Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me

by Teffi

“I’m the editor in chief and you tell me nothing about the articles you are including. One more article like that—and I could be sent into exile.”

  Minsky’s wife, the poet Ludmila Vilkina, also came into the office. “I’m frightened,” she said. “What if my husband does get sent to Siberia? He wouldn’t survive—he has a weak chest.”

  In response to this entirely reasonable fear, we heard a snigger: “Oh, it’s not so bad as all that in Siberia! There’s a bracing climate out there in Siberia—(here there was another snigger). It’s just what he needs!”

  It was all very nasty. Not for one moment had Minsky imagined he would be treated like this.

  It was K.P. who came to his rescue.

  “Go abroad immediately,” he said.

  “But they might not let me out of the country.”

  “I’ll give you my internal passport. But don’t waste a moment.”

  A few days later, Minsky came into the office to say goodbye. He showed us the brand new external passport he had just obtained. On the English page[33] was written “gentleman” (K.P. was from a noble family).

  “Look,” he laughed. “Now I’m a real gentleman—with official papers to prove it.”

  Minsky left the country shortly after this, and the entire literary section soon resigned too. We asked for our names to be removed from the list of contributors. There was no point in us staying with the paper any longer.

  Predictably enough, the paper soon closed down.

  Lenin turned up the collar of his coat even farther and, still apparently unnoticed, left the country for several years.

  When he came back, it was in the sealed railway carriage.[34]

  1950–56

  Translated by Rose France and Robert and Elizabeth Chandler

  RASPUTIN

  There are people who are remarkable because of their talent, intelligence or public standing, people whom you often meet and whom you know well. You have an accurate sense of what these people are like, but all the same they pass through your life in a blur, as if your psychic lens can never quite focus on them, and your memory of them always remains vague. There’s nothing you can say about them that everyone doesn’t already know. They were tall or they were short; they were married; they were affable or arrogant, unassuming or ambitious; they lived in some place or other and they saw a lot of so-and-so. The blurred negatives of the amateur photographer. You can look all you like, but you still don’t know whether you’re looking at a little girl or a ram.

  The person I want to talk about flashed by in a mere two brief encounters. But how firmly and vividly his character is etched into my memory, as if with a fine needle.

  And this isn’t simply because he was so very famous. In my life I’ve met many famous people, people who have truly earned their renown. Nor is it because he played such a tragic role in the fate of Russia. No. This man was unique, one of a kind, like a character out of a novel; he lived in legend, he died in legend, and his memory is cloaked in legend.

  A semi-literate peasant and a counsellor to the Tsar, a hardened sinner and a man of prayer, a shape-shifter with the name of God on his lips.

  They called him cunning. Was there really nothing to him but cunning?

  I shall tell you about my two brief encounters with him.

  1

  The end of a Petersburg winter. Neurasthenia.

  Rather than starting a new day, morning merely continues the grey, long-drawn-out evening of the day before.

  Through the plate glass of the large bay window I can see out onto the street, where a warrant officer is teaching new recruits to poke bayonets into a scarecrow. The recruits have grey, damp-chilled faces. A despondent-looking woman with a sack stops and stares at them.

  What could be more dismal?

  The telephone rings.

  “Who is it?”

  “Rozanov.”

  In my surprise, I ask again. Yes, it’s Rozanov.

  He is very cryptic. “Has Izmailov said anything to you? Has he invited you? Have you accepted?”

  “No, I haven’t seen Izmailov and I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “So he hasn’t yet spoken to you. I can’t say anything over the telephone. But please, please do accept. If you don’t go, I won’t either.”

  “For heaven’s sake, what are you talking about?”

  “He’ll explain everything. It’s not something we can talk about on the telephone.”

  There was a click on the line. We had been disconnected.

  This was all very unexpected and strange. Vasily Rozanov was not someone I saw a lot of. Nor was Izmailov. And the combination of Rozanov and Izmailov also seemed odd. What was all this about? And why wouldn’t Rozanov go to some place unless I went too?

