by John Burke
“Very good, Madame.”
“Let him ask for whatever he wishes. Anything within reason. You will do that?”
Sonia bowed her head submissively.
The Tsarina got up. As Sonia moved to her side to escort her to the door, the Tsarina’s full weight swayed against her. They stood still for a few seconds. Alarmed, Sonia said: “Are you all right, Madame?”
“I have not been feeling at all well of late. The shock of Alexy’s illness, and the strain, the . . . no, I have not been at all well.”
“Madame, I’ll fetch the doctor—”
“The doctor? Doctors . . . what good did any of them do for Alexy? What good have any of them ever done?” The Tsarina moved slowly to the door, leaning on Sonia’s arm. “No, I was wondering . . . this Rasputin . . . do you think I could go and see him?”
It was like a faint, remote bell—not a vigorously clanging bell such as they had heard clamoring above the city earlier today, but a distant alarm tolling its insistent warning. The Tsarina had spoken as Sonia had heard herself speak: the words seemed to be forced upon her, sieved through her from elsewhere. It was all part of this eerie scheme, all leading towards an inevitable fulfilment. A devil walked in St. Petersburg. No; he did not even walk . . . he sat and waited, twisting the threads of his perverse ambitions between his fingers.
Sonia made one desperate attempt to speak out. “Are you sure, Madame, that it would be wise? To entrust yourself to the methods of an unknown—to believe too readily in . . . in . . .”
She was shouted down. “Unknown? But you knew of him. You brought him here. And after what he achieved, should we not trust him? Go. Speak to him, and bring me word. I want to know where I may meet him.”
In a turmoil of apprehension and gladness Sonia went to the dismal attic. For thirty minutes she did not even mention her errand. For thirty minutes she cried and laughed helplessly on the greasy bed. Then, when he had finished with her, she told him why she had come here.
Rasputin nodded. None of it was any surprise to him. Once again she had a vision of those long fingers of his jerking strings while he watched the puppets dance. He had decreed what would happen and it was no surprise to him that it should now be happening.
“Tell her,” he said, “she cannot possibly come to see me. Not here. For obvious reasons.” He gestured round the room and chuckled. Then he leaned towards Sonia and chose his words with care. “Tell her that somewhere will have to be found for me. Somewhere more suitable for our meeting. Somewhere I can practise my . . . good works. Eh? Do you understand, little Sonia?”
“I understand.”
“Good.” Rasputin waved her away as though she were the lowest of his servants. “Then you may go.”
7
The hall was magnificent. Duchesses in their white satin could have sat on the gilded chairs and believed that they were at a fashionable reception in one of the more ornate embassies. Beyond the closed doors it was easy to envisage long corridors with fine glass and florid scrollwork, as colorful as the blazing walls of the Winter Palace. The dark woodwork around the massive fireplace was carved into a convolution of leafy shapes. Light glowed from a dozen finely wrought brackets.
“Not bad, eh, Boris? Not bad for a peasant.”
Zargo took a few faltering steps across the marble floor. He had known from the first moment of their meeting that Rasputin was no ordinary mortal. He was a man whose arrogance would achieve most of his ends simply because more diffident, more civilized people would crumble before him. Zargo had no illusions. It was the ruthless who got to the top, not necessarily the gifted. But this transformation was the most swift and startling he had ever encountered.
“You’re lucky it all worked,” he said enviously.
“Lucky? This is only the beginning. She has given me this, but what is it really? Just a house. A house—which she can well afford. She has all Russia.”
For a fleeting instant Zargo caught a glimpse of the vertiginous depths of the man’s fanaticism. He was shocked. And he had thought for so long that nothing in this world could ever shock him. He had lost his own position by his own folly and had long ago ceased to repine: knowing his own madness, he sensed the different grades of madness in other people, and accepted that this was the way of the world. He did not so much forgive as dismiss. Understand, laugh, weep . . . and dismiss it all. Oblivion was not too difficult to achieve. As a doctor he had known much. As a discredited doctor and chronic drunkard, he felt that he knew even more. And when he found himself knowing more than he wished to encompass, there was always the forgetfulness of alcohol. But in his wildest drunken dreams he had never encountered anyone like Rasputin. Looking at Rasputin’s hand he saw a hand that craved to draw all Russia into its grasp.
