Natasha's Dream (3 page)

There was, however, a nuisance at large, and one whom Grand Duke Kyril chose to ignore. In 1920, a scarred and sick woman had surfaced in Berlin, and after two years of being a nameless mystery and curiosity to the nurses and doctors who did what they could for her, she had suddenly declared herself to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicolaievna, youngest daughter of the dead Tsar. She had survived
the massacre? Impossible, said exiled and aloof Romanov relatives, and refused to acknowledge her. There were some people, however, including several who had known Anastasia in the old days, who supported her claim.

She was still in Berlin. For three years, since 1922, she had been the centre of gossip and speculation. She was still physically fragile, still sick from shattered nerves, and among the people interested in the mystery of her true identity was the man who had saved a hungry and penniless young woman from being tossed over a bridge into the river.

Reaching his rented apartment on the second floor of a block in a quiet residential neighbourhood, the man set the young woman on her feet and fished out the door key. She clutched his arm for support. He opened the door and took her in. The warmth and comfort of the apartment were an immediate rapture to her, the living room a welcome haven. He removed the coat he had wrapped around her, seated her on a sofa and drew her feet up. She sighed and lay back, head on a cushion. He saw that her shoes were old and cracked, the soles badly worn. Her face looked pinched in the light of an electric lamp. Her eyes, so darkly blue they were almost violet, were rimmed by privation, her facial hollows a sign that she was indeed near to starving. She looked as if she had been
existing only on what she could get from a soup kitchen.

He went to a sideboard and poured a large cognac for her. He handed her the glass.

‘Sip it slowly,’ he said, ‘while I get you some hot soup and bread.’

He disappeared. She sipped the cognac, a little at a time. Its fire hit her throat. She coughed. She looked around. The comfortable atmosphere of the room was not diminished by the fact that it looked a little untidy. It was a masculine untidiness. Books had been left on a chair, a notebook perched precariously on the rounded arm of the chair, a pair of dried-out shoes lay close to a porcelain heating stove and a jacket was carelessly draped over another chair. There was a newspaper on the floor beside the sofa. She rose to her feet to test herself. Immediately her head swam and she sat down again. It was not nausea this time, but simply weakness.

The man brought the soup to her after a while, a large bowl of it. On the tray there was also a plate containing a large amount of dark brown bread, bread that looked fresh and was not of the cheap black kind. It was even
buttered. She sat up. Butter on bread to be eaten with soup? Oh, such extravagance, and such rapture. She took the tray on to her lap and looked up at the man. His hair was a deep brown and his eyes were warm. His smile was friendly and encouraging.

‘Oh, thank you,’ she said, and seized a portion of the thickly cut bread. Its fresh feel and glistening butter galvanized her hunger and she brought it ravenously to her mouth. Her white teeth tore at it. She chewed and swallowed, demolishing the entire portion. The smell of the soup assailed her nostrils. She quickly swallowed the bread in her mouth and picked up the soup spoon.

The man sat down in an armchair. He took up the newspaper and glanced through it, tactfully keeping his eyes off the starving girl.

‘There’s more if you want it,’ he murmured.

She gulped the nutritious soup, pushing in bread with each mouthful. ‘You will forgive my manners?’ she said, suddenly embarrassed.

‘Oh, manners,’ he said, murmuring the words in English, ‘they’re the indulgence of the well fed, not the starving.’ In German, he added, ‘Don’t worry.’

She was staring at him. ‘English? You are English, kind sir?’ she said in that language.

‘Yes.’ He looked up from the paper. ‘Do you speak English, Fräulein?’

Her pale, smudged face and her dark, hungry eyes were suddenly transformed by a delighted smile. He felt that if she were not so painfully thin, she would be a very attractive young woman.

‘Do I speak English? But am I not doing so?’ The language was clear and fluent on her tongue, with scarcely the faintest hint of an accent. ‘I speak it to perfection. My—’ She stopped, and her moment of brightness faded. Her face became full of shadows. ‘I mean, in my school there was an English lady who taught English. She was married to Peter Gregorovich Alexeiev, who was the headmaster. They—’ Her mouth trembled and she bent her head. ‘I speak German well, but not as well as I speak English.’

‘Shall we communicate in English, then?’

‘Oh, yes.’ A little of the brightness returned, and she resumed her meal, attacking it with the unaffected relish of one who considered it a banquet. ‘How kind you are, dear sir.’

