Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova.
My brother and I have played for a long time, mainly checkers and colorito, which is the game Mashka and mama used to play all the time together. We have played new games I don´t even have names for. We even invented a new game with cards.
It has been good fun. The excitement of inspecting different things is so distracting even Alexei looks at ease, invested in his new surroundings like the artic explorer he is probably going to be once he is older, if the idiots ever let us leave that is. But of course, they can´t, because we are so cunning we would take over the world in little more than a week, and so would all of our friends they have arrested. I understand their concern.
Alyosha is sitting on the floor with both his legs straight out. He is leaning against the bed. I have placed a pillow under his bad leg and am usually the one who moves his pieces so that he does not have to.
I win most times. Alexei beats almost everyone but me. He used to get really angry about this as well, or any time he lost actually. He and Mashka would have the most hilarious fights about it and papa would scold them every time. I die a little bit when I remember. A horrible image irrupts into my mind. Who allowed that nonsense to be there? I shoo it away and focus on the game.
We had a tiny argument recently, the first time he lost, although I am willing to admit I cheated that time, but it is not like Alyosha never cheats. It is a payback of sorts, for cheating, and for the fuss he makes whenever he loses. He is so dramatic.
Now Alexei is tired, so he does not care much for winners or losers. I don´t know what I am going to do when he gets too tired. I don´t want to go to bed. I can´t stay awake while bored. If I stop doing something, anything, it will all come back.
I wanted to go to bed then, not now when my parents are dead. I do not want to wake up without them. I don´t care how tired I am. I don´t care my eyelids feel as if they weighed as much as I do. I defy it. Why should I sleep now? Why am I allowed to now? Only when they are gone?
Right now we are playing the card game we invented and have only spoken Tarabar since we started. Tarabar is my brother and I´s secret and also invented language. Well, it is not really a language. We just put established syllables before every real syllable of every word, something that makes all sentences exceedingly long, but one gets used to it.
Alyosha grumbles something I don´t understand very well when he loses again.
"Can we go to bed now?" My brother whines, in Tarabar of course. He yawns.
His eyes have been trying to close for minutes now.
"You really want to go to bed?" I ask. My brother nods as he rubs one of his eyes. "And lose the challenge you made me?" I tease him. He stops rubbing his eye when I do.
"I didn't make you any challenge", he frowns.
"Well, I am making it a challenge now" I say. "The first to fall asleep is a red pig".
The next moment is priceless. He frowns furiously at me as he raises one of his eyebrows.
"Are you serious?" Alyosha appears to be asking with that look, but he stays silent.
By way of answer, I don´t stop grinning. He rolls his eyes. Then he sighs.
"Fine", he eventually accepts.
I observe the huge effort it takes for him to stay awake. He yawns loudly and then sighs again.
"Can we play colorito again?" He asks in a tiny voice. I nod, it is only fair.
I know it is a bit cruel, what I am doing. He truly does need sleep. Our faces are so swollen by earlier tears we look like scary monsters, but maybe Alexei will find this fun.
I love his daring side, so similar to mine, and I have not seen him cry ever since we started playing. Either way, I don´t want to wake up without papa saying good morning to us while stopping by our room outside in the corridor.
I don´t miss them now. Truly, I don´t. Way too little time has passed. We have spent way more time without papa and mama while they were still alive but had work to do.
Their deaths seem so unreal. The whole thing feels so weird, as if it hadn´t really happened. So horrible I can´t believe I even survived the pain. It couldn´t have been me in that cellar. I would have fallen apart. It had to be some other Anastasia, the ´me´ of my nightmare. I started to feel that way for the first time while we were upstairs and they were touching us. Like everything was happening around me and not to me.
For a second I felt as if I were watching a film, yelling at the protagonist to hide her jewels. My brother and sisters praised me for it, but at that time, I didn´t feel I was the one hiding anything. I felt so separated from everything I did.
I felt so separated from what happened so many times even today. It is quite embarrassing. My sisters must think that I don´t care. Alexei is, at least, young enough to have acted like me at times. He would never get the wrong idea either.
I said I did miss them, earlier, because the way that stupid man spoke to me after I made that silly face with the fan made me notice clearly, for the first time in this new house, that papa wasn´t there for me to turn to. I felt it, that time I did.
Each morning I wake up I will miss them more. I know. It will slowly become real. I fear the inevitable longing.
