Rasputin's Shadow

64

Misha’s Journal

Karovo, Kaluga Province

December 1926

It was a night that would long be remembered. The night that would change everything.

Not just for me, but for everyone in the empire.

And to the end of my days, given everything that followed, I shall wonder whether or not I should have stopped it from happening.

That winter ten years ago, back in 1916, was bleak and harsh. The war against the Germans was raging on, and eleven million of Mother Russia’s faithful sons had already been sucked into its bloody embrace. Horrific losses increased by the day, and the Army’s supply of weapons was virtually depleted. Across the land, there was great hardship and suffering. With food and manpower diverted to the front, there was widespread starvation. The people were angry. Trouble was brewing.

In Petrograd, we were all living on a knife’s edge. Rasputin was, as always, oblivious to the danger bubbling around us. His mind was elsewhere, strategizing for our grand intervention at the front. I was playing along while desperately searching for a way out of my quandary.

My old master was, by then, in continual fear for his life, and with good reason. He was loathed by all of Petrograd’s society, if not by everyone in the empire. The nobility and the bourgeoisie were outraged at how this sinful peasant had brought shame to the court and how he seemed to control the royal couple as if they were his marionettes. They blamed his meddling for the disastrous mismanagement of the war-it was at his behest that the tsar had relieved Grand Duke Nikolai of his command and taken over the war campaign himself. It was leading to an inevitable revolution that would cause them to lose everything.

It was in that turbulent environment that on a fateful day that December, Rasputin received an unexpected invitation. Prince Felix Yusupov, the young heir to Russia’s biggest fortune, wanted Rasputin to join him and some friends at his palace. The Yusupovs were descendants of the Tatar ruler Khan Yusuf and, it was believed, of the Prophet Mohamed himself. The prince’s ancestors had ruled over Damascus, Antioch, and Egypt before ending up in Russia at the time of Ivan the Terrible and converting to Christianity a century later. Their palace fronting the Moika Canal, one of many they owned across the empire, was a sprawling edifice that rivaled the Alexander Palace in its grandeur. It had ballrooms, bathing pools, and a private theater where Liszt and Chopin had performed concerts. Much later, I would hear that long after the revolution had wrecked the empire and the Yusupovs had fled Russia on board a British warship, the remains of a corpse were discovered in one of the palace’s many hidden rooms. The bones turned out to be those of Felix’s great-grandmother’s lover. This was a family whose history mirrored that of Russia. On this occasion, it was fated to influence it one final time.

Felix and Rasputin had become more than acquaintances over the last year, but Rasputin had never been to the Moika Palace, nor had he met the prince’s wife, Irina, who was the niece of the tsar and was, according to Felix, feeling unwell.

He asked Rasputin if he wouldn’t mind treating her while he was there, and offered to send his driver to pick him up.

Irina was young and attractive. I couldn’t help but think of the poor woman as yet another lamb being led to the slaughter. But perhaps something else was afoot.

Rasputin knew that Yusupov, as Russia’s richest heir and a key member of the nobility, harbored the same hostility toward him as the rest of his enemies. He suspected Yusupov and his friends had other intentions regarding him. Malevolent ones. It was already insulting that the prince couldn’t be seen to receive him during the day and had asked that he visit them in the middle of the night.

Still, he decided he would go to the meeting. He wanted to know what they were up to.

“We’ll use the device,” he told me. “You will set it up outside the Moika Palace before I go in. And once they’re under its effect, I will know what they really have planned for me.”

I harbored the same suspicions, but I had a different plan in mind. I decided I would find out on my own, before he went there.

Not knowing anything about the layout of the palace was going to be a problem. I didn’t know where to set up my device, and I didn’t want to risk riding out there on the cart with the larger machine, the one we’d used at the mines. The only alternative was to use a coat with the conductors sewn into its sleeves, the one Rasputin had used the first time he treated the tsarevich. It would be more powerful than that earlier version, of course. Many years had passed, and my work had greatly evolved. Still, it was a risk, but one I felt compelled to take.

