Interlude
Alexei: I am a Pinocchio
Oh, no, not in the sense that my nose grows when I lie. I don’t think I’ve told a lie, though I’ve kept my mouth shut, from time to time, since I was much littler than I am now. No, no; I am a Pinocchio in the sense that I cannot be a real boy, and I have no Fairy with Turquoise Hair to turn me into one. If I had one and she tapped me on the head with a magic wand, there’s a decent chance I’d bleed to death.
I don’t know how I’ll ever become a real man, since I can’t be a real boy. And if I can’t be a real man, however could I have been a real tsar? So perhaps not much was lost from the revolution and my father’s abdication on both our behalfs.
Certainly I’d have been more than happy—no, that’s not strong enough, I’d have been so happy no one would believe it—to trade the throne for the chance to be a real boy and a real man. Unfortunately, no one ever did make, nor ever could have made, me that offer.
Though they suffer terrible anguish for it, Mama and Papa let me do more than they really want to. Indeed, I usually have to make myself refrain from doing everything I’m allowed to, since I know how much it worries them. Still, I can do a little work, handle a sharp saw, play with my friends and my pets.
But the soldiers—the Red soldiers—shot my pets, back in our old place, and my friends have to keep from playing rough with me, in case I might get a cut or bruise. It’s like people throwing chess games with my father, because he’s the tsar . . . or, rather, was. Not much fun, not much of being a real boy, in that, is there?
I pray for a miracle, though I never prayed for, nor asked for help from, Rasputin. I never trusted him. And I wasn’t sorry, except for Mama, when he was killed. He was no starets, no holy man. He was a fraud and a swindler and, though the rumors about him and Mama, or him and my sisters, were all false, it wasn’t as if he didn’t want them to be true. You could see it in his eyes and manners; he definitely wanted them to become true.
Though I believe in God, of course, I’ve never understood why he allowed me to be born like this. When I die, and it probably isn’t all that far off, I intend to have some very cross words on the subject.
People wonder—I know some of Mama’s friends did—how it happened that this old fraud was able, still, to create miracles where I was concerned. I have a theory; it wasn’t his faith that did it; it was Mama’s and Papa’s faith.