by John Boyne
‘None. Yet,’ she replied. ‘I couldn’t stand it there without you, you see. In Kashin. I couldn’t bear to be left behind. So I made my way here. I thought … I thought that perhaps you could help me.’
‘Of course,’ I said nervously. ‘But how? What can I do for you?’
‘I thought perhaps … well, they must want servant girls in the palace. There might be a position for me. If you spoke to someone.’
‘Yes, yes,’ I said, frowning. ‘Yes, I’m sure there is. I could try to find out.’ I thought about it, wondering who I should consult. I pictured my sister in a maid’s uniform or the lesser clothing of a kitchen servant and for a moment it seemed like a happy thought. She would find as much ambition here as I had. I would have a friend; not one whose respect I craved, such as Sergei Stasyovich. Nor one whose affection I desired, such as Anastasia. ‘Where are you staying, anyway?’
‘I found a room,’ she said. ‘It’s not much and I can’t afford to stay there for too long. Do you think you could ask for me, Georgy? We could meet again then. Here, perhaps.’
I nodded and felt a sudden urge to be rid of her, to be back inside the unreal world of the palace and not out here having conversations with the past. I hated myself for my selfishness but could not seem to vanquish it.
‘A week then,’ I said, standing up. ‘A week from tonight, at this time. Come again and I will have an answer for you. I wish I could stay longer now, but my duties …’
‘Of course,’ she said, looking saddened. ‘But later tonight, perhaps? I could return and—’
‘It’s impossible,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Next week. I promise. I will see you then.’
She nodded and embraced me once more. ‘Thank you, Georgy,’ she said. ‘I knew that you would not let me down. It is either this or I return home. There is nowhere else for me. You will do what you can, won’t you?’
‘Yes, yes,’ I snapped. ‘Now I must be gone. Until next week, sister.’
And with that I hurried back into the square and towards the palace, cursing her for coming here, bringing the past into a place where it did not belong. By the time I reached my room I had grown more tender again, however, and resolved that the following morning I would do what I could to help her. And by the time my door was closed, she had vanished from my mind entirely and my thoughts were once again with the only girl whose existence mattered to me at all.
Of the three main imperial dwellings – the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, the cliff-top citadel at Livadia and the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo – the last of these was my favourite of the Tsar’s many residences. It was an entire royal village situated some sixteen miles south of the capital, and the court regularly travelled there by train – slowly, of course, so as not to cause any sudden jolting which might instigate another episode of the Tsarevich’s haemophilia.
Unlike in St Petersburg, where I was quartered in a narrow cell along a corridor populated by other members of the Imperial guard, my place at Tsarskoe Selo was a tiny billet situated close to the Tsarevich’s own bedroom, which was in turn dominated by a large kiot upon which an extraordinary number of religious icons had been placed by his mother.
‘Good God,’ said Sergei Stasyovich, poking his head around the door one evening as he passed along the hallway. ‘So, Georgy Daniilovich, this is where they’ve put you, is it?’
‘For now,’ I said, embarrassed that he should find me lying on my bed, half asleep, when the rest of the household was engaged in work. Sergei himself was red-cheeked and bristling with energy and when I asked him where he had spent the evening he shook his head and turned away from me, examining the walls and ceilings as if they contained matters of great importance.
‘Nowhere,’ he replied reluctantly. ‘I took a turn around the grounds, that’s all. A walk down towards the Catherine Palace.’
‘You should have told me you were going,’ I said, disappointed that he had not invited me to accompany him, for he was the closest thing I had to a friend and there were moments when I thought I might be able to confide some of my secrets in him. ‘I would have joined you. Did you go alone?’
‘Yes. No,’ he added a moment later, correcting himself. ‘I mean yes, I was alone. What does it matter anyway?’
‘It doesn’t matter at all,’ I said, surprised by his behaviour. ‘I only wondered—’
‘You’re lucky to have this room,’ he said, changing the subject.
‘Lucky? I think it must have been a broom closet in the past, it’s that small.’
