City of Shadows (15 page)

“I am not ordinary. Am not
ordinary.
”

Esther gripped her hands. “It won’t be fame, it will be notoriety.” She struggled for a way to pierce the incomprehension. “Newspapers may carry articles about you, but the Romanovs will refute them, they’ll be unkind, they’ll make you a laughingstock. Some people may take you up, but the Romanovs won’t. They’ll never recognize you as Anastasia. Anna, please try to see.”

Astonishing violet eyes looked back at her, but what they saw, Esther couldn’t tell. She felt a desperate tenderness for this abused creature— and guilt for her own part in abusing it.

“If I am well known, I have a dog,” Anna said.

Esther released her hands and let her go.

In her room Natalya was sitting on her bed. Esther sat down next to her. It was very cold; the only light came through the door from the sit
ting room. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Six months of my life,” Natalya said tonelessly. “There’s not much left.”

“Not much left of what?”

“My life. I’m going to die young, you know.” She’d hooped her bed
spread over her head and shoulders so that she was completely en
wrapped except for nose and mouth. As she spoke, her breath made steam. Esther was reminded of the little charcoal burners’ kilns in the Siberian forest.

“Nonsense.”

“I am.” Natalya’s voice had taken on an elegiac quality. “There was an old woman in the village; she saw things. Poor peasants’ Rasputin, she was. We were frightened of her, she looked like Baba Yaga, but she had the sight. She told me once, she said I’d be a shooting star, not long in the heavens but bright while I crossed them.”

“For God’s sake, Nasha.”

“Could have been me, couldn’t it? He should have chosen me, really. Nick should. Right height, right coloring. I know as much as she does, and I’m a hell of a lot saner.”

“Doesn’t sound like it.” Esther reached out and touched the cold cheek under the quilt. “Come on, lovie. Get to bed. You’re tired.”

Natalya pointed to her pile of movie magazines. “Did you know Hol
lywood wants to make a film about Rasputin’s killing?”

“Does it?”

“Make a great movie.”

“I suppose it would.”

“Anastasia coming back from the dead—that’d make a great movie, too.”

“Not if she were a fake,” Esther said.

“It’s all fake. That’s what movies are.”

The telephone rang. Esther went into the living room to answer it and heard Nick’s voice on the other end.

“He’s back,” she called, putting down the receiver. “And he’s got cash, thank God. We can eat again. I’ll go and collect it.”

“Tonight?” Natalya appeared in the doorway like a pink bear in her bedspread.

“I’ve got to. We need to get food first thing tomorrow, before the prices go up. He says he can’t come over—he’s throwing a party for Yusupov at the Green Hat and can’t leave.”

“Yusupov?”

“Yes, he met him in Paris.”

“Prince Felix? The one who killed Rasputin? He’s in Berlin?”

“Yusupov?” Anna raised her head from her exercise. “He’s a bad man. He put poor Rasputin under the ice.”

“Oh, shut up about Rasputin. He was as mad as you are.” Natalya was excited. “Esther, that film ...the one I was telling you about, they want Yusupov to star in it. As himself, like.”

“Really.” Esther was putting on her coat. Get to the shops early,
very
early, before the lines grew too long. Maybe there’d be meat
.. . .

Natalya was still in the doorway. “How well did he know Anastasia?”

“Who?”

“Yusupov.”

“Only as a child. The czar banned him after he killed Rasputin.”

“He’s important, though, isn’t he? Prince of the blood and all.”

“I suppose. Where’s my gloves?” Some vegetables before they sold out . . .

“I’m coming, too,” Natalya said. “Wait for me.”

“No, stay here.”

There was an altercation through the door of the bedroom as Natalya retired into it to get ready. Anna had never been left alone in the flat at night and didn’t want to start now. “The Cheka will get me.”

“Who cares?” Natalya shouted.

