Rasputin's Daughter (29 page)

Papa asked, “Child, comfort me with a poem, will…will you? How about that one I like so much? You know the one, by that writer, that…that fellow all you girls are crazy about.”

I nodded and tried to steady my voice, as I recited, as softly as a prayer, the words of the great Aleksander Blok:

“To sin shamelessly, endlessly,

To lose count of the nights and days,

And with a head unruly from drunkenness

To pass sideways into the temple of God.”

“Yes, that is nice, very nice…yes, sideways.” With no small effort, Papa grabbed me by one hand. “My sweet, dear, beautiful girl…I must tell you a secret.”

Biting my lip and trying my best not to break down sobbing, I merely nodded.

“I know for sure that that is Heaven,” he said, weakly pointing to the sky. “But now I…now I see also that this”-he looked around-“is not earth but hell.”

“Papa, no. You mustn’t talk like that.”

He nodded. “Yes, this…this is hell.”

Mopping my eyes with the sleeve of my cloak, I stood paralyzed in fear. If only the world could see him now, Rasputin the devil, for who he really was: my father, a muzhik who, unarmed and unsuspecting, had been shot like a mad dog. How easily he had been brought down…and how easily he had brought himself down. But I couldn’t crumble, not now.

“Papa, listen to me. I have a troika waiting just around the corner. I’m going to fetch the driver, and the two of us will come get you.”

My father’s body went rigid with one huge spasm, and he cried out in pain. I held him around the waist and shoulder and felt his entire body quiver horribly.

“Yes…go,” he finally muttered.

“I’ll hurry!”

Carefully letting go of my father, I started to pull away. He began to teeter to the side, and for a moment I thought he would collapse right then and there in the side courtyard.

Raising his reddened eyes to me, Papa commanded, “Go!”

I gathered up my cloak and started to run. I just had to get the driver to bring the troika right here, and then the two of us would gather up my father and whisk him away. We just had to be quick. I had to be quick.

Dashing to the stone wall, I started over. Oh, Lord, I thought as I lifted my feet, I can climb over, but what about Papa? How would we get him-

I heard it quite clearly then. Just as I landed on the other side of the wall I heard someone shouting the alarm.

“He’s getting away! Hurry!” yelled a voice that was much, much too familiar.

Turning around, I saw the small service door flung wide. And standing right there in the doorway, the light pouring from inside and over him, was…was…but how could it be? How did he-? No, this was impossible.

“Sasha?” I muttered.

My entire body flushed with horror. Yes, it was indeed my sweet Sasha. Only he wasn’t coming to my rescue. No. He was…was…

“Hurry!” he shouted over his shoulder into the palace. “Bring a gun. You’ve got to shoot him again!”

I felt like a tiny bird that had flown full speed into a large pane of glass and then, stunned, fallen to the ground. What invisible reality hadn’t I seen before? What hard truth was I facing now? The betrayal was too much, I couldn’t comprehend what I was witnessing. And if I hadn’t been in such shock, I would have cried out in horror. Sasha hadn’t come to our rescue, but to make sure of my father’s death?

“Where, Prince, where?” shouted Purishkevich, that infamous monarchist with the famously pointed mustache.

“Out there!” replied Sasha, pointing directly at my father.

I tried to call to my father, to beg him to run, but nothing came out of my mouth except a horrible piercing cry. I watched as my father glanced back and laid his eyes on the man who I thought was my lover-but who was, in fact, one with my father’s murderers. Oh, dear God, what had I done? What web of deceit had I fallen into?

Finally, I managed to scream, “Hurry, Papa!”

His face awash with terror, Papa hobbled on, hurrying toward me, pleading, “Run, Maria! Get away! Save yourself!”

I couldn’t move. Behind my father I saw Purishkevich struggling to load a revolver. First one, then a second bullet dropped from his shaking hands into the snow. Frustrated and furious, Sasha ripped the gun from Purishkevich and raised it high. And then Sasha-none other than Sasha!-took careful aim at my father.

“No!” I shrieked. “No!”

The very next instant Sasha fired, shattering the night. Before I knew it, something went screaming through the air not far from me. Sasha had missed! Papa, I realized, was still struggling onward!

