Anastasia's Secret

by Susanne Dunlap

  The worst days were the ones that were so snowy we all had to stay inside, and no one from the suite could come over to relieve the monotony. Those days weighed on Mama, who would read from spiritual books and pray, her eyes shut. Once a week a priest would come, and initially we were allowed to go to church on Sundays. We could only go to the first Mass in the morning, though, and no people from the town were permitted to be there at the same time. After another month or so, even that privilege was discontinued, but the local priest put a makeshift chapel in the large hall and would officiate at a service for us at the Governor’s House. Unfortunately the altar was not consecrated, so we could not receive the sacraments.

  One day, everyone was huddled in Mama’s sitting room looking miserable. Papa stood up and began to pace rapidly back and forth across the small space. “I must have exercise. I cannot simply spend my days idle and useless!”

  I couldn’t help thinking that we women always had something to do, even if we didn’t want to do it. Either we cleaned or we knitted and sewed. It was tedious and repetitive, but it was something. I realized something about my papa then that had never occurred to me before. He did not have much imagination. I suppose he hadn’t had time just to daydream when he was little, but was always kept busy with lessons and sports. Now, when all distractions were at an end, he couldn’t abide the unvarying company and see new ways to be occupied or useful. It was Zhilik, in the end, who spoke to Kobylinsky and had them bring logs into the yard so that Papa and Zhilik could saw them for fuel.

  We desperately needed that fuel for the stoves in the drafty house. But in truth, the stoves were so old and small that no matter how one kept them fed they could not heat a room. Apparently the mansion had a system of central heating that required a great deal of fuel to run, and the Soviet decided it would cost too much and be too luxurious for us to use, even if it had been in decent repair.

  My hands, feet, and even my nose were always cold, but inside, I was so warm I was certain the rest of the family must have felt it when I was around them. In addition to Sasha’s and my secret nocturnal meetings, he had become bolder and showed himself more often during the day, even speaking to me in front of others occasionally—pretending we were complete strangers to each other, of course. Instead of notes and messengers, we created our own private code, so that I would know by what he said whether we could meet that night or not. It was a challenge for me to continue to pretend disdain for him, or at least indifference. I yearned to tell Mashka that this was the Sasha from Tsarskoe, but I didn’t dare. I realized she might have guessed, noticing the patch on his eye if nothing else. Each time Sasha and I met, he would impress on me the necessity for utter secrecy.

  I thought we had succeeded in fooling everyone, until one day Alyosha and I were alone in the great hall, each staring out a window at flakes of snow drifting lazily down to merge into the blanket that covered everything as far as we could see.

  “I didn’t know that impudent guard with the patch on his eye had come from Tsarskoe with us. I didn’t see him there for the last weeks.”

  I tried to pretend nonchalance. “Didn’t you? I think I saw him once or twice. And he must have come on the train and the boat, mustn’t he.”

  “I didn’t see him on the Rus either.” Alyosha came over to stand next to me. “I think that if he didn’t murder that fellow in Tsarskoe, he’s a spy. I’ve noticed that the guards who come and go are the ones we can usually tell are watching us and reporting back to the Soviet. Or even the Bolsheviks.”

  “What do you know about the Bolsheviks!” I ruffled his hair. “You’ve been sick half the time all these things have been going on.”

  He took my arm and turned me toward him. His eyes were disturbingly deep and sad. “Being sick gives me a lot of time to think, and I think that guard is a bad man. I don’t like the way he acts around you.”

  “Don’t be silly, Baby.” I shook his hand off my arm. “He’s just a guard like the others. He doesn’t ‘act’ like anything around me.”

  Alyosha shrugged. “Perhaps. But I shall be watching him.”

  He left me alone there as the twilight deepened. My heart was beating fast. If Alyosha had noticed something, perhaps the others had too. I was getting careless. I would have to be more cautious.

