Anastasia and Her Sisters

by Carolyn Meyer

  Our bedrooms, schoolroom, and music room were on the floor above our parents’ rooms, connected by an elevator because Mama tired easily and could not use the stairs. Our maids and governesses and nurses occupied the rooms across the hall. Beyond the palace was a Chinese village, built by Catherine the Great, who liked Chinese things, and a small traditional Russian village called Feodorovsky Gorodok that Papa had had built. There was also a zoo with an elephant, a favorite with Alexei, who especially loved to visit when the great animal was bathing. When we weren’t imprisoned with our tutors and punished with interminable lessons, we went boating in summer and skating on an artificial lake and sledding down the ice mountain that the servants built for us in winter. There was an island with a playhouse, as well as lots of parkland that would have been a fine place to wander. But there really was no such thing for us as just wandering—we always had to be guarded. I amused myself by trying to escape from the huge, black-bearded Cossack whose duty was to guard me. I was never successful.

  When Papa went out for a walk at half past eleven, our tutors set us free and we went with him. At noon there were more visitors and more reports for Papa and more studies for us, until luncheon at one. We joined Papa and whatever visitors he had invited—Mama usually chose to eat with Alexei in her boudoir. Father Vassiliev in his long black robe was there to pronounce the blessing in a loud, cracking voice. The chef prepared three courses, but Papa stuck to his borscht and his cabbage soup.

  Chef Kharitonov drew up several menus each morning. The menus were then presented to Mama by Count Benckendorff, a dignified man with snowy whiskers and a monocle, the grand marshal in charge of managing almost everything that went on in the palace. Mama decided on the meals for that day, and the grand marshal carried the orders back to the chef.

  Mama also decided what we would wear. She preferred matching outfits: one day we might all dress in black skirts and white silk blouses, and on another day she’d pick white dresses with pale green sashes. Some days it varied a little: Big Pair wore blue sashes and Little Pair wore yellow. Only once did I announce that I did not want to wear the blue dress with the sailor collar, which I disliked. Mama reacted with such shock at this act of rebellion that I never did it again.

  Mama seldom rose from her bed before noon, claiming that she felt too tired or ill to speak with us. Instead, she wrote us long letters in which she lectured us on our behavior. She sent a maid to deliver them.

  I hated getting one of those letters. I had been sent quite a few, usually about something I had said, rather than something I had done. Marie burst into tears whenever she received one, sobbing, “I don’t believe Mama loves me!” When I tried to tell her that I loved her, all of us loved her, she was the best sister in the world, and of course Mama and Papa loved her, she wailed, “No, Nastya, they love you best—Papa calls you Shvibzik, the imp, because you always make him laugh. Tanya is always so well organized, she’s our governess, and she’s so close to Mama, she knows how to keep Mama happy. And Olya—”

  “It’s Olya we should feel sorry for,” I interrupted. “You’re sweet-tempered, everyone loves you, even if you don’t believe it, Papa goes on and on about what an angel you are, that you must have wings hidden somewhere. But poor Olya! Nothing she does pleases Mama—that’s why they argue.”

  Olga was always the quiet one—unless she and Mama were arguing. Mama didn’t call them “arguments” or “disagreements.” Instead, she said, “Olya is having another of her sulks.”

  • • •

  Olga was our best musician. She could play almost anything by ear and sight-read pieces easily. I practiced as little as possible, but Olga willingly spent hours in the music room next to our schoolroom, playing scales and arpeggios and going over a piece until it was perfect. That was the best time to have a look at her secret notebook. I had only to worry about being caught by Tatiana, but since Tatiana spent most of her free time with Mama, I often decided to risk it.

  When I played a Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody at my lesson yesterday, my teacher said, “If you were not a grand duchess, you would certainly become known as a fine concert pianist.”

  I think about what she said and wonder if it might be true.

  I skipped ahead a few pages and read this:

  I lose myself in books. English novels like Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and Pride and Prejudice are my favorites. From them I’ve gained a fair idea of what life is like among ordinary English people. I probably know Heathcliff and Rochester and Mr. Darcy better than I know Pavel Voronov. How would Elizabeth Bennet behave if she were the daughter of the tsar of Russia instead of an English country gentleman? My books substitute for a life beyond the narrow, suffocating restrictions endured by a grand duchess.

