The Kitchen Boy by Robert Alexander Read Free Book Online

Photography was still very much a folly of the nobility, and I’d rarely seen a camera, let alone held one. The Romanovs, on the other hand, were fanatics. They’d all had cameras. They’d always been snapping away. Because of this and their extensive diaries and letters, the Tsar and his family were better documented than any of today’s most famous people. And these things – their writings and something like one hundred and fifty thousand family snapshots – are still kept not only in the archives in Moscow, but also at the libraries of Harvard and Yale.
    Once the young Tsarevich explained, I stepped back several feet, aimed the thing, and repeated what a photographer had told me when he’d taken my one and only portrait, “Now say
eezyoom
.”
    Rather than saying “raisin,” Aleksei Nikolaevich remained silent, staring oddly at me and raising both hands, palms out. I operated the shutter, made it open and close, and then just stood there, afraid to move.
    “It’s done. You took the picture,” advised the Heir. “Here, now give me the camera.”
    I did as the Heir asked, of course, passing him the wooden Kodak. Wasting no time, Aleksei Nikolaevich took it, turned, and reached around the white, metal railings of his bed’s headboard. I moved forward, watched as he leaned over and plied away a piece of the tall mopboard, revealing a secret hiding place. Inside the dark wooden compartment sat the Heir’s treasures, pieces of wire, some rocks, coins, a few nails, and a few folded pieces of paper.
    “This is where I keep my special things,” whispered the Heir as he pushed his camera into its hiding place. “You never know when we might need some of them.”
    Aleksei Nikolaevich had to give the Kodak a good shove, but it fit, just barely, and then he set the mopboard back in place, tapping it with his hand. He loved collecting little pieces of things, small bits of tin, rusty nails, wine corks, rocks. And in that regard he was just like any other little boy, curious, energetic, always fiddling. Of course, in every other respect he was entirely different. Before his father’s abdication lackeys were always falling over him because he was the Heir Tsarevich, and his family, too, was loath to deny him because he was so sickly. So he was indulged, rather spoiled, and also not as well educated as he should have been because he’d lost years of study due to his bouts of bleeding. On the other hand, he was compassionate because he knew pain, real pain, and real suffering too. Yet even in those bouts when it looked for sure as if he would die, he was never given morphine, not even as his screams of pain rattled the palace windows. That poor child had traveled to the bottom of life and back again, and naturally that had had a profound effect on him. I liked him. In another world, in another time, we would have been true friends. Rasputin had predicted that if Aleksei lived to age seventeen he would outgrow his hemophilia, a brilliant dream the Empress lived for and perhaps the only one that kept her alive. Had this happened, had he matured into a healthy young man and become tsar, he would have been one of the greatest, for while his father found his wisdom too late, Aleksei Nikolaevich had found his much too early.
    “You can’t tell anyone about our hiding place. It’s our secret. Agreed?” said the Heir, studying me with a naughty grin.
    “Agreed.”
    From the side of his bed he grabbed a game board. “Do you want to play
shahmaty
?”
    I shrugged, a bit ashamed to admit, “I don’t know how.”
    “I could teach you.”
    “Well…”
    “It would be fun, I promise. Really, it’s not too hard. It just takes some practice, that’s all.”
    Staring down at him, I couldn’t help but pity this sickly boy whose empire stretched barely beyond the limits of his bed.
    “Everyone should know how to play
shahmaty
,” pleaded the boy, desperate for any kind of diversion.
    “Perhaps, but…”
    Just then I