City of Shadows

by Ariana Franklin

  “I am not ordinary. Am not ordinary.”

  Esther gripped her hands. “It won’t be fame, it will be notoriety.” She struggled for a way to pierce the incomprehension. “Newspapers may carry articles about you, but the Romanovs will refute them, they’ll be unkind, they’ll make you a laughingstock. Some people may take you up, but the Romanovs won’t. They’ll never recognize you as Anastasia. Anna, please try to see.”

  Astonishing violet eyes looked back at her, but what they saw, Esther couldn’t tell. She felt a desperate tenderness for this abused creature— and guilt for her own part in abusing it.

  “If I am well known, I have a dog,” Anna said.

  Esther released her hands and let her go.

  In her room Natalya was sitting on her bed. Esther sat down next to her. It was very cold; the only light came through the door from the sitting room. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Six months of my life,” Natalya said tonelessly. “There’s not much left.”

  “Not much left of what?”

  “My life. I’m going to die young, you know.” She’d hooped her bedspread over her head and shoulders so that she was completely enwrapped except for nose and mouth. As she spoke, her breath made steam. Esther was reminded of the little charcoal burners’ kilns in the Siberian forest.

  “Nonsense.”

  “I am.” Natalya’s voice had taken on an elegiac quality. “There was an old woman in the village; she saw things. Poor peasants’ Rasputin, she was. We were frightened of her, she looked like Baba Yaga, but she had the sight. She told me once, she said I’d be a shooting star, not long in the heavens but bright while I crossed them.”

  “For God’s sake, Nasha.”

  “Could have been me, couldn’t it? He should have chosen me, really. Nick should. Right height, right coloring. I know as much as she does, and I’m a hell of a lot saner.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it.” Esther reached out and touched the cold cheek under the quilt. “Come on, lovie. Get to bed. You’re tired.”

  Natalya pointed to her pile of movie magazines. “Did you know Hollywood wants to make a film about Rasputin’s killing?”

  “Does it?”

  “Make a great movie.”

  “I suppose it would.”

  “Anastasia coming back from the dead—that’d make a great movie, too.”

  “Not if she were a fake,” Esther said.

  “It’s all fake. That’s what movies are.”

  The telephone rang. Esther went into the living room to answer it and heard Nick’s voice on the other end.

  “He’s back,” she called, putting down the receiver. “And he’s got cash, thank God. We can eat again. I’ll go and collect it.”

  “Tonight?” Natalya appeared in the doorway like a pink bear in her bedspread.

  “I’ve got to. We need to get food first thing tomorrow, before the prices go up. He says he can’t come over—he’s throwing a party for Yusupov at the Green Hat and can’t leave.”

  “Yusupov?”

  “Yes, he met him in Paris.”

  “Prince Felix? The one who killed Rasputin? He’s in Berlin?”

  “Yusupov?” Anna raised her head from her exercise. “He’s a bad man. He put poor Rasputin under the ice.”

  “Oh, shut up about Rasputin. He was as mad as you are.” Natalya was excited. “Esther, that film ...the one I was telling you about, they want Yusupov to star in it. As himself, like.”

  “Really.” Esther was putting on her coat. Get to the shops early, very early, before the lines grew too long. Maybe there’d be meat.. . .

  Natalya was still in the doorway. “How well did he know Anastasia?”

  “Who?”

  “Yusupov.”

  “Only as a child. The czar banned him after he killed Rasputin.”

  “He’s important, though, isn’t he? Prince of the blood and all.”

  “I suppose. Where’s my gloves?” Some vegetables before they sold out . . .

  “I’m coming, too,” Natalya said. “Wait for me.”

  “No, stay here.”

  There was an altercation through the door of the bedroom as Natalya retired into it to get ready. Anna had never been left alone in the flat at night and didn’t want to start now. “The Cheka will get me.”

  “Who cares?” Natalya shouted.

  Esther was dubious; she didn’t like leaving Anna alone, and she distrusted Natalya’s sudden excitement, but Natalya said, “You can’t stop me,” and Esther could think of no way, short of violence, to do so. She wondered whether she should send the girl to get the money on her own, then doubted whether, in her present mood, she’d come back.

