Rasputin's Shadow

28

Misha’s Journal

Petersburg

September 1909

He has done it.

Or, rather, we have done it. Together.

Rasputin-or Father Grigory, as his admirers everywhere call him, even though he is not a priest of the Church-is now the empress’s indispensable friend. The healer, spiritual guide, and adviser she cannot be without. And the tsar himself, her devoted and loving husband, has embraced my master’s presence as much as she has.

Everyone in St. Petersburg speaks of it. It is the sensation of the salons and the teahouses. The crude, semi-illiterate peasant from Siberia with the incoherent speech, the monstrous scrawl, and the louche habits, is a regular guest at the glorious imperial palace out at Tsarskoye Selo.

He now calls the tsarina and the tsar “Mama” and “Papa”-the mother and father of the land of Russia. In return, they refer to him warmly as “Our Friend.”

They know nothing about me, of course. No one does. That is how my master wills it to be, and as in everything else, I trust his judgment. For despite the simplicity of his manner, he is truly wise. Wiser, I would venture, than any man who has walked this land. A bold claim, but one I believe to be true.

Our journey together, the one that began in that faraway monastery all those years ago, was always destined to bring us here, to the capital. To St. Petersburg. It was a long road and an arduous one, but one that was necessary to lay the groundwork for our enterprise. For that is why we are here.

To save the empire.

Before meeting Rasputin, I was oblivious to the unease that was simmering across our beloved Mother Russia. My life had been too insular, and I had been too focused on my research to notice the changes going on outside my laboratory. It was during our long discussions at the monastery in Verkhoturye that my master opened my eyes to what he had seen in his travels and told me about this great unease that needs our attention.

The peasants, downtrodden and oppressed, have grown jaded and cynical. Their worsening conditions have eroded their faith in the royal family, which seems lost in its own world. Our new German-born empress, Alexandra of Hesse, is haughty, stern, and domineering. The young tsar, Nicholas, is a physically slight, weak-willed, and anxious man who is in thrall to his imposing wife. They don’t even live in the capital, preferring to stay at their palaces at Tsarskoye Selo, twenty-five versts to the south-a tiresome journey by carriage, or even by motorcar, for anyone who was fortunate enough to be granted an audience. They seem to be detached from the problems sweeping our country and are oblivious to the resentment that the populace, and much of society, feels for them. I remember my own shock and revulsion at what had happened when the tsar finally ascended to the throne. The newly married tsar and tsarina had set up an outdoor festival to celebrate their coronation; the intention had been to extend a helping hand to the poor by offering them a grand day out and free food. They hadn’t planned for the hundreds of thousands of wretched souls who turned up. In the ensuing chaos, several hundred of the poor folk had died, trampled to death. The tsar and his young bride hadn’t seen fit to cancel their grand ball that same evening. The dead were still being taken away by the cartload while the court toasted the royal couple and danced the night away.

Worse still for the state of our great nation is that the people have lost their faith in our Church. This is through no fault of their own. With its pomp and its doctrinal introspection, it is the Church that has lost its connection to the people. A connection Grigory understands better than anyone.

“The mystical and the prophetic are the true essence of Christianity, and these things matter greatly to the people,” he told me in one of our long discussions at the monastery. “But the Church’s officials and its preachers have forgotten it.”

My master told me about the time he spent in the pagan cloisters, deep in the Siberian forests. In these “churches of the people,” as he called them, he learned the ways of the elders. It was there that he was taught the art of healing through potions and prayer. It was also there that he’d first heard prophesies of the downfall of the Romanov dynasty and of a bloody revolution to come.

“The monarchy needs saving,” Father Grigory told me. “The devil’s agents are everywhere, even in the halls of government, plotting to topple the tsar and undermine the faithful. We will need to be cunning if we are to save the people from themselves. That is why God gave you his divine inspiration to design and build your machine. We will need it if we are to overcome the formidable forces of the Antichrist that are allayed against us.”

My master understands these matters with great perspicacity, and I am grateful to be accompanying him on this sacred mission.

