fact, he’d probably ordered them away, because even though he needed Papa’s blessing to keep his position, he didn’t want to be seen coming here. If there were no guards, there were no written reports. And if there were no written reports, his regular visits to Rasputin would not be revealed.
Oh, Lord, was the adult world I was just entering really so dirty, let alone so conniving?
Envelope in hand, I hurried back through the salon to the window in Papa’s study. Peering down, I saw a large, fancy vehicle. It had to be the minister’s car, and of course it was, for seconds later Protopopov emerged from our building and scurried into the rear seat. As the vehicle quickly disappeared, all I had to do was wait.
And as I waited, of course, I started fiddling with the envelope. Gospodin Ministir Protopov wanted Papa to read the anonymous letter, but that would be difficult if not impossible because my father was only semiliterate. Ultimately, I knew, it would probably be me who read him the letter anyway, so within seconds I was tearing it open.
Grigori,
Our Fatherland is in danger, both from beyond our borders and within. The fact that you receive telegrams from high places in cipher proves that you have great influence. Hence we, the chosen ones, ask you to arrange matters so that all ministers should be appointed by the Duma. Do this by the end of the year so that our country may be saved from ruin. If you do not comply and if you do not stop meddling in affairs of government, we shall kill you. We will show no mercy. Our hand will not fail as did the hand of the syphilitic woman. Wherever you are, death will follow you. The die has been cast; the lot has fallen on us ten chosen men.
So, I thought, my heart shuddering, Papa’s second sight of his own death was not really so difficult to envision. It was, instead, little more than common sense, given how many enemies he had. In fact, could we even trust Protopopov, whom many called nothing more than an excitable seal? Bozhe moi, could he in fact be one of the “ten chosen men”?
I heard a noise on the street and looked back out the window. Without any urgency, a black automobile emerged on the edge of the street. A few long moments later, several men got out and made for our building. So. I was right. Now that Protopopov was gone, the guards were back.
In disgust, I turned away from the window and threw the envelope on my father’s desk. The truths of the world were being laid down before me like cards, each one trumping the last, and I was deeply pained. And yet the truth I most wanted-that of Sasha-was unseen, the most illusive card. If only I could talk to him and ask what in the name of God he was involved in. Would another two years go by before I saw him again, or this time had he vanished forever?
Making my way out of Papa’s study, I stepped to the edge of our empty salon and glanced around. I saw a simple room lined with many chairs, the walls hung with a few plain etchings. How many fine women had sat here, women with fancy feather boas and diamonds of the first water, women who were lost in their meaningless lives and wanted nothing more than to kiss my father’s hand or at least the hem of his filthy blouse. How many poor souls had come here as well, for who else was willing to listen and help them, the downtrodden of my country, except one of their own who had by fate risen to the very top? Everyone in Russia, it seemed, was desperate for a miracle, and many people were turning to Papa in search of it. Oddly, if he were to survive these dark days of rumor and innuendo, no one required that very miracle more than my own father.
With still no sight or sound of either Papa or Dunya, I moved on. As I passed his bedroom, I saw that the door was shut. I wanted to knock but dared not, for I heard his deep, muttering voice from within. Was he on his knees lost in prayer? Was he begging for forgiveness? I certainly hoped so.
Actually, it wasn’t hard at all to gain entry to Rasputin’s home and family. In fact, I was quite eagerly received. After all, they were just simple peasants and that is the peasant way, to open heart and home.
I never met his son, the simple one. And I never really got to know the younger daughter. It was the older one, Maria, with whom I became friendly. I remember how surprised I was the first time I met her. She looked so much like him. Not just the hair. Not the small chin, either. No, it was her eyes. She had his eyes, so piercing, so intense. The resemblance actually frightened me.
But, no, I feel no remorse for what I have done, none at all. We did what we did because we had to, because we had no choice. Rasputin was destroying the prestige of the monarch and tearing the nation apart.
The only mistake we made was in not acting sooner.
CHAPTER 10
If I’d learned anything at all from the titled ladies who visited us, it was this: The single most valuable commodity in Russia had never been serfs or land, money or jewels. Rather, it was-and probably always would be-information, which was so tightly controlled by the government, from the censors on down. From eavesdropping on these women as they waited for my father’s blessings, I’d come to understand that it wasn’t through good deeds or integrity that one was elevated. Rather, it was with the right tidbit of knowledge, real or, better yet, fabricated. Whom you knew. Who knew what. Who knew when. If you possessed any or all of these, you were covered in luck, for that was how titles were given, lands awarded, even how one secured a simple clerical position or, if you were lucky enough to read, a spot in a good school. As these fancy women knew all too well, one didn’t achieve, one connived.
Not long ago I’d brought a cup of tea to a princess, who was laughingly saying to an old baronessa, “Everyone knows that gossip and vranye-our beloved art of creative lying-are the only two things that keep our huge, ignorant country rolling ahead like some giant steamroller, wouldn’t you say, ma cherie?”
“Oui, bien sur,” chuckled her aged friend, who, like so many of her class, only spoke the tongue of her native land to her lowly servants.
So when I woke the next morning I knew exactly what to do. I needed information, and I knew precisely where to get it.
By the time I had finished my breakfast of steaming kasha and tea, Papa was already receiving his first visitors of the day in the salon. There was a little man from Moscow who, from what I’d overheard, had come because he wanted to supply the army with large-sized military undergarments and needed my father’s help to moisten the deal. Another, a mother of six in dire financial need, had come in search of a prophecy: Would her husband come back from the front alive, or should she start giving up her children for adoption? Papa, as far as I could tell, declined the first, and in regard to the second, the mother, he opened a drawer and tossed her a stack of 2,000 rubles that someone had left as a bribe the day before. As I drank the last of my tea, I heard the woman fall sobbing on the floor to kiss his dirty boots in gratitude.
There was already a line outside our door, and one by one they were let in, humbling themselves before Father Grigori and begging to press their lips to his filthy hand. Sometimes Papa would see scores of petitioners in a single day, sometimes only a few. There was simply no telling how many he would receive this morning; when he’d had enough, he would just turn away and tell Dunya to send the rest packing.
While Papa was busy humbling several fashionable ladies by kissing them directly on the lips, and Dunya was occupied with a tiny nun who was quietly asking for one of Father Grigori’s dirty under linens-“But, please, give me one with sweat”-I ducked into his study. Going directly to my father’s desk, I took two things that were sure to lubricate the lips of any Russian, a small stack of rubles plus, most important, a handful of Papa’s already signed notes. Less than five minutes later I was sneaking out the back door of our apartment, disappearing down the service stairs completely unnoticed.
With my cloak bundled over my shoulders and my hood thrown over my head, I emerged from the courtyard of our building and through the front arch without being recognized. A damp, freezing wind whipped all around me, and I turned right on Goroxhavaya. As I walked toward the River Fontanka, just a block away, a flurry of horse cabs and a motorcar passed me, all hurrying in the opposite direction, I was sure, for the train station. It was ten in the morning and the sun, nearly at its weakest point in the year, was barely rising. Glancing at the low, steely- gray clouds blowing in from the Baltic, I realized we would have little more than five hours of light today, and by four this afternoon it would be dark.
Like all the canals and waterways in Petrograd, the River Fontanka had been captured and tamed several centuries earlier by the work of thousands upon thousands of serfs. Essentially transformed into a broad granite-
