by Ariel Lawhon
Gleb Botkin.
So it has come to this. She hasn’t seen him in many years, and they have both grown old in the meantime. He married and had children and became a widower. Anna feels guilty that she is grateful for this, but she couldn’t go to him if his wife were still living. It would be too strange, with their history. Anna regrets the way she kept Gleb at arm’s length, unable to surrender to his affections. But his mistake in Wasserburg was the beginning of everything going wrong. Had it not been for the Private Investigator, she would have proved her case before the courts long ago and she wouldn’t have spent decades living in a ramshackle cottage waiting for the verdict of her appeal. She would have a title and an estate and the dispersed fortune of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
ONE MONTH EARLIER
Unterlengenhardt, Germany
July 1968
Baby lays his head on the hard knob of Anna’s knee. This is a thing he has done since he was a puppy. Whenever he finds her sitting for more than ten seconds at a time, he plops down on his haunches, drops his chin to her knee, and sighs like an arthritic old man. When Anna first found him on the side of the road with his siblings, he was sick and skinny with the mange, one eye swollen shut. The runt of the litter. She didn’t know that he was mostly Irish wolfhound and would grow so large that he would nearly reach her shoulder. In hindsight, she should have guessed. His paws were almost the size of her hand even then. But the rest of him was so scrawny and emaciated she didn’t pay attention. Now, eleven years later, he is a shaggy, bearded, gentle giant. He’s a shadow with eyes the color of a copper penny and a huge pink, wagging tongue. He is a beautiful dog despite the fact that he hasn’t been groomed in years and has grown quite matted around the edges. He is ridiculous, but she loves him entirely. At this point in Anna’s life, Baby is the closest thing she has to a real friend. Everyone else objects to the cats.
This train of thought has put Anna into a gloomy frame of mind and she wants a change of scenery. “Come, Baby, let’s check the mail.”
She wraps her hand around his collar and he pulls back on his hind legs, giving her a little tug, the smallest boost to get her out of the chair. She is moving more slowly these days, fighting a constant series of aches and pains.
Anna and Baby meander down the drive. The dog walks in large, lazy circles around her, sniffing at plants and trees, lifting his leg at any large rock in his path. Anna takes her time, allowing herself the simple luxury of stretching tight muscles and letting the sun warm her face.
There are two letters in the mailbox. One from Gleb Botkin and the other from Maria Rasputin.
Anna scowls when she sees the overly elegant, feminine handwriting on the latter. All that looping, swirling calligraphy. The telltale marks of a woman who is trying too hard. She understands this to a degree. The years cannot have been any kinder to Grigory Rasputin’s daughter than they have been to her.
“That woman needs to stop writing me,” Anna says. Baby looks up as though she has addressed him directly.
Baby nudges her in the hip with his cold, wet nose. It leaves a damp mark on her cotton skirt. He’s telling her it’s time to go back to the house. The dog herds her as though she is a child. Anna turns obediently and they begin the slow ascent back up the drive.
Not only has Anna never responded to Maria’s letters; she hasn’t read any of them. They are on the bookshelf, tucked between two cumbersome German law tomes that she found at a yard sale in the village. It was a rash purchase, a half-hearted attempt to navigate the legal system and her endless series of court cases and appeals.
Once they get back to the cottage, Anna retrieves the other letters from the shelf, evicts an orange, pregnant cat from her chair, and settles in to finally see what devilry the woman is up to.
Maria Rasputin is long-winded, prone to flattery, and impressed with her own vocabulary. She also has a frenzied need to insert herself into Anna’s life. She wants to visit and, though she hasn’t stated it directly, is now insinuating an unnecessary concern for Anna. She’s wondering why Anna hasn’t responded to her other missives, and she has floated the idea that she might “pop in” one day soon to check on her. Anna finds it quite interesting that even though Maria has gone to some trouble to dig up her address (it is not publicly listed), she has not been forthcoming with her own. The return address on each of the three letters shows only a post office box in Straubing. Whether or not she actually lives there, Maria Rasputin is sending her letters from the hinterlands of Germany.
There are no circumstances under which Anna will willingly entertain the woman. And since an answer to this quandary does not immediately present itself, she moves on to Gleb’s letter.
His handwriting is as familiar as her own. A gentle, non-pretentious scrawl that looses steam at the end of each line and squiggles into nothing. As if he can’t remember what he meant to say next. Not unlike the man himself.
Gleb’s letter is short. He wants her to come visit him in the United States. He has made a friend, some professor by the name of Dr. Jack Manahan, who has just retired from the University of Virginia, and they’ve come up with a plan to have her declared, finally, as Anastasia Romanov. What Anna finds interesting is that inside Gleb’s letter is another short note from Jack Manahan himself, offering to be her host. He never comes out and directly mentions her financial woes, but he says that she won’t need to be concerned about a place to live if she chooses to accept the invitation. His home is available to her. And knowing she might question his motives, he lays them out plainly. Jack is an academic who specializes in genealogy and family history. On a broader level he wants to set the record straight about her identity, and on a personal level, doing so would be the crowning accomplishment of his career. He’s honest enough to admit that outright.