‘Small?’ he asked, laughing quickly. ‘Don’t complain about it. There are twenty of us stuck together in one of the great dormitories on the second floor. You try getting a night’s rest when they’re all coughing and farting and crying out for their sweethearts in their sleep.’
I smiled and shrugged at him, pleased that I was not forced to join the guards in such surroundings. This room could barely contain a bunk and a small table for a jug and wash basin, but Alexei and I had grown close and he liked me to be near by, and the Tsar decreed that it should be so and therefore it was so.
The Tsaritsa, Alexandra, seemed less happy with the arrangement. Ever since the incident at Mogilev when Alexei had fallen from the tree and injured himself, I had been out of favour with the Empress. She passed me in the corridors without a word, even as I bowed low and humbled myself before her. When she entered a room where her son and I were together, she ignored me completely and directed all her remarks towards him. This in itself was not unusual – she stared through most of those who were neither blood relatives nor members of an illustrious family – but it was the manner in which her lip curled slightly when I was near by that made me realize the extent of her contempt. I believe she would have been happy to have seen me dismissed from the Royal Family’s service entirely and sent home to Kashin – or further, perhaps, into a Siberian exile – but the Tsar remained a supporter of mine and so I managed to retain my place. Had it not been for his faith in me, my life might have followed an entirely different direction.
It was three nights later before I had company in my room again, but this time my visitor was not quite as welcome as Sergei Stasyovich. I was preparing for sleep when a tap came at my door, so quiet that I failed to hear it at first. When the knock sounded again, I frowned, wondering who could possibly require me at this late hour. It could not be Alexei, for he never bothered to knock. Perhaps … I could hardly breathe for thinking that it might be Anastasia. I sat up, swallowed nervously, and went to the door, opening it only a fraction and peering into the darkness of the corridor beyond.
At first, it seemed as if my ears had deceived me and there was no one out there. But then, just as I was about to close the door again, a man stepped forward out of the shadows, his long dark hair and black robes blending into the gloom of the hall so that for a moment only the whites of his eyes were visible.
‘Good evening, Georgy Daniilovich,’ he said in a clear voice, opening his mouth to reveal a set of yellow teeth in an approximation of a smile.
‘Father Gregory,’ I replied, for although I had never spoken to him before, I had seen him on many occasions, passing in and out of the Tsaritsa’s suite of rooms. I had first laid eyes on him on my very first night at the Winter Palace, of course, when I had disturbed him while he incanted a blessing over the Empress’s head and he had looked across at me and caught me in the terror of his glance.
‘I hope it’s not too late to call on you,’ he said.
‘I was in bed,’ I replied, suddenly conscious that I had opened the door wearing only the loose-fitting vest and shorts that constituted my night-clothes. ‘Perhaps this can wait until tomorrow?’
‘But I don’t think it can,’ he said, smiling wider as if this was a tremendous joke and stepping forward, not so much pushing me out of the way as simply continuing into the room until I had no choice but to step aside. He stood with his back to me, remaining perfectly still while staring down at my bed, before turning
his gaze to the narrow window that overlooked the courtyard and standing there as if he had been turned to stone. Only when I had closed the door again and lit a candle did he turn around, but the flickering light of the single flame was so weak that it did little to improve my view of him.
‘I’m surprised to see you,’ I said, determined not to appear intimidated by him, despite the fact that I found him to be a menacing presence. ‘Is there a message from the Tsarevich?’
‘No, and if there was do you think I would bring it?’ he asked, looking me up and down slowly. I began to feel self-conscious in my underwear and reached for my trousers, which I pulled on even as he watched me, never once turning his gaze away. ‘We have so much in common, you and I, and yet we never speak to each other. It’s terribly sad, don’t you think? When we could be such friends.’
‘I can’t think why,’ I replied. ‘In truth, Father Gregory, I have never been a spiritual man.’
‘But the spirit is inside all of us.’
‘I’m not so sure.’