  CHAPTER 27

  By November it had become too cold to spend much time outdoors, except at midday when the sun shone and the wind died away. The hours of tedium were almost unbearable, with only a few rooms to roam in, the same books to read, and lessons I no longer had any interest in doing. Mama made me read unceasingly from the book of Isaiah—I don’t know why. All those evil children and sinful cities upon whom God turned his back. Beating swords into plowshares—perhaps she sensed my restlessness, the way I wandered around, unable to settle, longing only to see Sasha but with no one to tell, no one to share my feelings, good and bad. I sometimes satisfied my frustration by reverting to my old tricks. Why not? I thought. Everyone expected it of me. And then, I hit upon something that might at least give me a sight of Sasha, let me drink in everything I could in one glance to take back with me to my solitude.

  “I’m bored,” I said, after lessons were over and our lunch cleared away. “Let’s go see what the guards are doing.”

  “We can’t do that!” Mashka exclaimed.

  “Why not? We’re allowed to go outside, and the guards’ house has an entrance from our yard. We could hardly escape through a building full of people who wish to keep us captive.”

  To my surprise, it was Tatiana who seconded my plan. “Yes, why not!” she said. “The worst that could happen would be that they’d turn us away.”

  “But what would we do once we got there?” Olga asked.

  I went to the table and picked up the draughts board and pieces. “We’ll play,” I said.

  In the end I convinced everyone except Alexei. “It’s too cold to go outside,” he said.

  “Oh, don’t be such a little girl!” I teased. His look held a warning, though. For a moment I thought he saw through my mischief to the real purpose behind it. But I didn’t remain there long enough to find out, and the others didn’t know anything, or if they did, they hadn’t said.

  Even if I hadn’t wanted to lead the way, my sisters would have pushed me ahead of them when we reached the door of the guardhouse. As I knocked, I hoped they would open quickly—we hadn’t bundled up as we would if we were planning to stay outside, and it was already so cold that within minutes our noses would turn blue. Thankfully, our knock was answered quickly by a young guard who stared at us in silent amazement.

  “Hello. Would you like to play draughts with us? And can we come in? It’s terribly cold out here!” I gambled that his astonishment would overcome any resistance he might have had to fraternizing with us.

  And I was right. A helpless grin brightened his face as he opened the door wide and said, “Come in! It’s not very luxurious here, but we could do with a change to cheer us up in this weather.”

  He led us into a sort of common room filled with cigarette smoke, with men huddled around a stove for warmth. A quick glance showed me that Sasha wasn’t there. For a moment we all stared at each other, speechless. Then I held up the draughts board, and quickly the guards cleared off a table, pulled up stools for us, and brought out their own draughts boards. Before long, the competition was fierce—and friendly.

  I’ve always loved playing games, and I soon forgot myself in the challenge of trying to win these fast-paced contests. Before long, the room rang with everyone’s laughter, shouts of triumph, and groans of defeat. Time went quickly.

  I gave up my seat at the board to Mashka, who had initially held back but eventually became caught up in the fun. One of the younger guards came over to me and offered me a cigarette. I took it. It was not one of the ones Papa would give us, elegantly wrapped in colored paper with a gold band around it for your fingers. This was hand rolled, tobacco spilling out at one end. I wasn’t prepared for the rawn
ess of it, and the smoke burned my throat. I coughed.

  The guard smiled. “A little strong for you?”

  I waved my hand in front of my tearing eyes and nodded, then handed the cigarette back to him.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Point out which of your sisters is which.”

  I told him who was who.

  “Tatiana,” he said musingly. “How old is she?”

  I had to think for a moment. “Twenty-one.”

  He looked surprised. “Really? She seems younger.”

  That was the end of our conversation, but I continued to look around at the guards, many of whom could not take their eyes off my older sisters, who did look especially beautiful in the flush of winning or losing their game.

  After I don’t know how long, the door opened, and Colonel Kobylinsky entered. Suddenly everyone became quiet. A draught fell on the floor and rolled away, the only sound as we all held our breath, worried that the colonel would punish the men or become angry at us.

