Anastasia and Her Sisters (3 page)

We spoke English with Mama, Russian with Papa, French with Grandmère Marie, a mixture with each other, and German with nobody.

Dear old baggy-eyed Pyotr Vasilyevich Petrov, our Russian tutor, also attempted to instill in us some knowledge of geography. He had mounted a large map of the world on the wall of our schoolroom. “First, Your Imperial Highnesses, let us look
at the Russian Empire,” he announced at the beginning of each day’s lesson, taking up his pointer. It made me laugh when he called us by our formal titles, since he saw us every day and we had known him for most of our lives, but Pyotr Vasilyevich was a traditionalist, and traditionalists don’t change. He swept his pointer from west to east, from central Europe to the Pacific Ocean—“Fifty-four hundred miles! More than eight thousand
versts
!”—and then from north to south. “The tsar’s mighty empire covers one sixth of the land surface of the world!”

It was, I thought, truly impressive: Russia was much bigger than all the countries of Europe put together, bigger than China, bigger than the United States. Our papa was the tsar, the emperor, the autocrat—whatever you wished to call him—and ruler of more than one hundred seventy million people: the most powerful man in the world.

After that stirring introduction, Petrov droned on interminably about mountain ranges and river systems and natural resources, and the many different nationalities living within Russia’s distant borders. Olga took a particular interest in geography, although I could not understand why. I yawned and sketched flowers in the margins of my copybook. Only when the lessons were in art, dancing, and music did I truly apply myself.

In early January Alexei, racing around the palace in his usual rambunctious manner, took a tumble and was hurt. For days he did not leave his bedroom. These were the times we dreaded. A gloom settled over the entire palace, surely noticeable to everyone. Papa constantly wore a worried look. For days at a time Mama hardly left Alexei’s bedside, and we scarcely saw her. Meanwhile, we were expected to carry on as
though nothing was wrong. My brother had an illness that was a closely guarded secret. We had been instructed by our parents never to speak of it outside the circle of our family and a few close friends. “It is our burden to bear,” Mama said.

The secret was that Alexei has hemophilia. His blood doesn’t clot. He could die from a minor cut or a nosebleed. When he bruises himself, he bleeds inside his body. The blood has nowhere to go and collects in his joints, and that causes him great pain. It’s an inherited disease. Only males suffer from it, and only females carry it. Mama’s grandmother, Queen Victoria of England, was a carrier, and many of her descendants are bleeders. Alexei is one of them.

Our parents learned of this terrible illness when Alexei was still a baby, but they never spoke of it because they didn’t want the Russian people to know that the tsarevich might not live to become their next tsar. The doctors could do nothing. There is no treatment for it. Two sailors from the imperial navy, Andrei Derevenko and Klementy Nagorny, were assigned to stay with him constantly to keep him from injuring himself and to carry him when he couldn’t walk.

Mama and Papa were in despair, until they met Father Grigory.

To us, he was always Father Grigory or Our Friend, but to others he was known as Grigory Efimovich Rasputin. He was a
starets
, a holy man. He prayed with Mama, and when he did, Alexei got better. The swelling went down, and the pain went away. Mama came to believe in Father Grigory completely and loved him devotedly, because of the effect he had on Alexei. He had only to bow his head and take my brother’s hand, and
Alexei immediately became calmer. When Father Grigory visited my parents, he usually came to our rooms and spent time with my sisters and me, talking quietly and praying with us in front of our holy icons.

Father Grigory was a big man, taller than Papa and much broader and heavier. He dressed in the rough clothes of a
moujik
, a peasant—baggy trousers and loose blouses and muddy leather boots, as though he had just come in from working in the fields. He looked as though he never changed those filthy clothes, or bathed, or even washed his grimy hands, and he smelled worse than Alexei’s pet donkey. His thick, scraggly black beard was stuck with bits of food, and his long, stringy hair hung down to his shoulders.

