Enchantments: A Novel of Rasputin's Daughter and the Romanovs by Kathryn Harrison Page A

with anyone save Alyosha.
    One good thing about the Haymarket, I told the tsarevich: whatever was stolen on Monday could be found there on Tuesday, displayed among the wares of merchants offering items from an “estate sale,” as their grimy placards announced. Except that the previous owners, generally speaking, weren’t dead. Maybe vendors of apples and cheese and sturgeon didn’t offer purloined goods—maybe—but the dishes and cutlery, the clocks, andirons, samovars, oil paintings, statuary, and lead-crystal stemware, not to mention the odd harp, taxidermied yak, or leopard-upholstered love seat, had been taken from a sleeping or absent owner. Anyone thorough in canvassing the goods on offer would in time come upon something he recognized. “Look,” you might hear someone say, “Aren’t those Great-Uncle Vladimir’s dueling pistols?” Or, “Didn’t that friend of yours, Anna-What’s-her-name, have a silver tea set with this exact pattern? I thought she said it was one of a kind.” And undoubtedly it had been, but, alas, once blue-white cataracts had dimmed Anna-Whoever-she-was’s brown eyes, her groping fingers never guessed that the larcenous servants she trusted had replaced her tableware, her plates and spoons and glasses and bowls, with cheap imitations.
    “Why, look over there,” Alyosha said, closing his eyes as he did when pretending. “Father’s favorite shotgun.” He could be the most literal-minded boy, absolutely hemmed in by reality, and the only way he knew how to use his imagination was by closing his eyes to what was in front of them. As for the rest of the family, they seemed well practiced at being blind with their eyes wide open. Either that or they pretended optimism for one another, voicing what they knew were fantasies.
    “And your sister Olga’s chess set.”
    “Nagorny’s tennis racquet.”
    “Botkin’s diamond studs.”
    We were so bored locked up at Tsarskoe Selo—and for the tsarevich, every day he was kept in bed was yet another insult added to that of being kept hostage—that Alyosha and I made play of whatever we could and went to any length to invent amusement. Perhaps only they who have endured a similar punishment would understand.
    Of course, Alyosha wouldn’t have been confined to bed if he hadn’t tobogganed down the service stairs on a tea tray. But he did, and the day after he did I overheard Botkin tell Nagorny the swelling was so bad, blood was leaking through the pores of his skin.
    I’ve never encountered so eccentric and tenacious a passion in another family, but the Romanovs, save the tsarina, were, to hear Alyosha tell it (in an attempt to explain his misadventure), the most unreasonable tea-tray riders, in all seasons, under all circumstances. Were the family to pass a tempting hillock of dry grass or sand dune when they traveled together on the imperial train, Tsar Nikolay would order the locomotive be stopped and the cars backed up to the hillock.
    “Just an hour,” he’d tell the engineer. “Once we’re rolling again, we’ll make it up easily.” And then he and all four girls and Alyosha (if he was well and both his bodyguards were present to run on either side of him, and if the tsarina allowed it) would tear out of the cars with serving trays and dedicate themselves to making as many trips down the slope as they possibly could within the time allotted.
    Winters at Tsarskoe Selo, the tsar built a mountain of snow on the park lawn. He shoveled and shoved from all directions, the girls helping with their own smaller shovels, until he and the children agreed it was high enough. Then they all rushed in and out ofthe palace with kettles of water to pour over the packed snow, until their little Matterhorn developed a slick glazing of ice on one side. Up the snowy side they filed, taking turns shooting down the icy track until they were too tired to stand. Not Alyosha, of course, as mishaps were guaranteed on so hard and fast a surface. All