  I rang the editorial department of the Stock Exchange Gazette, where Izmailov worked. It was too early; no one was there.

  But I didn’t have to wait long. About two hours later Izmailov rang me.

  “There is the possibility of a very interesting meeting . . . Unfortunately, there’s nothing more I can say over the telephone . . . Maybe you can guess?”

  I most certainly could not guess. We agreed that he should come round and explain everything.

  He arrived.

  “Have you still not guessed who we’re talking about?”

  Izmailov was thin, all in black, and in dark glasses; he looked as if he had been sketched in black ink. His voice was hollow. All rather weird and sinister.

  Izmailov truly was weird. He lived in the grounds of the Smolensk cemetery, where his father had once been a priest. He practised black magic, loved telling stories about sorcery, and he knew charms and spells. Thin, pale and black, with a thin strip of bright red mouth, he looked like a vampire.

  “So you really don’t understand?” he asked with a grin. “You don’t know who it is we can’t discuss over the telephone?”

  “Kaiser Wilhelm perhaps?”

  Izmailov looked through his dark glasses at the two doors into my study—and then, over his glasses, at me.

  “Rasputin.”

  “Ah!”

  “Here in Petersburg there’s a publisher. Filippov—perhaps you’ve heard of him? No? Well, anyway, there is. Rasputin goes to see him quite often; he dines with him. For some reason he’s really quite friendly with him. Filippov also regularly entertains Manuilov, who has a certain reputation in literary circles. Do you know him?”

  Manuilov was someone I had come across a few times. He was one of those “companion fish” that are part of the entourage of great writers or artistic figures. At one point he had worshipped Kuprin, then he had moved over to Leonid Andreyev. Then he had quietened down and seemed to disappear altogether. Now he had resurfaced.

  “This Manuilov,” said Izmailov, “has suggested to Filippov that he should ask round some writers who’d like to get a glimpse of Rasputin. Just a few people, carefully chosen so there’s no one superfluous and no chance of any unpleasant surprises. Only recently a friend of mine happened to be in the company of Rasputin—and someone covertly took a photograph. Worse still—they sent this photograph to a magazine. ‘Rasputin,’ the caption read, ‘among his friends and admirers.’ But my friend is a prominent public figure; he’s a serious man, perfectly respectable. He can’t stand Rasputin and he feels he’ll never get over the disgrace of this photograph—of being immortalized amid this picturesque crowd. Which is why, to avoid any unpleasantness of this kind, I’ve made it a condition that there should be no superfluous guests. Filippov has given his promise, and this morning Manuilov came over and showed me the guest list. One of the writers is Rozanov, and Rozanov insists that you absolutely must be there. Without you, he says, the whole thing will be a waste of time. Evidently he has a plan of some kind.”

  “What on earth can this plan be?” I asked. “Maybe I should stay at home. Although I would, I admit, be curious to get a glimpse of Rasputin.”

  “Precisely. How could anyone not be curious? On
e wants to see for oneself whether he really is someone significant in his own right or whether he’s just a tool—someone being exploited by clever people for their own ends. Let’s take a chance and go. We won’t stay long and we’ll keep together. Like it or not, he’s someone who’ll be in the history books. If we miss this chance, we may never get another.”

  “Just so long as he doesn’t think we’re trying to get something out of him.”

  “I don’t think he will. The host has promised not to let on that we’re writers. Apparently Rasputin doesn’t like writers. He’s afraid of them. So no one will be telling him this little detail. This is in our interests too. We want Rasputin to feel completely at ease—as if among friends. Because if he feels he’s got to start posturing, the evening will be a complete waste of time. So, we’ll be going, will we? Tomorrow late—not before ten. Rasputin never turns up any earlier. If he’s held up at the palace and can’t come, Filippov promises to ring and let us all know.”

  “This is all very strange. And I’ve never even met the host.”

  “I don’t know him either, not personally—nor does Rozanov. But he’s someone well known. And he’s a perfectly decent fellow. So, we’re agreed: tomorrow at ten.”

