, ever was in enough pain to beg for death to come. It is too horrible, too horrendous, too painful to accept. He still wants everything to be a lie.
"It is not true!" He cries, panting from the exertion of the crying session. "It isn't true! Please, uncle, tell me it isn't! Please!"
But he knows that it is real. It finally feels that way, and it is unbearable.
The men at the table rush to comfort him, and the boy pathetically tries wrestling them away. "No! No! No!" He cries. "No! Please! Why are you lying, uncle?" He coughs and pants for air. "Why are you lying to me?"
Ilya manages to hold him down. "Your father was very brave, son", he weeps too. "He died for his convictions", he assures him. "He died for his convictions", he repeats, trying to convince himself as much as his nephew.
The words sound hollow to the sobbing boy, and though he hates himself for momentarily disregarding that which his father gave his life for, there is nothing right now that can alleviate the worst grief he has ever experienced for anyone. He just wants his daddy back.
The child keeps sobbing for hours, keeping the three adults awake for the rest of the night and waking a few others. If he hadn't taken precautions, he would probably have had another "accident" as well.
Following this explosion of grief, Dmitri wouldn't talk at all for days. He wouldn't utter a single word.
For weeks, he would rarely stop crying.
Oo
Peterhof.
The little Grand Duchess Anastasia was having a great summer spending time with her grandmother and playing with her siblings, especially Maria and Alexei, when she suddenly fell ill with a fever and a sore throat.
Her nanny Maria Ivanovna put her to bed in Olga's room so that she didn't pass the disease on to anyone else. The eldest Grand Duchess would, for a while, have to share a room with siblings as she did in Tsarskoye Selo.
When Sofia Ivanovna Tyutcheva asked whether the Empress had been notified of the incident, Maria Ivanovna replied that she didn't want to disturb her before the doctor arrived.
In the meantime, Tyutcheva looked at the girl's throat. It was covered in white. When the pediatrician arrived and started examining the girl, the governess asked him if it could be diphtheria.
"Why assume such horrors!" He exclaimed.
When Alexandra was informed about her daughter's condition, she ordered her to be transferred to the isolation room. The following day, the doctor produced Anastasia's diagnosis. She had diphtheria.
At Sofia's insistence, the Tsarina was immediately notified about her daughter's condition while still at a parade. She returned immediately, ordering the transfer of the healthy children to the Farm Palace.
Diphtheria, the dreadful illness that had taken Alexandra's mother and sister all those years ago. She needed to remain with her sick daughter until she recovered, as the alternative was unthinkable.
Though terrified for her sunshine, Alexandra kept her composure and prepared herself to do her best to take care of Anastasia, aided by the devoted young Shura.
Oo
Less than a week following his sad and drunken tirade, Ilya takes a train with his three-year-old niece and his seven-year-old mute and weeping nephew, traveling with them from the city of St. Petersburg to the village where he and Ivan were raised, only to find a completely different world from the one he last saw that spring of 1905.
The revolution has turned the region completely upside down. None of the Sudayev cousins nor their children live there anymore, and neither does the family of Ivan and Ilya's mother. Having been enlightened by Ivan's rhetoric, most of the men and women related to the brothers were hanged as bandits for their alleged participation in the uprising against local landowners that swept the region a couple of years ago.
The Punitive Expedition sent to the village also burnt several houses belonging to the rebels, leaving hundreds destitute. Many of the people the Sudayev brothers knew have been forced to leave.
As if all of this weren't enough, the revolution also fractured the family, turning siblings and cousins against each other.
Cousins Georgiy and Igor sided with the government, and they left the village in the aftermath of the uprising along with their wives, children, and the orphaned children of their hanged relatives. Georgiy and his party left for Siberia, as many benefits had been offered to them there, whereas Igor was given a small parcel that had once been part of the crown lands.
It seems that everyone considered Ivan, Ilya, and their families dead after so many months without news and visits from them. The vastly illiterate village has no way of contacting anyone either, as the surviving people related to the Sudayev brothers left to start anew without telling anyone about their future whereabouts.
Ilya finds out about all of this going door by door and asking the neighbors, and Dmitri doesn't once open his mouth to speak as he listens to the disheartening conversations. He just glares at everyone with teary eyes and hatred in his heart. His sadness and despair have given way to anger.
He intensely hates so many people right now. He hates the Tsar's cruel, evil, and vicious men most of all, so much so that he might burst from rage, but he hates the Tsar too for being so stupid and dim-witted, for taking not only his precious and perfect papa away but also his entire family. They are all gone, some unjustly punished like his papa only for fighting for a better world where no one is better or worse, and others simply gone somewhere else. The Tsar gave them land and opportunities, and this confuses Dmitri more than anything else.
