Free City of Shadows by Ariana Franklin Page B

some phantasm conjured up by a deluded woman in an asylum.
    “You’re just a bloody coincidence,” she told it, and began typing.
    “Who’s Madam Midnight?” Natalya wanted to know on her arrival.
    “She’s the landlady, Frau Schinkel. She does the door opening.”
    “She sure don’t help ladies with their luggage.” Natalya was puffing.
    Esther took the case from her and carried it to the third bedroom. “I’m Esther Solomonova. I’m pleased to meet you.”
    Natalya Tchichagova was guarded. “Yeah, I heard about you.” She was pretty. Her bleached-blond hair was severely cut and plastered so that two ends curved around to her cheeks, where they stuck to her skin as if glued. Blue eyes peeped out from between heavily weighted black lashes, and lipstick rose in little twin peaks above her upper lip.
    She approved of her bedroom and the fact that she didn’t have to share it. “Classy.” She turned her nose toward the kitchen: “Is that kotlety pozharskie I smell? Ain’t tasted that since Czarskoe Selo.”
    Esther had to admit she’d bought it ready-made from the Russian delicatessen near the Inselbrücke. “I’m no cook, I’m afraid.”
    “You can afford to buy it cooked, you don’t have to be. I ain’t eaten chicken in a year.”
    Esther, honest to a fault, explained that the money came from Nick. His insistence that Anna must be well fed meant that Esther herself was eating better than she had done for a long time, though the sight of the lines at the food shops and of starving beggars on the streets flavored every mouthful with guilt. Without telling Nick, she was giving some of his money to the Salvation Army canteen around the corner in Cauerstrasse.
    “Kotlety pozharskie,” Natalya said fondly. “Maybe this job won’t be so bad.”
    “Did you think it would be?”
    It appeared that Natalya hadn’t wanted the job of coaching Anna An derson. Her removal from the stage of the Purple Parrot had caused dis appointment to an appreciative audience and inspired her resentment. She’d enjoyed stripping. “I’m an artiste,” she said. “One of my regulars says I’m a natural entertainer. He’s going to put me in his next film.”
    However, like Esther, she owed her livelihood to Prince Nick and had been persuaded to do the work of tutor by a doubling of her salary.
    “Gloomy old area, this,” she said, though. “What am I going to do for nightlife?”
    “You aren’t,” Esther told her.
    “Yep, that’s what Nick said.”
    “What else did he say?”
    “He said”—Natalya squeezed her eyes shut—“I was to help Her Im perial Highness remember everything as happened at Czarskoe Seloe, who did what and where everything was, and if I was a good girl and the grand duchess got what was coming to her, he’d buy me my own film studio, but if I ever said a word about it, he’d cut my tongue out.”
    She opened her eyes. “ Is she Anastasia? Nick says she is, but Nick’d say the moon was green cheese. Way I heard it, nobody escaped Eka terinburg.”
    “I heard that, too,” said Esther. Natalya was going to have to make up her own mind.
    “Wouldn’t it be peachy if she was?” For a moment, Natalya’s face soft ened. “Near broke my heart, Ekaterinburg. Where is she?”
    “In her room.” Actually Anna was sulking; more and more she was spending her time in isolation.
    “Ain’t she going to eat with us?”
    “It’s me,” Esther said. “She’s decided she doesn’t like taking her meals in the kitchen, especially with a Jew.”
    “I heard you was a Jewess,” Natalya said cautiously.
    “I’m a Jew,” Esther told her. “I don’t eat pork, but I’m partial to the occasional boiled baby, and I don’t like the word ‘Jewess.’ ”
    “Why not?”
    “It has derogatory connotations.”
    “What’s that mean?”
    “It means people spit when they say it.”
    Natalya nodded. “My pa and ma did.”
    “That was Russia. This is Germany.” They might as well get the