Anastasia and Her Sisters (16 page)

“Talk about patriotism!” she remarked. “I’ve witnessed the most extraordinary sights over the past week: the thrilling sight of men going to war. Every day from early morning until after sunset, hundreds and hundreds of men marching down Nevsky Prospect to the Warsaw Station to board a train for the front. People walk beside them, cheering them on. They’re fighting for Holy Russia and for the tsar, Nicky!”

Papa nodded. “Yes, it’s such a stirring sight. I would have done anything in my power to avoid this war, but I am deeply moved by the dedication of the men.”

While they talked, I was sitting on the floor with my brother, playing with his toy soldiers, shoving them back and forth as he issued commands. But I was also listening to what the adults were saying.

“My Hussars have been called up,” said Aunt Olga. “The regiment is being sent to the front in the southwest. Kolya is going with them, of course.” She said it very matter-of-factly, but my ears perked up when I heard her mention Kolya, and I turned slightly in order to hear better. Alexei noticed—he always noticed if you weren’t focusing completely on him—and started to protest, but I shushed him.

“Of course,” Papa said. “It’s his duty.”

Her voice rose slightly. “Before he left, Colonel Kulikovsky told me that the junior officers were asking if they shouldn’t pack their dress uniforms for the victory parades. He told them the proper uniforms would be sent along later.”

I thought of what Gleb Botkin had said—
The Germans don’t know how to fight! They only know how to make sausages!
Yesterday he’d told us that his two older brothers, Dmitri and Yuri, were on their way to the front. Gleb was very proud of them and deeply disappointed that he was too young to fight.

Dmitri Pavlovich arrived for tea, proudly wearing the Cross of St. George, a military honor, pinned to his chest. I hadn’t seen him for a long while, and I’m afraid I did grin too much when he was around, because later Tatiana remarked in her stern governess voice, “You make it so obvious that you have a crush on Dmitri.”

He had been at Stavka with Nikolai Nikolaevich, the commander-in-chief. “What a giant of a man!” Dmitri said enthusiastically. “He’s nearly seven feet tall. And such a commanding presence!”

“Appropriate for a commander,” Mama said sourly. She didn’t much like Uncle Nikolasha, and made no secret of it. Father Grigory didn’t trust him, she said.

Dmitri and Papa talked for a long while after the tea things had been cleared away—I don’t know about what—and I think he would have stayed longer had we not been expecting a visit from Father Grigory, the first he’d come since the crazy woman attacked him. Dmitri was one of the people who didn’t like Father Grigory, and he didn’t even try to hide his dislike. Naturally that offended Mama, who couldn’t bear to hear the slightest criticism of a man she believed could work miracles.

Father Grigory was very late arriving, and Mama began to fret. Papa, too. I wanted to see him and wished I could stay to overhear the conversation, but our parents decided that we should go to our rooms since the visit was going to be so late.

“Nobody ever keeps the tsar waiting!” Shura said as she brushed my hair for the night. “It’s the height of ill manners.” Shura was one more who didn’t like the
starets
, but she was careful not to say anything that would anger Mama.

We didn’t see Father Grigory that night, and so we have no idea if he tried to convince Papa that Russia was going to drown in blood. Whatever was said did not change Papa’s mind, and in the days that followed, he went calmly about his preparations to leave for Stavka. On the morning he was driven off in his motorcar, we all cried because our dear papa was going away. Mama cried most of all.

Then Anya moved from her little yellow cottage into rooms in our palace, to keep Mama’s spirits up while Papa was away.

CHAPTER 12

Changed Lives

TSARSKOE SELO, AUTUMN 1914

A
lmost overnight our lives changed completely.

Mama announced that it was her duty to provide care for the wounded. She developed a plan for turning the Catherine Palace, which she had never liked anyway, into a hospital. The Winter Palace in what was now called Petrograd and a couple of imperial palaces in Moscow became medical units to care for the wounded, with space set aside for the soldiers’ wives and mothers to stay when they came to visit. Mama sent our Dr. Botkin to Yalta to open hospitals on the estates of wealthy families. She also created smaller medical facilities called lazarets. Feodorovsky Gorodok, the village that Papa had built in Tsarskoe Selo to remind him of “old Russia,” became one of the lazarets. Then she organized special trains to bring the wounded men to the hospitals from the front.

