Natasha's Dream (27 page)

‘Oh, have you no feelings at all?’ she gasped.

‘Calm yourself, child.’

‘Child? Child? Who is a child? I am not. I am a woman and I am dying of love. Ah, you are smiling? It amuses you that I am dying?’ Natasha was revelling in the exchanges. ‘There, how can you love me if such a terrible thing amuses you?’

‘Love you I do,’ said Mr Gibson, ‘so stop playing Chekov.’

‘But you haven’t even kissed me!’ cried Natasha.

‘Pardon?’ said Mr Gibson.

‘Oh, kiss me, won’t you? Just a little kiss, even?’

Natasha lifted her flushed face, eyes moist and shining. Mr Gibson kissed her. Warmly. On the mouth. Her lips clung, and her body vibrated.

‘Is that better?’ he asked.

‘I am no longer dying,’ she declared, ‘I am just a little faint, that is all. It’s permissible in England to be just a little faint?’

‘It’s permissible for young Russian ladies to even fall about. Now, what I wanted to talk to you about was the possibility that you might consider marrying me. Will you consider it? If, of course, America has more appeal—’

‘Oh!’ Natasha burst into tears.

‘Good grief,’ said Mr Gibson, ‘is the thought of marrying me as bad as that?’

‘Oh, no! No!’ Natasha’s emotions were now very real. ‘Don’t you understand? There were so many years, so much running and hiding. There was no one, no one, not even in Berlin. Then, suddenly, there was you. You gave me everything, everything, and asked for nothing. Oh, such lovely clothes, such warmth and comfort, such kindness. Don’t you see, don’t you see, how could I ever feel alive unless I am with you? To marry you, to be your wife – oh, my tears are miserable, aren’t they, when you have made me so happy? But how can I help it? Is it true? You are really asking me to marry you?’

‘Well,’ said Mr Gibson, looking into her swimming eyes, ‘since I love you, I naturally thought it was the best thing I could do. The best
thing for me, I mean. You are an exceptional young Russian lady. Yes, I did have feelings for Mildred. But by the time you and I reached England, I wondered what had happened to those feelings. Later, in Lausanne, I wondered what the devil I was doing there, trying to see a man who, like so many others, had recanted. I wondered why on earth I was spending time in pursuit of the hopeless when I should have been here in pursuit of the brave and the beautiful, which is you, Natasha Petrovna. Now, does that confession help you to consider my proposal favourably?’

‘Favourably? Favourably? How can you ask a question like that?’ Natasha was still heady and emotional. ‘How could any woman not want to marry a man like you?’

‘Well, none of them have,’ said Mr Gibson, ‘and you’re making quite a Russian meal of my proposal yourself.’

‘Oh, it is not amusing – no, no, no! You are not to joke with me. I am balanced on the precipice of heaven, and that is not a joke, it is a wonder of wonders. You are the light of my soul—’

‘That’s a little extravagant,’ said Mr Gibson, ‘and not to be repeated in front of people.’

‘But it’s true,’ said Natasha. Lightly, his hand
caressed her shoulder. She took it and placed it on her breast. ‘If you love me, that is where you should caress me.’ She wound her arms around his neck and kissed his mouth. ‘You are all of my life, and I am going to be the most wonderful wife you could have chosen. You will like having a wonderful wife? I shall be very passionate.’

‘I shall count my blessings, naturally,’ said Mr Gibson gravely.

‘Yes, one should count one’s blessings,’ said Natasha. ‘Please, you are not caressing me,’ she murmured, putting her face against his shoulder. ‘Yes, that is better. Oh, everything is a miracle, isn’t it? I am lovely, you are lovely, we are both lovely. We shall have a large family, many children, and belong to each other always?’

‘There may be some ups and downs,’ said Mr Gibson, remembering she was Russian.

‘Ups and downs are lovely too. And when a woman has a husband and children, their ups and downs are very forgivable. I should not mind six children, would you?’

‘What you shall have, my sweet, is a family that will love you,’ said Mr Gibson. He knew what her dearest wish was. An escape from loneliness.

‘Thank you,’ said Natasha, ‘you are very dear to me.’

Elizabeth, who had absented herself from the cosy classroom, tiptoed back in.

‘Pssst,’ she whispered.

‘What for?’ asked Julia.

‘Uncle Philip’s kissing Miss Alex.’

‘Fancy that,’ said Julia. ‘How d’you spell crocodile?’

Because of so much opposition and her constant declaration that she did not have to prove she was who she was, any more than any person did, it was many years before the claim of
Fräulein Unbekannt
(Miss Unknown) was heard by a court of justice. Not until 1958 did that hearing begin, when the claimant’s suit for legal recognition as Anastasia, youngest daughter of the late Tsar Nicholas II, was laid before a court in Hamburg, West Germany.

Her two most eminent opponents were dead. The Dowager Empress Marie of Russia had died in 1928, the Grand Duke Ernest of Hesse in 1957. But their implacability lived on, to be reflected in the attitude of the opposition, which contested the claim fiercely and went to extraordinary lengths to discredit the claimant. Whenever evidence entirely convincing was
produced in her favour, the opposition managed to drum up new witnesses willing to declare that black was white. Under challenging and intelligent cross-examination, certain of these witnesses were proved to be liars.

