Rasputin's Shadow

13

Misha’s Journal

Verkhoturye, Ural Mountains

December 1899

Everything has changed.

My stay here, in this place, has been upended. I was here for a reason I thought I understood. I came here to put my old life behind me, to think about what I had done, and to find a noble direction for the future. But the future that is now before me is like nothing I imagined. Here, at the dawn of the new century, I feel the portents of an eventful time ahead, a time of which a lot is unknown at the moment, save for this feeling that great change is about to be thrust upon us all.

A change in which I feel I am destined to play a central role.

And yet, this has all come unexpectedly. That was not at all my plan. Far from it. It is for this reason that I have taken pen to hand and I am writing this journal while still closeted away here, at the Nikolaev Monastery, a sixteenth-century cloister that sits crouched on a hillock close to the town of Verkhoturye in the Ural Mountains. No doubt you will have heard of it, as it is famous across Siberia for its relics: the bones of Saint Simeon, the mystic who wandered the banks of the Tura River and spent his days praying, fishing, and mending the clothes of the poor. Simeon had died in 1642, a young man of thirty-five, as a result of his fasting; fifty years after his death, his coffin was said to have risen out of the ground, with his remains astoundingly well preserved. Simeon’s grave became a place of pilgrimage for those seeking to be healed, and after two and a half centuries of duty, his bones were moved to their new healing outpost here at the Nikolaev Monastery, where they continue to attract wanderers in need.

It is because of Saint Simeon that I find myself in this portentous situation. For I have recently met a man, here, in this remote place of contemplation and prayer, a man who also came here to seek Saint Simeon’s guidance. A man who, I believe, will bring about this great change.

I came here myself seeking change, seeking to escape from my own demons. You see, I have done things that confound me. I have delved into secrets that terrify me, the unfortunate result of a life devoted to study and knowledge-knowledge that I now wish I had never gained.

I had considered myself fortunate to have enjoyed the benefit of a proper education. My father, a schoolteacher, had sewn the seeds of curiosity in me from my earliest days. My mind had been taken captive by the wonders of science ever since I was a child, and I remember gazing with equal fascination at the stars in the sky or at the veins in my wrist. But it was at university that the hidden truths of our nature started to be revealed to me. It was also there that chance-or misfortune-would introduce me to the work of Heinrich Wilhelm Dove, the illustrious Prussian physicist. It would, however, be disingenuous for me to blame him for my discoveries. It was my own curiosity, along with my selfish disregard for propriety and caution, that have led me this far and have now brought me here to try to atone for my digressions.

At first, the ramifications of my work were not manifest to me. I was simply intrigued, and thrilled, by the results of my first experiments. It never occurred to me that I should abandon my line of inquiry. I was blinded, driven by an unseen hand to explore further the secrets hidden inside us. Secrets that I should have left alone. Secrets that are laden with monstrous potential. And so I came here, to this remote, holy place, to pray for guidance. To try to veer away from my chosen path, to leave behind the science of the devil that had bewitched me, to try to find a more worthy pursuit for the rest of my years.

This man has changed all that.

He is an illiterate peasant, of average height, skinny, and with unusually long arms. He has a large, irregular nose; rich, sensuous lips; and an unkempt, shaggy beard. His hair, which is combed across his forehead, is long and parted down the middle. He wears tattered clothes and never washes. His skin bears the marks of hardship, of years of harsh exposure to hot sun and cold winds, no doubt a result of many years of wandering the land. Since his arrival over two months ago, he kept to himself and spent most of his time in silent prayer and introspection. I had not given him much notice until the day he looked at me, and I saw his eyes.

They are impossible to ignore.

Peering out from under thick brows, they are gray-blue and unsettlingly hypnotic. They are bursting with life, at first gentle and kind, rich with dreaminess and contemplation. And yet, in an instant, they can turn fierce and angry. His speech is strange, too, almost incoherent, lulling, somehow primordial. It is clear that he has no education, and he speaks in breathless torrents of simple words. And yet, when he does, the effect of his impassioned words, combined with the intense gaze emanating from his deep-set eyes, is nothing short of mesmeric.

Over the last few weeks, we have spent many hours talking.

He told me he was born in Pokrovskoye, a small Siberian village on the banks of the Tura River, in January of 1869, thirty years ago. It was the day of Saint Grigory, after whom he had been named. For that is his name. Grigory Efimovich Rasputin.

His father drove mule carts and worked on the barges by the river. When he couldn’t find work, he farmed the little land he owned, and fished. Grigory worked with him and still lived in the home of his parents with his wife and his two children. He tells me she is pregnant with a third.

There is a great hunger in this young peasant. He tells me he wasted a large part of his life, engaging in fistfights and drunken debauchery. He confesses to having a wild streak to him, an animalistic craving for violence and for women. I must admit that despite his crude ways, there is something inexplicably magnetic about him. I imagine that women must find him beguiling and irresistible. He tells me that back in Pokrovskoye, he had been caught several times with wenches and had suffered numerous beatings because of it. This does not surprise me.

