THE LAST TWO WEEKS
In Ekaterinburg, in anticipation of Goloshchekin’s return, preparations for the end were already under way.
On July 4, Commandant Alexander Avdeyev was replaced by Chekist Yakov Yurovsky. Simultaneously the entire guard inside the house was replaced; the outer guard, however, made up of the Zlokazov workers brought in by Avdeyev, remained.
Also remaining was the husband of Avdeyev’s sister—the driver of the house automobile—Sergei Lyukhanov.
Inside the house, unfamiliar, taciturn young blond men appeared: the Cheka’s new Latvians, who occupied the entire downstairs.
Nicholas felt it immediately: the “dark man” had come. Now it would be soon.
Yurovsky had entered the Ipatiev house in the guise of a deliverer. First he had been a doctor. Now he was a battler against dishonest thievery.
He informed Nicholas of the many robberies by the former guard. Silver spoons, which had been found buried in the garden, were returned to the family triumphantly.
At the same time, however, all the family’s property was recorded—for purposes of learning the extent of the robberies, naturally. This record began with the jewels.
The Romanovs were under arrest, and of course they were not allowed to wear jewels, such being the lot of all prisoners, explained Yurovsky. For now they must not. The experienced Chekist cleverly weighed this “for now” in his conversation. For now. Until the denouement. Until their fate was decided.
That was what Nicholas understood, although he did not believe him, of course.
This secretive and at the same time very trusting man. He did not know the slogan of the great revolutions: Rob the robbed. It seemed to him that for the first time an understanding had arisen between him and this altogether incomprehensible power. The town would fall, and they had decided to take his life, but in doing so, naturally, they must surrender to the family that which belonged to it, intact and preserved. The jewels—that was all they had. It was unclear where they would have to live afterward. Or how. He was the father of the family, and he was obliged to consider their future. He was happy with this unspoken gentlemen’s agreement.
Nicholas’s diary:
“21 June [4 July]. Today there was a change of commandant. During dinner Beloborodov and others came and announced that instead of Avdeyev they were appointing the man we took for a doctor, Yurovsky. In the afternoon before tea he and his assistant compiled a list of gold things: ours and the children’s. The greater part [rings, bracelets] they took with them. They explained that there had been an unpleasant story in our house.… Am sorry for Avdeyev, but he is to blame for not keeping his own people from robbing from the trunks in the shed.”
Yurovsky appreciated Nicholas’s trust. He did not even begin to conduct a search, so as not to undermine this faith. Although, why did he need to search them now, when he could do it after?
Alix did not trust the new commandant. She did not trust a single word he said. She was happy that she had prudently concealed everything most valuable.
Alix’s diary:
“June 21 (July 4). Thursday. Avdeiev is being changed a[nd] we get new commandant (who came once to look at Baby’s leg …) with a young help who seems decent where as the others vulgar a[nd] unpleasant. All our guards inside left.… Then made us show all our jewels and the young one [the assistant] wrote them all down in detail and then they were taken from us (where to, for how long? why? don’t know) Only left me two bracelets I can’t take off.”
The commandant’s “young help,” who “seems decent” to Alix was indeed a most pleasant young man. Clear-eyed, with a clean side-buttoned shirt and a name soothing to the tsaritsa’s ears—Grigory. This was Nikulin, who in just a few days would shoot her son.
From Nikulin’s autobiography (kept in the Museum of the Revolution in Moscow):
“My father was a bricklayer, a stove-fitter, and my mother was a housewife. His education was the lowest, he completed two grades.
“Starting in 1909 I worked as a bricklayer and then at a dynamite factory (this was during the war, to get excused from military service). Ever since the factory closed in March 1918, I have worked in the Ural Regional Cheka.”
Yurovsky noticed him immediately. Nikulin did not drink, a rarity among former workers who joined the Cheka. Most important, he knew how to inspire confidence immediately. Yurovsky appreciated all this and tenderly called him “my son.” When Yurovsky became commandant, he took Grigory Nikulin for his assistant.
Alix’s diary:
“June 22 (July 5). The command[ant] came with our jewels before us.… Left them on our table a[nd] will come every day to see we have not opened the packet.”
As before, Nicholas believed in the new commandant.
Nicholas’s diary:
“23 June [6 July]. Saturday. Yesterday Commandant Yu[rovsky] brought a small box with all our stolen jewels, asked us to verify the contents, and sealed it in our presence, leaving it with us for safekeeping.… Yu. and his helper are starting to understand what type of people surrounded and guarded us, robbing us….
