Rasputin's Daughter

CHAPTER 15

By the time we returned home, Dunya and my sister were already waiting out front for us. Taking him by his arms, we rushed Papa upstairs and changed him into a fresh kosovorotka.

“You are coming with me, Marochka,” my father said, as we pulled the shirt over his head. “I’m so exhausted there’s no doubt I’ll need your help.”

Knowing that my father’s commands were every bit as absolute as the Empress’s, I obeyed silently, following him down the stairs and into the back of the royal limousine, which had just arrived. All at once we were racing toward Tsarskoye Selo, the vortex of Russian politics, gossip, scandal…and tragedy. But as we sat there in the rich leather seats, I didn’t speak or even look at my father for fear of the anger and confusion that would burst forth. Besides, the most important thing was for him to gather his strength for his duties ahead. And so I gazed out the window in thought.

The greatest attack on Papa had come three or four years earlier, when his former friend and ally in Christianity, the monk Illiodor, turned so rabidly against him. Whether or not Papa had in fact raped a nun, as was proclaimed, Illiodor began shouting everywhere that Papa was a holy devil set on destroying the very foundation of Holy Mother Russia-the monarchy-and that he was pandering to the Yids as well as aiding the new capitalists, who, the fanatic monk claimed, were hell bent on debasing the Russian soul.

To launch his famous attack, Illiodor released a letter that he had stolen from our home in Pokrovskoye, a letter tucked in my father’s little wooden desk and written by none other than Her Majesty the Empress, to my father:

My beloved, unforgettable teacher, redeemer, and mentor! How tiresome it is without you! My soul is quiet and I relax only when you, my teacher, are seated beside me. I kiss your hands and lean my head on your blessed shoulder. Oh, how light, how light do I feel then. I only wish one thing: to fall asleep, to fall asleep…forever on your shoulders and in your arms. What happiness to feel your presence near me. Where are you? Where have you gone? Oh, I am so sad and my heart is longing… Will you be soon again close to me? Come quickly, I am waiting for you and I am tormenting myself for you. I am asking for your holy blessing and I am kissing your blessed hands. I love you forever.

Yours, Mama

Not even the censors could stop the wide publication of this letter, and it caused a scandal of the greatest magnitude. People of every level of society were aghast at the thought of their Empress kissing the foul hands of that dirty peasant, and the worst rumors started running everywhere, even supposed eyewitness accounts of Khlyst activities in the cellars of the Aleksander Palace itself. Soon thereafter an even worse story started circulating as quickly as a hot fire in a parched forest-that Rasputin had molested the Tsar’s second daughter, Tatyana.

People didn’t understand. Or what they did surmise was wrong. I myself had received a note from the Empress written in such a florid manner, for that was her style. She was all emotion, all soul, and she gave herself completely to those she cared for. Those were the exact words the Empress wrote to my father-her Father Grigori-but no one understood where the words came from or what they truly meant for one simple reason: No one knew her secret, a secret that affected everything in our country, right down to the soft snowballs formed and handed to me that winter afternoon at the Aleksander Palace.

In fact, hardly anyone realized there was one, a state secret of such magnitude that it was carefully guarded even from many princes and princesses of the royal blood. I was one of the very few privy to it, and only then because I knew of my father’s activities. Unbeknownst to almost everyone in the nation, there was an explanation for the imperial family’s withdrawal from the whirling social world of the capital, there was logic behind their decision to retreat to the Aleksander Palace in Tsarskoye Selo and live there in near isolation, and there was most definitely a reason for the Empress’s lack of laughter and perpetually sad appearance.

It was that the Heir Tsarevich Aleksei Nikolaevich suffered from the English disease. He was a bleeder. And the Tsar and Tsaritsa, and even their most trusted advisers, had decided that no one should know that the future of the nation was in peril not just from the Germans but from a simple bruise or bump, any number of which most little boys encountered on any given day. It all came down to blood-royal blood, to be specific-that had been passed from Queen Victoria to her favorite granddaughter, a minor German princess who became our Empress Aleksandra Fyodorovna, and who in turn passed the condition to her first-born boy, Heir to the Imperial Throne of All the Russias.

The only time I ever heard Papa speak against the monarchy was when he had groused that we simple people took better care in breeding our pigs back home-where everyone knew you needed fresh stock from other villages to keep the herd strong and healthy-than these fancy nobles did in breeding themselves. But it was in this, the inability of the Heir’s blood to clot, that lay the true nature of my father’s extraordinary bond with our Empress.

Less than an hour later a pair of heavy black iron gates opened before us and the royal limousine carried us once again to the very steps of the Aleksander Palace. I thought of the boy’s pain, of the Empress’s misery…and of the terrible things constantly said about her. Even her own mother-in-law, the Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna, had called her a traitor, first because she had given birth to four daughters in a row and then because she had birthed such a sickly boy. To make it all worse, the court of the Dowager Empress was filled with evil gossips, highborn personages who spread the most wicked stories to all the courts of all the grand dukes and beyond. There was even tittle-tattle that Aleksandra Fyodorovna had a secret telegraph cable stretching from the mauve boudoir all the way to her native Germany and the offices of her cousin, Russia’s sworn enemy, Kaiser Wilhelm, with whom we had been at war for so long. Every time I heard that I shuddered, for I couldn’t help but think of the poor Marie Antoinette, daughter of the Austrian monarch, whom the French had labeled the Austrichienne, the Austrian dog.

