I Was Anastasia

by Ariel Lawhon

  She squeezes Anna’s hand and drops her voice to a whisper. “I promise. You’ll see. I’ll get you out of here.” The simple, foolish girl laughs, like they’ve shared some confidence. She pats Anna on the shoulder. “It’s okay. You don’t have to pretend anymore. Good-bye, Tsarevna.”

  SEVEN MONTHS EARLIER

  Dalldorf Asylum, Berlin

  October 3, 1921

  One day Anna is consumed by silence and boredom and then the next she is summoned twice by the Duck to be inspected by strangers. From then on the visitors come in streams, one or two a day. Sometimes three. Men and women who have misplaced a loved one and have seen Anna’s photo in the paper. They hope against all reason that their daughter, sister, wife, or mother has been found. Every day Anna is ordered to dress and go sit in a small waiting room. Every day Anna sees hopeful, desperate, broken families, and every day she breaks them a little bit more. This is the worst of it for her, being an unwilling participant in their personal tragedies.

  The waiting room is deceptively warm, furnished with plush couches and framed by a large window overlooking the manicured lawn facing the entrance. It feels comfortable and calm, nothing like the stark, cold reality within the wards themselves. The Room puts families at ease when they come to visit their loved ones, but like everything else at Dalldorf, it makes Anna angry.

  Most of the visitors turn away immediately upon seeing her. They shake their heads, wipe their eyes and leave, muttering their apologies to the Duck. Only one man has tried to claim her, and it was clear to everyone that he was crazier than any of the patients housed within these walls. The orderlies dragged him from the room after he lunged at Anna and tried to tear off her blouse. “My wife!” he screamed as they promptly removed him from the premises. “I want my wife back!”

  The Duck had the decency to apologize for that one at least. “They told me he seemed normal enough at the gate,” she said afterward.

  “Pity you weren’t at the gate yourself,” Anna said. “Since you’re so good at making judgments based on appearance.”

  Even after that, others come, only to be devastated to learn Anna is not the daughter who slipped out of an open window to meet her lover and never returned. Or the wandering prodigal or the straying wife or the feebleminded cousin. Day after day she remains unclaimed.

  Fräulein Unbekannt. Miss Unknown.

  She sits, yet again, in a chintz wingback chair beside the window, waiting for today’s visitor. The fog has descended, shrouding the lawn and the long drive so she doesn’t see the black truck until it pulls up in front of the building. The man who emerges looks determined even from this distance. But when he lifts his face to take in the enormity of the square brick building she sees something else beneath the brim of his worn hat. A hardness along the jaw line. An impatient gait as he slams the truck door and disappears beneath the awning. It’s not long before she learns that he has come looking for his sister, some woman who wandered away from a boardinghouse in Berlin. The Duck says that this man saw her picture in the paper and read how she had jumped from the bridge. This is the first Anna has heard of the newspaper’s publishing that detail. That’s all she’s told. But it’s enough to put her on edge, and the Duck notices the way she fidgets nervously with the hem of her dress while they wait.

  “Do we have to keep doing this?” Anna asks.

  “Has it occurred to you that I don’t enjoy playing babysitter? That I have to stop what I’m doing every time someone shows up at that gate to speak with you? That I’m required to record the details of your time together? If you want to stop this, tell us your name. But if you’re not willing to do that, shut up and quit complaining.”

  This is the harshest the Duck has ever been with her, and Anna is taken aback. “I’m sorry to be such a burden.” A sarcastic tone punctuates each syllable.

  “Then stop being one.”

  Not that sorry, apparently, because she is sullen and uncooperative when the guards escort the man, slightly older than Anna, into the waiting room. He is considerably taller than she is but they are similar in appearance— dark hair and blue eyes. The Duck sits up a bit straighter to make a note of this in Anna’s file.

  “Felix Schanzkowska,” the guard says by way of introduction.

  When it comes to poker faces, his is every bit as good as Anna’s. He stares at her, head tipped slightly to the side, and gives no indication at all of what he’s thinking. Anna doesn’t break eye contact, but she does pick at her cuticles— one small show of nerves that she can’t disguise.