“25 June [8 July]. Monday. Our life has not changed a bit under Yu. He comes into the bedroom to check that the seal on the box is intact and looks out the open window.… Inside the house new Latvians are standing guard, outside it is the same—some soldiers, some workers. Rumor has it that several of Avdeyev’s men are already under arrest. The door to the shed with our baggage has been sealed—if only they had done that a month ago. Last night a storm and now even cooler.”
——
A stormy summer. He noted the storms in his diary. Lightning in the sky—and water on the land. A lot of water.
For that reason the forest roads had largely washed out and it would be hard for the truck to drive down those roads with its corpses.
Meanwhile, the house was already being readied for the final event. He paid no attention, but she took note.
“June 25 (July 8). Lunch only at 1.30 because they were repairing the electricity in our rooms.”
The jewelry had been listed and the electricity fixed.
The next day, July 9, Dr. Botkin began writing his final letter….
“I AM DEAD, BUT NOT YET BURIED”
After the execution, Yurovsky collected in Dr. Botkin’s room the papers of the last Russian court physician.
I am looking them over: “1913 Calendar for Doctors,” “notice from main headquarters on the death of [his son Dmitry] in battle, December 1914.”
And here is his letter, which he wrote to a classmate who had graduated with him long before, in 1889. He began writing it on July 3 and evidently continued to work on it throughout the following days. Then he copied out this very long letter in his minuscule handwriting. He was copying it out on the last day when someone interrupted him in the middle of a word:
“My dear, good friend Sasha. I am making a last attempt at writing a real letter—at least from here—although that qualification, I believe, is utterly superfluous. I do not think that I was fated at any time to write anyone from anywhere. My voluntary confinement here is restricted less by time than by my earthly existence. In essence I am dead—dead for my children, for my work.… I am dead but not yet buried, or buried alive—whichever: the consequences are nearly identical.… My children may hold out hope that we will see each other again in this life.… but I personally do not indulge in that hope.… and I look the unadulterated reality right in the eye.… I will clarify for you with small episodes illustrating my condition. The day before yesterday, as I was calmly reading Saltykov-Shchedrin, whom I was greatly enjoying, I suddenly saw a reduced vision of my son Yury’s face, but dead, in a horizontal position, his eyes closed. Yesterday, at the same reading, I suddenly heard a word that sounded like papulya[papa dear]. I nearly burst into sobs. Again—this is not a hallucination because the word was pronounced, the voice was similar, and I did not doubt for an instant that my daughter, who was supposed to be in Tobolsk, was talking to me.… I will probably never hear that voice so dear or feel that touch so dear with which my little children so spoiled me….
“… If ‘faith is dead without deed,’ then deeds can live without faith. If any of us does combine faith and deeds, then it is only out of God’s special kindness. One such happy man—through grave suffering, the loss of my firstborn, my half-year-old little boy Seryozha—was I. Ever since then my code has significantly expanded and defined itself, and in every case I have also been concerned about the patient’s soul. This vindicates my last decision, too, when I unhesitatingly orphaned my own children in order to carry out my physician’s duty to the end, as Abraham did not hesitate at God’s demand to sacrifice his only son.”
Nicholas’s diary:
“28 June [11 July]. Thursday. In the morning, at about 10.30, three workers came up to the open window, hoisted a heavy railing, and attached it to the outside of the frame without any warning from Yu. We like this man less and less! Began to read the eighth volume of Saltykov-Shchedrin.”
This was the last straw. It was awful to enter the room and see that dark railing. He suffered both for her and for the boy.
And she … she was living the hard existence of captivity. She explained in her diary Nicholas’s obscure entry: “We like this man less and less.”
“June 28 (July 11). Thursday.… Command[ant] insisted to see us all at 10, but kept us waiting 20 m. as was breakfasting & eating cheese wont permit us to have any more any cream. Workmen turned up outside and put up iron railings before our only open window. Always fright of our climbing out no doubt or getting into contact with the sentry. Strong pains continue.… Remained in bed all day.”
Yes, the dark man wielded them two blows that day. In the final analysis, the cream, cheese, and eggs brought from the monastery had been a distraction to Alexei’s perpetual boredom.
(“It’s boring! What boredom!” These exclamations filled the boy’s diary.) And now on top of that—the railings.
But Yurovsky was only doing his job.
