Then there’s Nastya, clowning around and pulling silly faces, a true shvibzik. But sometimes I catch her watching me, as though she knows what I’m thinking. I pray that she does not, because I see nothing good ahead for any of us. The youngest OTMA may be the only one in the family I could talk to honestly, but
That’s where Olga stopped writing. Someone must have come in and interrupted her, and she slapped the Advanced Mathematics book shut, smearing the last word, before she shoved the notebook back on the shelf. “But” what? What was she thinking? I wondered if I would ever find out.
• • •
Our life as spring slowly unfolded was very strange. We could spend more time outdoors, but waiting for an officer to meet us with a key to our own park was annoying. The soldiers jeered at us and shouted stupid insults. One soldier poked his bayonet in the wheel of Papa’s bicycle and made him fall off. If I had been Papa, I would have been furious, but if he was angry, he didn’t show it. I wanted to stick out my tongue and cross my eyes and make fun of those idiotic soldiers, especially the young ones with pimples on their faces and teeth that they hardly ever brushed.
“What girl would ever want to kiss you!” I shouted at them, but I shouted in English so there was no chance they’d understand. I felt better when I’d done it, but soon after that a new rule was imposed: We were not allowed to speak English or French, even to each other—only Russian.
Every day crowds of ordinary people jammed against the fence surrounding the park and gawked at us, as though we were animals in a zoo. Some whistled and yelled insults, most of them directed at Papa. This drove Alexei crazy. He couldn’t stand seeing Papa treated so disrespectfully. “They used to kiss Papa’s shadow when he passed by,” Alexei raged. “And now they call him names and spit at him.”
Papa seemed less concerned about all of this than he was about the progress of the war, which he followed in the newspapers he was still allowed to read. Soldiers were deserting by the hundreds, maybe thousands, and the army seemed to be melting away. “I worry that the Provisional Government isn’t strong enough to pull itself together to win the war,” he told Mama. “It would be a disaster for Russia if England and France make peace with Germany.”
Whenever they talked about the war, I thought of Olga’s Pavel and Tatiana’s “little Malama” and Marie’s Kolya and all those brave wounded soldiers Mama and my sisters and I had cared for in the hospital. Were any of them still alive? Sometimes I could not bear to think of it anymore.
• • •
In May a new officer, Colonel Kobylinsky, was put in charge of the soldiers at Tsarskoe Selo. On the whole, the officers were not a bad lot. Many of them were actually quite decent men, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if Marie had taken it into her head to fall in love with one of them. Colonel Kobylinsky was one of the best—he seemed to like us, and we liked him, too. He had been a member of the Imperial Guard and had fought at the front, until he was wounded. But the regular soldiers were mostly boorish louts, shooting off their guns at all hours, killing the tame deer in the park and even the beautiful swans floating regally in the pond. The least thing put the soldiers in an uproar. One day they found Alexei playing with a toy gun and demanded that he surrender it. Colonel Kobylinsky got it back and smuggled it to my brother, piece by piece, but he sternly ordered Alexei not to march with it outside.
When the last of the snow had finally disappeared and the ground was thawed, Papa announced that we would plant a kitchen garden in the park. We set to work, digging up the grass and carrying it away. Our tutors and most of the servants helped with the huge effort of preparing the soil. Even some of the soldiers pitched in. Mama watched from her wheelchair, a blanket over her knees and a needlepoint project in her lap.
Papa supervised the layout, deciding which vegetables should be planted where. We sowed seeds, putting in row after row of carrots, five hundred cabbages, and every kind of vegetable. We hauled water from the kitchen in barrels on wheels. We’d never worked so hard in our lives, but Papa insisted that physical exercise was far better than sitting and brooding, and no doubt he was right. It was certainly better than being cooped up all day in our schoolroom, memorizing French parts of speech. Even Monsieur Gilliard grudgingly admitted that.
