She stopped and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. Marie, who hated to see anyone crying and unhappy, ran to Olga and hugged her. Tatiana, arms folded across her chest, frowned and said sternly, “You didn’t think Mother and Father would allow it to go on any longer, did you? And you didn’t exactly keep it a secret.”
“Oh, I knew we’d never be allowed to marry!” Olga said. “But Aunt Olga has never been allowed to marry the man she loves, and no one seems to be terribly upset about that.”
“But she’s married to Uncle Petya!” Marie said, wide-eyed.
“The marriage is unconsummated,” I said, pleased that I knew something Marie didn’t. I instantly regretted it. All three of my sisters stared at me.
“It’s what?” Marie asked innocently.
“How do you know that?” Tatiana demanded.
“How do you even know the word?” Olga asked, and I could see that she might have caught on how I learned it—by reading her notebook.
“It’s just one of those words,” I said, shrugging, and quickly changed the subject. “Anyway, what were you saying about Aunt Olga?”
“We’re not supposed to talk about it,” Tatiana said.
“But we are talking about it, aren’t we?” Olga said. “So let’s just say it: Aunt Olga doesn’t love Petya, and she never did. Grandmère Marie wanted her to marry him, and so she did. But they never—” Olga hesitated and looked helplessly at Tatiana.
“Lived as husband and wife,” Tatiana said, completing her sentence. “More like brother and sister.”
“You mean they never kissed?” Marie asked.
“Exactly,” said Olga, sounding relieved. “They never kissed.”
“And that’s what ‘unconsummated’ means?”
“Well, yes,” Tatiana said—unconvincingly, I thought.
“Who is it she really loves?” Marie wanted to know.
“A cavalry officer,” Olga said, sniffling. “Nikolai Kulikovsky.”
“But you said Aunt Olga isn’t allowed to marry the man she really loves and wants to kiss,” I said, determined to get to the truth of the matter. “Why not?”
“Because she’s still married to Uncle Petya, and he won’t give her a divorce.”
“So Uncle Petya and Aunt Olga live separately,” Tatiana explained.
“And she sees Nikolai Kulikovsky as much as she wants,” Olga said. “Mama says it’s shocking.”
Marie sighed. “I wonder if she kisses him.”
Olga started to say something, but Tatiana gave her a sharp look and Olga kept silent.
“I’m confused by all of this,” I announced.
“Good,” Tatiana said. “I’m glad to hear that, Nastya. This is not a proper subject for a girlie your age, and I suggest we talk about something else.”
I hated it when Tatiana called me a girlie. That’s what Mama called us. Tatiana is only four years older than I am, and we nicknamed her “the Governess” because she is so bossy. I did not think that gave her the right to call us girlies. I decided to say nothing but gave her a look. As for kissing and being unconsummated, I would have to wait for my next chance at Olga’s notebook for more information on the subject.
CHAPTER 8
Out in Society
ST. PETERSBURG, WINTER 1914
Papa took my sisters and me to spend Christmas Eve with Grandmère Marie. Aunt Xenia and Uncle Sandro came to Anichkov Palace with their daughter, Irina, who was planning to marry Felix Yussoupov in February, and their six uncivilized sons.
Preparations for Christmas had exhausted Mama. “Baby and I will stay at home and have a cozy supper together, and the rest of you can have a gay time and come back and tell us all about it.”
I knew that exhaustion was just an excuse. She and Grandmère were extremely polite to each other, but the chill between them seemed to have increased another few degrees. Olga said it was because each felt she should be the most important woman in Papa’s life. “Mother thinks that Grandmère Marie treats Father as if he was still a boy, and Grandmère thinks that Mother has too much to say about how Father rules Russia.”
Also, Mama could not bear to be around Aunt Xenia and “her brood,” as Mama called all those big, noisy boys, when she herself had produced only four daughters and one sickly son.
