Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova.
My brother and I have been playing 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 donʼt even have names for. We even invented a new card game.
It has been good fun. The excitement of inspecting our new room is so distracting even Alexei looks at ease, invested in his 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 they canʼt, of course, because we are so cunning we would take over the world in little more than a week with the help of our friends who have also been arrested. I understand their concern.
Alyosha is sitting on the floor with both his legs straightened out. He is leaning against the bed. I have placed a pillow under his bad leg, and I am usually the one who moves his pieces so that he does not have to.
Most times I win. 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. Papa would scold them every time this happened. 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.
My brother and I 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.
Alexei has grown tired though, so he does not care much for winners or losers anymore. I donʼt know what I am going to do when he gets too tired. I donʼt want to go to bed. I canʼt stay awake while bored, and 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 don't want to have another nightmare like the one I worked hard to conceal yesterday. I do not want to wake up without them again. I donʼt care how tired I am. I donʼt care about my eyelids feeling 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?
Alyosha and I are playing the card game we invented. We have only spoken Tarabar since we started. Tarabar is our secret and also invented language. Well, it is not really a language. We just place established syllables before every real syllable of any word used, something that makes all sentences exceedingly long, but one gets used to it.
My brother grumbles something I donʼt understand very well when he loses again. "Can we go to bed now?" He whines in Tarabar before letting out a yawn. 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, making him stop rubbing his eye.
"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 following moment is priceless. He frowns furiously at me, raising one of his eyebrows.
"Are you serious?" Alyosha appears to be silently asking with that look.
My grin is the only answer I give.
Alexei rolls his eyes. "Fine", he sighs. Then he yawns loudly. I observe the huge effort it takes for him to stay awake. "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 with that runny nose of his. Our faces are so swollen by earlier tears that 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 donʼt want to wake up without papa saying good morning to us while stopping by our room outside in the corridor.
I donʼt miss my parents now. Truly, I donʼt. Way too little time has passed. They sometimes went on trips without us, so my siblings and I have endured more time without them before their deaths.
What happened seems so unreal, so weird, as if it hadnʼt really occurred. So horrible I canʼt believe I even survived the pain. It couldnʼt 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 my cleverness and bravery, but at that time, I didn't feel I was the one hiding anything. I felt so separated from everything I did. I don't think I even experienced anything while we were all sobbing inside the warehouse. While I was sobbing inside the warehouse. No sadness. No pain. I was feeling sorry for the 'me' who was sad and in pain and deafeningly crying out for her dead parents like a mad woman while slamming her palms and head against the walls. That crazy girlʼs siblings were so similarly defeated by grief that they didn't react to her wild outburst, for it wasn't out of place. They had all gone mad. "No, please, no, papa!" Maria sobbed desperate pleas to our invisible captors as if doing so could change the past. "Mama! Mama! Why?!" She screamed. Alexei was a wailing newborn in her arms. Tatiana shook like a leaf. Lying on the floor as if already dead, Olga effectively stopped blinking. I barely remember puking my guts out in the bucket.
I felt so separated from what happened so many times yesterday and even today. It is quite embarrassing. My sisters must think that I don't care. At least Alexei, owing to his youth, acted as childishly as me today, and he would never get the wrong idea from my stupid behaviour.
I said I did miss mama and papa, 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 ever, that papa wasn't there for me to turn to. That he never again would. I felt it, that time I did.
Every 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 second time I am not sleeping with them, I realize, and I donʼt like it. The grief distracted me from their absence yesterday, and so did the urge to cuddle and comfort my dear little Alyosha, who consoled me back, but not having my sisters around feels wrong tonight somehow. We have always slept together. 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 donʼt want to sleep. She is the one who may understand me the most, even though she would tease me mercilessly before giving me any advice… although, well… maybe no teasing today.
She must be asleep already, and I canʼt 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 of the nonsense the four of us usually talk about between laughter and giggles before falling asleep, but I wonder if the beds would all fit. I wonder if we will even have the same kinds of silly 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 awake past our bedtime. I wonder what room they would have slept in. There are more than two on the second floor, 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, something happy, such as the days when Alyosha and I played just like this 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 didnʼt, 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 wasnʼt looking."
"What?!" He snarls. "That isn't even true! Which one?!" He is so tired he is falling for this silly old prank 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 body. I use his distraction as an 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 thing, but he would also pretend to steal Alyosha's nose. I was only five or six at the time, but I observed my uncle carefully and learned a similar trick. I wonder where Uncle Misha is now.
"Aww, Nastya!" Alexei groans as he straightens up and puts his hands on his nose, but I donʼt worry.
I have done this before, and I know how much force to use in order to make the trick harmless. My brother's frown relaxes, turning into another one of those rare smiles, one that quickly fades away like the others. I wonder if he will ever smile again while really wanting to smile instead of doing so for the sake of any of us four.
We stay silent for a minute.
"I wonder whose house this was", Alexei sneezes after saying that.
"Another engineerʼs?" I venture. "The Ipatiev House belonged to one."
"Maybe a geologistʼs house", Alyosha continues guessing as he cleans his nose with his forearm. "Or a rich peasantʼs."
"Maybe an architectʼs house, it is very beautiful. 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 as a circus performer."