If the dumb Tsar that Russia has really does good things like that once in a while, could he really have offered Dmitri's father a pension? Could he?!
Could Father Boris have been telling the truth after all? But why would papa reject the money then? The question haunts Dmitri. How could he leave me and Sonya destitute? How could he leave me to starve with Mrs. Smirnova?
Oo
Ilya proceeds with his search and discovers that the extended family of the children's mother, Natalia, is similarly lost and scattered.
This makes him start begging the villagers to take Dmitri and Sophia in, among them the remaining relatives of his late wife Maria, but he has no luck. The situation has gradually improved since the recent disorders, but they are all still very poor, and some can barely feed their families.
The little Dmitri experiences an unbearable sense of betrayal at his uncle's insistent attempts to get rid of him and Sophia by leaving them with the first strangers willing to accept them, as if they were stray cats no one wants or a hated chore everyone wants someone else to do. Does he really care about them so little?
Dmitri understands his neighbors' lack of interest in him and his sister now, as their own children were a priority, but Uncle Ilya too? His papa's own brother? It is too much. Much more painful.
Dmitri's sense of betrayal only grows stronger when on their way to the inn where they will be staying for the night before taking another train back to Petersburg the next morning, Uncle Ilya leaves him and Sophia sitting on a wooden bench outside of a pub.
"Wait here a few minutes", Uncle Ilya tells the children. "It won't be long."
But the minutes become hours and Ilya doesn't come out of the pub. The three-year-old Sophia soon becomes bored and starts annoying her brother with endless questions that he doesn't feel like answering, as he is still unable to utter a single word or keep himself from crying for too long.
Tired of waiting, Dmitri wipes his tears, takes his sister's hand, and enters the modest wooden pub, where the sight of peasant drunkards brawling and cursing out loud scares both children badly and even makes Sonya cry. A barely conscious man almost tumbles over the terrified little girl. Luckily, Dmitri pulls her out of the way.
When the seven-year-old finds his uncle drinking by the bar, he finally gathers up the will to speak again.
"Let's go, uncle!" He exclaims angrily, but the drunk Ilya waves off his words like a pesky fly while gulping down another shot of vodka.
Seeing his sister so scared, Dmitri has no choice but to keep waiting, in tears, with her outside. By the time Ilya leaves the tavern, he is so drunk that he doesn't even remember the way to the inn, and if he did, he wouldn't be able to walk all the way there. It is the seven-year-old Dmitri who is left with the responsibility of finding shelter for the night somewhere closer.
A family of peasants living nearby, fortunately, allows them to sleep in the granary. Dmitri can't sleep though. He spends the rest of the night crying. What if his uncle gets drunk all of the time? Who is going to take care of him and Sonya then? Would his papa's anarchist friends be willing to let him fight against the Tsar with them? He wants his papa's dream world to become real.
The following morning, he has trouble waking his uncle up. The boy tries slapping and kicking him to no avail until he finally asks the peasant woman who took them in for a bucket of cold water.
"Ah!" Ilya cries out when the freezing liquid hits his face, quickly straightening up. "What the fuck?!" He looks around and immediately realizes what just happened. "What the actual fuck, Dmitri?! You didn't have to splash me like that, you little brat!"
"My sister almost got hurt because of your drunk ass!" The seven-year-old exclaims in outrage, employing the same words he has recently heard his uncle using around the other drunkards, the same words that often came out of the mouths of the older boys back at the orphanage. "And you spent all of your money on that shit! We don't have anything left for the train ticket! We will have to walk all the way back to Petersburg while starving!"
"Dima, I…"
"Fuck off, uncle!" As he says that, the boy leaves the granary with Sophia to have breakfast with the poor yet hospitable peasant family.
Eyes wide open, Ilya is left shocked by the bad language that his nephew has quickly adopted from both him and the other men at the bar, and also by the mere fact that the traumatized boy is speaking again at all. He doesn't actually remember much about what happened the night before. He doesn't remember Dmitri yelling at him.
The man looks down in shame, knowing too well that the life he wants to protect his niece and nephew from is not much worse than what his broken and grieving self has to offer.
Oo
Peterhof. Lower Dacha. June, 1907.
Alexandra Feodorovna Romanova.
"And the little bird enters the nest!" I make the last spoonful of porridge fly across the air all the way to my adorable youngest daughter's mouth.
