Anastasia (2 page)

3 January 1914

Tsarskoe Selo

Well,
that’s
over, and I’m glad of it. I
hate
dancing. I’d rather climb trees any day! My feet still hurt — especially the toe that clumsy Lieutenant Boris stepped on while he was
trying
to waltz. What an oaf.

Hundreds of people attended the ball — all the court society of St. Petersburg, Papa says. If you piled all their jewels in a heap, they would weigh at least a ton.

Mama had a headache and left before midnight. Our little brother, Alexei, is feverish again, and Mama wanted to be at home with him. I wish I could have gone with her, but that would have upset Grandmother. She is already annoyed at Mama, I think.

Grandmother gave us each a diary as a keepsake of the ball. Olga and Tatiana and Mashka (that’s what we call our Marie) have begun pasting things in theirs — the invitation, the menu for the midnight supper, the program of music played by the orchestra, and my sisters’ dance cards signed by the officers who danced with them. (I did
not
collect my dancing partners’ signatures.)

It was very late when Papa had the sleigh drive us from Anitchkov Palace to board our train for the ride back to Tsarskoe Selo. He sipped tea while my sisters chattered all the way home. I could hardly keep my eyes open but pretended to be wide awake.

4 January 1914

Ts. S.

I’ve decided to write a play about the ball. I’m calling it
The OTMA Snow Ball: A Jest in One Act.

OTMA is the name we made up with the initials of our first names — Olga, Tatiana, Marie, and Anastasia. That’s me, trailing along at the end, the youngest, the last of the Romanov sisters. Papa calls me
Shvibzik
: “Imp.”

When I told my sisters about my play, Mashka said, “What a good idea! We can perform it for Mama.”

Olga added with that worried look of hers, “Promise you will make it nice, Anastasia?”

I promised I would.

The Main Characters:

G
RANDMOTHER
— also known as the
dowager empress
, wearing her diamond tiara and white brocade gown

P
APA
— also known as
NICHOLAS ALEXANDROVICH ROMANOV, TSAR OF ALL THE RUSSIAS
, in military dress uniform, with lots of ribbons and medals

T
HE
G
RAND
D
UCHESSES — OTMA

O
FFICERS
from the yacht
Standart

The Scene:
Grand Ballroom of Anitchkov Palace (actually our library)

The Grand Duchesses enter. They are dressed in matching gowns of white silk embroidered all over with pearls and crystal beads, and satin slippers.

My slippers pinched, but at least I didn’t have to wear a corset. This is because I don’t have a “figure,” as Olga calls it. She’s eighteen and has one. So does Tatiana, who’s sixteen, and Mashka, who’s fourteen. I’m twelve and haven’t yet gotten a bosom. When I say “bosom,” my sisters are shocked.

“Say ‘figure,’ Anastasia,” Olga corrects me. “Proper ladies don’t speak of . . . of bosoms.” She blushes when she says it.

“But I’m not a proper lady,” I remind her. “I’m a
shvibzik
.”

7 January 1914

Well, we did it. Mama’s friend Anya Vyrubova came to our rooms after supper. And we rounded up Dr. Botkin and his son, Gleb, and Baroness Buxhoeveden and as many of Mama’s ladies-in-waiting and Papa’s gentlemen as could be found to make up the audience. There was no one to play the role of the Dowager Empress, of course, and so we put one of Mama’s tiaras on an embroidered cushion on a gilt chair and pretended
that
was Grandmother.

Papa put on his white dress hat with a gold braid. First he bowed to Olga, and she curtsied, and then they danced while he whistled a waltz. Papa is the best whistler! Next it was Tatiana’s turn, and then Mashka’s.

I would have been next, but I decided not to play myself in this production. Instead, I borrowed a pair of tall black boots and a white jacket from one of the servants and took the role of Lieutenant Boris. Shura, my nurse-governess, painted a huge black mustache on my lip. Alexei made me a cocked hat of folded paper. Then I ordered my sisters to dance with me while I pretended to stomp all over their feet. (Mashka said I didn’t pretend
enough
, and that I really did step on hers. But it was truly not on purpose.)

It ended badly, because Alexei insisted that
he
was going to dance “like Lieutenant Boris,” and he got rowdy and crashed into Mama’s table. Now we’re afraid he’ll get one of those terrible bruises and be ill again.

9 January 1914

Faugh! I detest schoolwork! Monsieur Gilliard, our French tutor, says that my efforts “lack inspiration.” What he means is, I am lazy. We’ve been working on the pluperfect tense, and what could be inspirational about that? I was supposed to write my sentences ten times each, but I “forgot” a few of them and instead drew a border of flowers around the paper. M. Gilliard says that my flowers don’t make up for lack of inspiration.

10 January 1914

Just as I feared, Alexei is in bed again, his knee swollen up like a cabbage and paining him horribly. When Alexei is not well, our whole family suffers with him. We take turns sitting by his bed and reading to him.

The servants tiptoe in and out, asking in whispers, “How is the tsarevitch?” And Mama always gives the report, “He seems a little better today, thanks be to God.” Or, “He needs our prayers. Don’t forget him!”

Of course everyone in the palace prays for Alexei, because he is the tsarevitch, the son of the tsar, and will be the next tsar of Russia, after Papa. No one must know that he’s so ill. “It would alarm the people,” Mama and Papa tell us.

Alexei is a bleeder. That means he suffers from a disease called hemophilia. (I probably didn’t spell that right. Mr. Gibbes, my English tutor, complains that I’m a dreadful speller.) However it’s spelled, it means that if my brother hurts himself, there’s no way to stop the bleeding. A small cut on the skin isn’t so bad. But if he injures a joint, or if something happens to make him bleed inside his body, then the blood is trapped. His joint swells up and hurts him, and he cries awfully. Then Mama turns pale and presses her lips together and begs us all to pray.

