Rasputin's Shadow

by Raymond Khoury

  It scared him so much that he kept it to himself. He wasn’t going to share it with his father, who was rarely sober after sunset. He thought long and hard about sharing it with his brothers, particularly with Pavel, the third of the four boys and the one he was closest to. But he decided against it. Somehow, although it scared him, it also excited him. In a world of little—if any—possessions, it felt good to have something special, something no one else had or even knew about. Something he could call his own.

  The more he reread it, the more he wanted to understand what it was and how it worked. But his grandfather had been very cryptic. The little he’d mentioned about what it actually was didn’t explain much at all. Sokolov understood the reason for this. His grandfather Misha didn’t want his discovery known. He didn’t want anyone else to be able to do what he’d done. He’d mentioned it repeatedly in his diary: his remorse, his horror, his desire to bury his secret forever. And he’d almost managed it. Sokolov had found the journals by pure luck, but his grandfather’s warnings had only served to stoke his curiosity.

  It became his obsession. And it coincided with the fact that at fourteen, Leo Sokolov was about to complete his compulsory seven-year general education. Like his peers, his choices were dictated by the state. He could begin employment, go to a vocational school for manual labor, or try to enroll in a technicum—a specialized secondary school. Much against his father’s will, he chose the latter. It wouldn’t be easy, given the remoteness of where he lived, but Sokolov was determined and fought stubbornly until he managed to snare a place at an engineering technical school in Tula, fifteen miles away.

  Once there, he threw himself into his studies. He demonstrated a curiosity and a fascination with science that greatly impressed his teachers. His appetite for physics and biology was ravenous. And in the highly centralized government-run educational system that was designed to feed the planned economy, nothing went unnoticed. Sokolov’s intelligence and his hunger for learning soon caught the attention of the regional education committee. Engineering was a priority for the Soviet Union, which concentrated its vocational training resources in areas such as aerospace and military technology, and Sokolov was soon offered a place at Leningrad University.

  While advancing his studies in science, Sokolov quietly sought out everything there was to know about Rasputin, especially about the monk’s years in Petersburg, when he’d become a close confidant of the tsar and tsarina. Written information about that period wasn’t plentiful, and most of it was tainted by a propagandist approach, so Sokolov traveled the country whenever he could to try to get to the truth.

  He started at the State Historical Archive in St. Petersburg, where he studied the records of the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry for the Investigation of Illegal Acts by Ministers and Other Responsible Persons of the Tsarist Regime, a commission that was set up in 1917, after the fall of the tsar. In particular, Sokolov was interested in the findings of its Thirteenth Section, the one concerned with understanding the activities of the “dark forces”—political jargon, back in 1917, for Rasputin, the tsarina, and those close to them—that were believed to be controlling the tsar.

  The commission’s investigators held intensive interrogations of everyone in the tsar’s inner circle, most of whom were by then languishing in prison. Sokolov also read the reports of the investigators’ travels to Tobolsk, where Rasputin had spent his youth and where they’d interviewed his fellow villagers. All these investigations had been very thorough, but Sokolov knew the reports and transcripts weren’t completely reliable; they were the result of a political witch hunt, seeking to discredit the monk in order to further justify the uprising against the royal family.

  But some of the reports would prove useful in other ways. Sokolov got hold of the testimonies of monks from distant Siberian monasteries, where Rasputin’s mysterious wandering had taken him and where his transformation had begun. He found references to the monastery at Verkhoturye, where his grandfather had first met Rasputin, but as much as he scoured the records for any mention of his grandfather, he found none.

  Clearly, Rasputin had kept his friendship with Misha a secret.

  The commission’s archive also held Rasputin’s unpublished diary, but Sokolov knew enough to not give it much attention. Rasputin was virtually illiterate, and this “dictated” diary was widely assumed to be a fake—one concocted by the playwright and science fiction author Alexei Tolstoy as part of an effort to further discredit tsarism and promote the Bolsheviks.

  He pored over the reports of the secret police agents who had been assigned to watch Rasputin, but much to his frustration, he discovered that they were very incomplete. He learned that entire batches of the reports had been destroyed in a fire that burned down the tsarist secret police’s headquarters during the February Revolution, two months after Rasputin’s murder. Other files were destroyed by the police officials who had fraternized with Rasputin and had scrambled to keep any association with him out of sight after the fall of the tsar. Again, there was no mention of his grandfather. Sokolov knew from the diaries that his grandfather and Rasputin had a very close association, but the monk had managed to elude his watchers whenever they had met—which probably saved the life of Sokolov’s ancestor.

  There was no record of Misha anywhere.

  Sokolov also studied the testimony of Badmaev, a mysterious emchi—a Tibetan healer—at the service of the court. Badmaev was Rasputin’s friend, another supernatural healer in the tsarina’s orbit. Sokolov thought he might find something useful there, but again, it was not to be.

  Eventually, Sokolov gave up and decided to focus on what he knew best: science. He committed himself to focusing on replicating his grandfather’s success, using the cryptic hints Misha had—perhaps inadvertently, perhaps out of hubris—scattered throughout the long and detailed text.

  It would take him years to figure it out.

  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, whi
ch 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.