‘Dear sir?’ repeated her host.

‘That is English, isn’t it?’

‘Indeed it is,’ he smiled.

‘Then, dear sir, I—’ She put soup and bread into her mouth. She chewed, swallowed and went on. ‘I wish to say how fortunate I am in having met you. In Berlin, there are a thousand thieves in every dark doorway at night. The world is so unhappy, and people have turned away from God.’

‘Perhaps they feel God has failed them.’

‘Oh,’ she said, and gazed at him over the dripping spoon. ‘Oh, you are not a heathen, are you?’

He laughed. It was a richly comforting sound to her.

‘No, I don’t think I’m a heathen,’ he said, and she was plainly relieved to hear that. He watched her then. For all that she was devouring the food ravenously, she had little touches of gracefulness. But she was desperately thin. Her ankles were thin, her wrists thin, her facial bones thrusting and sharp. Her right cheek, smudged, showed a slight bruise from contact with the parapet. She had been handled with lethal brutality. ‘You haven’t finished your cognac,’ he said. ‘Put the rest of it in the soup.’

‘Cognac in soup?’ she said in amazement, but did as he suggested. It gave a royal flavour to the soup. ‘Kind sir—’

‘My name is Gibson. Philip Gibson. Mr Gibson, or Herr Gibson, will do. And what is your name?’

She cast a hesitant glance at him. In his suit of charcoal grey, he seemed to her a distinguished-looking man. His own eyes were very direct, his mouth firm, his smile still encouraging.

‘I am Natasha Petrovna,’ she said.

‘Natasha Petrovna? You’re Russian, then?’

‘Yes, but not Bolshevik,’ she said quickly.

‘Oh, I’m quite sure you don’t have bombs in your pocket,’ said Mr Gibson. ‘Natasha Petrovna are your given names? What is your other name?’

‘Chevensky,’ she said, after a moment.

‘So, Natasha Chevensky, you’re Russian and you speak excellent German and perfect English. May I ask what you’re doing in Berlin?’

‘I am a goose,’ said Natasha.

‘A goose?’ he said gravely. ‘Why are you a goose?’

‘Because there are too many Russians in Berlin.’ Natasha became sad. ‘There is no work
here for thousands of Germans, so how can there be any work for Russians? I should have gone to a small town, where there are only Germans. One Russian would not have mattered too much, and might have found work.’

‘Why did you leave Russia?’

Natasha finished the last portion of bread. She had consumed a whole loaf. She looked down at the empty plate.

‘Bolsheviks,’ she said, and there was pain in her voice.

‘I’ve heard they can be rather unpleasant,’ said Mr Gibson.

‘Thousands of Russians have left,’ said Natasha, head still bent. ‘Millions more would leave if they could. Kind sir, you do not know. They said the Tsar was a terrible man, a tyrant of evil and cruelty. But he was not evil and cruel to me. They were. They would have murdered me. I was young. I have never been young since.’

‘Why would they have murdered you?’ asked Mr Gibson.

‘Who can tell with Bolsheviks?’ Natasha did not lift her head. ‘They have murdered millions of people, yes, millions, and yet they still say it was only the Tsar who was cruel. They—’
Her voice was full of pain. ‘They murdered my family, my mother and father and my two brothers. I escaped. But I have since thought – oh, many times I have thought – that I should have stayed and let them put me to death beside my mother and father. God would have received all of us together.’

Mr Gibson sensed her pain was unbearable.

‘I am sorry, Natasha,’ he said, ‘I am very sorry. And I’m not helping by asking questions, am I? But why did they do such a thing? Your whole family? Why?’

‘Because they are afraid for their Revolution, because they hate everyone who does not think as they do,’ said Natasha. ‘To disagree with one of their commissars is to commit yourself to death. The Revolution is more important to the Bolsheviks than ten million Russian lives. Twenty million. I know, kind sir. I hid for two years, in many different places, and many times with good people. Then I escaped into Poland, but in Poland the Bolsheviks are everywhere. I managed to get to Germany, and came to Berlin four years ago. I tried on my way to get work on German farms, but German farmers chase Russians away, and who can blame them?
If they have work to offer, they must first offer it to their own.’

‘You grew up on a farm?’ asked Mr Gibson, absorbed.