  “Why don’t you introduce yourself to this young man?” the Duck says. It’s a test and Anna won’t fall for it.

  She studies this Felix instead and finds a very sad face regarding her in return. Unlike the others he doesn’t ask questions or try to touch her. He simply looks at her. At her clothes. At her face. At her hands, her fingers, and raw cuticles. And, for quite some time, at the ragged scar that deforms her right temple. He seems to be reading her mood. Her thoughts. The temperature in the room. She stares at him, defiant and quiet, willing him to leave.

  This exchange is so different from the others that the Duck glances at them—back and forth repeatedly—scribbling notes on the page without looking down.

  Finally, he curls his lip. Then clenches his jaw. Sighs. “I do not recognize this woman.”

  And he’s gone that quickly. Anna feels both triumphant and oddly bereft. She belongs to no one. “Can we stop this game now? Please?” she asks.

  The Duck closes her folder and tucks the pencil into the pocket of her shirt. “Last I checked, Fräulein Unbekannt, you were the only one playing a game.”

  · 26 ·

  Anastasia

  BORROWED TIME

  1918

  Ipatiev House, Ekaterinburg, Russia

  May 25

  “How was your trip?” Father asks. “We were quite worried about you.”

  We sit in a small room off the first-floor kitchen eating our usual dinner of chicken, roasted potatoes, and fresh bread from a linen-clad table awash in candlelight. Even here in this miserable outpost we keep up the illusion of grandeur.

  Father drags a bit of bread around his plate, soaking up the chicken juices, and looks at me expectantly. I watch him pop it in his mouth and chew slowly while I struggle to find a suitable answer.

  “Absolutely horrible,” I say, finally, and Olga goes completely still beside me. Her fork is suspended halfway between her plate and her mouth. Her hand begins to tremble and a piece of chicken wobbles off the tines and falls to the floor where Joy swoops it up greedily. Mother eyes Olga with suspicion. I can see my sister retreat into herself and shutter her eyes. So I shrug. I try to seem disinterested. “The journey was cold and long and we missed you terribly.”

  Everyone relaxes then. Father nods compassionately and my sisters each take another bite. Mother peers at me intently, however, not eating. I can feel that probing intuition stretch toward me. Observing. Measuring each of my words to get at the truth. She always knows when I am lying. It’s an innate sense that I do not understand but learned to fear at an early age.

  “And the guards,” Mother asks. “Did they treat you well?”

  Olga and Tatiana push food around their plates, not looking up, hardly breathing. Maria, oblivious, slices a piece of chicken from the bone and eats it with the finely tuned manners of a princess. My brother gazes at a greasy spot on the floor where Joy licks gristle from the wooden planks. But my parents study me, and I know that my words will determine much of what happens next. So I roll my eyes and shake my head.

  “Of course not. They were odious. As always. I don’t know why they have to be so vulgar and uncivilized. So cruel. Sometimes I think that frightening us is their greatest entertainment. They wouldn’t let us lock the door to our compartment, and they stood in the hallway all night, drinking and cursing and making those awful
bawdy jokes, but we did our best to ignore them.” I know that I’m rambling nervously so I nod, as though to convince them of the veracity of my story. It is a gesture meant to convey our bravery and composure. I tear off a piece of the warm, crusty roll beside my plate and set it in my mouth, pretending that I don’t have a care in the world. I chew the bread slowly, gathering myself to tell them what they want to hear. “We didn’t feel comfortable undressing for bed, so we slept in our clothes. I can’t wait to have a bath and a good night’s sleep.”

  I didn’t realize how tight Father’s shoulders were until they drop in relief.

  “I’m sorry the trip was awful,” he says. “But I’m glad we’re together again.”

  Mother takes a sip of water and smiles at me. There is something about the way her lips struggle to curl upward that makes me think she doesn’t believe a word of what I’ve just said. “Where is Ortimo?” she asks.

  Tatiana shudders at the question, her body folding in on itself. Her lips tremble. Her eyes flood. And then she is gasping for air, wracked by sobs.

  So I tell them how Semyon barged into the cabin, drunk, and threw Ortimo from the window. But I tell them nothing else. I cannot. Olga reaches for my hand beneath the table and squeezes it in gratitude. Father is enraged, but this news mollifies Mother somehow. She sits there, searching our faces, wanting to believe we suffered no other harm on the journey.

