“We’ll do it again sometime,” he’d said. And indeed, when he felt it necessary to mark her as his territory and he was between mistresses, they had.
He increased speed through western suburbs that were still loosely connected villages, where cottages and, intermittently, the walls of mansions lined the route and goats grazed the roadside grass and the poverty was agricultural, which meant that the poor at least had milk from their cow and eggs from the hens now scattering from the Audi’s wheels.
“What’s the madwoman called?” she shouted.
“What?”
“The madwoman. What’s her name?”
“She hasn’t got one.”
“Nick?” He was making her nervous.
“Oh, come on, Esther,” he said. “One of those Romanovs escaped from Ekaterinburg. Everybody thinks so.”
“People will believe anything,” she said.
“And sure as hell it was one of the princesses. All right, the Bolshies shoot the czar and the czarina, maybe even little Alexei—he’s heir to the throne, and he’s sick anyway. But those girls? You’ve seen their pictures, all in their pretty white dresses? Like swans, every one of them. Maybe somebody’s finger faltered on the trigger when it came to putting a bullet through those golden heads. Maybe one of them wasn’t shot, or maybe she was just wounded and they let her go.”
“That’s firing squads all over,” Esther said. “Tenderhearted.”
“Russian firing squad, remember that. Bolshevik bastards, but Russian Bolshevik bastards; they’d grown up with the image of those sweet kids in their heart, and what harm did they ever do anybody?”
He’d actually slowed down so that she could attend to his argument better. They were into forest now, and she could smell the pines and hear birdsong.
“Nice, polite kids they were, opened a church bazaar here and there, rolled bandages at the hospital. Was that grinding the faces of the poor? I tell you, Esther, when it came to burying the bodies and they found one of those girls was still alive, they couldn’t finish the job. They had to let her go.”
“Sweet,” said Esther. “What did she do then? Grow wings?”
“That’s the trouble with you Jews,” he said. “No soul. She’s wandering alone in Siberia, she’s found by true Russians, they smuggle her over the border, she’s helped again, crosses Poland, arrives in Berlin. She’s hurt, destroyed by grief, lost her mind and memory for a while maybe.. . .”
“Please don’t tell me what I think you’re going to tell me,” Esther pleaded.
“Yep. She ends up in a German loony bin. It makes sense.”
“Oh, it absolutely does,” she said. “And which of the grand duchesses is she? Olga, Tatiana, Marie, or Anastasia?”
“Tatiana. One of the inmates recognized her from a magazine.”
“That proves it, then,” she said. “How did you hear about her?”
“Word gets around,” he said vaguely. Nobody had his ear pressed more firmly to the ground than Prince Nick; he could hear a penny drop in Kazakhstan—and make a profit from it.
She laid her hand on his sleeve. “Don’t do this, Nick. Whatever’s in it for you, don’t do it.”
“This is sacred, Esther, in the name of God. You think I’m out to make money from it?”
“I bloody know you are.”
“You hurt me.” He put his foot on the accelerator. “All right, maybe she is Tatiana, maybe I help her to her inheritance, and maybe I take a percentage, but I tell you . . .”
He took his hands off the wheel to slam them on his chest. “If I do this, I completely do it for my dead czar, for the soul of Russia, for the Holy Church.”
“Oh, shut up,” she said.
It’s another of his schemes, she thought. Like the time he tried to marry the kaiser’s aunt. It’ll come to nothing.
He was driving like a mad thing now, punishing her. People came out of their doorways at the sound of the car, only to find it had already gone by, leaving them in its dust.
It didn’t worry her. She’d got used to being out of control and clinging on to life as it dragged her helter-skelter through its scrub, lucky when she didn’t encounter anything too hard, not yelping when she did. At the moment it wasn’t hurting too much, which was all she could expect of it. Numbness was her chosen state; after being in hell, limbo had much of heaven’s attraction. Anyway, her body enjoyed being whipped by warm air. Physical sensation was the thing.
He was slowing now to look at some written instructions that he had, and crawled until he saw a sign above some gates, then turned into them, fast. She had just time to read the word “Dalldorf ” before they were haring up the drive, scattering pigeons and rooks.
