by John Boyne
‘He’s not so much your friend that he told you what was happening.’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘He will be in pain right now. I can’t let him go without speaking to him. I betrayed a friend once before and it is all that I can do to endure the shame of it. I won’t do it again, no matter what you say.’
She stared at me and looked as if she wanted to make further protest, but could recognize an equal determination in my face and so finally nodded, but looked anxious nevertheless.
‘We must be careful from now on,’ she said as I opened the door. ‘I couldn’t bear it if they found out. If you were sent away from me. No one can ever know.’
I rushed over and held her in my arms and she began to weep, half for us, I suspected, and half for her sister’s broken heart.
‘No one will know,’ I confirmed, already worried because someone already did.
I found Sergei Stasyovich just as he was leaving the palace, held under guard by two other young officers, friends of both of ours, with whom we had got drunk on many leisure evenings. They looked miserable to have been entrusted with this task. I begged them for a few minutes alone with my friend and they agreed, stepping away from us so that we could say our goodbyes.
‘I can’t believe it,’ I said, staring at his tired, unhappy face. He wore a haunted expression, as if he could not quite believe that the events of the previous few hours had taken place at all.
‘Try, Georgy,’ he replied with a smile.
‘But do you really have to leave us? Won’t they …’ I looked across at our friends, his guards. ‘Won’t they set you free somewhere along the way? You could go anywhere. You could start a new life.’
‘They cannot,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘It would be more than their lives were worth. There will be someone at the other end to receive me. He will write to the Tsar. These are their orders, after all. And I cannot disobey. I’m sorry to be saying goodbye to you, Georgy,’ he added, his voice catching a little in his misery. ‘I don’t know if I have been much of a friend to you—’
‘Or I to you,’ I said quickly.
‘Perhaps we have both had our minds elsewhere, yes?’ He smiled at me and I felt myself grow pale. He knew, of course. He knew of me what I had not had the wit to realize of him. ‘Just be careful,’ he insisted, lowering his voice as he looked around nervously. ‘He will wait for his moment. And he will cut you down, as he did me.’
‘He?’ I asked, frowning. ‘He who?’
‘Rasputin!’ he hissed, pulling me to him now and wrapping me in a bear hug. ‘The author of my misfortunes. Rasputin knows everything, Georgy,’ he whispered into my ear. ‘He treats us all as if we are nothing more than players in his endless games. From the Tsar and the Tsaritsa right down to the insignificant people like us. He has toyed with me for months.’
‘In what way?’ I asked as we separated.
He shook his head and offered a bitter laugh. ‘It doesn’t matter. It shames me to think of it. But this is not a man who you want to know your secrets,’ he added. ‘This is not a man at all, I think. He is a devil. I should have killed him when I had the chance.’
‘But you could never do such a thing,’ I said, appalled. ‘Not without cause.’
‘And why not? What will my life be now without her? What will hers be without me? He’s up there right now, I promise you, laughing at us both. In my foolishness I believed he would not betray us if … if …’
‘If what, Sergei?’
‘If I did what he asked of me. I should have killed him, Georgy. I should have slit his throat from ear to ear.’
I looked up towards the palace windows, half expecting to see the dark shadow that I had observed there on more than one occasion in the past, but there was no sign of Father Gregory now. I wished that I could see the note that was left for the Tsar, examine the envelope, the letter paper, the handwriting. I could picture it perfectly.
The perfect Cyrillic handwriting.
‘I must go,’ said Sergei, looking across at the guards, who had brought three horses around now. ‘We won’t meet again. But think of what I have said. My life is over now. Mine and Marie’s. But yours and Anastasia’s … you still have time.’
I opened my mouth, ready to protest, but I did not know what he meant. And so I said nothing more, simply watched as he rode away from the palace towards his lonely, desperate future.
Father Gregory. The monk. The starets. Rasputin. Call him what you will. His hand was in this business, of course it was. He had manipulated Sergei Stasyovich in who knew how many ways. And finally my friend had said no and had turned against him. And this was his reward.