My little Anastasia savors the bite, closing her eyes and smiling. Oh, she is such a sweet thing!
She and I are still in Olga's room, whereas my four other children have been staying in the Farm Palace. Luckily none of them have caught diphtheria. I miss them all so much, especially my cheerful baby boy.
I have been so terrified for Anastasia's life that I have not slept properly in days, and my heart has also been troubling me. My sunshine has coughed so much, poor thing, just the way I remember my beloved baby sister and best friend May doing before she died, and my poor mama… this illness has brought up so many awful childhood memories that I sometimes take walks around the house just to cry them off. I have been genuinely freaking out.
One night, my daughter woke me up and tearfully demanded me to "make it stop", meaning the symptoms such as the coughing and the sore throat. My girlie, they must have been hell to deal with. I myself remember that they were. It soothes me to know that I was there for her, rubbing her back and holding her in my arms as I rocked on a chair for the rest of the night. No child should go through diseases like these without a loving parent around.
Luckily the worst lasted only one night, and Anastasia's condition has improved a lot, probably because we gave her a vaccine before things got worse, right after she was diagnosed. Her throat doesn't hurt anymore, her temperature is good, and she is not coughing as much.
Shura and I sometimes take her outside to get some sun. The three of us are always dressing in simple, long-sleeved white shapeless dresses, Anastasia wearing black shoes and tights too, as her dress is short unlike Shura and I's. My little girl wears a straw hat as well, whereas her nanny and I have our heads covered in white veils. We look almost like nuns or hospital nurses.
Right now I am just done giving Anastasia her breakfast in bed.
"Perfect, little one!" I show her the empty plate. "I told you you could finish it all!"
"Yay!" She claps. "Another one! Another one!"
"Another one?" I show her the plate again, smiling. "But you ate everything up, sunshine, look!"
"I want to be a big bad bird who eats the little bird now!" She exclaims, making me laugh out loud. She is just so funny, not an hour goes by without her making me laugh.
"Alright", I say, "here comes the little bird", I fly the empty spoon through the air.
"Arrgh", Anastasia pretends to be the big mean bird who eats it.
We play this way for a few minutes longer before I call Shura and ask her to pick up the plate.
"Wow!" The young nurse exclaims in feigned awe for the sake of my daughter. "You finished it all!"
Anastasia smiles proudly, and when Alexandra Tegleva leaves the room with the plate, she grabs my sleeve to catch my attention.
"Monsieur Guiliard is in love with Shura, mama", my little daughter whispers, smiling complicity.
"Little monkey!" I gasp, trying not to make much noise. "It is not good to gossip, where did you get such an idea?"
"Olga and Tatiana say that when Pierre sees Shura if she happens to pick them up from French class, he always smiles like this", Anastasia proceeds to mimic the awkward smile the French tutor does whenever he is nervous in such an accurate way that for a moment I have trouble believing that a five-year-old is responsible for the performance.
"Just don't say that out loud in front of Nanny Shura and Monsieur Guiliard, dear", I chuckle, "you might embarrass them awfully." The warning turns out to be a terrible mistake, as my daughter is now smirking as if she had just gotten the best idea ever. "I am serious, Anastasia", I say a bit more sternly.
"But mama, if they get married, can we go to the wedding?" She asks, ignoring my request to be discreet.
"I doubt that is something that will happen, girlie, but of course, if they invite us", I indulge her.
"Mama, what prince will I marry?" She continues excitedly, with the innocence of a child who thinks their parent knows everything, and as if the question were a simple matter of what is to be eaten later for lunch.
I genuinely do not know, and despite the fact that there is still plenty of time to decide on such matters, the question does worry me intensely. Marriages are complicated for people like us.
Nikolasha and Stana ended up getting married after all. It happened this year despite the law prohibiting two sisters from marrying two brothers. I can not help but be glad for them, as my friend Stana endured a lot of heartbreak during her awful first marriage, and yet the whole situation leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I don't want any of my precious innocent daughters, or my baby boy for that matter, all of whom I have protected and kept away from the debauchery of the outside world and raised to remain pure of heart and become good Christians, to suffer through the scandal and heartbreak of a divorce, to give away their innocence and wide eyes to someone who shall not be their one and only love, and yet how can one prevent such a horrible thing? Stana's previous husband didn't give any signs of his vice, of the fact that he would be unfair and untrue. How can I protect my daughters from evil men when I have already failed to do so with my dear friend Anya?
Earlier this year, my friend Anna Alexandrovna Taneeva got married, becoming Anna Alexandrovna Vyrubova.
