inability of the Heir’s blood to clot, that lay the true nature of my father’s extraordinary bond with our Empress.
Less than an hour later a pair of heavy black iron gates opened before us and the royal limousine carried us once again to the very steps of the Aleksander Palace. I thought of the boy’s pain, of the Empress’s misery…and of the terrible things constantly said about her. Even her own mother-in-law, the Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna, had called her a traitor, first because she had given birth to four daughters in a row and then because she had birthed such a sickly boy. To make it all worse, the court of the Dowager Empress was filled with evil gossips, highborn personages who spread the most wicked stories to all the courts of all the grand dukes and beyond. There was even tittle-tattle that Aleksandra Fyodorovna had a secret telegraph cable stretching from the mauve boudoir all the way to her native Germany and the offices of her cousin, Russia’s sworn enemy, Kaiser Wilhelm, with whom we had been at war for so long. Every time I heard that I shuddered, for I couldn’t help but think of the poor Marie Antoinette, daughter of the Austrian monarch, whom the French had labeled the Austrichienne, the Austrian dog.
But none of the incendiary stories they told about the Empress was true. Not one. And yet virtually every Russian believed them because the stories had been told and retold, heard and heard again so often, that eventually no one doubted their authenticity. There were supposed eyewitnesses everywhere.
Russia had long been an aria in search of a tragedy, and as Papa and I clambered out of the deep seats of the Delaunay-Belleville limousine and up the steps, I wondered if my father would be able to forestall the finale of the doomed opera. Or were we too late? I couldn’t tell, not by the tears rolling down the big round cheeks of Madame Vyrubova, who greeted us once again at the top of the steps. Forgetting the frost, today she simply stood there, wearing a gray dress and leaning heavily on crutches.
“Thank you for coming, Father Grigori,” she said, profusely kissing Papa’s hand. “The boy, he…he-”
“Yes, I know,” said Father, with a godly authority. “He’s still with us.”
“And-”
“This I know as well. Batushka,” the Dear Father, meaning the Tsar, “has returned home.”
“Not more than ten minutes ago.”
“Eto xhorosho.” Good.
How my father knew these things, I didn’t know, yet I knew he was right, for with each step an aura seemed to grow more clearly around him. Was it the cod? Had the endless amounts of fish he consumed made his soul so clear, his body so pure, that he had indeed become a heavenly vehicle? Or had he been purified by his session with the prostitute Anisia?
When we reached the top of the steps, Madame Vyrubova glanced nervously at me and said to my father, “Father Grigori, I think it’s better if the child is returned home. You know how the Empress doesn’t-”
“I’m still exhausted from the other night,” said Papa firmly. This afternoon and evening will be long and hard…my daughter stays. She will attend to me.”
“Of course, Father,” the most powerful courtier in the nation replied, submissively bowing her head. “It is as you wish.”
“It is as is needed.”
Minutes before we’d pulled up to the gates, Papa had clasped my hand and told me the details of the other night when we’d come so late and I had been turned away. Aleksei had come down with a chill and sneezed. Such, of course, was the nature of any cold, only the boy had started to bleed profusely from the nose. Compresses had been applied, to no avail. The doctors had been called in and the boy’s nose was cauterized, which hadn’t done anything but elicit screams of pain from Aleksei Nikolaevich, who was never given the likes of morphine. As always, the best and finest doctors of all Europe hadn’t been able to do a thing, so finally Papa had been summoned. And only many hours of Papa’s prayers beside the Heir’s bed had slowed and finally stopped the bleeding.
“I can see the boy’s suffering is worse than it was the other day,” Papa muttered, as we entered the palace. “I do not know what I can do for him, for of course it is up to the will of God, but I shall try my best.”
Once again we hurriedly followed Madame Vyrubova through the large doors, past the guards and the reception desk, and into the private apartments of the royal family. Rather than proceed down the long central hall with its roll of Oriental carpet, Madame Vyrubova, hobbling on her crutches and with her gray dress trailing on the floor, took us into the small wooden elevator on the left. In silence we rode up to the second floor, the children’s floor, where we were taken down a long empty corridor. I noted that the doors on the right were all shut tight, for these were the rooms of the Tsaritsa’s personal maids, who surely had been told not to set foot outside their chambers.
