London Evening Standard
May 18, 1938
Mysterious Death in Maida Vale
A woman was struck and killed by an automobile on Tetchly Road, W9, late yesterday evening. She has been identified as Marie Duvall of Toulouse, France, age 35. While there were no witnesses to the incident, residents reported hearing the sound of an impact at approximately 9:45 p.m. Officials at the French embassy are assisting the police in their inquiries. Anyone who is acquainted with Miss Duvall or who witnessed a vehicle driving recklessly on the evening in question is asked to contact the Westminster police station.
Mrs. George Weatherby, who discovered the victim and alerted the authorities, said she was shocked such a tragedy occurred in her quiet neighborhood. “Young people today drive far too fast, with no care for anyone else,” she said. “You can’t cross the street without being afraid for your life.”
RUSSIA
1914
I’ve had many faces, many names. I’ve died and been born again. In prison, I was reduced to a number. But I began life as Nadia Shulkina, a name I was once proud of. A name that led to my death.
On every family tree, there are sturdy central branches and scrawny offshoots. The Shulkins were a grand old family—rich and well connected—but even as a girl, I knew that my brother and I hovered at the bottom of the hierarchy. Our father was the younger son of a younger son who inherited a midsized house in Saint Petersburg and a modest country estate, Priyalko, that was a fraction of his cousins’ landholdings. Because we were surrounded by those who had more, our own position felt far from privileged. Papa—Count Shulkin to the world—was all his title implied: proud of his lineage, politically conservative, and rarely seen in public without the medals he’d earned for loyal service to the tsar. Beneath the pompous exterior, though, he was kindhearted and generous, always putting in a good word for friends or loaning them money. He had a similarly good-natured relationship with our staff, or so I thought. Did our servants secretly sneer at him behind his back? One of the revolution’s many cruelties is the way it has corrupted my own past, tingeing even happy memories with retroactive doubt.
My father and mother were comically mismatched, a fact they both acknowledged with resigned acceptance. Mama’s grandfather was a French wine exporter who married into an aristocratic but bankrupt Russian family; his son, Mama’s father, was a businessman at ease in Paris as much as Saint Petersburg, and his children were raised accordingly. Mama played Debussy nocturnes on the piano, made sure her cooks produced flawless petits fours for her afternoon gatherings, was a loyal patron of the ballet, and hired a French nurse when my older brother, Vasily, was born. Mama often told us she had no tolerance for crying babies and only began spending time with us when we were able to talk. In French, of course.
Mama may not have been maternal in the traditional sense, but I didn’t care. To me, she was something far better: a real-life romantic heroine. Artistic and emotional, with downward-tilting eyes that gave her face a naturally wistful expression, she was more beautiful and interesting than any other mother I knew. Flitting from enthusiasm to enthusiasm—the piano, painting, fine needlework, poetry—Mama was drawn to extremes, whether she was celebrating the completion of a sketch or lamenting the tragic ending of a novel. Whatever mood she touched on, it was soon replaced by another, and I adapted accordingly. I never doubted that Mama loved me, fiercely, even when she brushed me away. There was so much for her to do, so many new things to try, and never enough time.
Mama called Papa’s extended family “boring old sticks-in-the-mud,” preferring to socialize with artists and the adventurous members of society who funded them. The only time I saw my Shulkin cousins was at large family celebrations, most often a christening, since the Shulkin women reproduced at a staggering rate. Whenever the extended clan gathered, Mama was the object of pitying glances—only two children!—and it wasn’t until years later that I suspected it wasn’t bad luck that had kept my family so small. Vasily and I were more than enough for Mama.
If I tell you that my brother was handsome and effortlessly talented at everything from horse riding to dancing, you’ll assume I resented him. Quite the opposite. I adored Vasily, with a devotion embedded in my bones. He was five years older, an age difference that kept us from being competitive, and he treated me like a pet our parents had brought home to entertain him. And like a puppy, I trailed after him, panting for attention. I had friends my own age, the daughters of families Mama approved of. But Vasily, like the sun, outshone anyone else.
In the spring of 1914, I had no premonitions of war, let alone revolution. Yet I remember it as a troubled time. Vasily would be leaving for military college in the fall, and I was already grieving. I tried to be my usual compliant self, the good daughter who never caused trouble. Inside, however, Vasily’s departure weighed on me like a sickness. My entire life was oriented toward my brother; who would I be without him? When we received the invitation to Maria Shulkina’s debut ball, it felt like another blow. The grandest party in years—even the royal family might come!—and seventeen-year-old Vasily was old enough to go. His twelve-year-old sister was not.
I was too well behaved to make a scene. But I’d also spent years observing Mama’s histrionics, and I knew the effect that could be achieved with silent tears. I moped and sighed and shuffled through the house like a second-rate actress rehearsing a death scene. In the end, a compromise was arranged: I could come for the dinner and watch the first few dances. Like Cinderella, I was going to the ball.
Mama, delighted at this excuse to spend money, called in her favorite dressmaker and ordered my first proper evening gown. She bought me coordinating shoes and gloves soon after. But on the evening itself, Mama was too caught up in her own preparations to be much help, so I was dressed by my governess, Miss Fields. Papa had hired her the previous year through a London employment agency, in an attempt to improve my atrocious English. Mama and I had braced ourselves for a humorless battle-ax—“The British are so terribly serious!” Mama lamented—but Miss Fields turned out to be relatively young, with a pleasant demeanor and an easy, round-cheeked smile. She won Vasily over by re-creating the Battle of Waterloo on the sitting-room floor, using marbles and Mama’s collection of tiny silver spoons, and spent hours patiently reading The Secret Garden aloud with me until I could sound out the words myself. It wasn’t long before my English was almost as good as my French—and both were far better than my Russian.
As Miss Fields pinned up my hair, I chattered away, fidgety with anticipation.
“I wonder if the princesses will come,” I said. “The youngest is the same age as me.”
“Anastasia, is it?”
“Yes. Wouldn’t it be marvelous if I met her? Though I’d be too nervous to say anything.”
The tsar and his family largely kept to their palaces in those days, due to what Papa called “the trouble in 1905.” He’d never explained what that trouble was, and I’d never been concerned enough to ask.
I waved my arm in front of the lamp on my dressing table, admiring the sparkle of the diamonds encircling my wrist.
“What do you think?” I fretted. “It’s so beautiful, but what if the clasp breaks and I lose the bracelet? Mama will never forgive me.”