Esther was dubious; she didn’t like leaving Anna alone, and she dis
trusted Natalya’s sudden excitement, but Natalya said, “You can’t stop me,” and Esther could think of no way, short of violence, to do so. She wondered whether she should send the girl to get the money on her own, then doubted whether, in her present mood, she’d come back.

In the end she persuaded a grumbling Frau Schinkel to let Anna sit with her until they returned.

Natalya joined her, carrying her handbag, in her best coat, and with what appeared to be a long skirt beneath it. She had on a pair of shoes.

“What’s happened to your boots?”

“These are more comfortable.”

It was too cold to talk; they adjusted their scarves over their mouths and walked fast through unlit streets, a wind straight from the steppes blowing on their backs. Herr Hitler’s scarlet posters were black in the dark; they seemed to have proliferated.

They could hear the noise and see the lights from the Green Hat as they reached Potsdamer Platz. Flashbulbs were popping. A crowd had gathered outside its big glass doors in two lines to watch people going in. Autograph books were being proffered and signed.

“Oh, my God,” Natalya said. “Look who’s getting out of that car.”

“Who?” The faces were vaguely familiar.

“Ruth Weyher and Fritz Kortner. You remember—
they’ve been in dozens of films.
And there’s Fritz
Lang.
Oh, my God.”

Film people. Esther became angry. Nick had found money enough to pull out the stops for Yusupov.

They pushed their way through the crowd, to be barred by a large man in an astrakhan hat and a uniform heavily frogged in gold braid. “Only invited guests,” he said. “Oh, hello, Esther.”

“Let us in, Gricha, we’re on business.”

The foyer was full of people handing in their coats and wraps. Esther tapped one of the cloakroom girls on the shoulder. “Where’s Nick, Vera?”

“Just gone upstairs.”

Esther turned to look for Natalya, found she’d disappeared, and went up.

The gaming room was getting ready for the suckers. Nick was hand
ing out the banks to his croupiers and testing what Esther had always suspected were crooked roulette wheels. “Come for our money, Nick,” she said.

“You girls, so mercenary.”

“We girls, so hungry.”

They went to his office. “How’s Mademoiselle Eloise?”

He frowned. “Oh, shit, Esther, wait till I tell you. She is a complete disappointment. Not Bourbon at all. I think she’s Mafia. I may
have
to marry her. What do you want? I don’t have time, I got a party to throw.”

“Money, Nick.”

Grumbling, he opened his safe.

She went to the window that gave onto the club’s great room, effac
ing the memory of the night it had been empty by seeing it crowded. A ragtime band was playing the Charleston and couples were dancing, legs kicking, arms swinging. The women were shimmering and angular in their straight, bosomless dresses, long necklaces bouncing, their neat bobs circled by jeweled headbands.

Watching money enjoy itself, wondering where it came from, com
paring the glitter of wealth in this heated place to the bleakness of the streets, she recognized faces she’d seen in the newspapers, politi
cians, actors, actresses. How had Nick come to know these people? And they him?

Oh, hell, she thought with a sudden longing, it may be decadent but it looks fun. “Is Yusupov here?”

“Not yet. He will be; he never misses a party. Met him in Paris, down on his luck like the rest. I’m softening him up. He doesn’t know it yet, but one of these days our Prince Felix is going to recognize the grand duchess Anastasia.”

She took in a deep breath to tell him a thing or two ...and let it out again: “Oh,
hell
.”

“What?” He joined her at the window.

A figure had walked onto the flickering floor, matte and plain against the surrounding sparkle. The dancers were stopping to look at it, and it was inclining its head graciously toward them.

Natalya had dressed herself in a long skirt and an off-the-shoulder blouse. There was a single string of pearls around her neck; she’d bor
rowed a kokoshnik from one of the cigarette girls and had scraped her hair back under it, leaving only a fringe.

She looked very young; she looked like the picture that had adorned a hundred thousand postcards; she looked like Anastasia.

