Anastasia and Her Sisters Read Free Page B

tree, tables were piled with Christmas gifts. Each Cossack saluted Papa, took a numbered slip and presented it to Aunt Olga, kissed her hand, and accepted the gift from the pile, a silver spoon or cup with the imperial seal. A balalaika orchestra played, followed by a chorus of Cossacks in their brilliant red coats, singing “Absolute Master of our great land, our tsar,” followed by Cossack dancers leaping and whirling and throwing their daggers. This went on for three long hours! The Cossacks were splendid, but still ! And then, after we’d had tea, there was yet another Christmas tree party for the officers, this one at our palace.
    “I can’t bear it,” my sister Olga muttered.
    “It’s our duty,” Tatiana, “the Governess,” reminded her.
    Daughters of the tsar couldn’t argue with duty. Duty was duty, and we had no choice.
    When the official obligations were over and the first star gleamed in the sky, we gathered by the light of a single candle for our own quiet Christmas Eve supper. The table was spreadwith the twelve traditional Russian dishes—bowls of kutya made with wheat grains mixed with honey and nuts, mushrooms served in several ways, almond soup, pickled herring, and roast carp stuffed with buckwheat—but it was the last of the forty days of fasting, and there was no meat or eggs or cheese, and no sweets. Papa loved the meal, and we ate it because Papa did. Mama hardly touched it.
    A crowd had gathered, as they always did, in front of Alexander Palace to wish our family a joyous Christmas. We stepped out onto Mama’s balcony to acknowledge their joyful shouts and cheers, as we always did. At midnight we attended Mass in the chapel, and the next day, the Great Feast of the Nativity, we exchanged gifts and presented our handmade presents to our servants and friends.
    Papa believed in a strict routine—rising at a certain hour, eating at set times, working and studying and exercising during certain periods. In Tsarskoe Selo we rose at seven and joined Papa for breakfast at eight. He always had the same thing, tea and two rolls, buttered. After breakfast he disappeared into his study to receive visitors and read reports and do whatever else a tsar does, and we dragged ourselves to our schoolroom to spend the morning at the mercy of our tutors. Our tutors arrived at nine o’clock. Alexei was taught separately. Hour after tedious hour we were at our lessons.
    An Englishman, Charles Sydney Gibbes—we called him Sydney Ivanovich; I’m not sure why—instructed us in English. When I was seven, our family made a summer visit to England as the guests of King Edward VII. He was an uncle of both Mama and Papa—it’s a very complicated family tree; you reallyneed a chart to keep it all straight—and we called him Uncle Bertie. He informed our parents that their daughters spoke English with “atrocious accents.” Papa speaks English beautifully, almost as though he was born and raised there, and Mama does also but with a German accent. They must have agreed with Uncle Bertie, because when we arrived home in Russia, Mama hired Sydney Ivanovich to correct the problem.
    Monsieur Pierre Gilliard, a Swiss with an upturned mustache and a well-trimmed beard, taught French. We called him Zhilik, our Russian version of his name. My sisters read French rather well, but I’m the only one who actually spoke it well. I may not have gotten the grammar right, but my accent was impressively good. Gilliard’s explanation: “Anastasia is a born mimic. She imitates perfectly what she hears.”
    Dear Trina—Catherine Schneider—tried valiantly to teach us to speak German. When Mama had come from Germany as a girl engaged to marry Papa, Trina was hired to teach her Russian. Poor Mama struggled; she had a terrible time with it. “It’s very hard to learn a foreign language when one is an adult,” Mama told us. “And that’s why you girlies—and Baby, too—must learn while you’re still young.” She always