The Kitchen Boy by Robert Alexander Page B

proud, beaming smile, the sister stepped forward and kissed me peasant style, that is to say, three times on my cheeks. As she embraced me so warmly, I glanced over her shoulder, and saw that Marina was looking on, staring at me as if I were some kind of godly hero.
    At the tail end of the third kiss, Sister Antonina whispered into my ear, “
Molodets
.” Excellent.
    The diminutive sister was musty with the unmistakable perfume of Orthodoxy, so smoky and sweet, and I pulled back, took the basket from her hand. “Here, allow me.”
    And so it was that the sister and novice followed me out of the parlor, through the dining room, back around, and into the little makeshift kitchen. Cook Kharitonov stood at the counter peeling potatoes, and he eyed us over his shoulder.
    “Again we have brought you the freshest of eggs,” began Sister Antonina, “as well as milk still warm from the cow. Marina herself helped with the milking.”
    With that, the young girl stepped forward, handing me one glass bottle in particular and placing the other on the table. She looked at me, blushing as her eyes caught on mine.
    “We will be back as soon as possible,” said Sister Antonina.
    I handed the novice the bottle they’d previously brought, now empty, of course, and escorted them through the dining room and into the parlor. Sister Antonina rapped once on the doors, one of which was opened, and the two women disappeared.
    While Kharitonov, potato in hand, kept a seemingly loose eye on the door for a guard, I pulled the stopper from the very bottle Marina had placed in my hands. And that was where the second note from the officer was found, the note that to this day lies with the others in the
arkhivy
of the Russian Federation in Moscow. Later that summer, in an attempt to hide their crimes, the
Bolsheviki
frantically took all such documents – diaries, photo albums, letters, as well as the secret rescue notes – upon their evacuation of Yekaterinburg.
    But back then, on the twenty-fifth, the morning thereof, hope seemed to be burning bright yet again. All of the Romanovs likewise supposed that there was a note in that milk bottle, and they were eager to know its contents. Within moments of the departure of the sister and her novice, the Tsaritsa’s maid was at the door of the kitchen.
    “Would you be so kind,” said Demidova, “as to fulfill Aleksandra Fyodorovna’s request for a glass of water?”
    “Certainly,” replied cook Kharitonov.
    Of course, I was the one to fulfill the so-called request, because such trivial tasks always fell upon me, little Leonka. And so, clutching the folded note in my hand, I went to the crock of water that we always kept on the wooden counter. I gently pulled off the cloth covering the top and ladled a glass. And then turning to Demidova, I handed her the water. As I did so I slipped the note from my palm into hers. She smiled, her head bobbed in appreciation, and she quickly stuffed the note up the long sleeve of her dress. Immediately she turned to go, but just as quickly Kharitonov spoke out.
    “Would you be so kind as to tell the others,” said the cook, gazing deep into Demidova’s eyes, “that only soup and vermicelli will be served at lunch? There will be no meat until dinner – the
komendant
himself told me that Leonka will not be allowed to go to the Soviet for more cutlets until three.”
    “I see.”
    Actually what she said was “
yasno
,” which has a very rich meaning in Russian because, of course, Russian is a much richer, not to mention more beautiful, tongue than English, which is so hard-sounding and so rigid in its complex rules.
Yasno
doesn’t simply mean “I see,” nor does it simply mean, “It’s clear,” or “I understand.”
Nyet, nyet
, that single word says something infinitely more profound. What it implies is that one understands not simply the meaning of the word, but also what lies beneath the surface yet cannot be spoken. It lays out, the true, complex