The Resurrection of the Romanovs (7 page)

Age brought a natural end to the most audacious of her practical jokes and tomboyish behavior, though Anastasia replaced them with an often reckless, acerbic wit. Her humor, sharp, pointed, and often unwelcome, honed in on humiliation and mockery, and she developed a keen sense of mimicry.
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Relatives, courtiers, servants—no one was safe from her unstinting lampoons of personal foibles and flaws. “Ladies who came to see my sister-in-law,” recalled Olga Alexandrovna, “never knew that, somewhere unseen in the background, their Empress’s youngest daughter was watching every movement of theirs, every peculiarity, and later it would all come out when we were by ourselves. That art of Anastasia’s was not really encouraged but, oh, what fun we had!” She especially recalled how adeptly her niece had acted the role of an obese countess who claimed to have suffered a heart attack on seeing a mouse; it was, Olga admitted, all “very naughty,” though she had to admit that everyone thought Anastasia “was certainly brilliant at it.”
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Aboard the imperial yacht
Standart
about 1911. From left: Tatiana, Marie, Olga, Empress Alexandra, and Anastasia.

These petty amusements perhaps hinted at something of greater concern, had Nicholas and Alexandra possessed a more discerning attitude, for all of their children tended, in varying degrees, to be somewhat immature. The imperial couple encouraged innocent little romances with young officers from their yacht or with members of the suite who partnered the girls in dancing and tennis matches but “continued to regard them as children,” as Anna Vyrubova recalled.
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“Even when the two eldest had grown into real young women,” said one courtier, “one might hear them talking like little girls of ten or twelve.”
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It was as Alexandra wanted it: a family protected from the potentially dangerous and morally questionable world beyond the palace walls, but it left her son and daughters isolated from emotional influences that might have better helped steer them through the tumultuous years to come. Anastasia’s own letters underscored not just the normalcy of her life but also the childish atmosphere in which she lived. “I am sitting picking my nose with my left hand,” a twelve-year-old Anastasia wrote to her father. “Olga wanted to biff me one, but I escaped her swinish hand!”
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A year later, again writing to her father, she noted how a nineteen-year-old Olga Nikolaievna was “hitting Marie, and Marie is shouting like an idiot”; even at a time when uncertainty and death hovered over the empire, Anastasia thought it funny that her eldest sister had led them all in mock battles using toy guns and in racing their bicycles through the palace rooms.
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Anastasia enjoyed this stream of happy games and laughter, and indeed, there was much to enjoy. Life settled into a quiet, pleasant routine: winters at Tsarskoye Selo; perhaps a few nights—when it was absolutely unavoidable—in St. Petersburg’s immense Winter Palace; and, if possible, Easter in the Crimea. The isolated peninsula, jutting its rocky cliffs and beaches into the clear waters of the Black Sea, was a world unto itself, a tropical paradise of palm and cypress trees, rolling vineyards and lush roses. Here, at the imperial estate of Livadia, Nicholas and Alexandra built an Italianate palazzo, a sprawling white palace of loggias and sun-washed courtyards high above the crashing surf. Life at Livadia was deliberately informal, dominated by walks in the fragrant gardens, games of tennis, excursions to nearby picturesque villages, and afternoons spent swimming, though the waves that broke along the beach were particularly dangerous. Once, Anastasia was happily splashing about in the water when a breaker sucked her beneath the surface. Nicholas, watching from the beach, dove into the sea and barely managed to pull his youngest daughter to safety; shortly after, he had a canvas pool built atop the bluff so that his children could swim in safety.
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The warm climate in the Crimea was particularly beneficial for tubercular patients, and the empress used the fact to introduce her daughters to the idea of noblesse oblige. They sponsored hospitals and clinics in the surrounding hills, and regularly visited patients despite occasional protests. A courtier once objected to the practice, asking Alexandra, “Is it safe, Madame, for the young Grand Duchesses to have people in the last stages of consumption kiss their hands?”

“I don’t think it will hurt the children,” the empress replied, “but I am sure it would hurt the sick if they thought that my daughters were afraid of infection.”
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To aid these patients, Alexandra organized two annual events. The first, a charity bazaar, always took place along the quay in Yalta, and everyone contributed, the grand duchesses adding their needlework, small watercolors, and vases they had painted to the assemblage of knickknacks, souvenir postcards, furniture, and food that Alexandra and others sold from awning-draped booths along the pier.
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But it was the Day of White Flowers that not only allowed the imperial siblings to make a meaningful contribution but also gave them a rare taste of freedom. On the appointed day, they left the protected confines of Livadia and freely roamed the streets of Yalta, holding long staffs decorated with clusters of white flowers. They entered shops, stopped motorcars, and engaged strollers in impromptu conversations, asking for donations in exchange for one of their flowers “as enthusiastically as though their fortunes depended on selling them all,” remembered Anna Vyrubova.
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On no other occasion, and in no other place than the Crimea, could Anastasia so freely meet and mingle with her father’s subjects.