  In the end she persuaded a grumbling Frau Schinkel to let Anna sit with her until they returned.

  Natalya joined her, carrying her handbag, in her best coat, and with what appeared to be a long skirt beneath it. She had on a pair of shoes.

  “What’s happened to your boots?”

  “These are more comfortable.”

  It was too cold to talk; they adjusted their scarves over their mouths and walked fast through unlit streets, a wind straight from the steppes blowing on their backs. Herr Hitler’s scarlet posters were black in the dark; they seemed to have proliferated.

  They could hear the noise and see the lights from the Green Hat as they reached Potsdamer Platz. Flashbulbs were popping. A crowd had gathered outside its big glass doors in two lines to watch people going in. Autograph books were being proffered and signed.

  “Oh, my God,” Natalya said. “Look who’s getting out of that car.”

  “Who?” The faces were vaguely familiar.

  “Ruth Weyher and Fritz Kortner. You remember—they’ve been in dozens of films. And there’s Fritz Lang. Oh, my God.”

  Film people. Esther became angry. Nick had found money enough to pull out the stops for Yusupov.

  They pushed their way through the crowd, to be barred by a large man in an astrakhan hat and a uniform heavily frogged in gold braid. “Only invited guests,” he said. “Oh, hello, Esther.”

  “Let us in, Gricha, we’re on business.”

  The foyer was full of people handing in their coats and wraps. Esther tapped one of the cloakroom girls on the shoulder. “Where’s Nick, Vera?”

  “Just gone upstairs.”

  Esther turned to look for Natalya, found she’d disappeared, and went up.

  The gaming room was getting ready for the suckers. Nick was handing out the banks to his croupiers and testing what Esther had always suspected were crooked roulette wheels. “Come for our money, Nick,” she said.

  “You girls, so mercenary.”

  “We girls, so hungry.”

  They went to his office. “How’s Mademoiselle Eloise?”

  He frowned. “Oh, shit, Esther, wait till I tell you. She is a complete disappointment. Not Bourbon at all. I think she’s Mafia. I may have to marry her. What do you want? I don’t have time, I got a party to throw.”

  “Money, Nick.”

  Grumbling, he opened his safe.

  She went to the window that gave onto the club’s great room, effacing the memory of the night it had been empty by seeing it crowded. A ragtime band was playing the Charleston and couples were dancing, legs kicking, arms swinging. The women were shimmering and angular in their straight, bosomless dresses, long necklaces bouncing, their neat bobs circled by jeweled headbands.

  Watching money enjoy itself, wondering where it came from, comparing the glitter of wealth in this heated place to the bleakness of the streets, she recognized faces she’d seen in the newspapers, politicians, actors, actresses. How had Nick come to know these people? And they him?

  Oh, hell, she thought with a sudden longing, it may be decadent but it looks fun. “Is Yusupov here?”

  “Not yet. He will be; he never misses a party. Met him in Paris, down on his luck like the rest. I’m softening him up. He doesn’t know it yet, but one of these days our Prince Felix is going to re
cognize the grand duchess Anastasia.”

  She took in a deep breath to tell him a thing or two ...and let it out again: “Oh, hell.”

  “What?” He joined her at the window.

  A figure had walked onto the flickering floor, matte and plain against the surrounding sparkle. The dancers were stopping to look at it, and it was inclining its head graciously toward them.

  Natalya had dressed herself in a long skirt and an off-the-shoulder blouse. There was a single string of pearls around her neck; she’d borrowed a kokoshnik from one of the cigarette girls and had scraped her hair back under it, leaving only a fringe.

  She looked very young; she looked like the picture that had adorned a hundred thousand postcards; she looked like Anastasia.

  Nick picked up a speaking tube. “The girl on the dance floor. Get her up here. Now.” Swearing, he began kicking his desk.

  She’s gone mad, Esther thought. We’ve sent her mad. She watched Theo and another muscled man in a tuxedo advance on Natalya and speak to her. Natalya smiled, laid her hand elegantly on Theo’s proffered arm, and allowed herself to be led away. The band started up again, but the dancers remained in groups, talking.