  “I am sorry,” Mother says, pulling Tatiana against her side. “I am so sorry about Ortimo. We will speak with Semyon. We will address this.”

  “No!” Tatiana says, and then, lower, “No. It won’t change anything. Just keep him away from us. Keep all of them away from us.”

  “He will not go near you again,” Father growls.

  Something occurs to me then. “Where is Yakov? I haven’t seen him since we arrived.”

  “Gone to Moscow,” Father says. “He does that occasionally.”

  “Why?”

  “He doesn’t say.”

  “Have you asked?”

  Father sets his fork down on the edge of his plate. There is an angry slant to his mouth. “Yakov Yurovsky does not answer to me.”

  It is not like Father to be evasive, but I don’t see much point in pushing him any harder in the middle of dinner. Father refills his glass from a crystal decanter on the table and drains it in four long gulps of water. It makes me sad to think that same decanter once held wine. Part of a serving set we used daily, it is now one of the few luxurious things we still have in our possession.

  When we arrived in Ekaterinburg hours earlier we found that our living quarters were greatly diminished even from what we’d had in Tobolsk. The room where we now eat, once a formal dining room for the previous owners, is expected to be dining room, parlor, and study combined. The table is crammed in one corner with the chairs crowded together, and two couches are arranged along the other wall in an L shape. Some of Father’s books are stacked in piles against the walls. The rest are stacked in crates in a back room, unopened since his arrival a month earlier. During the day he uses the table as a desk. Dova has tried, with little success, to make the room comfortable by arranging rugs and hanging curtains, but the overall look is tattered and haphazard.

  Beyond that we are granted use of the kitchen, a single bathroom, and three bedrooms to be split between us and our few remaining servants. My parents and Alexey share one. Botkin, Trupp, Cook, and Dova are in another. And my sisters and I have been given the last.

  Our bedroom, as it turns out, hasn’t been prepared for our arrival. So we make do, piling cushions and cloaks and spare blankets in the middle of the room. We peel off our clothing and throw it in the corner, relishing the feel of clean nightgowns and good hairbrushes. The baths will have to wait. We are too exhausted.

  Tomas and Ivan are somewhere on the grounds—I didn’t miss the look of delight on Maria’s face when she saw Ivan. But the bitter surge of jealousy took me by surprise. Maria is oblivious. She has no idea what happened on the train. Luck of the draw spared her from our fate, and there is now a distance between us that I do not know how to bridge. I doubt Olga and Tatiana will even try.

  We’re in a strange city in a borrowed home and are still surrounded by countless soldiers. But our parents are here. We are as safe as we can be at the moment. It is true there are no locks on the doors, but Semyon will not dare touch us with our protectors nearby. He is a coward at heart, a greedy, loathsome opportunist. And we are utterly spent. So my sisters and I curl into that makeshift pallet in the middle of the room and give ourselves up to the great and merciful gift of sleep.

  Maria is the first to begin snoring, and when she does I feel a hand reach out and brush my cheek. Then Tatiana’s voice. “Thank you, Schwibsik,” she says. “I couldn’t bear it if they knew.”

  TWO DAYS LATER

  Ekaterinburg, Russia

  May 27

  We enter the storeroom to find everything we own in shambles. Boxes emptied onto the floor. Crates overturned. Furniture broken. Clothing is strung about and books lay open, their spines cracked and pages mangled. All of our silver, crystal, and fine china has been stolen. Sold, no doubt, to some secondhand store in the city. The trunk containing our corsets was taken to our room immediately upon arrival; otherwise, it would have certainly been pillaged as well.

  Dr. Botkin and I have come to retrieve our camp beds so we won’t have to sleep on the floor again. Many of the items that traveled with our parents and almost everything we brought from Tobolsk is stored in this large, empty room at the back of the house. In hindsight it’s obvious that the soldiers have unrestricted access to this room, but we had no way of knowing that our belongings were being pilfered.

  It is one thing to have everything you own picked through and winnowed down. It is something else to see it trampled on and torn to pieces. Pillaged. Violated. Ravaged. I have never been one to hold my anger, but I lose all pretense of control upon finding this mess.