  2

  I had glimpsed Rasputin once before. In a train. He must have been on his way east, to visit his home village in Siberia. He was in a first-class compartment. With his entourage: a little man who was something like a secretary to him, a woman of a certain age with her daughter, and Madame V——, a lady-in-waiting to the Tsaritsa.[1]

  It was very hot and the compartment doors were wide open. Rasputin was presiding over tea—with a tin teapot, dried bread rings and lumps of sugar on the side. He was wearing a pink calico smock over his trousers, wiping his forehead and neck with an embroidered towel and talking rather peevishly, with a broad Siberian accent.

  “Dearie! Go and fetch us some more hot water! Hot water, I said, go and get us some. The tea’s right stewed but they didn’t even give us any hot water. And where is the strainer? Annushka, where’ve you gone and hidden the strainer? Annushka! The strainer—where is it? Oh, what a muddler you are!”

  •

  In the evening of the day Izmailov had come round—that is, the day before I was due to meet Rasputin—I went to a rather large dinner party at the home of some friends.

  The mirror above the dining-room fireplace was adorned with a sign that read: “In this house we do not talk about Rasputin.”

  I’d seen signs like this in a number of other houses. But this time, because I was going to be seeing him the next day, there was no one in the world I wanted to talk about more than Rasputin. And so, slowly and loudly, I read out: “In this house we do not talk about Ras-pu-tin.”

  Sitting diagonally across from me was a thin, tense, angular lady. She quickly looked round, glanced at me, then at the sign, then back at me again. As if she wanted to say something.

  “Who’s that?” I asked my neighbour.

  “Madame E——,” he replied. “She’s a lady-in-waiting. Daughter of the E——” He named someone then very well known. “Know who I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  After dinner this lady sat down beside me. I knew she’d been really wanting to talk to me—ever since I’d read out that sign. But all she could do was prattle in a scatterbrained way about literature. Clearly she didn’t know how to turn the conversation to the subject that interested her.

  I decided to help her out.

  “Have you seen the sign over the fireplace? Funny, isn’t it? The Bryanchaninovs have one just like it.”

  She immediately came to life.

  “Yes, indeed. I really don’t understand. Why shouldn’t we talk about Rasputin?”

  “Probably because people are talking about him too much. Everyone’s bored with the subject . . .”

  “Bored?” She seemed almost scared. “How could anyone find him boring? You’re not going to say that, are you? Don’t you find Rasputin fascinating?”

  “Have you ever met him?” I asked.

  “Who? Him? You mean—Rasputin?”

  And suddenly she was all fidgety and flustered. Gasping. Red blotches appeared on her thin, pale cheeks.

  “Rasputin? Yes . . . a very little . . . a few times. He feels he absolutely has to get to know me. They say this will be very, very interesting. Do you know, when he stares at me, my heart begins to pound in the most alarming way . . . It’s astonishing. I’ve seen him three times, I think, at friends’. The last time he suddenly came right up close and said, ‘Why so shy, you little waif ? You be sure to come and see me—yes, mind you do!’ I was completely at a loss. I said I didn’t know, that I couldn’t . . . And then he put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘You shall come. Understand? Yes, you absolutely shall!’ And the way he said ‘shall’ so commandingly, with such authority, it was as if this had already been decided on high and Rasputin was in the know. Do you understand what I mean? It was as if, to him, my fate were an open book. He sees it, he knows it. I’m sure you understand I would never call on him, but the lady whose house I met him at said I really must, that plenty of women of our station call on him, and that there’s nothing in the least untoward about it. But still . . . I . . . I shan’t . . .”

  This “I shan’t” she almost squealed. She looked as if she were about to give a hysterical shriek and start weeping.

  I could hardly believe it! A mild-mannered lady, mousy and thin, and she looked as if she were at least thirty-five. And yet she had suddenly, shamelessly, lost all self-control at the mere mention of Rasputin, that peasant in a pink calico smock whom I had heard ordering “Annushka” to look for the tea strainer . . .