  The office door opened. “Here she is, boss,” Theo said. “She was asking for Prince Yusupov, but he ain’t here yet.”

  “Leave her to me.”

  There was silence. Unwillingly, Esther turned around from the window.

  “Well?” Nick asked.

  Natalya started to babble. “I can do it, Nick. Look at me. Somebody said ‘Anastasia’ down there—I heard them. We’re wasting time with Anna. She’ll never do it; she can’t even speak the bloody language. Let me see Yusupov. Just let him look at me; he’ll say. I know it all, I was there, for saints’ sake—she wasn’t. I’ll do it for you, I can do it. Look at me.”

  “I’m looking,” Nick said. He’d sat down on the edge of his desk. He was terrible when he was quiet.

  Mascara was smudged below Natalya’s eyes. Her short, too-blond hair had fallen out of her kokoshnik and assumed its flapper position on her rouged cheeks. Her eyes were wide and staring; she looked like a rag doll. She began shrieking. “It’s bloody done now. They’ve seen me. I’m not going back. There’s a film in it, Nick. Me as Anastasia, back from the dead. Oh, Nick, let me do it. I can do it.”

  “No.”

  They stared at each other.

  “Why not?” asked Natalya, and she sounded reasonable.

  “Because Anastasia isn’t trash and you are.”

  Esther moved to Natalya’s side, facing Nick. “Leave her alone. It’s finished. You started this, and here’s how it ends.”

  “Oh, no it isn’t.” Natalya’s face had wizened with shock. “I’ll tell, Nick. I’m Anastasia now, and you say I’m not, and I’ll tell the newspapers what we’ve been doing with that Polish slut in Bismarck Allee these months.”

  “Oh, yes?” Nick got up. Gathering Natalya in one arm like a friend, he took her to the window. “Look down there, kid. See that fat man in the corner, the one with the floozy in the pink? Biggest publisher in Berlin. And him on the next table? That’s the chief of police with the minister of the interior.”

  He turned Natalya around and put his face close to hers. “The powerful men of Germany are in the Hat tonight, kid, and most of ’em are taking my sweeteners one way or another. Who’re they going to believe?”

  Yes, Esther thought, I ignored this. Good old Nick, the corrupter. Good old vicious Nick. I didn’t want to know. I should have.

  “Now, you go home,” Nick was saying. “You be a good girl, and maybe I’ll forget this.” He steered Natalya to the door and opened it. The bouncers were outside. “But one word, one word, and I swear on the fucking Bible you’ll have no tongue to say another.” To the bouncers he said, “Get her coat and one of you take her home.”

  When she’d gone, he turned back into the room, glaring at Esther. “And what the fuck were you doing bringing her here?”

  “Nick, the game’s over, whoever you use. It’s dirty, and it’s damaging those girls, and I’m not playing it anymore. There’ll be no Anastasia. I’m stopping it.”

  “You are?”

  “Yes. Try it and I’ll do some telling of my own. And I know where the bodies are buried. Income tax, Nick.” He stared at her, appalled; she’d used a dirty word: Einkommensteuer. “Income tax,” she said again, enjoying it. “You can have half the government in your pocket, but you haven’t got the Tax Department, and they don’t like being bilked.”

  He picked up a paperweight from his desk, and for a moment she thought he’d throw it at her. Instead he smashed the glass of one of the Braque prints. “That’s what I get for employing a fucking Jew.”

  “That’s what you get,” Esther said. “And while we’re talking money”—she swept up the pile of thousand-mark notes he’d got out of the safe—“this is mine.”

  Theo was at the door, lumbering from foot to foot. “We lost her, boss. I was getting her coat, and she sort of slipped out—”

  “Find her.” His fists drummed on the desk. He began hitting it with his head.

  Esther tapped him on the shoulder. “Give me your car keys.”

  He looked up. “What for?”

  “She’s out there somewhere without a coat. Give me the stinking keys.”

  “Oh, fuck it. Come on.”

  On the way out, he shouted for Boris to take over. “And if Yusupov comes, give him the real Veuve Clicquot. The bastard knows his champagne. Tell him I’ll be back.”

