by Ariel Lawhon
“Good!” Yakov shouts. “Now, all of you, back to your posts.”
Tomas trembles, hatred and fear etched across his face, but he obeys the order. I am too afraid to watch him go, afraid my feelings will betray me.
Yakov nods toward Ivan’s broken and bloody form. “Arrest him.”
Semyon unties the bonds around Ivan’s wrists so that he falls forward onto the stones, arms twitching, blood pooling beneath his nose. Because Ivan cannot walk he is dragged across the courtyard, through a heavy wooden door, and into the cellar. A final twist of the knife for Maria. Yakov’s idea of poetic justice given that he found them in that very cellar less than an hour ago.
Satisfied with the results of his ghastly demonstration, Yakov kneels before Maria. He squeezes her jaw between his long, bony fingers, forcing her to look at him. “Was your little tryst worth it, Tsarevna? That handsome face is ruined. Your honor is tarnished. You will be forever known as the Romanov who spread her legs for a common soldier. Congratulations.”
Maria doesn’t respond, but she doesn’t look away either. Snot runs down her chin. Those huge, beautiful blue eyes are bloodshot and swollen. Her entire body shudders with defiance, but she does not buckle beneath his triumphant sneer.
“Oh, you hate me, do you?” Yakov squeezes her chin tighter until she grinds her teeth in pain. “Good. Now we understand each other.”
“Get your hands off my daughter.” For the first time that afternoon Father’s voice is deadly calm. His lip is curled and his fist is raised. But the blow never lands. It’s a token protest. Impotent.
Yakov laughs and pushes Maria away. “All of you, get out of my sight.”
· 29 ·
Anna
THE ELISABETH HOSPITAL
1920
The Elisabeth Hospital, Berlin
February 18, 1920
Anna’s eyes fly open when someone slaps her left cheek. Shouting. Questions. There’s a roar in her ears so she can’t make out the words. She rolls to her side and coughs until her throat burns. Anna can feel her ribs, probably not broken but certainly bruised from impact, protesting each violent spasm. There is canal water in her mouth and her nose. It tastes like pond scum and old fish. Her entire body bends and clenches trying to force the last drops of liquid from her lungs. She lies there for a moment gasping, feeling as though her chest is simultaneously waterlogged and on fire.
A man kneels beside her, but she can’t make out details of his face in the darkness, only the policeman’s cap and the hard, guttural sounds of his voice.
“Who are you?” he demands. “What is your name?” The questions are short and harsh, like gunshots, and she flinches as the sharp edge of a gruesome memory presses against her mind. Anna shakes her head, pushing it away, and tries to sit up.
The man is in uniform. Older and angry. Anna peers at the emblem sewn onto his shirt. A police sergeant. She scoots away from him and looks around her to find a crowd. Pointing. Gaping. Whispering. All of those preoccupied lovers she’d passed on the embankment are now hovering nearby, watching the spectacle.
“She needs a doctor!” someone shouts.
“No,” the Sergeant says. He sets a large, meaty hand on each of her shoulders and shakes just enough to make her teeth rattle. “She goes to the police station. Unless she tells me her name and why she jumped from that bridge.”
Anna looks at him and sees only a caricature of authority. Cruel and selfish and brutal. It’s easy enough to make her decision in the light of his cool indifference. She shakes her head. No. She will not give him answers.
“Have it your way,” he says.
* * *
—
The police station is nearly two miles from the canal, a slow drive down narrow, uneven streets. They shackle her in the back of the police wagon without a blanket or any other basic comfort. Her fingers are numb and her entire body convulses with cold and shock. She is only semiconscious by the time they reach the station. When the Sergeant helps her through the heavy wooden doors and into the holding room, Anna slumps to the bench and pulls her knees against her chest for warmth. She watches the hem of her skirt drip water onto the concrete floor. She struggles to keep her eyes open.
“What is this?”
Another officer. Another question.
“Some rat we dragged from the river.”
“She jumped?”
“That’s what they say. And she sure as hell hasn’t shown us any gratitude for saving her life.”
Anna stares at the floor. Counts the drops. Watches the small puddle grow larger and spread across the tile. It darkens a grout line. Her eyes grow heavy.
“Suicide is illegal,” the second officer says.
If Anna had any desire to speak, and if the muscles in her jaw would unclench long enough for her to do so, she would explain the irony of this. She presses her tongue against the roof of her mouth instead, because she knows anything she might say will come out slurred and incomprehensible, and she doesn’t want to be charged with public drunkenness as well.
The Sergeant kneels in front of her, determined to make eye contact. “But the thing is, you didn’t die, did you?”
She blinks hard, trying to stay present.
“So that means we can prosecute you.”
She hadn’t taken the possibility of prison into account. But then again, the future was a useless consideration when she went over that rail. Anna simply threw herself toward the darkness, hoping to be consumed.
“You will receive no help until you tell us what happened on that bridge.”
A glimmer of defiance returns. Anna lifts her chin and several seconds pass before she can pry her tongue from the roof of her mouth and control the shaking enough to form words. “I have not asked for help.”
And then she falls from the bench, unconscious.