There is no cure for this disease, and nobody knows what to do, not Dr. Botkin, who checks all of us every day for signs of rashes and sore throats and such, nor Dr. Derevenko, Alexei’s special doctor.

The only one who can help Alexei is Father Grigory, the holy man who is Mama’s friend. Mama sent a message to Father Grigory to come.

Later

Alexei is much better. He always gets better when Father Grigory prays over him.

11 January 1914

A sunny day, but so cold, it makes my teeth hurt. Just as we finished our morning lessons, Papa came out of his study, where he had been working since breakfast, and announced that we must go ice-skating. My sisters and I dressed in our warmest woolen skirts and thick stockings and fur jackets and ran outside with Papa. Alexei couldn’t go, but he waved to us from his window on the second floor in the south wing of the palace.

We ran to the lake in the middle of the imperial park, where the servants built a roaring fire near the warming hut. As soon as we’d strapped on our skates, Papa got us playing crack-the-whip. I challenged Mashka to a race and won. I couldn’t beat Tatiana, because she’s the tallest and her legs longest, but when I grow more I’ll beat her with no trouble.

Papa stopped us often to make sure our noses were not getting frostbitten. “Keep moving! Keep moving, my dears!” he called out, but we didn’t need this advice, because to stand still in such weather is to freeze solid as an ice statue.

Later Mashka asked if I remembered the time I made a snowball with a rock inside and threw it at her, and it knocked her almost unconscious.

That was wicked of her to mention it. Of course I remember! Olga Alexandrovna, Papa’s younger sister, scolded me that day until I cried. Papa never scolds me, and Mama hardly ever. It’s only Aunt Olga who does. Yet she’s my godmother, and I love her best, after Mama and Papa! But nobody in this dratted family will let me forget that stupid snowball.

12 January 1914

Dr. Derevenko just finished examining Alexei and says he is improving, but cautions that he mustn’t be allowed to run about and do dangerous things. Alexei loves to do dangerous things! So do I, but I’m not a bleeder. Girls are not — just boys, who inherit it from their mothers. I once overheard Shura gossiping about it: It was Mama’s grandmother, Queen Victoria of England, who passed it on through her daughters’ blood to their sons and grandsons. I wonder if I shall pass it on to my sons?
Not
something I can ask Mama.

14 January 1914

Alexei is much better, and we’re all relieved. Whenever he is ill, life seems to hang suspended, as though we have all stopped breathing. Then, when he’s recovered, we start living again.

It was Father Grigory who cured Alexei this time, Mama’s sure of it. Gleb Botkin says that his father and Dr. Derevenko positively
detest
Father Grigory. They’re convinced that he’s a fraud. They even say that because he’s a
moujik
, a peasant, he has no official family name, and that people in his village in Siberia call him Rasputin. (It’s an ugly name meaning “dissolute,” that he has no morals.)

Mama would be very upset if she knew how much the doctors dislike Father Grigory, because she believes in him absolutely. So does Anya Vyrubova — she introduced him to Mama a long time ago when she heard about his miracles of curing the sick and hoped that he could help Alexei.

And so we must all believe in him, even if he looks very strange. He is tall and strongly built; his hair is parted in the middle, long and dirty; and his beard is long and dirty as well. Mama says this is a sign of his humility, that he cares nothing for things of this world. When he looks at you with those fierce blue eyes, it’s like he’s staring straight into your soul. It makes me shudder! He seems not to bathe much (he does smell rather awful — like Vanka, Alexei’s pet donkey — but of course I can’t say that to
anyone
).

15 January 1914

I wonder if my sisters are writing in their diaries every day. Mashka scarcely bothers, I know that much. She’s at least as lazy as I am (maybe worse). Papa and Mama think it’s important for us to keep diaries. And Mama says we should also be using both Old Style and New Style dates, as she does. This is because Russia uses the Julian calendar, and most other places in the world use the new Gregorian calendar, which is thirteen days
ahead
of ours. For instance, today is 15 January in Russia, but in England and Germany and lots of other places, it’s already 28 January. How strange! And what a bother! But if Mama says we must, then we must. I’ll start tomorrow.

This morning I crept into the Big Pair’s room (Papa calls O and T “the Big Pair”; M and A are “the Little Pair”), but I saw no diaries lying about. They must have hidden them. I thought of asking, but realized the question was fat-witted. They would certainly not tell me!

So I’ve decided I must find where each one is kept. I’ll take a look from time to time, just to make sure they’re actually writing in them. I’m going to search for Olga’s first, because she’s the oldest and most likely to have interesting secrets — although what they could be, I can hardly imagine. We already know everything about each other.

16/29 January 1914

(Ugh! I suppose I’ll get used to this eventually.)

How we do love our evening baths! Until a few years ago, when Olga begged Mama to intervene, we took cold baths every morning because Papa believes they’re good for you. He has one every day as soon as he gets up, just as he has done since he was a boy. Fortunately, Mama took our side and convinced him that young ladies do not need to be brought up like soldiers. And so now we have the luxury of warm baths in our big silver tub before we retire.

But that’s the end of Papa’s indulgence. The four of us sleep on camp cots. We must rise before sunup and make up our beds under the stern eyes of our maids, who tolerate no laxness, such as lumpy bedcovers. Then we join Papa for breakfast. I should love to have chocolate and pastries, but no! It must be rye bread and herring, or it’s not “a good Russian breakfast” in Papa’s eyes!