‘Why not?’
‘I grew up without the benefit of education,’ I explained. ‘We had to work hard, my sisters and I. We didn’t have time to worship icons or say prayers.’
‘And yet you call me Father Gregory,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘You respect my position.’
‘Of course.’
‘You know what others call me, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I replied immediately, determined to show no emotion, neither fear nor admiration. ‘They call you the starets.’
‘They do,’ he replied, nodding his head and smiling a little. ‘A venerated teacher. One who lives a wholly honourable life. Do you find the name appropriate, Georgy Daniilovich?’
‘I’m not sure,’ I said, swallowing nervously. ‘I don’t know you.’
‘Would you care to?’
I had no answer to this and simply remained where I was, unable to move, wanting to separate myself from his presence but feeling that my legs were great weights, pinning me to the floor.
‘They have another name for me,’ he said, after a long silence had lingered between us, and now his voice was low and deep. ‘You have heard that name too, I imagine.’
‘Rasputin,’ I said, the word catching in my throat as I said it.
‘That is it. And do you know what it means?’
‘It means a man of no virtue,’ I replied, struggling now to keep my voice steady, for those dark, unblinking eyes of his were staring directly into my own and causing me to feel entirely unsettled. ‘A man who makes himself familiar with many.’
‘How polite you are, Georgy Daniilovich,’ he said, smiling a little. ‘Makes himself familiar with many. A very quaint phrase. What they mean is that I have relations with every woman I meet.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘My enemies claim that I have ravished half the population of St Petersburg, do they not?’
‘I have heard that.’
‘And not just the women, but the young girls too. And the boys. They say I take my pleasures wherever I can find them.’ I swallowed nervously and looked away. ‘There are those who even have the temerity to suggest that I have taken the Tsaritsa to my bed. And that I have penetrated each of the Grand Duchesses in turn, like a rutting bull. What do you think of that, Georgy Daniilovich?’
I looked back at him now, my lip curling in distaste. I felt an urge to strike him, to turn him from my room, but I was powerless beneath that dark gaze of his. A chill ran through my body and I considered running towards the door, flinging it open and fleeing along the corridor, anything to be away from this man. And yet I could not make that step. Despite how much his words disgusted me, I felt captivated by him, as if my legs would not obey me even if I commanded them to run. A silence lay between us for a minute, perhaps more, and he seemed to enjoy my discomfort, for he smiled to himself and laughed very low while he shook his head.
‘My enemies are liars, of course,’ he said finally, extending his arms as if he was about to embrace me. ‘Fantasists, every one of them. Heathens. I am a man of God, nothing more, but they portray me as a fellow steeped in licentiousness. They are hypocrites too, for you’ve said it yourself, one moment I am an honourable man, the next I am without virtue. One cannot be a starets and Rasputin simultaneously, don’t you agree? I don’t allow such people to injure me, of course. Do you know why?’
I shook my head, but said nothing.
‘Because I have been put on this earth for a greater purpose than they,’ he explained. ‘Do you ever feel like that, Georgy Daniilovich? That you have been sent here for a reason?’
‘Sometimes,’ I whispered.
‘And what do you think that reason is?’
I thought about it and opened my mouth to reply, before changing my mind and closing it again. I had replied sometimes but in truth I had never considered the matter before; only when he asked me the question did I realize that yes, I did believe that I had been brought to this place for a purpose which I did not yet understand. The notion was enough to make me feel even more unsettled and when I looked up, the starets was smiling that horrible smile once again, the strangest detail of which was that, much as he repulsed me, I found it impossible to remove my eyes from his face.
‘I said earlier that you and I are alike,’ he said, the dark pools around his pupils swirling before me in the candlelight, as malevolent and destructive as the Neva in the heart of winter.
‘I don’t believe we are,’ I said.
‘But you are the protector of the boy and I am the guardian of the mother. Can’t you see that? And why do we care for them so? Because we love our country. Isn’t it true? You can’t allow any harm to come to the boy, or the Tsar rules without an heir of his own issue. And at this time of crisis too. War is a terrible thing, Georgy Daniilovich, don’t you agree?’
