Olga looked beautiful, as always, but very pale and very serious. I tried to make her smile by pulling faces at her, sticking out my tongue, crossing my eyes — everything I could think of. Nothing worked. Her face was like stone.
Prince Carol didn’t have much to say, silly or otherwise. Afterward, we sisters argued about whether he was handsome or not. Mashka liked him, and so did Tatiana, but I voted against him because his hands were as clammy as fish. Olga voted against him, too, no surprise.
24 May/6 June 1914
Livadia
I had to search everywhere for Olga’s diary to see what she’s written about Prince Carol. (I found it hidden in the bathroom.) This is what I read:
I am a Russian and I will remain a Russian. I will never leave my country, even if it means that I do not marry.
I wonder what Mama will have to say to that!
When Olga makes up her mind to something, that’s the end of it. Now I suppose Papa and Mama will have to find her a suitable Russian, although I can’t think of any.
25 May/7 June 1914
Today is Mama’s birthday. We had a quiet little family party, because she always says she doesn’t want any fuss.
Tomorrow we leave for Tsarskoe Selo.
26 May/8 June 1914
On the train
Farewell, Livadia! We’re headed north again.
The train is dreadfully hot. Sometimes we stop in a shady grove to jump out and cool off. Olga mopes in her compartment. Alexei and I pass the time playing checkers. He said he thinks Mama will feel better when she sees Father Grigory again. That surprised me because I hadn’t noticed she wasn’t feeling well.
“Mama never feels really well, you know,” he said, and calmly captured two of my men.
29 May/11 June 1914
This is Tatiana’s seventeenth birthday. She likes her gloves — I’m sure she would tell me if she didn’t. We played charades as the train rumbled along. Mama and Papa promised that she would have a grand ball in November when we go back to Livadia. But then I remembered what Alexei said, that we would not be back again, and it made me shiver.
30 May/12 June 1914
Ts. S.
The servants are always happy to see us when we’ve been gone for a while. Shura and our personal servants travel with us, but most of the others stay here unless they’re sent to one of the other palaces. Jim, the Ethiopian from America, was one of the first to greet us. He brought me a jar of jam that his mother made for him. He says it’s made with guava, a fruit that grows in America in what he calls “the South.” I immediately sat down with a spoon and ate nearly all of it. I made myself half sick, but it was so delicious.
31 May/13 June 1914
Here’s something interesting: Natasha, the daughter of our maid Dunyasha, is getting married. She came today to tell us about it. She is so excited — Vladya is a member of the Cossack guards. He’s very handsome in his bright red tunic! The wedding is to take place next winter, and she’s promised to tell us all her plans as she makes them.
Only Olga doesn’t want to hear about it. She is out of sorts most of the time — “Grumpy,” Mama says. She and Mama seem to oppose each other quite often, and I’m sure it’s because Olga refused to marry Crown Prince Carol and Mama says she ought to.
Tomorrow we’re going to Peterhof, our summer palace by the sea.
1/14 June 1914
Peterhof
We call it “the farm” because this little palace is not as elegant as the one at Livadia (or the gold and white Great Palace nearby, which I can’t recall us ever using). And the Baltic is very different from the Black Sea (cold!). But this is where I was born, and I love to celebrate my birthday here. Four more days and I’ll be thirteen.
Maybe when I am thirteen my life will become exciting.
2/15 June 1914
What a splendid day! The British Royal Navy’s First Battle Cruiser Squadron arrived on an official visit. This afternoon we were taken by launch to the admiral’s flagship, Lion, and given a tour by the midshipmen. They are so handsome! Even Olga was smiling.
Three more days.
4/17 June 1914
Tomorrow is the day, my birthday, the day that everything will change. If I keep saying that, I’m sure it will.
Mama’s cousin Kaiser Wilhelm sent me a doll from Germany for my birthday. A doll! I am so disgusted. It’s true that it’s beautiful, porcelain with blue eyes like Mashka’s, and she’s dressed most elegantly with a little rabbit fur jacket for winter, but still! Doesn’t that idiotic Cousin Willy understand that I am no longer a child?
5/18 June 1914 — My birthday
(If I write two dates, shouldn’t I have two birthdays?)
I’m up early, waiting for something to happen.
Here’s a story that no one in my family knows that I know. I heard it from a servant named Lutka.
It’s the custom that when the tsar and the tsaritsa have a baby, a salute is fired: 300 rounds for a boy, and 101 rounds for a girl. The reason, of course, is that a boy will be the next tsar, and a girl will be only a grand duchess. Anyway, when Olga was born — according to Lutka, who was there — the gun was fired 101 times. The next time it was Tatiana, who was greeted with only 101 rounds. The third time Mama was waiting for a baby, Mashka appeared. Boom, 101 times.
Then, when Mama was expecting her fourth baby, the churches were filled with people praying for a tsarevitch. Candles were lit, and the priests said special Masses. No one prayed harder than Mama!
And out popped another girl — me! No one had to tell me that an awful lot of people were disappointed when a fourth grand duchess was squalling in the nursery!
