Sex with the Queen (58 page)

gretted that she must leave “so much unsaid, which would so much lighten my heart to say: all my longing, my sadness, all the dear memories which flood back into my heart. . . . The woods with the little yellow crocuses, the smell of the oaks when we rode through those same woods in early summer—and oh! so many, many things which are gone. . . . God bless you all and keep you safe. . . .”13

Then Marie turned to her other love, Romania, and wrote her final letter. “I have become yours for joy or sorrow,” she wrote. “When I look back, it is difficult to say which was greater, the joy or the sorrow. I believe the joy was greater, but too long was the sorrow.”14

A l e x a n d r a o f H e s s e - D a r m s t a d t , E m p r e s s o f R u s s i a

“Rasputin Is a Messenger of God”

Aping Queen Victoria’s devotion to John Brown, Empress Alexandra of Russia, wife of Czar Nicholas II, was equally de-voted to a blunt-spoken peasant. But unlike her wise grand-mother, the foolish Alexandra made a choice that was politically explosive. Alexandra fell in love with a sexual satyr, a con man, and a lunatic, the man who lit the spark of the Russian Revolu-tion. His name was Gregory Rasputin.

Alexandra, a German princess, had come to Russia as a bride in 1893. Haughty, stubborn, and loudmouthed, she won the im-mediate dislike of many who met her. Upon hearing the news of her betrothal to the future czar, an official from her native land of Hesse whispered to a Russian diplomat, “How lucky we are that you are taking her from us.”15

Tall and slender with rich chestnut hair and large blue-gray eyes, she completely overwhelmed her indecisive husband who signed himself “Your poor, weak-willed little hubby.”16 Nicholas’s handsome features were marred by his insipid expression. His cousin Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany thought he should have been

“a country gentleman growing turnips.” When his tutor tried to t h e t u r n o f t h e t w e n t i e t h c e n t u r y 2 6 7

teach him about governing a nation, Nicholas “became actively absorbed in picking his nose.”17

Believing herself to be a political genius, Alexandra pushed her weak husband out of the way and ruled one-seventh of the surface of the globe herself. Nicholas’s old tutor remarked that Alexandra was “more autocratic than Peter the Great and per-haps as cruel as Ivan the Terrible. Hers is a small mind that be-lieves it harbors great intelligence.”18 One court official described her as having “a will of iron linked to not much brain and no knowledge.”19 She knew she was detested at all levels of society, but thought the root cause was jealousy of her intellec-tual brilliance and steely resolve not to change her mind merely because the Russian people objected.

Increasingly isolated as the years passed, gullible Alexandra fell prey to various charlatans and psychics. As the mother of four daughters who were not allowed to rule the Russian Empire by virtue of their gender, her main objective was to have a son.

But Czarevich Alexis, born in 1904, suffered from hemophilia, a disease which always resulted in death at a very early age. Des-perate for a cure, the empress agreed to meet a Siberian holy man who had come to St. Petersburg.

Gregory Rasputin had grown up on a farm and stumbled into the Russian capital to obtain sex, which he needed several times a day. Siberian farms offered a limited number of women, and many of their fathers and husbands objected to his ravishing them. But in the decadent, overripe world of St. Petersburg, he reflected, there would be countless women ready to sleep with him.

Though only of medium height, Rasputin gave the impres-sion of being incredibly tall. He had a shaggy, dirty beard and wild unkempt hair; his teeth were black stumps. He wore silk peasant blouses of blue or red, embroidered with flowers, and baggy black pants tucked into thick high peasant boots.

Rasputin’s most striking feature was his eyes. They were a gray so light that they often appeared to be white—burning white eyes, pinpricks of fiery light shooting out relentlessly from beneath a Neanderthal brow. “The eyes of a maniac,” said one Russian who 2 6 8

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met him.20 “He looked like a lascivious, malicious satyr,” said another. One had the impression of being “pierced by needles rather than merely of being looked at.”21

When Rasputin was a child, his daughter later reported, he had the unique ability to heal sore and injured farm animals. He knew when unheralded visitors would come calling, found lost objects, and predicted village deaths. At the age of eighteen, he claimed to see a vision of the Virgin which led to a spiritual awakening. Yet his fervent prayers were usually mixed with drunken debauchery and ribald orgies.

Wrapped in a heavy mantle of ancient Russian spirituality, Rasputin became a living icon, a pallid face with burning eyes, the symbol of primitive Christianity. His unique religious out-look won him many lovers, even as it outraged the Russian Or-thodox Church. The only way to become close to God, Rasputin argued, was through the redemption of sin. Therefore, if one remained sinless, one could never join with God. True believers must sin—preferably sexually and with Rasputin—to become close to the Creator. Making love to him, he assured gullible women, would actually purify them of sin. One woman expressed shock at how sinful she had been; Rasputin had needed to purify her several times.

