I Was Anastasia

by Ariel Lawhon

single word whispered in our ears. “Tsarevna,”

He doesn’t look at me. His gaze hovers protectively over Jimmy. And I love him for it.

I love him. It is a stunning, wonderful, entirely human realization at the worst possible moment.

“Welcome,” Semyon says, “to the House of Special Purpose.”

The experience became a door in her mind that, when pushed too hard, swings toward madness. In the years since, as her episodes have become less frequent, Anna still distrusts time itself.

She fears that time will forever be slower for her, that each injustice and hardship and cruelty will have to be lived through at half speed.

Worse, she knows that if she makes trouble they will move her to another ward with less freedom.

She doesn’t see the nurse, the one she has nicknamed the Duck,

She takes a step closer to the Baron, and this is all the consent he needs. “Collect your things,” the Baron says. “You’re coming with me.”

“How do you know Clara Peuthert?” “She is the daughter of a friend,” the Baron says. “And she tells me you are the daughter of the tsar.” “And you believe her?” “I do now,” he says, and then the two visitors are gone.

All because of Crazy Clara’s aggressive reverence. Thanks to Clara, and to the Baron, there is the possibility of freedom now. All she has to do is speak. So she does. “My name,” she says, “is Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanov.”

Clara is the sort of woman who doesn’t know how to think, only what to think. “What about your family?” Clara whispers. Anna looks away, whispers, “My family is gone.”

“Important people. On the outside.”

“That would be great. Very helpful.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to pretend anymore. Good-bye, Tsarevna.”

Every day Anna sees hopeful, desperate, broken families, and every day she breaks them a little bit more. This is the worst of it for her, being an unwilling participant in their personal tragedies.

“Pity you weren’t at the gate yourself,” Anna said. “Since you’re so good at making judgments based on appearance.”

Fräulein Unbekannt. Miss Unknown.

The Duck says that this man saw her picture in the paper and read how she had jumped from the bridge. This is the first Anna has heard of the newspaper’s publishing that detail.

you want to stop this, tell us your name. But if you’re not willing to do that, shut up and quit complaining.”

“Felix Schanzkowska,” the guard says by way of introduction. When it comes to poker faces, his is every bit as good as Anna’s. He stares at her, head tipped slightly to the side, and gives no indication at all of what he’s thinking. Anna doesn’t break eye contact, but she does pick at her cuticles— one small show of nerves that she can’t disguise.

Finally, he curls his lip. Then clenches his jaw. Sighs. “I do not recognize this woman.”

Mother peers at me intently, however, not eating. I can feel that probing intuition stretch toward me. Observing. Measuring each of my words to get at the truth. She always knows when I am lying. It’s an innate sense that I do not understand but learned to fear at an early

Maria is oblivious. She has no idea what happened on the train. Luck of the draw spared her from our fate, and there is now a distance between us that I do not know how to bridge. I doubt Olga and Tatiana will even try.

He is a coward at heart, a greedy, loathsome opportunist. And we are utterly spent. So my sisters and I curl into that makeshift pallet in the middle of the room and give ourselves up to the great and merciful gift of sleep.

It is one thing to have everything you own picked through and winnowed down. It is something else to see it trampled on and torn to pieces. Pillaged. Violated. Ravaged. I have never been one to hold my anger, but I lose all pretense of control upon finding this mess.

my anger has nothing to do with our belongings and everything to do with the rage I have held, bottled and corked, since that night on the train.

“You let your men go through our things. You let them steal from us.”

didn’t let them do any such thing,” he says. “I ordered them to.”

Yet the dam has burst, and all that pent-up rage comes spilling out.

“Don’t bother me again, you stupid little girl. You have no rights.”

console myself that I am finally able to appreciate Tolstoy’s penchant for philosophy. How can I not? It is waved in front of my face for hours every day. “We can only know that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”

Anger, fear, embarrassment, stubbornness, euphoria. All of these things flash across her face before she says, “Please don’t tell Mother and Father. They’ll be furious.”

“You seem to have the misguided notion that the natural response to imprisonment is gratitude.”

Her only crime was trying to end her life in a broken, desperate moment.

she hasn’t had one of these episodes in three months. This is progress. They came daily at first. And she’s never known what to call them until now.

“Welcome. I mean…Scheiße…I’m sorry you’re here. No one wants to be here. But they put you in the best place. It’s quiet in this ward. For the most part. The others are awful. Those poor women are crazy. The ones here just have a nervous disposition. Like me. I’m nervous. Do I make you nervous? I’m really sorry if I do.

He wants her to have a chance. Even though he doesn’t understand what drove her to jump from that bridge, he doesn’t want her to attempt it again.

This is how the human heart beats, a twisted staccato of love and envy, of anger and relief. I doubt that Maria can define this loss of affection with our sisters, but I am certain the estrangement has driven her further into Ivan’s arms.

There is canal water in her mouth and her nose. It tastes like pond scum and old fish. Her entire body bends and clenches trying to force the last drops of liquid from her lungs. She lies there for a moment gasping, feeling as though her chest is simultaneously waterlogged and on fire.

“She goes to the police station. Unless she tells me her name and why she jumped from that bridge.”

“Suicide is illegal,” the second officer says.

Anna simply threw herself toward the darkness, hoping to be consumed.

She barely recognizes herself in the glassy black surface. How could it come to this?

She resists pulling in a lungful of murky water. What a stupid thing she has done. What an idiotic, foolish, asinine thing. But it doesn’t matter now because Anna is sinking fast.

doubt that Ivan survived the day. Yakov Yurovsky is not a man who likes leaving witnesses to his cruelty.

Yakov steps inside followed by eleven soldiers.

Semyon is a man who will violate a woman on a train in the middle of the night but cannot kill her unless he has spent the evening with a bottle of vodka.

“The Praesidium of the Ural Regional Soviet has declared you all to be sentenced to death.”

Anna reads how the sister of Empress Alexandra has appealed to the courts for help investigating the disappearance of the imperial family. She refuses to believe the rumors that they are dead. She will not believe it, the article says, until she has solid evidence.