I was amazed at whatever had come over Mama. Our mother, who had always spent most of the day reclining in her mauve boudoir, announced that she and Olga and Tatiana were going to become nurses and actually work in those hospitals. They would undergo two months of training by the Red Cross, with classes in the morning and actual duties in the wards in the afternoon. They would then become qualified as “sisters of mercy.”

“And what about Mashka and me?” I asked. “Can’t we become nurses, too?” I could not bear to be left out of what seemed such a great adventure.

“You girlies are too young to be full-fledged sisters of mercy,” Mama said firmly. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t both serve proudly and usefully. You will be patronesses at the lazaret at Feodorovsky Gorodok. That will give you plenty to do, and I’m sure you will accomplish a great deal of good.”

Once they were qualified, Mama and our older sisters put on long gray uniforms and white aprons with a big red cross on the chest and white wimples that covered the head and neck. You could hardly recognize them when they were in uniform, as they now were every day.

“In uniform, everybody is the same,” Tatiana said. “We’re not there as the empress and the grand duchesses. We’re there as Russian nurses.”

Mama was up and dressed at seven o’clock and on her way to the hospital at the Catherine Palace every morning at nine. She and Olga and Tatiana came home exhausted at the end of the day. They did really hard, awful work—cleaning bedsores and changing bandages and helping with the surgeries.
Sometimes Mama assisted at as many as three surgeries, one right after the other, each lasting a couple hours.

“Sometimes the doctors have to cut off an arm or a leg without enough anesthetic,” Olga said, her face etched with sadness at the sights she had witnessed. “The doctors are so tired they can hardly stay on their feet. And yet every hour more trains arrive from the field hospitals at the front, more filthy, moaning men are carried in, and we clean them up for the nurses to examine and the doctors to operate on. It’s unbearable! Mama is so brave—she holds the cone over their noses and drips ether onto it to put them to sleep, but sometimes there isn’t enough ether and they scream in agony. And then she helps to carry away the mangled flesh or the amputated hand or arm—” My sister shuddered. “And the smell! You can’t imagine the smell, all those infected wounds.”

“I think I’d throw up,” I whispered.

Olga forced a wan smile. “At first I did,” she admitted. “I threw up more than once. But you get used to it after a while.”

“Some of them are screaming and praying to die,” Tatiana said. She had kicked off her shoes and was rolling down her stockings. They were spattered with something dark. “Then we sit with them while they’re dying. It’s the most awful thing you can imagine.” She shook her head, as though ridding herself of the terrible sights and sounds. “Oh, I do hope it will be over soon. But I’m afraid it won’t.”

Marie and I went daily to the lazaret. We didn’t have uniforms, and that was a disappointment—we were almost the only people in the whole imperial compound wearing ordinary clothes. I was glad that we didn’t have to witness grisly wounds
and horrible surgeries. The wounded men in the lazarets had already been treated, and while they might have been suffering and in pain, most were able to talk and were glad for the company. When Alexei was able, we took him with us. The wounded soldiers seemed happy to see us and overjoyed to see the tsarevich. We helped the men write letters to their families—often Marie wrote the letters for them, because many were simple peasants who had never been taught to read or write. I especially liked reading to the men—they said I read very well, that I was a good actress and it was almost like being at a play. That was nice to hear, and I began to think that maybe, when the war was over, I would consider becoming an actress as well as an artist.

But there was a bad side to my work: Every day I visited wounded soldiers who in the morning were murmuring their thanks for my reading them letters they had received, letters full of love and longing, and who in the afternoon were dead, a white sheet pulled over their faces, and I’d had no chance to say good-bye. It was enough to break one’s heart, over and over. Suffering and death were all around me, and I never did get used to it.

It was easy now to have a chance to read Olga’s notebook without the risk of getting caught. Sometimes she even forgot to put it away. But there were times when I wished I hadn’t read it.