  “I see you have found a way to pass the long winter afternoons,” he said, then smiled. A sigh of relief went around the room. “So long as you don’t forget when it is time to relieve your brethren at their duties.” He pointed to a wall clock, and in an instant, the guards in the room stood and put their hats on their heads. We also stood, putting our coats and hats back on.

  “Thank you,” Olga said, and we all followed suit.

  “Will you come back tomorrow?” one of the youngest guards asked.

  We all looked at Colonel Kobylinsky. “Members of the Romanov family are free to move anywhere in the confines of this area. If they wish, they may come.”

  No one could suppress a grin.

  Before I fell asleep that night, I thought about Olga and Tatiana. If things had been different, they both might have been married by then, perhaps even had children of their own. Would that ever happen now? Some of the guards were quite handsome, and I could tell that my sisters would have liked to be able to flirt with them openly and that they might have had romances like mine with Sasha. I was a little glad they didn’t, though, because in the cold weather there were few places to meet in private. I giggled to myself at the idea of us all enacting a sort of imprisoned bedroom farce, like the French plays we put on under Zhilik’s direction.

  Sasha and I had taken to meeting in a small room in the cellar of the guard’s house, which had been built in the old Siberian style, with chambers below the ground that had small windows that just peeked out above. One of these was little more than a root cellar, but again Sasha had done his best to make it comfortable for us. He brought a wool rug down, and cushions, so we could sit and talk and do those other, intimate things that made me feel so alive and free even as in our daily lives we became more and more like prisoners.

  It was on a bitterly cold November day that Sasha informed me of something that would have monumental importance for my family, although I couldn’t have realized it at the time. We had met as planned, but after our initial greeting he seemed more distant and quiet than usual.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked him, threading my fingers through his after we had lain together and kissed for a while.

  He furrowed his brow, making the patch over his eye dig into the edge of the socket in a way that looked uncomfortable. “There has been news today. It hasn’t been in the papers yet, so you mustn’t say anything to your family.”

  I sat up. This sounded serious. “What is it?”

  “There has been another Bolshevik uprising in Petrograd and Moscow. This time, they succeeded. The Provisional Government has fallen and the extremists are in control.”

  I didn’t know what to say. “Does this mean anything for us?”

  Sasha dropped my hand and a cross look passed over his face. “I see. So nothing is important except insofar as it directly affects you and your family? Well, ex-Grand Duchess, the world is no longer the same. You are not Her Imperial Highness!”

  His words stung me. “I—I didn’t mean that. I meant you and me.”

  He shrank visibly, his shoulders drooping, as if all at once the tension in his muscles had let him go. “I don’t know. It could.”

  “Perhaps they will forget about us? Surely they have more important things to worry about than keeping guard over people who are now, as you say, simply private citizens.”

  “You and your sisters and brother are. But your parents are under arrest. Prisoners of the state. And there is a strong feeling against them among the soldiers.”

  “But they are so friendly to us, most of them anyway.”

  “You make a sympathetic group, you four girls and Alexei. But even that, I fear, will soon change. As soon as they hear about the revolution.”

  There it was again. Sasha knew something that nobody else knew. How could he? Where did he get his information? I wanted to ask him, but I was afraid. I didn’t want to change our relationship, take it out of the realm of pure feeling, out of its magical time and place, where only we two existed. I didn’t want to know things that would spoil that enchantment. “So, I must truly keep this to myself.”

  He kissed me. “I know I can trust you. You’ve always proven that to me. I wish everyone in Russia could know how worthy you—and your family—really are.”

  When we parted that night I had a heavy feeling in my heart. Where before when it came to Sasha, all was sunshine and light, now I sensed gathering clouds. I did not know how soon those clouds would rip open and hurl lightning bolts at us in our relative tranquility, beset by vexing regulations and constricted in our movements, yet still—for the moment—able to eat and sleep and dream of better times.

