The Rasputin File (53 page)

That former Saul turned Apostle Paul naturally seemed useful to Rasputin.
All the more so, since, like Rasputin himself, he was very fond of restaurants and sprees. Thus, a master of intrigue and provocation found his way to Gorokhovaya Street. And had joined Rasputin’s ‘Brain Trust.’

The Mysterious Reshetnikova

As Dzhunkovsky was ordering an investigation of the scandal at the Yar, a merry and drunken Rasputin was on his way out of Moscow. That trip, as it happens, was described in detail by an eyewitness. And contained in the description are the atmosphere and mood that possessed Rasputin at the time.

The File, from the testimony of Konstantin Yakovlevich Chikhachev, forty-eight, deputy chief of the Saratov Judicial Chamber.

At the beginning of 1915, while serving as the deputy prosecutor of the Saratov Judicial Chamber, I was travelling on business from Moscow to Petrograd. And at the Nikolaev Station I saw a crowd of people standing around a man whose picture had been published in the newspapers many times. Rasputin was taking the same train [he returned from Moscow in March, so Chikhachev is in fact describing the finale of the drunken trip] … Several ladies with flowers and candy were seeing him off. He was dressed in a coat made from sable fur … a beaver hat, an embroidered coloured silk shirt girded with a silk waistband with tassels, and high patent leather boots [his sharp eyes registered everything] … A tall, lean man of forty with pale eyes, a long beard, and long hair. He joked with the ladies, nervously rubbed his hands together, fidgeted in place, and shook his shoulders — he was tipsy. The people on the platform had recognized Rasputin and were watching his behaviour with curiosity [yesterday’s impoverished peasant had long since become a superstar].

I entered the same second-class Compagnie Internationale sleeping car in which a small compartment had already been prepared for Rasputin … Travelling in the same car were the Khotimskys, husband and wife. He was an official for special commissions of the Department of State Properties, and she was the niece of Witte’s wife. She decided to make Rasputin’s acquaintance and went into his compartment, introduced herself, and introduced us. Rasputin invited us all to join him in his compartment.

And then almost at once one of them ‘unceremoniously asked, “Listen, Grigory, where on earth did you get drunk?”

“At Reshetnikova’s. You saw her, the one that was seeing me off. My devotee.”’

The same name — Anisia Ivanovna Reshetnikova — was listed in the police report along with those of the other people who had been carousing with Rasputin. And in the scandal at the Yar it was in fact that name that would play a very nasty trick on the powerful chief of the gendarme corps.

Rasputin
Vivant

But let us return to the car, where in the now departed train the conversation transcribed by Chikhachev was already under way. At first the visitors to his compartment talked to Rasputin in a facetious way, like gentry with an intoxicated peasant.

‘Perhaps you would like something more to drink?’

‘Sure, but they haven’t got any wine here, have they?’ It turned out the Khotimskys had brought back several bottles of red wine from the Crimea. We uncorked one and asked the conductor for glasses, and Rasputin’s tongue was loosened. He readily answered all our questions, and the conversation proceeded unconstrainedly, frequently even with enthusiasm, as if he were among old friends. He gave the impression of being a completely spontaneous person who said whatever he thought. He replied to several questions by saying he didn’t understand them. No hypocrisy, no posing, no trying to seem more intelligent or better than he really was … He often interlarded his speech with expressions like ‘see?’ and he often used uncensored swear words, while gesticulating, rubbing his hands, or picking his nose.

And then his fellow travellers turned to the topics then of greatest concern to ordinary Russians.

Rasputin spoke reluctantly about the tsar and tsarina, but at various points he said, ‘He is simple, but God gives to him for his simplicity. No one has taken Constantinople, but it is possible that he will do so.’ And he also said, ‘They are all trying to persuade the tsar to become commander-in-chief. The sovereign wanted to, but I have been speaking against it. Can the tsar really be in command? He will be asked about everyone who is killed. But the tsar wanted to. He even turned pale when I started speaking against it.’