When Olga was born, cannons boomed one hundred times to announce to the Russian people that a daughter had been born to the tsar and tsaritsa. Mama and Papa were happy to have such a healthy daughter. A year and half later Tatiana arrived, and again the cannons boomed one hundred times. Our parents were happy to welcome a second daughter. Two years later, Marie appeared, and they were grateful for another daughter, but they must have thought, Surely the next time.
But when the next time came two years later, it was a fourth daughter, me, Anastasia, and everyone stopped pretending to be happy or grateful. Poor Mama! It was her duty to provide a male heir to the throne. She cried and cried—one of my nurses told me this—although Papa didn’t show how disappointed he was. Mama must have felt that she absolutely had to have a baby boy the next time. There had to be a next time!
So when Alexei was born, the cannons boomed three hundred and one times, and the whole country went mad with joy. But Alexei was not strong and healthy like Xenia’s sons. Every time he hurt himself, Mama feared he might die and there would be no heir. No one blamed Mama for feeling envious of Aunt Xenia, no matter how oafish those boys were.
Anichkov Palace was beautiful, the Christmas tree was lovely, the twelve traditional Russian dishes were served, and lots of French dishes, too, including another awful jellied fish that I managed to avoid. Irina and her fiancé, Felix, were there early in the evening. Felix was certainly handsome, but in my opinion not as handsome as Dmitri. After they had gone on to the Yussoupovs’ palace for another gathering, Aunt Xenia told us about the plans for Irina’s wedding in February. They’d decided to have it there in Anichkov Palace. Aunt Xenia was delighted that they had somehow gotten hold of a lace veil that once belonged to Marie Antoinette. I don’t know why that made her so happy, considering what happened to the French queen in the end.
Before we left for Tsarskoe Selo, Grandmère Marie reminded us of the Winter Ball she was giving in our honor—as though we could forget! She’d been planning it, and we’d been talking about it, for weeks.
“You young ladies need to get out into society more than you do,” she’d said, and Papa winced, because it was Mama who didn’t like going out into society. “I shall expect you to dress in elegant gowns for this occasion, and to wear your finest jewels.”
“We’ll all have on our glass slippers,” Tatiana said, laughing.
“And I’ll be sure that their coach doesn’t turn into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight,” Papa said.
I wanted to wear a real ball gown, like Olga’s and Tatiana’s, but I was sure Mama would insist that Marie and I dress like “girlies” and wear our usual white dresses. Tatiana was “out” now, sixteen and allowed to wear her hair up and gowns to her ankles. But when I complained to Mama, she said, “Don’t be in such a hurry to grow up, Nastya. There will be plenty of time for ball gowns and dancing and midnight suppers as you get older, I promise you.”
That’s what she always said.
But Grandmère Marie, without telling Mama, ordered beautiful dresses for all four of us. Marie’s and mine were ivory satin, and Olga’s and Tatiana’s were deep rose with more sophisticated necklines. We loved our dresses, and Mama pretended she wasn’t annoyed that Grandmère had gone around her and got us dresses she liked.
Invitations to the Winter Ball were delivered to hundreds of people—“All the court society of St. Petersburg,” Aunt Olga told us—and almost all accepted the invitation. Everyone loved our grandmother, because the dowager empress was always lively and gay and loved parties and balls and everything social. Mama didn’t enjoy these things at all, preferring to stay at Tsarskoe Selo with Anya, playing piano duets and chatting and embroidering.
Mama came with us to Anichkov Palace, but just before the supper was served she said she had a headache and felt too ill to stay longer, and she was taken back to Tsarskoe Selo. Papa stayed on until the ball ended. It was well after midnight when we were driven in a sleigh to our train. Papa sipped tea and listened to Marie and Tatiana and me discussing our dancing partners—the ones with sweaty hands, the ones wearing too much cologne, the elderly gentleman with the dyed mustache. Olga said hardly anything.
I tried my best to act happy, for the sake of Grandmère Marie, but it was impossible. I think of him night and day. I know that I must try to forget him but I cannot, and I don’t want to. May the Lord grant happiness to my beloved Pasha. He and Olga Kleinmichel are to be married in February. It is painful and sad. May he be happy, but I cannot.