WE BEGAN OUR JOURNEY in the provinces, far from the capital. We needed to build on the work Father Grigory had already begun on his own and embellish his reputation as a prophet and a healer. I say embellish, for the man would be a prophet and a healer even without my assistance. He is gifted by God with such powers.

We moved from village to village, from monastery to monastery. I accompanied him as a humble, loyal follower. I quickly discovered that Father Grigory understands people with uncanny perceptiveness. He is a shrewd and unerring judge of character. All those years spent wandering the land before we met, sitting in prayer and discussion with countless people, gave him a veritable fount of insights. Even without the use of my discovery, his tremendous instincts and his hypnotic gaze allow him to divine the hidden desires and fears of those he meets. The most subtle of hints don’t go unnoticed.

Of course, with the aid of my device, he was able to fathom all their secrets. Secrets that he put to good use by turning them into revelations that astounded his gullible, superstitious audience.

On a few occasions, when faced with more stern resistance and cynicism, Father Grigory felt that more memorable interventions were needed. I remember one such incident, in a village near Kazan. It was in the dead of winter, and our request for food and shelter had been brutishly rebuffed. The local priest, an oaf of a man whose name I have long since forgotten, was unmoved by Father Grigory’s offers of spiritual enlightenment. It was only through the good graces of a reluctant blacksmith that we ended up in a small barn while the snow fell outside. The local townsfolk weren’t any more amenable the next day, or the one after. Father Grigory’s mood soured, and a vicious hunger for retribution took hold of him.

“Listen to me, Misha,” he told me that night. “Something malignant has these peasants in its grip. I have seen it before, and I fear my words won’t be enough to help them overcome it. We will need to be more cunning if we are to save them.”

I listened carefully as he outlined his plan, then nodded my acquiescence.

The next night was bitterly cold, and at the allotted time, I stood in the shadows as Father Grigory ran through the village with nothing but his shirt on, screaming like a madman.

“Repent,” he hollered, “repent before the calamity strikes.”

He had been warning the villagers of something terrible all day. The peasants watched in shock as Father Grigory reached the edge of the village and collapsed into unconsciousness.

By the time he awoke many hours later, half the village had burned down.

Needless to say, those peasants were turned into fervent believers. Little did they suspect that it was I who had set the place aflame.

With prophesies, healing, and small miracles, we traveled the land and built up his reputation over the course of many months. On a couple of occasions, we returned to Pokrovskoye, his home. I met his parents, his wife, and his children. They seemed greatly relieved and impressed by his burgeoning fame. I heard stories of how, as a youngster, he spent hours staring at the sky and asking probing questions about life. I also heard about the early manifestations of his talents: how as a child, he’d correctly identified the thief who’d stolen a neighbor’s horse, how he’d predicted another villager’s demise, how he’d healed a horse that had gone lame.

The doubters and the suspicious, however, remained. And on our third visit back to Pokrovskoye, they were ready for us.

A bishop had been dispatched to Pokrovskoye by the Tobolsk Theological Council, and he had already interviewed the village’s local priests before we arrived. By this time, my master was fond of traveling with two or three female companions-fellow pilgrims in search of enlightenment. I would follow on, a humble disciple. During our visits to the village, Father Grigory and his followers would customarily meet in a makeshift chapel in a cellar that had been dug under the stable next to my master’s home. They would read from the Gospels, then he would explain the hidden meanings concealed within them to his riveted audience.

The inquisitor, a gruff man by the name of Father Arkady and assisted by an equally saturnine policeman, accused my master of having joined the Khlyst heresy and spreading its falsities through his “ark,” the name the Khlysti apparently used for their communities. I didn’t know much about the Khlyst sect. All I knew was that it was a banned doctrine that combined elements of Orthodox Christianity with paganism. Its adherents, mostly the poor who lived outside the cities, held their meetings in secret chapels that were often hidden deep in the forests, away from curious eyes. Many of its leaders had been executed over the years, its followers exiled. An accusation such as this was highly dangerous.

Father Grigory and I moved fast to defuse it.

I hid in the stable and set up my device in one of the stalls. At the agreed-upon time, my master invited the bishop and the policeman to join him in the chapel.

Once they were settled in the cellar, I stuffed the protective wax pellets in my ears, connected the wires, and switched on my device.