She carefully folds the letters up the way they came and tucks them back in the envelopes. Anna grins at the thought of this new opportunity. She is more than willing to let them fight on her behalf.
* * *
—
Three days later Anna posts a letter accepting Gleb’s invitation. By her calculations, it won’t reach him for at least a month, what with the glacial pace of international mail. His letter took a similar length of time to arrive, and she feels the wait will be good for him. Let him fret and pace for a change.
Once back at the cottage, Anna makes a phone call. “Hello,” she says once the man on the other end answers. “I’m going to need a visa.”
The conversation is short and to the point. She has known Tartar for years but has never heard him speak more than three sentences at a time.
“Thank you,” she says when he assures her the request will be processed immediately.
“Anything for you, Tsarevna.”
Anna imagines him sitting behind that large, bureaucratic desk, bowing at the neck. The thought makes her laugh. The lightness of her mood is interrupted by a car speeding up the driveway. It comes to an abrupt stop before her door, slinging gravel against the window where she sits. Anna can see a hairline fracture spread out at the corner of one pane, not five inches from her face. All is still and silent for one long breath, then two car doors creak open and slam shut simultaneously.
Anna’s hips ache constantly these days, as does a single vertebra in the small of her back. But neither of these maladies stops her from sliding out of the chair like a lizard, then crawling toward the front door. She pushes the lock into place seconds before the pounding begins.
“Anna! I know you’re in there. Are you okay?” A woman’s voice, disingenuous, and in Russian.
Not concerned enough to call first. Or to alert the authorities. Or to send a doctor. Not even troubled enough to summon anyone to check on her. No, this is an ambush and Anna won’t play along.
Across the room Baby lifts his head from the rug and begins to growl, low and deep. It reverberates through the floorboards and into Anna’s
palms. She raises a calming hand to him and whispers, “I’m okay,” but he strains forward anyway, suspicious. After a short, silent pause, he heaves to his feet and pads to the door, his long nails clacking against the wood. He sniffs twice, listens for a moment to the shuffling on the other side, and releases a series of thunderous barks.
“Did you receive my letters?” The woman is now shouting to be heard.
Of course it would be a Rasputin at the door.
Anna sets a hand on Baby’s head. He drops back onto his haunches, tail wagging.
Another woman speaks, but in English, and not to Anna. “Look at this place,” she says. “I’ve not seen anything like it outside of a Third World country.”
Maria Rasputin answers in English and they begin the thoughtless, self-righteous sort of conversation usually inflicted on the feebleminded and the impoverished. If they intend to be secretive, they have failed. Anna lived in the United States for many years and speaks fluent English.
“I hear she’s always been fond of cats,” Maria Rasputin says.
“The smell is…impressive.”
“We’re dealing with an eccentric. Keep that in mind. We must coddle her. In this case, flattery will get you everywhere. When she opens the door make a point to bow and call her tsarevna. Use her full name, Anastasia, as often as possible.”
“I’m not convinced she’s home.”
“Oh, she is; the trouble is getting her to let us in.”
Finally, after they have knocked and pleaded and called to her, one of them leans against the door—Anna can hear it groan under her weight. “She’s not answering. What do we do now?”
There is a ruthless note to Maria Rasputin’s voice when she answers. “We have to flush her out.”
“And how, pray tell, are we going to do that?”
“It’s a pity anyone is forced to live under these conditions,” Maria says loudly, in German, and with a note of obscene pleasure. “I think a call to the town council is in order. Don’t you? Surely this has to be a health hazard.”
“You devious old harpy.”
“Takes one to know one. But you should be nice to me, Patte. I’m your meal ticket.”
“I thought you said she was our meal ticket?”
“Well, you don’t get to her without me, now do you?”
Anna listens as the two of them bicker, now in English, and walk back toward the car. The last thing she hears before the doors shut is this strange woman—Patte, Maria called her—say, “I’m beginning to doubt whether anyone can get to her.”
Baby growls again as the car roars to life, and he sends them off with another earsplitting round of barks.
“Enough,” Anna says, swatting at him. “I’ll go deaf if you keep that up.”
It takes her a moment to get off the floor, and by the time she makes it to the window her visitors have already disappeared down the drive.
* * *
—
Within the week, Anna gets three surprise visits from the health department. Each time they knock on the door she stays hidden within the house, only to rip the citation up and throw it away once they’ve left. She has been ordered to clean up the property. They are concerned about the cats and the garbage and the piles of books and boxes they can see in the windows. They are concerned about her health. There’s been a report she’s ill— damn that Rasputin—and they want to check on her. Anna doesn’t know much German law, but she does know they can’t actually enter her home without a warrant or a doctor’s order—unless they can see that she is incapacitated.
The following week, people begin to arrive in one fretting group after another. They come in twos and threes and peek in the windows and bang on the door. They slip notes under the door and beg her to come out. They don’t bother lowering their voices as they talk about her health and the condition of the cottage. They malign the animals, as though any of this is their fault, and they disparage Anna herself. At first she doesn’t open the door to them because she is suspicious. Now she keeps it closed because she’s angry.
