Anastasia.
July 17, 1917. I was so bored. It had been half an hour since the guards had made us wake up in the middle of the night and told us to get dressed because apparently, there was a shooting outside. We were all now in the cellar downstairs.
I yawned, I wanted to get back to bed too, at least my little brother and mama had chairs to sit on, the poor dears, they are in front of us with papa while I am behind with my three sisters and our 4 remaining servants. My sister Tatiana, left of me, is carrying her dog Ortipo, while my dog Jimmy was walking around the room, so cute. My brother´s dog Joy must be lurking outside the house somewhere, he always does that, how I envy him now, he has more freedom than us.
It had been half an hour, but it felt like more, I wanted to either sleep or leave this house already! Wondering where we were going to be taken next was the only fun thing to do.
_I wonder if they are going to move us to a different city_ my sister Mashka said, as if reading my thoughts.
_ I don´t know dear_ answered papa with a smile, turning around from the door to face us_ we may not be taken anywhere, there is fighting outside, and they may have brought us here just for our own protection.
_ I miss Tobolsk_ she told our father_ I hope if they move us, it is to a similar place, or maybe Crimea to be with grandma, but I think is unlikely.
_God willing, we may not stay here for long_ mama said from her chair, also turning her head around as much as she could, she was stroking Alyosha´s hair with one hand.
He was sitting in the chair beside mama´s, looking half asleep with his head turned upwards, poor baby. He had managed to stand on one leg a few days ago, I really hope he gets better soon and is able to play outside at least for the miserable minutes the guards allow us, he has been sad these past few weeks, I can tell even if he tries not to show it.
_ I also preferred Tobolsk_ said Tanya, my second oldest sister.
_I don´t understand why they couldn´t just let us live there_ I added_ I see no point in bringing us here, I am sure they saw we were happy there and did it just to annoy us.
I saw Olga roll her eyes discreetly and my heart sank, she used to love my dumb comments and even play along with me, but these past few weeks she has not been the same, it was getting harder to lift the spirits of my family now that we had been imprisoned for almost 2 years.
_ Remember it is all in God´s hands darling_ mama said to me _ we may be getting rescued soon for all we know.
Suddenly Yurovsky, the man in charge of the other guards, storms into the cellar with 5 other men and they place themselves in front of us.
Both mama and papa quickly turned back their attention to the door where they all came from.
One of the men was smiling, but his smile looked sinister, it wouldn´t have scared me if I wasn´t seeing so many men in front of us, they all had guns in their hands, it can´t be, can it? There had to be a trial at least! Was that not how things worked? I started praying in my head to God for me to be wrong or at least give us strength if it really was what my panic filled mind told me it was.
Yurovsky took a piece of paper from his pocket. My heart started beating faster. He started reading it:
_In view of the fact that your relatives in Europe continue their assault on Soviet Russia, the presidium of Ural Regional Soviet has sentenced you to be shot. In view of the fact that the Czechoslovaks are threatening the red capital of the Urals, Ekaterinburg, and in view of the fact that the crowned executioner might escape the people´s court; the presidium of the Regional Soviet, fulfilling the will of the revolution, has decreed that the former Tsar Nicholas Romanov, guilty of countless bloody crimes against the people, should be shot.
It couldn´t be, these are the kinds of things that happen to other people, historical characters, or people in the newspapers, but not us.
_So, you are not taking us anywhere? _ I heard our loyal friend, Dr. Botkin, say in a somewhat confrontational tone of voice.
_ What? What? _ said papa, perplexed, while looking back and forward to his family_ read it again please._ Yurovsky complied, I saw my mother and my sister Olga, left of me, cross themselves while he read the same piece of paper again. I heard my sister Tatiana, left of her exclaim "Oh, no!". I heard our maid gasp. I heard worried murmurs from our three remaining male servants. I heard my father start to say the phrase I had heard so many times at church.
_ God forgive them for they don´t know what…_ but Yurovsky raised his gun and shot him before he could finish. It was so loud, more than I thought it would sound, it wasn´t one but two, three, all the men were also aiming at him and started shooting papa´s exploding chest before his blood soaked corpse finally collapsed on the floor, his entire upper body was completely red, the floor was filled with so much blood.
