Rasputin's Daughter

by Robert Alexander

  Passing through our dining room, I swerved around several cases of sweet red wine a councilor had just brought, a gift that particularly pleased Papa because of the Dry Laws the Tsar had decreed soon after the start of the war. I then skirted our brass samovar, its fire gone out, and the heavy oak table, which was laden with a basket of flowers and plates of biscuits and sweets, nuts, dried fruits, cakes, and other delicacies that appeared day in and day out for our stream of guests.

  By the sounds from the salon, I assumed that was where I would find Papa. In fact, he was not there. Rather, I found the lone balalaika player, strumming the melancholy tunes of our land, and two women, both huddled on the floor. One was our eternally loyal maid, Dunya, one of Papa’s earliest disciples, who’d followed us from Siberia and who was, I couldn’t help but notice, getting fatter by the week. The second was Princess Kossikovskaya, a young beauty of the best society. The princess had a number of diamonds sparkling in her rich brown hair and hanging from her ears, while strands of huge pearls drooped from her neck, but right then and there, hunched over on her knees, she didn’t look so elegant. She was quite drunk.

  And when I heard the beauty retch, I understood why Dunya, who was holding a basin to the young woman’s smeared lips, hadn’t answered the phone.

  “Dunya, where’s Papa?” I demanded.

  “Back in his study,” she said, with a quick wave over her shoulder.

  I bit my lip, for it was not without some dread that I hurried out of the room and down the hall. Reaching the door of Papa’s room, I raised my hand to knock-but hesitated. We were never, ever supposed to interrupt when Papa was healing someone…and yet if he was being summoned by the Empress, wasn’t that more important? Absolutely, I thought, and I knocked firmly, albeit hesitantly.

  A moment later came his gruff reply. “Da, da. Please enter at once!”

  His study was small and narrow, with an icon and its oil lamp in one corner, an old oak desk, and, of course, his pathetic leather sofa, which was nearly rubbed bare. Perched on a chair in front of the sofa was Papa, wearing loose black pants, tall black leather boots, and a lilac kosovorotka, a shirt buttoned at the side of the collar. Every day any number of women begged for Papa’s attention, but I had no idea how he treated them. Peering in now, however, I saw my father leaning forward and holding his visitor, none other than Countess Olga Kurlova, by the knees. The countess, wearing a pink Parisian silk dress that appeared loose, perhaps even unbuttoned in the front, was one of the great beauties of the Empire, with thick blond hair and cheeks that were high and distinguished. She was from Moscow, I knew, and though her family was neither so very noble nor, from what I heard, so very rich, she was a favorite in the capital, sought after by society for her seductive looks and keen wit.

  As if I had walked in on a pair of lovers, Countess Olga gasped and clutched at the top of her dress.

  “What are you doing here?” Papa asked with a scowl. “I thought it was our other guest. You know you’re not supposed to bother me when my door is closed.”

  Averting my eyes, I said quietly, “There’s a call of urgent business…from the Palace.”

  “What’s that you say? Speak up, child!”

  “There’s a call from the Palace… It’s urgent, Papa.”

  All but forgetting about me, my father turned to the luscious countess and bragged, “Ah, Mama needs me. Mama needs me at the Palace.”

  Horrified that a peasant would refer to so lofty a personage in such coarse terms, the countess stared at him in shock. While some members of the court were permitted to address Her Majesty by her first name and patronymic-Aleksandra Fyodorovna-her lowly subjects were supposed to refer to her either as the Tsaritsa or the Empress. Never, ever, as Mama.

  “I don’t need them, I can just go back home to Siberia,” my father boasted, holding up a sloppy finger to make a fine point. “But they wouldn’t last six months on the throne without me! Really, not six months!”

  “The phone, Papa!” I reminded. “You’re wanted on the telephone!”

  “Of course…yes, the telephone.”

  He kissed his right hand, then used that same hand to massage Countess Olga’s right knee. The countess, though, was none too pleased and jerked back, whereupon the back of the old leather sofa fell off. The visiting beauty uttered a stifled scream.