The man was mad. There had been many madmen in Zargo’s life, but none so awe-inspiring as this one.
Rasputin clapped him on the back. “She has so much to give, my friend. Come!”
He showed Zargo round the villa. It was lavishly furnished in the finest contemporary taste, with pieces from France and from the East. There were few native Russian influences—the Tsarina, who had specified how the building should be equipped for its holy occupant, might bow to the mystic powers of fakirs from the steppes, but she was intuitively opposed to the coarser manifestations of peasant taste. As rulers of the Russias, she and her husband were disturbed by the existence of the rabble, those untold millions of their people whom they referred to secretly and apprehensively as “the dark ones”. A holy man might come from those cloudy sources, but nothing should be done to remind him of his ancestry. If he was to aspire to the heights he would learn the ways and tastes of the western capital.
“You will stay with me,” said Rasputin, bounding up a staircase in great leaps. “I shall need an assistant. I feel that we shall entertain a great deal. Entertain . . . in a way.”
It was a prophecy as accurate as any he had so far made. Word soon got round that the holy man who had cured the Tsarevitch was now grandly ensconced in a fine villa. It was rumored that the Tsarina had not merely presented him with this resplendent establishment but that she herself came frequently to visit him. Frequently and privately. It was rumored . . . oh, many things were rumored. The only way to get close to the truth was to visit the house and seek help from the healer and draw one’s own conclusions later.
The fashionable ladies began to come to Rasputin. Once they had started coming they found it hard to stop. It was soon said that he could work miracles simply by touching an arm, a cheek, a foot. It was hinted that his touch had an even more remarkable effect elsewhere, though such hints never became outright confessions. At first it proved difficult to persuade him to accept any fee for his services, but within a few weeks he had been coaxed into setting a figure of fifty rubles a consultation. It was less embarrassing when things were made so definite. Fifty rubles was a great deal for a brief session with him, but at least it avoided another embarrassment: one could be sure that only people of one’s own social class would be encountered in that sumptuous hall which served as a waiting-room.
Women whose husbands asked them what happened at Rasputin’s consultations were honestly bewildered. Among themselves they would talk enthusiastically of the wonders he wrought, the health he restored to them . . . but when they were bluntly questioned about his unique methods they found that they could not remember. He conquered pain and drew disease out of them. It was all done without potions and without the harsh butchery of the surgeon’s knife. But quite how it was done was something no one could say. The bishop might have his doubts about the purity of the monk’s soul, and the physicians of the Court might cast dark suspicions on his methods, which savored more of black magic than of medicine; but the ladies continued to visit him.
“Did you know the Tsarina comes here twice a week now? They say he has great influence over her.”
“That’s not all they say . . .”
Zargo could have answered the rumors if he ha
d chosen to do so. He did not choose, for rumors were good for business. But as Rasputin’s assistant, trim now in dark, well-pressed trousers and a white jacket, he saw all the comings and goings, saw when respect for the monk became abject devotion, saw when Rasputin wanted a woman and when he found a woman a nuisance . . . and saw that while the Tsarina worshipped him with an uncritical spiritual devotion she would never have contemplated the coarseness of a physical relationship.
Let the others believe what they wished to believe. Let them indulge in the titillation of gossip. They were wrong, but it did no harm. And in any case the Tsarina was more humbly subservient to Rasputin in this way than she would have been if he had played the part of the domineering lover.