I screamed, all of us women were screaming, the screams were almost as loud as the gunshots. Mama was the only one who didn´t scream, because she was shot in the head as soon as my father hit the floor, the side of her head exploded just like my father´s chest had, sending blood all across the room, and staining my white shirt. She fell from the chair. I could hear Tatiana hysterically screaming for her, this was too much too soon; how could our dear parents, who were talking to us so lovingly a few seconds before, be those two lifeless, unmoving and bloody things? I screamed and screamed, hugging my sister Maria as tight as I could, trying to get away from those men who had just killed our parents, trying to get away from the corpses, we sat close together in a corner, I don´t know when we started crying.
The men then started shooting at us, where they killing us too? I was so scared, how much would it hurt? God please make it quick!
The shooting seemed to go on forever, the screams seemed to go on forever.
After a while of shooting, the room was so filled with smoke that the armed men got out. Even through the smoke I could see my brother, still sitting on his chair paralyzed, with a hand covering his eyes and the other hand clutched tightly on the seat, he wasn´t making a sound, how could he be so calm? I wanted to go see if he was injured but I was too scared to move, I thought that if I moved even an inch those evil men would come back as soon as I did, like they could feel all my movements.
Mashka was sobbing and praying out loud by my side. I saw Olga on the ground, she wasn´t moving, was she dead? I wished I had managed to make her laugh one last time. Tatiana was sitting in the corner opposite from us, weeping and saying "God have mercy on us" repeatedly. Anna was also on the floor; her skirt was covered in blood. Two of our male servants appeared to be injured, they were making pained sounds. Botkin is the only one who was dead for sure, his head had a hole and blood was coming out of it.
I cried, it suddenly hit me that they were dying because of their loyalty to us, and the men would come back and finish us; I wasn´t scared to die if it was God´s will, mother and father used to tell us that whatever happened we had to accept it. I believed we would all meet again, but I feared the pain and watching my loved ones go through the same thing, I feared the process. I couldn´t bear the idea of my sisters 'or brother´s heads ending up like mama´s.
I heard the sobs of my sisters, moans and troubled breaths, my sister Masha was shaking beside me.
The smoke in the room cleared, and the armed men entered again, some of them had bayonets instead of guns. I started sobbing so hard I began having trouble breathing and covered myself with one of the pillows we had brought to the cellar. I felt my sister Mashka standing up, what was she doing? I realized she was trying to open the backdoor, yelling for help in the process.
_ Help! Help, please, somebody help us! _ she yelled.
I stood up and went to help her, having to step over Botkin´s body in order to do so, I started to feel sick.
The men walked closer, making us more and more desperate to open the door, but it was useless, it was locked. I recognized one of them as the man with the creepy smile, they ignored Alexei, and I was too scared at the moment to notice how strange that was. Alyosha was still sitting on the chair in the same position, but I could now hear him sobbing.
One of the men moved towards the valet, Trupp, who laid injured on the floor. Trupp tried to cover his face with his hand, he was shot in the neck. Tatiana, who was near, started screaming again, hugging Ortipo and trying to get away.
The man with the creepy smile then went over to our cook, Kharitonov, who pleaded with him.
_Please_ he said, with a lot of effort due to pain and trying to crawl away as far as possible from that monster. But that man could not be reasoned with, he shot the cook three times. Me and Maria started hitting the backdoor with our palms desperately, it was pathetic. My hands hurt from trying to knock down the door, knowing full well it is impossible. My heart hurts for mama, for papa, for Olga, for our friends, poor Kharitonov who had taught us how to make bread just days before and was now dead.
The man then started walking towards us, I heard Jimmy barking, he was still alive, he barked at the man with the smile, who noticed and shot him as well. I hated him, I hated all of these men, I wanted them to die and not us, it wasn´t fair.
Suddenly, Anna Demidova stood up and shouted frantically:
_ Thank God! God has saved me!
All the men in the room turned towards her and started bayoneting her, poor Anna tried so hard to fight back but was stabbed again and again, the men seemed just as scared of her as she was of them, her screams of pain were unbearable to listen to, the whole thing lasted for a minute at least. Tatiana and Olga, who appeared to have only fainted before, screamed the whole time while watching the horrible scene unfolding before them, hugging each other with Ortipo in the middle. Maria had given up trying to open the door and was now sitting on the floor praying, moving back and forward and crying.
I didn´t want this, I didn´t want to die like that, I didn´t want my siblings to suffer that, oh please help us lord.