  “Ah, now, don’t you worry, my tasty dish,” muttered Papa, as he slowly and drunkenly pushed himself to his feet. “One of those fat sisters from the women’s monastery slept on that sofa last week and broke it.”

  Almost without effort, Papa bent over the countess and lifted the heavy piece into place with one hand. Swaying slightly, he then leaned down and patted his guest on her head.

  “We’ll continue our purification later.”

  “Papa!” I insisted.

  He stretched one hand toward me and called weakly, “Yes, yes. Come help me, malenkaya maya.” My little one.

  Understanding that he’d drunk too much, his “little one” was not eager to go to his side; I would have preferred simply to leave the room. But my mother in Siberia had long ago forgiven Papa his excesses, grateful for the three children he had given her, not to mention the finest house in the village and a field to till. So, as the oldest Rasputin female in the Petrograd household, I had no choice but to overlook things also.

  Looking down at the countess one last time, Father made a drunken sign of the cross over her and intoned one of his favorite sayings: “Remember, great is the peasant in the eyes of God!”

  As I helped him from his study, I stared at this terribly plain, even homely man, who was nothing less and nothing more than a muzhik-peasant-from Siberia. He was not dashing and debonair like the fathers of my classmates, many of whom were princes or counts. Instead, here was a person of only medium height, a semi-illiterate ox of a man who had toiled in the fields for years. He had light blue eyes, the kind that made people feel uncomfortable, his nose was long and slightly pocked and his skin wrinkled beyond his age, while his lips were thick and ripe with color. One look at him and anyone could tell he was from the wilds, for his long hair was dark and parted down the middle like a crooked dirt lane, and his beard, which was thick like an ancient forest, had a dark reddish-brown hue.

  No, my father was not a handsome man, nor was he charming or witty or devilishly tall, as so many wrote. But he did have an extraordinarily magnetic presence. He could enter a palace room and, though at first all the nobles would stare down on this ugly peasant, within moments they would be listening to his every word.

  And he did have amazing physical strength. Never had I seen anyone able to grow sober so quickly, which he did just then. Oh, he leaned on me as I walked him into the hall, and he slurred a few words on the phone with Madame Vyrubova as she begged him to come to the palace, saying a motorcar had already been sent. But he pulled himself together in short order, for he was the Empress’s favorite, the one on whom she depended most deeply, the one whom she loved as no other. No, my father had not lied, Aleksandra Fyodorovna could not exist without him. She knew it all too well, as did I.

  Dunya left Princess Kossikovskaya vomiting to the sad twang of the balalaika player, and together we pulled Papa into the washroom, where we wiped his face with a damp cloth, changed his soiled shirt, and attempted to comb his unruly hair. As I pulled several strands aside, I hit the little bump on his forehead, a bump like a budding horn that he was always trying to conceal.

  “I’ll do it!” he shouted, trying to grab the comb from me.

  “No, Papa, let me!” I said, slapping away his hand.

  Cowering like a little boy, he bowed his head and let me continue; unfortunately, when I was done he looked no better than a roadside waiter. Meanwhile, Dunya had slipped away to the samovar, to return with a tall lukewarm glass of tea loaded with so much sugar that the granules floated this way and that like snow in a lazy blizzard. This was Dunya’s medicine, which she dispensed not only when the barometric pressure changed, and hal
f the city suffered from headaches, but also for colds, kidney aches, and, naturally, hangovers.

  “Drink this all the way to the bottom, Grigori Effimovich,” ordered Dunya, handing him the podstakanik, the metal frame holding the warm glass.

  Father did as commanded, downing the entire glass of sweet tea as easily as a shot of vodka.

  As I watched him drink, I thought of all the horrible rumors about my father that floated like a black fog across town. The most persistent and most damning, of course, was that he was one of the Khlysty-the Whips-a peculiar and very secret sect that had evolved hundreds of years ago in Siberia. Whether or not their name was a derivation of Xhristi-the Christs-no one was sure, but according to rumor the Khlysty were a strange blend of paganism and orthodoxy and, it was whispered, were not afraid to sin. Because of all the nasty rumors-it was said they gathered deep in the forest, where in the dark of night they had big orgies and even ate the breasts of virgins-I was certain my father had never had anything to do with them.