Nick picked up a speaking tube. “The girl on the dance floor. Get her up here. Now.” Swearing, he began kicking his desk.

She’s gone mad, Esther thought. We’ve sent her mad. She watched Theo and another muscled man in a tuxedo advance on Natalya and speak to her. Natalya smiled, laid her hand elegantly on Theo’s prof
fered arm, and allowed herself to be led away. The band started up again, but the dancers remained in groups, talking.

The office door opened. “Here she is, boss,” Theo said. “She was ask
ing for Prince Yusupov, but he ain’t here yet.”

“Leave her to me.”

There was silence. Unwillingly, Esther turned around from the window.

“Well?” Nick asked.

Natalya started to babble. “I can do it, Nick. Look at me. Somebody said ‘Anastasia’ down there—I heard them. We’re wasting time with Anna. She’ll never do it; she can’t even speak the bloody language. Let me see Yusupov. Just let him look at me; he’ll say. I know it all, I was
there,
for saints’ sake—she wasn’t. I’ll do it for you, I can do it.
Look
at me.”

“I’m looking,” Nick said. He’d sat down on the edge of his desk. He was terrible when he was quiet.

Mascara was smudged below Natalya’s eyes. Her short, too-blond hair had fallen out of her kokoshnik and assumed its flapper position on her rouged cheeks. Her eyes were wide and staring; she looked like a rag doll. She began shrieking. “It’s bloody done now. They’ve seen me. I’m not going back. There’s a film in it, Nick. Me as Anastasia, back from the dead. Oh, Nick, let me do it. I can
do
it.”

“No.”

They stared at each other.

“Why not?” asked Natalya, and she sounded reasonable.

“Because Anastasia isn’t trash and you are.”

Esther moved to Natalya’s side, facing Nick. “Leave her alone. It’s finished. You started this, and here’s how it ends.”

“Oh, no it isn’t.” Natalya’s face had wizened with shock. “I’ll tell, Nick. I’m Anastasia now, and you say I’m not, and I’ll tell the newspapers what we’ve been doing with that Polish slut in Bismarck Allee these months.”

“Oh, yes?” Nick got up. Gathering Natalya in one arm like a friend, he took her to the window. “Look down there, kid. See that fat man in
the corner, the one with the floozy in the pink? Biggest publisher in Berlin. And him on the next table? That’s the chief of police with the minister of the interior.”

He turned Natalya around and put his face close to hers. “The power
ful men of Germany are in the Hat tonight, kid, and most of ’em are tak
ing my sweeteners one way or another. Who’re they going to believe?”

Yes, Esther thought, I ignored this. Good old Nick, the corrupter. Good old vicious Nick. I didn’t want to know. I should have.

“Now, you go home,” Nick was saying. “You be a good girl, and maybe I’ll forget this.” He steered Natalya to the door and opened it. The bouncers were outside. “But one word, one
word,
and I swear on the fucking Bible you’ll have no tongue to say another.” To the bounc
ers he said, “Get her coat and one of you take her home.”

When she’d gone, he turned back into the room, glaring at Esther. “And what the fuck were you doing bringing her here?”

“Nick, the game’s over, whoever you use. It’s dirty, and it’s damaging those girls, and I’m not playing it anymore. There’ll be no Anastasia. I’m stopping it.”

“You are?”

“Yes. Try it and I’ll do some telling of my own. And I know where the bodies are buried. Income tax, Nick.” He stared at her, appalled; she’d used a dirty word:
Einkommensteuer.
“Income tax,” she said again, en
joying it. “You can have half the government in your pocket, but you haven’t got the Tax Department, and they don’t like being bilked.”

He picked up a paperweight from his desk, and for a moment she thought he’d throw it at her. Instead he smashed the glass of one of the Braque prints. “That’s what I get for employing a fucking Jew.”

“That’s what you get,” Esther said. “And while we’re talking money”—she swept up the pile of thousand-mark notes he’d got out of the safe—“this is mine.”