Their days were numbered, and he had already begun to isolate them from the world. He feared the monastery. Yes, the Cheka had conceived of transmitting the deceitful letters, but what if suddenly someone else.… He had to consider that “suddenly.” There was anarchy in Ekaterinburg. The gold reserves had been evacuated, the archives had already left town. Only the small detachment—that was all he had.
That was all right, though, for a few days.
THE DECREE OF EXECUTION
It happened on July 12—the day after the railings were put up.
Upon his return from Moscow, Goloshchekin called a meeting of the Ural Soviet Executive Committee.
The loyal Goloshchekin did not say a word about his agreements with Moscow: only the most restricted circle knew about them—the Ural Soviet presidium. The Soviet’s rank-and-file members were certain that today they themselves would decide the Romanovs’ fate. The Whites were advancing. All of them realized what this decision might mean in their lives.
Nevertheless, they passed the decree unanimously. The Ural Soviet’s decree of execution.
From a letter of Alexander Kruglov in Perm:
“My father kept a copy of the text of the decree on shooting the tsar, which was posted around town after the execution:
“ ‘Decree of the Ural Executive Committee of the Soviet of Worker, Peasant, and Red Army Deputies. Possessing information that Czechoslovak bands are threatening the Red capital of the Urals, Ekaterinburg, and bearing in mind that the crowned hangman could hide and escape the people’s tribunal, the Executive Committee, carrying out the will of the people, has decreed to execute the former tsar Nicholas Romanov, guilty of countless bloody crimes.’”
Implementation of the decree was entrusted to Yakov Yurovsky, commandant of the “House of Special Designation.”
“WE HAVE NO NEWS FROM THE OUTSIDE”
Nicholas’s diary:
“30 June [13 July]. Saturday. Alexei took his first bath since Tobolsk. His knee is improving, but he cannot bend it completely. Weather is warm and pleasant. We have no news from the outside.”
With this hopeless sentence, the day after the execution decree, as if he had sensed something, Nicholas closed his diary (see Appendix).
What follows are empty pages carefully numbered by him to the end. There is something awful in those blank pages.
All these days she had been waiting. Waiting for more news from the suddenly silent “Russian army officer.”
She listened and listened to the sounds outside the window.
Alix’s diary:
“June 29 (July 12).… Constantly hear artillery passing, infantry & twice cavalry, during the course of two week. Also troops marching with music—twice. It seems to have been the Austrian prisoners who are marching against the Czechs (also our former prisoners), who are with the troops coming through Siberia & not far from here now. Wounded daily arrive to the town….
“June 30 (July 13). At 6½ Baby had his first bath since Tobolsk. He managed to get in and out alone, climbs also alone in & out of bed, but can only stand on foot as yet.… Rained in the night. Heard three revolver shots in the night.”
THE FINAL THREE DAYS
Three days before their end, Nicholas broke off his diary. She continued hers. She took their story to its end.
“July 1 (14). Sunday. Beautiful summer’s morning. Scarcely slept because of back & legs. 10½. Had the joy of a vespers—the young Priest for the 2nd time.”
It was Sunday. And while the new leader of the country, the atheist Ulyanov, was relaxing at his dacha in Kuntsevo, the former leader of the country, prisoner Romanov, received permission for a service.
Father Storozhev was invited to serve the vespers the family had ordered. Father Storozhev had already held services once in the Ipatiev house, and Yurovsky agreed to call him a second time.
The commandant’s room was slovenly and filthy; grenades and bombs littered the piano. Grigory Nikulin was sleeping on the bed fully clothed after his shift. Yurovsky was slowly drinking his tea and eating his bread and butter. While the priest and deacon arrayed themselves, they began to talk.
“What’s wrong with you?” asked Yurovsky, noticing that Father Storozhev kept wringing his hands.
“I have pleurisy.”
“I had active tuberculosis, too.”
Yurovsky began giving him advice. He was a medic, and he loved dispensing medical advice. In addition, only he understood the importance of the moment: he, a tailor’s pupil from a poor Jewish family, was allowing the last tsar his last service. His last—that he knew for certain.
When Father Storozhev walked into the family’s quarters, the family had already gathered. Alexei was sitting in the wheelchair; he was quite grown up, but his face was pale after his long illness spent in stuffy rooms. Alexandra Feodorovna was in the same lilac dress she had worn when Father Storozhev had seen her during the first service. She was sitting in a chair beside the heir. Nicholas was standing, dressed as he had been the last time—in a field shirt, khaki trousers, and boots. The daughters were standing, dressed in white tops and dark skirts. Their hair had grown out and reached to their shoulders. In the back, behind the arch, stood Dr. Botkin, the servants, and the little cook Sednev.