I don´t think anyone would ever understand, not even my sisters… this is the first time in years I am not sleeping with them, I realize, and I don´t like it. It feels wrong somehow. They are always there to gossip and joke around before I fall asleep. I wish Mashka were also here to tell her about the real reason I don´t want to sleep. She is the one who might understand the most, even though she would tease me mercilessly before giving any advice… although, well… maybe no teasing today.
She must be asleep already, and I can´t bother Alexei with my weirdness. My little brother would not take me leaving him here nicely either. Sometimes I forget he must be just as scared as I am after what happened. It must be horrible to sleep alone in this strange house without papa and mama as well. Maybe we should put the five beds in one room instead, so we can all sleep together cozily.
I bet Alyosha would love to hear all the nonsense the four of us usually talk about between laughter and giggles before we fall asleep, but I wonder whether the beds would all fit. I wonder if we will even have the same kinds of talks before sleeping from now on… or ever will again.
"Ha, ha, ha", Alyosha brags exaggeratedly. I cross my arms, turn away, and make a haughty face, pretending to be offended by the fact he has won this time.
This is what good days are made of. It would be so much better if our parents and friends were also here though. It would have been much more fun and exciting to do this if papa and mama had been here to possibly catch us past our bedtime. I wonder what room they would have slept in. There are more than two in the upper floors, but they would have probably stayed here with Alexei. My eyes almost flood with tears at the thought. I need to think of something else, of the days Alyosha and I played like this just months ago, but with the knowledge that papa was near to join us at any time.
Papa is... was like a little boy whenever he played with us. I am about to cry now. I breathe in deeply to choke back the tears.
"Well done", I say. Unlike Alexei, I sound completely serious. "But you cheated", I state.
"When?!" Alexei asks with more indignation than a board game fraud allegation merits. He really didn´t, at least not this time. It is just fun to provoke him.
"Here, look", I use my index finger to point at the board game. "You moved a piece when you thought I wasn´t looking".
"What?!" He snarls. "That isn't even true! Which one?!" He is so tired he is falling for this silly old joke again. God, I love him. He leans to have a look.
"Here, closer", I say. Alexei leans in even closer to the game, using one hand to support the weight of his torso. I use the opportunity to quickly raise the index finger I was pointing at the game upwards, hitting his nose in the process. When Alexei was a toddler, Uncle Michael would do the same, but he would pretend to steal Alyosha´s nose instead. I was only five or six at the time, but I observed carefully and learned a similar trick. I wonder where Uncle Misha is now.
"Aww, Nastya!" He groans as he straightens up and puts his hands on his nose, but I don´t worry.
I have done this before, I know how much force to use in order to make it harmless. His frown relaxes and his expression turns into another one of those rare smiles, one that quickly fades like the others. I wonder if he will ever smile again while really wanting to smile, instead of smiling for the sake of any of us four.
We stay silent for a minute.
"I wonder whose house this was", Alexei comments.
"Another engineer´s?" I venture. "The Ipatiev House belonged to one."
"Maybe a geologist´s house", Alyosha continues guessing. "Or a rich peasant´s".
"Maybe an architect´s house, it is very beautiful", I say. "Which makes me wonder Alyosha, what do you want to be when you grow older now?" Alexei shrugs, which makes me sad.
"I will tell you if you tell me", I encourage him.
"I already know yours, you want to be an actress!" He exclaims.
"I don't know", I say. "I have been thinking about other things, I could be a newspaper reporter and travel all around the world to get new stories, or a painter, I would just need to practice more, and it would also be fun to work in the circus". He laughs at this.
"Oh, sure, I can imagine you dancing with the elephants, no one would be able to tell the difference!"
"Alyosha!" I exclaim, genuinely appalled by his insensitive comment. I feel a bit insecure about myself for an instant.
"What?" He asks innocently, seemingly hurt that I did not laugh at his joke.
"That was rude!"
"But you always call yourself…"
"Only I, can call myself… that, you little brat", I mess with his hair a bit more roughly than I usually do and pretend to be more upset than I actually am. He notices.
"Alright then", he says. "Maybe you can be a trapeze artist, but I am worried for the person that will have to catch you, and even more worried about you, I hope you will use a safety net".
I chuckle a bit at that, and we stay silent for a minute. I am so tired I am running out of clever comebacks.
