Lenka — the kitchen boy

They let me take the couch.

“Get some sleep,” they told me. I was so angry. I wanted to scream at them and punch them and push them down the stairs but I shook so much from crying that I couldn’t even say no so I just complied and lay down.

I need to sleep though. And I want to, I really do, because I don’t want to be awake. I thought the sobbing would tire me out but I’m not asleep. The guards know I’m not asleep. I haven’t been very quiet.

I don’t owe them quiet.

But they owe me my Dyadya.

He was meant to be here. They came into the house and said that I should come over because he’s here, but he’s not here.

Filthy Bolsheviks, he would say. But he isn’t here. I don’t think he’s anywhere anymore.

I try to recall what exactly happened. I remember the Ipatiev house. I remember the crude vandalism on the walls. The Tsaritsa and Rasputin.

“Don’t look at it, Lenka,” Dyadya said.

“Vile treason,” said Nagorny.

So I avoided looking but still I saw. The guards put it in many places. Grigori and his body meshing with the Tsaritsas in a way which only the Tsar’s should be allowed to.

Is allowed to.

It’s treason. And blasphemy.

I’m not quite sure what the motivation behind it was. I don't remember much of those days. I chose to forget.

I remember Dyadya and Nagorny scrubbing the bathroom walls. So the girls wouldn't see — so the duchesses wouldn't be hurt.

Dyadya shouldn't have opposed the guards.

The duchesses did stay safe, I suppose.

But he was hurt. Now I hurt.

It must be around midnight now. I still lay on the couch thinking about Dyadya. I hope to see him but I don’t think I ever will. I think they killed him.

I’ve gotten quieter now, I finally exhausted myself.

Still I can’t sleep.

There’s a noise. Then another, then more and more. Loud bangs from across the street and I think it’s gunshots but they tell me it’s not.

“Just an engine,” they say. “Just a truck.”

I nod okay but the tears still flow down my face because why are there guns? They shot Dyadya and are they going to shoot me now?

They comfort me that it’s okay but I sob on my couch and don't know what to do. I’m powerless. I'm without a family. Alone in a house of guards.

I hope Alexei is alright. And the duchesses and the Tsar. I hope everyone is alright. I hope Dyadya is alright.

I hear more engines and know they’re not.

Morning comes and I force my way outside onto the street. I hope to go to the house again. To see Alexei and ask him what he thought of the loud truck last night and cry to him that they lied, that my Dyadya wasn’t there. I choose to believe that after all, they are alright. Maybe tired from having to try and sleep while so much noise was happening, but still fine. And Dyadya must be safe somewhere too.

I stop. Kolya is here with his Papa. I’m crying. He’s crying. His father isn’t but he never cries, does he?

The engines stopped at some point in the night and after that it was silence.

The quietest, most ringing silence I’ve ever heard. Not even my cries stopped it from buzzing round in my brain.

On the street there is still silence. The Ipatiev house is trembling with it.

I’m not sure what to do.

Kolya runs to his Papa and nestles his face in his coat. He wipes his tears off as they start to flow. He cries for his Ieskela and his Papa comforts him.

I look around the blurred street. Dyadya isn’t here. He’s dead. I know that. Alexei is dead too, isn’t he? They killed him, didn’t they?

Koyla’s Papa just told him that. He wouldn’t lie, he’s a doctor, a wise man to be trusted. He probably knows the truth about what the guards did with everyone.

“They are all dead,” his father says. My face stings. All, I think. I know that his all doesn’t include my Dyadya but if they killed the Tsar why would they spare a servant?

If they killed Alexei why did they spare me?

Kolya weeps into his coat and rubs his face. He looks up at me and I imagine what he sees: dirty Lenka with puffy cheeks and red eyes. A boy whose clothes are crumpled and tear-soaked from sleeping in them, who stands alone in the open street because he has no one whose coat he could sob into.

He stares for a second then goes back to his own crying. He doesn’t care about me. He has others, he has his Papa who cares about him.

I have no one else. I have no Dyadya.

I’m alone.

Of course I am. Who did I think I was?

I’m just Lenka. I’m no one.

Why did I bother to hope?

Leonid Sednev and his uncle, Ivan Sednev, worked for the Imperial family under Nicholas II. Ivan was a sailor and the personal servant to the Tsar’s children, meanwhile Lenka worked in the kitchen as a chef’s assistant. Being a similar age to Tsarevich Alexei, the two became playmates and friends.

When the Romanov family were exiled to Siberia following the revolution, Ivan and his nephew went with them, first to Tobolsk, then Yekaterinburg where they were placed to live with the family in the Ipatiev House (also called the ‘House of Special Purpose’). While here, Ivan Sednev and another sailor, Klimenty Nagorny, began opposing the Red Army guards, arguing with them and washing away the things they wrote or drew around the house. They openly criticised the guards before in June 1918 being taken away, and eventually killed with a few other prisoners for “betraying the cause of the revolution.” Their corpses were left unburied at the site.

The Romanov family and Lenka had no information about what happened to the two. On 16 July, the Red Army guards had Lenka taken to the Popov House across the road, under the pretence that his uncle was back in the city and wanted to see him. This is documented in Alexandra Feodorovna’s last diary entry. Obviously he did not find his uncle there, but was kept in the house. That night, the Romanovs and their remaining servants were woken and told to go into the basement of the Ipatiev house, apparently to await transport to a new location. They packed their belongings and waited in the basement before being met by a firing squad of guards, who shot and bayoneted them to death.

It’s not clear why exactly Lenka was spared from the killing, with different accounts giving varying reasons and attributing the decision to different people. Similarly, his fate after 1918 is unclear. According to Yakov Yurovsky, the commander of the guard at the Ipatiev House, Lenka was sent back home. Information on his death is conflicting, with some sources saying he was shot in 1929, while others claiming he died during the Second World War, either in battle or by execution.