The Summer Day is Done (54 page)

‘My friend,’ said Prolofski, ‘why did you come by yourselves to Ekaterinburg?’

‘It doesn’t matter now, does it?’ said Kirby. He and Karita were still on the floor, their backs against the wall. His hands were in his lap.

‘No, it doesn’t matter now,’ said Prolofski. ‘For crimes against the state the Romanovs were executed two days ago. They’re all very safely dead now. You’re going to follow them, only you will take longer.’

Aleka came in. Kirby seemed transfixed, Karita was white. Aleka smiled.

‘Still talking, Comrade Commissar?’ she said. ‘You will have your preludes and overtures, won’t you?’

The diversion, casual and inconsequential on the face of it, was enough. Kirby, madness in his eyes, uncovered the pistol and shot Oravio from where he sat. He fired repeatedly and one after another four bullets thudded into Oravio’s chest and stomach. He fell, his screams choking in blood. The rifle clattered. Prolofski moved like a striking snake. But Kirby thrust out a long leg, Karita sprang and the rifle was in her loving hands. Prolofski shouted. There was the sound of two men quickly descending the steps. They were the men who had been listening nervously all day for the sound of the first shells from the Czech guns. Karita let them both rush in before she pulled the trigger. The noise was a blasting roar in the low-ceilinged cellar. The first man’s face seemed to disappear behind a glistening red mask. Kirby, two small bullets left, shot the second man. The cellar reeked, the noise of the firing ran around the walls for long seconds before dying away.

Prolofski stood in the silence of the grave.

They listened. The moon face was wet with sweat. Cold blank eyes protruded. There was only silence.

Then Aleka said, ‘That’s all of them, Ivan. There are no others. Everyone else has gone. I wonder how many bodies there are in Russia?’

‘What has happened to the Tsar?’ asked Kirby.

‘I don’t know. Deal with him.’ Aleka nodded at Prolofski, covered by Karita’s rifle. Karita held it with burning gratitude. God had been good, giving to her a man egoistically symbolic of the hatred that had destroyed a good and beautiful family. Karita believed what Kirby did not want to.

‘What has happened to them?’ His hand shot out, he took hold of the neck of Aleka’s linen blouse and pulled her forward. Aleka found herself looking up into eyes that were murderous.

‘Ivan, what has happened to
you
?’ Because of his wrenching grip Aleka choked on her words. ‘Have you let them turn you into a savage too?’

‘Tell me what you know,’ he said, and his hand shook her so that her head jerked.

‘They’re dead, shot,’ she gasped. ‘Oh God, they murdered them too.’

‘All?’ His voice was a harsh whisper. ‘All? Olga too? Olga?’

‘All of them,’ she breathed.

He let her go. He covered his face with his hands.

‘Sweet Jesus Christ,’ he whispered.

‘Don’t you see, that was when it all ended for me?’ she said feverishly. ‘I didn’t want that, I never wanted that. I put my trust in people worse than assassins. There hasn’t been a day since Lenin seized power that I haven’t seen someone butchered or hanged or shot. Ivan, they killed them all, the whole family, all the children. Oh, dear God, all of them.’

Kirby uncovered his grey face. He shuddered. Karita was weeping. Prolofski was stiff, only his eyes moving, glancing at the open door beyond the sprawled bodies. Kirby turned, took the rifle from Karita and jammed the point of the barrel hard into Prolofski’s stomach. It brought an involuntary escape of hissing breath from Prolofski.

‘No!’ It was a cry of anguish from Karita as she saw Kirby’s finger tighten on the trigger. ‘No! You’ve never done such a thing, only you have stayed sane while everyone else has gone mad. Ivan, no! Oh, I will do it, but not you, not you. Wait, there’s another way, a better way. Give him to the Cossacks.’

Kirby smiled into the white, sweating moon face. It was a smile that made Prolofski sweat more and it turned Aleka’s blood cold.

‘Yes,’ said Kirby softly, ‘we’ll give him to the Cossacks, little one.’

‘And it’s over now,’ said Karita, ‘we can go to England. Aleka Petrovna is right. Russia is dead. We will go home, Ivan.’

‘Yes,’ said Kirby.

‘Ivan, you’ll take me with you?’ Aleka seized his arm, held on to him. ‘I still have money, jewels,
I’ll give you all you need to get us to England. Ivan, anything, anything.’