I could hear their voices. They were cordial at first. Then their tones changed. My master’s voice rose in intensity as he probed the inner demons of his guests, while their own voices stumbled and stuttered in confusion. With each exchange, Father Grigory’s voice rose in intensity until, by the end of his interview, his words were thundering down on them.

The townspeople, along with Father Grigory’s family, were all waiting anxiously when the three men emerged from the stable. The inquisitor looked disheveled and shaken. The local priest who had summoned the inquisitor ran up to him, asking for his verdict.

“There is no heresy here,” the bishop announced. “This man truly understands the scriptures. Heed his words.”

The policeman, for his part, turned to my master, bowed his head, and said, “Forgive me, Father, for my transgression.” Father Grigory extended his hand to him. The policeman kissed it.

It was time for us to enter the capital.

WE ARRIVED IN PETERSBURG in the winter of 1904. It was a tumultuous time. The empire was mired in the war against the Japanese, an unpopular war that we would lose the following year. The people were starving and angry. There was talk of revolution in the air, and within weeks of our arrival, in January of 1905, a march of protesting workers turned into a bloody massacre after the tsar’s army opened fire. Over many months, more armed rebellion would follow until the tsar would be forced to sign a constitution limiting his powers to appease the populace.

Not all of the tumult was bad news for the royal family. After producing four girls, the tsarina had finally given birth to a long-awaited heir a few months before our arrival.

The young tsarevich would play a pivotal role in our adventure.

By the time we reached the capital, Rasputin’s reputation as a prophet and a healer of exceptional gifts had already preceded us. Armed with a letter of introduction from another abbot we had beguiled in Kazan, my master soon had an audience with Bishop Sergius, the rector of the Petersburg Theological Seminary.

I managed to set up my device outside the window of the room at the Alexander Nevsky Abbey, where my master was to meet the bishop. Under its influence, the bishop was even more impressed by Father Grigory’s impassioned words. He soon introduced him to other highly placed officials of the Holy Synod, and my master’s ascent through the corridors of influence was under way. Bishop Feofan; the brutish anti-Semitic monk Iliodor; and Hermogen, the bishop of Saratov who dreamed of restoring the Patriarchate-one that he would head-all became his friends. The nobility began to seek him out for spiritual guidance and healing. Within society, word spread of how this crude peasant never failed to demonstrate a perspicacity that bordered on second sight and a wisdom that comforted all those who were distressed.

Of course, no one knew what was helping him obtain these insights into people’s lives and unveil their innermost secrets.

It wasn’t long before Rasputin’s circle of admirers grew to include members of the tsar and tsarina’s inner circle. We were now well on the path to the palace and to meeting the royal family. And it was then, through one of these close confidantes of the royals, that my master first heard whispers of what would prove to be the key to his influence over them.

He had moved into the luxurious home of the Lokhtins. Olga Lokhtina, the striking wife of a senior official in the government and one of St. Petersburg’s most fashionable hostesses, was by now besotted by Father Grigory. She fawned over him publicly and gushed about him to all her society friends, and it was in her elegant salon that he became privy to all of the city’s gossip.

“The tsarevich is sick,” he announced to me one day, at one of our clandestine meetings, away from his entourage. “He could die very easily. It is a closely guarded secret. It is also an incalculably valuable opportunity.”

I was stunned by the revelation. The heir-the long-awaited heir, the sole heir to the throne, gravely ill?

“What is his condition?” I asked.

“The young child suffers from hemophilia,” Father Grigory informed me, his expression already clouded with machinations. “His veins are too fragile to contain his blood. Even the smallest fall or the smallest wound could cause him to bleed to death.” He paused, thinking things through, then turned to me, his face tight with concentration. “The empress is beside herself with blame. She will do anything to keep him safe.” A chilling vibrancy danced in his eyes. “Anything.”