"I don't know if I will actually live to be a grown-up", Alexei finally laments. "And I don´t know if I am good at anything… I wish I could be a soldier, but I can´t, at least not a proper one". My heart breaks for him but I try not to let it show. I use a grin to hide how his words make me feel.
The high likelihood of his early death has always been a known fact. My parents knew. My sisters and I know, but none of us would ever dare say so out loud, least of all in front of him. It is a fact that I, in fact, defy. He will live as long as I have a say in it.
"Can you please hurry up then? Fall down the stairs headfirst this time or something?" I ask, wearing a cheeky smile. "Every time we think it is finally over you amaze the world by continuing to live, this oh-so-inevitable death of yours that has been announced for years never arrives. It is starting to become annoying. We were nice for mama´s sake, but my goodness! You are clearly overstaying".
Alyosha growls in a playful way and then pulls my short blond hair.
It is not the first time we roughhouse. I was always careful, of course, and we did it mostly when neither our parents nor the big pair were there to watch us. His illness never stopped Alyosha from wrestling with the other boys either way, so I always thought it was only fair it didn't stop him from wrestling me, someone who may partially be another boy.
I still panic when he pulls my hair. My eyes grow wide. I frown and hide my lips. I stop moving.
I feel the man who groped my sisters pulling my hair down in the cellar. I was the least affected amongst the four of us, not that they did not manage to touch me once or twice as well, but Tanechka would, whenever she could, place herself in front of me and Maria to protect us. She did this several times. My poor and devoted, sweet, sweet sister. She did not deserve to go through that. I hope she is able to forget about it. I have the sudden urge to hug her really tightly and tell her how much I love her. I will do so tomorrow, but I will make it seem like a joke, of course, I can´t do serious sentimentality unless it is through letters.
Alyosha perceives my fear and immediately releases me. His smile disappears. I am angry about the way our fun has been spoiled. Stupid gross men.
If I let them ruin this for me, they have won, so I grab Alyosha´s hands and guide them back to my hair. Then I lightly grab him by the neck, or more accurately, I put my hands closely around his neck and grind my teeth, pretending to be angry. Alexei gets the message and playfully growls again.
We haven't done this in months, maybe a year or so. Kolya, who is around my brother´s age, was the one who usually wrestled with Alyosha while we were imprisoned at Tobolsk. Kolya was allowed to visit. Then my brother became ill again and wasn´t able to play the same way with Leonid, our kitchen boy.
Alexei has been injured recently, and his bent knee isn´t well yet, so we don´t move too much. We just lean back and forward slightly while grabbing or pretending to grab each other´s necks and hair. We also make angry sounds. It is so pathetic it is hilarious.
Alexei lets go of my hair and touches my face with the palm of his hand slowly, as if giving me a slap.
"Take this!" He yells. I put my hands on my cheek and act as if I were in pain, then I do the same to him with my fist, laying it gently on his face as I frown.
"Pow!" I exclaim. He moves his head backwards dramatically as if he had indeed been punched.
And then we start laughing as we continue to play fight.
God we laugh. I am crying inside, but I genuinely want to laugh, because my brother is laughing as well, and we are both enjoying this ridiculousness. It is a pathetic attempt at wrestling, but it is our pathetic attempt at wrestling.
We stop at some point, of course, even the nonsense we did can get tiring, although it will definitely not help with my weight.
"How silly!" Alexei exclaims, still laughing. "That was so stupid!"
"Well, that clearly wasn´t my fault", I get back at him for calling me fat. "I bet wrestling with a porcelain base would have been more fun".
He simply frowns, but looks more hurt than he lets himself show. A bit too much, I guess. I feel slightly guilty for an instant, but that is just how I get along with everyone.
We stay silent for a minute. I yawn. I am beginning to grow really tired. But not every day will be like this one. The heartache will get worse. I don't want to wake up to another day.
Alexei continues to look around the room.
"There were probably children in here, because there are many board games, as well as the slingshot you found", He observes. "A woman also lived here, because there are lots of makeup, maybe it was the mother. I think this was the mother´s room, because all of the makeup is here, and we found more hairbrushes here than in the other room. Most of the board games and the slingshot were here though… probably because the mother used to take them away whenever the children misbehaved. The cigarettes were in the sisters´ room, so they may have belonged to the children once they grew older. Maybe this woman was one of those who thought smoking was unladylike, and that is why she didn't smoke."