I had already tried, unsuccessfully, to block the events of that night from my mind. In truth, I remembered little of it. The alcohol. The drugs. The potions he had given me. The other players in his tableau. I could not even remember everything that I had done. Except that I was ashamed of it. Except that I regretted it. Except that I wished to God that I had never picked up that envelope off the floor of my bedroom.
The only thing that was important to me now was Anastasia. I could not allow him to do to us what he had done to Sergei Stasyovich and Marie. I could not allow him to separate us. And so I admit it. I confess it now, once and for all. I became the man I never thought I would be. I determined that he would not destroy us both.
Finding enemies of Father Gregory was not difficult; they were legion. His influence over every section of society was quite extraordinary. During the years that he had spent in St Petersburg, he had gained enough power to remove both ministers and prime ministers from their offices. His uncontrollable lust had brought him to the centre of more marital breakdowns than could be counted. He had incurred the enmity of the ruling classes for turning the people against the autocracy, for while the great ladies of society, including the Tsaritsa herself, might have been swayed by his hypnotic and seductive control, the moujiks in the towns and villages of Russia were not.
The wonder was not that there were so many people willing to kill him; the wonder was that he lasted so long in the first place.
The days following the revelation of Marie and Sergei Stasyovich’s affair were anxious ones. I was driven half crazy with worry that the starets would find some reason to inform the Tsar of my own relationship with his youngest daughter. Combined with this, I was saddened by the loss of my friend and concerned for Anastasia, who was tending to her grieving and disgraced sister and seemed to be suffering an equal amount of pain.
It seemed impossible that I could continue with such an existence, constantly terrified of every knock at my door, afraid to walk the corridors of the palace in case I ran into my tormentor. And so, a few evenings after Sergei’s exile, without stopping to consider the consequences of my actions, I went to the armoury and took a pistol from the racks, and waited until dark before making my way to the house that I had visited not three weeks before, on the evening when I had debased myself for the starets’ pleasure. I was concerned that I would be seen and so disguised myself well, wearing a heavy cloak that I had purchased from a stall the day before, a hat and muffler, a long scarf. No one would have recognized me or taken me for anything other than a busy merchant, making his way quickly through the streets, aiming for nothing more than to get home and out of the cold. Even to walk those streets again, even to hear the sound of my hand knocking on that black wooden door-frame filled me with shame and remorse; I could feel my gorge rise at the memories of what I had done and what I had tried so desperately to forget. My innocence had been lost, I no longer knew whether I was even worthy of Anastasia’s love.
My hands trembled not just with the frost in the air but with the fear of what I was planning to do, and I kept one hand tightly gripped to the pistol concealed within my greatcoat as I waited for my enemy to appear. Would I shoot him where he stood, I wondered? Would I allow him to say one last prayer, to beg forgiveness, to supplicate himself before whatever god he held
dear, in the way that he had forced so many to supplicate themselves before him.
I heard footsteps growing louder on the corridor within and my heart raced with anxiety, my slick fingers sticking on the pistol trigger, and I thought that no, if I was to do it at all, I should do it when he appeared, before he knew what was happening and could seduce me to mercy. To my surprise, however, it was not he who opened the door, but the prostitute whose pleasures I had indulged in a few weeks before. She wore a vacant expression on her face, not recognizing me at first, and I could tell that she was either drunk or had lost her reason from who knew what concoction.
‘Where is he?’ I asked, my voice deep and dreadful as I committed myself to my final purpose.
‘Where is who?’ she replied, unmoved by either my appearance or my determination. I was only one of many the starets had brought here. Dozens, probably. Hundreds.
‘You know who,’ I insisted. ‘The priest. The one they call Rasputin.’
‘But he’s not here,’ she sighed, then shrugged her shoulders and offered a drunken laugh. ‘He’s left me all alone,’ she added in a dreamlike tone.
‘Then where is he?’ I demanded, reaching forward and shaking her by the shoulders; she grew angry then and stared at me with hate in her eyes, before thinking better of it and smiling.
‘The prince came for him,’ she said with a shrug.
