by Ariel Lawhon
Anna
THE SCHANZKOWSKA AFFAIR
1938, 1932, 1931
Hannover, Germany
July 9, 1938
“I see you’ve gotten married,” Anna says, looking at the gold band on the ring finger of Gleb Botkin’s left hand. Such an American thing to do. Russians wear their wedding rings on the right. Sellout. This fact disappoints her almost as much as the marriage itself.
“I was going to tell you.” Gleb sticks his hand in his pocket defensively. “She’s a nice girl. Lovely.”
“I didn’t say otherwise.”
“Listen, I haven’t seen you in years. Seven years.”
“You don’t owe me an explanation.”
“She’s American.”
“I assumed as much.”
“That means I can stay in America. You know how important that is. To your cause.” He says it like this is some compromise on his part, as if he has sacrificed something on her behalf.
Anna is exhausted, and Gleb’s stammering makes her even more so. It’s not like they had any sort of understanding. She hasn’t seen him since New York. Since that last fiasco he got her into. Hell, he didn’t even know they’d locked her away in that asylum for a year until after she’d been shipped back to Germany. Anna has no claim on him. Yet this still hurts. It’s an embarrassing realization to come to in her forties.
Gleb looks so eager to explain, to apologize, that Anna almost asks the name of this strange new wife he has acquired. Almost. But Edward Fallows steps through the door before she has time to give in to sympathy.
Her lawyer has aged considerably in the years since she last saw him. They communicate regularly by letter and telephone but have not been in the same room since New York. His hair has gone gray at the temples. His back has grown rounded. And he wears spectacles, thick and very English-looking. Edward Fallows was not a man blessed with good lips to begin with, and they are tight and thin now, like dried orange peels.
“Are you ready?” he asks.
“No. But I don’t have a choice, do I?”
She’s only answering this summons because Gleb is present. Anna didn’t really think he’d make the trip all the way from America. But now that he has come she can’t very well avoid it any longer. The interrogation has been ordered by Adolf Hitler. His interest in Anna’s case has only grown in the months since he accosted her in Berlin.
“Let’s go then,” Gleb says, offering her a hand.
If it hadn’t been his left hand, she might have accepted it. But she stares at that gold band for a moment and rises from the couch on her own.
* * *
—
The Hannover police headquarters is located seven kilometers from Anna’s new apartment. They drive in silence. There is no point in discussing strategy. One does not refuse the Führer. Not if one enjoys breathing. Anna has brushed up against death often enough to know that she is not ready to permanently inhabit its cold, clammy grasp.
Police headquarters are housed inside an ornate building that was once a library. Libraries these days are frowned upon, but the structure retains its charm, and she hopes that the ghosts of those stories still haunt the corridors. She hopes they torment the Nazis at night.
They are met at the top of five wide steps by an SS officer proudly wearing his red arm patch and a scowl. “This way,” he says, snapping his heels together and leading them through the double doors and deep into the building.
Hallways. Corners. Stairs. Anna doesn’t keep track of their route. She has little reason to believe she will be led out the same way. It is her assumption that this soldier, or one just like him, will take her out the back in handcuffs.
Anna is wearing her best wool suit for the occasion. Pale gray, soft as a lamb’s ear. A matching cloche. Silk stockings. New black leather pumps, satin gloves, and a string of pearls. If she is going to be hauled off to prison, she might as well look sharp. Whatever the outcome of this meeting, it’s time to put the Schanzkowska affair to rest.
The officer leads Anna, Gleb, and Fallows into a large interrogation room. Inside are four people seated on one side of a long wooden table. There is an enormous, rectangular mirror on the wall behind them. Double-sided no doubt. She guesses that whoever is on the other side will remain anonymous. If the Führer has made the trip from Berlin to witness this meeting firsthand, he hasn’t condescended to show himself.