My spiritual mentor proceeded to tell me what Olga Lokhtina had told him about the empress. The tsarina was widely known to be highly religious. She was also, it transpired, a fervent believer in the mystical. Before the birth of her son, she had longed desperately for some kind of divine intervention to help her produce an heir to the throne. At a time when her resentful, impoverished populace was turning away from religion, she embraced it more and more, surrounding herself with icons and holy relics and seeking out miracle workers. Much to the dismay and ridicule of the capital’s society and of the royal court, “Men of God” were introduced to her, elders who were believed to be endowed with a special gift from God. One after another, they failed to help her produce a son. And yet, with each daughter she gave birth to-four in all-the empress kept firm in her belief that God would hear her prayers and send her a holy envoy.

“The last of these ‘miracle workers’ was a French magus they called Monsieur Philippe,” he told me. “He told the empress he could speak with the dead and said he lived between our world and the spirit world, and she believed him. He claimed he could heal all illnesses, even syphilis. And, of course, after insinuating himself into her world-Olga even heard he shared a bedroom with the royal couple-he assured her she would become pregnant and give birth to a son.”

“But she did,” I interjected.

“No,” my master corrected me. “She did fall pregnant when under the care of this Monsieur Philippe, but it was a phantom pregnancy. It was simply a testimony to his powers of conviction and to her gullibility. He was banished back to France long before she conceived the tsarevich. But you know what his parting words to her were? He told her he would die soon, but that he would return ‘in the shape of another.’ And still she awaits her emissary from God.”

“But she has Feofan. She has Iliodor and Hermogen and Father Ioann,” I said, referring to the senior members of the Church.

“They won’t do,” Father Grigory told me. “They are rigid, trite Orthodox priests. The tsarina is waiting for a true mystic, and what’s more, she believes this starets will come not from the capital, but that he will arise from among the common folk in some distant village-a true Russian who loves God, the Church, and the divine Romanov dynasty.” He nodded solemnly to himself. “I will be that emissary, Misha. And we will rescue the tsarevich and, with him, the monarchy.”

I could not have hoped for a more noble, or a more redemptive, use for my discovery.

Saint Simeon was truly walking alongside us.

MY MENTOR’S UNSHAKABLE FAITH, his intense passion, and his formidable inner strength had all combined to make a remarkable healer out of him, but this would require everything at our disposal. The life of a young child hung in the balance, and not just any child. This was the heir to the throne. Failure would mean a shameful end to our crusade.

In October of 1906, and through the championing of Olga Lokhtina and other members of the court, Father Grigory was finally granted an audience with the royal couple. For this occasion, I wouldn’t be able to accompany him. I wouldn’t even be able to be close by. We had anticipated this moment, of course, and I had been hard at work devising an alternative to my machine that my master would be able to carry with him. I was able to produce a small version that could be carried in a low-slung pouch under his coat. I ran a wire up the inside of each of the sleeves of my master’s coat. The wires ended at two small transducers that I sewed on the inside of his cuffs. The whole apparatus was powered by four small dry-cell batteries such as those that Gassner had demonstrated years earlier at the World’s Fair in Paris. I had first seen them for myself in the laboratory of Akiba Horowitz, who had since found fame and fortune in America under the new name of Conrad Hubert, of course, with his “Ever Ready” Flash Light devices. The alternative Father Grigory would be taking with him was not anywhere near as powerful as the larger version, of course. It would only really affect anyone sitting right next to my master, and it would only have one setting.

We hoped that it would suffice. And, as providence would have it, it proved wondrous.

I watched anxiously from the nearby corner as one of the tsar’s attendants, a slim man in royal livery and topped by a flat hat festooned with tall red and yellow ostrich feathers, came to fetch my master from the Lokhtin residence. My master appeared, wearing the coat I had prepared and carrying the gift we had carefully sourced. The canvas-topped motorcar disappeared in a belch of smoke, and I could hardly wait until they returned to hear how it went.

The Alexander Palace, he told me, was magnificent. He had never seen anything like it. The reception rooms were enormous, paved with acres of the finest marble and illuminated by dazzling chandeliers. The chambers had sumptuous gilded furniture, walls that were teeming with glorious paintings and ceilings bedecked with the most exquisite moldings. And in one of those rooms, the tsar and the tsarina awaited him.