‘The prince? What prince? Tell me his name!’
‘Yusupov,’ she said. ‘It was hours ago now. I don’t know where they went.’
‘Of course you do,’ I said, curling my free hand into a fist and showing it to her without remorse. ‘Tell me where they’ve gone or I swear to you—’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, spitting out the words. ‘He didn’t tell me. He could be anywhere. What are you going to do anyway, Pasha?’ she continued in a mocking tone. ‘You think you can hurt me? Is that really what you want to do to me?’
I stared at her, shaken that she recognized me after all, but I said nothing, simply spun around in the street so that I didn’t have to look at her.
‘The Moika Palace,’ I said quietly, thinking of Felix Yusupov’s home. It was the most likely place for them to have gone; after all, the Moika was infamous for its parties and debauched behaviour. It was a place, I thought, where Father Gregory would feel very much at home. I looked at the whore one last time and she began to speak again, to taunt me, but I heard not a word of it, turning away from her and heading in the direction of the river.
I made my way towards the banks of the Moika River and crossed at Gorokhovaya Ulitsa, passing the bright lights of the Mariinsky Palace as I made my way towards the Yusupov home. The river was mostly frozen over, the ice crashed up against itself by the walled banks, freezing in great white-peaked caps, like a snowy mountain range as viewed from above. I encountered not a single soul on that long, chilly walk; all the better, I realized, for the outcome of my actions could only result in my own death – particularly if the Tsaritsa was to hear of them. There were many who would applaud me for what I was planning to do, of course, but they would be a silent majority, unwilling to stand behind me if I was brought to trial. And if I was found guilty, then I would necessarily end my story as his final victim, swinging from a tree in the woods outside St Petersburg.
Finally, the Moika Palace rose up before me. I was pleased to see that there were no guards patrolling the grounds. Perhaps ten, fifteen years earlier, there would have been dozens parading the forecourt, but not any more. It was a sign of how far the ruling classes had fallen. The idea that the palaces might not even last another year was in common parlance. In the meantime, the wealthy were living their debauched lives while they still could, drinking their wine, gorging on their meat, sodomizing their whores. Their end was coming and they knew it, but they were too drunk to care.
I made my way to the rear of the palace and was about to try one of the doors when I heard a gunshot from within. Startled, I stood there as if I had been turned to stone. Had it really been a gunshot or was I imagining things? I swallowed nervously and looked around, but there was no one in sight. I could hear voices shouting, laughing, inside the palace the sound of people hushing others, and then to my horror another gunshot. And another. And another. Four in total. I looked around and just at that moment a great light illuminated me as the door opened and an unknown man threw himself upon me, his arm around my neck, the blade of his knife pressing against the skin of my throat.
‘Who are you?’ he hissed. ‘Tell me quick or you die.’
‘A friend,’ I stuttered, desperate to get the words out without extending my throat too far, lest the knife bury itself in my neck.
‘A friend?’ he said. ‘You don’t even know to whom you are speaking.’
‘I’m …’ I hesitated. Should I identify myself as the Tsar’s man? Or an intimate of Rasputin’s? An enemy, perhaps? How could I know whose body controlled this arm?
‘Dmitri, no,’ came a second voice and a man emerged from the palace whom I recognized immediately as Prince Felix Yusupov. ‘Let him go. I know this boy.’ I was released immediately but held my ground, running a hand across my throat, searching for any cuts, but I was unharmed. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked me. ‘I know you, don’t I? You’re the Tsarevich’s bodyguard.’
‘Georgy Daniilovich,’ I said, acknowledging this.
‘Well, what do you want here? It’s late. Has the Tsar sent you?’
‘No,’ I said quickly, shaking my head. ‘No one sent me. I came of my own volition.’
‘But why? Who are you looking for?’
The man who had held me a moment before came around in front of me and I stared at him with murderous intent. I had seen him on a few occasions in the past, a tall, unhappy-looking fellow. A Grand Duke, I thought, or perhaps a Count. He glared at me, daring me to challenge him. ‘Answer him,’ he snapped. ‘Who were you looking for?’
