I Was Anastasia

by Ariel Lawhon

The man is absurdly pleased by the sound of his own voice, needing very little encouragement from her.

unconcerned in the way only a child born of utter privilege can be.

The guards are young, my age or a little older perhaps, and one of them is in possession of a matching pair of dimples. As we pass through the door he nods at me, ever so slightly. Not enough for Kerensky to notice but enough that I do.

D’Yavol. Devil.

Anna cannot remember the last time she felt heat like this in her belly, the last time a man looked at her like that, not as a threat, or a claim, but as a challenge. An invitation. It feels good,

A spinster, they would call her, if she lived anywhere other than the glittering center of Manhattan, where wealth and excess are worshiped above a woman’s fertility and marital status.

So you need to ask yourself one question: if none of those other women are ashamed to trade on what they’ve been given, why should you be?”

now I am angry as well because I want my mother to comfort me and she doesn’t. She is drowning in her own fear and cannot be bothered to assuage mine. This, I suppose, is what it means to be grown. I add this feeling to the list of things I hate.

There are ways to make a man like Semyon feel small. You look at him with pity—it’s far more effective than disdain. You cooperate with his demands but in a way that makes him feel you’re only doing so because he is weak and must be cosseted. The goal is to make him hate himself for being a man unworthy of respect.

There is nothing artistic about rape. Taking a woman by force makes a man no better than the rooster in Tobolsk. It simply makes him an animal.

“We can only know that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”