Anastasia's Secret

by Susanne Dunlap

  Sasha was to command a platoon? He had been a mere private soldier, the lowest of the low, in the Semyonovsky. I glanced back at the motley crowd behind me. They looked as if they had been called up in the midst of plowing their fields or building something. What kind of army were we sending into battle?

  The tent flap flew open then and startled me out of my thoughts. A man wearing the uniform of a sergeant swept out. He looked right through me, and I might have thought he hadn’t seen me except that he swerved neatly to avoid crashing into me.

  “Sasha!” I whispered hoarsely as soon as the sergeant had vanished behind a supply wagon.

  “You might as well come in. I’m not ready to come out just yet.”

  I didn’t like the bitterness I heard. Still less appealing was the sight I beheld when I stepped beneath the flap of the tent. Items of clothing were littered around. A kit bag had fallen open and its contents—including a safety razor—tipped out onto the dirt. Sasha himself sat upon a camp bed. He looked like a soldier from the waist down with his smart trousers and polished boots, but like a frightened animal from the waist up. He wore only his undershirt, exposing his thin, pale arms, and his long neck looked vulnerable without the stiff, military collar he normally wore. Above that, contrasting with the boyishness, his unshaven cheeks were dark with a few days’ growth.

  “Sasha!” I cried. “What does this mean?”

  “They have promoted me,” he answered, sounding more as if he had been telling me that he had been sentenced to prison.

  “Isn’t that what you wanted? To be a real soldier, not just polishing boots and cleaning guns?”

  He stood, putting on his uniform jacket and buckling his belt as if I were nothing more than a fellow soldier or a valet, accustomed to seeing him in a state of undress. “But that’s just the point. I’m not a real soldier. I haven’t had the proper training. They’ve shown me how to read the telegraph tape, the forms I should expect for getting orders, and who reports to whom—me to the company commander, the company commander to the battalion chief, the battalion chief to the regiment colonel, the regiment colonel to the army general. And the higher up you get, the farther from the ground—and the fighting. Yet they are the ones who have experience.”

  I didn’t quite know what to say. “Did you think I wouldn’t come?” I asked, gesturing toward the untidy mess.

  For the first time, Sasha looked directly at me. His eyes were full of sadness and bewilderment. “I suppose I didn’t. It was all well and good when we could meet in your garden. How did you get away?”

  “As you can see, Varenka helped me.” I gave him a little curtsy and swung my egg basket. He smiled, looking for an instant like the impish Sasha I had come to know. “But I have to be back before Mashka wakes, or I’ll get in trouble.”

  Sasha finished putting on his uniform and adjusted his cap smartly on his head. “Do I look like I command a platoon?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. How many soldiers are in a platoon?”

  “Only fifty. And have you seen them?” He jerked his head toward the tent flap.

  “Those are your soldiers?” I began to see why Sasha was so upset. “Most of them look too young or too old, and I’d say the majority I passed had just yesterday been in the fields.”

  “I knew I could count on you to be astute.” His words were like acid on metal.

  “I don’t deserve your anger. I had nothing to do with this!”

  “No, but your imperial father had everything to do with it. How are we to fight the Germans? They have all modern equipment, big guns, and aircraft, and a standing army that’s trained. Our ‘army,’ such as it is, consists of officer dandies and peasants, thanks to our ancient law that calls up the poor and serfs—so many thousand for each landowner, like heads of cattle. Most of the fellows out there have never worn a pair of stout boots before, and God knows if they can fire a gun with any accuracy. To make matters worse, I have only the vaguest idea what the plan is. All I know is that we’re heading west. We don’t go by train except at the very beginning. We march. All the way to Prussia, apparently.

  “Do you know, I have heard that we don’t even use code to communicate because no one can remember what it is. It’s laughable!”

  Was this true? What of the spirit of the Russian people, who were invincible—even by the great Napoleon? “Surely the generals … I mean, it all must be part of a plan. You just don’t see the entire thing, so it seems absurd.” Yet even as I said it, I felt it was untrue.