‘I don’t allow harm to come to Alexei,’ I protested. ‘I would lay down my life for him if I had to.’
‘And how many weeks did he suffer at Mogilev?’ he asked then. ‘How many weeks did they all suffer – the boy, the sisters, the mother, the father? They thought he would die, you know that. You lay awake at night listening to his screams, just as we all did. How did they sound to you, like noise or music?’
I swallowed. Everything he was saying was the truth. The days and weeks that had followed the Tsarevich’s fall had been nightmarish. Never had I seen a person suffer as he had. When I was permitted to enter his chamber to talk to him I did not see the cheerful, lively boy with whom I had formed an almost fraternal connection. Instead, I found a skeletal child, his limbs twisted and contorted upon the bed, his face yellow, his skin soaked in a perspiration that would return no matter how often cold cloths were pressed to his face. I saw a boy who looked at me through eyes that recognized nobody but yet begged me to help him, an innocent who reached out with what little strength he had and screamed at me, imploring me to do something, anything, to take his torment away. I had never witnessed such distress, had never even believed that the agonies he suffered could exist. How he survived it, I did not know. Every day and night I expected him to succumb to the pain and allow himself to slip away. But he never did. He had a strength which was quite unexpected. It was the second time I had realized that yes, this boy could be a Tsar.
And through it all, through those three weeks of torture, the Tsaritsa, that good woman, had almost never left his side. She sat beside him, holding his hand, talking to him, whispering to him, encouraging him. We were not friends, she and I, but by God, I could recognize a loving and devoted mother when I saw one, all the more so for having never had one myself. By the time it was over and the relief finally came, by the time Alexei began to improve and his strength started to return, she had aged noticeably. Her hair had turned grey, her skin had become blotched with stress. That one incident, for which I had been entirely responsible, had altered her irreparably.
‘If I could have helped him, I would have,’ I told the starets. ‘The
re was nothing I could do.’
‘Of course not,’ he said, extending his hands and smiling. ‘But you must never blame yourself for what happened. Indeed, that is why I came to visit you tonight, Georgy. To thank you.’
I frowned and stared at him. ‘To thank me?’ I asked.
‘But of course. Her Majesty, the Tsaritsa, has been much occupied with the health of her son of late. She is concerned that she might have appeared … unfriendly towards you.’
‘I thought no such thing, Father Gregory,’ I lied. ‘She is the Empress. She may treat me as she wishes.’
‘Yes, but we thought it important that you understand that you are valued.’
‘We?’
‘The Tsaritsa and I.’
I raised an eyebrow, surprised by the formulation. ‘Well, gratitude is not necessary,’ I said finally, confused by his meaning, unconvinced that the Tsaritsa had ever said any such thing or sent him on this mission at all. ‘And please reassure Her Majesty that I will do everything in my power to ensure that no such incident ever takes place again.’
‘You’re not just a handsome boy, are you?’ he asked quietly, taking a step towards me so that only a few inches separated us and my back was pressed against the wall. ‘You’re also a very loyal one.’
‘I hope so,’ I replied, wishing that he would leave.
‘Boys your age are not always so loyal,’ he said, stepping closer still, and now I could smell the foulness of his breath and feel his body beginning to press against my own. My stomach turned; I felt a sudden conviction that he had been sent to murder me, but instead he simply turned his head a little and smiled, a ghastly expression of doom, and held my gaze with those terrible eyes. ‘You are loyal to the entire family,’ he purred quietly, running a finger from the top of my shoulder along my arm. ‘Here, you took a bullet for one,’ he whispered, hesitating at precisely the spot where Kolek’s bullet had passed through my shoulder. ‘And here you would take a bullet for the boy,’ he said, pressing the palm of his hand flat against my chest, my heart pounding quickly beneath his touch. ‘But where will you be when the bullets come in the future?’