If nothing else, Rasputin had definitely turned me into an adventurer.

I showed up at the Moika Palace the next day and, reining in my nervousness, I presented myself as the personal envoy of Rasputin and asked to see the prince. Felix, curious as to my presence, agreed to receive me. The liveried Ethiopian manservant led me past rooms of astounding opulence, past a library lined with shelves that held what must have been every book ever written, and down a steep staircase to a charming basement room. It had a vaulted ceiling and was divided into two parts. One was a cozy dining room that had a roaring fireplace. There was a magnificent inlaid ebony cabinet beside it that seemed like it was made up of thousands of tiny mirrors, with a splendid rock-crystal crucifix sitting on it. The other part was a sitting room that had a settee facing a large polar-bear skin. The only windows were small and set high in the wall on one side, just under the ceiling.

Before long, the prince joined me there. He was slim and unprepossessing, his features thinly drawn. He reeked of elegance and of breeding, but I found his manner phlegmatic and rather effeminate. As a youth and during his years at Oxford, he was known to enjoy dressing up in women’s clothing and going to nightclubs disguised as such, and I could easily picture him in that attire. Rumors abounded about his liaisons with Grand Duke Dimitry Pavlovich, the tsar’s tall, ruggedly handsome young cousin who lived nearby.

Once we were alone, I switched on the device and waited until I felt the prince was under its influence. Then I began by asking him how he felt about Rasputin.

“That scoundrel is the root of all evil and the cause of all our problems,” he hissed, his eyes bulging angrily. “He is single-handedly responsible for all the misfortunes that have blighted Russia. If he isn’t stopped, he’s going to bring down the monarchy and bring us down with it. Do you know what he did last month?”

I probably did, but I replied, “No.”

“He offered to get me a senior posting in the government,” Felix scoffed. “Me, Prince Felix Yusupov. This illiterate peasant from the armpit of Siberia was offering me a job. In my uncle-in-law’s government.”

“What did you reply?” I asked.

“I took on a humbled air and told him I felt I was too young and inexperienced to serve at such a high level, but that I was immeasurably flattered and gratified by the thought that someone as discerning as he had such a lofty opinion of me.” He looked at me in disbelief, then he burst out laughing.

I waited for him to settle down, then I asked him, “So what is to be done?”

He fixed me with a surprisingly chilling glare and took in a deep breath, then, almost under his breath, he said, “Only the complete destruction of Rasputin will save Mother Russia. It is the only way to release the tsar from his vile spell and allow him to lead us to a decisive victory against the Germans.”

He then told me what they had planned for Rasputin.

They had chosen the date, December 16, because of something I had forgotten. “It is,” he said coldly, “the fifth anniversary of that failed attempt on the depraved scoundrel’s life. You remember it, yes? The day that prostitute with no nose stabbed him in Tobolsk.”

I remembered it well. It had been the catalyst to darker times, although I suspect they would have happened with or without the syphilitic whore and her dagger.

I made sure the setting was strong enough so that Felix wouldn’t remember our chat, and left him.

I didn’t tell Rasputin any of it.

THAT NIGHT, I HUDDLED in the shadows outside the Moika Palace, as Rasputin had asked, awaiting his arrival. But I had no plans to use the machine. I didn’t even bring it with me.

It was a mildly cold evening, a few degrees above freezing, and a light, wet snow was falling. At around half past midnight, the canvas-topped motorcar I’d seen earlier returned and pulled into the yard outside the palace. The driver, whom I knew to be Lazovert, the military doctor who was acting as the prince’s chauffeur, came out first, dressed in a long coat and an Astrakhan cap with ear flaps on it. He opened the rear door. Prince Felix stepped out first. Then I saw Rasputin emerge, looking regal in his fur coat and his beaver hat.

Rasputin stepped up to the house as if it were his own. What a journey, I thought. What a long way we’ve come since our days in the austere cells of the monastery at Verkhoturye.

They disappeared into a doorway. I kept watch.