  “Do you know anything?” Sasha asked.

  I opened my mouth to speak, actually considering lying to Sasha just to make him feel better. But the words would not come out. Finally, I squeaked out a pathetic little “No.”

  Sasha sighed, then drew his shoulders back and put his chin up. “I suppose I should try to be happy that I have been promoted so unexpectedly. And I would be if I did not suspect that platoons like mine will be used as cannon fodder. Isn’t that what a soldier does? Fight, and probably die?”

  “You don’t seem to be fighting very much!” I said, becoming irritated with his self-pity. “I would go to the front and lead a whole battalion, or even a corps, if I had to!”

  “Have you ever seen a man killed by gunfire?”

  “No. But it’s a war. People get killed.”

  Something closed in Sasha’s face when I said that. I wished I could have swallowed back the words. “You had better be going before you get in trouble,” he said. I blushed to have my own cowardice thrown back in my face. And Sasha looked so vulnerable there, his uniform a little too big for him. What a photograph that would make. Yet if I had my camera with me, would I take it? I did not want to be reminded of Sasha in that weak state. How could he take charge of even ten men? I wondered. I wanted to run up to him and fling my arms around his neck, tell him that he should come with me, that my papa would make things all right and he wouldn’t have to go to war. But even as I took a step toward him, he flinched.

  “Take care, Alexander Mikhailovich,” I said, feeling the tears close my throat. I turned around, not wanting to prolong our good-bye. Not wanting to ask him to write to me, especially since any letters he sent would be read by several pairs of eyes before they ever reached me.

  “Wait!” he said. I stopped just before opening the tent flap. “Would you keep this safe for me?” He darted to the corner of the tent and picked up something wrapped in cloth. I could see by its shape that it was his balalaika. He held it out toward me.

  “Won’t you want it? To play to people and soothe them?”

  “The less I have to carry the better. And besides, if something happens to me, I want you…” He didn’t finish. I reached my hand out and grasped the instrument firmly by the neck. He moved his grip so that his hand covered mine, and it sent a charge through me. Our eyes met briefly, and I could tell that he felt it too.

  I was too confused to continue looking at him, so I forced a smile and lowered my eyes. “Of course, Sasha.” I pulled the instrument toward me. He let go of it and my hand. I still felt the warmth of his skin.

  “Good,” he said. “Good.” Then he gave me a half-hearted salute. I left, looking even more like a peasant than when I arrived, with my wrapped-up balalaika slung over my shoulder.

  I got back to the palace gardens just as the sun was rising. Varenka anxiously paced back and forth by the kitchen entrance. “I’d have never forgiven myself if something had happened to you, Princess!” she said.

  We went inside and exchanged clothes hurriedly. I realized how selfish I had been in getting her to help me with my little excursion. She would have been severely punished—and not just by her mother with her switch and harsh tongue—if there had been some mishap.

  Mashka was already taking her cold shower when I got to our room. I quickly hid the balalaika behind my dresses in the wardrobe, then sat at the dressing table and brushed my hair, trying to decide how to explain my early morning absence to my sister.

  She cam
e out wrapped in a large white towel. “Where have you been?”

  “Up,” I said, deciding the less I told her the better. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  To my surprise, rather than quizzing me further, she said, “Neither could I. I lay awake for the longest time last night. I think of all the officers we know, the ones Olga and Tatiana have danced with and had tea with. And … you know who. Some will die.”

  I nodded. Mashka had had a flirtation with a soldier, but it was not serious. She had stitched him a shirt, though, to wear on dress parade. Somehow her romance was tamer than my friendship. I supposed that was because mine was secret.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she continued. “It may be impossible to make enough shirts to be useful, but we can help the soldiers by knitting socks and making bandages for the wounded.”

  “Yes, it would be good to actually do something, even so small.” I couldn’t help thinking that no amount of socks would improve the training of our army. And as for the wounded—I couldn’t bear to think about them, not yet.

