Anastasia's Secret (6 page)

“Yes, I know what you do.”

She stood quite still for a moment, not taking her eyes off me.

“What is this soldier’s name?” Without saying she would help me, she turned toward the great ledger book where they wrote what names they could, based on information from the wounded themselves or those who came with them.

“His name is Sash—Alexander Mikhailovich Galliapin, in the Second Army, Thirteen Corps.”

The nurse looked up and stifled a gasp when I said “Thirteen Corps.” I thought I saw her hesitate when she turned back and traced the lines of names that had been written down just that morning. There were already five or six pages closely filled, and it was not yet ten. The nurses had pads of paper they jotted names and other information on as quickly as they could, to be transcribed neatly by a wizened little man sitting at a desk. “We have had may from Thirteen Corps this morning. But I see no one by that name.”

“He—he probably couldn’t speak. How do you write down the ones whose names you can’t find out?” I touched her arm so that she could not dismiss me yet, although she flicked her eyes in the direction of the others and was clearly anxious to get back to her real work. But this would be my only opportunity to find out, and I had to grasp it.

“Here. Here is what we write. You can look at it, but I must return to my work.”

She thrust the ledger into my hands. I opened it again, half dreading, half hoping. I saw that at the end of the long list of names were some ten or more that simply said “Unable to identify” and then listed a quick description of their wounds, followed by a triage determination: critical, surgery, or hopeless. I scanned down until I found one description of head wounds. Someone had initially written “hopeless,” but that was crossed off and “surgery” was written above it.

I still knew little more than I did before. My pulse raced. I knew I should just wait until the soldier I believed was Sasha came out of surgery. But what if he died in there? Head wounds were very tricky, I had heard my mother say.

I forced myself to calm down and return to the convalescent ward where I was meant to be reading to the men. The sister gave me a frosty look as I entered. I went and sat by a young fellow who didn’t seem to mind that it was I and not my sister Tatiana reading to him, and started on the tales of Gogol. I soon lost myself in them, and amused the men by using funny voices for the characters, making more than one of them smile, and redeeming myself somewhat for my tardy appearance that morning.

Late in the day, I decided I had to make one last attempt to see the young soldier who had gone into the operating theater with a head wound. I knew where the post-surgery ward was, although I wasn’t supposed to enter it. I decided that I could use the excuse that I was looking for my mother, hoping all the time that she wouldn’t be there. She did not know of Sasha’s existence, or of my friendship with him, and I had no desire to explain it to her now.

The lights were lower in that ward, as if the cots contained not men who had just had limbs amputated or bullets and shrapnel pulled out of their bodies and vital organs, but babies newly born who needed sleep. I was lucky in finding it deserted for the moment, perhaps because the nurses were changing shifts. I scanned the cots, quickly eliminating all but one of them as possibly containing Sasha. That one held someone whose head was almost completely bandaged, with holes for his nose, mouth, and one eye. I was certain it was the soldier I had seen earlier, and crept through the ward until I was at his bedside. Even less of him was visible than when he originally came in. I thought at first I must have been mistaken, and sighed.

“Oh, Sasha,” I whispered. “Where are you?”

So quietly that at first I thought it was nothing more than a breath, the soldier’s lips moved. I put my ear to those lips, deciding that even if it wasn’t Sasha, perhaps he would say his name and I might be able to tell the nurses so that they could inform his family where he was.

“Na… stya,” he said.

“Sasha!” I nearly cried out, but stopped myself, and his name came out in a coarse whisper. “Sasha, I’m here,” I continued. I didn’t know whether to be overjoyed or devastated. What if he died? Many did after their surgery. “I’ll come see you every day. Does it hurt very much? When you can, you must tell me what happened.”

“What are you doing here?” The loud voice of the nurse made me jump backward.

“I—I can identify this soldier, Sister,” I said.

“You are contaminating this ward. Leave at once!”

“Yes, of course,” I said. I was so elated to have found Sasha that her rude dismissal didn’t bother me in the slightest. I’d make sure they gave me access tomorrow so that I could come and visit, and I’d use what little influence I had to ensure that Sasha had the very best care.

Sasha was alive. Wounded—I didn’t know how badly—but alive. My heart swelled with gratitude. When we knelt for our evening prayers, I actually meant all that I said for the first time in several years.

C
HAPTER
8

Sasha’s convalescence took a long time. At first, he could only squeak out a few words. I learned that the doctors hadn’t expected him to live at all—a piece of a shell had lodged in his left eye, and they feared that it might have caused irreparable brain damage. But luckily for Sasha—if you could call it luck—the jagged piece of metal that struck his face missed every important artery and nerve, except for his optic nerve. He is blind in that eye, and has worn a patch over it ever since he left the hospital.

