Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [104]
On March 9, at eleven o’clock in the morning, automobiles drove out of the palace garage to the station—to the imperial pavilion. The train pulled in, and Nicholas emerged wearing a Caucasian fur cap and soldier’s greatcoat, his yellow skin taut across his temples. Behind him the members of his suite began to jump off the train and run away down the platform. Not looking back—they fled. This was not only the effect of banal fear. This was the first demonstration of the camarilla’s true attitude toward Nicholas.
The tsar got in the automobile. Next to him was Marshal of the Court Dolgorukov. In the front seat was his orderly, Pilipenko, a sergeant-major in the convoy. (Dolgorukov would be shot in 1918, Pilipenko in 1920.) The order was given: “Open the gates for the former tsar.”
The gates opened and the automobile of living corpses drove in to Tsarskoe Selo.
By this time the empress had burned her papers in her beloved lilac study. In Vyrubova’s room she destroyed all her letters to her friend. She probably burned her brother Ernie’s letters as well. And her diaries. Given her passion for the pen, one can imagine what quantity this amounted to! She did decide to preserve the memory of these days, though, so she invented a style for keeping a new diary. Only events and times. That was all, not a single opinion—a canvas for future reminiscences.
That was how she transmitted to us everything that happened from the early part of the terrible year 1917. That was how her diary of the empire’s collapse was created. English words in this diary are interspersed with Russian. She often joined individual letters—Russian and English—to make it harder to read if it were ever confiscated.
“March 1. 11:00. Benck. Tea.”
This means Count Benckendorff had been invited for tea and on that day they discussed the latest news from Petrograd.
“O. 38 and 9, T. 38, A. 36 and 7, Ania 38”—these are the temperatures of her sick children and her friend.
“Ivanov—1–2.5 night.”
This was a notation about that tragic nighttime conversation with General Ivanov, when she understood the full extent of their defenselessness.
Here is the day that interests us especially:
“March 9. O. 36.3, T. 36.2, M. 37.2, An. 36.5, A. 36.2.
“11:45—N. arrived.” Yes, this was Nicholas arriving.
When the car drove up with the sovereign, she was sitting in the playroom with Little One.
“She ran down the corridors of the palace like a fifteen-year-old girl,” Anya would write. The perpetually youthful girl was greeting her perpetual sweetheart. The two young people embraced passionately.
The valet Volkov observed this meeting: “The empress rushed to meet him, smiling. And they kissed.”
The parlormaid Anna Demidova observed her as well:
“When they were left alone together, they began to cry.”
More precisely—he cried. Her other boy.
“Lunch with N.… Alexei in the playroom.”
Afterward, when he was again calm and steady, Alix led him to the playroom to see Alexei. At lunch they talked cheerful nonsense with their son, and neither he nor she nor their son spoiled this new game. Nothing had happened, everything was as before.
Yes, everything was as before. After he saw his daughters in their darkened room, he left the palace for his cherished long walk.
Out the window, Alix saw the soldiers pushing the former tsar back toward the palace, jostling him with their rifles: “You can’t go there, colonel sir, go back, that’s an order.”
He returned to the palace in silence.
Nicholas’s diary:
“9 March, Thursday. Arrived quickly and safely at Tsarskoe Selo at 10.30. But Lord, what a change! There are guards outside and around the palace, and ensigns of some kind inside the entry. Went upstairs and there saw my sweetheart Alix and my dear children. They looked cheerful and healthy, but they were all lying in a dark room. They all feel good except Marie, who got the measles only recently. Had lunch and dinner in the playroom with Alexei. Took a walk with Valya Dolgorukov and worked with him a bit in the