His audience with the royal couple lasted far longer than had been anticipated-over an hour. He sensed their nervousness immediately. He began by presenting them with his gift: an icon of Saint Simeon, the miracle worker of Verkhoturye, the monastery where he and I had first met. He astounded me by telling me he did not make use of my device, not then. He decided he would simply use his own acumen and the powers of insight he had honed for so many years.

The royal couple were, he told me, enchanted by his words. The empress, in particular, seemed giddy at the prospect of miracles. He spoke to them of the sin of pride and prophesied a great future for the dynasty.

“You should have seen the delight in the empress’s eyes when I told her she and her husband should simply spit on all their fears and just rule, as God had intended,” he told me.

It was then that Father Grigory asked for permission to see the child. They did not resist.

He was led to the children’s wing, where he met the nurses looking after the baby and the heir himself. The tsarevich, now a little more than two years of age, was unwell and in pain. He hadn’t been able to sleep.

“How long has he been like this?” he asked them.

“Five days,” the empress replied, pain cracking through her polished veneer.

“And the doctors?”

She shook her head. “They say there is nothing they can do. He is in God’s hands.”

“You are right,” Father Grigory replied. “He is in God’s care now. But he will be fine. Of that I can assure you.”

Without asking for permission, Father Grigory approached the crib, leaned over it, and began praying. The room fell silent. He prayed hard, as he did in these situations, sweat breaking out across his face, his limbs shaking. After many minutes, he reached out and placed his hands on the baby boy’s temples. The royal couple watched in astonishment as their son calmed down visibly, then fell asleep.

The next morning, Madame Lokhtina received an excited phone call from Tsarskoye Selo. The heir had woken up without crying. He seemed in perfect health.

Saint Simeon had smiled upon us. I struggled to understand what had happened-had it simply been my master’s gift of healing at work, or did my device contribute to the miracle? After much deliberation, I determined it to be an effect of both. There is no doubt that my master possesses a magical power of his own, and in the case of the tsarevich, the calming effect of my binaural beats had slowed his pulse rate right down as intended, allowing the blood time to coagulate. It was this serendipitous combination that would remain the miracle cure for the ailing prince throughout his short life-and turn my master into the royal couple’s untouchable man of God.

OVER THE FOLLOWING MONTHS, my master became the royal couple’s intimate friend and counselor. He is particularly close to the empress, who is prey to many anxieties and suffers from migraines. Father Grigory’s words of comfort about her future in this life and the next soothe her. By getting her to divulge all her innermost fears and desires, he knows everything about her. Then, when she is fully conscious, he regurgitates these secret wishes of hers, presenting them to her as prophesies of his own. Then he schemes to make them come true.

They summon him every time the prince is ill, and each time, my master restores him to good health. They believe he is the key to their son’s survival, which, in truth, he is. Moreover, he has convinced the royal couple that their own survival, the very survival of their dynasty, depends on his presence and his prayers on their behalf.

They cannot imagine a life without him.

Of course, there are many detractors. Tongues throughout society are wagging about this crude peasant and his unsavory influence over the royal couple. It is mostly jealousy about his growing power, of course. But it is also about the women.

The women are becoming a problem. I worry that this will cause our downfall and prevent us from accomplishing the divine mission I have been blessed to participate in.

I shall never forget the first time I got wind of the gravity of this situation. It happened late one morning, when I went to visit him for tea at the Lokhtin apartment. There was a screen in his room there, behind which sat his bed. As I entered, I heard what sounded like loud slaps accompanied by moans, then I heard my master hollering, “Who am I? Tell me who I am.”

“You are God,” a woman replied meekly. “You are Christ, and I am your lamb.”

I stepped around the screen to witness the most disturbing of sights. Madame Lokhtina, wearing a loose, white dress that was extravagantly decorated with ribbons, was kneeling in front of my naked master. She was holding on to his erect manhood while he beat her mercilessly.

“What are you doing?” I shouted to him as I tried to intercede on her behalf. “You’re beating a woman.”

He pushed me aside and did not interrupt his beating. “Leave me be. The skunk, she won’t let me alone. She demands sin. She needs to be cleansed.”

I left in shock.