She had been in love with General Orloff, a great friend of mine. I just felt ambivalent about this match, as Orloff was a bit too old and probably, ehem, "experienced", for my impressionable and very young friend, who I felt protective over as if she were my little sister or my very own daughter. I was just trying to look out for her and ensure that her marriage would be as happy as mine and Nicky's, as even my own husband's only sinful liaison before marriage had been shocking enough to learn about and painful for me to accept and forgive as a naive and innocent religious young woman.
Although General Orloff loved my friend Anya back and desired nothing more than to marry her, Anna listened to my concerns and accepted Lieutenant Vyrubov, a younger suitor whom she married in the Palace Chapel at Tsarskoye Selo.
Oh, what a terrible mistake I made! The union has turned out to be a complete failure that I definitely blame myself for, and to think the poor old General Orloff had warned Anya about rushing to make a decision.
Lieutenant Vyrubov is literally an ill man, so I can hardly fault him for what he has done, and neither can Anya, who says that he returned from the rigors of the Russo-Japanese War a changed man, aggravating the madness that he had acquired due to his family issues.
The marriage hasn't been consummated, as often Vyrubov keeps to his side of the bed, refusing to speak to anyone, but sometimes things can get a lot scarier for my dear friend. Vyrubov goes as far as hitting her sometimes. One night, the man became so violent and unpredictable that Anya couldn't help telephoning me, expressing her fears about the whole thing.
I responded by interrupting a reception and instantly driving to her house in my evening gown and jewels. For an hour I stayed there comforting her with promises that the situation would become better one way or another.
If the man doesn't get better and stop mistreating poor Anya, then I guess that the marriage will tragically have to end in divorce, what other choice is there?
It is difficult for me to accept how rare the bliss that I have with Nicky is and what this unfortunate fact implies for the future of my dear daughters.
My son I can raise not to be like those awful men who mistreat their wives or take them for granted, once he grows a lot older that is. I want to make sure that he understands that attitude towards women is the best way to test a man's nobility. He should relate to every woman with respect, no matter rich or poor, high or low social status, and give her all sorts of signs of respect. He must also refrain from being led to sin by ignorant men telling him that God's command to keep oneself pure for marriage does not apply to his gender.
But even doing everything to ensure that my boy will be decent is no guarantee for the complex result of marital happiness, as my brother Ernie exemplifies, and I can only hope that the royal families around Europe will worry about raising their sons right too, because they are the only ones that my daughters will have to pick from to marry. Anything lower than a Russian Grand Duke is unthinkable, as it would be inconsiderate to Nicky's position and to the family prestige, not to mention against the laws. And yet anything other than an unlikely love match is just as unthinkable for me, perhaps even more.
Minnie is already "marrying" either Maria or Anastasia to her little Danish great-nephew Frederick when gossiping about hypothetical matches with her society friends. So ridiculous, what is this, the middle ages?
I don't have any better ideas though. The girls will have such a limited number of options as it is, and then there is the question of religion which caused me and Nicky so much trouble… oh it is stressful just to think about! I am glad there is time. I will do my best to secure a love match for them with a good man who is also within their station when the moment comes. I will help them with any religious differences or issues that may arise, the only important thing is that the young men fear God, while Nicky shall veto the suitors with unsavory pasts.
"I have no clue who the lucky prince is yet, darling", I tell my youngest daughter. "That is something you will get to decide when you are older, with the help of your papa and I only to make sure he is suitable, of course, though your granny will probably want a say", I giggle.
"Can I see Babushka oranges when I get better? I miss her", she quickly and happily changes the subject, pleasantly reminding me of the fact that the topic of marriage at her age is just an amusing flight of fancy rather than a legitimate concern.
"Babushka oranges" is the nickname she has recently given Minnie for one of her favorite scents.
"Well, of course darling, your Babushka would be happy to see you", I reply.
"Because she is away so often", she complains.
"Oh, but you always see her every few months."
"But why does she travel so much? When can I go with her? She says it is when I grow big, but when will that be?"
I let out a giggle. "Let's see… big for me would be when you are at least sixteen… no dear, that is not it, preferably you would be older, at around eighteen."
"How many years for that?"
"That would be twelve years."
"How many days is that, mama?" She frowns.
"Oh, darling", I laugh, "why don't you try to count them? Every year has 365 days, try it."
Her little features become strained in the effort to find the answer. She may not like math very much, and the problem I am making her solve is beyond what she has studied anyway, but when she sets herself to achieve something, she can be quite obstinate and prone to anger when made to acknowledge her limitations.