  We had breakfast together in our dining room. It was the four of us with Zhilik and Trina. Mama and Alexei had breakfast in her room, and Papa never joined us anymore, spending all morning with his military maps and his generals. I had to find a way to talk to him at some point, to let him know that his great army might not be as strong as he thought. Yet even then I knew I would never dare speak to him about it. He would ask too many questions about how I knew. I, the youngest girl, the one no one took very seriously because I was always clowning around.

  In any case, the opportunity never arose. Matters were already too far gone for anything he might have done to have made a difference. And as for me—how could I have thought any action of mine would have mattered?

  CHAPTER 6

  We departed for the trip to Moscow a week later to ask God’s blessing on the war and protection for our soldiers. Our train arrived on August 17, at a crowded and jubilant Moscow station. We made our way slowly in a file of carriages through the streets toward the Kremlin. All the bells of all the four hundred and fifty churches pealed out, but they were not loud enough to drown out the raucous cheers of the people who swarmed the streets, hung out of windows, and surged onto balconies—some even perched on low rooftops. I had never heard so many voices singing “God Save the Tsar,” our national anthem. Mama’s cheeks were pink with happiness. Olga and Tatiana tried hard to look very dignified. Alexei stood straight and tall, despite the fact that his ankle was hurting him, and Mashka and I grinned like fools. For a brief moment, it seemed that all the bad things I’d heard or that had been hinted at had evaporated with the morning mist.

  At the Iberian Gate, Papa got out of the carriage and went into the chapel, as is the custom—or was at any rate—to kiss the icon of the Virgin of Iberia. When he returned, we proceeded through the gate into the Red Square. I remember the look on his face as if it had all happened just yesterday. It’s a look I have seen many times since, but have never managed to capture in a photograph. He did not look proud or triumphant. He seemed overcome with sorrow and yet at the same time content, listening to the voices of his people glorifying his name. I wonder if he had some premonition of what was to come. Perhaps he was thinking of Alyosha, who weakened visibly throughout the day, and who awoke the next morning in such pain that he could not walk.

  The next morning I went to see Alexei in his room. “Are you really unwell, Alyosha?” I asked. All our teasing and tormenting ceased when he had one of his attacks.

  “It’s my ankle. It hurts so terribly. I’m not as bad as I’ve been, but look.” He lifted the covers and I saw his ankle, swollen and bruised, misshapen. I wanted to touch it and kiss it and try to make it better, but even the lightest touch was agony to him. “I don’t want to miss the blessing. It’s terribly important,” he said.

  When Alyosha was ill, his eyes looked much older than his years, as if all the pain he had suffered in his young life had lodged there. He was only eleven, yet he had had a lifetime of agony. “As long as you’re not moaning or can’t sit up, one of Papa’s Cossacks can carry you. You won’t miss it,” I assured him, stroking a stray hair out of his eyes.

  Mama came in, already dressed in her caftan with the heavy embroidery in gold thread and wearing her imperial crown. If it wasn’t for the anxious expression in her eyes, she would have looked like an icon herself. “Baby, are you too ill to come?”

  “No, Mama. I must go. Only I cannot walk.”

  “Perhaps you should stay here and rest.”

  “No, Mama, I am going. I am the tsarevich. I must be there.”

  I had shrunk away from Alyosha’s bed while my mother was with him. When he was ill, she seemed not even to see me. This occasion was no different, until Papa came in.

  “How’s your little brother?” Papa asked me quietly.

  “He’s in pain, but he will come. He can’t walk, though.”

  Papa nodded, then walked forward and took Mama’s hand. “I’ll send Nagorny in to help you dress in your uniform. You’ll be carried in to the service.”

  “I’m sorry, Papa,” Alyosha said, looking down.