It is easy enough to barricade herself inside the cottage, to let her world shrink to a pinprick. The cats come and go at their leisure through a small pet door at the back. Anna lets Baby out twice a day to do his business. Mostly her days are filled with reading—letters and old newspapers and tedious volumes of German law—things she’s been meaning to get to for years. She eats what is in the house, giving little thought to preparation or taste or expiration date.
At first she doesn’t mind the stomachache. It’s easy enough to pass off as indigestion. Only when the aching turns to cramping and the sweat turns to chills a day later does Anna begin to consider the possibility of food poisoning. But in this new, feverish state, the only word that makes any sense to her at all is poison, and she begins to fear, and then believe, that she has actually been poisoned. Anna spends one long tortured night walking a path between the bedroom and the bathroom, making a mental list of all the people who want her dead. If she were not afraid of actually dying, she might laugh. The list is obscenely long.
* * *
—
Baby presses his nose against Anna’s cheek, trying to rouse her. It isn’t cold and wet the way a dog’s nose should be, but dry and warm and rough, and even in her condition Anna knows that he is dehydrated. Anna also knows that she is very ill. She vacillates wildly between hot and cold. She’s thirsty but not hungry. Anna is very tired and wants to stay exactly where she is, in her slender bed in her crowded bedroom beneath the window, curled up in a glorious patch of sunlight. It feels good on her old, thin skin. She feels as though the sun is coming directly through, warming her blood. If she opened her mouth she could taste the warmth itself. Drink it in—it would be like citrus, sour and explosive. It would make her mouth pucker and her entire body would shudder a bit with the sensation. The hairs on her arms would stand to attention. The sun is a lemon hanging in the sky. Floating fruit. Flaming fruit. Hotter now, on her cheek, uncomfortably so. The lemon is burning her. She should roll over to her other side but her left arm has gone numb beneath the weight of her body and she can’t quite get her limbs to cooperate and shift her around. Oh well. The sun-lemon will fall lower in the sky eventually. It will drop from its celestial tree and her cheek will stop hurting then.
Baby barks, loud in her ear. He nudges her. A groan is all she can muster in reply. Anna assumes he wants to be let out and she feels guilty that she can’t get up and open the door for him. If he messes the floor, she’ll just clean it up later.
He pads away and barks again, louder this time. Incessantly. Now she’s angry. Be quiet, she thinks, I can’t take care of you right now. I can’t even take care of myself.
That’s what mothers are for. To take care of you. Anna wants her mother suddenly. Badly. She has reverted full circle to a child curled on her bed crying for her mother. Wanting to be soothed and have the pain taken away. There is a pain somewhere in her abdomen, and it begins to bloom brighter and bigger now that she’s aware of it.
“Mother,” she moans and Baby goes berserk.
He throws himself against the front door.
And then there are the sounds of splintering wood and breaking glass. Voices. Footsteps. Rough hands that shake and poke her. Anna screams. She thrashes. There is an acute, needle-like pain at her left wrist. And then all is devoured by darkness.
· 4 ·
Anastasia
CITIZEN ROMANOV
1917
Alexander Palace, Tsarskoe Selo, Russia
March 9
When my father finally returns home, none of us go out to greet him. We’ve been trained to wait for the trumpets, for the choreographed footfalls of a hundred officers in full regalia. That’s the point at which we’re allowed to throw wide the front doors and line up in our finery. When our father makes an entrance, we are to be accessories�
��ornamental figures meant to enhance his glory. But no one has ever bothered to tell us what role to play should he come home disgraced and despondent. So when Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov the Second, tsar of all Russia, is brought back to the Alexander Palace unshaven, in a common carriage, under armed guard, we are nowhere to be seen.
He finds us in the parlor, staring at the fire, our spirits waning. I look up and there he is, standing in the door, the toe of one muddy boot resting on the Persian rug. For just a moment he looks like a god, tall and strong and surrounded by light. This is my father and he has come home and I could burst with joy at the sight of him. I am too stunned, too relieved to speak. But then he steps forward and I realize that he is not at all the man I have known. Or perhaps he is simply a man and not the emperor I remember him to be. I was tricked by the light and by my own hope, for he is weary and haggard, looking every bit the mortal. It’s all there in the lines around his eyes and the stubble along his cheekbones. The impressive mustache that he always takes such pains to wax and curl hangs limp at the corners of his mouth.
“Nicky!” Mother sees him next but she does not rise from her chair or throw herself into his arms. It’s as though she’s a puppet and whatever strings keep her up are snipped by invisible scissors. Mother collapses in upon herself and goes quietly to pieces right there on the couch.
Father can barely get her name out without choking on a sob of his own. “Alix,” he says, eyes full of a rare softness and longing.
Alexey flies at him, all elbows and knees. Large eyes. Pale skin. Bright freckles. He is twelve, but he looks like he’s two, the way he wraps himself around Father and buries his face in his chest.
My sisters rush him, and Father can’t scoop them up quickly enough. I am the last to approach, and he does not see me for several long moments because his eyes are squeezed tight. But when he does, he utters a single sentence and some shattered thing inside me is pieced back together.