Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [168]
In the translucent light of morning, through the smeared window, we are trying to see him.
The same strong muscular body. But he has filled out slightly from the enforced immobility. He is not very tall (the guards were very disappointed in his height. In their simple imaginations a tsar was supposed to be great, that is to say, tall). Compared with his father, his giant uncles, and his brother Misha, he has always seemed small. (Long ago his great-great-grandmother the Princess Württemburg-Stuttgart, the wife of the unlucky Paul I, brought her family’s beauty and build into the Romanov family. Ever since, tall men had been born—Alexander I, Nicholas I, Alexander III.) He is of ordinary height. His body is not perfectly proportioned: his muscular torso is rather massive and his strong legs relatively short. His neck is unusually powerful for his small, neat head. A pleasant face and a small nose, reddish mustache, tobacco-yellow beard. Not long ago he had grown a beard, but thanks to Alix….
Her diary: “June 7 (20) … I cut N.’s hair.”
She managed to cut it before.
Right now, in the light of day, scattered gray hairs can already be seen in his mustache and beard. His head, cut by the empress’s firm hand, is already graying evenly. His eyes are changeable—first bluish-gray, then sky blue … and sometimes steely green. A “charmer.” The enigma of his gaze. He always felt a little like a child. Was it because of the powerful size of his father, uncles, and brother? Was it because of the strength of the women by his side? This childlike quality of his combined with the constant foreboding of future suffering—all this is in his gaze. And it is upsetting. The gaze of a helpless and gentle sacrificial lamb. Those who saw him remembered that gaze.
Many years later his lover Kschessinska, already very old, would meet a mysterious woman who declared herself to be his daughter—the miraculously saved Anastasia. In answer to a journalist’s questions she would say:
“This woman has his gaze.… No one who looked into his eyes … could ever forget….”
“And you knew those eyes?”
“Very well.… Very well,” the ninety-year-old Little K. whispered with frightening tenderness.
Now his face is darker, coarsened from the sun. His neck is red, and there are bags under his light eyes.
Finally, he hands the letter to her. But Alix never gets the chance to read it.
In walks Commandant Avdeyev, “to verify the presence of the prisoners.” Nicholas walks from behind the table toward the commandant, as he always used to greet petitioners during audiences—standing, in front of his desk. Thus he now meets the former Zlokazov worker.
As always in the mornings, Avdeyev is gloomy, having overindulged the night before. He reeks of wine—in a room with closed windows.
Nicholas cannot bear drunkards.
In an even, quiet voice (none of his ministers had ever heard him raise his voice) Nicholas greets the commandant. Finally, Avdeyev leaves.
“WAIT FOR A WHISTLE TOWARD MIDNIGHT”
Alix reads the mysterious letter, which is written in French. With suspicious mistakes. But immediately she believes in it. It is just not written by aristocrats. Where are they—those aristocrats?! They have betrayed them. Common people are writing. “Good Russian people.” She feverishly absorbs the long-awaited text: “We are a group of Russian army officers….”
This is how the letter promising them escape appeared. It was signed: “Prepared to die for you, an officer of the Russian army.” Oh, how Alix likes this signature. Her migraines are but a memory. She is once again the old spitzbube. Yes, it has come to pass. They have come. They have not abandoned their tsar! Good Russian people! They are prepared to liberate their emperor. The holy man has sent the family a “legion of angels.”
She begs Nicky to reply. As always, he calmly agrees. Yes, he will write an answer.
He does, and so this secret correspondence is established.
“Your friends do not rest,” it says in the next note, sent in another bottle from the monastery.