For about an hour, nothing visible happened, not from my vantage point from behind a large hedge. But in my mind’s eye, I tried to picture what was happening in that basement. The prince had described their plans to me in great detail. Years later, it would be hard to glean what exactly did take place. Several of the participants have described the event in their published memoirs, but they were all contradictory and, knowing Rasputin as I did, seemed rather fanciful.

What I did know was that Felix would be entertaining Rasputin in the basement dining room. The servants had been told they wouldn’t be needed for the night. The other plotters would be waiting upstairs in the prince’s study: his friend and lover Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich, who had been raised in the tsar’s household and loathed Rasputin for all the calamities that had befallen his family; Vladimir Purishkevich, a monarchist member of the Duma who had repeatedly denounced Rasputin; Lieutenant Sukhotin, a soldier who had been wounded in the war and believed Rasputin to be a German spy; Dr. Lazavert, a friend of Purishkevich; and two women: Vera Karalli, a ballerina who was also a lover of the grand duke; and Marianna Pistolkors, Dimitry’s stepsister. Felix had not wanted his wife to be there.

I pictured Felix and Rasputin sitting around the table or on the settee, by the bear skin, a log fire crackling in the hearth. Rasputin would have on one of his prized silk shirts, the ones embroidered by the tsarina. It would only inflame the young prince even more. I imagined Felix offering Rasputin the pastries that they had laced with chippings of potassium cyanide, and offering him a glass of wine that they had spiked with a vial of the same poison. They had opted to use poison to avoid the noise from gunshots. A police station stood directly opposite the palace, across the Moika Canal, not fifty meters away. Gunshots in the dead of the night, even inside the palace, would be heard.

I knew Rasputin wouldn’t eat the pastries. He still didn’t eat sweets. The wine, though, he would happily drink.

And drink he did. But nothing happened. They had prepared four glasses, two of which were laced with the poison. Rasputin downed them, and kept on talking, unaffected. He downed the third glass. Then he smiled at the young prince before his brow darkened around his ice-blue eyes and his face took on a look of terrifying hatred.

“You see,” Rasputin told Felix. “Whatever you have planned for me, it won’t work. You can’t hurt me, no matter how hard you try. Now pour me another cup, I’m thirsty. And come sit close to me. We have a lot to discuss.”

Felix was perturbed. Rasputin had drunk all the poison and although he seemed a bit drowsy, he was still as fit as he was when he came in. His fellow plotters upstairs were also getting impatient and rowdy. Rasputin heard the noise and remembered he was also there to treat Irina.

“What’s all that noise?” he asked.

“It’s Irina and her guests. They’re probably leaving. I’ll go take a look.”

Felix left Rasputin and hurried up the stairs to his study. He told the others what had happened.

“What should we do?” he asked in a panic, but before anyone could answer, he saw Dimitry’s Browning lying on the table and grabbed it.

He went back down to the basement, where he found Rasputin standing by the fireplace and studying the richly inlaid cabinet next to it.

“I like this cabinet,” Rasputin told him.

“I think you’d do better to study the crucifix and pray to it,” the prince told him. Then he raised his gun.

AT ABOUT HALF PAST two, still standing outside, feeling heavy-headed and shivering from the cold, I heard a single gunshot. The detonation roused me like a slap to the face, and I felt my pulse quicken.

Was he dead? Could that possibly be the end of Rasputin? It seemed such an unfitting finish for him. I never imagined he would leave this world in such a prosaic way.

True to form, he wasn’t going to disappoint me.

He had fallen heavily onto the bear skin, with Yusupov standing over him, the gun in his hand. The men all rushed downstairs. They moved him off the rug and onto the tiled floor, then left him there, switched off the lights, and went back upstairs to toast their success.

Less than half an hour later, a detachment of police officers walked past my position and knocked at the palace’s main entrance. I saw some light spill out onto them as the front door was opened. I couldn’t see or hear what was said, but they didn’t go inside and left shortly after. Moments later, I saw another car arrive. It stopped near the small footbridge that faced the palace, and four men climbed out of it before it sped away. As they trudged past me in the snow toward the side entrance, I recognized two of them. They were Fyodor and Andrew, the brothers of Felix’s wife, Irina. They disappeared inside the house.

