Even two years later, the memories of Sasha and the murder attempt, fueled by my lingering guilt, now kindled my fears as much as Papa’s vision of death. Though my father was under constant police surveillance for his own protection, I knew very well that those who hated him were as clever as they were well connected. Indeed, Gospodin Ministir-Mr. Minister-Protopopov, who headed the Interior Department, had repeatedly warned my father of dangers lurking everywhere.
“Listen to me carefully, Father Grigori,” Gospodin Ministir Protopopov had said. “People are openly plotting your death. Be on your guard every moment! These are very difficult times!”
As I now rushed out the door, I called to the two secret agents posted on our staircase. Coming to our aid, they each took Papa by an arm, and all of us quickly descended. Once downstairs, we stepped from the small lobby, across the courtyard, through the archway, and onto the frigid street, where a dark blue limousine was already waiting for us. It was a Delaunay-Belleville and certainly from the imperial garage, though it lacked a coat of arms and official markings. When the chauffeur jumped out to open the door for us, I could see by his khaki-colored full-dress uniform and the double-headed eagles stamped on the gold braid around his collar that he was in fact one of the Tsar’s personal drivers. That an unmarked motor had been sent was no surprise, for the Tsaritsa always took great pains not to draw attention to my father’s visits to the palace.
As we flew off, rushing down the street and then turning along the embankment of the Fontanka River, I leaned over and lowered Papa’s window so the brisk night air might rouse him to his duties. Sitting back in the rich leather seat, I pulled my cloak over my shoulders and buried my hands in my fur muff-which the Empress had gifted me just the year before.
It was slightly past midnight, and had this been before the war and these the White Nights of summer, the streets would have been flooded with dusky sunlight, people in search of entertainment, and any number of horse cabs. In December, however, the planned boulevards and prospekti of the capital-all of which were big and straight and therefore so very foreign, so uncomfortably non-Russian-were dark and freezing and filled now with droves of wounded soldiers and hungry peasants, some huddled around open fires, others sleeping right out on the pavements, with a few marauders roaming about. Not long ago Papa had had a vision that the Tsar needed to bring trainload after trainload of grain into the capital. And he was right. The liodi-common people-needed food. Back home in our village, we had lived through many hard seasons, and my father knew very well what the Tsar did not-that a peasant without bread was a very dangerous man.
When we turned onto Nevsky Prospekt I saw only a small handful of sleighs and just one place that looked lively and warm, the Sergeeivski Palace, which had been home to Grand Duchess Elizabeth, the Tsaritsa’s sister, before she’d taken to the cloth. Now it was inhabited by the young Grand Duke Dmitri, and the second-floor windows of the stunning red building were ablaze with electric lights and some sort of revelry, for of course there were not and never would be any shortages among the nobility. After that, all was depressingly quiet, the streets filled with litter and lost souls, who, I began to realize, looked increasingly less like wounded soldiers and more like deserters.
Within a short time we left the edge of the city and were speeding through the countryside. Father and I sat silent in the rear seat, he gazing out his window, I staring out mine. The moon was surprisingly bright, and as my eyes followed the snow-laden landscape, I saw flat white fields, then a strand of birch, next a cluster of small huts with smoke curling from the chimneys and a tiny church with a gold onion dome, then again dormant fields tucked under a pale blanket.
There was little doubt in my mind that by morning all good society and then some would know of tonight’s events. I was sure that by sunrise the drunken princess, the half-naked countess, and the balalaika player, even the secret agents, would start spreading the word that the Empress had called Rasputin to the palace yet again-and at such an ungodly hour, no less. By teatime tomorrow afternoon, all the court would probably be gossiping about how a late-night call had been placed for the Tsaritsa, a call begging the besotted Rasputin to rush to her private rooms and soothe her desperate needs. Yes, the tongues would wag, for we Russians were the most vicious of gossips, and there were sure to be nasty rumors of the wild peasant romping in bed with the Empress Aleksandra Fyodorovna-that German bitch-and even with her devoted friend, that slut Anna Vyrubova, perhaps all three of them together. There might even be gossip of a Khlyst act, a “rejoicing.” After all, didn’t the name Rasputin come from the word rasputa-a debauched, depraved good-for-nothing? The counts and dukes and princes might even hold an emergency meeting at the Yacht Club, where they would smoke and drink and mutter that something had to be done about that filthy monk who was ruining the prestige of the Tsar, the peasant who was nothing but a stain on the entire House of Romanov. After all, wasn’t he more than likely spying for the Germans, even quite possibly drugging the Tsar himself? Gospodi-good heavens-for the sake of Holy Mother Russia, shouldn’t he be eliminated?