Zargo’s cynicism about the human race was justified a thousand times over. He enjoyed the spectacle. It was always good to have one’s prejudices confirmed. Yet even he had his moments of doubt. He could respect a flamboyant charlatan who imposed himself on others; he would gladly serve a man who offered him in return all the creature comforts that had been lacking for so long and at the same time took him into his confidence as an intellectual equal; but he felt strangely uneasy when Rasputin went so far as to invite him to eavesdrop, to spy, to witness the way in which he operated. It ought to have been an added pleasure but somehow Zargo found it upsetting. A confidence trickster ought to work slyly and privately, not to exhibit himself and his methods with arrogant disregard for his victims and for the critical susceptibilities of his audience.
When Zargo showed the Tsarina into the inner study, he was accustomed to leaving the two alone together. But at the end of the first month Rasputin indicated casually that he should stay. They were partners, were they not? Without speaking a word, Rasputin managed to convey that they were inseparable now and that, whatever happened, responsibility for the consequences must be shared. Zargo was both flattered and frightened. When the Tsarina was there he retreated unobtrusively into the recess where he had set up a small laboratory—a joy which, it had to he admitted, he owned entirely to Grigori Rasputin. However he might strive to detach himself and pretend that he was not a party to the murmured insinuations which Rasputin poured into the Tsarina’s ear, he knew that simply by being here, by remaining silent and assisting this wild-eyed creature from Siberia, he was tacitly pledging his support. When Rasputin wished the lights to be lowered he would nod to Zargo; and Zargo would obediently dim the room into a mysterious dusk.
He knew that Rasputin was visited regularly by one of the Tsarina’s ladies in waiting. And he pretended even to himself not to know. If she told Rasputin things he wished to learn, that was a matter for the two of them. If Rasputin used the knowledge to startle the Tsarina with his insight, it was a harmless trick. Harmless . . . ? Profitable for Rasputin and Zargo, anyway.
He also knew that Rasputin lusted after the second lady in waiting, the shy young Vanessa. He also thought, with malicious private satisfaction, that he was unlikely to dominate that one. Sonia might give in to him, but the demure Vanessa was quite a different matter. When on several occasions Vanessa accompanied the Tsarina to Rasputin’s villa, the gleam in the man’s eyes told Zargo that he would prefer to be closeted with the girl rather than with the Empress. But so far he had made no move. Power came first. Absolute power would make the conquest of a mere girl easy.
Zargo watched. He took the good things that were offered, and watched, and made his own guesses about Rasputin’s motives.
From time to time Rasputin idly mentioned to his royal patient that word had come to him of some injustice. There was unrest in the city because of some trifling matter which could have been so easily adjusted if only the Tsar had heard of it in time. Perhaps the Tsarina could speak to her husband? Terrorism had been a regrettable commonplace for some years now. It could all have been avoided by sterner measures on the one hand and more tolerance on the other. It was a matter of knowing, of understanding, of feeling the pulse of the land. Rasputin knew. Rasputin had an awareness of currents of unrest. He knew intuitively the distinction between discontented patriots and the truly subversive elements in the country. He dropped a name here, frowned there; and ministerial changes were made, Court advisers were dismissed or promoted.
The Tsarina listened to Rasputin and acted on what she heard. From the villa his influence spread out, slowly at first and then with gathering momentum.
When his advice was not taken, perhaps because the Tsarina had been argued out of a decision by the concerted efforts of outraged ministers, he would sometimes accept the defeat with a philosophical shrug which endeared him to her and sometimes plunge into a black, misanthropic mood. Then he would prophesy disaster for the land. At such times she would timidly try to draw his attention to herself, or worry about his own peace of mind. “Are you happy . . . is there anything you want . . . are the conditions right for your work?” These were the eager questions she asked.
Zargo stood in the doorway of his laboratory one afternoon as the Tsarina recited her personal aches and pains and the troubles of state. It was a familiar catalogue. As Rasputin was in an unresponsive mood, she became querulous.
“Are you no longer happy here, Grigori?”