But here’s what Lutka said: “Your papa cried! I saw him with my own eyes, weeping at your birth, Anastasia! They were not tears of joy, believe me! But then he collected himself and went into the tsaritsa’s bedroom with a smile on his face just for her.”
I don’t know if that part of the story is true or not. Lutka is no longer one of our maids. I didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye to her when she left.
When I was three years old, Alexei was born, and the Russians at last heard three hundred rounds for the tsarevitch. He was — and still is — the most important child in Russia.
6/19 June 1914
Nothing happened. Nothing exciting happened. Maybe my exciting life will begin very gradually.
We did have a nice party — Aunt Olga and Anya Vyrubova came, and Dr. Botkin and Gleb. All the usual people. And the usual gift from Mama and Papa: another diamond. They give me a diamond or a pearl on every birthday and name day so that when I am sixteen I shall have a beautiful necklace with thirty-two beautiful gems, just like my sisters’.
As a special treat, Aunt Olga and I went for a walk with our easels and my new watercolors and sat under a tree and painted. When we came back to the palace for tea, there were special tiny cakes that Grandmother’s pastry chef made especially for me and sent along with Aunt Olga. Anya ate so many, I thought she would explode. But she did not. She resembles a little sofa, soft and puffy, all dressed up in a flowered slipcover and toddling along on pudgy feet.
Tatiana says I am not a good one to talk, because I’m getting fatter, too. She actually said such a mean thing on my birthday.
8/21 June 1914
Grandmother invited my sisters and me to lunch at Anitchkov Palace in honor of my birthday and Tatiana’s, and Mashka’s next week. As usual we had a French menu (escargots en beurre — snails in butter — ugh!) and spoke only French throughout the meal. Her gift to me was a silver music box that plays a pretty tune and has a ballerina on top, who dances when I wind it up. I did remember to say Merci beaucoup, which is French for “Thank you very much,” and I kissed her three times, Russian style.
Then she promised to take me to Paris. (At least that’s what I think she said; my French is far from perfect.)
I asked her when — in French, of course — and she said, “For your sixteenth birthday, Anastasia Nicholaievna.”
But that’s not for three whole years! How can I bear to wait that long? (She didn’t say if all four of us are going. Mashka will be sixteen next year, and Grandmother didn’t say a word about taking her to Paris, but she’s too good-natured to be jealous.)
11/24 June 1914
On the Standart
Our small yacht took us from Peterhof this morning out to the Standart, which was waiting for us in deeper water. The brass band was playing as we boarded, which put us in a merry mood. Mama and Anya immediately found their favorite white wicker chairs on the deck, and we began our summer cruise in the Gulf of Finland.
I love to watch the white plumes of smoke that pour out of the white funnels. Papa says the Standart is 128 meters long and more splendid than anyone else’s yacht — more than Grandmother’s Polar Star, more than Kaiser Wilhelm’s Hohenzollern. (Papa says Cousin Willy is horribly envious of ours.)
Every night before dinner, Papa, the men in his suite, and the ship’s officers gather in the lounge for zakuski, little appetizers like pickled reindeer tongue, and radishes carved into flower shapes, and dark bread with roses made of butter. The men stand around eating and drinking and talking. Then we all go in to dinner together. The officers are so dashing in their sparkling white uniforms. I think Tatiana has been flirting with a tall, redheaded second officer named Saltikov.
12/25 June 1914
Last evening at sunset when the ship’s guns were fired (I have no idea why they do this every evening), I stuck my fingers in my ears and let my tongue loll out of my mouth, as though the sound of the cannon had done me in. Mama hates it when I do this. She says I am unladylike, and that such behavior is appalling.
After that little bit of nonsense, Mashka and I took a stroll around the deck. She went to our cabin to get a wrap, but I wasn’t at all cold, and continued to wander around by myself. That’s when I saw Tatiana flirting quite madly with Officer Saltikov.
She saw me watching her and demanded to know what I was doing, “skulking about and spying.”
I said I wasn’t skulking or spying, I was simply strolling in the moonlight. Later, when Tatiana came to our cabin, Mashka and I both accused her of flirting outrageously (even though Mashka hadn’t actually seen her and had to take my word for it). Tatiana denied everything, but she did blush the rosiest color!
I told her that if she could accuse me of skulking and spying, then I could accuse her of flirting. She had no answer to that.
Later
Why couldn’t everything go on being perfect? Alexei has had an accident. He jumped from the ladder when we went ashore this morning, and fell and twisted his ankle. Now that dreadful disease has flared up again, and he is in horrible pain. Mama is quite beside herself. She blames Derevenko and Nagorny, the two sailors who are constantly with Alexei, for not watching him closely.
Since he was five years old it has been their job to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself. Not an easy job for anyone, especially since Alexei is determined to do everything any other boy can do. Mama always tries to protect him, but Papa wants him to grow up to be as strong as possible so that he can be a good tsar.
14/27 June 1914
On the Standart
We had a lovely birthday party for Mashka, with music and dancing and lots of food. Mama and Papa gave her the most beautiful sapphire that’s the exact color of her eyes. We like to tease her about her eyes, so big and round that Papa calls them “Mashka’s saucers.”