The days passed with the endless cycle of watering and weeding. The garden thrived during the long hours of daylight, and the cabbages were growing huge. When I teased Papa that he would be eating cabbage three meals a day, he replied, “And for tea as well.”
He moved on to cutting down dead trees in the park. He and Monsieur Gilliard chopped the trees into firewood, and we stacked it in piles.
“Think how warm this will keep us next winter!” Papa said cheerfully, and I saw Olga look at him and guessed what she was thinking: If we’re still here next winter.
In the evenings we were weary to the bone, but it was a good kind of weariness. We did needlework in Mama’s mauve boudoir while Papa read to us from the Russian classics. I loved Gogol’s short stories. My favorite was “The Nose.”
We observed another round of birthdays. I was now sixteen.
Grandmère Marie once promised that we would celebrate my sixteenth birthday in Paris. I had always imagined that we’d go there by imperial train. But was there such a thing now as an imperial train? Or was it called something else? It seemed better not to say anything about it. I could imagine Olga’s dour look if I did. But no one could stop me from dreaming.
My best present was a birthday greeting from Gleb Botkin. He was sometimes allowed to visit his father in the guardhouse, and he’d made a little card that folded like a fan, small enough to fit in Dr. Botkin’s boot. On the title page he had printed: The Adventures of Anastasia Mouse, followed by a series of drawings in colored pencil. In the first the mouse wore a court dress, her tiny paws peeking out of the open sleeves and a kokoshnik perched above her pink ears. In the background were the onion-shaped domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral by the Kremlin in Moscow. In the next drawing Anastasia Mouse peered out of the window of the imperial train, next she was on a yacht with Standart lettered on the bow, and finally she stood by the Eiffel Tower. The mouse had made her way to Paris!
On the last page he’d written, To Anastasia Nikolaevna on the occasion of her 16th birthday. With kind regards from your friend, Gleb Evgenievich.
• • •
In low voices we discussed what might happen next. Minister of Justice Kerensky had spoken again of a ship to take us to England. Papa’s cousin King George V would see to it that we were allowed to stay there. Their mothers were sisters, and in old photographs King George and Papa looked so much alike it was hard to tell them apart. There had been disagreements between them; King George believed in the English parliamentary system with a cabinet and a prime minister, and Papa believed a tsar was destined by God to rule as an autocrat. Nevertheless, Papa started sorting through his books and papers, deciding what he would take with him.
But everything remained unsettled. Kerensky was sympathetic to Papa and our family, and he held an important position in the Provisional Government—he had been promoted to prime minister—but a militant group, the Bolsheviks, opposed that government. The Bolsheviks were not sympathetic to us—they hated us!—and they controlled the rail lines. Kerensky said now that he feared we’d never get through to Murmansk. He told Papa he thought we’d be safer somewhere else in Russia.
“I suggested Crimea,” Papa reported to us with a rare smile. “And Kerensky says it might be possible. In any case, he told me we should start packing.”
Livadia! How splendid that would be! Grandmère Marie had left Kiev for Crimea, and so had Aunt Olga and her new husband and the baby we’d learned she was expecting, and Uncle Sandro and Aunt Xenia were there with loads of cousins—who were probably still barbarians, but it didn’t matter. Mama was sure the Tatars who lived in the mountains around Yalta were our friends. We were so excited that we could talk of little else—until Count Benckendorff warned us that t
his constant talk of Livadia was unwise.
“You may be unaware of it,” he said, “but there are spies in every corner of the palace, listening to every word you say and passing it along to their superiors.”
We became very careful then, wondering which of our servants might be eavesdropping. Who could be trusted and who could not? We spoke in whispers, never sure there wasn’t someone crouching on the other side of the door with an ear to the keyhole or taking note of our chatter over the cabbage soup at dinner.
• • •
The day before Alexei’s thirteenth birthday, Kerensky came to the palace and spoke privately to Papa for a long time. After he’d gone, Papa gathered us together to tell us the news: We would leave Tsarskoe Selo very soon—possibly within two days.