Dalldorf, then. A place with such echoes that its name had entered the Berliners’ language as a euphemism for madness. He belongs in Dalldorf. Let you out of Dalldorf, have they? Carry on like that, you’ll end up in Dalldorf.
The building was large and, on a day like this, didn’t look oppressive, though one felt that it would if it could. A few people wandered the lawns at its front, watched by a man in a white coat.
The front door was opened by a large porter; their names and business were inquired into before they were allowed into a big hall smelling of antiseptic. The place was ordered and almost empty. Noise—a lot of it—was somewhere in the building, but not here. They were shown into the office of the matron, a large woman with starched white cuffs and cap, who asked them what they wanted. She had a bunch of keys hanging from her belt.
Nick kissed her hand. “Prince Nikolai Potrovskov, madam. This is my secretary.”
He never gave her name at first meetings in case its Jewishness put people off. He catered to anti-Semitism in other people without having any himself; Jew, goy, black, white—they were all the same to him as long as they served his purpose. Esther often wondered whether his total amorality caused his total lack of prejudice, or the other way around.
Anyway, he’d discovered that people were flustered by her face and that this was useful, because they then obliged him in their embarrassment for having been caught staring at it. Their initial reaction always amused him. “Like introducing Medusa,” he would say.
The matron didn’t spend much time on it; in a hospital like this, there were other horrors. “What can I do for Your Highness?”
“Madam, here you have unidentified lady patient. With your permission, we see her, yes? Maybe she is compatriot of mine.”
“Frau Unbekkant?” The woman’s lips compressed. “I am sorry. This business is attracting too much attention for her own good. We’re not permitting visitors.”
Esther watched Nick slide a hand under the matron’s arm and lead her to one side. It was merely a matter of waiting. The woman would do what he wanted; women always did.
Three minutes later they were on their way through bare, disinfected corridors tiled to waist height in pastel green. Some doors were open, showing people sitting at tables, weaving baskets, or doing jigsaw puzzles.
All very tidy, very decent, very German, she thought. In Old Russia a place like this would have been a snake pit.
They stopped at double doors with windows that were netted with wire as if against a bomb blast. In the anteroom beyond, a nurse sat at a desk, writing.
They went in. “These people want to see Frau Unbekkant, Klaus-nick,” the matron said. “How is she today?”
“No different, Matron.”
The matron nodded with satisfaction. “She won’t talk to you,” she told Nick. “She’s not said a word to outsiders since she’s been here.”
“How long?”
“Two years. Very well, Nurse Klausnick will look after you. I have things to do.” She bustled off.
Klausnick unlocked the door to the ward, and the noise came at them in a roar—the screechings, screamings, moanings of anxious animals in a zoo.
It was a long, clean room, hot from the sun coming in through barred windows. Antiseptic mixed with the smell of urine.
It was full of women. Iron beds ran along each side, and two of the patients were jumping from one to the other, yelling like high-spirited children and being shouted at. Two more were rolling on the floor, pulling each other’s hair.
Klausnick drew in a breath and roared, “QUIET!” from not inconsiderable lungs.
Everything stopped—the jumping, fighting, the moaning. Heads were turned to where they stood in the doorway and then, after a while, turned away.
Klausnick separated the two women on the floor and began pursuing the ones who had resumed jumping. She flicked a thumb toward the bottom of the ward. “Last bed,” she said.
But they’d already seen Mrs. Unknown. She was the only still person in the room and the only one who hadn’t looked up at their entrance. Her bed was a reservoir of quiet. She’d built a barricade of pillows around it, and they could just see the profile of her face upturned to the ceiling.
She was aware of them, though; as they approached, she pulled the gray hospital blanket over her mouth and hugged it there with tiny, nail-bitten hands. Huge and very blue eyes continued looking at the ceiling from a little skull like a marmoset’s.
Nick spoke to her in Russian. “Madam, we have come to talk to you. I am Prince Nicolai Potrovskov, here is my secretary.”