Yes, I thought with a shudder, Papa’s visions of his own end were not so hard to believe.
The closer we came to Tsarskoye Selo, the more I could see that the bite of cold night air was invigorating Papa like a dip in the Gulf of Finland. Indeed, as the wintry countryside gave way to villas and small palaces tucked in parks, I was relieved to see that my father appeared in complete control of himself.
Within minutes of entering the royal village, we came to the long iron fence surrounding the vast palace grounds. Staring across a plain of snow and into the deep night, I caught a distant glimpse of the buttery-yellow walls and white columns of the home Catherine the Great had built more than a century earlier for her favorite grandson, Aleksander I. When we reached the entrance itself, the guards hurriedly swung open the gates without so much as a single question, and the limousine followed the drive up a slight hill. I couldn’t hide my surprise, because for years my father hadn’t been allowed to approach the home of the tsars so directly. Because of an uproar of protest from, among others, nearly the entire Romanov clan, the infamous Rasputin had been forced to sneak into the imperial home via a pretend meeting with a maid in the right wing of the palace. In fact, the outrage against him had grown so vocal recently that the only place he could meet their Imperial Highnesses was down the road at Madame Vyrubova’s tiny house. All this because the chamberlain’s staff listed any visitor to the palace in the Kammerfurier-the court log-available to many officials. Needless to say, whenever the name Rasputin appeared, it sparked another wave of protest about his dark influence on the throne.
Tonight, however, none of that apparently mattered, for the Delaunay-Belleville limousine pulled up not to the main entrance at the rotunda, or even the right wing, but directly to the left wing, which contained the private apartments of the Tsar and Tsaritsa. And there, dressed in a huge fur coat and perched on the fountain of steps, was plump Madame Vyrubova herself.
“Come this way at once, Father Grigori,” she pleaded anxiously, leaning heavily on a cane.
The Empress’s confidante led my father into the palace, and I, ignored, scurried after them. Madame Vyrubova limped horribly, for several years earlier she had nearly been killed in a train accident. When she’d been pulled from beneath a steam radiator and steel girder, no one thought she would live, let alone walk. Taken to the hospital, she received the last rites as the Emperor and Empress, who had been quickly summoned, wept by her side. It was then that Papa had appeared, pushing everyone aside as he rushed to the wounded woman. Taking her limp hand in his, Papa used all his forces, commanding her back to us, the living.
“Anushka! Anushka!” he called, as the Tsar and Tsaritsa watched in amazement.
She stirred and opened her eyes for the first time.
“Speak to me!”
Her lips trembled and she barely spoke. “Pray for me, Father…”
“Wake up and rise!”
Her eyes opened wider but she did not move.
Father dropped her hand and stumbled in exhaustion from the room, muttering, “She will be a cripple, but she will live.”
Now, wasting no time, Madame Vyrubova hobbled along, steering us through the large doors and into a reception area, forgetting the registry-where our presence was, nevertheless, duly noted by an official who had worked for this tsar’s father and even the one before that. We passed some silent guards in magnificent uniforms, moved through a double door, and went down the long center corridor with its magnificent roll of carpet from the Caucasus. The Tsaritsa’s private chambers were here, in the rooms on the left, and the stories to be told about tonight, I was sure, would place Rasputin there, probably in Aleksandra Fyodorovna’s favorite room, her mauve boudoir. Adding to the tales of Rasputin was a national obsession; I’d just heard of a fashionable hostess who’d tacked up a sign in her salon that read NO TALK OF RASPUTIN. Mention of my father in the press was strictly forbidden, so “supposed” eyewitnesses were always cropping up, conveying “supposed” information about Papa in the time-honored Russian mode: gossip. In this way, endless nasty stories were spread, both at court and at the market and as far away as the front. Not long ago I had heard Dunya ranting in the kitchen, complaining that the stories had traveled as far as Berlin, where the Kaiser’s propagandists not only expounded on them but made sure their spies returned and planted them again in Petrograd, creating yet more uproar.
