I Was Anastasia

by Ariel Lawhon

If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten. —RUDYARD KIPLING, THE COLLECTED WORKS

But, like so many others through the years, you have asked: Am I truly Anastasia Romanov? A beloved daughter. A revered icon. A Russian grand duchess. Or am I an impostor? A fraud. A liar. The thief of another woman’s legacy.

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. —SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

Fifty years ago tonight Anna threw herself off a bridge in Berlin. It wasn’t her first brush with death, or even the most violent, but it was the only one that came at her hands.

Gleb wouldn’t need this instruction. He would know what to do. He would know what questions to ask. But Gleb is no longer here, and, once again, this reality leaves her feeling adrift.

A decade ago Anna’s lawyer told her this lawsuit was the longest-running case in German history.

Jack and Anna don’t have many friends. They haven’t been married long, only two years, and theirs is a relationship based on convenience and necessity, not romance. They are old and eccentric and not fit for polite society in this quaint college town.

“ ‘We have not decided that the plaintiff is not Grand Duchess Anastasia, but only that the Hamburg court made its decision without legal mistakes and without procedural errors.’ ” He looks up. “So they have decided…nothing?” She shakes her head slowly and then with more determination. “Oh, they have decided everything.”

“They will never formally recognize me as Anastasia Romanov.”

Lazy snow. American snow.

“How did I get here?” Anna sighs, already knowing the answer. She has gotten here, she has survived, by always doing the thing that needs to be done.

The thing Anna has always hated most about being a small woman is the disadvantage she has in situations like this. People assume they can touch you, pat you, shake your hand without permission. They assume that if your size is little more than that of a child, you must be one. That you can be talked down to or coerced. It is hard for a small person to be intimidating or to be taken seriously. This lack of stature has forced Anna to develop other skills through the years: to sharpen her wit, to treat her tongue like a blade and her mind like a whetstone.

“His name is Hans-Johann Mayer. In 1918 he was a prisoner of war being held in Ekaterinburg in the basement of the Ipatiev House. He was an eyewitness to the slaughter of the entire Romanov family and can prove, definitively, that Anastasia Romanov is dead.”

Mayer describes the slow thump of footsteps descending the cellar stairs. The questions of confused children. A tired family yanked from their beds. And then silence in the cellar as their captors leave and go into an adjacent room and drink enough vodka to finish the task. Mayer describes in detail, and with shaking voice, what gunshots sound like in an enclosed space and how the smell of gunpowder can drift beneath a closed door. He tells of screaming and crying and the dull thud of gunmetal hitting human flesh. The worst sound, he explains, was the silence afterward and the knowledge of what it meant.

Mayer explains to Judges Reisse, Werkmeister, and Backen how desperate he was to believe that a Romanov, any Romanov, had survived the slaughter and how he followed those soldiers into the woods. Mayer waited until the soldiers left to fetch supplies so they could destroy the evidence of their grisly deeds.

His voice is hollow when he explains that, in the middle of a warm summer night he stood in the clearing known as Pig’s Meadow and counted the bodies of seven Romanovs and four servants and wept because he had been unable to save any of them.

The gavel is a distinctly American symbol, and Anna has watched her fair share of Hollywood films in which a judge bangs his gavel to bring order or closure to the court.

“It is the belief of this court,” Werkmeister says, “that Mayer’s knowledge of these details can only have come from things he witnessed firsthand. We do not believe they were gleaned from other writings, stories, or rumors circulating at the time of these events. It is the belief of this court that his account is true, that the entire Romanov family was murdered in 1918, and therefore we deny the petitioner’s suit to be legally recognized as Anastasia Romanov.”

One of the worst moments of Anna’s life has become one of the most interesting things about her.

“You look nothing like the Anastasia I have known! I am quite satisfied that you are the most despicable sort of impostor, and I will swear to this every time I am asked, from now until the day I die. The real grand duchess would no more treat a visitor rudely than she would curse a tree for bearing rotten fruit.”

After the bombing in Hannover destroyed her home and nearly everything she owned, Anna has only this one small suitcase to her name.

“We’re too heavy! We can’t keep taking on water like this or we’ll sink.” “Throw out your suitcase!” Frederick screams. She grips it tighter. “No!”