The woman’s eyes didn’t move.
He repeated what he’d said in German. There was a flicker, but no response.
“How old do you reckon, Esther?” Nick said. “Your age, maybe?”
“Maybe.” The forehead skin was unlined, like her own, but youth had gone out of both of them.
“Recognize her?” Gently, he disengaged the blanket from the woman’s grip and pulled it down. Immediately, her hand came up to cover her mouth again.
“Should I?”
He shrugged.
A woman had come up, adjusting the band that held back her long, gray hair—she’d been one of those fighting—and stood at the end of the bed. She was tall, bony, and aggressive. “You want to talk to her, you talk to me. She don’t talk to just anybody. She’s royal.”
Nick turned to her. “I am also. Prince Potrovskov, at your service.”
The woman stared at him for a moment, then ran up the ward, scrabbled under a mattress, and came back waving a dog-eared magazine.
“It was me,” she said. “Clara Peuthert, you remember that, Your Highness. It was me recognized her.”
Other patients were gathering around the bed, their eyes avid.
“Sure, Frau Peuthert. I’ll remember.” Nick took the magazine, an old edition of the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung that had been turned back to a full-page family picture. The accompanying story on the opposite page had a headline: “The Truth About the Murder of the Czar.”
Clara jabbed her finger on one of the pictured faces. “See? That’s Tatiana.” She transferred the finger to the quiet shape on the bed. “And that’s Tatiana. Recognized her right off. You remember that. I been writing to every bit of family that’s left. The czar’s poor mother in Denmark and the czarina’s sister, Princess Irene of Prussia. ‘I found the Grand Duchess Tatiana,’ I told ’em. Been waiting and waiting for one of
’em to come. Knew they would. Sent you, did they? Supreme Monarchy Council?” “Sure.” Nick was turning pages, his eyes going from the magazine to
the woman on the bed. “You want to look at this, Esther?” “No.” He shrugged. “She ain’t the believing type,” he told Clara. The big woman transferred her attention to Esther, grabbing one of
Frau Unbekkant’s unresisting hands and waving it like an exhibit. “You can believe this. See this? How fine is this? That’s a grand duchess’s hand. See mine?” A thick, raw fist was brandished. Clara was getting angry. “Common, that’s a common hand, and it can punch your snotty nose, miss. Who’re you, you ugly thing, coming in here and telling me—”
The rising voice was an alarm bell, and Nurse Klausnick was at Frau Peuthert’s side. “Calm, now, Clara. Calm yourself. You don’t want solitary again.” She led her off.
Nick jerked his head at Esther. Everybody to be kept away; this was private. Esther approached the women gathered at the end of the bed. “Tell me, ladies, have you been here long?”
Gently, she shepherded them up the ward, listening to the answers. One tiny woman could make only inarticulate sounds but made them with such urgency that Esther had to turn to Nurse Klausnick.
“What’s wrong with her?” “Nothing much. She’s just deaf. Never learned to talk.” “And she’s in here how long?” “Forty-two years.” Esther said, “There are ways to help the deaf now.” “Too late for her.” Klausnick hurried away. Clara Peuthert was crying into her pillow. At the end of the ward,
Prince Nick had his head close to the unknown woman’s. He’d given
her a piece of paper and a pencil. On the way home, he was subdued. “What do you think?” “Sad. Horrible.” “Know why Unbekkant covers her mouth like that?” “No.”
“She had toothache. They pulled some of her teeth out. Cheaper. But we can fix that, good dentist, nice dentures, all dandy.” He shot a look at her. “You think she’s the grand duchess Tatiana?”
“No.”
“You’re right. Know who she thinks she is? Feel in my left pocket.”
He smelled of pomade and the artificially scented carnation in his buttonhole. She pulled out a piece of paper.
He yelled, “I wrote down the names of the four grand duchesses. Told her to scratch out the ones that weren’t her. Look at it.”
She looked. Three names had been struck through. The one that remained was “Anastasia.”
“Shook me,” he said. “I was expecting Tatiana. Know when Unbekkant was born? Hospital register says 1901. Know when Anastasia was born?”