“Mark my word, there are German spies doing their dirty work everywhere,” Dunya had said, furiously stirring a pot. “Gossip heard once is titillating, heard twice and it’s interesting, but when it’s heard three times people take it as fact. And the Germans are cleverer than we are. They know the best way to topple the Tsar is to attack his consort, who of course is one of them, a German princess by birth.”
When I saw no trace of stockings beneath Madame Vyrubova’s thick sable coat, I could only imagine what would be going around tomorrow. Someone would claim, no doubt, that she had been waiting for Rasputin naked beneath her resplendent fur.
I heard a door open at the far end of the long corridor, and a tall elegant woman stepped through. It was the Empress Aleksandra Fyodorovna herself, one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen, tall and thin, her face finely carved, her hair thick and long, though tonight, much to my surprise, it was let down as if for bed. Along with her ever-present strands of freshwater pearls hanging from her alabaster neck, she wore a long white silk robe, nothing more. Her eyes, usually clear blue, were swollen and red.
Upon seeing me, the Empress couldn’t hide her surprise and froze, shaking her head ever so slightly. Madame Vyrubova, who maintained her coveted spot by her keen ability to read her mistress’s wants, immediately stopped and caught me by the arm. Papa, however, continued on, marching right up to Her Imperial Highness. And, no, he did not fall to his knees before her, nor did he bow and seek the bizmyen-the opportunity to kiss his sovereign’s hand. Rather, he strode up to the Empress as if he were her equal, even her superior, and kissed her Siberian style, three times on the cheek. Then, much to even my surprise, the Empress muttered something ever so quietly and swooned like a lost lover into Papa’s arms.
“Come, my child,” said Madame Vyrubova, spinning me around lest I see more. “The driver will take you home.”
“Please may I visit Maria Nikolaevna?” I begged, referring to the Tsar’s number three daughter, with whom I had become quite friendly.
“All good children are asleep at this hour, as well you should be. I don’t know what I was doing, I should never have let you in. And I wouldn’t have if it weren’t so cold.”
“But-”
With her hand firmly planted in the small of my back, Madame Vyrubova steered me quickly down the hall, through the double doors, and to the reception hall, where several guards snapped to attention.
“See that she is returned at once to the city,” Anna Aleksandrovna commanded imperiously. “Make sure the driver escorts her not just to her building but right up to her apartment.”
“What about-,” I started to say.
But there was nothing I could do. For all intents and purposes, I was being returned to the city by imperial order. I could not protest, just as there was no question but that the orders would be obeyed.
Madame Vyrubova stepped to a side table and scooped up a handful of candies wrapped in wax paper. They were my favorite, butterscotch balls made right here in the palace confectionary. She then grabbed my muff from me, pinched one end of it shut, and stuffed the candies inside. Pressing the muff back into my hands, she whispered in my ear.
“You must not talk about tonight to anyone, no matter their position. Am I clear, my child?”
“Most certainly, Anna Aleksandrovna.”
“Good,” she said, kissing me on my forehead. “Now hurry off, my dear!”
One of the guards, a burly man with a dark mustache, took me gently by the arm and escorted me to the main door. Just before I stepped into the frigid night air, I turned. Rushing like a jealous lover, Madame Vyrubova had pulled up her magnificent fur coat and was hobbling as fast as she could back into the palace.
Not only were her ankles completely naked, so were her legs.
You ask when did I myself first make Rasputin’s acquaintance? Well, the first time I ever laid eyes upon him was four winters ago. I had heard he was in town, and, since I was eager to see him for myself, I stopped by my friend’s house, where Rasputin was apparently residing for the week. I knocked on the door, but my friend was not home. I was just about to leave when I heard screaming. Quite worried, I ran around back to the kitchen…and what did I find but that monster on top of a young scullery maid, ripping away her clothing. He was quite drunk even though it was still morning, and he was having his way with her, this young girl, can you imagine! I reached for a large iron pan and hit him. I hit him so hard, he fell to the floor and didn’t move. When I saw the blood flowing from his mouth and nose, I feared I had killed him, but after a moment he started to stir.
Do you know how many times since then I have wished I had hit that devil a second time or stabbed him with a knife? If only I had killed him back then! Just think how much pain I would have spared the Motherland.