According to the vespers ceremony, they had to read the prayer “Rest with the Saints.”
Naturally he was the first to drop to his knees. He was the tsar, who always knew that the tsar’s lot “is in the hands of God.”
He also knew: Soon! Very soon.
On the way back the deacon told Father Storozhev, “Something has happened to them. They are different.”
THE SOLICITOUS COMMANDANT
During that period Yurovsky was often away from the house. He was taking trips with Upper Isetsk Commissar Ermakov to the Koptyaki countryside, 18 versts (12 miles) from Ekaterinburg. There, not far from the village, in the deep woods, were abandoned mines.
Yurovsky knew that the execution of the Romanovs was only the beginning of his job. Then came the hardest part: burying them so that they could not be found.
“The family has been evacuated to a safe place.” Yurovsky and Ermakov were searching for that safe place.
Alix’s diary: “July 2 (15). Monday. Greyish morning. Later sunshine. Lunched on the couch in the big room, as women came to clean the floors, then lay on my bed again & read with Maria … Ezra 26–31. They went out twice as usual. In the morning T[atiana] read to me the Spiritual Reading. At 6½ Baby had his second bath. Bezique [a card game]. Went to bed 10¼.… Heard the report of an artillery shot in the night & several revolver shots.”
The women who washed the floor on the next to last day later told how they were ordered to wash all the floors—in the family’s rooms and downstairs, on the first floor, where the guard lived. They also washed the floor in the half-cellar room.
They had repaired the electricity, put in railings, and washed the floors. Yurovsky had thought of everything.
During that period he was finishing up the entries in the sentry journal:
“July 10. Notification of Nicholas Romanov about opening the windows to air out the rooms, which he had been refused.
“July 11. The family had its usual walk: Tatiana and Marie asked for their camera, which the commandant naturally refused them.”
Yes, there was a camera in the house. The one that had been confiscated from the tsaritsa when she first entered the Ipatiev house. The camera was lying in the room of the commandant—commandant and former photographer Yakov Yurovsky.
The Chekist’s son Mikhail Medvedev:
“My father said that during that time Yakov Yurovsky held a meeting in the American hotel. Participation in the execution was voluntary, and the volunteers gathered in his room, no, 3. They agreed to aim for their hearts, so that they wouldn’t suffer. And then and there they figured out who would shoot whom. Peter Ermakov took the tsar for himself. By rank he was the Upper Isetsk military commissar. He had people who were supposed to help bury the bodies.
“Most important, Ermakov was the only one among the execudoners who had done hard labor as a political prisoner. This was one of the most honored pasts for a revolutionary. Anyone who did hard labor was for the revolution!
“Yurovsky took the tsaritsa, Nikulin Alexei, my father got Marie.”
(Mikhail Medvedev could have felt insulted. The next most honored past for a revolutionary was political prisoner, which Mikhail Medvedev had been—a professional revolutionary, a former sailor, who had served in a tsarist prison, although he had not done hard labor. His real name was Kudrin. Medvedev was his party pseudonym, from one of the countless false passports he had used during his underground work in Baku. In 1918 he began working for the Cheka. This was not all that common among “old” revolutionaries. As a rule they refused to work in the Cheka because they did not like to arrest Socialist Revolutionaries, their old comrades in the struggle against the tsar.)
The remaining daughters and retainers were left to another Medvedev, Pavel Medvedev, the head of the guard in the Ipatiev house, another Chekist, Alexei Kabanov, and six Latvians from the Cheka.
Yurovsky agreed: at exactly midnight a truck was to drive into the courtyard. Peter Ermakov was to come with the truck, which they planned to take from the Soviet’s garage. And replace the driver.
The truck was to be driven by Sergei Lyukhanov—the Ipatiev house driver. This truck would take away the bodies.
The town was restless, which was why Yurovsky designated a password. The password on the day of the execution was “chimney sweep.”
They adored revolutionary rhetoric. They chose “chimney sweep” because they were planning to clean out the dirty chimneys of history.
Now it remained to decide where to carry out the execution. The commandant did not hesitate. Next to the storeroom was a room—he had noticed it right away. The room let out onto Ascension Lane, which was a dead end. There was a grating on the window, and the window jutted out into a slope, so that the room was a half-cellar, and if they turned on a lamp—a bare bulb at the ceiling—the light would not be visible at all from the street because of the high fence.
