City of Shadows (3 page)

“Oh, yeah.” He liked Americanisms. “Esther, she’s been there two years, and nobody’s so much as sent her a card—I asked. Two
years.
And in the hospital before that—the police fished her out of the Landwehr Canal in 1920. Nobody wants to know who she is.” He chewed reflectively. “Except me.”

“Was she? Fished out of a canal?”

“That’s what it says on her record.”

So she’s been where I’ve been, Esther thought. She’s stared down into the waters and wondered how long it took before they delivered oblivion. Only she decided to find out. Does that make her more cow
ardly than me? Or braver?

“All right, she’s mad,” Nick said. He shrugged. “But who ain’t?” He held that the whole world was insane, a conviction Esther agreed with. “But suppose she is Anastasia
.. . .
” His eyes widened. He stopped shoveling food from her plate onto his. “Holy Martyr,
I think she is.
I completely think she is.”

Alarmed, Esther saw him reassessing his evidence. “Holy Martyr,” he said again. “I’ve found Anastasia.”

“You are appalling,” she said.

“What? See, all right, I got this tip-off. There was an unknown woman in Dalldorf, and one of the patients in there shouting around it was Grand Duchess Tatiana.”

“And you thought Tatiana plus Romanov equals czarist treasure.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” he said, injured. “There’s a fortune in Ro
manov jewels still floating around that didn’t all disappear. Grandma Dowager Czarina took a king’s ransom in precious stones with her when she escaped. She’s an old woman. Who’s going to get them when she curls up her toes? The Bolsheviks want them, say they’re state prop
erty. The king of England says he’ll distribute them around the family, but his old lady . . . what’s her name?”

“Queen Mary.”

“She’s got a keen eye for a trinket, that one, so she won’t let them go once they’re in her claws.” He poked the fork at her, like a stabbing tri
dent. “And I’ll tell you this, Esther, I’d see them go to the Reds before I let the fucking English get them.”

“Very patriotic of you.” King George V, the czar’s first cousin, had ensured the death of the Romanovs by refusing them asylum in En
gland. It had not endeared him to White Russians, high or low.

She said, “So the Bank of England and various Romanovs are going to say how nice, Prince Potrovskov, thank you for bringing the grand duchess Tatiana and/or Anastasia back from the dead, and here’s our millions. I should have left you in Dalldorf.”

“Yeah, but see, Esther, I’m beginning to think she truly is. Okay, maybe I was considering making my own grand duchess when I started out, but now . . . It fits. Think back to that kid we’ve just seen in that bed
.. . .
”

She thought back. There’d been intelligence, even craftiness, in those eyes. But mostly panic. The barricade around that bed had been a bunker. She’d lain like a leveret in the long grass hoping the fox wouldn’t find it. Two years of it, two years of silence in a cacophony of the afflicted. Refusing an identity. Either very crazy or very frightened. Perhaps both.

“Nick, you saw her. She doesn’t even speak Russian.”

“Would you?” The fork summoned up a funeral drum. “If your own people took you down to a cellar, Russians, and shot your daddy, your mommy, your brother and sisters in front of your eyes, wounded you, maybe, would you want to speak the same as those bastards? Not if you didn’t have to—and those girls were educated, remember. They had other languages. They were . . . what’s the word?”

“Polyglot?”

“Yeah, polyglots. Why’d she want to talk Russian? With those mem
ories? Too terrible. She sticks to German. That makes sense, the press’ll understand that.” He began eating again, swaying slightly to the symphony in his head.

“The press?”

“Obviously we’ll call a press conference once she’s ready.”

“You’re calling a press conference,” she said flatly.

“Not yet. We’ve got a long way to go, but . . .” He faced her look. “Esther, we’ll be doing people a favor. That was a terrible thing happened at Ekaterinburg. Made the whole world sad. Maybe as a Jew you don’t feel
it the same, but for us loyal subjects”—he thumped himself on the chest—“that pierced our hearts. We’ll never get over it.”