Seeing them, I felt a sense of finality. Rasputin had to be dead, surely. Felix must have summoned the young princes to gloat over his achievement and give them a chance to savor the pathetic sight of their dead nemesis before his body was disposed of. I knew Felix would find it hard to keep his mouth shut about what he had done; he would use it to stifle any questions about his manhood and gain some of the respect he desperately sought from his brothers-in-arms in the Corps des Pages.

When Felix led them back down to the basement to show off his prize, they were all stunned to find that Rasputin was still breathing. Not just breathing-he was trying to sit up. The men then all attacked him and beat him mercilessly. I know this, for I heard the commotion and decided to risk a look for myself. I crept up to one of the windows that sat low, just off the ground level of the courtyard, and peered in. It was steamed up from the inside, partly obscuring my view, but I could still see the men-I couldn’t count how many-taking turns punching him, kicking him, stabbing him with a candelabra and hitting him with truncheons and bats. I wanted to tear my gaze away, but I couldn’t. I managed to catch a glimpse of Rasputin’s face when one of them turned him over. One eye had come out of its cavity, and his ear was hanging awkwardly, partly detached from his head. I also saw a large, dark stain on the side of his white shirt, and it confirmed what I’d suspected, that he’d been shot.

Then, mercifully, they stopped. They stood over his supine body, then left the room in a cheerful, uproarious mood.

I took one last look at him before I scurried back to my hiding place, worried they might come out at any moment. But they didn’t. In fact, nothing further happened for several hours. I was chilled to the bone and desperate to leave and find some shelter and warmth, but I couldn’t tear myself away. Not yet. I needed to see it through to the very end.

With each passing hour, I felt my consciousness wane. It was a struggle to stay awake, but I couldn’t let myself fall asleep, not out in that cold. My eyelids now felt like they were made of lead and were inexorably forcing themselves shut when the side door creaked open.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was Rasputin, on his feet, staggering out of the palace. Impossible, surely-but no, it was him, still alive, still breathing. He wasn’t wearing his coat and faltered as he moved across the yard, heading for the gate, his feet plodding heavily in the sloppy, wet snow.

I felt an urge to rush out and help him. We’d been through a lot together, and seeing him wounded like that pained me. But before I could step out of my hiding spot, before he’d even managed ten yards, the door burst open and male silhouettes spilled out into the night, rasping, “Get him,” and “He’s getting away.” Then I heard two other gunshots and they were on him, pulling him to the ground. One of the men, a man I didn’t recognize and who wore a Russian Army gray coat, pulled out a revolver from under his coat and shot Rasputin in the forehead point-blank.

They carried him back inside.

About half an hour later, I watched as another car drove into the courtyard. Several men, their breath coming out in swirling white puffs, emerged from the house carrying Rasputin’s body. They stuffed it into the car. Three of the men climbed in, and the car sped off. The whole country would later hear how they drove his body to a bridge and dumped it into the freezing river.

The autopsy on his body would reveal that he was still alive when he hit the water.

Even in death, my old master would continue to mesmerize the country. His death became the stuff of legend: he was poisoned, beaten, and shot several times, and yet he still lived on.

Only a devil could manage that.

IT WAS TIME FOR me to disappear.

First, I made sure I destroyed everything. The machine. All my equipment. My notes and my books, all burned.

A whole lifetime of work. Gone.

It had to be done.

Then I left Petrograd and the brewing rebellion and wandered the land for months until I settled here in the Kaluga Province, in a small village called Karovo. It is a remote, idyllic place of birch forests, picturesque bluffs, and lush meadows by the Oka River.

I have found work as a farmer. I masquerade as a barely literate fool with no past and no future.

I plow the soil and keep to myself in the quiet hope that, one day, I will find a way to atone for my sins.