  Suffocating restrictions? Did Olga feel suffocated?

  I put the notebook back on the shelf, reached for Miss Austen’s novel, and turned to the first page:

  It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth—

  “She’s a fine writer, isn’t she?”

  I hadn’t heard Olga come in. “Oh!” I exclaimed, and nearly dropped the book. “I didn’t think you’d mind if I looked at it.” I must have had guilt written all over my face.

  “Of course not, Nastya,” she said. “I’m not sure you’d find life in an English country village of much interest. Maybe when you’re older.”

  That remark truly irritated me: Maybe when you’re older. I shut the book and returned it to her stack of English novels.

  The notebook was certainly more interesting, but it was more upsetting, too.

  CHAPTER 3

  Our Social Life

  ST. PETERSBURG, WINTER 1912

  I was gazing out the window at the swirling snow, thinking about “the narrow, suffocating restrictions” of life as a grand duchess, when Shura, my favorite of all our governesses, bustled in carrying an armful of clothes.

  “Time to dress for tea,” she reminded me. “Tanya says your mother wants you all to wear the gray flannel jumpers today.”

  She laid out the clothes on my bed, everything needed for the prescribed outfit—jumper, blouse, belt, stockings, underclothes, shoes. Everything Shura did, she did quickly, but she never made me feel rushed.

  I took off the dress I’d been wearing and washed my face and hands. Marie waited outside the bathroom door, urging me to hurry. Shura checked my fingernails for cleanliness and helped me put on clean stockings and the rose-colored silk blouse and the jumper, a proper outfit for tea, and inspected my shoes, wiping them with a cloth to be sure they were shined perfectly.

  “Shall I brush your hair, or shall you?” Shura asked, taking the barrettes from my long hair.

  “You do it, please, Shura.”

  This was our usual routine. “Will you be checking my nails and shining my shoes and brushing my hair when I’m married?” I once asked her.

  “Of course I will, Nastya,” she answered.

  “And when I’m an old lady, will you do it then, too?” I couldn’t imagine life without Shura.

  “Even then,” Shura promised.

  We had tea in Mama’s mauve boudoir. Everything in the boudoir was done a particular shade of purple that was Mama’s favorite color. The chairs were covered in flowered chintz, the curtains were flowered chintz, family pictures and religious icons hung on the walls, and objects she treasured crowded the tables. Vases of flowers from her greenhouses filled the air with their sweet scent, even in the middle of winter. No other room in the palace was as comfortable as Mama’s boudoir.

  Alexei was sitting with Mama and playing with a little windup Cossack, marching him back and forth. Water simmered in the gold samovar, and the tea concentrate sat in a small teapot balanced on top. Glasses were lined up in their silver holders. Plates were arranged on the linen cloth, along with a platter of bread, alr
eady buttered. The menu was always the same: bread, butter, and tea. When Papa walked in, greeting everyone, a servant poured tea concentrate into the glasses, added hot water, and handed them around. After two cups of tea and one slice of bread and a little conversation about our day, Papa returned to his study. Mama could not bear to have us idle and expected us to find something useful to do until dinner. I had no talent for embroidery as the others did, but I could knit woolen stockings at top speed.

  Dinner was served at eight. Sometimes all seven of us ate together, but often Mama and Alexei dined alone in the boudoir, and my sisters and I ate with Papa in our family dining room. There were no guests at dinner.

  Afterward, we sat around a large table and pasted photographs into our albums or did needlework while Alexei played with his toys and Papa read aloud, something pleasantly soothing, until bedtime. Mama and Papa gave us each a blessing and kissed us, and our governesses escorted us upstairs to our bedrooms and made sure our teeth were brushed and our rooms were tidy, and they listened to our prayers before we lay down on our camp beds.