* * *
—
Anna wakes again, this time to the sensation of warm towels and soft hands on her extremities. She can feel her fingers and toes, and her nose and earlobes are no longer cubes of ice. She can smell the canal water in the damp strands of hair that hang across her face. Someone rubs her hands, drawing the blood back to her fingers, and then they move on to her feet. This gentle massaging is repeated on all of her limbs, and she feels the muscles across her body slowly relax. It takes several minutes for her to realize that she is completely naked beneath the towels.
Anna sits up with a start only to feel someone press against her forehead and lightly push her back down. The hand is warm and gently calloused. “Lie still,” a woman says. “We aren’t done yet.”
A nurse.
So the police brought her to the hospital. This surprises her. Leaving her to die would have made things easier on the city of Berlin. One less indigent to provide for. Yet here she lies, behind a curtain in the open ward of the women’s wing. She has little privacy— only this curtain—and she listens to the other patients with growing dismay. Some of them are sick. She hears coughing and vomiting. Some are wounded. Pathetic whimpering comes from a bed nearby. Others are clearly insane—screaming, babbling, chattering. And above this din Anna can hear police officers shouting in the hallway, demanding answers, demanding to be let in to interrogate her.
“Ignore them,” the nurse says when she notices Anna’s panicked glances toward that end of the ward. “They can’t come in here. Dr. Winicke won’t allow it.”
Anna relaxes back onto the pillows, and the two nurses exchange a glance.
“I am Agatha,” one says, “and this is Hedy. What is your name?”
Anna should warm to the kindness; she should be grateful for it. But she suspects that is exactly the point, so she says nothing at all.
Agatha continues, as if they are having a pleasant, normal conversation. As if they have known each other for years. She is plain and small, her dark hair tucked be
neath a white cap. She picks up Anna’s damp skirt. “Let’s see what we have here.” And she begins to list Anna’s possessions while Hedy writes them down on a clipboard. “Black wool skirt. Black stockings. Linen blouse, soiled and torn at the cuffs. Underwear and brassiere. Black boots. Tall. They lace to the knee.” She pauses, allowing Hedy enough time to note all of these details on the chart. “And a shawl. No papers. No identification.”
Anna watches with morbid interest as they rifle through her clothing, looking for initials, laundry marks, and labels. They find nothing and, in the end, Hedy pronounces the clothing homemade. This is also written on the chart in quick little marks. Hedy should be beautiful. She has all the right features: large eyes, high cheekbones, full lips. Yet everything about her looks wrong, as though her face has been drawn with a thick pencil by the clumsy hands of a child.
Once Anna’s personal items have been catalogued, they move on to her body.
“We need to remove the towels now,” Agatha says. “But you will be fine. No one can see you.” She looks at Anna and there is a genuine plea in her eyes. “Please don’t fight us. If you do we’ll have to call the orderlies and they will be far less gentle.”
She’s giving Anna the option of being protected from male view. It’s a small mercy, so Anna nods and rests her arms lightly at her sides, allowing the nurses to remove the towels. As each piece of terry cloth is stripped away, their eyes grow wider and the worried glances they give each other increase.
“So it’s true then,” Hedy whispers, aghast.
Anna knows what they see, what it looks like, but there is no explanation she can give that will not make this situation worse. Anna turns her face to the cinder-block wall. She tries to count the scratches left by other patients, but there are too many and her eyes blur with tears anyway.
“What have you done to yourself?” Agatha asks.
Nothing. Anna has done nothing. But they won’t believe her—not after what happened tonight.
Hedy holds the clipboard while Agatha takes inventory. She places the pad of one finger at various places along Anna’s body. Her left shoulder. Beneath her right collarbone. The side of her neck. Her temple. One foot. Her right calf. They turn her over and look for exit wounds.
“How many?” Hedy asks.
“Six.”
“Bullets?”
“I think so.”
Hedy waves her free hand across Anna’s naked body indicating the web of thin silver lines. They cover her torso and abdomen and are sprinkled across the tops of her thighs. Long, thin puckered scars. “And these?”
Agatha looks at Anna with horror. When she speaks the words, it’s a request for confirmation. “Stab wounds?”
There are other marks as well, between her hips, along the soft skin of her lower belly. Faint red stripes a few inches long.
Anna stares at the ceiling, inspecting a tiny crack that weaves and splits above her. She focuses on this fissure, pushing all other thoughts aside. The nurses’ questions are resurrecting memories that she wants to leave buried.
“Look at me please,” Agatha says.
Anna does, noting the black rings around Agatha’s blue irises. They make her eyes look darker than they really are.
“Did you do this to yourself?”
No. She shakes her head, but she can see the pity in their eyes and knows they don’t believe her.
“Can you speak?” Hedy asks.
A nod.
“Then it’s time you do so. Help us understand what happened to you. Otherwise you’ll go to jail. Suicide is a moral crime. They prosecute it in Berlin. You know that, right?”
Anna nods.
“What is your name?”
Silence.
Their pity is tinged with frustration now. “Tell us who you are.”
“No.”
They leap at this single word in triumph. “Where are you from?”