Immediately after the surgery, he was grateful to see me.

“You remember me?” he asked.

“How could I not? You do realize you’re the only friend I have.”

He managed to look puzzled without being able to move the muscles in his face very much. “But everyone must want to be your friend.”

“Oh,” I said, “many of the daughters of the nobility want to know us, but Mama won’t allow us to become friendly with them. She says they have been brought up in decadence, without any responsibilities, and that they are not religious enough for us.”

He made a sort of snort that I realized was a laugh. “I’m sure they have enough religion when called upon.”

Already, even before they took the bandages off, I noticed that something had changed about Sasha. He had an edge that wasn’t there before. I wanted to ask him about it, but I didn’t know how, and I didn’t want to upset him.

I had to continue reading to all the wounded soldiers, but I always made time in my day for Sasha. It was the only instance where I ever used my rank to achieve something. I wasn’t really supposed to go anywhere except the convalescent wards, but I demanded they allow me in wherever Sasha was, even if he had just come out of another surgery. In all, he had three. None of them managed to repair his eye.

I wasn’t certain how conscious Sasha was of the extent of his wound, until the day I came in and all but one bandage over his eye had been removed. He had several gashes on his face that had been stitched up, but only one appeared deep enough to leave a scar.

“You look quite well, considering everything,” I said with a smile, attempting to adopt the teasing tone we once had with each other. But his face remained immobile. He looked at me with an expression I could not read. He was harder than I had ever seen him, and yet underneath, more vulnerable. Frightened, I thought.

“You may wish to laugh at me, but I assure you, I am not in the least amused to know that I have lost the use of my eye forever.”

I didn’t know what to say. I reached for his hand. He clenched it into a fist and pulled it away. I leafed through the book I had brought, pretending to be looking for the place we had left off the day before, but really I was trying to compose myself.

“Maybe we would be winning this war if your mother wasn’t a German spy!” he burst out.

I couldn’t answer that. It was the most preposterous thing I had ever heard. Mama loved Russia more than anyone. I stood and glared at Sasha, hoping he saw the anger I felt but couldn’t express in that crowded ward. Then I turned and walked out.

I returned early to the Alexander Palace and found Olga lying on a sofa, still wearing her nurse’s uniform, and staring blankly at the ceiling. Countess Hendrikova, the maid of honor we called Nastinka, came in a moment later stirring a bromide, a worried crease in her forehead.

“Olga, dearest?” I said, approaching my sister. She was twenty-one at the time. I thought of her as almost as much of an adult as my mother.

“She cannot answer you,” Nastinka said. She sat beside Olga and tried to tip the bromide into her mouth. It dribbled out down her chin.

“What’s wrong? Is she ill? Has she got a fever? Is she hurt?” Any of those events would be worrisome, in the midst of everything else. Even Alyosha had cooperated by being in one of his healthy phases. Yet Olga didn’t look unwell. She looked… blank. Empty.

“Not exactly ill. Just overwrought.”

Olga didn’t seem to see or hear anything, but as I watched, great tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down her face. She didn’t move a muscle to wipe them away. Nastinka blotted them with her handkerchief. “Nastya, be a dear and go and fetch Dr. Botkin, would you?” Nastinka was trying to appear calm, but I could hear panic on the edge of her voice. Something had happened, clearly, and Nastinka either wouldn’t or couldn’t tell me what.

I didn’t have to be asked again. I ran to find a servant who could call one of the other ladies-in-waiting to telephone Dr. Botkin, who lived in the village. It seemed an eternity until he arrived. He came in immediately to see Olga, opening his medical bag as he walked so that his stethoscope was already out by the time he reached her side. Mother returned home a short while later and came directly to the parlor. “Nastinka, please take Nastya to the schoolroom to prepare for tea,” she said, not looking at me.

I opened my mouth to protest. I wanted to know what was wrong with Olga. But one did not contradict Mama. She had a delicate heart and any unpleasantness made her short of breath. “No need to take me, I know my way,” I told Nastinka. She cast an apologetic look at me as she closed the door after me.

That night, Olga did not come to tea or supper. No one said anything in the parlor, although often it was Olga who read or played the piano, or played bezique with Papa. We were the usual circle: Mama, Anya, Nastinka, Isa, Lili Dehn, the elderly Count and Countess Benckendorff, and Prince Dolgorukov—marshal of the court and Papa’s aide-de-camp. There were also one or two officers who were on leave and whom Anya had invited, thinking they would be company for Olga and Tatiana, but only Tatiana was there. The atmosphere was tense, and Mama went up to bed early, probably to check on Olga.