The Russian imperial family, 1914. From left: Olga, Marie, Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, Anastasia, Alexei, and Tatiana.

Time in the Crimea was pleasant and relaxed, but lessons, duties, and imperial obligations still managed to intrude. Real escape only came each June, when the Romanovs spent several weeks cruising through the Gulf of Finland aboard their yacht
Standart
. If, at Livadia, the routine of court life carried on in abbreviated form, summer cruises were true holidays, free of all cares. More than four hundred feet long and manned by some three hundred sailors, the
Standart
was a sleek, black-hulled vessel, with wicker furniture scattered over awning-shaded teak decks and comfortably appointed cabins decorated in chintz and mahogany.
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All of the grand duchesses, recalled a courtier, “loved the sea,” as well as the “intimacy with their beloved father, which was otherwise impossible. To be at sea with their father—that was what constituted their happiness.”
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Sailing through the Finnish Skerries, the yacht would anchor in some secluded cove, and the imperial family went ashore. Nicholas walked with the suite, rowed, and shot game; Alexandra read and did needlework; and the grand duchesses hunted in the forest for wild berries and mushrooms. When they returned to the
Standart
, there were teas on deck and dances for the grand duchesses, partnered by handsome young officers.
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Tsesarevich Alexei with Alexandra Tegleva (“Shura,” later the wife of Pierre Gilliard).

With autumn came another move, this one to Poland, so that Nicholas could hunt at one of his country estates. In September 1912 they arrived excited and relieved at Spala: excited to once again temporarily abandon some of the intrusive pressures that came from life at court, and relieved because just two weeks earlier, Alexei had injured himself while jumping into a boat, but after a few days the crisis had luckily passed.
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The lodge, a rambling wooden chalet so gloomy that electric lights burned throughout the day, sat in the middle of a thick forest of evergreen, fir, and pine fringed by the chilly waters of the Pilitsa River.
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While Nicholas hunted, the grand duchesses roamed the woods collecting mushrooms, took carriage rides over the sandy roads, or played games of tennis on the clay court.

One day, thinking that the air would do him good, Alexandra took her eight-year-old son for a ride in the forest. As the carriage jostled over the uneven, sandy roadways, the swelling from the previous hemorrhage in Alexei’s thigh dislodged, and the internal bleeding began anew. “Every movement of the carriage,” Anna Vyrubova recalled, “every rough place in the road, caused the child the most exquisite torture, and by the time we reached home, the boy was almost unconscious with pain.”
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The tsesarevich took to his bed in agony with a high temperature as the blood flowed from the upper left thigh into the abdomen, into an ugly swelling; the pressure was unbearable, but nothing could be done. Day and night, the tsesarevich’s screams rang through the villa, terrible wails so heartrending that servants and members of the suite had to stuff their ears with cotton to continue their work.
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It was all the more vivid, this sound track to an unraveling nightmare, as the silence of worry, of an urgent sense of despair, of impending death, descended over Spala.

This reality, that Alexei was desperately ill and his life in danger—Nicholas knew it, Alexandra knew it, the grand duchesses knew it, and a few members of the suite knew it—and yet dozens of others at Spala had no idea what was wrong, or just how serious the situation had become. A tragic charade, dictated by the imperial couple’s decision to conceal their son’s hemophilia, meant that life went on, said one courtier, “as if nothing were happening.” An idea had been drummed into Anastasia and her sisters, the necessity of secrecy, of deception where their brother’s health was concerned, an emotional struggle to maintain a facade of normalcy in the face of looming catastrophe. Even as their brother lay dying, recalled a member of the suite, the grand duchesses “never mentioned a word.”
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For ten days, Alexandra rarely left her son’s bedside; the only comfort she could offer him was her presence. She “never undressed,” recalled Anna Vyrubova, “never went to bed, rarely even laid down for an hour’s rest. Hour after hour, she sat beside the bed where the half-conscious child lay huddled on one side, his left leg drawn up. . . . His face was absolutely bloodless, drawn and seamed with suffering, while his almost expressionless eyes rolled back in his head. Once, when the Emperor came into the room, seeing the boy in this agony and hearing the faint screams of pain, the poor father’s courage completely gave way, and he rushed—weeping bitterly—to his study.”
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Only one other person at Spala truly understood what the empress suffered: this was her sister Irene, Princess Heinrich of Prussia, who had come to the lodge for a brief holiday with her sixteen-year-old son Sigismund, known as Bobby.
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Married to the brother of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Irene—like Alexandra—was a hemophilia carrier, and had passed the disease to her two other sons, Waldemar and Heinrich. Like Alexandra, she had endured the agonies of uncertain days and nights, watching helplessly as her sons suffered without relief; unlike the empress, though, she knew loss, for her son Heinrich had died at age four when, following a minor accident, he hemorrhaged to death.
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This shared pain, this maternal guilt, created a bond between Alexandra and Irene that came to the fore at Spala that autumn, providing the desperate empress with an ally who shared her agony.