“Happiness is not for those of my calling. We are surrounded by sickness and suffering—we would have to be callous indeed to enjoy our own trivial happiness. But I am . . . shall we say content? I can do my work. That is enough for me.”
“You are so good, Grigori.”
“And you look so pale,” he said tenderly. “How are you feeling now?”
“Terrible.” She yearned at him. “No, I am better . . . a little better. Oh, I don’t know. I seem to feel well only when I am with you, Grigori.”
He moved closer and stood above her chair.
“That is because you relax when you are here. Relax, then. Allow the cares and worries of your taxing life to melt away. Let them flow out of you.” He placed his hands on her shoulders and began to massage them gently in a steady rhythm. “Allow your pains to leave your body and enter mine. I will take them on myself. So . . . there . . .”
The Tsarina moaned and rocked from side to side.
Rasputin glanced past her at Zargo. With a jerk of the head he indicated the electric chandelier above him. It was one of his marvels, exciting the admiration of all who came to the villa. Zargo reached inside his little den and turned the control on the wall so that a number of the lights dimmed, leaving one beam focused on the Tsarina. Rasputin guided her imperceptibly to one side so that the light was directly in her eyes.
“Look at me.”
“I can’t. I—”
“Into my eyes.”
“Your eyes,” she murmured.
“Drain your thoughts of everything except my eyes.”
“Yes, Grigori.” She was almost inaudible.
“Now sleep.”
The Tsarina rocked very slowly from side to side and then was still. Rasputin stood back and contemplated her. He passed one hand in front of her face. She did not move. He looked at Zargo.
“Boris”—it was little more than a whisper, but quite clear in that silent room where all life seemed for the moment to have been suspended—“I have an idea. I’m going to have you made Court Physician.”
It was so fantastic that Zargo thought he was being mocked. He said bleakly:
“I was struck off the medical register a long time ago. I am not allowed to practise.”
“I’ll have you struck on again. I need you in Court. Sonia is of little further use. Besides, she’s becoming a bore.”
Zargo realized that this was serious. Wild hope surged up in him and then ebbed away. “It’s madness,” he said. “The Doctors’ Council will never stand for it.”
“They will do what she tells them.”
“I don’t like it.”
Rasputin grinned derisively. His self-confidence was overpowering.
“But this is just the first step, Boris. You might then become a Minister of State . . . anything
! I could do it, you know.”
Until now Zargo had been carried along by the man’s fiendish energy, and had not been reluctant to taste the fruits of comfort. Their savor had been an agreeable change after the befuddled years of deprivation. Now he became aware that this was not just an eccentric game. There was a real menace behind those smouldering eyes.
“Yes,” he said gravely, “I know you could.”
The Tsarina was quite still and oblivious. She was no more than a richly arrayed doll who would jerk and squeak to Rasputin’s tune. Zargo had never before been conscious of any instinctive loyalty to the self-indulgent royal house; but now he felt that Rasputin’s contempt for the woman was in some way a contempt for their whole land and people.
He tried to frame a protest, but Rasputin was already turning back towards the Tsarina.
“Your Doctor Siglov is no use to you. He is no good.”
“No good,” echoed the Tsarina flatly.
“No!” said Zargo. “Please don’t . . .”
“You must get rid of him,” Rasputin went on, “and insist on having my friend Doctor Zargo as your personal physician. Do you understand that?”
“I understand.”
Rasputin chuckled. “Congratulations, Doctor.”
Zargo could not meet his gaze. He went back to his laboratory and stood there trembling. He desperately wanted a drink but he was going to resist the craving. Once he started drinking, Rasputin would make more and more demands on him, would extract promises from him that would sooner or later have to be redeemed. Rasputin had already started him sliding down a slope that was steeper than he had thought. He had no desire to finish up at the bottom in a crumpled, drunken heap.
Behind him he heard the snap of Rasputin’s fingers and the cooing, sardonic voice.
“How does that feel?”
“Better,” murmured the Tsarina. “Oh, so much better. You are so wonderful to me, Grigori.”