Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [119]
“ ‘Papa was reading in the papers yesterday that they are sending us abroad as soon as they can convene a Constituent Assembly. Is that true?’
“ ‘There’s no telling what they write in our papers!’” ‘No, no. Papa says we ought to stay in Russia. Let them send us deeper into Siberia.’”
PATCHED TROUSERS
Time dragged on and on. Everything was an event: the long-awaited wine brought from Tsarskoe Selo was poured out on the wharf. Gray coats, having heard about the wine, had converged on the wharf like flies on sugar. Fearing their “visit” to Freedom House, Pankratov had ordered the wine destroyed.
Nicholas’s diary:
“They decided to pour all the wine out into the Irtysh.… The departure of the cart carrying the bottles of wine on which the commissar’s assistant sat with an axe in his hands … we saw from our windows before tea.”
General Lavr Kornilov had unsuccessfully demanded dictatorial powers to deal with the Soviets and the Bolsheviks and bring order to the rear and the front.
Nicholas’s diary:
“5 September.… Clearly in Petrograd there is great confusion.… Evidently nothing ever came of General Kornilov’s undertakings.”
In his confinement, all events were equal, although his disappointment over the loss of the wine may have been greater.
September 17 (again 17!). Shortly before the October overthrow of the Provisional Government Nicholas finished the fiftieth notebook of his diary, the last he was to complete. He began a new one, which he would fill only halfway.
“51,” the tsar numbered it. “Begun in Tobolsk.”
“18 September. Monday. 1917. Fall this year is remarkable here. Today 15 degrees in the shade and the air utterly southern and warm. In the afternoon Valya and I played gorodki, which I haven’t done for many years.… Olga’s ill health has passed, and she sat on the balcony for a long time with Alix.… Mama wrote a letter through the censor Pankratov.”
This entry began his fateful final notebook.
A monotonous life.
A letter from Alix to Anya:
“I cant guess what lies ahead.… God knows—& will work in His own way.… I put all in His hands.… am knitting socks for Little One, he asked for a pair: his are full of holes, but mine are thick & warm.… We used to knit in winter, remember? Now I do everything for my people: Papa’s trousers are all patched … the girls’ nightgowns are full of holes, Mama has masses of grey hair, & Anastasia is very fat, like Marie used to be—big, thick-waisted, then tiny feet—I hope she grows more. Olga is thin & so is Tatiana—their hair is growing marvelously, so in winter they can go without shawls.” (In February the grand duchesses’ hair had been shaved when they had the measles.)
They entertained themselves with amateur shows. Gilliard and the daughters and the tsar himself were the actors. “We rehearsed the play,” “we did a small play very amicably … much laughter.”
Nicholas appeared in the leading role in Chekhov’s The Bear, playing the “not very old landowner” who comes to collect a debt from the “little widow with the dimples in her cheeks” and falls in love with her.
Nicholas’s diary:
“18 February.… We performed our play [The Bear], in which Olga, Marie again, and I acted. At the beginning of the performance there was a great deal of nervousness, but it seems to have come off well.”
He stood on his knees before Olga, who played the widow. “I love you as I have never loved before: I have left twelve women, and nine have left me, but I never loved one of them as I love you.”
How they all laughed when Nicholas said this. Even Alix. Rarely did she laugh anymore.
Their voices, there in the darkness, in a vanished house, a vanished time.
“IT MAKES ME SICK TO READ WHAT HAPPENED”
October had come.
Snow-draped Tobolsk dozed, and no one knew about the events in Petrograd. The newspapers