Bad as he looked and smelled, there was something deeply mysterious about Father Grigory. His brilliant blue eyes were so magnetic that I could not look away when he gazed at me, and I felt sure that he could see into my very soul. His voice was so compelling that when he spoke my name, I shivered, but it wasn’t a shiver of fear—it was something I couldn’t name. My sisters, too, felt his powerful spell. Strangely, his animal smell didn’t bother us when he bent close to us and placed a gentle, fatherly kiss on our foreheads.

Mama believed that God had sent this holy man to her and to all of us. She was convinced that he possessed miraculous powers that would save Alexei from his terrible illness—not cure him, but heal him and let him live without suffering. “If God does not hear my prayers, I know that He hears Father Grigory’s,” she said.

But not everyone loved him. Our governess at that time,
Sophia Ivanovna, mistrusted him. “Holy man or not, Grigory Rasputin should not be going into your bedroom while you girls are in your nightgowns. He should not be sitting down beside you on your beds, and touching you in a most familiar way. It’s simply not proper for him to be there with you unchaperoned.”

Sophia expressed her disapproval to Papa, and Papa spoke to Father Grigory. His visits to our bedrooms stopped, but he was still a regular visitor to Alexander Palace. Then one day our dear nurse, Maria, upset and weeping, told Sophia that Father Grigory had done something very wicked to her. Sophia reported Maria’s story to Mama. A few days later Maria was sent away. When I asked Sophia what had happened and where our nurse had gone, our governess just shook her head and grimaced. “It’s too shocking. I shall say no more about it,” she said, and changed the subject.

I didn’t know what to think. Papa and Mama believed Father Grigory was a saint, and Sophia Ivanovna thought he was a devil. She said no more to us, but she must have spoken to others, because Mama heard about it, and suddenly Sophia Ivanovna, too, was dismissed.

Mama instructed us not to speak of Father Grigory to anyone outside our little family. “They don’t understand,” she said.

Lyosha is much better, and we are grateful for the help we’ve received from Fr. G. But Mother allows no criticism of him. Everyone is afraid to say a word.

Today Zhilik came to the music room while I was practicing and listened with his eyes closed until I finished. Usually so calm, he paced nervously and asked if he could speak frankly. I said he could. In the three years he has served our family, he said, he has observed that Lyosha suffers from physical problems, but the cause has never been explained to him. At times Lyosha seems quite well; then, without explanation, the lessons are suddenly suspended. A fortnight later the boy is racing through the palace again—or one of the sailors carries him about as if he were an invalid. Could I explain it? Zhilik asked.

What to tell him? We’ve been told never to speak of it. I decided on the truth, and described the nature of the disease and the reason for secrecy. Then I revealed another secret: Only Fr. G is able to help him.

A look of distaste crossed our tutor’s face, though he tried to hide it. He said he’d met Fr. G only once but has heard much talk about him. “And how does this man Rasputin help?”

I explained the effect the
starets
has on Lyosha and told him that Fr. G is a holy man who prays with Mother, and then Lyosha gets better. No one can deny it, and no one is allowed to question it. Then I begged Zhilik not to let anyone know what I told him.

The truth is that I find Fr. G completely revolting, but for Mother’s sake and Lyosha’s, I must be careful never to let anyone know how I feel. I feel guilty for saying as much as I did, because Mother instructed us not to—especially not to Zhilik, who is Swiss and not of our religion and wouldn’t understand.

I was shaking when I put away Olga’s notebook. I wished that I did not know what she thought of Father Grigory. Mama would be furious if she found out.

•  •  •

Tsarskoe Selo was only a half hour’s journey from the gaiety and excitement of St. Petersburg, but ours was a different world. Our family occupied the west wing of Alexander Palace, which was very small—only a hundred rooms—compared to the enormous Catherine Palace nearby that my parents used only for formal occasions, and there weren’t many of those. The east wing had quarters for our tutors, for our physician, Dr. Botkin, and his children, Gleb and Tatiana, and for Mama’s ladies-in-waiting and Papa’s gentlemen. Between the two wings was a huge semicircular hall with a giant dome, filled with busts and portraits of important people.