  The lady of the house came over to where we were sitting and asked us a question. And without replying, probably without even hearing her, Madame E——got up and with a jerky, angular gait went over to the mirror to powder her nose.

  3

  All the next day I was unable to put this twitching, bewitched lady-in-waiting out of my mind.

  It was unnerving and horrible.

  The hysteria around the name of Rasputin was making me feel a kind of moral nausea.

  I realized, of course, that a lot of the talk about him was petty, foolish invention, but nonetheless I felt there was something real behind all these tales, that they sprang from some weird, genuine, living source.

  In the afternoon Izmailov rang again and confirmed the invitation. He promised that Rasputin would definitely be there. And he passed on a request from Rozanov that I should wear something “a bit glamorous”—so Rasputin would think he was just talking to an ordinary “laydee” and the thought that I might be a writer wouldn’t so much as enter his head.

  This demand for “a bit of glamour” greatly amused me.

  “Rozanov seems determined to cast me in the role of some biblical Judith or Delilah. I’ll make a hash of it, I’m afraid—I haven’t the talents of either an actor or an agent provocateur. All I’ll do is mess things up.”

  “Let’s just play it by ear,” Izmailov said reassuringly. “Shall I send someone over to fetch you?”

  I declined, as I was dining with friends, and was going to be dropped off after the meal.

  That evening, as I was dressing, I tried to imagine a peasant’s idea of “a bit of glamour”. I put on a pair of gold shoes, and some gold rings and earrings. I’d have felt embarrassed to deck myself out any more flashily. It wasn’t as if I was going to be able to explain to all and sundry that this was glamour on demand!

  At my friends’ dinner table, this time without any wiles on my part, the conversation turned to Rasputin. (People evidently had good reason to put injunctions up over their fireplaces.)

  As always, there were stories about espionage, about Germans bribing Russian officials, about sums of money finding their way via the elder[2] into particular pockets and about court intrigues, the threads of which were all in Rasputin’s hands.

  Even the “black auto
mobile” got linked with the name of Rasputin.

  The “black automobile” remains a mystery to this day. Several nights running this car had roared across the Field of Mars, sped over the Palace Bridge and disappeared into the unknown. Shots had been fired from inside the car. Passers-by had been wounded.

  “It’s Rasputin’s doing,” people were saying. “Who else?”

  “What’s he got to do with it?”

  “He profits from everything black, evil and incomprehensible. Everything that sows discord and panic. And there’s nothing he can’t explain to his own advantage when he needs to.”

  These were strange conversations. But these were strange times, and so no one was especially surprised. Although the events soon to unfold swept the “black automobile” right out of our minds. All too soon we would have other things to think about.

  But at the time, at dinner, we talked about all these things. First and foremost, people were astonished by Rasputin’s extraordinary brazenness. Razumov, who was then the director of the Department of Mines, indignantly related how one of his provincial officials had come to him with a request for a transfer. And to support his case, he had held out a piece of paper on which Rasputin—whom Razumov had never even met—had scrawled:

  Dearie, do wot the barer asks and yul have no caws for regret.

  Grigory.

  “Can you imagine? The cheek of it! The brazen cheek of it! And there are a great many ministers who say they’ve received little notes like this. And all too many of them just do as he asks—though they don’t, of course, admit as much. I’ve even been told I was reckless to be getting so angry, because he would hear about it. It was vile. Can you imagine it? ‘Dearie’! As for the fine fellow who turned up with the note, I showed him what a ‘Dearie’ I can be! I’m told he flew down the stairs four at a time. And he had seemed like such a respectable man—as well as being a rather eminent engineer.”

  “Yes,” said someone else, “I’ve heard about any number of these ‘Dearie’ recommendations, but this is the first time I’ve heard about one not being granted. People get all indignant, but they don’t feel able to refuse the man. ‘He’s vindictive,’ they say, ‘a vindictive peasant.’ ”