July 31, 1918.
Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova.
I am bored. Tired of everything we do.
Maria claims she is fine every day. We are fine, she insists. The weather is nice one day and she takes this as proof that God will help us through it all.
The idea got into her head that once the war is over, the reds may simply release Olga and Alexei. She had never been interested in politics before, but now she suddenly has some complex theory on why this is such.
She smiles, talks, and jokes with us. She looks for Oleg in the yard, but that guard looks as if he were trying to hide from her every time we go outside. That is unless Maria catches a glimpse of him. Then he tries to be polite.
She becomes insufferable whenever I can't keep up with her cheerful mood. But I heard her scream for papa tonight, and last night. Two nights ago she screamed for mama. She was yelling at the murderers to leave our beloved mama alone, sounding as if our mother's murder had taken hours. It did not. The bullet destroyed her skull in seconds.
Maria never falls asleep when Tatiana and I do. I am awakened every night by the sound of her sobs. The bags under her eyes are similar to those Alexei had before he left.
Oo
Some of the soldiers Maria and I visited at our infirmaries returned from the front transformed. They were lazy, serious, and spoke slowly, with lots of pauses, only to say 'please' or 'thank you'. Their eyes were empty. You couldnʼt cheer them up as much as you tried. Those soldiers didnʼt enjoy playing tennis, or chess, or anything as genuinely as the others. And yet, the unfortunate men could act as well as any professional. They would claim to be in a particularly cheerful mood one day or the other so that you didnʼt feel ridiculous about your failed attempts at lifting their spirits. I have come to notice, little by little, day by day, that my sisters are the same as those soldiers now. This breaks my heart.
Maria is worse. At least Tatiana is a bad actress. Maria may actually believe her own lie, and the worst part is that she wants me to continue being the girl who cheers everyone up, but I can't. It is pointless.
"Why are you so serious today?" She typically asks, or the daily "How are you feeling?" Or the usual "Are you sad today?" Which is ridiculous, because I am in no way acting any differently than she and Tatiana are. We are all sad every day.
Oo
I donʼt know when I started feeling this way, but perhaps the guilt for feeling nothing at times caused my awakening. Papa and mama were dead and I kept acting silly whenever I wasnʼt crying. There was no in-between. I knew it was not supposed to be like that.
Guilt started everything. I tried to act as one would expect from a girl who had just lost her parents. Quieter, more solemn, more reflective… a complete lie at first, but then this new, boring behavior gave me time to think, and inevitably, to dwell on the horror, the loss. Their murders started to feel so real again, as they did that awful dawn before the 'me' of my nightmare took over and began suffering almost everything for me. And now the 'me' of my nightmare wants to be me again.
When there is noise outside a house, maybe children playing and yelling, or something more dreadful, wounded soldiers crying out in pain...
Yes, that is a better comparison.
Sometimes, you canʼt hear the noise outside because you are having a chat inside with your friends, and then someone tells a good joke, making everyone laugh. The laughter goes on for a while, but it has to stop at some point. It always does. It always ends, and when it does, you can finally hear all of the noise outside, the noise that didn't bother you before. You can distinguish its sources if there are many. There is nothing to distract you from that disgusting noise, not until one of your friends can think of something clever to say, once again breaking the silence inside with the sound of laughter.
The noise outside is the pain, and everyone is running out of clever things to say.
By the time I realized that the pain was real, it was too late to go back to the way I was acting. I could no longer shield myself from the noise.
I have stopped swallowing my tears. I have stopped trying to be funny. I have stopped willing myself not to be angry all day long.
Now I cry every day, and I am annoyed whenever Maria tries to console me, why can't she just let me cry? Starting to cry and then stopping over and over again is becoming tiresome and stressful. I don't want to stop crying, I just want papa back. That, or for 'me' of my nightmare to make me feel like it happened to someone else again.
Maria could also use some crying. Clearly, crying exclusively at night isnʼt working for her, because she has this stupid need to stop me and Tatiana from crying. She wouldn't able to keep her cheerful charade up if she just let us tear up in peace. She is running far behind us. She thinks she is doing better, but she is far behind us. It is like she hasnʼt caught up yet. She is like the typical last person to realize no one is laughing anymore. I used to be that person.
I told her so. I told her everything I thought. Our passionate exchange eventually turned into a hideous fight filled with screams and ridiculous ugly sobbing.
"Just leave me alone!" I cried minutes ago. "I don't want to go outside today!"