He is frequenting many women. Duchesses and wives of the highest officials fawn over him and kiss his hands openly. They are constantly at his side, whether at the apartment he now occupies here in St. Petersburg or on his trips to Verkhoturye or to his newly built home in Pokrovskoye. They even accompany him to the bathhouses. And that is not all. Aside from spending all this time with these high-placed ladies, he is frequenting prostitutes. He takes them to hotels or to the bathhouses. There have been occasions when I have known him to hire several of them in a single day.

Accusations are being voiced more and more openly, questioning his morality, claiming he is a scoundrel and a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” even accusing him of being in a state of spiritual temptation.

When I questioned him about this, he shrugged and said, “Don’t believe what these people say, Misha. They’ll never understand.”

“I don’t understand,” I told him, fearful of the answer.

He fixed me with his deep-set eyes, then he said, “Sin is a vital part of life. We cannot ignore it. God put it there for a reason.”

“I thought sin was the work of the devil,” I countered, confused.

“Sin is a necessary evil, Misha. There can be no true life, no joy without profound repentance, but how can our repentance be sincere without sinning? Do you see? We cannot be true to God without sin, and it is my duty at the command of the Holy Spirit to help these women rid themselves of the demons of lechery and pride that live within them.”

And that was when I started to understand. Father Grigory drives out sin with sin. The crude peasant is taking these poor women’s sins onto himself, selflessly toiling and debasing himself for their redemption and for their purification. These women know to heed my master’s cautions and not say anything to their confessors, whom he considers simpletons. He has warned them that it would only confuse the poor men and, worse, make them commit a mortal sin by passing judgment on the Holy Spirit.

“Each of us must bear his own cross,” he told me, “and that is mine. So pay no heed to these wicked tongues. The impure will always stick to the pure. They shall answer to God. He alone sees everything. He alone understands.”

My master’s understanding of God’s will is truly beyond compare, or reproach.

He is God’s emissary. The empire, and the royal family, are lucky to have their “Blessed One” as their protector.

Yes, the monarchy needs us, Rasputin mused after he left Misha.

The royal couple need saving if they are to remain my patrons and my conduits to power and gratification.

He thought back to the times that had shaped him, back when he was a precocious, impatient young man in Pokrovskoye. He had seethed with jealousy and contempt every time the gilded aristocrats thundered by in their sumptuous carriages, on their way to some distant monastery for a frivolous cleansing of their souls. He’d heard about the riches in the big cities, about the motorcars and the ostentatious parties and the lavish lifestyles of the court. It had all festered within him after he’d left his village, during his travels, and it was still with him when he’d heard about the empress’s problems and superstitions. She was the most religious, and the most credulous, of them all, even more so than the wretched souls who flocked to Saint Simeon’s grave and rubbed themselves with its crusty soil in the belief that it would cure whatever ailed them.

It was a credulity that was begging to be exploited. And the insights he’d gleaned from the myriad encounters he’d experienced during his wandering years had turned him into a master of exploitation.

One chapter had marked him most of all, and that was his time with the Khlysti in a remote corner of the Siberian outback. He would always remember that first ritual among the sect of resurrected “Christs” who believed repentance was pointless unless it was about repenting for a major sin, which usually took the form of fornication. The chants, the dancing, the frenzied whirling, all of it culminating in the rite of “rejoicing”-the wild orgies, during which the Holy Spirit would, they were told, descend upon them. It was all mind-boggling.

What a concept, he thought. Rejoicing through group sinning. Abstention through orgies. The purification of the soul through wanton copulation. The boundless debauchery that, according to their beliefs, allowed every man the potential to turn into a Christ and every woman into a mother of God.

It was so twisted and ingenious, it was no wonder the Orthodox Church had moved quickly to stamp it out. But it survived, in the dark corners of the empire, its “arks” connected to each other by secret messengers-the “flying angels,” or seraphs who wandered the land.

For a while, Rasputin had become one such seraph. And with Misha’s assistance, he would take the rituals of the secret sect of the poor from the forests of Siberia and unleash his own version of them on the high society of St. Petersburg and its polished, unsuspecting women.

It was a far better life than any of the illiterate peasant of Pokrovskoye had ever dared dream of.