The ball at Anichkov Palace was the beginning of the winter season in St. Petersburg, and that meant Sundays with Aunt Olga and her lovely parties. The rest of the week we were at Tsarskoe Selo with our tutors, going out every day for walks with Papa no matter how cold it was, bundled up in our warmest woolen stockings and fur jackets and mittens.
I did as little as I possibly could with Monsieur Gilliard and Mr. Gibbes and Pyotr Petrov. Now that she was eighteen, Olga no longer had to endure classes, except to practice her languages. Mama insisted that she be fluent in three languages: French, English, and Russian. “And you may have to acquire a fourth some day,” Mama explained. “All of you may.”
We understood what was implied: When we married, we might have to learn the language of our husband’s country. The very day Olga turned eighteen, everyone began gossiping about a possible engagement. There had been suggestions that perhaps the English boy, Edward, Prince of Wales, would be a good match. He was a great-grandson of Queen Victoria, and for that reason Mama rather liked the idea. Mama had been very close to the queen.
“Father called me to his study,” Olga told us. “I tried to tell him that I could not imagine ever living in England. And I remembered meeting Edward when we visited Uncle Bertie six years ago, and I didn’t think much of him then.”
“Ugh,” said Tatiana, making a face. “I remember him, too. He was very unlikable, I thought. He had a string of names, but everyone called him David.”
“He was nice looking, though, wasn’t he?” asked Marie, who was inclined to find something good about almost everybody. “And smiled a lot and had straight teeth.”
“He was a pig,” I announced. “He snorted like this when he laughed at his own stupid jokes.” I demonstrated an English pig-snort.
“How can you remember that, Nastya? You were only six or seven.”
“I always remember people who make bad jokes.”
Olga wore a pained smile. “Father probably agrees with you. He finally admitted that the more they heard about Edward, the less they believed he would be appropriate. Anyway, the Prince of Wales is no longer a candidate. And neither is Prince Arthur of Connaught, because he married someone else in October! And Sergei Georgievich, eighth Duke of Leuchtenberg, seems to have been taken off the list, but I’m not sure why. At least he’s Russian!”
The problem was that there weren’t many appropriate husbands for grand duchesses. We were not supposed to marry men of a lower rank, and it was not possible to marry someone with no rank at all, no matter how wonderful, intelligent, and kind he might be—like Pavel Voronov. Olga would be the first OTMA to marry, and she had to follow the rules. I was glad that I would be the last. Maybe the rules would have changed by the time my turn came. Maybe by then no one would care—I could marry the court juggler, if we had one. Or not marry at all.
• • •
We drove in two motorcars from Tsarskoe Selo to Anichkov Palace for Irina’s wedding to Felix Felixovich Yussoupov. She refused to wear a traditional Russian court dress with long, split sleeves, the style that my sisters and I have been photographed in dozens of times. Instead, she chose a modern wedding gown, a long white satin dress embroidered in silver with a train, very simple and elegant, and a diamond and crystal tiara that was Felix’s gift to her. Irina arrived at the chapel looking so beautiful I could not stop admiring her.
But where was Felix? No one had seen him. Had he changed his mind?
“It’s the lace veil,” Aunt Olga said. “The one that belonged to Marie Antoinette. I warned Xenia that it was bad luck.” I didn’t know if she was serious.
At last the missing bridegroom was discovered, stuck in the old palace elevator. Papa and the always practical Tatiana finally managed to free him. He looked elegant, too, but in a more traditional way: white trousers with a black frock coat, the collar stitched with gold, and a row of nine gold buttons marching down the front.
Papa escorted Irina to the chapel. As a wedding present he gave them a bag of twenty-nine diamonds, each as big as a cherry. Felix was probably the richest man in Russia, even richer than Papa—he owned fifty-seven palaces, four of them in St. Petersburg—and now he was twenty-nine diamonds richer. Being so wealthy apparently made up for the fact that Felix had no rank. None at all! Irina was the granddaughter of a tsar, but now none of her future children would inherit titles.