In any case, Anna finds the visible occupants of the room troubling enough: all four Schanzkowska siblings. Valerian, Felix, Gertrude, and Maria-Juliana. Stair-stepped in age, they are very attractive in an earthy, rural sort of way. They are clearly impoverished—both women wear simple homemade dresses of drab black, and neither man has a tie or pair of suspenders between them, but they have the strong, sinewy look of people who work hard for a living. Clear-eyed and brown from the sun, they have scrubbed up the best they can, but Anna can still see the residue of manual labor beneath their fingernails. Ordered to attend this meeting, and pulled from their fields and their factories, they are anxious and wary. Not that she can blame them.
Anna takes a seat with Gleb and Fallows on either side of her. The Officer sits at one end of the table while Anna stares at the older woman, Gertrude, knowing immediately what every person around this table sees: a startling resemblance between them. Anna has known Gleb Botkin long enough to perceive when he is nervous. And the telltale tapping of his shoes gives him away now. Gertrude Schanzkowska has Anna’s same high cheekbones, dark hair, and startling blue eyes. Their noses and mouths are similar, as is their height and build. The lines around Gertrude’s eyes are deeper, and there is more silver in her hair, but even a casual observer can see they could be sisters.
The Officer scribbles in his file.
“Can we please get this over with?” Anna asks in German.
The siblings confer, in Polish, looking at her and then away. They take in her fine clothing and her meticulous grooming. The careful distance she keeps across the table. They size her up against the memory of the woman she is accused of being. Their long-lost sister. A mentally unstable woman who disappeared in early 1920. A charge brought against Anna a decade earlier by relatives of the imperial family. The dates line up, as do appearances, and it’s easy to understand why she hasn’t been able to shake this accusation since that ambush in Wasserburg.
She knows Gleb is thinking of it now, as he gazes unblinking on these four Polish witnesses. If only he hadn’t taken her to the inn that day. If only they hadn’t fallen into the trap so neatly laid by that Private Investigator.
Anna shakes her head. Clears her thoughts. Focuses on the present.
The Officer slides a paper across the table and places it before Valerian Schanzkowska. “This is an affidavit stating that this woman is your sister, Franziska. If you identify her as such today, you will all be required to sign it before leaving.”
What the Officer does not mention is that if they sign the affidavit, Anna will be charged with fraud and, at the very least, imprisoned. Whether the Schanzkowska siblings know this is unclear.
Valerian looks at Anna. His eyes are brown, soft and round, like an American penny. He takes in her pearls—the necklace, the earrings, the ring on her right forefinger—and shakes his head slowly. “This lady looks too different. Too elegant. My sister was a simple woman.”
“See, I’m not the woman you’re looking for,” Anna says to the Officer.
But then Valerian speaks to her directly. “Do you have children?” he asks.
“Of course she doesn’t have children. What kind of question is that?” Gleb demands.
“Let the woman answer for herself,” the Officer says.
Anna can feel a vein throbbing in her throat, right where her neck and chin meet in a gentle curve. There is only the briefest hesitation before she answers, “No,” and then, after she has had a second to think, s
he asks, “Why?”
“Because the last time I saw Franziska she was pregnant.”
“Oh, please do record that in your files,” Edward Fallows tells the Officer.
He doesn’t even glance up, unperturbed at this bit of new information. “And how many years since you last saw your sister?” the Officer asks.
“Nineteen.”
“That’s a long time. Long enough for anyone to age. To change fortunes.” He glances at Anna. “To change appearances.”
Valerian stares at her steadily. She meets the gaze. Eyes narrowed. Back stiff. Mouth drawn in tight. She is defiant. Desperate.
Don’t do this. Please. If she could scream the words at him she would.
“No one changes that much. This woman is not my sister,” he says, finally, and slides the affidavit to his brother, seated beside him.
Felix looks at the paper. He has blue eyes. Like Gertrude. Like her. He reads the affidavit slowly, quietly.