An astonishing observation! Does it mean that even at the beginning of 1915 the ‘tsar wanted to become the commander-in-chief’? And that the peasant understood he should not? And it is no invention. Those words of Rasputin’s are a remarkable complement to an entry in the diary of Grand
Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich at the very start of the war: ‘29 August 1914. The choice of Nikolai Nikolaevich as commander-in-chief has obviously already been recognized a failure, but it is also recognized that it is still not the time for him to take the reins of the complex running of the army himself. But when they beat us and we retreat, it will then be possible to try it! It’s unlikely I’m very far from the truth! We’ll wait and see.’

Words that would turn out to be prophetic, as we shall soon see.

(One thing, however, is clear: Rasputin already knew then that the days of his enemy Nikolai Nikolaevich were numbered. Because the tsar wanted to take his place. Although at the time the tsarina was apparently against it. She was afraid that the tsar would then get tangled up in the war.)

Rasputin’s guests continued to question him avidly about the tsars. He ‘was very approving of the fact that the tsarina was looking after the wounded. “She will at least find out how the people suffer.” In reply to a question about whether it was the tsarina who had given him his magnificent fur coat, he said no, it was a gift from his devotee Reshetnikova, and that the tsarina had given him another less good that he didn’t wear.’

Reshetnikova’s name had come up once again. She was apparently very rich, if her fur coat was more costly than the tsarina’s gift and had impressed even those wealthy people.

After the ‘tsars’, they moved on to another topic of concern.

Rasputin did not conceal that he liked women. He said that they are good, but they all deceive. He regarded court and aristocratic women with contempt. ‘The fools! They themselves come crawling to me. One came to me to ask for a boon. She should have said right out what she needed.’ In reply to the question why he enjoyed so much success with women, was it that he hypnotized them, he said in vexation, ‘I myself am a simple man and don’t deal in hypnotism and don’t understand what it means.’

And then a third question of concern:

Rasputin was reluctant to talk about the war, alluding to the fact that, in general, one should not fight. In reply to the question when the war would end, he expressed the thought, ‘When they take Constantinople, that will be the end of it,’ or else took refuge in generalizations like, ‘People in general will stop having wars when little boys stop having fist fights.’

And then they looked around his compartment.

‘In reply to the question who paid for the compartment, he said it was probably his devotee Reshetnikova who had done it. In the compartment lay boxes of candy, which he shared but did not touch, expressing himself vulgarly that he didn’t eat that “scum”!’

And all that time Rasputin was not alone. ‘They’ were nearby and controlled the peasant’s every move. The experienced Chikhachev noticed ‘them’ at once. ‘The compartment next to Rasputin’s was occupied by some gentleman … Who kept his door ajar, so he could listen to what was being said. He was evidently a police agent.’ On parting with Rasputin, Khotimskaya said that she was ‘exceptionally pleased to have met such a famous person, and that as soon as she got home she would without fail call all her friends on the telephone. But Rasputin cut that half-gibe short with the doleful observation that “Nothing good will come of it. They’ll curse you on the very first call.”’

Showing through Chikhachev’s account is the usual Rasputin story: the slightly drunk peasant, beginning humbly, gradually bewitches everyone in the compartment. And they are already hanging on his words, the words of someone from the, for them, inaccessible world of the ‘tsars’.

And Rasputin sensed that he had bewitched them. And he began his usual seduction and recruiting of a new feminine heart. ‘Rasputin began courting Khotimskaya. He sat down beside her and admired her voice when she started singing him ballads and revue tunes. His didn’t take his eyes off her, he rubbed his hands in delight, and expressed his pleasure with unusual expansiveness … According to Khotimskaya, when they were left alone together, he suggested she come to his compartment during the night.’ And Chikhachev was convinced that it was the truth. ‘In fact, after we had all separated and I later than the others was walking down the corridor of the car and accidentally touched the handle of Rasputin’s compartment instead of my own, he, apparently expecting Khotimskaya to join him, jumped up and at once opened the door to the compartment with the joyful exclamation, “Come on in! Come on in!”’

Evenings With Rasputin

On 30 March, according to the agents, ‘Rasputin returned from Moscow.’

From the external surveillance log: ‘30 March 1915. Returning from Moscow he sent telegrams to Moscow.’

‘To Princess Tenisheva. I rejoice for the discovery, I grieve for the wait, I kiss my own dear one.’