It was a hungry time. They had to work all night. Yurovsky allowed the nuns from the monastery to bring milk and a basket of eggs for Alexei. And he asked them to pack the eggs better so they wouldn’t break. He took pains with everything.
THE LAST DAY
On that last day, July 16, they got up at nine. As always, they gathered in the room of the father and mother and prayed together.
Before they had often sung religious songs together. But this last day for some reason they did not sing.
At nine in the morning, as always, Commandant Yurovsky arrived at the house. At ten they had tea and the commandant walked around the room, verifying the prisoners’ presence.
He also brought the eggs and milk.
Yurovsky informed Alix of this; he was pleased with this idea of his—in any event they would be in a good mood. And the eggs would come in handy. Later.
He allowed them to walk for an hour that day, as always. They walked half an hour in the morning and half an hour before dinner.
On their walk they saw the guard Yakimov, who said that only the tsar and his daughters walked; he did not see Alexei or the tsaritsa.
She did not go out but spent the entire day in her room.
From Yurovsky’s Note:
“July 16, 1918. The telegram arrived from Perm in the code language containing the decree to exterminate the Romanovs. At six o’clock in the evening Filipp Goloshchekin ordered the decree executed.”
What was this telegram? And where did this word decree come from? Who could issue a decree to Goloshchekin, the military commissar of the entire Ural district?
Even earlier, in late June, when a false rumor had spread in Moscow about the execution of Nicholas II, the Sovnarkom had sent an inquiry to the Urals. The reply—“All information about the murder of Nicholas Romanov is a provocation—arrived over the signature “Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Ural-Siberian Front R. Berzin.”
After Muraviev’s betrayal, power in the Urals had been given to the Latvian revolutionary commanding the front against the advancing Czechs—Reinhold Berzin, whom Moscow had evidently instructed to set the family’s execution in motion. This was logical; he could be a guarantee that the Ural Soviet did not do this before Ekaterinburg’s fate at the hands of the Czechs had been decided. Only he, the commander of the army, could know this fateful hour precisely. Only he, the commander-in-chief, could issue an order to a military commissar. On July 16, realizing that the town’s situation was hopeless, Berzin clearly gave his order, sentencing eleven people to death—including a minor.
In 1939, Reinhold Berzin would be shot in Stalin’s camps.
BEFORE THE APOCALYPSE
It was seven o’clock in the evening.
The Romanov family was having tea. Their last tea. That morning the guards had come and taken away the little cook Sednev. Alix was very concerned and sent Botkin to ask what was going on. They explained that the boy had gone to see his uncle. He would return soon.
Having received Berzin’s order, the cautious Filipp Goloshchekin decided in any event to telegraph Moscow, so he sent that telegram—to the effect that the family’s execution agreed upon with Moscow could not be delayed because of the town’s imminent surrender.
“If your opinion is contrary, inform us immediately.”
He wanted to secure a direct decision from Moscow. He sent the telegram through Zinoviev—the execution’s ardent supporter. He understood that Zinoviev would not allow the execution decision rescinded. Zinoviev sent the telegram on to Lenin in Moscow. At 21:22 it was in Moscow, as the telegram itself attests.
Did Ekaterinburg receive an answer? Or, as always, was Moscow silent, implying agreement?
WAS THERE AN ANSWER FROM LENIN?
On August 11, 1957, an article was printed in Construction Newspaper entitled “On Lenin’s Advice.” An article with a title like that scarcely had many readers, which was too bad—the essay was as curious as could be.
Its hero was a certain Alexei Feodorovich Akimov, a senior lecturer at the Moscow Architecture Institute. Akimov had a meritorious revolutionary past, about which the essay’s author wrote. From April 1918 to July 1919, Alexei Akimov served in the Kremlin guard—first guarding Yakov Sverdlov and then Vladimir Lenin.
The newspaper recounted an event that involved Akimov in the summer of 1918:
“Most often he stood at his post by Lenin’s reception room or on the staircase to Lenin’s office. But sometimes he had to carry out other orders as well. Run down to the radio station or the telegraph office, for example, and transmit especially important telegrams from Lenin. In those instances he brought back not only the original of the telegram but also the telegraph ribbon. After transmitting one such telegram of Lenin’s the telegraph operator told Akimov that he would not give him the ribbon but would keep it. ‘I had to take out my pistol and insist,’ recalled Akimov. But when he returned to the Kremlin half an hour later with the original of the telegram and the telegraph ribbon, Lenin’s secretary said pointedly: ‘Go in to Vladimir Ilich, he wants to see you.’