The Officer notes Valerian’s statement dispassionately in his messy scrawl. “And what of the rest of you? Do you concur?”
Anna has seen Felix Schanzkowska twice in the last two decades. Once in Wasserburg, and once, years earlier, in a meeting that, as far as she knows, remains undocumented to this day. It cannot be brought up now or used against her. But that doesn’t ease the tremor of fear that beats against her rib cage. Of all the siblings, his face is the most inscrutable. No hint of his thoughts or what his reaction will be.
“This woman does not look a thing like Franziska,” Felix says after staring at Anna for some time. “She doesn’t even look like the same woman I saw at Wasserburg eleven years ago. Can we go home now?”
Maria-Juliana agrees. She is the youngest of them, and it is clear she worships her brothers. She will not contradict them. She doesn’t want to be here. The woman practically withers beneath the scrutiny. She doesn’t even bother to read the affidavit before pushing it farther down the table to her sister Gertrude. Each of Maria-Juliana’s fingernails is bitten down to the quick, but that doesn’t stop her from picking at them with her teeth. “I’ve never seen this woman before in my life,” she says.
The Officer seems uncomfortable. Three denials. Not the outcome he expected.
Anna is poised in her chair, ready to leave this dank room behind when Gertrude leaps to her feet. “What is wrong with you?” she screams—actually screams—at her siblings. “This woman is our sister!”
Gleb and Fallows push back against their chairs, startled.
Gertrude turns to Anna. “I know you are Franziska. You must recognize me. Please! Look at us! How can anyone deny it?”
The Officer turns his attention to her, triumphant, as though he has caught Anna in the middle of a great fraud. “Well,” he asks. “What have you got to say?”
One heartbeat. Four. Nine. Anna counts them slowly, letting her pulse settle, forcing any potential tremor from her voice. “What am I supposed to say?” Another long beat to drive home her point. “She is lying.”
Gertrude begins to sob.
The Officer regards Anna with a vulture’s stare. “How many brothers and sisters do you have?”
“Four,” Anna answers, honestly.
“And here we are,” Gertrude insists, wiping her nose with the back of her hand, “four—”
“Their names are Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Alexey,” Anna says. “My siblings are all dead.”
Gertrude leans across the table now, desperate. “This is insane. She is insane. Tell them the truth!”
The Officer watches Anna closely. There is no more scribbling of notes or casual observation. “Where were you born?”
“Russia.” Anna spits the word out and folds her arms over her chest, hiding her trembling hands.
Felix’s voice is quiet, almost inaudible as he reaches down the table and places his hand on Gertrude’s. “Don’t you see? It isn’t her. Frankie was born in Poland. Like us.”
“Admit it!” Gertrude yanks her hand away and glares at Anna. “Admit it!”
“Are any of you willing to sign that?” the Officer asks, nodding toward the affidavit. He looks at each of the siblings in turn.
“No,” Valerian, Felix, and Maria-Juliana say in unison.
Gertrude hesitates, lips parted, her arm lifted several inches from her side.
Anna jumps at the opportunity. “Enough of this. I am done here.” She rises smoothly from the table and stares at the two-way mirror. Her reflection shows the face of a calm, confident woman. A woman sure of who she is. Then she turns to the door and passes through without another word. Gleb and Fallows come after her a moment later.
Once they are deposited outside on the sidewalk, they rush Anna toward the waiting car.
“Gertrude wouldn’t sign it. Too afraid of her siblings, I guess,” Gleb says triumphantly. “The German government will take no further action in this case.”
Anna is too exhausted, too relieved, to celebrate. She simply wilts into the backseat, pulling the cloche from her head and wiping one hand across her sweaty brow. Perhaps wearing wool in July wasn’t such a great idea after all.
“That was close. Far too close,” she says.
Edward Fallows grins at her in the rearview mirror. “It doesn’t matter now. It’s over. And besides, I have other news.”
Anna has learned to dread these words from him. “What news?”