  “It can’t be helped.” Papa put his hand on Alyosha’s head, then bent down and kissed him, his ornamental sword clanking against the iron bedframe. I could tell by his expression that he was unhappy about Alyosha’s attack, not just because he was in pain, but because having to be carried into the very public blessing would show weakness. At times like these, I felt sorry for my brother rather than envying him all the attention and special treatment he got. What was it all worth if he couldn’t even enjoy the smallest things in life, and if at any time he could be stricken and have to spend weeks in bed?

  On our last day in Moscow we took a trip out to a famous, ancient monastery outside the city, fortified and containing thirteen churches within its walls.

  “Mama says if there is time we’ll visit the hermitage at Gethsemane,” Tatiana said. She always seemed to have information from Mama that the rest of us didn’t.

  “Why is that so wonderful?” I asked, thinking that we’d have enough of visiting old churches and seeing long-bearded patriarchs by visiting the monastery and we’d have little need of any other religious touring.

  “Don’t you know? They have real hermits there who are virtually buried alive,” Mashka said. “They live in holes in the ground and just get their food handed to them through a slit that’s not even big enough for an arm to pass through.

  “And when one of them dies—which they only know by the smell, because they don’t always take the food that’s given to them—they simply seal over the slit and leave them there.”

  I shivered. Who would choose such an existence? Aside from the question of bathing, I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to be away from the sunlight and air. I had a terrible fear of being imprisoned. Even the low ceilings of the basement rooms in the Alexander Palace made me start to panic if I remained down there too long. Perhaps I was spoiled by having twenty-foot-high ceilings in most of the places we lived.

  I wondered if Mashka knew that what she was telling me would give me nightmares. Perhaps she did, and told me on purpose. I think I brought such things on myself with my mischievous behavior, but I never did anything that would really upset one of my sisters—except for that snowball, of course, the one with the stone in it. But as I remember, Tatiana was being rather high and mighty at the time, and I never did anything as dangerous again. Oh, well, I used to throw things at my tutors and sabotage their satchels with live toads and such. But that didn’t really hurt anyone.

  Fortunately, there wasn’t time for the visit to the hermits.

  We were in Moscow for less than a week, and then we returned to Tsarskoe Selo. I was glad to get back to our familiar rooms. Of all the palaces we lived in, the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe felt the most like home. Of course, Mama always made certain to have her photographs and mementos around her wherever she went, but Mashka and I—as if by mutual agreeme
nt, although we never actually discussed it—kept few belongings other than a favorite doll and some books. We made do with whatever existed in the different palaces rather than bring our possessions from place to place. I expect that would have surprised many people, who no doubt imagined us traveling around with trunks and trunks of toys and books. We did have some jewels, but they were in the charge of Mme Zanotti and worn only on state occasions, and hardly seemed to belong to us. And I must say that the playrooms in our wing of most of the palaces were stocked with just about anything we could want to amuse ourselves with—including an artificial hill for tobogganing in the Winter Palace that was even bigger than the slide in the Mountain Hall of the Alexander Palace. We often rode our bicycles around the rooms in the Alexander Palace, and it was the smallest of all our homes.

  Because everything we packed for our trips was taken care of by the servants, and the household staff looked after our clothing and other belongings, it was extremely difficult to keep Sasha’s balalaika hidden. I decided it would be safer to confess something about it to Mashka. I couldn’t say that I purchased it myself, because we never had any money at all, and I wouldn’t have known how to go about it or how much to give. It had to be a gift from someone, and I settled on it having come from one of the servants whom I had heard playing it in Peterhof. People did that sort of thing for us children sometimes, although less now that we were getting older. I still remembered the old man who had come from Siberia with his tame sable. We wanted to keep it, but it was only tame for him, and when he left it behind it ran around and knocked things on the floor. I thought it was terribly funny, but we gave the creature back to the old man.

  “Why would you want such a thing as a plain old balalaika when we have pianos to play here? I simply do not understand,” Mashka said after I told her and showed her the humble instrument.

  “Just because it is a peasant instrument doesn’t mean it isn’t beautiful!”