Now she’s fifteen, and she has already begun talking about “when I am married” and “when I have little ones.” She’s probably dreaming of her Russian soldier and their twenty children.
15/28 June 1914
Alexei was well enough today that Papa decided the rest of us could go hiking. Tatiana stayed on the yacht with Mama and Anya because Mama always likes to have one of us around. (I think Tatiana agreed so she could flirt with her officer.)
Early this morning the launch delivered Papa and Olga and Mashka and me to a little island, where we spent the day picking berries. Mashka accused me of eating more berries than I put in the basket, but that is absolutely untrue.
When we got back to the yacht, Mama was in the lounge, playing piano duets with Anya. Mashka brought her a bunch of wildflowers, and I made up a story about a bear chasing us in the berry patch and acted it out for her, taking the part of the bear.
“There was no bear, Anastasia,” Tatiana said. And when I asked how she knew, since she wasn’t there, she said she was watching the whole time through the telescope.
16/29 June 1914
Bad news came over the wireless at noon today: Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungry was assassinated yesterday. He was riding in an automobile in Sarajevo when a crazy man shot him and his wife. Papa knew the archduke. He says he was a friend of Cousin Willy’s.
At dinner tonight, everyone was talking about the assassination. The officers usually want to flirt with us (with my older sisters, and sometimes with me), but there was no flirting this evening. The brass band plays marches in the evenings, but Papa asked them for something else. Instead, they played Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. At the end we had some fireworks, which Alexei loves. Alexei’s leg still hurts him, but he’s very brave.
17/30 June 1914
Much worse news today. Someone attacked Father Grigory with a knife and tried to kill him. He was badly wounded, but all of us are praying for his recovery.
Mama is terribly upset, and Anya weeps inconsolably. “Such a good man! Such a man of God!” she cries, over and over, and wonders who could ever wish him harm.
Mama says it was arranged by one of his religious enemies. Even a man of God has enemies!
18 June/1 July 1914
Alexei was the first to sight the Polar Star, Grandmother’s yacht. Our two yachts dropped anchor side by side, and Grandmother was brought from hers to ours in a small boat and then lifted on board with a special chair.
We had tea on the deck — the sun was hot, but the white canvas shades were up, so no one got scorched — and then OTMA presented the little skit called The Bear. I’ve been working on it for days. Alexei played the part of the bear, carried on the shoulders of Derevenko. We found a great brown rug to drape over both of them, so the bear looked quite fearsome. Tatiana and Olga were maidens in need of rescue, and I was the hunter who almost shot the bear.
Before she went back to the Polar Star, Grandmother asked Papa what he had heard about the archduke’s murder, and he told her what he knew: that the assassin was a Serbian, and that Cousin Willy blames it all on the Serbian government. “Watch out for Kaiser Wilhelm,” Grandmother said. “He’s such a bully, you know.”
I don’t think she said a word about the awful thing that happened to Father Grigory, because she doesn’t like him at all. I can tell by the way she twists her mouth whenever he’s mentioned. This is another reason why Mama and Grandmother aren’t fond of each other.
20 June/3 July 1914
This morning on our hike with Papa, I collected a whole pocketful of pretty rocks from the beach and brought them back for Mama. They seemed to cheer her up a little. After lunch Papa went to his study (he works two days a week when we’re on our cruise), and my sisters and I roller-skated on the deck. I can skate faster than Mashka, who’s always afraid she’s going to crash into something. I never think about crashing.
23 June/6 July 1914
A thunderstorm broke this afternoon, and the sea was wild and churning. We stayed in the lounge, where Mama played the piano for us while spray lashed the windows. The music she always plays is sad, and when I begged her to play something cheerful, she just looked at me and said, “But, my darling, life is sad.”
I know that she was thinking of Father Grigory. We pray for him every morning, and
at night, too.
26 June/9 July 1914
Papa seems determined not to let his worries spoil our yachting holiday. Today we went ashore to hunt mushrooms. (Mashka stayed with Mama.) Papa built a little fire and pulled out a pan and some butter from the pack he carries. He cooked the mushrooms, and we ate them with bread.
Later I got in trouble with Tatiana. Olga went off by herself to read, and Papa went for a swim. He left his cigarettes on the beach. I took one and lit it and was holding it between my fingers the way Papa does and only pretending to smoke it. Suddenly Tatiana leaped out of the bushes and threatened to tell Mama. I tried to explain that I was playacting.
Tatiana said it looked an awful lot as though I had actually been smoking, and I reminded her that I had seen her holding hands with the redhaired officer and it looked an awful lot as though she had kissed him. So I don’t think she’ll tell Mama, but, anyway, I’m not touching Papa’s cigarettes ever again.
30 June/13 July 1914
Today was so fine that we persuaded Mama to come ashore with us for a picnic. Tatiana’s redhaired officer carried Mama and helped her get settled on a rug. Then he spent most of his time gazing cow-eyed at Tatiana, and Mama had to ask him twice to bring her parasol.
No mention of cigarettes or smoking.
Anastasia Page 5