‘The starets,’ I admitted. ‘I looked for him at his home and he wasn’t there. I thought he might be here.’
Prince Yusupov stared at me in surprise. ‘Rasputin?’ he asked quietly. ‘And why were you looking for him?’
‘To kill him!’ I shouted, no longer caring who knew it. I was damned if I was going to be a pawn in any more of their games. ‘I came to murder him and I’ll do it, even if I have to take both of you first.’
The Prince and his companion looked at each other and then back at me, before bursting out laughing. I felt like shooting them both on the spot. What did they take me for, some child having a tantrum? I was here to kill the starets and I was damned if I would leave without doing so.
‘And why, young Georgy Daniilovich, would you want to do that?’ he asked.
‘Because he is a monster,’ I said. ‘Because if he is not destroyed, then the rest of us will be.’
‘The rest of us will be anyway,’ said the Prince with a disaffected smile. ‘There’s nothing any of us can do to stop that. But as for the mad monk … well, I’m afraid you’re too late.’
I didn’t know whether I felt relief or dismay. ‘He is gone then?’ I asked, imagining him fleeing along the streets back into the arms of his whores.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘But he was here?’
‘He was,’ admitted the Prince. ‘I brought him here earlier tonight. I gave him wine. I gave him cakes. I laced them with enough cyanide to kill a dozen men, let alone some stinking moujik from Pokrovskoye.’
I stared at him and opened my eyes wide in surprise. ‘Then he is dead?’ I asked, astonished. ‘You have already killed him?’
The two men exchanged another look and shrugged almost apologetically. ‘You would think so, wouldn’t you?’ he asked, smiling at me. His manner was not that of one who had attempted murder and I wondered whether he might be drunk or out of his senses too. ‘But it had no effect on him. He is not human, you see,’ he added, as if this was a simple fact of life, something of which every civilized person was aware. ‘He is the
devil’s creature. The cyanide did not kill him.’
‘Then what did?’ I asked, a chill running through my veins.
‘This,’ replied the Prince with a smile, removing his pistol from inside his tunic, and sure enough, smoke was still snaking from the tip. I immediately recalled the sound of gunfire that had almost led me to run away from the Moika not ten minutes before.
‘You shot him,’ I said flatly, chilled by the reality of the words, despite the fact that it had been my intention anyway.
‘Of course. I’ll show you if you like.’
He led the way back inside the palace and we walked a short distance to a dark corridor, illuminated on either side by tall white candles. In the centre of the floor, lying face-down, was the unmistakable figure of Father Gregory, his black cloak spread around him, his arms splayed out in a cartoonish pose, his long hair stringy and filthy on the marble floor.
‘I decided that if poison couldn’t do the job, then bullets would,’ said the Prince as I stepped closer to the corpse and looked down. ‘I put one in his stomach, one in his leg, one in his kidneys and one in his chest. Someone should have done it years ago. Perhaps we wouldn’t all be in the mess we are now if someone had.’
I was barely listening to him, but staring at the body instead. I was glad that someone else had done the job and wondered for a moment whether I would have had the fortitude to commit so heinous a crime. I felt no happiness though, no satisfaction that he was gone. Instead, my head was filled with nausea and revulsion and I realized that I wanted nothing more than to be back in the safety of my palace bed, for however much longer it was to be mine. No, given the choice I would have been in the arms of my love, my Anastasia, but for now that was impossible.
‘I’m glad you did it,’ I said to the Prince, turning to reassure him, lest he kill me too for witnessing the crime. ‘He deserved everything he—’
I didn’t get to finish the sentence for at that moment a sound emerged from Father Gregory’s body, his eyes opened wide, and he began to laugh, to screech, to emit a sound that was more animal than human. I gasped as his mouth fixed into a horrendous smile, his lips parting to show his yellow teeth and dark tongue. I wanted to scream or run, but could do neither. Within a second, the Prince discharged a bullet into his heart. His body jumped, collapsed and slumped.