“To Livadia?” Mama asked hopefully, but anyone looking at Papa’s face could see that we were not to get what we had wished for.
“Kerensky would say only this: ‘Pack your furs and plenty of warm clothes.’ ”
I sighed. “Could it be Murmansk after all?” Tatiana suggested. “And then on to England?”
But Olga said doubtfully, “It doesn’t get that cold in England.”
Papa shook his head resignedly. “Probably Siberia.”
Mama groaned. “Oh no! Perhaps if you spoke to him again, Nicky?”
“If this is what he says we must do, then we have no choice. We have to trust him.”
For the next two days it was a mad scramble to get ready, with only a pause long enough to observe Alexei’s birthday. Mama asked for a certain holy icon to be brought from the church. A flock of solemn, black-robed priests with beards down to their waists accompanied the icon, and we followed them into the chapel. The realization of what was about to happen was finally dawning on all of us, and everybody was in tears—even a few of the soldiers who were guarding us. The priests called for prayers for a safe journey, to wherever it was we were going.
My brother, however, had just one birthday wish: “Please do not call me Baby anymore,” he said. “I’m thirteen. I wish to be called Alexei, or Lyosha. No more Baby.”
I personally felt that it was about time to call Alexei by a grown-up name, but Mama wept and said she’d try but could make no promises.
CHAPTER 19
Good-bye to Tsarskoe Selo
ALEXANDER PALACE, AUGUST 1917
Our parents asked our closest, most loyal friends—people who had refused to leave Alexander Palace when they had the chance—to go with us, even though we didn’t yet know where we were asking them to go.
Count Benckendorff told us sorrowfully that he could not come. His wife was ill, and he must stay behind with her.
Papa clapped the count on the shoulder. “Then I must ask you, my old friend, to perform one last service for me.”
“Whatever you wish, Your Majesty,” he said. His monocle popped out, and he wiped away tears with an enormous handkerchief.
“Please see to it that all those carrots and cabbages and so on in the garden are distributed fairly among the servants who helped us with their labor.”
“Of course, Your Majesty,” snuffled the old count.
“The firewood as well.”
“Yes, yes, I’ll see to it!” By then the count was sobbing.
Papa’s good friend, Prince Dolgorukov, agreed to accompany him as his gentleman-in-waiting. General Tatischev, his aide-de-camp, would replace the count as grand marshal of the court—what court he would be grand marshal of, no one could say.
Trina Schneider told Mama, “I have been with you since you were a young bride, Your Imperial Majesty, and I will be with you now.”
Countess Hendrikova, one of Mama’s closest friends, had had no news of her sister, ill with tuberculosis, for months, but she declared she would leave it in God’s hands and come anyway. Baroness Buxhoeveden had to have an operation for appendicitis, but she promised to join us as soon as she was able.
There was no question that Dr. Botkin and Dr. Derevenko would go wherever we were sent. Dr. Derevenko’s wife and their son, Kolya, who was just Alexei’s age, would accompany him. I was afraid that Gleb and Tatiana would be left with the friend’s grandmother who had been looking after them, but Dr. Botkin arranged for them to come, too, and that pleased me.
Monsieur Gilliard said, “Madame, you’ve been trying to send me home to Switzerland for months, but my home is with your family.” I had no worries that Shura, my governess, might choose not to come. By then it was obvious to everybody that she and Gilliard were in love, and if he was coming, so would she.
We didn’t know about Mr. Gibbes. Our English tutor had been in Petrograd when we were put under house arrest, and he had not been allowed to see us when he returned to Tsarskoe Selo. No one knew where he was or what he might decide to do.
Some of our servants chose to stay behind—many had families in Tsarskoe Selo or in Petrograd—but others would come: Nagorny, Alexei’s one still faithful sailor-attendant; Mama’s maid, Anna Demidova; and Kharitonov the chef and Lenka Sednev the kitchen boy; as well as Papa’s barber, Mama’s hairdresser, and a number of cooks, valets, chambermaids, and a footman—about thirty in all.