He was only attracted to pretty women. When the not-so-pretty ones thronged about him, hoping to be purified, he would say, “Mother, your love is pleasing, but the spirit of the Lord does not descend on me.”22

With regard to Rasputin’s countless affairs, his hearty Siber-ian wife, at home minding the farm, said, “He can do what he likes. He has enough for all.”23

In addition to his sexual services, Rasputin had great success healing ladies of depression, hypochondria, and migraines.

Hostesses fought over him as a dinner guest; he intentionally of-fended the cream of St. Petersburg society, and they loved it. He jeered, cursed, and pawed the women, all the while talking of barnyard sex. His table manners were revolting; he tore food into large pieces and shoved them into his mouth with dirty hands. It was certainly much more entertaining to listen to t h e t u r n o f t h e t w e n t i e t h c e n t u r y 2 6 9

Rasputin discussing sex as a holy sacrament than to the standard dinner conversation of war and social unrest.

Women asked for Rasputin’s dirty linen as holy relics. “The dirtier the better. It’s got to have sweat,” they said.24 He was novel, he was amusing, and just maybe he was sent from God.

But while Rasputin was on the rise in St. Petersburg, Russia’s fortunes were declining. In 1904 Japan declared war on Russia, but Russian armed forces did as much damage to themselves as the enemy did. Russian boats fired and sank each other by mis-take. Russian minesweepers were sunk by their own mines.

Trade unions struck. Hundreds of peasants protesting peace-fully for better conditions were gunned down on the czar’s or-ders. “If such a government cannot be overthrown otherwise than by dynamite,” wrote Mark Twain, “then thank God for dy-namite.”25 Fearing for their lives, the imperial family did not venture out into public.

Two countesses, friends of the empress, knowing her interest in quacks and charlatans, brought Rasputin to the imperial palace. The empress was awestruck by the holy man. Rasputin calmed the empress’s heart palpitations and, oddly, had a heal-ing effect on the dangerous bleeding of the czarevich. Whenever the little boy fell or knocked himself against something, internal bleeding swelled him to enormous proportions; he lay moaning in agony as palace doctors trembled for his life. But when Rasputin visited him, the pain and swelling subsided.

One witness reported, “Coincidence might have answered if it happened, say, once or twice, but I could not even count how many times it happened!”26 Rasputin probably hypnotized the boy, calming him so he could recover naturally. But the empress declared he had miraculous powers direct from God almighty.

Soon Rasputin convinced the empress, who convinced the czar, to appoint his friends to top positions in the church and government. But the political meddling of Rasputin, who pos-sessed the tact of a cannonball and the diplomacy of a sledge-hammer, was disastrous. Officials who protested the favorite’s influence were soon ousted and replaced by his friends.

When it became known that the empress was meeting 2 7 0

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Rasputin at her maid’s cottage on the palace grounds, many speculated that they were having an affair. Rumors also flew that perhaps Rasputin was enjoying the favors of Alexandra’s four teenage daughters. Some people, certain he was in league with the devil, reported that the Russian flag flying over the imperial palace had been transformed into Rasputin’s underpants.

Yet General Alexander Spiridovich, the head of the czar’s se-cret service who got to know Rasputin very well, said the monk behaved with “extreme decency and chastity” with the imperial family.27

One day Rasputin’s friend Aron Simanovich cried, “It’s in-tolerable that rumors are spread about the grand duchesses be-cause of you. You ought to realize that everyone pities the poor girls and that even the czarina is being drawn into the dirt.”

“Go to hell,” Rasputin replied. “I’ve done nothing. People should realize that nobody fouls the place where he eats. I’m at the czar’s service, and I’d never dare do anything of that sort.

What do you think the czar would do to me if I had?”28

In 1912 letters written by Alexandra to Rasputin were stolen from his apartment and published in the newspapers. In a letter which could be interpreted as expressing sexual desire, Alexan-dra wrote, “My beloved and unforgettable teacher, redeemer and mentor, how weary I feel without you. It is only then that my soul is quiet and I relax, when you, teacher, are sitting beside me and I kiss your hands and lean my head on your blessed shoulder.

Oh! How light I feel then. I wish only one and the same thing then. To fall asleep forever on your shoulder, in your arms. . . .

Come quickly. I am waiting for you and I am tormenting myself for you. I am asking for your holy blessing and I am kissing your blessed hands. Loving you forever, M [stood for Mama].”29