OTMA shared two large bedrooms (Big Pair in one, Little Pair in the other), slept on camp beds with thin mattresses, endured cold morning baths, and kept diaries in which we recorded the events of our day. I thought the diaries were a waste of time, because every day was almost the same as the previous one, even when we’d moved to a different palace. Sometimes we bargained for a change: Olga finally persuaded Mama to persuade Papa that warm evening baths were more beneficial for young girls than cold baths in the morning. We thought the biggest treat in the world was having Papa’s permission to use his huge marble swimming bath.

Our bedrooms, schoolroom, and music room were on the floor above our parents’ rooms, connected by an elevator because Mama tired easily and could not use the stairs. Our
maids and governesses and nurses occupied the rooms across the hall. Beyond the palace was a Chinese village, built by Catherine the Great, who liked Chinese things, and a small traditional Russian village called Feodorovsky Gorodok that Papa had had built. There was also a zoo with an elephant, a favorite with Alexei, who especially loved to visit when the great animal was bathing. When we weren’t imprisoned with our tutors and punished with interminable lessons, we went boating in summer and skating on an artificial lake and sledding down the ice mountain that the servants built for us in winter. There was an island with a playhouse, as well as lots of parkland that would have been a fine place to wander. But there really was no such thing for us as just
wandering
—we always had to be guarded. I amused myself by trying to escape from the huge, black-bearded Cossack whose duty was to guard me. I was never successful.

When Papa went out for a walk at half past eleven, our tutors set us free and we went with him. At noon there were more visitors and more reports for Papa and more studies for us, until luncheon at one. We joined Papa and whatever visitors he had invited—Mama usually chose to eat with Alexei in her boudoir. Father Vassiliev in his long black robe was there to pronounce the blessing in a loud, cracking voice. The chef prepared three courses, but Papa stuck to his borscht and his cabbage soup.

Chef Kharitonov drew up several menus each morning. The menus were then presented to Mama by Count Benckendorff, a dignified man with snowy whiskers and a monocle, the grand marshal in charge of managing almost everything that went on
in the palace. Mama decided on the meals for that day, and the grand marshal carried the orders back to the chef.

Mama also decided what we would wear. She preferred matching outfits: one day we might all dress in black skirts and white silk blouses, and on another day she’d pick white dresses with pale green sashes. Some days it varied a little: Big Pair wore blue sashes and Little Pair wore yellow. Only once did I announce that I did not want to wear the blue dress with the sailor collar, which I disliked. Mama reacted with such shock at this act of rebellion that I never did it again.

Mama seldom rose from her bed before noon, claiming that she felt too tired or ill to speak with us. Instead, she wrote us long letters in which she lectured us on our behavior. She sent a maid to deliver them.

I hated getting one of those letters. I had been sent quite a few, usually about something I had said, rather than something I had done. Marie burst into tears whenever she received one, sobbing, “I don’t believe Mama loves me!” When I tried to tell her that I loved her, all of us loved her, she was the best sister in the world, and
of course
Mama and Papa loved her, she wailed, “No, Nastya, they love you best—Papa calls you
Shvibzik
, the imp, because you always make him laugh. Tanya is always so well organized, she’s our governess, and she’s so close to Mama, she knows how to keep Mama happy. And Olya—”

“It’s Olya we should feel sorry for,” I interrupted. “You’re sweet-tempered, everyone loves you, even if you don’t believe it, Papa goes on and on about what an angel you are, that you must have wings hidden somewhere. But poor Olya! Nothing she does pleases Mama—that’s why they argue.”

Olga was always the quiet one—unless she and Mama were arguing. Mama didn’t call them “arguments” or “disagreements.” Instead, she said, “Olya is having another of her sulks.”

•  •  •

Olga was our best musician. She could play almost anything by ear and sight-read pieces easily. I practiced as little as possible, but Olga willingly spent hours in the music room next to our schoolroom, playing scales and arpeggios and going over a piece until it was perfect. That was the best time to have a look at her secret notebook. I had only to worry about being caught by Tatiana, but since Tatiana spent most of her free time with Mama, I often decided to risk it.

When I played a Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody at my lesson yesterday, my teacher said, “If you were not a grand duchess, you would certainly become known as a fine concert pianist.”

I think about what she said and wonder if it might be true.