He was frightening her; he was sobbing. She wanted the cynic back. This was an alien being crying real tears. Her own eyes were stony dry.

“Beautiful things happen sometimes,” he said. “Now and then the saints in their grace grant us a miracle. They just did. We got one of them back.” He knuckled his eyes with his forefingers, wiping them. “I tell you, such a cheer will go around the earth. Stock market’ll go up, maybe. I must get in touch with my broker.”

That was better. Nick the opportunist she could cope with.

“It won’t work,” she said. “She’s just a sick, scared young woman.”

He became impatient. “Sure she’s scared. Maybe she thinks the Bol
shies are out to get her. ‘You want to stay here forever?’ I said to her— she understands German well enough. ‘You’ve got me to protect you now.’ ”

“And suppose the Romanovs say she’s not Anastasia?”

“They’ll have to. New teeth, plenty of coaching . . .” He began tap
ping his own teeth with his fork and then waved it at her. “Listen, Es
ther, there’s a hole in the market just waiting for her. People want a happy ending, I’m giving them one.”

Another thought struck him. “What a movie it’d make. I could get rich out of the film rights alone.”

“And Little Miss Unknown has agreed to all this, has she?”

“Anna Anderson,” he said.

“What?”

“Anna Anderson. That’s who she’s going to be for now. I suggested the name, and she liked it. Nice and neutral. It’s the name I’ll get put on her identity papers.”

Esther raised her eyes to heaven. “She’s agreed to this arrangement, has she?”

“She will. Fifty-fifty, I told her.” Absentmindedly, he took over Es-ther’s plate and began clearing it. “Maybe I’ll make it seventy-five–twenty-five, I’m going to have a lot of expenses.” He beckoned to a white-aproned waiter. “Do you make palatschinken here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Two portions.”

He was silent until the pancakes came, and then he said, “You could put her up in the new apartment I’m getting for you.”

Ah.

“Suddenly Moabit’s looking attractive,” she said. “I think I’ll stay there.”

“Moabit’s a shithole. I was going to take you out of it anyway.”

“I’m not going to do it, Nick. It’s fraud on a grand scale. It’ll hurt peo
ple.”

“Not if she’s the real Anastasia. Who’s it going to hurt? Her? I’m go
ing to restore her to her rightful place, cherish her like she should be. At least she gets out of Dalldorf. The rest of the Romanovs? I spit on ’em. They can’t even wipe their own asses without whining there’s no servant to do it for ’em.”

It was true. They had become shabby in their obsolescence. Since the revolution, princes, grand dukes, who’d once roamed Europe in their private trains, kept their mistresses in luxury, flung roubles to peasants lining the roadway, patronized great artists and gambled mil
lions on a throw of cards at Monte Carlo, had become pathetic emper
ors without clothes, still clinging onto their titles and expecting to live on the generosity of others.

Grand Duke Cyril, Nicholas’s cousin and now heir to the nonexis
tent throne, had declared himself “Czar of All the Russias” from a farmhouse in France where the occasional émigré turned up to bow to him. “Makes the farmhands walk backward,” Nick had said.

Only Grand Duke Dmitry, Nick said, was showing a grasp on reality; he’d become a champagne salesman and was allegedly pursuing an American heiress.

None of the bluer-blooded émigrés would invite Nick, the arriviste, to the homes other people had given them. But they were glad enough to go to the parties he threw, Esther thought, quick enough to touch him for a loan that they had no means and no intention of repaying. She’d seen them at his clubs in lachrymose gatherings, remembering the good old days, still pretending to dignity, still unable to believe that the serfs they’d maltreated didn’t want them back.

What right had they to look down on him? Bereft of their palaces and jewels, they’d been landed back in the primeval soup to begin the
business of survival all over again. And they weren’t good at it. The ruthlessness of their ancestors that had given them the palaces and jewels in the first place had been bred out of them. Instead the energy to crawl onto dry land belonged to men like Nick, hungry, unhampered by tradition or morals.