"You are as good as Sherlock Holmes Alyosha, maybe you should be a detective when you grow up, they may even write a book about you. Now, thank me for figuring out your vocation".
Another one of his sad smiles. A minute of silence, two minutes? Then his head lowers and his lip trembles. My eyes are already wet by the time he starts crying.
"I am also very sad, Nastya", he explains. Tears roll down from my own eyes, but Alexei extends his arms and wipes the tears away from my face. I smile at him.
"It has been too horrible, right?" This time it is me talking. I take his hands to keep them on my cheeks.
"Like a horror story", he weeps. "I hate what they did to them, I want mama back already".
More tears fall down my face after hearing this. It may not have been long enough, but right now, there is nothing that he said which is different from what I feel.
I extend my arms, and we hug and cry together. I lean against his bed. He rests his head on my chest while I rest mine on his. Shedding even more tears is painful. Literally painful, not as in sad-painful. I feel as if the salt were piling up and burning through my cheeks. It is too much.
Alexei´s sobs sound like those of a baby. I simply can´t compose myself whenever he is sobbing like that. Like he did in the cellar.
"Do you, think, it, hurt?" Alyosha pauses often to speak. "I wonder, if, all those, bullets, were painful, one after, the other".
"When they shot papa and mama?" I ask, and feeling him nod, I continue: "I don´t think so sunbeam, it was very quick. It may have looked horrible because we saw the result in their bodies, but they were dead very quickly, and corpses can´t feel anything".
"But what about… mama, and her… headaches? Wouldn´t that, bullet have hurt her, for at least a second?"
God. His voice breaks by the word ´bullet´. Lord help us. I don´t really want to think about the answer.
"The important thing is that it has passed", I say as a few more tears roll down my eyes, and he nods again.
"Not, in pain now, it, over… passed", he sobs, more to himself than to me.
"I am afraid to fall asleep", I confess. "I don´t want this day to be over, the last day we saw them alive. Tomorrow, the days without them begin, and so will the longing". He doesn´t say anything, but I think he might understand.
I realize light is coming from the other room. Our sisters must be awake as well. I wonder if they can hear our sobs. I don´t want to worry them.
"But Nastya", my brother weeps after a while in a worried tone, "you have, to sleep, eventually, staying awake, forever, is not good, for your health".
"For ours, silly…" I reply. "I know".
"And the morning will come, even if you don´t sleep", he continues. "We just have to, endure, with God´s help, we can endure, anything, the pain always, passes". I stroke his hair and give him a tearful smile. I wish mama could stroke my hair now.
We keep sobbing. After a few minutes, I realize my sisters have turned off the lights once more, maybe for good this time. A shiver runs through my spine. I am scared. I have been scared since early in the morning, and no daring act can hide the fact. I was never scared. I was the most fearless out of the five.
Once, while still at Ekaterinburg, Alexei said that if they killed us, he hoped they wouldn´t torture us. I had said he was being dramatic and told him none of those things would ever happen. Mama and papa had reassured him that they probably wouldn't torture us. Now I finally understand how scared he was, because I am as well. And his fears were not unfounded. What they did to us in that cellar, and later in the rooms, was torture. This realization makes me upset. The tears won´t stop flowing anytime soon.
I confess this to Alexei, just like I did earlier. I also tell him exactly what I am scared of.
I am scared of having nightmares. I am scared of the new guards and tremble at the thought they might enter our rooms. I hate the fact I am supposed to restrain myself around them to avoid being punished or mistreated like we were this morning, which is why I did stupid things just to prove myself I still could. I am scared I will not like being my old sunny self anymore or ever want to be, that the former me will disappear along with my parents and I won't know how to even exist. I tell him I wanted everything to stay the same, to cheer everyone up as I always had, and just recently have I come to realize no one feels as weird, detached, and separated from what happened as I do. I tell him I feel guilty about the way nightmare-me abandoned Masha when that beast started beating her in the cellar.
Most of all I tell him the truth, that whenever I am not thinking about our parents I feel nothing. Absolutely nothing. And yet I become terrified when I do think of them, because I know myself enough to understand I won't ever be able to live without them. A piece will always be missing. Once I start missing them I will want to die everyday. Mine will be no life but a slow death.