“I have nothing left but what is in this case!” Anna screams, making him the subject of her undiluted rage. “Never do that again. Never!”

“Welcome home, Anastasia!” Prince Frederick shouts, his voice echoing through the empty woods. “I so hope you will be happy here.”

I can barely see the carpet for shiny, glittering items. There are ropes of pearls and strings of diamonds.

“What are you doing?” I finally ask. “Taking an inventory.” “Why?” “The Americans would call it an insurance policy,”

There is sadness around her eyes when she smiles. “It would be best if you wore your hair down for a while. Especially when you’re outside or anywhere near the guards. Do you understand?”

“What are you doing at my desk?” Father asks. “It’s not your desk. Not anymore. Sit down. We have things to discuss.”

The day that Father returned to the Alexander Palace, his study was searched and all of his weapons seized. Kerensky took his revolver, a Mauser pistol, a long rifle, six knives, two ceremonial swords, and a variety of other blades, handguns, and weapons. Kerensky insisted that the protection provided us by his soldiers was more than sufficient and that as prisoners we no longer had a right to bear arms.

“And yes, I must. You and your family live in a world disconnected from all reality. Your children in particular need to understand what is happening on the other side of the palace wall so they will understand the choices I make going forward.”

“Why did you have to kill him?” “Because it costs the Russian government eighteen thousand rubles every year just to feed him. Did you know that, boy?” Alexey wipes snot on the back of his sleeve, then shakes his head. “And do you know how much the average family earns per year in this country?” Again my brother shakes his head. “Approximately four thousand rubles. Your pet is an offense to every family in Russia that eats one meal a day. The people are tired of paying for your luxuries and your frivolities. The sooner you understand that, the better off you’ll be.”

“My duty is here.” “And my duty is to protect you.” Botkin leans over his son and cups the boy’s cheek in his palm. “I would not have you end up like the elephant.”

“Your train has arrived.”

“You no longer have a train. Or a yacht. Or a home. You have only the mercy I choose to extend you. So collect your family, board this train, and be grateful that I did not send you off in your normal transport. Because you can be sure it would’ve been stopped five miles down the tracks, boarded by your disenfranchised people, and all of you would be shot dead on the spot.”

“Father,” he asks, “where are we going?” “They say we are headed to England.” “Then why are there so many soldiers on this train?”

Anna never once thought she would still be facing the threat of rape at this age.

Anna has heard the rumors of how Romanov friends and sympathizers were systematically hunted down and assassinated after the revolution. She does not care to think what they would do with a woman who claims to be Grand Duchess Anastasia.

Anna is certain, now more than ever, that she cannot stay in Winterstein. Not with the lingering Soviet occupation and the constant threat of discovery and repatriation. It is time to go.

And that is her first thought, that she has died, and it is only the raging sound of explosions that convinces her she is still alive.

Muscle memory is an odd thing. Linked to music and athletics and survival. Anna does not even have to tell her limbs to move, to run. They do it on their own.

Keepsakes from a former life that she will not leave behind, cards she might yet need to play.

The air around her vibrates, filled with the screaming of people and the screaming of bombs, and then one eerie moment of total silence as that sickening white light from the fourth flair spills into the cellar.

Anna cannot bear to look at the people who wander, stricken, through the rubble. The air is filled with soot and ash, with the wailing of women and the blare of distant sirens.

I refuse to believe that animals are incapable of emotion, that they cannot communicate.

Too proud to call for help, I yanked myself free and lost a patch of hair in the process. That’s how I feel as the train travels eastward, my thumb brushing the thick, firm skin of the pear. Ripped away.

Three hundred and fifty soldiers travel with us. Farm boys and villagers mostly. Men conscripted into service at the beginning of the war. Neither political nor dangerous, simply following orders and biding their time until they can go home.

There is no station, no railway siding to be seen. Only rolling green fields, dotted with trees and bushes, stretching out in either direction.

Semyon, however, slides the bolt on his rifle and rests it against his shoulder, ready, I presume, in the event that any of us decides to run.

“Where do you think they’re taking us?” He pulls me closer and kisses the top of my head. His voice tightens when he says, “To Siberia.”

The penal colonies were established in the early 1800s as a means of punishing criminals, dissidents, and anyone else who ruffled the sensitive feathers of my forefathers.