The lawyers for the claimant presented a case backed by scores of reliable witnesses, and it was a case of dramatic and moving credibility. Among the most important people who spoke up for the plaintiff was a tailor from Vienna, one Heinrich Kleibenzetl. He said he
knew
Anastasia had survived the massacre. When asked why he had never mentioned this before, he said he had. He said he had told his story to a friend in Vienna as early as 1923. But he had also told his friend that when a man had seen what the Red Revolution was all about, it was wiser, even in 1923, to keep his mouth shut. (Significantly, despite Soviet Russia’s apparent indifference to anything relating to the murder at Ekaterinburg, and to the murder itself, their occupation of part of Berlin from 1945 resulted in the disappearance from the Central District Court of files containing a great deal of evidence favourable to the claimant.)

In 1958, because of all that was being quoted in the newspapers about the claimant not being
who she said she was, Heinrich Kleibenzetl told his wife that this was crazy and wrong, for he knew Grand Duchess Anastasia had escaped death. He had seen her alive after the murder of her family. And his wife had urged him to come forward with his story.

What was his story, then?

First, the still ebullient Austrian produced documents proving he was in Ekaterinburg as a prisoner of war in 1918, working as an apprentice to the tailor Baoudin in a house directly opposite the Ipatiev residence, in which the Imperial family were imprisoned. He was allowed to go in and out of that depressing place because of the work he and Baoudin did in the repair of the guard’s uniforms. He saw the daughters of the Tsar many times.

Late one evening in July, he was actually in the courtyard and aware of unusual activity going on. A guard appeared, told him to make himself scarce, and then went back into the house. Kleibenzetl, about to leave, suddenly heard the sound of rifles being fired, the sound of screams and the cry of a young woman.

‘Mamma!’

It was a cry that haunted him. He fled in fear and horror, sure that it would be fatal if
the guards caught him there at that precise moment. They were an unpleasant lot. In his agitation, he wandered about the town, keeping as far as he could from that place of violent death. It was a long time before he finally found the courage to go home to his room in the Baoudins’ house. When he did get there, his landlady, Anna Baoudin, told him to stay out of the way. His room, she said, was not available to him for the time being. He asked what was happening, for she was agitated too, and kept going up and down the stairs with hot water. She would not say. Eventually, however, remarking that she trusted him to keep his mouth shut, she told him that Grand Duchess Anastasia was in his room, terribly wounded, and that one of the Red soldiers had brought her there. Kleibenzetl went up to the room with her, offering to give what help he could. He recognized the young Grand Duchess, seventeen at the time. She really was terribly wounded, the lower part of her body covered with blood, and her chin bones broken. She was as pale as death, and unconscious, but did open her eyes once, just for a moment. She had very blue eyes.

Kleibenzetl said she lay in that room for
three days, her wounds being simply treated by his landlady. On the second day, some of the Red guards arrived. They entered the house. There was a hunt going on, a hunt for a young woman. But because he and the Baoudins were well known to the soldiers, they did not search the house. But they did say, ‘Anastasia’s disappeared. She won’t be here, of course, that’s for sure.’ And they went away, not realizing how close they had been to discovering her.

On the third day, the Red soldier who had rescued the Grand Duchess and brought her into the care of the Baoudins, returned for her and took her away.

Heinrich Kleibenzetl was questioned and cross-examined for over six hours in that Hamburg courtroom, but could not be persuaded to retract one word of his story. Steadfast and convincing, he declared he could not change what was the truth, or alter what was fact.

Despite his impressive stand and the production of supportive documents, and despite so much other convincing evidence in favour of the claimant, the judgement went against her, although not wholly so. The court decided, after the case had lasted for years, that in asking for
recognition as Anastasia Nicolaievna, Grand Duchess of Russia, she had not been able to provide sufficient proof for such recognition.

‘I am who I am,’ she had once cried in despair, but as far as the Hamburg court was concerned, it seemed that a sufficiency of proof could only be provided by an act of God. It seemed that the Tsar himself was required to rise from the dead and acknowledge her.

An appeal was lodged.

It took three years to be heard. The tribunal judges gave it due consideration, but on 17th February 1970, the fiftieth anniversary of her suicidal leap into the canal, the appeal was dismissed.

The presiding judge said, ‘We have not decided the plaintiff is not Grand Duchess Anastasia. We have decided her claim is neither established nor refuted.’

They could not say she was Anastasia. They would not say she wasn’t.

In February 1984, the death was announced in Charlottesville, Virginia, of Mrs John Manahan, formerly the unknown Fräulein of Berlin. She was eighty-two.

Existing serenely in the tranquil twilight of
her life, Mrs Natasha Gibson paid a visit to her church in a village in Surrey, England.

There she lit a candle to the memory of the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicolaievna of the lost world of Imperial Russia.

Mary Jane Staples
was born, bred and educated in Walworth, and is the author of many bestselling novels, including the ever-popular cockney sagas featuring the Adams family

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NATASHA’S DREAM
A CORGI BOOK: 9780552150927
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781446488263

First published in Great Britain in 1986 by
Severn House Publishers Ltd as
The Woman in Berlin
under the name Robert Tyler Stevens
Corgi edition published 2010

Copyright © Robert Tyler Stevens 1986

Mary Jane Staples has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

In this work of fiction, the characters, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or they are used entirely fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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