“In 1901?”
“That’s right.”
They stopped for lunch at a Spiesehäuser. He liked plain eating houses. The weeks of starvation that he’d endured trying to get out of Russia while dodging the Bolshevik army had instilled in him a passion for German food at its weightiest. With his wealthier clients and his fancy women, he ate French food at the Eden or the Adlon; with her he fell on pork and potatoes.
“You’re not going to be difficult, are you?” he said.
“She’s not Anastasia.”
“Why isn’t she?” he said. “Pass the salt. Right size, right eyes, hair, everything. I tell you, kid, she shook me. You notice her ears?”
No, Esther said, she hadn’t noticed Unbekkant’s ears.
“Exact same shape as Anastasia’s in the photograph. You can’t fool around with ears.”
“She’s not Anastasia,” Esther said.
“By the time I’m finished with her, she will be. Empress Granny will fall on her neck: ‘Vnushka, my long-lost little one. Here are the jewels of the Romanovs.’ And I happen to know”—he tapped his nose— “there’s a fortune the czar put for safekeeping in the Bank of England. You leaving that herring?”
She leaned forward and wiped food from his chin with her napkin. “She’ll have relatives who know who she really is.”
“Oh, yeah.” He liked Americanisms. “Esther, she’s been there two years, and nobody’s so much as sent her a card—I asked. Two years. And in the hospital before that—the police fished her out of the Landwehr Canal in 1920. Nobody wants to know who she is.” He chewed reflectively. “Except me.”
“Was she? Fished out of a canal?”
“That’s what it says on her record.”
So she’s been where I’ve been, Esther thought. She’s stared down into the waters and wondered how long it took before they delivered oblivion. Only she decided to find out. Does that make her more cowardly than me? Or braver?
“All right, she’s mad,” Nick said. He shrugged. “But who ain’t?” He held that the whole world was insane, a conviction Esther agreed with. “But suppose she is Anastasia.. . .” His eyes widened. He stopped shoveling food from her plate onto his. “Holy Martyr, I think she is. I completely thi
nk she is.”
Alarmed, Esther saw him reassessing his evidence. “Holy Martyr,” he said again. “I’ve found Anastasia.”
“You are appalling,” she said.
“What? See, all right, I got this tip-off. There was an unknown woman in Dalldorf, and one of the patients in there shouting around it was Grand Duchess Tatiana.”
“And you thought Tatiana plus Romanov equals czarist treasure.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” he said, injured. “There’s a fortune in Romanov jewels still floating around that didn’t all disappear. Grandma Dowager Czarina took a king’s ransom in precious stones with her when she escaped. She’s an old woman. Who’s going to get them when she curls up her toes? The Bolsheviks want them, say they’re state property. The king of England says he’ll distribute them around the family, but his old lady . . . what’s her name?”
“Queen Mary.”
“She’s got a keen eye for a trinket, that one, so she won’t let them go once they’re in her claws.” He poked the fork at her, like a stabbing trident. “And I’ll tell you this, Esther, I’d see them go to the Reds before I let the fucking English get them.”
“Very patriotic of you.” King George V, the czar’s first cousin, had ensured the death of the Romanovs by refusing them asylum in England. It had not endeared him to White Russians, high or low.
She said, “So the Bank of England and various Romanovs are going to say how nice, Prince Potrovskov, thank you for bringing the grand duchess Tatiana and/or Anastasia back from the dead, and here’s our millions. I should have left you in Dalldorf.”
“Yeah, but see, Esther, I’m beginning to think she truly is. Okay, maybe I was considering making my own grand duchess when I started out, but now . . . It fits. Think back to that kid we’ve just seen in that bed.. . .”
She thought back. There’d been intelligence, even craftiness, in those eyes. But mostly panic. The barricade around that bed had been a bunker. She’d lain like a leveret in the long grass hoping the fox wouldn’t find it. Two years of it, two years of silence in a cacophony of the afflicted. Refusing an identity. Either very crazy or very frightened. Perhaps both.
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