Prolofski was a disgusting embarrassment to Karita in her grief, Aleka Petrovna an irritating encumbrance. She took the rifle back from Kirby and used the butt to smite the embarrassment unconscious. Prolofski fell heavily. That left only the encumbrance, the irritation. Coldly Karita pointed the rifle at Aleka.

‘Get away from him,’ she said, ‘he is not yours. We are family, he and I and Aunt Charlotte. What are you to do with us? You’re frightened now, frightened that we’ll leave you and that the Cossacks will get you as well as Prolofski. But tomorrow, if we take you with us, you’ll be laughing again.’

‘Oh, Karita, no, I swear,’ pleaded Aleka. ‘Karita, I shall never laugh again. Ivan, I did help you, now you’ll help me, won’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Kirby. He was not looking at her, he was not looking at anybody. He felt only freezing pain. Russians in their madness had murdered a whole family. For the sins of the worst of the Romanovs they had murdered the best of them.

The children. Oh, great God, where was
your
compassion?

They stayed in the school until the Czechs and the Whites swarmed into the evacuated town. Then they gave Prolofski to the Cossacks and he danced macabrely and in agony. Karita did not look on. Neither did Kirby. But Aleka did. It was the one act of butchery she wanted to see.

Ekaterinburg had been worse than Tobolsk. The Imperial family were not merely locked up, they were practically boarded up.

Alexis, unable to walk, had been ill for months. The four girls, wistful for happy days gone, bore their final imprisonment bravely, their humiliations quietly. The coarseness of their Ekaterinburg guards shocked them. Brought up in an atmosphere of protective love and devout Orthodoxy, they regarded love and compassion as the finest of human emotions. But however much they were shocked by their guards, however often their minds were distressed and their hearts saddened, they did not fail their parents.

They never ceased to give each other affection and comfort, to do what they could for the suffering Alexis.

The attitude of Nicholas and Alexandra during those weeks at Ekaterinburg, the most despairing of their lives, was an example to shame an ignorant, indifferent world.

Of all statesmen, only Winston Churchill cared.

Nicholas and Alexandra thought first always of others in that place. They were harassed, bullied and threatened, but they showed concern only when the hatred was directed against their children or the few loyal servants who still remained with them. It is difficult to grasp the extent of their courage in conditions of horrifying adversity and even more difficult to weigh it against their frailties when they were Emperor and Empress.

Lenin and Trotsky were in command, but great and glorious as their revolution was they went in fear of opposition, in fear of the deposed Tsar and his children. Trotsky wanted the Imperial family disposed of. He wanted a public trial in Moscow, where justice could be seen to be done. The fact that the verdict would have been arrived at in advance did not have to deprive the people of the chance to witness Trotsky’s presentation of an unanswerable case. The Ekaterinburg soviet told him in effect, however, to immortalize himself in some other way. They did not intend to let the Imperial family be taken to Moscow.

If there was unlimited fortitude in that house, there was not quite so much laughter. But Anastasia still had her moments and Marie still described her dream prince (who had altered with each year she had grown). And Tatiana still had precious hours with Olga, when they talked of days that were golden and beautiful.

‘Olga, are you ever afraid?’ asked Tatiana one day. It was the afternoon of 16th July 1918, and it was hot. They were in their bedroom. It was one place where they could escape the eyes and tongues of the guards, although even here they could never be certain.

‘I sometimes pray harder,’ said Olga with a slight smile.

‘They dislike us so, worse than any of the others we’ve had,’ said Tatiana.

‘Perhaps they’ve suffered more,’ said Olga.

‘I shouldn’t think they’d ever know whether they were suffering or ecstatic,’ said Tatiana sarcastically. She went on a little vehemently, ‘I
can’t bear the dreadful way they treat Mama and Papa.’

‘Oh, Tasha, Mama and Papa deserve so much better than this,’ said Olga, ‘but oh, I’m so proud of them, so proud they are our parents. They’ve given us so much love and happiness. And when you think of poor Alexis, you and I can’t complain, can we?’

‘We might later on,’ observed Tatiana, ‘because I’m sure Anastasia is going to become dreadfully bossy.’

‘Darling, you will hold your own,’ smiled Olga. Then very softly, ‘Tatiana?’

‘Yes?’ said Tatiana.

‘We have all been very happy, have we not?’