Natasha shook her head, scattering her tangled mane of raven-black hair. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I grew up in just a few hours, when I was fourteen. Not on a farm. In our house. I became very old in just a few hours. It is such a sad thing to know I am very old, even though my twenty-first name day was only last month.’

‘You are not old at all,’ said Mr Gibson. ‘You simply look as if you haven’t eaten too well lately. That can be put right. Natasha, will it pain you too much to tell me why the Bolsheviks should want to do away with a girl of fourteen?’

Natasha did not immediately answer that. She finished her soup first, and her head was bent again when she did speak.

‘Who can see into the minds of people who believe hatred is a good reason for killing people? Who can understand men who believe God is not as important as their Revolution?’

‘But who could hate a fourteen-year-old girl, Natasha?’

‘A commissar,’ she said.

Mr Gibson thought about the incident on the
bridge. ‘Are there Bolshevik agents in Berlin?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes.’ Natasha shuddered. ‘Some pose as White Russians favourable to the cause of the Tsar.’

‘The Tsar is dead,’ said Mr Gibson, ‘and his family too, all of them.’

‘Yes, that is what is said.’ Natasha gazed at the empty soup bowl.

‘Do you mean it isn’t true?’

‘Kind sir, how should I know what is true and what is not?’

Mr Gibson nodded. ‘Would you like to have what’s left of the soup?’ he asked.

‘Oh, thank you, thank you.’

He took the tray into the kitchen. He returned it to her lap with the bowl almost full again, and more bread with it. Natasha, quite overcome, was moist-eyed with gratitude.

‘Natasha,’ he said, as she began to eat again, ‘although all the Tsar’s children were reported dead, there’s a woman in Berlin claiming to be his youngest daughter.’

She hesitated before saying, ‘Yes, so I have heard.’

‘Have you seen her?’

‘No.’

‘If you did see her, would you be able to say whether or not she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia?’

Natasha’s relish for the food continued unabated, but her appetite for conversation seemed in sudden decline. She looked uneasy.

‘I—’ She cut herself off by filling her mouth with bread.

‘Natasha?’ Mr Gibson was becoming curious.

‘I was never invited to St Petersburg to meet the Tsar and his family,’ she said, ‘so how would I recognize any of them? Why do you ask such a question?’

‘Because you’re Russian, I suppose, and this woman must be of interest to you.’

Natasha looked worried then, and a little cautious. She spooned soup, ate bread, and said, ‘But you are English, so why should she be of interest to you?’

‘She poses a mystery that fascinates people everywhere,’ said Mr Gibson, studying her thoughtfully. What was it that had made the Bolsheviks murder her family, and what was it that made her keep the reason to herself? And why was she uneasy about the woman who called herself Anastasia? ‘Doesn’t it fascinate
you, Natasha, the possibility that she might be who she says she is?’

Natasha looked at him, her rimmed eyes very dark. ‘When one is struggling to stay alive, one is not very interested in other people’s problems, Mr Gibson, sir.’

‘Where was your home in Russia?’ he asked.

She stared blindly at the soup spoon. ‘I cannot think of things like that without pain,’ she whispered, ‘I cannot speak of it. You have been kind to me, you have given me food and saved me from being robbed of my papers. Without papers, a Russian in Berlin might as well be dead. Without papers, one does not exist. I cannot speak of other things.’

Mr Gibson wondered if it would be a further kindness to warn this unhappy girl. He decided he must.

‘I don’t think it was your papers he was after, I think he meant to pitch you into the river,’ he said.

Natasha paled to whiteness. ‘No, no, I have said nothing,’ she breathed.

‘What does that mean?’ asked Mr Gibson.

‘Nothing. Nothing.’ Natasha shook her head. ‘Oh, that is terrible, isn’t it, to think someone would want to do that?’

‘Might the man have been a Bolshevik agent?’ asked Mr Gibson gently. ‘Do they still want to do away with you, Natasha? If so, why?’

Natasha shivered. ‘No, no, he must have given up by now,’ she said.

‘He?’

‘The commissar.’ Her eyes were looking inwards. ‘No, it must have been—’ She stopped. ‘I must find a corner in another house.’

‘Why?’ Mr Gibson was worried for her and very curious about her. ‘Do you think the man knew where you slept at night and was waiting for you on your way there?’

‘Dear sir,’ she said earnestly, ‘you have many questions and I have only a few answers. When I am not quite so poor as I am now, I shall light a candle to your goodness, and ask the priest to say a blessing for you.’