“Akimov entered the office with a bold military step, but Lenin stopped him cold: ‘What were you up to there, comrade? Why did you threaten the telegraph operator?
“ ‘… Go to the telegraph office and publicly apologize to the operator.’”
This essay contained one very strange detail: not a word was said about the subject of that “especially important telegram” that Alexei Akimov took away from the telegraph operator while waving a revolver.
From a letter of Nikolai Lapik, director of the Progress Factory’s museum in the town of Kuibyshev:
“We have in our museum a typed record of a conversation between A. F. Akimov and A. G. Smyshlyaev, a veteran of our factory whose hobby was searching for materials on its history.
“In the stenographic record of this conversation, which took place on November 19, 1968, the following was written down from the words of A. F. Akimov:
“ ‘When the Ural Regional Party Committee decided to shoot Nicholas’s family, the Sovnarkom and Central Executive Committee wrote a telegram confirming this decision. Sverdlov sent me to take this telegram to the telegraph office, which was located then on Myasnitskaya Street. He said to send it as cautiously as possible. This meant that I was to bring back not only a copy of the telegram but the ribbon as well.
“ ‘When the telegraph operator sent the telegram, I asked for the copy and the ribbon. He would not give me the ribbon. Then I pulled out my revolver and began to threaten the operator. When I got the ribbon from him I left. While I was on my way to the Kremlin, Lenin found out about what I had done. When I arrived, Lenin’s secretary told me, “Ilich is asking for you, go, he’s going to give you a dressing down right now.”’”
So, the Sovnarkom and Central Executive Committee (that is, Lenin and Sverdlov) sent that telegram to Ekaterinburg “with confirmation of this decision” about the execution of the tsar’s family.
In Ekaterinburg at that moment it was already getting on toward midnight. They were still waiting for a reply.
When he received the reply after midnight, Goloshchekin sent the truck. That was why the truck and Ermakov arrived only at 1:30 in the morning, two hours late. Yurovsky would write about this delay with annoyance in his Note.
While they were awaiting the telegram in Ekaterinburg, the family was getting ready for bed. That night Alexei slept in his parents’ room. Before bed she wrote at length in her diary—the whole day—the last day (see Appendix).
“July 3 (16). Tuesday.… Grey morning, later lovely sunshine. Baby has a slight cold. All went out ½ hour in the morning, Olga & I arranged our medicines. T[atiana] read the spiritual reading. They went out, T. stayed with me & we read: the book of the prophet Obadiah and Amos.”
From the book of the prophet Amos:
“And their king shall go into captivity, and he and his princes together, saith the Lord: (1:15).
“The Lord God hath sworn by his holiness, that, lo, the days shall come upon you, that he will take you away with hooks, and your posterity with fishhooks” (4:2).
“Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time” (5:13).
“Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land; not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord:
“And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east; they shall run to and fro to see the word of the Lord, and shall not find it” (8:11–12).
From the prophet Obadiah:
“Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy next among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord” (1:4).
Hearing these ominous sacred words, Tatiana suddenly fell silent and got to thinking.
“Every morning the commissar comes to our rooms, at last after a week brought eggs again for Baby.
“8. Supper. Suddenly Leshka Sednev was fetched to go see his uncle & flew off—wonder whether it’s true & we shall see the boy back again.”
Alix still did not believe him: she remembered how everyone who had been taken away had vanished without a trace: Sednev, Nagorny….
“Played bezique with N[icholas].
“10½. to bed.”
At that moment two rather drunk guards, the sharpshooters Proskuryakov and Stolov, walked up to the Popov house across the way, where the guards lived.
The day before had been payday (we shall also remember this). They had been drinking at a policeman friend’s house, and they reached the Popov house in a jolly mood. They were met by the head of the guard, Pavel Medvedev, who was for some reason very nasty. Cursing, he drove them both into the bathhouse in the Popov house yard. The night was warm. They lay down and fell asleep immediately.
Meanwhile the guard Yakimov was posting the watch.
Sharpshooter Deryabin to post 7.
Sharpshooter Kleshchev to post 8 in the garden by the window to the entry.
Yakimov posted the watch and went to bed.
Alix finished writing in her diary.
It was cool. She recorded the temperature in her diary. These became her last words: “15 degrees.”
She said her prayers before going to bed. The girls were already asleep.
At eleven o’clock the light in their room went out.