My brother tries to think of helpful things to say. He tries to sound wise, the poor dear. I should be the one comforting him. I never tell him any of my worries. That is what sisters are for.
"It doesn´t matter, how you act, Nastya, or how you feel, or how much, you change", he says, a bit more fluently this time, as if he had tried to compose himself just for me. "I will always love you and be there for you. You are you, always, and I am also afraid". He says the last words shyly.
"I am sorry about what I said about Joy", I tell him. "I was just mad about how they killed our friends and parents, and how you were still thinking about your dog knowing that… but I am also sad about Jimmy, and a bit jealous your dog could still be alive. Maybe I said those things because the way I had been acting, as if nothing had happened, was starting to make me feel a bit like a monster, maybe I wanted to drive the attention away from my behavior."
"Don´t, worry, Nastasia," he breathes in and out deeply. "They would, not have, wanted, you, to feel guilty, like that".
"One could say I wouldn´t have time to think of Jimmy as well, with our parents and friends gone, but in fact, I do think of him, and how he barked before they killed him. He probably thought he was defending us".
"Yes", my brother replies, "Jimmy was, very brave, and so was Eugene, did you hear how he talked to, Yurovsky, right before he started, shooting?" I chuckle.
"Yes", I say. "Dr. Botkin was having none of it at the end, he was being polite no more, ´so you are not taking us anywhere? You absolute beast?! ´"
We laugh out loud. I have said the last sentence imitating our friend, also adding the words I think his tone was conveying at that moment.
"Are you also sorry, about calling Uncle George, the King of England, an idiot?" Alexei asks. I can´t see his face, but he sounds as if he were smiling through the tears.
"No", I state. "I am not sorry about that". We both laugh again.
"If you do have nightmares, I will wake you up", Alyosha promises. And I kiss the top of his head.
"I will wake you up as well, but I won´t have any nightmares because I am not falling asleep, the challenge still stands. I will sleep tomorrow".
My brother grunts, but he stays awake. He does not want to be the loser. We keep snuggling like we used to do a lot when we were little. I even take some pillows from the beds so we can lie on the ground more comfortably.
Oo
When I wake up, I find Alyosha snoring under my arm. His own arms are around me. His eyes are closed, but his mouth is open.
I realize, slightly frustrated, that I did not notice who fell asleep first. It is time I give up my stupid defiance and go back to bed.
I wake up Alexei and we finally pull away from our embrace. I help him climb back into his bed, trying to make sure he doesn´t accidentally hit himself anywhere in the process. He complains a lot about it. He bursts into tears again and even tries to make me feel guilty by almost throwing a tantrum. I don´t care. He is way too old to be sleeping with any of us four. He hasn´t done so in many years. He didn´t even sleep with mama. Being tucked into bed should suffice.
The room is a mess, but again, I don´t care. I won´t clean it up now. It should be fun to see Tatiana´s reaction in the morning…that is if her mind is not too distracted to care.
I turn off the light and go to my bed. It is then that I realize I don´t want to clean up because I am exhausted. I will do it tomorrow.
The diamonds in my feet hurt a little bit as well. It is a relief to take my shoes off. I think I will sleep with the diamonds inside my clothes. I couldn´t bear putting them anywhere else.
"Nastya!" My brother calls. Not now, let me sleep.
"What?!"
"If you ever become a newspaper reporter, can you take me with you on your trips?"
"Sure, I don´t see why not", I reply, a little bit annoyed. "But Alyosha, that thing about not being good at anything is nonsense, you are literally thirteen. You will eventually find something, and also, you are great at playing the balalaika, are you not? And you love to be the host in cinemas, right? Maybe someday you could own your own cinema!"
"Yes!" He exclaims. His excitement is contagious and now I want to talk about this despite being exhausted. Perfect. "And your movies could be shown there as well!"
"Wait a second, wait a second, am I going to be an actress or a newspaper reporter?"
"You could be both!"
I hope my sisters talk like this in bed again someday. I hope the five beds fit inside the room indeed.
"Well this talk is exciting, but I am genuinely tired now," I say. "Let's sleep now, alright?"
"Alright, Nastya, goodnight. I love you". My chest tightens.
"I love you too... and, Alyosha?"
"Yes?"
"Just so you know, the soldiers who stay behind the front lines to plan the attacks are just as important. Papa was one of them. You can still be a soldier".