I Was Anastasia: A Novel

Cherepovets, Russia. August 1: Gleb sends Anastasia a pear, which brings her to tears. She thinks that she would like to be unemotional, like her great-grandmother Queen Victoria. She feels she’s being ripped from her life. The train travels east, carrying 350 soldiers along with the family’s four servants: Botkin, their physician; Dova, their lady’s maid; the cook; and Alexey Trupp, her father’s valet. Gilliard, their tutor, will join them at their destination. They are allowed a short pause to stretch their legs and walk the dogs. Anastasia eats the pear. Their father suspects they are being taken to Siberia.

Five days later. Tyumen, Russia. August 6: The train stops at Tyumen, and the family boards a steamer. Anastasia takes comfort in her father’s stories as they travel. They pass the place where Grigory Rasputin was born. Anastasia thinks how she was friends with his daughter, Maria, for some time. They stop in Tobolsk.

Hannover, Germany. July 9, 1938: Anna learns that Gleb has married an American woman. Anna hasn’t seen him in seven years but is still hurt by the news. Her lawyer, Edward Fallows, looks worn out. Anna has been summoned to an interrogation ordered by Adolf Hitler and has dressed well; she thinks that if she’s being sent to prison, she will go in style. Anna regrets that she fell into the trap set by the private investigator, and she wants this affair over with. The four Schanzkowska siblings are waiting for her: Valerian, Felix, Gertrude, and Maria-Juliana.

Gertrude and Anna look remarkably alike. The officer in charge asks the Schanzkowska siblings to sign an affidavit declaring that Anna is their sister, Franziska. Valerian says the last time he saw Franziska, she was pregnant. Anna says she has no children. As they stare at her, she mentally pleads with them to leave her alone. Anna has seen Felix twice, once in Wasserburg, and once before that. He says she looks nothing like Franziska. Gertrude insists Anna is their sister, but Anna says her siblings are all dead. She leaves the room. Edward says that he has contested the suit brought by the tsar’s surviving relatives to settle his estate, and the court has agreed to hear their evidence.

Four months earlier. Berlin, Germany. April 1938: Anna meets with Adolf Hitler, who has investigated her claims and believes she is Anastasia Romanov. He expects that if he supports Anna, she will, in turn, support his regime. The alternative is imprisonment or death.

Six years earlier. Kuranstalt Ilten Psychiatric Home, Hannover, Germany. January 1932: Anna meets Ernest Frederick, Prince of Saxe-Altenburg, who visits her cottage on the grounds of the psychiatric institution. His sister, Charlotte, married Anastasia’s cousin Sigismund. Sigismund has devised a list of questions for Anna, and he says that if she passes, she will have his full support as well as that of Princess Irene. Anna reflects that the last time she sought help, “she ended up at the bottom of the Landwehr Canal in Berlin” (124). Frederick apologizes for testing her. He knows that her stay at the facility is being paid for by Miss Jennings, who had Anna committed to an institution back in New York. He says he can offer Anna a home in Hannover, near the Marstall Gate.

Tobolsk, Russia. August 7: The Romanov family is given the old Governor’s House. It is run down and filthy. Their maid, Dova, organizes the cleaning. Dova asks Tomas to help. Tomas tells Anastasia he was born in the town and there is a museum of torture devices.

Seven weeks later: Tobolsk, Russia. September 27: Nicholas II summons the children into his study and reads from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. Their mother shows them how to sew jewels into the seams of their clothing.

Four Winds Sanatorium, Westchester County, New York. July 1931: Anna is being released after a year in the sanitorium. The year and a half when she lived in Annie Burr Jennings’s Manhattan penthouse already seems like a distant blur. The new director of the sanitorium realizes Anna has been committed without a proper evaluation. Jennings, whom Anna thinks of as the Heiress, has paid for her care and is now sending her back to Germany. Jennings is a major benefactor of the institution as well. Anna’s file is given to Jennings.

One year earlier. Private Medical Office, Manhattan. July 25, 1930: Anna is distraught that she accidentally stepped on and killed her last green parrot, one of a pair she named Janus. She feels “that creeping darkness that she has fought for over a decade begin […] to smother her again” (135). She has a panic attack, and people break into her room.

Anna wakes in restraints and realizes she’s been medicated. A doctor says she has disordered nerves and wants her permission to administer a new treatment. He puts a pen in Anna’s hand and guides her fingers to sign.

Six months earlier. Manhattan. January 14, 1930: Anna recalls the statement issued by Tsar Nicholas II’s family insisting that Anna is an imposter. It was written after the death of the Dowager Empress and has come to be known as the Copenhagen Statement. Anna stays in her room and drinks champagne. She is wearing nothing but a fur coat at the open window. She opens the cage holding her parrots and both fly for the window. One escapes. Anna runs to the rooftop, screaming for her bird. Neighbors tell her to be quiet, but “Anna does not comply. Compliance is not in her nature” (140). Someone carries her to her bedroom.

Tobolsk, Russia. October 10: Anastasia feels frustrated during her lessons because Gleb sits outside on the garden wall, teasing her by flashing light into her eyes. Pierre Gilliard scolds Anastasia for sleeping in class, and she throws the chalk. She is punished by having to take chicken entrails to the refuse pile. Tomas comes to help her. He observes that she is different from her sisters and more spirited. Anastasia’s dog, Jimmy, likes Tomas. Anastasia sees Maria talking with a guard named Ivan.

Two weeks later. Tobolsk, Russia. October 25: Nicholas II learns that the Bolsheviks have taken control of the provisional government, and Kerensky is no longer in charge. He realizes Kerensky showed them mercy by not handing them over to the mob and by making them grow their own food, as there are food shortages. On hearing this, Anastasia runs from the room and tells Tomas she wishes she could escape.

Metropolitan Opera House, New York City. November 1929: Anna is with Annie Burr Jennings, whom she thinks of as the Heiress, attending a performance of Tosca. The Heiress is following the news of the stock market crash and tells Anna a handsome young banker, John Hammond, took his life by jumping from a window. He made a bad investment and lost everything. Anna tries to hold her panic at bay.

Four months earlier. Siaconset Beach, Nantucket Island. July 1929: Anna and a man, a banker, are alone on the deck of the Heiress’s boat, which is anchored offshore. Anna drinks champagne, which she thinks of as “her drug of choice” (157). The young man, John Hammond, teases Anna into swimming with him. She worries he will see her scars.

Six months earlier. Law Office of Edward Fallows, Long Island, New York. January 1929: Edward asks Anna to authorize a corporation named Grandanor that will ask investors to give funds on the promise of getting part of the Romanov fortune when Anna’s claim is proven. Grandanor stands for Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia. Anna is angry that she wasn’t consulted on this effort. Gleb implores her to go along with the plan. Against her better judgment, Anna signs.

One month earlier. The Ritz-Carlton, Manhattan. December 1928: Annie Burr Jennings is an older, unmarried woman with a large fortune. She believes Anna is a social find and invites Anna to live with her. 

Two months earlier. Garden City, New York. October 1928: Gleb notes that Anna sits beneath a picture of one of her ancestors, Queen Louise of Prussia, but doesn’t recognize the woman. Gleb says this is the kind of thing her detractors will use against her. Anna uses her paper knife, which bears the crest of the Empress Alexandra. The composer Sergei Rachmaninoff is paying for Anna to stay at this hotel after she left Kenwood. Gleb says they need money.