  Suddenly there was a heavy pounding on our front door, and Dunya scurried off. No sooner was she gone than Papa snatched the comb from me and threw it on the floor. I immediately retrieved it, for if one of my father’s visitors found it tomorrow the comb was likely to end up being sold and resold. Indeed, there were many souls, desperate for a miracle, who would pay great sums to run Rasputin’s comb through their own hair-what better way to bring God’s blessings down upon them? Just a few months ago I’d caught a baronessa picking up Papa’s fingernail clippings so she could stitch them into her dress and “be protected by his shield.”

  “Dochenka maya.” My little daughter, he said, clasping both my hands in his massive grasp. “I had the same vision again. Earlier this evening I saw it all, quite clearly so.”

  “Papa, please, I-”

  “No, I’m quite certain of it. Soon I’ll be crossing over, soon we’ll no longer be able to see each other.”

  In the last several years, fearing that he’d lost his powers, Papa had grown severely depressed. More recently, however, his gifts had seemed to return. Last week he’d healed a babushka who’d been as bent as a twisted branch with arthritis, and not long ago he’d foreseen a doubling of the cost of a single egg. But the return of his second sight wasn’t so very reassuring. I simply hated this talk of his own death, which he’d been grousing of more and more.

  “I’m not afraid, and you must not be either, dochenka maya.”

  “But-”

  “Don’t worry, once I’ve crossed over I will send you a sign. I will signal you from the hereafter, and you will have proof that I am well and live on. Promise me you won’t be afraid. Promise me you’ll be strong!”

  I hesitated before lying. “I promise.”

  “Good,” he said, as he examined me with his piercing blue eyes. “Now listen to me. When I am dead you must hurry to the Palace and warn Mama and Papa that their lives are in danger. Promise me this too!”

  “Yes…of course.”

  “I see it as the truth, and Mama and Papa must be warned!” said my father, his sluggish face now beginning to dance.

  “But-”

  Dunya came hurrying back, my father’s extravagant thousand-ruble sable coat-a gift from the widow Reshetnikova-and beaver hat in hand, and said, “The motor is downstairs waiting, Grigori Effimovich. You must come quickly!”

  Father looked at Dunya as if he couldn’t remember what was happening. Pulling away from me, he shook his head and stumbled. I rushed to his side.

  And he said, “Yes, Mama needs me. I must hurry.”

  Roused from his drunken stupor as if from a mere nap, Papa grabbed his heavy fur coat and hat from Dunya and started briskly down the hall toward the front door. As I watched him hurry off, I couldn’t help but be swept with worry. All this talk of violence. All this talk of murder. I wanted to dismiss it as simple paranoia, but how could I after the disaster that had struck us not so very long ago?

  “Dunya, where’s my cloak? My muff?” I shouted. “Oh, and my shoes-where are my shoes?”

  CHAPTER 2

  There was no doubt about it, the horrible events of two years ago had been largely my fault.

  My father had left Sankt Peterburg to visit a monastery and then return home to our village in Siberia. Varya and I, accompanied by Dunya, followed a week later, taking the train to Tyumen, where on a warm July day we transferred to a riverboat for the last hundred versts. Not long after we’d left the dock, the small cabin in which the three of us were packed became unbearably hot and stuffy.

  “I’m going up top for some fresh air,” I said, rising to my feet.

  My sister didn’t even look up, for she was already engrossed in a novel, her head propped on one of our bags. But Dunya, whose only duty was to guard us as carefully as a Cossack, immediately dropped her knitting into her lap.

  She muttered a hasty, “But-”

  “You’d better stay here,” I interrupted, knowing she was loath to let us out of her sight. “It wouldn’t be a good idea to leave Varya here alone.”

  “Very well, but be back in thirty minutes-no more!”

