I Was Anastasia: A Novel

The Elisabeth Hospital, Berlin. February 18, 1920: Someone slaps Anna, and she coughs water from her lungs. A police sergeant says he will throw her in jail unless she tells him who she is and why she jumped from the bridge. In response, “Anna looks at him and sees only a caricature of authority. Cruel and selfish and brutal. It’s easy enough to make her decision in the light of his cool indifference” (286). They question her motives, and Anna thinks she “simply threw herself toward the darkness, hoping to be consumed” (287). She falls unconscious at the police station and regains consciousness in a hospital, where she is tended by nurses who examine her. The nurses think her scars are from bullets and stab wounds. Anna refuses to tell them her name and says she has no family. The doctor, Dr. Winicke, thinks Anna might be a sex worker who mutilated herself or was abused by clients. He can tell she has had sexual intercourse.

Ipatiev House, Ekaterinburg, Russia. July 17, 1:00 am: Anastasia hears the cannons of the advancing White Army, and she hopes they will rescue the family. Tomas tells her Yakov plans to kill them all and is waiting for a truck to transport the bodies. He wants Anastasia to run away with him. Anastasia wants to warn her family. She hears the truck arriving.

The Netherlands Palace, Berlin. February 17, 1920: Anna stands at the gate of the palace, asking to speak with Princess Irene. She says she has news of the imperial family, whom the princess is trying to locate. She feels “[e]very choice leading her here. To see the woman who lives beyond these walls, the one person, she believes, who can actually help her” (297). The guard looks at Anna’s tattered clothing and turns her away. Anna wanders away, forlorn, and comes to the Landwehr Canal. She sees couples laughing and kissing. She begins to cry and looks at her reflection in the water. Then she jumps in and realizes “[w]hat a stupid thing she has done” (299).

Ipatiev House, Ekaterinburg, Russia. July 17, 1:30 am: Anastasia asks Tomas to take care of Jimmy. Then, she runs back to her room. Yakov orders the girls to dress and says he is taking them to a safer place. The girls put on all their “jewel-studded undergarments” (301). Anastasia hopes that Tomas is wrong. They are taken downstairs to a room in the cellar. Anastasia decides not to tell the others what she knows, thinking “the only mercy I can extend is the gift of ignorance” (303). They are forced to wait until soldiers file into the room, holding rifles with bayonets. Yakov announces that the Soviet Council has sentenced them to death.

Schreiber Boardinghouse, Berlin. February 17, 1920: Anna oversleeps, still suffering from nightmares. She worries she will lose her job. She has no money, and the rent is due. She sees a newspaper article saying Princess Irene is trying to find the imperial family. She is offering a reward for information, and Anna wonders “if she would believe the impossible if it came knocking on her door” (306). Anna examines herself in the mirror, including the stretch marks beneath her belly button.

Eleven months earlier. Antonescu Refugee Camp, Bucharest, Romania. January 1919: Anna screams as the contractions grip her, and the midwife is concerned. Anna gives birth to a baby boy, who is taken away to be given to another family. The midwife says, “He will never remember where he came from” (309).

Ipatiev House, Ekaterinburg, Russia. July 17, 2:45 am: Anastasia panics, and then the gunfire begins. She watches as her father, mother, and Maria are shot. Semyon looks as if he regrets having to kill Olga. The soldiers have been drinking vodka to prepare themselves for the slaughter. They kill the four servants as well: Dova, Trupp, Botkin, and the cook. Some of the soldiers vomit from the gore. Anastasia is shot several times, but her jewel-studded corset protects her torso. Yakov strikes her on the temple and then resorts to stabbing her. She falls unconscious, but she is not dead.

Anna is covered in blood, and she is in pain. Voices ask her to be still so they can help. Two people she doesn’t know remove the shrapnel from her wounds and suture them.

Tomas was the third soldier who entered the train car that night. He soothed Alexey and held Anastasia while she wept at hearing her sisters cry out in pain. Tomas kept other soldiers from approaching them. Anastasia thinks that even if she had run away with him, they would have been hunted down and killed. She is glad Tomas is alive and has Jimmy. As they throw her into the mineshaft, she can hear cannons and the barking of a dog.

Anna is upset over the telegram she received, which says her fiancé was killed at Amiens. Just as she notices a loose pin on the grenade she is handling, the baby kicks, and she is so surprised she drops the grenade. In the seven seconds of countdown, Anna wonders how to protect herself. The grenade explodes, and “Franziska Annalie Schanzkowska is blown backward into the wall, jagged bits of metal ripping into her temple, torso, and thighs” (320).

Anna says she never promised a happy ending. She addresses her reader, saying: “here is what you, and all the others, fail to understand: there would be no legend without me. I am the one who stopped her from being a tragic little footnote in history. I kept Anastasia Romanov alive for decades” (323). She reflects that she lost everything, including her fiancé and her child. At first, she enjoyed luxury and people giving her gifts. She says she felt guilty but saw how much people wanted her claim to be true. She says that she eventually found it impossible to back out, so she began to embrace the lie. She notes that while she told the lie, other people perpetuated it with their need to believe.