Alexei was no longer sitting in the chair, he was now laying on the ground shaking and hugging mama and papa, or what was left of them, I noticed he caressed mama´s blood soaked hair, like she had done to him a few minutes before, as if she could still feel it; the fact that mama was gone hurt me harder than ever before, with memories passing through my mind of her taking care of me when I was sick with diphtheria.
_ Stop that already, she is dead! _ I heard one of the men say to the ones who kept stabbing Anna´s lifeless body. I recognized him as Yurovsky _ go get the girls.
_ ¡No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! _ Olga yelled as one of the men grabbed her by the arm. Here it comes, now they are actually going to kill her. But the man carried her like a sack across the shoulder and took her out of the room kicking and screaming. Then another man started to do the same with Tanya, who asked them, sobbing and barely able to speak, where they were taking them, but she didn´t put any resistance and didn´t drop Ortipo while they carried her. I couldn´t believe this was happening to us, were they going to torture us? Now for the first time the thought crossed my mind that death wasn´t such a bad thing after all.
The only guard left in the room was the man with the smile, who started walking towards us yet again, I ran across the room, I would not let this evil man touch me, I felt good about myself for a second before the blood on the floor made me slip and fall, I landed on my hands, which hurt a lot.
The man went instead after my sister, who put a lot of resistance, she yelled, cried, moved and tried to kick him until the brute punched her in the face and her nose started bleeding, when she put her hands in her nose he hit her in the stomach with his knee and took advantage of her weakness to put his arms around her and take her out of the room.
Now I was alone, covered in blood with no sounds except for the ones made by my crying brother, still clinging to the bodies of our parents. I wept too, I considered trying to comfort him, but there was really nothing that could comfort him right now. I considered saying goodbye to my parents just like he was doing but I was scared to look at them or even touch them.
I had seen dead bodies before in the lazaret, where I visited wounded soldiers with Maria, but this was different, if I saw the bodies of my death parents then they would really be death. The thought of what my parents´ faces would look like now made me feel even more sick than before, I had to empty my stomach in a corner. Those bodies could not be my parents.
I felt footsteps coming, my heart was now beating so hard I was sure the men would hear it. Part of me clung to the irrational hope that they had forgotten about me and my brother and we would be able to escape the house and ask for help.
I was so scared, whatever they were going to do with us… would it hurt? Will they kill us after? I no longer knew what I wanted the answer to thar question to be. And what would happen to our precious Alyosha? Are they going to let him live? He was only 13! But I knew that thought was ridiculous, these monsters had already murdered a couple in front of their children and stabbed a helpless woman to death, what could stop them from killing a child?
The owner of the footsteps arrives, it is neither Yurovsky nor the other guy, he grabs my arm so tightly I am sure it will bruise later.
_Please_ I tell him_ please tell me where you are taking us, what are you going to do? Are you going to spare us? _He ignores me and tries to grab me by the waist.
I start struggling, I am very angry now, he wants me to do as he says, takes part in the killing of my family, and doesn´t even have the courtesy of talking to me and explaining what is happening. I start hitting and kicking him while he still tried to drag me out of the room and then upstairs by the hair, it hurt so badly, I managed to get out of his grasp tree times by biting him in the arm. I poured out all my anger at him.
_ I need help here! _ he shouted to the men upstairs while I kept hitting him to stop him from grabbing me. Help did come. Two men, one of which was the man with the smile, entered the room. They looked amused by what they saw when they entered.
_ You can´t overpower the short little fat one comrade? _ said the one with the smile, the other one laughed. _ Grab her by one arm each of you.
After the two men did as they were told the man with the smile slapped me in the face.
_ If you don´t behave I am going to skin you alive in front of your pretty sisters upstairs. Are we clear?
I started whimpering harder than before when I heard that threat, I had seen the face of that man as he stabbed our maid, he was the only one of the men who looked like we was enjoying the whole situation, instead of looking distressed, I didn´t doubt for a moment he was capable of doing what he had threatened to do.
The two men holding me still seemed to find my crying funny, because they started laughing as soon as the man made the threat. The cruel man slapped me again.
_ Are we clear? _ He repeated.
I nodded and my body went limp. I tried to pretend I was not part of this world; nothing was happening, and no one was laughing at me.
I felt angry at myself for making these men laugh because of my crying, I felt embarrassed too, for looking so weak in front of them. I wanted them to be the ones crying after what they had done to my parents, to our doctor, to our poor maid.
They took me upstairs; I could still hear Alexei back in the room crying.