‘Kozitsky Lane for Dzhanumova. Pampered treasure, I am firmly with you in spirit. Kisses.’

This was in memory of ‘refining nerves’ in Moscow. The nerve refining continued in Petrograd.

From the external surveillance log: ‘3 April. He brought to his apartment some woman who spent the night with him.’

He maintained the whirl of diversion in Petrograd. He happily accepted a variety of invitations. And the agents in their cabs had a hard time keeping up with him. ‘He was followed to someone’s apartment,’ the external surveillance agents wrote. The railway acquaintance continued. And described in Chikhachev’s testimony is a visit by Rasputin to Khotimskaya’s apartment.

He was fashionable, mysterious, frightening. And Khotimskaya planned to go ‘to a party where Rasputin would be present’. The company was recherche: the well-known writer Breshko-Breshkovsky; Lezhin, a professor at the Conservatory, and his wife, a well-known singer; and Chikhachev himself.

‘Rasputin arrived in time for dinner in a new silk shirt, and was at first shy but then became more lively, especially after he sat down at the table and had a glass of red wine.’

And of course ‘at the request of those present’, he told the story that had recently preoccupied all of Russia, that of Guseva’s attempt on his life.

She came up to me, asked for a three-rouble note, I got out my purse and was rummaging in it. While I was rummaging, she stabbed me in the stomach with a big knife. I started running, and she ran after me with the knife, the stupid woman. I yelled, ‘Drop it, bitch!’ But she didn’t drop it. Then I picked up a birch stake, and I am thinking, ‘At what point do I split open her head?’ Then I felt sorry, and hit her pretty lightly on the shoulder. She fell down, and people grabbed her by the arms — they wanted to tear her apart. I stood up for her, and then my strength failed me and I fell down.

And then the mocking conclusion of the story, which must have affected those well-nourished women: ‘If only a pretty one had stabbed me; that one was a noseless stinker.’

He was able to address every topic easily and naturally.

‘Why do you quarrel with Hermogen and Iliodor?’

‘I was their friend, so long as I went along with their wishes … They asked me to stand up for them, I stood up; they asked for money, I got it for them. When I started contradicting them, I became a bad person … Hermogen wanted to be patriarch. Where does he get off! The patriarch should be a pure man of prayer; he is the only one, like the sun.’

The drunker he got, the more frightening his naturalness became. More accurately, it was his game: drunk, he could put them in their pitiful place. ‘When the host asked him a question several times … while Rasputin was enthusiastically discussing something with someone else, Rasputin at first impatiently waved him away, and then he shouted at him, “Why don’t you
go to …”‘ And they heard ‘impossible, crude peasant swearing, so that the ladies present ran out of the room in embarrassment’. But at the same time that naturalness captivated those ladies and gentlemen.

‘He differed from many in his spontaneity, and did not try to seem better than he was … He came close in his whole demeanour to the type of the “sainted holy fool”.’ So Chikhachev realized the role Father Grigory was playing. Even if he did not realize that it
was
a role.

Rasputin made one other noteworthy visit soon after his return to the capital, a visit that is reflected in several works by fashionable literary people of the day for the fact that appearing along with Rasputin at the soiréein question was the Russian James Bond, Manasevich-Manuilov.

From the agents’ reports: ‘9 April. At 9:45 Rasputin … arrived at Alexei Frolovich Filippov’s at 18 Sadovy Street … He was left there till 2:00 a.m. It was noted that some kind of meeting or spree was going on.’

‘Bond’ Gathers The Celebrities

That remarkable soirée is described in the File by the host himself, Filippov. True, it was in sum a fairly deplorable one for him But everything in its place.

Several days before the soirée a series of mysterious phone calls were placed to the apartments of several famous Petrograd literary people. Among these was a certain Teffi. That name was known to all reading Russia at the time. It was the pseudonym of the famous humorist Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya. She was already past forty then, but yesterday’s
femme fatale
was still very pretty. Many years later after she had emigrated, she remembered that phone call in her little sketch, ‘Rasputin’. ‘A Petersburg thaw marked by neurasthenia… Rozanov called and talked disconnectedly about some invitation. “I can’t tell you anything over the phone.” He simply did not dare to say anything concrete.’