  CHAPTER 28

  We spent a quiet, cold Christmas and New Year in Tobolsk. We had made what Christmas gifts we could for the servants and our friends, using the scraps of this and that we were permitted to keep. With ribbons and cloth we made sachets and cards, and embroidered prayers onto handkerchiefs that we wrapped around beads and paper images of the saints. Mama knitted woolen waistcoats for Zhilik, Dr. Botkin, and Dr. Derevenko, as well as for some of the servants. We even gave presents to one or two of our guards, the ones we saw every day, which I think surprised them. Mama gave a Christmas tree to the servants, but without any decorations it looked sad and somber.

  Mama also invited Kobylinsky, Pankratov, and Nikolsky to our Christmas dinner. It was a silent affair, as we felt keenly how different this Christmas was even than our last, as prisoners at Tsarskoe Selo.

  We all wrote letters to our friends, to Anya and Isa, to Lili Dehn and others, knowing that they would be read and scrutinized for codes and conspiracies many times before they reached their intended recipients—if they ever did. Anya, at least, was out of prison and living with her parents. This we heard through Mr. Gibbes, who had visited her and taken a photograph of her in her horrible conditions. He had arrived a few weeks before the holiday and was staying with us, whereas poor Isa left only a week or so later and had still not been given permission to visit.

  “It took me weeks of effort to get the necessary papers to travel here,” Mr. Gibbes said as he sipped his evening tea with us at Christmas.

  “Why are they so afraid of letting us have our people around us?” Mama said. “I’m so glad you’re here, Syd. Baby’s English has become quite bad.”

  I noticed Zhilik flare his nostrils and turn away a little. I think that was the first time I realized that our two foreign tutors actually disliked each other so much. Mr. Gibbes had refused to share Zhilik’s room, and so was given a much smaller room that was barely more than a cupboard.

  Although Isa was right across the street in the Kornilov house, Mama never saw her at all in the end, only getting messages to and from her through the others. We all wrote letters to her as if she were still at Tsarskoe. I really wished she could have visited us then. She would have been a comforting person to have around. Always practical, always kind. She would have helped with the accounts and other matters; perhaps she would have been able
to prevent the complete destruction of Mama’s undergarments by the local laundry. Then it would not have been necessary for our friends outside in Petrograd to deprive themselves by sending her underlinen and warm stockings.

  After the New Year, the weather grew as bitterly cold as Siberia could manage. All of us became ill with colds, or in our cases, with German measles. This was not nearly as bad as the measles we had in Tsarskoe, and we recovered quickly. Then it was endless days and nights of ice and snow. Most days we couldn’t even get across to the guards’ house for games of cards—which Sasha never took part in, I noticed. He knew we were there whenever we came, because he would mention it to me. But he always stayed away. I’ve come to think it was wise of him. We might not have been able to act as distant as we should, and someone might have guessed what was going on.

  I have an image of Tobolsk that I will always carry with me. It is snowing hard, a blizzard, so that the railings that enclose our small exercise area are indistinct. The windows are etched with beautiful, crystalline patterns of frost climbing up them from the bottom, leaving only a small space at the top where I can look out and see. I am standing on a chair so that I can peer through that tiny space. I stay like that for a long time, watching the snow climb up the fence, wondering if that fence will disappear completely and we might have the illusion of not being enclosed, but connected to the town and the rest of Russia by that smooth whiteness. I keep my eyes focused on the swirling snow, until the constant, white movement makes it seem as if the snowflakes are neither falling nor being blown, but suspended in air, suspended in time. In my memory I fantasize that perhaps we too were not only out of the mainstream of life, but had been placed in a bubble of time. If we could only break out of that bubble, we would find that the world outside was just as we had left it before the war: Papa would be tsar and we girls, OTMA, would be thinking about who we might marry. And Alexei would be well. He would not suffer any more. And Sasha …