‘Oh, dearest Olga, we’ve been immensely, beautifully happy,’ said Tatiana, ‘we’ve all had so many wonderful times, and if you’ve had a little more it’s because you’re the dearest of all of us.’

‘No, I’ve been the luckiest,’ said Olga, her smile tender, ‘but for all of us there’s so much, so very much, that they can never take away from us.’

‘Especially from you, darling, especially from you.’

It was in the cellar of that Ekaterinburg house on the night of that same day when a man called Yurovsky valiantly identified himself with the Cause. He was valiant in that there were few other men willing to do what he did. He did not do it with his bare hands or even by himself. He had his guards to help him, as well as an array of brave arms and his own courageous revolver.
Nevertheless, the credit is his, for he took the bold initiative and he fired the first shot.

With it he killed the Tsar, with it began the execution of the whole family and their servants.

Nicholas died immediately.

Alexandra died making the sign of the cross.

Alexis, crippled, died in his father’s arms.

Marie died in incredulous astonishment, Tatiana proudly and in contempt of the executioners. Anastasia died twice. She came to as the first echoes of death faded and hearing her moans they bayoneted her into lasting silence.

Olga died quietly, as she had lived, her dreams vanishing. There was just one last moment, a moment of stark, tragic reality.

Now he would never know just how passionately she loved him, adored him, never know—

She fell forward.

They finished off a screaming maid with bayonets.

‘Well, that’s the lot,’ said Yurovsky, Russia’s man of the moment, as he stirred a crumpled dress with his booted foot. ‘Well done, comrades.’

Such was the stuff of which the heroes of the revolution were made.

The lesson to be learned, but which we refuse to learn, is that they are all the same, heroes of revolutions. The fact that we refuse to learn, that there are always some of us who will give help, comfort and bread to the violent ones, means that the children of Nicholas died in vain.

The grey British warship steamed its way through the turgid November waters of the Black Sea, heading south from Sevastopol. Its decks were crowded with refugees, most of them Russian. From the decks silent men, women and children were taking their last look at their native land.

Kirby stood in the lee of the solid mounting of a huge naval gun. Karita was close to him. Princess Aleka Petrovna lay emotionally prostrate in quarters assigned to the most exalted of the refugees.

Kirby’s eyes were on the receding domes and cupolas of Sevastopol, their brightness dulled under the grey canopy of the wet, wintry sky. The pain was unbearable. He was leaving her. She would remain in Russia for ever. She would never grow old now, never become a stately, grey-headed Grand Duchess. Nor would she ever be a Crown Princess.

The hills of the Crimea were rain-shrouded, rising in the distance to merge mistily with hanging clouds. It did rain often in the Crimea. It was rain that gave it its rich greens. But in the spring, in the summer and autumn there was so much sunshine. It was there, in her beloved Crimea, that she would always be. Not in the bleak, unfriendly Urals, not in Ekaterinburg, but there, in the peace and beauty of Livadia where she, where all of them, had spent their happiest days. It was there that she would find again the tranquillity she so loved, there that she would forever rest. But every dawn, every rising sun, would bring her spirit from its sleep and she would dance again over the green lawns and come lightly to
the pools. She would be laughing, happy, and always hand in hand with Tatiana.

In her gentleness and innocence she had gone from life unkissed. She had gone with those she loved. They were all at peace now, dearly together in spirit as they had been so much in life.

My sweet, my beloved, my precious Olga.

Karita’s eyes were swimming. The tears misted the damp shores for her and blurred Sevastopol. Beyond that fading coastline Russia lay like an endless waste, and the cold bitter ashes of useless war and savage revolution, blown by the winds of stupidity and hatred, covered her earth.

It was not Karita’s Russia. Others had it. They had even taken her God-fearing parents and shot them because neither would denounce the Tsar.

‘Ivan?’ she whispered.

He did not answer. He could not take his eyes from those clouded hills, his mind from all he had known. He thought of his marriage with Russia, the period of deceit, the years of discovery, the years of loving, the years of endurance. Finished.

The decks swayed to the roll of the warship as it veered sou’-sou’-west. The British sailors did not for the moment harry the mass of refugees, they let them see all that they could before Russia was lost to them in the rain mists. The faces of men, women and children were still, their tongues were still, and they paid their last, despairing farewells in silence. They had become exiles the moment the ship weighed anchor.