“As you know, the Romanovs tried to declare all of the tsar’s surviving relatives so his estate could be settled and dispersed among them. But I filed a motion to contest this, stating that you are his only surviving heir. And I’ve just received news that the court has agreed to see our evidence. Frederick has it in Berlin. Witness testimony. Photographs. Everything he could find.” He is elated, almost jubilant. “It’s only a matter of time and we’ll have you recognized, legally, as Anastasia Romanov.”
FOUR MONTHS EARLIER
Berlin, Germany
April 1938
Adolf Hitler is not as tall as Anna imagined. The papers make him out to be a giant, some otherworldly creature that exists on a dais, towering over his subjects, when in reality he is not much taller than she is. Anna only has to lift her chin to meet his curious gaze. The outstretched hand is harder to accept, but what else is there to do? It is an effort not to wipe her hand on her skirt afterward.
Anna is only in Berlin for the day, to give one of Edward Fallows’s endless depositions. Twenty minutes ago she stepped out of her hotel and onto the street to go in search of an early lunch when a large black limousine pulled to the curb and two armed SS officers stepped into her path.
“You must come with us, Fräulein,” they said. “Your presence is required by the Führer.” The sort of words one hears in their nightmares. But slumber is the only place you can resist such a command without consequences.
The officers explained nothing else on the short drive to the Kaiserhof building and now here she stands, in a room with the leader of the Nazi Party, with the man turning the world on its ear.
“Please,” he says, “have a seat.”
Anna lowers herself to the edge of the wooden chair across from his desk. She is careful not to get too comfortable. “You must forgive me,” Anna says, “but I do not understand why I am here. I only came to Berlin on business and I will be leaving first thing in the morning. I have caused no trouble.”
The Führer sits on the corner of his desk, a large block of wood that looks as though it has been cut from the heart of some ancient tree. He has blue eyes, brown hair, and that famous mustache shaved to a mere inch and a half. Anna cannot help but stare at the thing as it sits there on his lip like the dislocated bristles of a toothbrush.
“Do not be alarmed,” he says. “I only wished to tell you that I’ve had my intelligence officers perform a thorough investigation into your claims.”
Her voice is more of a squeak than she would like. “My claims?”
“That you are Grand Duchess Anastasia.”
She clears her throat. Grips the handle of her purse. “Why?”
“Because it matters.” The expression on his face is one of assurance, friendliness, even, yet there is nothing in his eyes. Nothing whatsoever. They are a blank sheet of glass, and Anna has the disturbing sense that his true feelings on the subject will not reach the surface. “As you know, the world is precarious at the moment, and your claims, if true, could alter the course of history.”
“If…true? Am I to assume that you do not believe me?”
A smile, filled with teeth, but it too sits on top of his face, not reaching his eyes. The expression is so out of place, so unnatural, it’s as though she’s found it on the floor, or hanging on the wall.
“On the contrary,” he says. “We have come to the indisputable conclusion that you are, in fact, Anastasia.”
This is a good thing. This should be a good thing. Yet a holy terror begins to rise in her chest, to fill her with dread. “I am glad you believe me. So few people do.”
“I don’t just believe you. I support you. And it is my sincere desire that you will support me as well.”
So he’s getting to the point, finally. “In what way?”
The Führer leaves his perch on the edge of his desk and goes to sit behind it. “My agents have concluded that your family was betrayed by the British government during the revolution of 1917. Disloyalty sickens me. England will pay for what they did to you.”
Only the two of them sit in this office, but it does not stop that frenzied, hypnotic tone to his voice, as though he’s speaking to a crowd. She hears it often enough on the radio. It is spun up with electricity now, and Anna has to force herself to sit still and listen instead of cringing and turning away. The air almost crackles with his zeal, and she fears any movement on her part will bring a static charge.
He continues, “And when I am finished with Britain, I will move to the Soviet Union. I will annihilate the men who murdered your family.”