The Secret Wife(77)

At a salon one evening in summer 1924 Burtsev told Dmitri that the Ekaterinburg prosecutor Nicholas Sokolov had finally published his report into the fate of the Romanovs.



‘It seems Sokolov escaped the Red Army by fleeing through Siberia with a box of the items he found in the Ekaterinburg mineshaft,’ the editor explained. ‘During the intervening years, he has interviewed émigrés and Romanov family members, making copious notes, until he felt ready to present his findings to the world.’

Dmitri’s hands were shaking. He put his glass on a nearby piano. ‘And his conclusion, no doubt, is that they all perished.’

‘That’s his opinion.’

‘And yet, I do not believe he has found the bodies, has he?’

‘He makes the rather grisly claim that they were hacked to pieces, dissolved in sulphuric acid and then thrown onto a fire.’ Burtsev screwed up his face in disgust, and Dmitri felt sick to the pit of his stomach. He leaned on the piano so as not to collapse.

‘Do you have a copy of the report?’

‘I will bring it to your apartment tomorrow.’

The report contained photographs of the items Sokolov had brought out of Russia in his infamous box. Dmitri knew about some of them from the 1919 press reports, but he pored over the images looking for a clue as to whether Tatiana’s remains were in the mineshaft. There was the Tsar’s belt buckle; a pearl earring of the type that Tsarina Alexandra always wore; some shoe buckles from the grand duchesses’ shoes – but not the type Tatiana had been wearing when last he saw her, Dmitri was sure of that; the eyeglasses and false teeth of the family’s doctor, who had died with them; some icons; a jewelled badge; and that grotesque severed human finger. The body of a dog had been found at the bottom of the well, and Dmitri shuddered to think it could be Ortipo’s.

Rosa arrived while Dmitri and Burtsev were talking about the report, and began preparing a meal. Dmitri could tell she was straining to hear what was being said but he did not include her in the conversation. It was nothing to do with her.

Burtsev asked if Dmitri would write an article about the Sokolov report, and he agreed. He already knew what he would write: that without any bodies, there could be no definitive proof the Romanovs were dead; that it was still possible the adults had been killed and the children imprisoned somewhere. News was beginning to filter out of Russia about the prison camps established by the Bolsheviks: horrific places, where inmates were routinely beaten, starved and tortured. He hoped Tatiana and her siblings were not being held in such a place, but that they were together, under house arrest in decent accommodation. When the government was overthrown and the exiles returned to their homeland, the Romanov children would be found and liberated.



His article was published a few months later, and Rosa read it but made no comment.

One evening in November 1924, Dmitri and Rosa went to Eldorado nightclub with some Russian friends. While Rosa danced in her inimitable style, Dmitri chatted to his comrades about the Russian writers who were returning to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, as it was now known, tempted back by overtures from the Communist government. Alexei Tolstoy had just announced his departure for Moscow, Andrei Bely had already returned and Boris Pasternak, a supporter of the regime, had never left.

‘I don’t trust them,’ Dmitri said. ‘I love my homeland as much as any Russian but I will not return until the Bolsheviks have been overthrown. The farcical trials and the inhuman prison camps demonstrate the true nature of their rule and I think it is wrong for writers implicitly to condone these.’

His friend agreed. ‘Did you hear about the prison on the Solovki Islands? A favourite punishment there is mosquito torture whereby they tie a man naked to a stake in the midst of a swarm. It is barbarian.’

They were interrupted by a commotion on the dance floor and when Dmitri stood to look, he saw Rosa lying on the ground. He rushed over.

‘What happened?’ he asked, kneeling beside her. Her eyes were closed but he could hear her murmuring.



‘She collapsed with no warning,’ someone said.

The manager approached with two of the doormen. ‘Let’s take her to a backroom where she can recover,’ he suggested. One of them lifted Rosa and carried her through a curtain to a room with a stained red velvet sofa and little else. She opened her eyes as she was laid on the sofa.

‘Dmitri? Where am I?’

‘In the club. You fainted,’ he told her, squeezing her hand. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘I’m all right. Just a little dizzy.’

‘Please call a doctor,’ Dmitri instructed the manager. ‘I can pay.’

While they waited for the doctor to arrive, Rosa rested with her eyes closed and Dmitri looked around the room. He guessed this was where the female staff brought favoured customers for ‘special treatment’, in return for generous tips. There was a nicotine-stained mirror on one wall, and a reproduction painting of naked shepherdesses on another.

When the doctor arrived, he took Rosa’s pulse, listened to her heart through his stethoscope, then asked her a string of questions in rapid German, which Dmitri could not follow. He prodded gently around her stomach and nodded to himself.

‘What do you think it is?’ Dmitri asked.

The doctor finished his examination before he replied. ‘Your wife is pregnant, sir. Congratulations.’