“Papa!” screamed Anastasiya, clutching her dog, Jimmy, against her chest.
His voice shaking, Nikolai turned slightly, muttering, “Forgive them Father, they know not what-”
Eleven people lined up in a small room as though for a photograph. Eleven assassins piled into a narrow doorway. The shooting began in nearly the same instant, and Nikolai krovavyi, the bloody, caught the first hail. All at once the blast of those eleven revolvers struck and lifted the Tsar off the ground, hurling him back through the air. His head exploded, showering his daughters with a coarse spray of his blood and brains. An instant later, Aleksandra, the Bolsheviki’s hated German bitch, took a handful of bullets in the face and mouth, the force of which threw her back as well, her cross-making hand flailing upward, her chair hurling back, her feet flying overhead as she tumbled ass over head into infinity.
“Aim for the heart!” shouted Yurovsky.
A horrible wail of confusion rose in the room. In complete terror, the daughters ran about, screaming, begging, and shrieking. Botkin shouted and pleaded. Demidova wailed. Trupp and Kharitonov sobbed. Only poor Aleksei, stranded as he was, remained in place, clutching his eyes shut, grabbing at the sides of his chair as bullets whizzed all about him. The gunshots started coming faster, more desperate, but remarkably no one else fell. I heard the twinging of ricochets, saw sunlike sparks burst as bullets bounced off those corsets, so thick with jewels that they had inadvertently been made… bulletproof. Protected as they were by all those invincible carats, the girls were not granted a quick death. Rather it appeared as if God Himself were shielding them, and a great cry arose, not from the horrified victims, but their executioners, so sure were they of the divineness of these White princesses. Terrified, the guards started pumping the bullets faster, more desperately.
Finally big Dr. Botkin tumbled, a bear of a man who dropped to his knees and fell face first into death. I saw Olga running to the side, clasping her ears. Suddenly her neck was ripped wide in a streak of crimson, and she too dove into the beyond. Trupp, Kharitonov – they went next, paying in blood for their faithful service. As they fell, a devilish fog began to fill the room and cloud it with confusion, for all the modern smokeless bullets had been used up during the war. And then Aleksei tumbled from his meager wooden throne.
“Mama! Papa!” rose the shrieks of those girls.
I saw Anastasiya bending her head, shielding her Jimmy, shrieking hell and devil. I saw Maria run back and forth, then fall against the wall. And I saw Demidova holding that priceless pillow up like armor. And too I saw Tatyana’s face and neck and arms blister with death.
Within moments, the entire room filled with smoke from the bullets. Yet still it went on, the shots slapping and hurling, biting and ripping. I heard the deep voices of the guards coughing and shouting, gagging and yelling, as they stirred up this black stew of pandemonium. And though the guards could no longer see their targets, it went on. And on.
Eleven men firing eleven guns for a minute is a lifetime. Upward of ten minutes is an eternity. But it took that long and longer to cut down those eleven victims. Eventually, the bullets began to slow and the smoke began to lift. Several of the men, vomiting and coughing on the acrid smoke, retreated into the hallway.
The clouds of death parted, revealing Yurovsky as he walked above the dead. Waving his hand back and forth in front of his face, the komendant peered down through the dimmest of light at the young Heir. It was then that I saw Aleksei, still moving, still treading life, still moaning and writhing as he clutched his father by the sleeve. Lowering his gun, Yurovsky placed the barrel on Aleksei’s temple and blasted, once, twice. He and the guards, who had fetched rifles from the hallway, moved on through the room, discovering that even after all the shooting three of the sisters and Botkin were still alive, convulsing as they choked on their own blood. Approaching Tatyana, a dark-bearded guard raised his rifle and bayonet over her and plunged at her heart. Despite all his brutal virility, however, the dull blade bounced off her, and the young princess twisted and contorted in semiconscious pain. Confused and dismayed, the guard straddled her, clutched his rifle in both hands, and plunged again. And again met with no success. Unable to puncture her chest and clearly terrified by her immortality, the man whipped out a knife and quickly slit her throat, finally finding proof positive in her butchered neck that she was not the daughter of a demigod.
Suddenly a woman’s voice screamed out, “Thank God!” It was Demidova. “God has saved me!”
I caught sight of the Tsaritsa’s maid, who’d apparently only fainted and was now pushing herself from the floor, smeared with the blood of her masters. No sooner had she risen back to life, however, than a herd of men were upon her, and she fell once again and for all, screaming, screaming, screaming so horribly as she grabbed at the dull, rusty bayonets that punctured her full round body no less than thirty times.
For a brief moment there was silence and peace, which in turn was broken by a pathetic whimper and an animal-like cry. One of the guards went over to Anastasiya and plunged her throat with his bayonet. Miraculously, however, the cry grew but louder until suddenly the girl’s tiny pet wiggled and squirmed from beneath the child’s carved body. Seeing the little dog, now soaking crimson, try to scramble away, its back legs broken, the guard raised one of his heavy boots… and smashed little Jimmy’s head.
All in all, it took twenty minutes before silence graced the basement chamber of The House of Special Purpose.
18
Hidden in the bushes, I stared off at the black sky, seeing nothing, neither star nor moon, but seeing again that which I had just witnessed: those twenty minutes. Hearing them too. Da, da, da, hearing their screams. Ever since, for eight decades now, I have daily seen this cinema of horror in my mind’s eye, and I watch it from this angle, from that, and nearly go insane.
I find myself so angry. Angry at all the tsars of my Rossiya for driving my homeland down the dead-end path of autocracy. Angry at the Bolsheviki for not realizing that kommunizm is naught but a gorgeous dream that can never be. Angry at Aleksandra for being a supreme mother not to her country but her invalid son. Angry at Nikolai for not signing that one piece of paper that would have averted all. Sure, Russia in its own clumsy, inevitable way was stumbling toward a constitutional monarchy, and because Nikolai could not see this, because he could not sign a simple paper granting a ministry appointed not by him but by his parliament, he and his family as well as about forty million others were slaughtered.
The thick, acrid smoke had yet to clear before the henchmen were upon their victims, Red vultures picking at the Imperial Family as if they were carrion. While Yurovsky was going from body to body, verifying pulses and the sort, two of the guards were in the hall, still vomiting not because of the gore but because of the foul smoke from those old-fashioned bullets. The rest of the guards forgot every bit of their ideology and searched pockets and wrists and necks for trinkets and treasures. Greed was their strongest urge, and these henchmen fed furiously upon their victims. They wanted more for themselves, and so they feasted upon those they had killed for possessing too much. Only Yurovsky stood as the pillar of the ideal revolutionary, and he flushed with disdain upon seeing the joyful looting.
He shouted, “You are to take nothing! Nothing! Now I want half of you to go upstairs and gather all the sheets you can, and I want the other half to go out to the shed and gather the shafts from the troikas.” When he saw hesitation among them, Yurovsky raised his gun. “Go!”