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, pretending to be more upset than I actually am. He picks up on this.
"Alright then", he says. "Maybe you can be a trapeze artist, but I am worried for the person who will have to catch you and even more worried for you. I hope you will use a safety net."
I chuckle a bit at that, and we stay silent for another 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 donʼt know if I am good at anything… I wish I could be a soldier, but I canʼt, at least not a proper one." My heart breaks for him, but I try not to let it show. I use a silly grin to hide how sorry his words made 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 mamaʼs sake, but my goodness! You are clearly overstaying."
Alyosha growls playfully and then pulls my short blonde 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 around to stop us. My brother's illness never kept him from wrestling with the other boys either way, so I always thought it was only fair that it didn't stop him from wrestling me, someone who may in part 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 get 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. This angers me, but my fury is not directed at him. It is directed at the stupid gross men who spoiled our fun. I firmly decide that if I let them ruin this for me, they have won, so I grab Alyoshaʼs 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, a boy around my brother's age, was the one who usually wrestled him while we were imprisoned at Tobolsk. Kolya was allowed to visit us. Then my brother became ill again and wasn't able to play the same way with Leonid, our kitchen boy.
Alexei was injured recently, and his bent knee hasn't healed yet, so we don't move too much as we wrestle. 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 rub it, acting as if I were in pain, and then I do the same to him with my fist, laying it gently on his face.
"Pow!" I exclaim, and he dramatically moves his head backwards as if he had indeed been punched.
We burst into laughter 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, looking 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.
Another minute of silence goes by. I yawn, 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 with curiosity.
"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 sistersʼ room, so they might 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", I tease him. "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 holding back tears 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 gently wipes them 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, at this moment, there is nothing he said that is in any way different from what I feel.
I extend my arms, opening them wide, and we hug and cry together as I lean on 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 when 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 donʼt think so sunbeam, it was very quick. It might have looked horribly painful to us because we saw the result in their bodies, but they were dead very quickly, and corpses canʼt feel anything."
"But what about… mama, and her… headaches? Wouldnʼt that, bullet have hurt her, for at least a second?"
God. His voice breaks by the word 'bullet'. Lord help us. I donʼt 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 donʼt want this day to be over, already the second day without them. The longing will get stronger with each passing day, and I am not ready for it", I sob loudly. "I know I won't be able to live without them." He doesnʼt say anything, but I think he may understand.
I see light coming from the room next door. Our sisters must also be awake. I wonder if they can hear our sobs. I donʼt want to worry them.
"But Nastya", my brother says after a while in a worried tone of voice, still weeping, "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 Godʼs 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.
Time passes. My baby brother and I keep sobbing in each other's arms.
A shiver runs through my spine when I notice that my sisters have turned the lights back off. I am scared. I have been scared since that fateful night, and no daring act can hide that fact. I was never scared. I was the most fearless out of the five.
Back in Ekaterinburg, Alexei once exclaimed that if they killed us, he hoped they wouldnʼt torture us first. Mama and papa reassured him that they probably wouldn't torture us, but I rolled my eyes condescendingly and told him that he was being dramatic. Now I finally understand how scared he was, because I am too. And his fears were not unfounded. What they did to us in that cellar and later in the rooms upstairs was torture. This realization makes me upset. The tears wonʼt stop flowing anytime soon.
Without knowing exactly why, I suddenly get the urge to confess to Alexei 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 may enter our rooms, which is what my nightmare yesterday was about. 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. He can barely speak with all that mucus running down his nose. As his big sister, I should be the one comforting him. I never tell him any of my worries. That is what older sisters are for.
"It doesnʼt 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 those last words shyly.
"I am sorry about what I said regarding 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 that your dog could still be alive. Perhaps 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 wouldnʼt have time to think of Jimmy with our parents and friends gone, but in fact, I do think of him and the way 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 that 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 canʼt 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 me. And I kiss the top of his head.
"I will wake you up as well, but I wonʼt 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 did yesterday, the way we often used to back when we were little. I even take some pillows from the beds so that we can lie on the ground more comfortably.
Oo
When I wake up, I find Alyosha snoring under my arm, his own arms wrapped around me. His eyes are closed, but his mouth is wide 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 Alexei up, and we finally pull away from our embrace. I help him climb back onto his bed, ensuring that he doesnʼt accidentally hit himself anywhere in the process. He complains a lot about having to sleep alone in his own bed, going as far as bursting into tears again and even trying to make me feel guilty by almost throwing a tantrum. I donʼt care. It is hard for me too. Sometimes I wish we were five and three years old again, but he is way too old to be sleeping with any of us four. He hasnʼt done so in many years. He didnʼt even sleep with mama. Yesterday was different, as our parents had just died the day before, but being tucked into bed should suffice today.
The room is a mess, but again, I donʼt care. I wonʼt clean it up now. It should be fun to see Tatianaʼs 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, so it is a relief to take my shoes off. I think I will sleep with the diamonds inside my clothes again. It has worked so far, and I couldnʼt 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 donʼt 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 host cinemas, right? Maybe someday you could own your own cinema!"
"Yes!" He exclaims. His excitement is contagious, and now I want to keep talking 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."