The young cadets who decorated those rooms were given day uniforms, full-dress uniforms for court appearances, evening clothes of black broadcloth with gold lapels, and standard ball uniforms, with weaponry to be removed while dancing, though the disasters that occurred when spurs and swords met taffeta and satin were legion. In their final years, the top students in the class were appointed pages to the court. The emperor was assigned a page, as were the grand dukes and duchesses. The dowager empress and Alix had four apiece. If Vova—when Vova—was appointed a court page and assigned to one of the imperial family, he would be given a court uniform of white doeskin breeches, a red-and-gold tunic, and black Wellington boots and driven in a court carriage to the Winter Palace, the pages all covered with sheets to keep their uniforms spotless en route. And when Vova completed his service he would be awarded a gold watch engraved with the monogram of the imperial personage he had served and commissioned as an officer, assigned as an adjutant to one of the men of the imperial family to begin what would be, I was certain, a brilliant career at court. I could see already his initial appearance there, where he would be formally presented to the imperial family, including Alix, whose hand he would kiss and with whom he would exchange pleasantries in French to the extent of her ability to deliver them. My son had a French tutor already, so by eighteen, he would speak the language fluently. What would she think of him? Would she note some imperial resemblance? See in him Niki’s eyes, perhaps, Niki’s likeness in the face, his gait, his bearing? Or would Vova be to her merely another of the many, many beautiful young men in uniform? Family, wealth, beauty, loyalty—those were the requirements for the Guards.
Yes, my son would get to his father in the Winter Palace one way or another, but for now my boy would remain at home with me, doted on by my family and cosseted by Sergei, who placated him for not attending the theater school by having a playhouse built for him at our dacha. And later when Vova complained, indignantly, that he had to stand in the garden to relieve himself into the rosebushes, Sergei added a working bathroom to the playhouse. He bought him a miniature motorcar that really drove, a fireman’s hose that shot real water, a stuffed llama that towered above his bed. At night, beneath the llama, Sergei and Vova knelt to whisper their prayers together. When Vova was sick, Sergei brushed his thin hair up into a ribbon to cool his fever and telephoned his brother the hypochondriac to send his personal doctor to come and treat Vova; Sergei even had a camp bed set up in Vova’s room so he could sleep by him until he was well. Though Sergei never rebuked me for my dalliance with Andrei, it seemed because of it Vova had supplanted me in Sergei’s affections and the two of us were turned by it from each other to Vova, who became quite spoiled from all the attention. And so, this is how it all was until 1912.
See How We Suffer
In late September of that year, the tsar and his suite traveled, as usual, to Poland for the hunt, to his estates at Skernevetski, Bielovezh, and Spala, and my brother Josef, now chairman of the Northerner, a hunting society, and who had been, through my influence, you remember, put in charge of the tsar’s hunting lodges after his dismissal from the ballet, traveled with him. It wasn’t long before rumors about matters in Poland began to make their way to Peter. People were saying the tsarevich had taken ill with typhus or cholera. The London Times had written the heir had been wounded by a terrorist’s bomb. Of the truth, Sergei knew nothing. If the rumors were true, Niki was not speaking of them yet. And then, on the ninth of October, Josef sent me a terse telegram instructing me to come to Spala at once at the tsar’s request and to bring Vova with me. I carried the telegram around in my hand so long that afternoon the paper began to disintegrate. What did the tsar want of me and my son after so long? What he wanted back in 1904? But when I answered my brother’s message, Josef would give me no details other than Don’t use Sergei’s railroad car. I was to call him at the lodge when I arrived at the station in Warsaw. Josef the revolutionary as the tsar’s servant? See how poverty and need can change a man!
I told Vova only that we would go to Poland to visit my brother who was serving the tsar at his hunting lodge. Yet at the train station I saw the gazeta with the black-bordered bulletin that announced the tsarevich was gravely ill, and though the bulletin did not specify the affliction, I knew the family would not allow such an announcement unless the tsarevich was near death. All the way south and west from Petersburg Vova chattered, could he go hunting and would we hunt elk and stag and would there be European bison there, too? Would he have his own gun or would Josef have to hold his for him? Could he take the antlers home and mount them on the wall of his bedroom, or, better yet, over the mantel in my White Hall so our guests could see them and demand to be told the tale? He wanted to practice with me the few Polish words I had taught him, but I was distracted and kept pulling out Josef ’s telegrams to read and reread as if some new information might appear there to explain away my dread. Eventually, in disgust with me, Vova wandered the aisle of the compartment. At each station he asked me to buy him strawberry-flavored kvass or tea or roasted nuts. He kept the vendors busy all along the route. At the Warsaw Station while we waited for the car Josef sent for me, I fussed over Vova, smoothing his hair, straightening and buttoning his coat, at one point drawing him close, but he was old enough now to be embarrassed by all this and so he squirmed away from me to kick at the leaves that blew about the station, and I pulled up the collar of my chinchilla coat.
Spala, once the hunting seat of the kings of Poland, was now the hunting seat of the tsar of Russia, who entertained the remaining subjugated Polish nobility there during his autumn visits. It was already dark by the time a car took us to the gates of the estate. Here in the forested countryside we were accompanied by a great, deep hush. A carriage brought us along a sandy road through the spruce and pine and fir trees to the lodge park. Josef, holding a torch, met me and Vova at the edge of the circular drive before the lodge, but Josef would not look at me directly; it was only after the carriage let us out and disappeared that Niki himself stepped from the shadows, holding his own torch like a weapon. The breath he blew toward me in the cold mingled with my own and his aging face confronted mine. His hairline had greatly receded, and beneath his beautiful eyes another color washed there, a purplish blue. The skin of his face was the texture of paper that had been folded again and again at every possible angle and then smoothed out. His moustache seemed to thrust from his sober mouth, or perhaps it was just the light or the grimace he made that had his moustache bristling so, and his eyes glittered far too brilliantly. Behind him on the grass lay a row of dead stags in two lines on their sides, back and front legs bound, branches thick with fall leaves pressed to their bellies like a garnish to hide where they had been gutted, their beautiful antlers lifted to the sky. At the sight of all those beasts, Vova cried out in delight, Look, Uncle Iouzia, and pulled at my brother’s hand, but Josef shushed him and Vova fell silent. Niki’s great sheepskin coat fell in folds to the grass and his tall black papakha made him a dark crown. He looked like the king of the underworld in full costume amid this carnage. Niki raised his free hand and gestured that Vova should approach, and beside me in his own little coat Vova began to shake. He was small for ten, with a delicate face, and people when they saw him on the street often called out to him, Look here, pretty boy! With a backward glance at me, my son took small steps toward Niki in the cold, stiff grass. Do you know who I am? Niki asked. Josef answered for Vova, This is the tsar, and Vova bowed and said, Highly pleased, Your Majesty. At this, Niki put his hand on Vova’s shoulder and peered into his face. Did he see himself? No, he saw my son’s brother. He looks so much like Alexei, Niki said to me, and then he held out his hand for my own. Forgive me, Mala. You’ve had a long journey. His palm was warm and rough, and it had been a long time since I had felt his skin against my own. Come. He walked not beside me, but slightly in front as we headed toward the lodge, leading me like a horse, Vova, the hound, trotting slightly behind, and my brother, whom I had forgotten, trailing us at the discreet distance of a servant.