  It was a quiet life, the way Mama and Papa wanted it. Mama did not enjoy social evenings with formal dinners and receptions and balls that went on until dawn. We saw few people other than my parents’ closest friends—Anya Vyrubova, Lili Dehn, Dr. Botkin, Baroness Buxhoeveden and Countess Hendrikova, who were two of Mama’s ladies-in-waiting, Papa’s friend Prince Dolgorukov, a few others—and we rarely had an opportunity to be with young people. We didn’t even see much of Gleb Botkin and his sister. They were close to our age and lived in the palace, and I would have liked to see more of them.

  Mama was fond of Gleb, a serious twelve-year-old with unusual green eyes that Mama said allowed you to see into the depths of his soul. Gleb wrote poems and drew amusing pictures to illustrate his stories about talking animals, and he had decided that he would one day become a priest.

  “Does that mean you’ll be a starets and wear dirty clothes and smell like a goat?” I once asked him. I thought Gleb would know that I was joking.

  “No, Anastasia Nikolaevna,” he said, his beautiful green eyes glittering with tears, his lip trembling. “I shall worship God and pray for you and your family every day of my life.”

  I felt so terrible that I apologized over and over and begged Gleb to forgive me. He said he had. I think he did, eventually.

  Tatiana Botkina and my sister Tatiana were friends, but not close. “Our lives are too different,” our Tatiana explained with a shrug. “I suppose it’s hard to be a friend of a grand duchess.”

  • • •

  Our dear aunt Olga Alexandrovna, Papa’s youngest sister, rescued us. Every Saturday during the winter, Aunt Olga, who was also my godmother, came out from St. Petersburg to Tsarskoe Selo. We watched from our window for the sleigh that would bring her from the train, arriving at the palace entrance with bells jingling, and for Aunt Olga to emerge from under the fur robe and hurry into the palace. We ran down to greet her, to kiss her cold cheeks and help her off with her sable coat and handsome fur-lined boots.

  Our aunt spent the day with us, doing whatever we wanted to do: playing piano duets with us in the music room or teaching us a new dance or applauding a song Alexei had learned on his balalaika. Sometimes we painted still lifes—bowls of fruit or Mama’s flowers—or we made sketches of one of the Ethiopian guards who stood stiffly outside Papa’s study and Mama’s boudoir, ready to open a door or announce a visitor. Our favorite wasn’t an Ethiopian but an American Negro named Jim Hercules, who brought us guava jelly from his visits home to a place called Alabama. Jim willingly posed for us in his crimson trousers, jacket embroidered in gold, shoes with turned-up toes, and a white turban.

  After lunch we went skating on our lake. Papa often joined us. Aunt Olga skimmed over the ice as graceful as a bird. She even went tobogganing on our ice mountain in the park, tumbling off into the snow and seeming not to mind at all. We returned to the palace with rosy cheeks. Ice crystals sparkled in Papa’s beard.

  Teatime didn’t vary—that bread-and-butter-only custom must have dated back to Tsar Peter the Great—but the evening was livelier when Aunt Olga was there. We all had cameras and loved to take pictures, and she never failed to comment on the most recent photographs we had pasted in our albums. When I first got my Kodak Brownie, a man from the camera shop in St. Petersburg came to Tsarskoe Selo and showed me how to use it. I snapped roll after roll of film, annoying my sisters by catching them in undignified poses that I hoped might turn out to be slightly embarrassing. The palace photography staff developed our film and gave us prints, and I learned to tint them with watercolors.

  I would have hated for Saturday to end, except that I knew Sunday would be even better. After Mass in our chapel, Aunt Olga shepherded four excited girls to the imperial train. At the St. Petersburg station, a beautiful sleigh drawn by sleek black horses waited to carry us to Anichkov Palace for luncheon with our grandmother, Dowager Empress Marie. The palace covered an entire block on the Nevsky Prospect by a branch of the Neva River, but we seldom ventured beyond our grandmother’s suite.

  Our father’s mother was a lively woman with bright, dark eyes and a warm smile. She didn’t seem old—not like some of the ladies of the court, with their wrinkled faces and too much rouge. We’d been taught to call her “Grandmère Marie,” and she greeted us in French. She asked first after “mon très cher Alexei,” and when we had to report, as we often did, that he was not well, she murmured, “Quel dommage! What a pity!”

  Then she inquired politely, “And your mother? Not feeling quite well, as usual?”