  “Anastasia,” Botkin warns, “don’t.”

  But it’s too late. I’m already picking up my skirts and running. Because the truth is, my anger has nothing to do with our belongings and everything to do with the rage I have held, bottled and corked, since that night on the train.

  I find Semyon outside, beside the fence, surrounded by a group of men. Their heads are thrown back and their throats filled with the coarse sort of laughter that makes my stomach churn. I know what they’re talking about, why they’re laughing, and I am driven forward in fury. There’s a momentary flash of uncertainty on Semyon’s face when he sees me storming across the grass, arms pumping and face red. For a second it looks like fear. He hides it quickly, however, and by the time I reach him, his true emotions are masked with that ever-present sneer.

  “You,” I say, breathless, as Botkin trots up behind me.

  Semyon rests one foot against the fence and crosses his arms over his chest. “Yes?”

  “You let your men go through our things. You let them steal from us.”

  “I didn’t let them do any such thing,” he says. “I ordered them to.”

  Soldiers draw closer from all across the yard, curious about the commotion. In my peripheral vision I see Tomas and Ivan shift from their posts at the front door, rifles slung over their shoulders, and wander close enough to hear.

  “You have no right!”

  Botkin’s hand settles heavily on my shoulder. Challenging Semyon like this is foolhardy, stupid even. I’ve seen firsthand how merciless he can be. Yet the dam has burst, and all that pent-up rage comes spilling out.

  “I have every right. You are not royalty. You are not even citizens. You are prisoners, and your belongings are property of the state. Be thankful we left anything at all. Yakov ordered me to sell the valuables. I could have burned the rest.” Semyon pushes off the wall and eyes me curiously, as though he has only now noticed my existence. He looks
me over slowly, the way he does with Olga, and I force myself not to shrink back when he reaches out and fingers the collar of my blouse. “I could have sold your clothing, you know. I could have left you all naked.”

  My spit is dripping from his eyelashes before I realize what I’ve done. The hand that was playing with my collar a moment earlier grips me tighter. He yanks me forward, inches from his face, while he wipes the spit from his eye with his other hand. He is a good bit taller than I am, but I roll up onto the balls of my feet, unwilling to back down. I can feel Botkin’s long fingers digging into my shoulders as he tries to pull me back. And I can see Tomas in the edge of my vision slide the rifle from his shoulder. He holds it loosely before him, ready to aim.

  Semyon shakes me once, hard enough that my head snaps backward and pain shoots through the base of my skull.

  “You should be more careful with the things you value. Or they will be taken from you.” He raises his hand and brushes it along my cheek, tucking my hair behind my ear. Then he plucks the diamond stud from my earlobe and holds it up to the light. It looks enormous there, pinched between his fingertips, like a button. Semyon tucks it in his shirt pocket and yanks the stud from my other ear as well. “Don’t bother me again, you stupid little girl. You have no rights.”

  Botkin steadies me when Semyon pushes me backward. I can do nothing but retreat, and I hate myself for it. My only consolation is the look of pure hatred on Tomas’s face as he glares at Semyon. He has returned to his post at the door by the time we pass through, but he has not repositioned his rifle. It still hangs loosely in his hand, finger hovering over the trigger. Tomas catches my eye just as I shake my head. I hope he understands my meaning. Don’t do it. Not yet.

  ONE WEEK LATER

  Ekaterinburg, Russia

  June 5

  No one ever tells you that time grinds to a halt when you are in captivity, that each day becomes a year and each week becomes a lifetime. That you will live a dozen slow lifetimes over the course of a single month. I thought that life was hard when we were put under house arrest at the Alexander Palace. We couldn’t travel or visit with friends. We had only the palace and the grounds at our disposal. And then we went to Tobolsk and our lives narrowed even further. A house, much smaller, and a meager yard defined our existence. But we had many of our things and a good rapport with the guards. We did not understand how lucky we were in either place until the reality of Ekaterinburg began to settle in. Now we have only a handful of rooms and a small, weedy garden that we are allowed to visit for thirty minutes twice a day. Our lives shrink to a pinprick of what they were before.