Oo
Shura and I take Anastasia outside after lunch. We sometimes see Nicky saying hi to the little one from afar, but this isn't the case today.
"Mama, I want to go to papa now!" My daughter exclaims as we walk back to the Lower Dacha, pointing at the Farm Palace in the distance.
"It is too soon, darling", I reply, "we need to make sure you won't give anyone else the disease."
"But I want to see him!" She whines, pouting adorably. "Masha and Alyosha have had all the fun swimming in the sea with him! It is not fair!" She laments most bitterly, though while trying not to let her sorrow show too much.
I should probably not have made her acquainted with all of the fun that her siblings were having in her absence.
"You will play with them for hours once you are well", I assure her.
"Mama, I am bored here!" She complains.
"I am sorry darling, but it is for the best, and does your old mama really bore you that much?" I ask playfully.
"Yes!" She replies without a trace of hesitation, with the honesty only small children are capable of.
Of course, all the children prefer their active and fun loving papa who can walk, swim, run, and romp around with them. Only my sweet and affectionate Tatiana seems to prefer me.
Even my baby boy, who couldn't stay apart from me for long before, has begun appreciating the time he spends playing with his father and assisting military parades and reviews as much as he does the moments with me.
I don't fault them for this, really, they are children who need to play after all, but it does make me a little sad to know that I am too weak to play with them as I would like most of the time.
Oo
Anastasia keeps cracking jokes as I tuck her into bed, stopping only to say her prayers with me. I kiss her face and palms countless times after that, playfully pretending to eat one of her hands. This makes her laugh for minutes. Oh, how I love the sound of her laughter! It is so different and special!
"Mama, don't you worry about getting sick?" She asks me as soon as she is done laughing.
"No, darling", I reply. "I have had the disease before, and many times that can make someone immune, but even if I hadn't, I would still want to be with you and keep you company when you feel bad."
"When did you have the disease?"
The question makes me melancholic. "When I was a very little girl." I proceed to reveal to her the way I lost my mother and sister to diphtheria, trying not to sound too cheerless. "But they are both with God now."
The disclosure seems to make my daughter really sad, as I can tell by her downcast little eyes, and I regret it for a moment. "But don't worry my dear, you will never lose me or any of your siblings", I squeeze her hand, knowing too well that I am not being honest. I just don't want to worry her. "Back then, medicine simply wasn't as good as it is today."
And yet there is still no cure for my baby's illness… but that is not for Anastasia to worry about. She adores her baby brother and is always romping around with him, playing soldiers or heroes of old ages with their older sister Maria trying to keep up with their energy. Sometimes I feel as if I had two sons instead of one.
Oo
My little daughter goes out for the first time since she got sick on the 15th of June. I knew that she would pull through, but seeing her play happily again as if nothing had happened makes everything blissfully real, makes all of my pent-up irrational fears go away, and truly brings home the fact that she is a brave little survivor.
Trigger warnings: Child abuse (Beatings, whippings, and cigarette burns, pretty brutal to be honest) and medical neglect, neglect in general, substance abuse in front of them, and bullying as well. Also, just to be safe, some talk about hell and the apocalypse. Period-typical political violence and attitudes just mentioned or talked about, as in previous chapters.
Parts of this chapter were inspired by/borrowed from a book called "The Romanov Files 1918-1953."
I must say I have no clue what the color of the 1906 formal dresses was, or if there was more than one color, or if the dresses were anything other than white. I am going solely by my aesthetic preferences as I straight-up love pink lol. If any of you know what color or colors OTMAA were wearing during the famous 1906 photoshoot, please tell me to change them, if they were different from pink and white that is.
And speaking of the 1906 formals, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, in that order: otmaaromanovas/718022842812432384/otma-1906
Same order, Olga is also carrying Alexei in this one: photos/99377981 N03/14469746190
Formal Anastasia picture(s) I imagine little Dmitri feeling drawn to after he sees them on the newspaper: russianprincesses/158539321746/her-imperial-highness-grand-duchess-anastasia
Inspiration for the fluffy moment with the donkey: empressminnie/745868143912763392/empress-alexandra-feodorovna-1872-1918-born
Little OTMAA playing on delicateflowers-of-the-past/625709092784291840/the-last-imperial-children-of-russia-1900s
As for sources, other than the ones I have already mentioned, "Four Sisters" by Helen Rappaport, this chapter (And in future chapters, probably) I used Pierre Gilliard's memoirs mainly, Tumblr user mashkaromanova's letters, and the translations of George Hawkins and Helen Azar.