When Mashka and I were at last alone in our room, I asked her if she knew anything.

“Olga collapsed at the hospital. She just collapsed.”

I didn’t understand. “What would have made her do that?”

“Anya says she could not bear the sight of so many torn limbs and dreadful injuries. It happened right after she saw someone die following an amputation.”

It made sense that Anya spoke to Mashka. She was Anya’s favorite. Still, I was a little hurt that people not even in our family knew more than I did. “Will she be better?”

“Dr. Botkin says yes, although they’ve called a mentalist from Petrograd. She won’t nurse again, though.”

I pictured someone who looked like Grigory Rasputin, but with a watch that he would dangle in front of Olga’s eyes to mesmerize her. “She looked so sad.”

“The injuries are horrible to see. Who is that soldier you spend so much time with? The one with the bandage over his eye?”

I was startled for a moment that she would have noticed, then I realized that when I was with Sasha, I barely looked anywhere but at him. She could easily have come into the ward and seen us and I wouldn’t have noticed. I had taken no pains to conceal my concern over him. “Oh, only someone I feel particularly sorry for. He will never be able to see with that eye again.” I didn’t think she was entirely convinced, but we were both tired, and turned out our lights to go to sleep.

I returned to the hospital the next day and didn’t feel like going to see Sasha. Between his awful accusation and my worry over Olga, I was little in the mood to confront anything. I went directly to the convalescent ward, where I knew he wouldn’t be, and began reading from the Bible to a young boy barely older than I was, who specially requested it.

I hadn’t been there long when a nurse came to me with a folded note. “The officer in the ward upstairs asked me to give you this.”

I thanked her and opened it.

Can you forgive me? That was a horrible thing to say, and I don’t really believe it. Please come and visit me when you can
.

    
S
.

Of course, I finished the chapter and, resisting the boy’s entreaty to read another, went directly to see Sasha. He smiled when I came in. I brought a chair over to his bed.

“You look sad,” he said.

“Olga is not well.”

“Has she caught a fever from the wounded soldiers?” he asked.

“No. Her illness is in her mind. She will not come back to nurse anymore.”

He nodded. “And yet you come every day, with so much blood and carnage around. Why?”

“Because I must. Because it is my duty.” I didn’t want to tell him that I raced to the hospital mainly because I knew I would see him.

He reached his hand out to me. I couldn’t help but remember how he had shrunk from my touch the day before, and I didn’t take it. “I really am sorry, you know,” he said. “But I’m not sorry too. You should know what people have been saying about your mother.”

“Is there more?” I asked, curiosity erasing my annoyance.

“They say she’s in league with Rasputin, who has cast a spell over her and tells her what ministers he wants the tsar to appoint.”

“That is not true and you must know it!” I honestly didn’t know whether to laugh or be angry. Grigory was a little odd, but Mama’s belief in him had only to do with Alexei. She believed he had made him better when all the doctors had failed.

“Really? Then how do you explain Protopopov? He’s incompetent, yet he stays. He’s thick with Rasputin.” Protopopov was the prime minister, I knew that much. But I really had no idea about anything else, only trusting that because Papa had appointed him, he was capable of doing his job.

The next day Sasha was in the same convalescent ward where I was supposed to be, and I didn’t have to make excuses to be with him. He kept the bandage over his eye, but the stitches on his face had been taken out. He looked almost like his old self, except that the metal that struck him had dug a channel from his eye to the corner of his mouth, leaving a visible scar. I think it hurt him to talk for quite a while after the stitches were out. He never complained to me directly. I just noticed that after he had been speaking for a while his face iced over, like the Neva River in the wintertime.

But once our conversation about the war and politics had begun, it could do nothing else but continue. “Listen, Nastya,” he said to me one day, “If you have any influence over your papa at all, you must convince him to use his reason. If he does not let the Duma have its constitutional monarchy, everything will be lost.”

The Duma, the closest thing we had to an English Parliament, had been dissolved by the prime minister Stolypin when I was just a small child. Then Stolypin was assassinated at the opera, with my father, Olga, and Tatiana looking on. They came back and told us about it, and their description left a strong impression on me. It made me feel that somehow the Duma was a bad thing. I didn’t know what to think when it was reconvened recently for the fourth time. I remembered my parents talking about it. My mother was completely against it. Papa said, “It will make no difference to let them have their petty squabbles in public. I am not bound to take any of their decisions as more than suggestion. How can intellectuals and merchants govern my Russia?”