The Missing
Preface (excerpt)
There was a time when they were always finding Anastasias, fishing them out of the sea like mermaids or stumbling over them in mad houses and hospitals. The girls kept coming in waves from the east, one after another, beached on the right side of the border, their memories washed out. Each one said that she was the real Grand Duchess escaped from the bullets and the bayonets, and each one had those gently slanting eyes and that red blonde hair. They would sit blank faced in hospital beds or apartment rooms with river mud still in the folds of their ears or sand in the creases of their toes, waiting for grainy photographs to be taken and comparisons to be made. Speaking in half sentences, confusing the sounds of Russian, English and German, they would talk of childhoods spent inside a jewel box palace, or of happy Easters with gifts of golden eggs. They would remember the panelled carriages of the Imperial train, the silver samovars, the braided soldiers, the cream canvas sails of the Black Sea yacht. Then the girls would weep and, pointing to the scars on their necks and their hands, each one would swear, over and over, that she was the real princess, the real Anastasia, as if the repetition made it true.
Quietly, in the evenings when the light was faint, they might recite the names of the imprisoned family - Mama, Papa, Olga and Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, Alexis. The girls’ cracked lips and dry tongues would whisper the list like a litany. They said that the family had waited, counting the long days, listening to rumours, and mutterings beyond the walls. Hope swung back and forth like a pendulum, but no one came. The father and his daughters paced the muddy grounds, while the jailers watched - stone headed soldiers or gentle boys with faces soft as summer plums. And upstairs the mother prayed beside her son with the bleeding bruises.