  Before she could say another word, I slipped out. It was only within the last two months that Papa had permitted me to travel the streets of the capital without an escort; Varya, because she was younger, was still not allowed to go farther than the corner store. And relishing my new freedom, I scurried down the narrow corridor of the steamer, out the door, and up the steep stairs to the top deck, which was totally empty.

  All at once I was intoxicated by the magic of my Siberia.

  Grabbing hold of a side railing, I peered over the edge at the flat, dark waters of the River Tura, which gave way to the churn of the boat. Gazing upward, I breathed in as deeply as I could, filling my lungs with the rich scents of the endless pine forests on the left and, off to the right, the loamy soil of the wild steppes. I was glad to be going home, glad to escape the capital with its endless buildings and incessant gossip. Here, where the nobility had never held land and so serfdom had never existed, everything was free and open, a nearly endless expanse of opportunity that existed nowhere else in my country.

  Suddenly a lyrical voice sang out in the language of my heart:

  “I have outlasted all desire,

  My dreams and I have grown apart;

  My grief alone is left entire,

  The gleanings of an empty heart.”

  I had thought I was quite alone, yet when I turned I saw a young man with long brown hair and a short beard, half chanting, half singing the words of our greatest writer. He had a smooth dark complexion and wore clothes that were suitably clean but by no means new. I supposed him to be four or five years older than I. In his hands he held a book; I stole a glance at his trim, clean fingers.

  When he turned his rich brown eyes upon me, I couldn’t help but call the next verse back to him:

  “The storms of ruthless dispensation

  Have struck my flowery garland numb-

  I live in lonely desolation

  And wonder when my end will come.”

  I was immediately taken by his smile, kind and small. Moving along the railing toward me, he opened his mouth as if to ask me a question, then gazed down at the open book in his hands. He didn’t know the poem by heart, as I did, yet he recited the last lines beautifully, not only as a literate man but with passion, his voice rising and falling.

  “Thus on a naked tree-limb, blasted

  By tardy winter’s whistling chill,

  A single leaf which has outlasted

  Its season will be trembling still.”

  When his voice trailed away and was replaced by the churning of the steamer’s boiler, I said, “Of Pushkin’s earliest poems, that is my favorite.”

  “Mine too.” He bowed his head to me and said, “They call me Sasha.”

  “Maria.”

  “Where are you coming from?”

  “Sankt Peterburg. And you?”

  Though he said he
was a native of Novgorod, Sasha was actually traveling from Moscow, where he was attending the university. He was on his way to visit a friend in Pokrovskoye, and when I told him that was my home village, his eyes lit up.

  “Say,” he began, pensively tugging on his beard, “if you’re coming from the capital and you’re on the way to…to…well, I heard down below that the famous Father Grigori is on board. You wouldn’t happen to be-”

  “Yes, I am his eldest.” I felt my cheeks flush warmly. “But like all rumors, the story you heard is not quite true. While my sister and I are on board, my father is not. He’s already at home.”

  “Oh, that is my loss, for it has always been a keen desire of mine to meet him.”

  I was never eager to speak of my family-in fact, my father encouraged me not to-so I glanced at his book, and asked, “What do you study at the university, literature?”

  “Exactly.” Now it was Sasha’s turn to blush as he bolstered his confidence and confessed, “Actually…actually, I’m a writer.”

  “Really?”

  As it turned out, we were both aspiring poets, only Sasha was rather more advanced, having published not just two poems at the university but one in a national poetry magazine as well. Of course he was smart, that much I could tell by the sweet squint of his eyes, by the way he used his hands, and, naturally, by his passion for the written word.

  “What do you love about literature?” I asked.

  “It’s so democratic. I know not everyone can read in our country-that will change-but anyone can pick up a book.”

  “And what writers have meant the most to you?”

  Our discussion took off like a racing troika, surprisingly fast and impetuous. Of our great writers of the last century, we both cherished Pushkin most of all for the way he spoke not to the upper class but to us, the common people. Sasha enjoyed Lermontov for his emphasis on feeling, while I found magic in Gogol’s strange mix of language. As to Dostoyevsky, however, we both found his stories too morose and too filled with sorrow.