One must pity Mother. She works so hard at the hospital, spares herself nothing, no duty is beneath her. Some of her patients can’t believe the empress herself is actually there, sleeves rolled up. Most adore her, call for her, kiss her hand if they can. But there are many who despise her and make no secret of it, because she was born a German. Mother is Russian to the very depths of her soul, but they don’t know that, or don’t want to know it. And I’m afraid it’s not just a few ignorant soldiers who feel this way. Mother is a quiet person, and she has not won the hearts of the Russian people the way our grandmother has. The people truly adore Father, but they are suspicious of Mother and even dislike her. She has done nothing to deserve that.

Poor Mama! She never hurt anyone, never meant to do anything but good. Reading it made me feel sorry for every naughty thing I ever
thought
of saying to my poor darling mother, and I cried.

•  •  •

Papa came home often from Stavka, but he never stayed long, especially when Alexei seemed to be doing well. We missed him awfully and took turns writing to him every evening, trying to find amusing things to tell him that would cheer him up. Sad and discouraging as life was during this time, some surprising things did happen. Tatiana may have actually fallen in love! The object of her affections was an officer named Dmitri Malama. He was seriously wounded, and she met him when he came under her care in the hospital. They began by talking about dogs. Tatiana told the lieutenant that she thought French bulldogs were irresistibly adorable, and the next thing we knew, a French bulldog puppy arrived at Alexander Palace. Tatiana named him Ortino. Mama’s dog, Eira, took great exception to this new rival, growling and barking. Olga’s cat, Vaska, chased
the newcomer around the palace, the two of them knocking things over and getting into all sorts of mischief.

Tatiana doted on that little dog, but he was not well trained and my sister kept a little shovel handy to clean up his messes. I enjoyed writing to Papa about Ortino, but I thought it was better not to say anything about Tatiana possibly being in love.

Everyone was so busy helping with the war effort that we almost neglected to celebrate Olga’s nineteenth birthday. Chef Kharitonov reminded us that he was preparing an excellent dinner for her with all her favorite dishes—he kept records for all of us—but there was no music, no dancing, no invited guests. Then she rushed off to a meeting. Besides their nursing duties, both Olga and Tatiana had organized committees to help the wounded soldiers, and they often had meetings to attend.

Meanwhile, Anya was being particularly annoying. She always did expect a lot of attention, and she acted offended if Mama didn’t spend a couple of hours with her every day, as she used to. Anya wanted to be pitied and fussed over, and I got sick of it. Only good-hearted Marie seemed willing.

War news was not often good. We saw proof that the Germans knew how to do much more than make sausages—they knew how to fight. Wounded soldiers poured into the hospitals where Mama and Olga and Tatiana worked every day alongside many other volunteers, including Tatiana Botkina, who had also trained as a nurse. They came in huge numbers to the smaller lazarets, where Marie and I did what we could to make the suffering men feel a little less alone.

The men sometimes talked about those who hadn’t been
so lucky, the ones who had been killed. “Mowed down like wheat,” one soldier muttered, turning his face toward the wall. “Our officers are brave,” he said. “And also foolish. They order us to crawl forward, always forward, bellies on the ground, while our leaders stand up and walk straight into enemy fire. They say it would be cowardly for them to take cover. And the Germans shoot them down like ducks in a shooting gallery.”

One of those brave officers was Dr. Botkin’s eldest son, Dmitri, a lieutenant in the Cossack regiment serving on the eastern front. We learned to our great sorrow that he was among the dead.

So many officers had been killed that Papa ordered fifteen thousand university students to take special training to become lieutenants. On one of his visits home Papa said, “I told my young lieutenants that I had not the slightest doubt of their bravery and courage, but I needed their lives—they are of no use to Russia if they are dead—and for them to take care for themselves. Then I reminded them of the value of prayer before going into battle. ‘With prayer you can do anything,’ I said, and I believe they took it to heart.”

•  •  •

No one talked about it, but obviously the war had not ended by Christmas.

The officials of the church had announced a ban on Christmas trees, because they were a German custom. We were disappointed—lighting the trees had always been a part of our family celebration—and Mama was furious. “I’m going to find out the truth of who gave that order and make a row about it,”
she said. “Why take away the pleasure of a beautiful tree from the wounded and children because the tradition comes from Germany? The narrow-mindedness is too colossal!”