"But darling…" Maria tried to respond.
"I know they are in heaven, and I don't care! I want them here! Let me be miserable!" I yelled.
"They would not be happy to see you like that."
"I am not feeling the way they would be happy to see me!"
"I just want to cheer you up. It breaks my heart to see you like this. I love you too much." Lies. She looked so pathetic when she said that. Choking with sobs, lips trembling.
"Well, I never asked to be consoled, thank you very much. I will tell you when I need that from you, if I ever do!"
Lying down on her bed, Tatiana wept by herself, showing us her back as if ignoring our existence.
A month ago, she would most definitely have scolded us for fighting. Does she even care anymore? I tried so hard to make things better for her, but she just keeps getting worse. Everything is different now, even the simplest of things. I hate this. I don't want to see what goes next. Nothing is the same, the perfect way I loved. I don't want to be myself anymore.
I lie on my bed in the aftermath of the fight, weeping silently. Maria is sobbing loudly on her own bed. After I dared her to go chase soldiers around in the garden now that mama isn't here to stop her, she ended up too distraught to do so.
I see Denis peek in our room. His stupid grin disappears when he realizes we are crying. I roll my eyes. I have chatted, played cards, and other silly stuff with him about an hour every day and now he thinks he can just come and visit whenever he pleases.
I am too tired for this. I just want to drown in my own misery and never return. I throw my pillow at him, frowning. It flies outside the room without hitting him, but this is enough. Denis gets the message and goes away. Good.
Oo
I spend hours sobbing, without exaggeration. I will probably spend the entire day doing so.
My sisters go down to get breakfast, lunch, and then dinner. I don't follow them. They try to scold me every time I refuse to eat. I defy them, and they canʼt force me to do anything.
Not even Tatiana has the energy to convince me that nourishment is important. As if we had a future. Maybe I will lose some weight after all.
What are we going to do now? Whatever outcome I imagine after we are taken out of here is so bleak. No papa around to talk and joke with us. To read to us. No mama to pray with us. None of her warm smiles whenever we sang or played or said something funny. No more four of us again, at least not like we used to be before. No more acting silly, not while actually wanting to act silly instead of doing it for the sake of cheering everyone else up, which is so unbearably lame. I canʼt even do that anymore. Tatiana is like half of herself. I am a failure.
We have been imprisoned for almost two years, and nothing has ever been quite as hard as these past two weeks spent endeavoring to accept that we will never receive a letter from papa and mama explaining how their journey has been so far, saying that they miss us and hope we will all be together again soon. Well, this unwelcome fact is in my head now, and it is too painful.
Then there is Olga and Alexei. I canʼt do anything about their situation. I canʼt help them, I canʼt write to them, I canʼt even accept that they are gone or grieve for them because they may very well still be alive, where does that leave me? What am I supposed to do with this? It is too much. I canʼt take a day more.
I want it to be over. I want God to stop taking things from me…
Oo
I should pray.
I will accept I have lost everything, God, if you just give me a sign to understand I have.
As I pray, I remember the times I did the same thing with my gentle and loving mother. I remember guiding little Alexei to do so properly since he was a toddler, imitating the way Maria would hold his hands and say the words first. Mama would praise us for this. I donʼt think I will ever feel more pain than I do now.
Has an hour passed? Two? Is the pain making time go slower? Why are my sisters not back?
The flow of tears hasnʼt stopped. I taste the salt on my cheeks... I like this. I like the taste of tears. They remind me of the saltwater I sometimes tasted, accidentally, as I swam with papa and my sisters during our holiday trips to the Gulf of Finland or Crimea.
I have grown bizarrely bored. Even sinking into my own misery gets old.
I see two legs standing right before me. Denis. He is holding a pillow with one of his hands. I didnʼt hear him enter.
"Mmm…I… uhm, just leaving", my friendly jailer mumbles as he awkwardly tiptoes through the room. "Umh, this… here."
The way he jumps on one leg and lays the pillow back on my bed quickly before going back to tip-toeing like a ballerina would have made me laugh days before.
When he approaches the door to leave, Denis hesitates, looking back at me as if to see what it is that I am doing, or more curiously, as if to make sure I havenʼt done anything in his absence. He then stares at me with sadness in his eyes, hiding his lips. I glare back at him, which makes him look down.
He is so clingy, and now, increasingly awkward. He is either childish enough to want to play every day, or he has fallen in love with me. I think it is the former. It is never me that men pay attention to when my sisters are around.
