Bloody Kopeks

It is July 17, 1918, and the smell of cordite snaps at the air with relish. The cooling bodies of the family Romanov are scattered about the floor of the small room, which has become their morgue. White feathers whirl like first winter’s snow around the room from the children’s pillows that they had brought for comfort.

             Private Yuri Popovitch stares at his hands and weeps. It has been three minutes and twenty-seven seconds since those hands had helped murder the entire Imperial family. He felt especially bad about the little boy who had clung to his mother’s hand, eyes huge and confused but understanding that death was in the air.

            This is what Popovitch wrote to his mother later that night, exceptionally drunk on cheap potato vodka.

             ‘Forgive me, Mama, I have to write some dreadful things now. Please don’t hate me; I had no choice at all. Not if you wanted to see me for pождество, for Christmas, and I have some well-salted meat and will try to bring carrots.

             Today, I helped murder the Romanov’s, traitors to the revolution and I should feel so glad and proud, but I’m sick. And my heart is shrouded in shame.

             Their blood was so red and it set quickly even though the boy was supposed to be a bleeder.

            Yurovsky. You remember him? A real hard bastard. He was so damned cold when he told the Tsar that his relatives were too late and the Bolsheviks had resolved to execute them all.

            The Tsar, I mean Nicholas, stepped in front of the Heir, his little boy and was shot immediately. I remember Yurovsky's smile, it was monstrous, a smile of one who loves his job, a killer’s smile.

            The women took longer to die because unknown to us they had made bodices out of their jewellery and the diamonds served as armour. Even the bayonets were refused. So we were told to shoot them in the head. The other soldiers spat on the ladies and called them zhadnyye shlyukhi, greedy whores but, secretly, I admired them. It takes guts to think you are going to survive a revolution and to stare down the men who intend to murder you.

             One of them was still alive, a maid, who must have hidden behind the Tsarina’s chair, was sitting up, bloody and dazed, but seemingly unharmed. It was a miracle and my senses, my smell, taste, everything about that moment was electric. You know, like just before a storm when everywhere tastes like sparks.

             I waved my arm to silence her, forgetting the pistol was still in my hand. Her face, a lovely face, it drained of everything: hope, courage, colour and she brought the heel of her hand to her mouth and bit down so hard that a thick line of crimson ran down the inside of her arm and spotted her skirts and the air like bloody kopeks.

                   And even then, even then, with her hair dusted with the violence of the slaughterhouse, she was magical and I was infatuated. I edged forward very slowly as if she were an injured calf because I needed her to hear me without raising my voice. Still skittish, the girl pushed back hard on her heels until she met the wall.  My head squeezed with anger and I thought I would gut Yurovsky if he walked back into the room and in that moment of red madness, I made the decision to save her.

            ‘You need to listen to me, I can help you. But you must keep quiet, like a mouse hiding from the cat, do you understand?’ Hazel eyes brightened with something, not hope, but courage perhaps; the survival instinct is very strong in times of stress. I have seen fellow soldiers crawling on their knees, feet and toes so blackened with frostbite that life expectancy could be counted in hours, not days. And still, they crawled away from death.

            My brave girl nodded and I motioned for her to come and stand beside me. She shivered and I understood that shock would arrive soon.

            ‘Don’t look at anything except for me’, I instructed, ‘they are gone now, no pain, no worry, no more suffering. But what is left looks ugly’. When I was satisfied that she was behind me and not going to faint, I opened the door to the stone-flagged hallway and glanced quickly up and down. It was empty and strangely quiet but the rusting stains on the pitted walls showed there had been life here once. I knew I could help her, but there were practicalities to think of. Her clothes were flimsy and thin, decorative rather than practical and the icy air would freeze a person solid on the dark Ural nights.

            Motioning her to follow closely we made our way towards an old, rough timbered window leading to the back of the buildings and out into the cobbled streets of Yekaterinburg. ‘You must go through', I whispered, 'and don’t stop when you hit the ground’.

            My girl tested the frame with her arms as if sure of its treachery and then, satisfied that it was true, turned back to face me. She took my hand and kissed it softly, before hauling herself up onto the ledge.

            ‘Jump,’ I urged and she did, her thin blonde hair whipping around her face like sprung wheat under Siberia’s rough winds.

            I killed many and saved one and I wonder how that will play out with God and his checks and balances.  Or the devil and his. 

In the name of Bread and Peace.

 Yuri.

Postscript.

Pvt. Yuri Popovitch was found guilty of treason by the Small Court on the 19^th July, 1918 and was executed by a makeshift firing squad in the courtyard of the Ipatiev House around 10.00 am.  Reports are that he died bravely but had suffered extensive injuries from multiple beatings.  Next of kin were notified soon thereafter.