“Nowhere.”
“Do you have family?”
Anna swallows hard, as though there is a stone in her throat. “No.”
Agatha is the first to realize they will get nowhere with these questions. “Okay then,” she finally says, throwing her hands up. “I’ll get you a gown. Hedy, go fetch Dr. Winicke.”
The hospital gown is thin, faded cotton but it covers her entire body and she feels protected again, safe from their condemning glances. Agatha brings her a blanket as well, and Anna lies back against her pillow, warm for the first time since she left the bus station yesterday.
A few minutes later, Dr. Winicke pulls back the curtain and she thinks that he looks very much like a physician: old and gray with astute eyes and more patience than personality.
“You’ve caused quite a stir tonight, young lady.”
She doesn’t answer.
“She can speak,” Hedy says. “She just doesn’t want to.”
Dr. Winicke isn’t so much kind as curious. And it’s clear that Anna isn’t wounded or dangerously ill. She’s frightened, though, so he doesn’t touch her.
He removes the clipboard from Hedy’s hand and flips through the pages, looking at her notes, and then those written in different handwriting. “The officers who brought you in tonight want to see you in jail.”
Her stubbornness isn’t helping, but she can’t think of how to answer their questions in a way that won’t make matters worse. “Why?” Anna asks in a small effort to cooperate.
“You jumped from the Bendler Bridge.”
Anna lies. “I fell.”
Dr. Winicke writes this on the chart. “The problem,” he says, “isn’t just your attempted suicide. Prostitution is also illegal.”
“I am not a prostitute.”
“What are you then?”
Silence.
“Do you work?”
A long pause and then she nods.
“So you’re a working girl.” He writes this on the chart.
Damn him. He’s using her words against her. “That’s not what I meant. I told you I’m not a prostitute.”
“Where do you work, then? Who can vouch for you?”
She presses her lips together. Again, silence.
Whatever patience Dr. Winicke is willing to extend runs out. He sighs and lays the clipboard on the bed. “Your situation is far worse than you realize. Over a dozen witnesses claim that you threw yourself off that bridge tonight. Your body is covered in alarming scars.” He glances at the chart. “Six of which appear to be from bullets. And eighteen—” he looks at Agatha in disbelief, needing confirmation, “eighteen seem to be stab wounds. Just how many times have you tried to kill yourself?”
“You don’t understand.”
“Yes I do. The life of a prostitute is very difficult.”
“I am not a whore!” she screams and her throat is immediately raw. She can taste blood at the back of her mouth. All that coughing has left her with a raspy voice and a ragged esophagus.
“I’m afraid my exam suggests differently.”
“What exam?” This is the first time she’s ever seen Dr. Winicke, and he hasn’t set a finger on her.
The nurses have the good grace to look ashamed, but Dr. Winicke matter-of-factly says, “You were unconscious for some time when you first arrived.”
“You—”
“Performed a medical exam, yes. That is my job. I assessed your condition and learned a number of things.”
Anna doesn’t ask him for details but he continues anyway.
“For starters, you are significantly underweight and malnourished. You appear to be about twenty years old. Your body has endured significant trauma in the recent past, and you currently have some rather alarming bruises on your rib cage and tailbone.” He waits for her to refute any of this. When she doesn’t, he continues. “The thing that is most damning, however, is the other scar tissu
e. It’s consistent with many of the working girls I see.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He leans a little closer, not unkindly, simply pressing his advantage, trying to coax a confession. “I think you do. It is quite obvious that you have engaged in sexual congress.”
· 30 ·
Anastasia
THE WARNING
1918
Ipatiev House, Ekaterinburg, Russia
July 17, 1:00 a.m.
I can hear the cannons booming in my dreams. The White Army coming to rescue us. That is what Cook told me earlier in the day when I helped him knead dough in the kitchen. Our guards were nervous, muttering in the courtyard as Cook went out to smoke a pilfered cigarette. He heard them talking about the Whites and their rebel forces. “They are coming to rescue us,” Cook said, “and Yakov is growing more uneasy the closer they get.” The big guns fired all afternoon and into the evening, the sound ricocheting off the hills surrounding Ekaterinburg. It reminded me of the morning the revolution spread to the grounds of Alexander Palace.
The longer the White Army’s cannons fired, the more restless our own guards became. They whispered in the hallways and stood in the door, peering at that great wooden fence across the yard as though they could see beyond it. Yakov and Semyon disappeared after dinner. It was a welcome absence, and our meal was almost lighthearted as a result. Later we went to bed, feeling real hope for the first time in many months. I fell asleep to the sound of those cannons, and it may as well have been church bells ringing out our liberation.
Sometime later a hand slips over my mouth in the dark. I wake instantly, trying to gasp for air, but the fingers press harder, pushing me back into my pillow. I can see nothing in the darkness. I have no idea what time it is, and a sudden, ferocious panic seizes my limbs.
“Ssshhh. Please. It’s Tomas. You have to be quiet.” Even at a whisper his voice is pitched high in fear. I still beneath his hand, but he doesn’t pull it away. “You have to come with me.”