"Don't you have somewhere to be?" I ask. My question makes him jump as if I had just come from behind and scared him on purpose.
"Oh, sorry!" He exclaims. "Well, my… my shift has ended", he explains in an apologetic tone. I nod in an equally awkward manner.
"Well", I raise my eyebrows and look at the door, as if using my eyes to signal him to go, but then I change my mind. Something more important occurs to me. "Are you even allowed here?"
"I, I… donʼt know", he shrugs. "I have never been scolded for this."
"So that new commander is nothing special then, huh?"
I notice a creeping blush in his cheeks. "The new commander gave us lots of new rules", he explains, "but didnʼt mention this."
"Really?" I wipe my nose and face as I sit up on the bed. "What sorts of rules?"
"Mostly about checking people who leave and enter the house to make sure they are not carrying anything suspicious with them. He also contemplated limiting the time you could spend outside."
I almost curse this new commander out loud. My instincts urge me to call him a pig and a bore, but another part of me wins. I nod slowly and then look away from Denis, turning my face to the window instead. I donʼt care anymore.
"I am sorry about your father and mother", Denis says so quickly that only the context and some scattered words allow me to understand the whole sentence. "And siblings." He adds those last words even quicker. I feel as if someone were squeezing my heart.
"Thank you", I keep looking away as I nod, this time faster. I hope that was polite enough. More tears fall from my eyes.
"Well, I will leave you to it", he walks away.
I am bored. I wish I could play with Denis. I could, of course. I just wouldn't enjoy doing so. Well, it is complicated. I would enjoy playing almost anything, but it will definitely be agony at the same time, to laugh while you are dying inside. What relieves you from the boredom does not similarly alleviate the sadness or pain. They may even grow stronger once the fun is over. The noise outside sounds louder immediately after everyone inside is done laughing.
Only forgetting everything and everyone would make me feel better. Only being someone else.
"Wait!" I yell, but Denis is already walking down the stairs, which is no impediment. He quickly returns, his eyes wide open as if he had been caught doing something wrong.
"What is it?" I ask.
"What?" He repeats.
"Why did you come here?" I inquire.
"Uhm…"
"Letʼs play that stupid, dumb, silly, useless, annoying, card game."
"It doesnʼt seem like you want to play."
"Letʼs go", I roll my eyes.
Oo
I wipe my tears and go to the bathroom to blow my nose before returning to my room.
Denis and I play with a regular deck of cards. He suggests a game in which your card has to match either the number or the rank of the one at the center. If none of your cards match, you have to get as many as necessary from the bunch. Whatever.
After I leave my one of my cards at the center, Denis has to take a card, then another one, and another. He smiles at me nervously, as if he had risked his life savings in this game. I smile back with amusement until he finally pulls out a card with the same number as the one I just left. Once again, I have the perfect card.
"Ow!" He exclaims. "How come you have the best luck?"
"I donʼt know why you care so much", I stretch and lie down on my back. "This game is boring, we play it all the time."
"It is one of the only things we can play, letʼs go to the other room…"
"I have already told you a thousand times that I donʼt want to!" I almost scream, sitting up abruptly. This is so frustrating. "I donʼt want to have anything to do with that cursed chamber!" I exclaim. "You can go if you like!"
I shoo him away with my hand. Denis hesitates, but he eventually leaves, and when I hear him moving stuff around in the same room where my brother and I played together for the last time, the pain returns stronger than ever. My eyes well up with tears, but I breathe in and out deeply and wipe them away before they fall.
After a while, Denis returns with the board for colorito, and I burst into tears at the sight. I run away out of embarrassment and lock myself in the bathroom, hoping he won't be there by the time I get out. I sit on the lid and cry.
Oo
After a long time, and just when I thought he was gone, Denis knocks on the door gently.
"I am sorry about that... going there probably makes you feel sad now that…" Denis sounds indecisive about what he is about to say. I canʼt believe he spent all of this time trying to decide whether he was going to talk to me or not.
"You make literally no sound, are you a ghost or something?" I try to tease him. My voice must sound so stupid with a congested nose. "I thought you had already left."
"I also know what it is like, you know? Everyone has lost someone nowadays, I am sorry."
What is it about people trying to comfort you that makes you cry worse? I stand up to go to the sink and look at my puffy red eyes in the mirror. I look at the tears still rolling down my cheeks, at my runny nose. Pathetic. I need more toilet paper.