This was the society wedding of the season. Every detail was perfect. Grandmère Marie, delighted to be at the wedding of her eldest granddaughter, charmed everyone. Aunt Xenia seemed tearful, which I suppose mothers are when their daughters marry. Aunt Olga was her usual merry self, making sure everything went off flawlessly. Mama wasn’t smiling, but then she hardly ever smiled at big public events. Olga looked sad—she must have been thinking again of Pavel. I wished she would get over him. Tatiana attracted quite a lot of attention from the young men, because in my opinion she was even more beautiful than Irina. And Marie, who loved weddings, announced, “When I am grown up, I want to marry a Russian soldier and have twenty children!”
Her enormous blue eyes—“Marie’s saucers”—were shining with the vision of all those little ones clinging to her skirts, squalling for attention. I thought she must be crazy. Where could she have gotten such an idea?
• • •
On the last Sunday before Butter Week and our last afternoon party until after Easter, I lay in Aunt Olga’s sitting room with my eyes closed. When my sisters were breathing deeply, or pretending to, I got up quietly and tiptoed into my aunt’s bedroom. She sat writing at a little desk, her pen racing across the paper.
“My dear Nastya!” she said when I appeared. “You’re supposed to be resting your eyes.”
“I’m too restless to rest my eyes,” I explained. “And I suspect that you don’t really rest yours, either.”
She smiled. I loved my aunt’s smile, because she smiled with her eyes and not just her lips. “You’re right. But when I need a little time alone, I get it by sending everyone to bed! Now sit, please, and we’ll talk.” She patted the chaise longue beside her desk. “Put your feet up. You may be dancing quite a lot this afternoon.”
I leaned back in the white velvet–covered chaise piled with silk pillows and gazed around. I loved this room—simple, but rather romantic. On her desk was a small, framed portrait of a man in a uniform. When she saw me looking at it, she picked up the portrait and handed it to me. I didn’t recognize him; but it wasn’t Uncle Petya. The man was very good-looking, and a lot younger than Petya.
“Who is it?” I asked, although I was fairly sure it was the cavalry officer.
“That’s my friend Nikolai Kulikovsky,” she said. “Though I believe your mother would disagree, I think you’re old enough fo
r some frank talk, and you’re unlikely to get it from your parents. I adore Nicky and I’m very fond of Alix, but there are subjects I suspect they avoid. They want to protect you and your sisters, to keep you innocent. I can’t fault them—maybe if I had daughters, I’d do the same. But . . .” She shrugged, watching me closely. “Kolya is my lover.”
No one had ever said such a thing to me. “Your lover?” I stammered. “But what about Uncle Petya?”
“Petya is a decent man, but he prefers men to women,” she said. This made no sense to me, but I nodded as though I understood. “I had no idea what that meant when I married him—I was very naive. Our wedding was beautiful—lots of satin and diamonds and magnificent gifts. But afterward . . .” She trailed off, gazing out the window. “We have never lived as man and wife.”
I handed the portrait back to her, and she set it in its place on her desk. A word leaped into my head: unconsummated, the word in my sister’s diary. It must mean “never living together,” I thought, and nodded again, and she told me the story.
“Soon after we were married, I was appointed honorary commander-in-chief of a Hussar regiment. Two years later, my brother Misha introduced me to the regiment’s acting commander, Colonel Kulikovsky. Almost immediately, Kolya and I fell deeply in love. I asked Petya for a divorce, but he refused. Then I went to your Papa and asked him to grant me a divorce. He told me I had to wait, and I’ve been waiting ever since. Petya lives at the other end of the palace, and Kolya lives here with me.” She saw my astonished expression. “Yes, dear Nastya, we are lovers, and we live in sin, because we are not allowed to marry. And this is a secret. Do you understand? A secret that most people know, but we do not discuss it. I know that you will say nothing.”
“I promise,” I said, thrilled that Aunt Olga trusted me enough to confide in me, but wondering, Does Mama know all this?
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