“Run!” I called to my father.

But before Papa had taken three more steps, Sasha was again raising the gun. How could this be? How could the sweet young man I had kissed so passionately and given myself to now be so consumed with anger? How could his face be twisted with such hatred?

To my horror, this time Sasha took longer, straining to steady his wavering arm. And then, when my father was only some twenty paces from me, Sasha fired a second time-and again missed! With every bit of his strength, Papa pressed on, half stumbling, half running.

“Please, God, give him strength!” I sobbed.

But then several more figures burst from the palace, including Prince Felix and none other than Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, that young dashing member of the royal family, a pistol in hand. My entire body shuddered. The grand duke was an Olympic athlete, a trained soldier, a seasoned hunter-and a Romanov bent on eliminating the “stain” of my father from the dynasty. When I saw him take confident, godlike aim at my father, I knew there was no hope.

The grand duke fired…and the bullet struck my father in the back, causing him to halt in his tracks. Slowly and with great effort, my father turned around, his hand rising slowly as if to make the sign of the cross. With great care, the grand duke fired again…the second shot struck my father directly in the forehead…and I screamed through the night as Papa tumbled to the ground, his hot red blood quickly melting away the cold white snow.

April 1917

Four months after Rasputin’s death

“And then what happened?”

Wiping my eyes, I raised my head and stared across the wooden table at him, at Aleksander Blok, the man who’d once been my favorite poet and who was now my interrogator.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” I asked.

“What happened next?”

How, I wondered, had the world been turned so on its head? I gazed around, craning my head and studying this columned room, St. George’s Hall, buried in the heart of the Winter Palace. Just weeks ago this had been the elegant throne room of the greatest monarchy on the face of the earth. Now it had been trashed by angry revolutionaries. And there it was again, I thought as I looked toward the dais, a distant noise coming from behind the grate. So the looting of the palace continued unabated. Yes, I thought, beware the peasant with the ax.

How strange. Just when I had begun to understand my own father, he had been killed. And just when I had found someone to love, that young man had betrayed me as had no one else.

“You understand Sasha’s real identity?” I said, looking up through a mist of tears.

“Yes, of course, Prince O’ksandr of Novgorod. A great friend of Prince Felix and Grand Duke Dmitri.”

And, I thought, a dabbler in the sects of Russia, particularly the Khlysty, which was why, of course, Prince Felix had first drawn Sasha into the plot against my father.

Blok dipped his pen into some ink, took a deep breath, exhaled as if in pain, and said, “I need specific information of that night.”

“Why? What do you care for truth?”

This man, one of our greatest purveyors of words whom many called the heir to Pushkin, flinched. Sure, I had just insulted him, but so what? His religion was using fine words to slice apart the complexities of the world and thereby expose the truths and the lies. Yet did I think my story, no matter how honestly he recorded it, even embellished it, would ever see the light of day? Never.

“You will write my story, but do you think it will actually be seen by any but a few officials? Do you think people in general will be allowed to read it?” I shook my head, and as confident as only a Rasputin could be, said, “Absolutely not. I’m quite sure these pages will be buried away and disappear.”

Aghast, Blok looked up at me. “Why in the name of the devil do you say that?”

“Because the real truth of Rasputin is not what your people need, it’s not something they can use to justify what they’ve done or something they can now use to fuel their revolution.”

“But-”

“Everyone is running around saying that first my father was poisoned, next he was stabbed, and then he was shot, but still he lived. He lived, and nothing killed the holy devil Rasputin until he was thrown into the frozen waters of the Nevka and died by drowning. But none of that’s true! I saw him killed! My father was murdered, first shot in the stomach and then in the back and finally in the head. Even the most cynical of revolutionaries wouldn’t believe that even the great Rasputin could survive a bullet wound in the head. After all, he nearly died at the hands of a small syphilitic woman, so he was obviously as mortal as the rest of us.”

Blok stared at me, not daring to contradict my words.

I said, “You know, of course, why Prince Felix and the others started this awful story? It’s perfectly obvious, isn’t it?”