“I tell you, Esther, we’ve found her. We’ve made the discovery of the century. You want to leave her in that place?”

“No.” Whatever happened, they were going to have to get her re
leased if they could. Just seeing her had laid that responsibility upon them. Walk away from it and that silent little form in the bed would haunt her dreams forever. “Get her out by all means, but after that you’re on your own. I’m not going to help you.”

“Really?” He leaned back in his chair and slowly lit a cigar, watching the smoke as it curled up from his lips before he looked at her. “What are you going to do instead?”

“I see,” she said quietly.

It was that important to him; she’d become his right hand, but for this he was prepared to cut it off. She met his gaze. “I’ll manage. There’ll be some other twister who needs his dirty work done in five dif
ferent languages.” And wondered where the hell she’d find him.

“Maybe,” he said.

Then he changed gear. He’s going to tell me I owe him, she thought.

“You owe me, Esther,” he said.

And she did. A Russian émigré, a
Jewish
Russian émigré, a
disfigured
Jewish Russian émigré didn’t rate high in the endless unemployment lines of a Germany with galloping inflation. She was only on dry land now because she’d clung to his back. Not just her, but the dozens of other poor White Russians he employed in his clubs—and what about the Jews who’d been able to get to the States and begin new lives be
cause of him?

All right, it had been self-interest, not philanthropy. But that was capitalism for you: sharks allowing little fish to feed on the bits be
tween their teeth.

She watched him shoveling in pancakes, persuading and cajoling. Automatically, she took the spoon out of his right hand and replaced it with a fork.

“I’ll miss you,” she said. And she would; in a fractured way they were each other’s best friend.

“So don’t,” he said. “All you have to do is take in a poor female, be her companion. You got class, Esther, haven’t I always said? You know things—art and books. Let some of it rub off on her. That’s completely all you got to do, I swear. As for the Anastasia thing, you won’t be in
volved. I’ll find someone to coach her in the Romanov stuff.”

“If she’s a Romanov, why does she need coaching?”

“She’s forgotten, for God’s sake.” He was amazed at her obtuseness. “It’s been four years since Ekaterinburg. The saints know how she’s had to live, what she’s been through. Brain fever wiped out her memory, maybe. All you do is remind her how to be a lady again. Is that so much?”

His persuasion ebbed and flowed in and out of her mind as she considered—and weakened.

“Come on, Esther. It’ll be fun.”

Yes, she could see that. By God, to set a cat among the pigeons that still believed they had a right to the Fabergé eggs and the rubies and the pearls distilled out of a people’s sweat and tears. She was amazed they could lay claim to them. They’d learned nothing.

“You want to leave her in that hellhole?” he continued.

Yes, I owe him, but he doesn’t know what he’s asking. It’s not wickedness to him; he doesn’t know what wickedness is. Neither do I anymore. I merely make a choice of sins.

“. . . get her doctors. Who’s the one that’s good with loonies? Freud, I’ll get her Freud
.. . .
”

Anyway, it’s too impossible to come to anything.

Oh, God help me, I can’t go back to being hungry, I can’t. With my face I couldn’t even earn a living as a whore.

“Be her friend, that’s all I’m asking.”

“Oh, shut up and finish your bloody pancakes,” she said.

He grinned at her. “That’s my girl.”

“That’s me,” she said. “Sadly.”

The trouble was
that the woman who was now Anna Ander
son refused to leave Dalldorf.

For three days she wouldn’t even desert the dugout of her bed. During their afternoon visits, Esther kept the other women of the ward at bay while Nick, cajoling in a whisper across the pillowed barricade, extolled the marvels that awaited his protégée in the outside world—without result.

“Has she said anything yet?”

“Not a fucking word.” He brightened. “But she’s listening.”