Anastasia and Her Sisters (24 page)

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

O
ur 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, and 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.

In the midst of this emotional turmoil, Uncle Misha arrived and immediately went to speak to Papa. We saw him come, and a little while later we saw him go—head down, wiping his eyes—but none of us had a chance to speak with him. He rushed past us without even a glance.

“I wanted to talk to him!” Alexei complained. “Why won’t they let me?”

“Maybe it’s better if you didn’t, Lyosha,” Tatiana said, trying to soothe him.

I dreaded leaving, but I also hated waiting for the time to come. I just wanted to get it over with. We were tired, all of us, even the dogs. Of course we were taking Alexei’s Joy, my Jimmy, and Tatiana’s Ortino. Mama’s Eira would come later with Baroness Buxhoeveden. At the last minute Count Benckendorff agreed to adopt Olga’s cat. The count looked so funny holding Vaska, who rubbed against the count’s whiskers and purred.

Kerensky sent word that we were to be ready at midnight. Soldiers were ordered to carry our trunks from the palace to the train station, which they did, grumbling and complaining, even after the count paid them each three rubles.

“What time is the train coming?” I asked for maybe the third time.

“It’s supposed to be here at one o’clock,” Papa said patiently. “That’s all I know.”

We sat in the hall, waiting. The hours passed. The night was hot, and we were exhausted. We weren’t used to staying up so late. Mama went to her room to lie down, fully dressed. But we were restless. Alexei’s dog, Joy, bounced around on his leash, pulling Alexei first one way and then another.

Colonel Kobylinsky, who we were pleased was to accompany us, kept checking his watch. He was restless, too.

Finally, as dawn was breaking, several motorcars arrived to drive us to the station. It was time. The train was ready. The baggage had been loaded. Mama, in an agony of weeping, had to be carried to the motorcar. All of us were crying, except Olga, who was always so reserved. She may have shed her tears in private, like the words in her notebook.

The train waiting on the tracks was not the dark blue imperial train with the golden Romanov crest emblazoned on the cars. This was an ordinary train marked
RED CROSS MISSION
and flying Japanese flags. How strange that seemed! Another train stood behind it, but it wasn’t a decoy like the one that always went ahead of the imperial train or behind it to deceive any revolutionary plotting to blow up the tsar’s train. This second train carried three hundred soldiers who would guard us when we arrived at our destination.

“We’re traveling in disguise,” explained Kobylinsky. “It’s better if the people in the little towns along the way don’t know who’s on board.” He laughed nervously, showing lots of crooked teeth. “When we are passing through villages, I must ask you to close the blinds of the car in which you are riding.”
He looked at me, shut one eye, and wagged his finger. “No peeking, Anastasia Nikolaevna!”

We climbed aboard. Clouds of steam hissed from the locomotive, and the train lurched forward. The sun was just coming up, bathing the world in a golden glow. We were on our way to Siberia, leaving behind everything beautiful, everything we loved.

•  •  •

The journey was hot, dusty, and monotonous. All we wanted to do that first day was sleep. When I awoke around noon in the sweltering heat, I was told that luncheon would be served at one o’clock. And it was! Then I had another long nap until teatime. After tea, the train halted somewhere out in the countryside, and we were allowed to get out to walk the dogs along the tracks. Mama stayed on the train, sitting by an open window and fanning herself. The sun was still high in the sky, and the heat shimmered on the steel rails. We climbed aboard again, and I peeled off my sweaty clothes and ran cold water on my wrists to cool off. Choking dust settled everywhere, on everything, and gritted between my teeth.

The two trains chugged steadily eastward. Each time we approached a town or station, we obediently pulled the curtains across the windows, but I ignored the colonel’s “no peeking” order and peered through a small gap. On the third day there was a change; we were crossing the Urals, where it was much cooler. Papa took this opportunity to lecture us on the mineral wealth of the mountain range, everything from diamonds and emeralds to coal. The Asian steppes stretched on to the horizon and, after thousands of miles, to the Pacific Ocean.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful,” Papa suggested quietly, “if Kerensky has arranged for the train to keep going, all the way across Siberia to Japan.”

“So that must be why we’re flying the Japanese flag!” I said excitedly.

Everyone told me to hush.

On the fourth day, very late at night after we’d all gone to sleep, the train came to a halt. I woke up and looked out. It was mostly dark, but I could see that we had stopped at a station near a river. There was a low murmur of voices, and figures were carrying our trunks and boxes and crates from the baggage car and loading them into small boats that were then rowed out into the river. This went on throughout the night. I watched until I could not stay awake any longer.