AS REAL AS WATER
(first published in Art Times (USA)
1920
It’s so cold I can no longer feel my feet or my fingers. Could it be any colder? It’s the cold of being buried in a block of ice, a deep-frozen Sleeping Beauty. I can’t bend my fingers at all.
I could jump. The shock of the water would take my breath away but the pain would be brief. Only twenty years old and here I am, widowed, inviting death to claim my poor body and whatever soul I possess.
It was wrong of me to put the boy in an orphanage; I hope they treat him well.
There are no papers on my body, so I will be buried without a name. I shall sing it into the air, my name that will never be spoken again, never heard.
‘I am…’ How to phrase it? Whispering is better – I want no one to rescue me: ‘My name is Franziska Tchaikovsky.’
I wake up and feel as though I’m drowning in grey, soupy water, pushing me down to the silt at the bottom.
‘You’re awake, then?’
This isn’t the face of death. Is she watching me from above or is she in the water with me?
I say nothing. The woman takes hold of my shoulders and pulls me up, out of the water.
‘No! Leave me alone! Let me go!’
‘Don’t be stupid. Get up, now.’
She drags me out of the dream and I see where I am.
‘How did I get here, please?’
‘Someone thought you were worth rescuing. Personally, I would have left you to your fate.’
With that, she flounces off, all starch and indignation.
I know who I am but I swore I would never hear those words again. No one knows me. I must forget the poor widow and her humble, pointless life.
I decide to say nothing. Whenever anyone asks me a question, I remain silent.
‘We need to know who you are,’ a doctor says. I smile – a special smile. I’m somewhere between a saint and a simpleton.
‘Do you not speak German, is that the problem?’ He tries the same question in English, in Russian, in Polish. I understand all of them but say nothing.
The doctor sighs. ‘Such a pretty girl,’ he says to the nurse, who sniffs. ‘Eyes the colour of forget-me-nots.’
They leave me to one of my fellow patients, a gigantic woman so fat she finds it hard to breathe.
‘I know you,’ she says. ‘Look.’ She shows me a photograph of a young woman with a diamond choker around her long neck and a tiara on her head.
‘That’s you, isn’t it?’ Berthe says. ‘You couldn’t hide it from me. I know all about you. They said you were dead.’
I finger the photo. It’s only a picture cut from a newspaper. ‘You can keep it, if you like,’ she says. She bends closer, to whisper in my ear: ‘I know you understand me. I know everything about you.’
She likes being my friend. She likes it when the medical staff speak to me and I won’t reply. Berthe watches, smirking, stuffing the blanket into her mouth, stifling her giggles.
‘You are physically well,’ the doctor says. ‘We can do nothing more for you. Mentally…I have to assume you understand what I’m saying to you. We shall be transferring you to a specialist hospital.’
Berthe doesn’t want me to go. I think she is the one who should be in a lunatic asylum, not I.
‘I’m going to plait your hair for you,’ Berthe says. ‘When you go, I want you to look like a royal princess so they won’t treat you like an ordinary person.’
She cries as she fixes my hair with rusty hairpins that grate against each strand. My eyes water but I won’t cry out, not even to Berthe.
‘I’ll always remember you,’ Berthe says, holding up a mirror so I can see my new self. Not Franziska – she is dead, rotting at the bottom of a filthy Berlin canal.
1921
I swap one hospital for another one but I miss Berthe. Here, the doctors don’t care who I am or what I say or if I say nothing.
After a few days, my hair is matted, the pins lost in the bed until they poke me as I turn over in the night.
Although I’m left alone, I don’t enjoy the company of lunatics. It’s time to become the girl with pearls I saw in Berthe’s faded picture. Once they hear me speak, they’ll know I’m not mad like those poor women who chew their own fingers until they bleed.
I haven’t Berthe’s talent for hairdressing, but I do my best with the old hairpins and some sugar water. I have no jewels, of course. Berthe told me the Romanov girls sewed diamonds into their clothes. The bullets, she thought, ricocheted off the jewels. Just imagine that: it’s fantastic and beautiful that not even a deadly bullet can shatter a diamond.
‘Doctor,’ is my first word. He looks startled. He has a grey beard, neatly trimmed, and a finicky manner.
‘So: our patient speaks, at last.’ He sits on the chair by my bed, crossing his legs like a woman.
‘My name is Anastasia,’ I begin. It takes him a while before he realises I’m claiming to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia.
‘No, no, my dear. Delusions…’
‘No! Let me prove it. Find someone who knows about the Tsar and his family. I will answer any question.’ And I would do so: I’d memorised everything Berthe had told me about the royal family.
He walks away, shaking his head, muttering to himself. I think I’ve failed and merely confirmed my madness, but two days later he’s back, with a Russian woman.
‘Who was in the cellar with you?’ she asks, with preamble or introduction.
‘My three sisters. My brother. Our parents. Three servants and our dear doctor.’
Someone is taking notes as I speak.
‘In which year were you born?’
‘1901.’ It is true, actually, for both of us.
‘Where were you – that is, where was your family executed?’
‘Ekaterinburg.’ At that, I roll over and bury my head in the pillows. Grief, they’ll assume.
‘Our medical examinations show that you’ve had a child.’
‘A son…yes. I married a soldier – the one who rescued me. He saved my life.’
Will they believe you? Do they consider me insane? If I can be Anastasia, I can forget that other girl and her feeble, penniless husband. They might give me jewels – carriages – a title. I don’t care what it takes: if I can’t be Anastasia then I am no one. That other girl is dead. Drowned in a cold canal.
1922
The doctor is back, with a team of medical men.
‘We have decided to release you,’ he says. ‘A relative of the, um, Russians has offered to provide you with shelter. What he thinks of your story is up to him.’
‘My story? It’s not a story.’ The men look at each other. They don’t believe me, then. Who is this Russian who will take me in? Is he perhaps an impersonator, as I am, with unclean reasons for wanting me?
‘Is he married, this Russian man?’
‘Count your blessings, young woman. Such as they are.’ It’s no answer. I am an undeserving cause and an embarrassment because, after all, I might genuinely be Grand Duchess Anastasia. They don’t know.
I gather up my meagre belongings. I have only the clothes I wore when I was hauled from the canal. Her clothes. They are dry and clean but they’re not mine.
‘I can’t wear these clothes,’ I tell the nurse.
‘And why ever not? I suppose you think you should have a ballgown and clatter with jewels, your highness.’
I put on the clothes. I just want to get out of here.
‘Good riddance,’ the nurse says, opening the door and giving me my first glimpse of the outside world in nearly two years. It’s still cold.
‘Wait…’ But the door is closed, bolted from the inside. I think I would rather be mad than free.
The Russian is waiting for me.
‘Anastasia?’ I can nod, and live with the consequences, or I can tell him my real name. Her name. Franziska.
I look at him. I know nothing about this man. Like me, he could be anyone.
‘Do you hear me, Anastasia? Can you speak?’
‘I hear you.’
I pick up my bags and follow him.