“This peasant life is meaningless,” he told me early on. “Backbreaking labor from dawn to dusk, only relieved by drunkenness and the release through the flesh of a woman. That is not the existence I seek.”

Eventually, he candidly told me how he had resorted to crime to fund his debauchery. He stole fences, horses, and cartloads of fur. He was caught, and he was beaten. His peers mocked and taunted him, calling him “Grishka the Fool.” Strangely, he told me how he took pleasure in the beatings and the abasement. More than once, he referred to this “joy of abasement.” And somewhere in this mad, wasted life, he discovered what had been missing in his life.

He started seeking God.

The search did not start well. The priest in his village, also uneducated by the sounds of it, failed to provide him with the spiritual guidance he was looking for. Dissatisfied with not finding the answers he’d been seeking, frustrated that his contemplation was not bringing him closer to God, he resorted even more to drink and to women. The beatings resumed. He decided to leave and search elsewhere. So began his life as a wanderer in search of enlightenment.

He has been wandering the land for many, many years.

He journeyed to the Tyumen and Tobolsk cloisters, the monasteries closest to his village. He didn’t find the answers he was looking for there, so he ventured on. He visited more monasteries, farther afield. More churches, more villages, meeting countless people, praying with them. He had trouble with insomnia and spent many nights without sleep. And in his ceaseless wanderings along the meandering Tura River, he found inspiration in the glorious nature around him and began to have mystical visions.

“I woke up one night to see the mother of God before me,” he told me. “She was weeping. She said she was weeping for the sins of mankind, and asked me to go forth and cleanse the people of their sins.”

Inspired by this vision, he returned to his village and started holding prayer sessions, but those around him didn’t trust him. They knew him as a libidinous drunk and laughed at him.

“Everyone watches he who seeks salvation as though he were some kind of robber,” he told me, an unsettling rancor festering in his eyes. “All are too quick to mock him. But that is the suffering one must endure. It is part of the journey.”

So he left again. He told me it was then that he stopped smoking and drinking, stopped eating meat and sweets. He walked thousands of miles, from the Siberian hinterland to Kiev and Petersburg and back, with no more than a knapsack over his shoulder. He stayed in churches and monasteries or with peasants who admired his devotion and offered him shelter and alms. He spent time getting to know, and understand, many dozens of people. And his journeying had eventually brought him here, to this monastery, where he hoped to find salvation and healing from his inner torment through the relics of Saint Simeon.

I had been here myself for months, following the same quest. I was here to be saved, only I still hadn’t found the salvation I was yearning for. I was still unable to let go of the notion that had been embedded into me from my earliest days: that God was to be found in the wonders of science. The science that had already caused me so much torment.

The more we spoke, the more this man bewildered me.

How could a man change like that? How could he go from a self-confessed thief and serial fornicator and become a sincere strannik-a pilgrim? For he is a sincere believer, of that I am certain. He tells me he dreams of God. He speaks of searching to understand the mysteries of life, of hoping to get closer to God. Of hoping to be saved.

As do I.

For unfathomable reasons, I found myself sharing my secrets with the man, despite the fact that I had sworn to myself that no one would ever know what I had discovered. And yet, here I was, telling this mysterious wanderer everything. I could not resist his will or the comforting inner strength that radiated out of his eyes. And when I was finished, I felt a great sense of relief knowing that someone else shared my burden.

My tale brought satisfaction to Rasputin as well, but in a very different way.

It lit a great fire inside him. I could see it in his stare, which rose even more in its unbearable intensity. Once I was finished, he remained quiet for an uncomfortably long moment, just studying me in silence.

“It is all very clear to me now, Misha,” he finally said.

“What is?” I asked.

“Us, here, you and me. There is a reason we are here.” He reached out and cupped my hands in his. “God is that reason, Misha. God wanted us to meet. That’s why He brought us both here. Do you understand? What other possible reason could there be for us to be sitting here, together. We are here because of His great plan.”

“What plan?” I asked, stupefied, my mind entranced by his commanding gaze.

“His plan to save the Russian people. That is His plan for me. And that is why He has sent you here, to meet me. Because you, Misha, are going to help me achieve it.”

This man is truly a gift from God, Rasputin thought as he studied Misha.

He wasn’t sure if the man of science’s brilliance would save all the people of Russia. What he did know, however, was that it would certainly be his own savior.

It would save him from the tedious, miserable existence he’d suffered so far.

He felt a deep gratification at his decision to come to the monastery. And while what he’d told Misha was partly true-that it had been the result of a hunger to find some kind of meaning to his life-his spiritual quest had also helped him to avoid a jail cell and a criminal record back in Pokrovskoye. He’d needed a credible excuse to leave his village, a reason that would make the townsfolk hesitate at holding him back. Announcing that he was to become a strannik was the perfect way out.

And the more he thought about Misha and his astounding discovery, the more he became convinced that his decision to come here, to this austere place, would reward him richly.

Perhaps Saint Simeon was-he laughed inwardly-working his miracles after all.