But none of the incendiary stories they told about the Empress was true. Not one. And yet virtually every Russian believed them because the stories had been told and retold, heard and heard again so often, that eventually no one doubted their authenticity. There were supposed eyewitnesses everywhere.

Russia had long been an aria in search of a tragedy, and as Papa and I clambered out of the deep seats of the Delaunay-Belleville limousine and up the steps, I wondered if my father would be able to forestall the finale of the doomed opera. Or were we too late? I couldn’t tell, not by the tears rolling down the big round cheeks of Madame Vyrubova, who greeted us once again at the top of the steps. Forgetting the frost, today she simply stood there, wearing a gray dress and leaning heavily on crutches.

“Thank you for coming, Father Grigori,” she said, profusely kissing Papa’s hand. “The boy, he…he-”

“Yes, I know,” said Father, with a godly authority. “He’s still with us.”

“And-”

“This I know as well. Batushka,” the Dear Father, meaning the Tsar, “has returned home.”

“Not more than ten minutes ago.”

“Eto xhorosho.” Good.

How my father knew these things, I didn’t know, yet I knew he was right, for with each step an aura seemed to grow more clearly around him. Was it the cod? Had the endless amounts of fish he consumed made his soul so clear, his body so pure, that he had indeed become a heavenly vehicle? Or had he been purified by his session with the prostitute Anisia?

When we reached the top of the steps, Madame Vyrubova glanced nervously at me and said to my father, “Father Grigori, I think it’s better if the child is returned home. You know how the Empress doesn’t-”

“I’m still exhausted from the other night,” said Papa firmly. This afternoon and evening will be long and hard…my daughter stays. She will attend to me.”

“Of course, Father,” the most powerful courtier in the nation replied, submissively bowing her head. “It is as you wish.”

“It is as is needed.”

Minutes before we’d pulled up to the gates, Papa had clasped my hand and told me the details of the other night when we’d come so late and I had been turned away. Aleksei had come down with a chill and sneezed. Such, of course, was the nature of any cold, only the boy had started to bleed profusely from the nose. Compresses had been applied, to no avail. The doctors had been called in and the boy’s nose was cauterized, which hadn’t done anything but elicit screams of pain from Aleksei Nikolaevich, who was never given the likes of morphine. As always, the best and finest doctors of all Europe hadn’t been able to do a thing, so finally Papa had been summoned. And only many hours of Papa’s prayers beside the Heir’s bed had slowed and finally stopped the bleeding.

“I can see the boy’s suffering is worse than it was the other day,” Papa muttered, as we entered the palace. “I do not know what I can do for him, for of course it is up to the will of God, but I shall try my best.”

Once again we hurriedly followed Madame Vyrubova through the large doors, past the guards and the reception desk, and into the private apartments of the royal family. Rather than proceed down the long central hall with its roll of Oriental carpet, Madame Vyrubova, hobbling on her crutches and with her gray dress trailing on the floor, took us into the small wooden elevator on the left. In silence we rode up to the second floor, the children’s floor, where we were taken down a long empty corridor. I noted that the doors on the right were all shut tight, for these were the rooms of the Tsaritsa’s personal maids, who surely had been told not to set foot outside their chambers.

Coming to a double door on the left, we turned into the children’s playroom, where years earlier I had been brought to play with the Tsar’s third daughter, Maria Nikolaevna, who was my age. Now, upon entering the large room, we found not the tepee, the tom-toms, the toy dog on wheels, or even Aleksei’s clockwork train, of which he was so proud, but rather a busy cluster of men gossiping sternly among themselves. There was also a man, his back to us, who was sobbing quietly but furiously as he leaned against the tall green tile stove on the far wall. As I quickly trotted after Papa and Madame Vyrubova toward another door, we passed a group of men-a bevy of doctors and specialists-who glared at us and practically spit on Rasputin. But Papa didn’t notice, so I tried to ignore them too. All that mattered, all that my father was focusing on, was the shrieking from the next room.

“Help me!” came the scream. “Mama, help me!”

One of Papa’s greatest skills was his amazing ability to concentrate. He could study a single Bible passage for a week. He could search the morose face of an icon for an entire day. And now he focused on the cry of the Heir Tsarevich Aleksei Nikolaevich, reading the tone of pain as intently as if it were a heavenly hymn.

“Not a moment too soon,” he muttered, his right hand clutching the gold cross, a gift from the Empress herself, that hung around his neck.

Just before I followed him through the next doorway, I glanced once again at the tall stove. The man leaning against the tiles turned and our eyes caught. Gospodi, it was the Tsar himself, his eyes wet and red. My heart ached for him. Was the boy truly on the doorstep of death?

“Mama, I can’t! I can’t! It’s too much!” came the plea from the boy’s chamber. “Please make it stop! Please let me die!”