Coming to a double door on the left, we turned into the children’s playroom, where years earlier I had been brought to play with the Tsar’s third daughter, Maria Nikolaevna, who was my age. Now, upon entering the large room, we found not the tepee, the tom-toms, the toy dog on wheels, or even Aleksei’s clockwork train, of which he was so proud, but rather a busy cluster of men gossiping sternly among themselves. There was also a man, his back to us, who was sobbing quietly but furiously as he leaned against the tall green tile stove on the far wall. As I quickly trotted after Papa and Madame Vyrubova toward another door, we passed a group of men-a bevy of doctors and specialists-who glared at us and practically spit on Rasputin. But Papa didn’t notice, so I tried to ignore them too. All that mattered, all that my father was focusing on, was the shrieking from the next room.
“Help me!” came the scream. “Mama, help me!”
One of Papa’s greatest skills was his amazing ability to concentrate. He could study a single Bible passage for a week. He could search the morose face of an icon for an entire day. And now he focused on the cry of the Heir Tsarevich Aleksei Nikolaevich, reading the tone of pain as intently as if it were a heavenly hymn.
“Not a moment too soon,” he muttered, his right hand clutching the gold cross, a gift from the Empress herself, that hung around his neck.
Just before I followed him through the next doorway, I glanced once again at the tall stove. The man leaning against the tiles turned and our eyes caught. Gospodi, it was the Tsar himself, his eyes wet and red. My heart ached for him. Was the boy truly on the doorstep of death?
“Mama, I can’t! I can’t! It’s too much!” came the plea from the boy’s chamber. “Please make it stop! Please let me die!”
As we entered the next room, a string of prayers fell from Papa’s lips, a heavenly chant, a call to God for His mercy. My father shed his peasant coat, dropping it to the floor, and pressed onward, but I stopped, moving against one of the windows, which was covered with large floral curtains. The only light in the room came from the oil lamps suspended before the multitude of icons encased in their large curving kiot. Gazing through the soft, smoky light, I saw Aleksei Nikolaevich writhing in pain as he lay on his simple nickel-plated camp bed. It seemed as if his failed body were trying to pull his soul across the threshold of death, while Russia ’s mighty Empress, Aleksandra Fyodorovna, who was on her knees clutching her son’s hand, was trying just as hard to keep him here. Like a mother superior, she was huddled in prayer, begging God for mercy, begging God to save this child who was lost in fever.
“Mama…Mama…,” he gasped, “will it hurt so much when I go to Heaven?”
With supreme confidence, Papa strode right up behind the Empress, placing his hand directly on her shoulder as if she were nothing more than the commonest of commoners. Startled, Aleksandra Fyodorovna turned, looked up, and, upon seeing him, half swooned to the side, falling upon his thigh like an eager lover. Unable to control herself, the Empress of All the Russias grabbed this ugly peasant’s ugly hand and kissed it passionately.
“Thank you, Father Grigori. Thank you for coming,” she gasped in relief. “Aleksei fell on his knee, and now he needs you badly. We all need you. Help us, please help us!”
My father said nothing, focusing only on the boy. The Empress, whose health and beauty had been ravaged by years of worry and anxiety, started to beg a question but stopped. I knew what it was. She wanted to know what none of those doctors or specialists in the playroom could tell her: Would the boy cheat death yet again? She started to speak but instead started to sob, and seemed about to faint. Indeed, she might have tumbled over had she not been leaning so heavily on her Friend, her Savior, my father.
Practically brushing her aside, Papa pressed himself up against the bed and stared down upon the pathetic child, who gazed up at him with hollow eyes, eyes that expressed nothing but excruciating pain. Pulling aside a light blanket, Papa saw a leg hideously bloated with blood, twisted and bent up to the boy’s chest. Papa made the
