Chapter 1

Introduction

The river does not know the names of the people who fall into it.

After the war, Berlin became a city that knew how to forget. Poverty, and cold, and tired faces crossing the bridges without looking back. And in this city, in the winter of 1920, they pulled a woman from the Landwehr Canal whose name no one knew.

Two years later, the whole world would talk about a name attributed to her, and she still had said nothing.

---

Chapter One: Who are you?

Berlin, 27 February 1920

"Fräulein! Can you hear me?!"

The policeman shouted as he ran along the canal, his eyes fixed on the body that floated and sank between the waves.

He took off his coat, went down to the water, and stretched out his hand.

"Take my hand! Come on!"

She did not stretch out her hand.

Her face disappeared beneath the surface, and for a moment he thought he had lost her. He jumped in, pulled her by the arm with all his strength, and brought her up onto dry land.

She was not breathing.

He pressed on her chest, called to her, and pressed a second time. Then she coughed, water came out of her mouth, and she opened her eyes.

She stared at the grey sky as if she did not know how she had got here.

"What's your name?"

She did not answer.

"Your name, Fräulein! Where are you from?"

She moved her lips, but no sound came out.

The policeman wrapped his coat around her shoulders.

"Alright, don't talk now. Help is coming."

But she was not looking at him. She was looking at the canal, and those who saw her there remembered that she looked at it for a long time.

---

At Elisabeth Hospital, the white light made everything colourless.

The nurse sat beside the bed, an empty file in her hand.

"What's your name, love?"

The woman stared at the ceiling.

"Do you have family? We want to let them know."

At the word "family," she tightened her fingers on the blanket, then loosened them.

The nurse wrote in the file: Identity unknown. No papers. Does not speak.

Days passed and the answer remained the same. The police asked, and the doctors asked, and the city newspapers published a small item about the "woman of the canal." No one came looking for her.

Then they transferred her to Dalldorf Asylum, and registered her under a name they wrote as quickly as they could:

Fräulein Unbekannt (The Unknown Miss).

Fräulein Unbekannt (The Unknown Miss).

---

At the asylum, there was a patient named Clara Peuthert.

She had watched the new arrival from the first day: the woman who ate in silence, and slept with her eyes half open, and kept away from everyone.

After weeks, Clara sat opposite her with an old magazine in her hand.

"You don't talk to me, that's fine."

She turned the pages without interest, until she stopped at a photograph.

A family standing before the camera: a man in formal uniform, and a woman beside him, and four girls and a boy in light-coloured clothes.

Clara lifted the magazine and looked at the photograph. Then at the woman. Then at the photograph.

"I'll tell you something, but don't be upset."

The woman did not reply.

"You look like one of them."

She did not move. But her hand on the blanket stopped.

"Her. The second girl from the right."

Clara pushed the magazine closer. The woman looked at the photograph for a few seconds, then pulled her eyes away from it.

"People look alike."

It was the first complete sentence Clara had heard from her.

"Not that much."

"And what do you want?"

"I don't know."

Clara fell silent, then asked in a low voice:

"Do you know who they are?"

"I don't want to talk."

"Why?"

"Because not every question has an answer you can say out loud."

Clara stood up gathering the magazine. At the door she turned.

"This photograph is of the Tsar's family."

No answer came to her.

And she went back to her bed, and the picture of the four girls did not leave her head all night.

---

In the morning, before the asylum woke, Clara was standing beside the woman's bed.

"I've been thinking about it."

"What subject?"

"You don't want to say your name. And I don't want to know if you don't want to."

The woman raised her eyes.

"But I want to ask you one question, and answer if you can."

The woman waited.

"If I tell you a name, and it might be your name... will you say no or will you stay silent?"

A long moment of silence.

The woman did not smile, and did not refuse.

Then Clara uttered the name in a barely audible voice:

"Tatiana."

End of Chapter One

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