As we entered the next room, a string of prayers fell from Papa’s lips, a heavenly chant, a call to God for His mercy. My father shed his peasant coat, dropping it to the floor, and pressed onward, but I stopped, moving against one of the windows, which was covered with large floral curtains. The only light in the room came from the oil lamps suspended before the multitude of icons encased in their large curving kiot. Gazing through the soft, smoky light, I saw Aleksei Nikolaevich writhing in pain as he lay on his simple nickel-plated camp bed. It seemed as if his failed body were trying to pull his soul across the threshold of death, while Russia ’s mighty Empress, Aleksandra Fyodorovna, who was on her knees clutching her son’s hand, was trying just as hard to keep him here. Like a mother superior, she was huddled in prayer, begging God for mercy, begging God to save this child who was lost in fever.

“Mama…Mama…,” he gasped, “will it hurt so much when I go to Heaven?”

With supreme confidence, Papa strode right up behind the Empress, placing his hand directly on her shoulder as if she were nothing more than the commonest of commoners. Startled, Aleksandra Fyodorovna turned, looked up, and, upon seeing him, half swooned to the side, falling upon his thigh like an eager lover. Unable to control herself, the Empress of All the Russias grabbed this ugly peasant’s ugly hand and kissed it passionately.

“Thank you, Father Grigori. Thank you for coming,” she gasped in relief. “Aleksei fell on his knee, and now he needs you badly. We all need you. Help us, please help us!”

My father said nothing, focusing only on the boy. The Empress, whose health and beauty had been ravaged by years of worry and anxiety, started to beg a question but stopped. I knew what it was. She wanted to know what none of those doctors or specialists in the playroom could tell her: Would the boy cheat death yet again? She started to speak but instead started to sob, and seemed about to faint. Indeed, she might have tumbled over had she not been leaning so heavily on her Friend, her Savior, my father.

Practically brushing her aside, Papa pressed himself up against the bed and stared down upon the pathetic child, who gazed up at him with hollow eyes, eyes that expressed nothing but excruciating pain. Pulling aside a light blanket, Papa saw a leg hideously bloated with blood, twisted and bent up to the boy’s chest. Papa made the sign of the cross over Aleksei and placed one of his massive hands directly on the boy’s damp, feverish forehead. He then reached down and closed his fingers firmly around the boy’s right hand. Papa had healed me from the worst illnesses in just this manner, and I knew he could read it all: the boy’s fear, the panic of those around him, the hopelessness everyone sensed, and the boy’s pain-the unbelievable pain of the pounding blood that had burst from the veins, swelled the skin, and twisted the limbs.

Without so much as glancing down at her, Papa barked at the Empress, “Leave us!”

Aleksandra Fyodorovna could barely rise, so wrought with worry was she, so pummeled by years of constant fear, the fear that hung like a guillotine over her head every moment of every day, the fear that today the blade might come suddenly crashing down and she would lose her beloved son. She tried to push herself to her feet but could not. She rose, and then sank, and I was about to hurry to her side when a short but muscular figure charged into the room. Rushing right up to her, the man tenderly reached down and took her in his own shaking but loving hands.

“Come, my dear,” the Tsar urged gently, his own tears now controlled. “We must let Father Grigori do his work.”

“Oh, Nicky!” She wept, clutching his arms, kissing his hands. “I…I…”

Then Papa offered the greatest of benedictions. “Do not worry. God has heard your prayers. Now leave us!”

Aleksandra tried to contain herself. The strongest of mothers, the mightiest of tsaritsas, attempted to restrain her joy, but she could not. She fell apart, and tears of boundless relief burst from her eyes.

“Thank you, oh, thank you!” she exclaimed, grabbing my father’s hand and kissing it.

The Tsar, small tears glistening in his eyes, leaned down, kissed my father’s hand, and thanked him too. “Spasibo.”

“Take care, my Sunbeam,” said Aleksandra Fyodorovna, kissing her son tenderly on the forehead. “Rest well, my dearest. Did you hear Father Grigori? You’re in the hands of God. Let’s all get some rest…and we’ll come back later. Everything’s going to be fine. We’ll be back later to kiss you good night.”

“Yes, Mama,” the boy replied softly, as if the pain was already beginning to pass.

Papa didn’t move. He didn’t budge. Not as the Tsar escorted his wife from the room. Not as the doctors and specialists were sent away. Not as the bedchamber and playroom were emptied. My father banished everyone, every last one of them except me, and within moments all was quiet and the door to the boy’s room was shut. Only I was left because only I understood how to serve Papa, only I, his own flesh and blood, could anticipate his needs. Dropping my coat on a chair, I pushed myself back into the tall floral curtains, where I disappeared. My own deep eyes never left Papa, who kept one hand pressed against Aleksei’s forehead, the other clasped around his fingers. Hidden in the vines and flowers of the fine fabric, I stared at my father as he chanted prayers and began the work for which he was both worshiped and reviled, that greatest of Christian gifts, the laying on of hands. But would he be able to perform a miracle yet again?

“Dear God,” I prayed quietly, “please grant Papa strength, please let Aleksei Nikolaevich live through the night.”