After a long moment, he finally nodded. “To maintain the myth of your father.”

“Exactly. There was no way a Yusupov could say that they had simply shot a peasant in the back as he tried to run away. Nor could they say that a defenseless and unarmed holy man from Siberia was easy to kill. Either statement would have enraged the liodi.” I continued, my voice full of anger. “So to make sure that the murder wouldn’t inflame the common folk, they made up the whole story of how difficult it was to kill Rasputin, the mad monk. And then they threw in the final tidbit, that my father died not by poison, or being stabbed or shot, but from drowning. You understand why that’s so important, too, don’t you?”

Blok nodded, albeit slowly.

“Then go on, tell me. Tell me why.”

“Because…” Blok pushed back his chair and rose, moving away from the table. “Because if your father were still breathing when he was thrown through the ice and into the freezing water, he could never become a saint.”

“Exactly. Their story not only confirms his supposed evilness, it entirely prevents him from being worshiped-ever!-simply because liodi believe that those who drown can never be canonized.”

Blok turned and looked at me with eyes so sad, so tired, that I knew I had actually done the impossible and punctured a hole in his revolutionary zeal. This was exactly why, I knew, Blok and his cohorts would never allow the real story of the real Rasputin to get out, for it would make the revolution look like the black joke it was.

“You’re sure of this, that your father was finished off by a bullet to the head?” he asked.

The crack of the gun, my father’s horrible groan, the sight of him falling into the snow. Could I be more sure?

“Absolutely positive. And it wasn’t Prince Felix or Prince O’ksandr or even Purishkevich who killed my father in the end. It was that splendid marksman, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich.”

“Dear Lord.”

As would any Russian, Blok immediately understood the ramifications. Earlier the virulent Purishkevich had given thanks to God that the hands of royal youth had not been stained with blood. But in the end, of course, that was exactly what had happened. Purishkevich wasn’t referring to Prince Felix, certainly one of the most noble young men in the country, but not royal. No, he meant Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, an immediate member of the ruling monarch’s family and a direct grandson of the great Alexander II.

It was all just as I had been told. “My father’s death was supposed to be only the beginning. The grand dukes next meant to kill the Tsar, toss Aleksandra Fyodorovna in a convent, and install one of their own, the young, handsome, and modern Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich. But russkiye liodi,” the common Russian people, “would never have accepted him as a pretender to the throne if they knew that he, a grandson of the Tsar Liberator who had freed the serfs, had killed one of their own, a true muzhik, in cold blood. And the grand dukes’ plot probably would have succeeded if it hadn’t been so cold, if the bread riots hadn’t broken out, if-”

“Of course.” Blok shook his head. “And you haven’t told anyone this?”

“No, absolutely not.”

“You’re positive?”

“Not even my own mother. I haven’t been able to tell a single soul…until you.”

“And why is that? Why haven’t you come forward?”

“Because they threatened me, because…”

The memories came flooding back, and I turned away. As if it had happened only moments ago, I remembered it all perfectly clearly, how I had rushed, sobbing, to my father’s body. No sooner had I fallen in the red snow, however, than a group of men had charged around me. Within seconds they were hauling me away, dragging me into the palace. I had screamed and cried, kicked and twisted. When someone struck me in the face, I had turned and seen Sasha.

“Shut up!” he shouted. “I’m sorry, but we had to do it. Your father left us no choice!”

I cried out again, and suddenly I felt the cold barrel of a gun on the back of my head, and Purishkevich was yelling into my ear, “Shut up or I’ll shoot!”

Looking back one last time I saw Prince Felix hysterically crying out and kicking my father’s body.

“Papa!” I pleaded, helplessly.

And when Prince Felix had fallen against the corpse and started beating and slugging it like a madman, I turned away, unable to bear it…

Now staring at Blok through a thick veil of tears, I said, “They kept me locked up in a coal bin for hours before tossing me out. And I’m still not sure why they let me go. All I can think is that Sasha-Prince O’ksandr-arranged it. When they did release me, however, they said that if I told anyone, they’d kill not only me but my sister, my brother, and my mother. All of us. They promised to eliminate all the Rasputins, to liquidate us.”