  The number of people on the pavement had grown, as if the entertainment of seeing the rich and beautiful pass by kept them warm for a while. As had the peasants in Russia, Esther thought. Until they got too cold.

  She slunk into the crowd and made her way around its back while Nick kept to the red carpet laid across the pavement, camera flashes flickering on his face.

  A woman with a notebook stepped forward. “Prince Nikolai, I’m from Film News. Is it true you’re backing a movie about the grand duchess Anastasia?”

  Suddenly he was surrounded with notebooks. “Is she in there? Is it true she’s alive?” “Do you know where she is?” “Where are you hiding her?”

  “No comment.”

  So somebody inside the club had spread the news of Natalya’s charade. Esther crossed the road to where Nick parked his car. He’d changed it for a Daimler. She stood for a moment, looking up and down the Platz for Natalya and not seeing her, then slid herself into the front passenger side. Come on. Come on.

  Still shouting “No comment,” he jumped into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and slammed the car into gear. “See what the bitch has done now? Fucking press.”

  “Oh, shut up,” she told him. “Bismarck Allee. And quick.”

  It was a straight run, and Natalya couldn’t have covered it in the time. She hadn’t gone home.

  Opposite number 29, Nick did a violent three-point turn and began going back, facing a few cars that immediately started doing the same. “Shit,” he said. “See what you’ve done? You’ve put the fucking press on my tail. Where now?”

  “The river.”

  “She wouldn’t.”

  “I don’t know what she’ll do.”

  Going slower now, watching the sidewalks, they went to bridges, to the canal, to more bridges. The cars behind them began to lose interest and drop away one by one. Nick was still swearing at them. Esther didn’t care whether they followed or didn’t. She was studying alleys as they passed, leaning out to look into black water.

  Nick was agitating to get back to his party; it was nine o’clock, everybody would have arrived, and him not bloody there. “Shut up,” she told him. But the streets were empty and dark; another electricity cut was affecting the whole city. Little flakes of snow showed white in their headlights.

  “She’ll be home by now,” Nick said. “I got to go, Esther. This is hopeless.”

  It was. “All right, take me back.”

  As he
stopped outside number 29 and she got out, the last remaining car to follow them slowed and then went on down the avenue toward Bismarckstrasse.

  Frau Schinkel and Anna were sitting in the downstairs apartment, playing cards by the light of a candle.

  “Has Natalya come in?”

  She hadn’t. Esther thanked the landlady, lit another candle from the supply kept in the hallway, and escorted Anna upstairs. “You away a long time,” Anna accused her. “Where you been?”

  “Looking for Natalya. We can’t find her.”

  “Maybe the Cheka get her.”

  The apartment was cold. While Esther went to the cupboard for another candle, Anna took up her old position by the kitchen window. Her shriek shredded the silence and Esther’s nerves.

  “For God’s sake, what is it?”

  “He is there.”

  “Who is?” Esther joined her at the window. Snow came down in little rushes, allowing patches of moonlight. The trees’ bare branches threw distorted shadows, none of them human-shaped. The doorway of the bookseller’s opposite gaped empty, though Anna, backing away, still pointed at it. She was moaning, “Keep him off, keep him off.”

  “Keep who off? There’s nobody there, lovie.” “Keep him off.” Anna kept retreating in terror and moaning. Esther bolted the door of the apartment. “See? Nobody can get in.” Anna began to chatter. “He’s there. He find me again.” “Who has? For God’s sake, Anna, you’ve got to tell me.” “At the asylum. He was there. I see his shadow, his face at the win

  dow, always I see it. Like the forest.”

  Esther sat her down, went and looked out, and then closed the oilcloth curtains. “It was somebody passing. There’s no one there now.” A reporter, blast him, she thought.

  In the candlelight Anna’s face was tight with terror. She was muttering. Esther caught the words “forest,” “always,” and “canal.”

  She poured a slug of the medicinal-purposes vodka she’d kept for emergencies into a glass for her. “Tell me,” she said. Anna shook her head, trying to guide the glass to her mouth with hands that shook so fast they were vibrating.