  It was up to Tatiana to explain that Mama was indeed rather tired and begged to be remembered to Motherdear—that was what our grandmother had insisted Mama call her when she and Papa were first married. I guessed that Grandmère Marie was not fond of Mama, and that Mama didn’t have much affection for her mother-in-law. Anyone could feel the coolness between them.

  The table was set for our luncheon in the small formal dining room with rose-colored silk damask on the walls and carvings of little cherubs everywhere. The porcelain dishes were so delicate that, if I held a plate up to the light, I could see the shadow of my hand through it. (I did this once and was told it was bad manners and I must not do it again.) A collection of knives, forks, and spoons was lined up on either side of the plate. We never had this much silverware laid out at luncheons at Tsarskoe Selo, but Grandmère Marie believed we should know what each piece was for and how to use it expertly.

  A uniformed footman stood stiffly behind each chair and served each dish as if we were taking part in a solemn ceremony. First came the consommé, followed by little patés, followed by cold trout that swam in a quivering jelly. I pondered the jellied fish unhappily and tried to think of some way to make it disappear from my plate without actually having to eat it. Grandmère Marie kept a sharp eye on us, and when I failed to use the fish knife correctly, she frowned. I received a firm lecture, and then I had to show that I understood and, worst of all, had to eat the fish. I made a horrid face that only Marie was meant to see, but my grandmother noticed that, too.

  “No need to behave badly, my dear Anastasia Nikolaevna,” she said, frowning, but I knew that I was her favorite and that she would not be truly angry with me, even if I failed to swallow the dreadful fish and hid it in my napkin instead.

  During the meal, which proceeded slowly, we spoke French as well as we could, but not well enough to satisfy Grandmère Marie. “My kind regards to Monsieur Gilliard,” she said, “but tell him, s’il vous plaît, that your command of the past perfect must be improved.”

  Once we’d survived our grandmother’s critical lessons and played something for her on the piano—she preferred Chopin, so I always had a nocturne ready—or recited a poem we’d memorized for the occasion, we kissed her hand and she embraced us warmly and sent us off with a cheery order: “Amusez-vous bien, mes chères jeunes filles!”

  Aunt Olga called for the sleigh, and we dro
ve to the palace on Sergievskaya Street that Papa had given her. Her husband, Duke Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg, lived at one end of the two-hundred-room mansion, and Olga lived at the other end. “Petya sends his warmest greetings,” she told us, but we rarely saw him.

  Our aunt had an artist’s studio, and it was the first place I wanted to see whenever we came for a visit. Canvases were stacked along the wall, some blank, others with paintings of religious icons or landscapes exploding with color. The half-finished painting of a church surrounded by autumn trees rested on an easel. “I’m not satisfied with the sky,” she admitted. “Something is wrong with the clouds.”

  I thought the sky was splendid, the clouds exactly right, and I hoped that some day I would learn to paint as beautifully as my aunt Olga.

  She ushered us out of the studio and into her sitting room and instructed us to lie down on a divan or a chaise longue and close our eyes. “One hour only!” she said. “This gives your lunches time to digest, and your complexions time to regain their glow and your eyes their sparkle.”

  Tatiana and Marie promptly drifted off, but Olga’s eyelids quivered and I knew she was faking. I didn’t bother to pretend. Sundays were too exciting for sleep.

  When the hour was up—it seemed longer—our aunt rang a little bell, and we rose and changed into the dresses Mama had sent from Tsarskoe Selo with our maids. Aunt Olga had arranged an afternoon party and had invited lots of young people, the sons and daughters of members of the court. Down we went to an elegant salon just as the guests began to arrive.

  Some of them were our cousins. Papa’s other sister, Xenia, and her husband, Sandro, had seven children: one daughter, Irina, who was a close friend of my sister Olga, and six sons. I was not fond of those boys, who were noisy and rough and ill-mannered. Andrei, the eldest, was seventeen and unbearably arrogant. Feodor, fifteen, apparently never brushed his teeth. Nikita, who was about to turn fourteen, once accused me of biting him, but that was a lie and typical of him. The younger three could usually be ignored. Aunt Olga spoke sharply to the boys, and they settled down.