"Let me guess, your father?" I inquire in a tiny voice. "Because of the war?"
Just as he is beginning to answer, I blow my nose loudly, and without planning to, the noise I make conceals his reply. This makes me let out a sad giggle, if that is even possible.
"I am sorry, can you say that again?" I ask, and I can hear him laughing from the other side of the door.
"You are very likable", Denis mutters quickly once he is done chuckling. He then says something else just as quickly, something hard to grasp from this side of the door, something corny, I think, having to do with not wanting me to be sad.
"So, was your father a soldier?" I throw the toilet paper into the trash.
"More less, he… he never actually got to the front", Denis admits. "He died during a training accident, but he would have definitely been part of a cavalry regiment otherwise. My father was really patriotic."
He sounds almost ashamed of this. I feel sorry for him. At least the families of fallen soldiers can, as a consolation, tell everyone that their loved ones fought bravely and died willingly for the motherland. His father died because of bad luck, and mine was murdered for no reason, died for nothing. He wasn't even allowed to fight for his country like he would have wanted to. He didnʼt even have time to understand why, he was confused, they just…
"How do you accept it?" My voice must sound like I am crying. Well, I am, but at least he canʼt see me. "How do you just accept that you wonʼt be able to see your father again and then continue living? I donʼt think it is possible."
"I don't… accept it", he replies. "I guess I just refused to think about it, and now I can avoid doing so easily because the memory is distant enough. I still miss him at times, but I try to distract myself whenever I do."
It is different for me. I always think about it. I can't stop. I was there. It is something I canʼt control. I see them every night. I think once I had a nightmare while I was awake.
Oo
I hear footsteps. Someone is climbing up the stairs, probably my sisters. It is only a pair of feet I hear though...
"What are you doing here?" Wrong. It is one of the guards. "Donʼt you have somewhere to go?" Sounds like the voice of one of Olegʼs friends, the dark-haired fellow he was talking to during his birthday, Igor Vladimirovich.
"I… I was just leaving, sorry", Denisʼs voice is shakier than ever.
Igor tries but fails to open the bathroom door.
"Was he bothering you?" He yells the question at me.
He must have heard my sobs. "No!" I exclaim. "No, I just became melancholic."
"You are not supposed to go upstairs except once every morning", Igor scolds Denis again. His voice begins to sound further and further away as they both go downstairs. "I didnʼt realize there was a special exception for you, young man. The new commander seems stricter, and I am just trying to watch out for you, what would your mother do if you got in trouble?"
When I return to my room, there is no colorito nor cards to be seen, a relief, but I kind of hope Denis does return with the cards someday.
Oo
After praying for Olga and Alexei, I decide to take a nap, but my sisters return as soon as I have laid down and closed my eyes, before I can fall into a deep sleep.
"Shh", I hear Maria murmur. "Look, poor baby, she had more than one nightmare yesterday. She needs this."
The way she mentions my nightmares annoys me a bit, as if she didnʼt have them as well... but somehow, I donʼt mind as much as I could. My sisterʼs concern has inspired in me a sudden rush of affection for her.
I think Tatiana is standing right next to the bed I am sleeping on now. I can almost see her smile down at me.
"We will tell her once she wakes up", Tatiana also murmurs. This is too much.
"Tell me what?" I uncover myself and straighten up, way too suddenly I can see now, because Tatiana jumps and shrieks, and Maria looks spooked as well. Tatiana even puts a hand to her heart. I grin at that.
My sisters smile at each other once the fright subsides. They look different. These are genuine smiles, not the "cheering everyone up" type.
"What is it?" I ask. Maria and Tatiana sit on each side of my bed, leaving me in the middle.
"Maria, go close the door first", Tatianaʼs smile grows wider. Maria does as she is told, returns, sits back down, and begins:
"We received a letter from Olga, darling. She is free, she is safe, and she assures us that there are people coming to set us free as well soon."
My eyes fill with tears, different tears, tears of relief. My prayers have been heard. I have hope now, and one less thing to worry about.
"And Alexei?" I ask. "Is he with her?"
Their smiles slowly disappear, and my heart starts beating really, really fast. No, God, no. Two tears roll down from my eyes, but I wipe them away.
"Donʼt worry, Nastya", Maria rubs my shoulder. "Olga didnʼt mention him in the letter, but it is probably implied that he is with her."