We had learned that Lili and Anya had been taken to the Palace of Justice in Petrograd, and that eventually Lili convinced Kerensky to let her go home to Titi and be placed under house arrest. At least we knew she was safe. Anya had then been sent off to the Fortress of Peter and Paul, and as far as anyone knew, was still being held prisoner there. She had often driven us all to distraction, even Mama, with her constant need for attention, but I wished for Mama’s sake that she could go with us.
“They’re punishing her because she was so close to our dear Father Grigory,” Mama said. “It is so unfair.”
Papa, always trying to raise Mama’s spirits, said, “Perhaps she’ll be released soon and come with the baroness.”
• • •
Kerensky had not given us any instructions about how much we could take with us, but it looked as though we were planning to take just about everything.
Alexei insisted that all of his toys and his balalaikas go with him. Mama was organizing her holy icons and family pictures, while her maids carefully packed her jewels in special chests. Papa favored books, but he was also taking his exercise bar.
I nearly filled one large wooden chest with things I loved: an embroidered scarf given to me by an old woman at our Polish hunting lodge, several of Aunt Olga’s drawings, a box of watercolors and brushes, some pretty stones I’d picked up along the beach at Peterhof, the piece of green sea glass Gleb had found years ago—had I really saved it all this time?—and The Adventures of Anastasia Mouse that he’d made for me on my last birthday. I was about to throw away some of my old exercise books when I found a couple of funny little drawings Gleb had done of bears and rabbits in traditional Russian shirts and trousers, and I stuck them inside the photograph albums I was packing.
The thing I most wanted to take with me wherever we were going was the silver music box Grandmère Marie had given me for my thirteenth birthday. I remembered my grandmother whispering as we were leaving the Cottage Palace after my birthday luncheon: Don’t forget, ma chère. You and I will visit Paris together when you’re sixteen. At the time—three years earlier—that seemed impossibly far in the future. Now it was just impossible.
I wound up the music box and listened again to Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers,” watching the little ballerina on top turn and turn, slower and slower, until the music stopped and so did she. I did this again, two or three times, before I wrapped it in a woolen scarf Alexei had knit for me at Christmas—it was yards long—and buried it among the clothes I’d stuffed helter-skelter in a trunk.
Tired of the sorting and deciding, I drifted down the corridor to Olga and Tatiana’s room and casually checked the shelf by Olga’s bed where she usually kept the notebook, fourth book from the left. Advanced Mathematics was still there. Mama and Papa were burning all their private papers, an
d I hoped Olga hadn’t decided to destroy her notebook.
Tatiana saw me lingering and frowned. “Have you finished packing, Nastya?”
“Almost,” I replied, untruthfully. When I went back to my room, Shura had taken everything out of my trunk and was repacking it carefully.
• • •
The trunks and chests and boxes were piled up in every room, waiting for servants to carry them down to the semicircular hall beneath the huge dome. We wandered through the palace, taking one last look at everything and saying good-bye to the servants who wouldn’t be leaving with us. Tatiana was very brisk about her good-byes. Olga looked glum and murmured farewells as though she was at a funeral. Marie hugged everybody tearfully and made them promise to write. I tried to make jokes, but they all fell flat.
The farewells were hard for everyone, perhaps hardest of all for Alexei. Colonel Kobylinsky kindly arranged for him to go to the stables to say good-bye to his donkey, Vanka, and to the little Shetland pony Grandmère Marie had given him for his tenth birthday. But when he begged to go to our zoo for a last visit with the elephant, Kobylinsky stalled. The elephant was no more. A week or two earlier we had been horrified to learn that the poor beast had been shot dead by one of the revolutionary sailors. That it might have been one of our sailors from the Standart was so awful to contemplate that Papa decided simply to tell Alexei the elephant had died of old age and warned my sisters and me not to say any more.
Anastasia and Her Sisters Page 18