"What do you mean it is implied?" I grow increasingly frustrated. "That is not how we write letters! Whenever we sent letters to papa, and Alexei happened to be with him, we mentioned him as well. We used to send both of them kisses."
Tatiana interjects before Maria can speak:
"You must remember, dear", she uses her typical "Governess" voice on me, "that we don't understand the whole situation right now. We don't know how Olga was rescued or anything, and her main priority right now must be our own rescue, not communicating and sending each other kisses as if we were on a leisure trip."
I genuinely hate her right now. I am dying of worry. One less thing to worry about is not enough. This is not good news yet.
"Is it even Olga?" I inquire. "Give me the letter", I extend my hand, "I want to see what words she used."
"We donʼt have the letter anymore darling", Tatiana explains. "We broke it into tiny pieces and got rid of it in the toilet before it got to the wrong hands, but it was Olgaʼs, darling. Any of us would have been able to recognize her handwriting. She will be the only one to send us notes in order to make sure we know it is her and not someone else trying to set us up."
My heart sinks. I canʼt believe they did this to me. I canʼt believe that they would dispose of the only evidence they had that Olga was still around, maybe close to us, safe and sound.
I lie down and cover myself with the blanket again.
I would have kissed that letter so many times. I would have imagined every moment of Olga writing it. I scream with my mouth closed. I hate them. I hate them.
"Shvibzik, enough", Maria scolds me gently as she touches my head from over the blanket. "We can tell you everything it said, and you can help us plan our next steps."
"It is not the same!" I cry. "I wanted to see if I could read something between the lines. I wanted to see it with my own eyes!"
I scream at them, still with my head covered. How could they care so little about me?
"Well, you didnʼt want to come down to have dinner", Tatiana nags me. "If you had been there, you would have also helped us and Galina wash the dishes, and you would have been present when she gave us the letter."
I groan. They have betrayed me, but I feel so curious I may explode, how did Galina even get the letter inside? Still, it would hurt my pride so much to just let this slide. That letter was a piece of Olga, and I would have liked to read it for myself.
"We couldnʼt go upstairs for you Shvibzik", Maria argues. "It would have raised suspicions."
I slowly uncover myself. Oh, I am crying like a baby. Perfect. Tatiana sees that, and she immediately hugs me.
"My darling", she squeezes me. "It is just this time, we promise, but you have to eat, all right? I know how you feel. I don't want to wake up sometimes either, but you have to eat."
Her warmth reminds me so much of mama that I let out a sob. I put my arms around her to my great shame.
"Do you want to know how Galina smuggled the letter?" Maria whispers. I roll my eyes, but then I smile at her reluctantly as Tatiana pulls away from me.
"It was hidden inside the layers of an onion", Maria reveals. "Can you believe it? They even searched her, but no one suspected a thing. The agent who did it knew what he was doing."
"Agent?" I ask.
"Yes", Tatiana nods. "The people helping us are British agents, see Nastya? And you said Uncle George was an idiot."
"He must be the one behind all of this", Maria adds.
I smile, still thinking he is an idiot. Late, he was too late.
"So what is the next step?" I ask. "What do we have to do?"
It is Maria who explains that we have to gather all the information we can on our security, draw a sketch of the inside of the mansion putting special emphasis on the windows and everything we can see through them, and describe our routines and that of the guards, among other things.
"We can ask Oleg and his friends, and Denis, right Shvibzik?" Maria requests as she looks straight at me with her huge wide-opened blue eyes, which are filled with hope.
"Sure", I shrug.
"But we have to be discrete", Tatiana adds, "and act as if we were just naturally curious about their daily lives without being too pushy, will you write everything down?" The last question is directed at Maria, who nods.
"No one would understand your handwriting", Mashka jokes. Tatiana and I smile.
"But how will we smuggle the message out?" I inquire. "It is not like Galina can just use another onion. It would be pretty silly for her to leave the house with an onion without a reason when she lives right here, why would she do that? To offer it to the neighbors?"
"Forget smuggling the message out", Tatiana says. "We donʼt even know where or how we are going to write it down. We are not allowed to send letters, remember? Do you think asking Commander Ignat Iliaovich for paper, brushes, pens, and paint or ink in order to have something to do would raise suspicions?"
"I donʼt know, but what else can we do?" Maria replies. "Maybe we should only ask for paper, brushes, and paint. No one has any reason to think we would use them to write."
"Sounds like a good start", Tatiana agrees. "Maybe we will come up with something better eventually."