Standing there in my cloak, I froze. Which door led to safety?
As the pounding steps from below grew closer and closer, I lunged at one doorknob and twisted it. Nothing. It was, I realized, a false door. I tried another. It too was false. Flushing with panic, I tried a third. The knob twisted, I pulled the door open, and I was immediately struck by the overwhelming beat of the American march from the gramophone. I was about to step through the door and into a salon of sorts when I thought I heard footsteps in that room. Was someone in there? Fearing discovery, I let go of that door and leaped at the next. To my great relief, the next one opened as well, revealing a shallow closet, into which I quickly pressed myself. I didn’t even have time to pull the door fully shut behind me before the men emerged from the stairs. Through a slim crack I saw them all, and I was not surprised that I knew most of them.
“Thank God that reptile is no more,” said a handsome young man, emerging and passing just inches in front of the closet.
It was, of course, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, the Tsar’s own nephew, dressed smartly in military uniform. Behind him came his dearest friend, Prince Felix, who was nervously brushing his small black mustache.
“Why in the devil didn’t he eat the pastries or at least take some wine?” demanded the prince, his voice shaking. “You don’t think he knew about the cyanide, do you? I mean, he couldn’t have, could he?”
“It doesn’t make any difference, he’s gone now. And obviously very mortal, after all.”
Huddled in the closet, I nearly fainted. So I’d been right about these two. I’d been right about their hatred and their intent. And now my father was dead. Good God, why hadn’t I warned him sooner? Why had I waited even a minute or two, let alone all these hours?
A man dressed, I thought, in a lieutenant’s uniform followed next. Then came a fourth, this one dressed in plain clothes. I didn’t recognize either of them, but the fifth, a bald man with a reddish beard and pointed mustache, wearing a khaki military jacket, was entirely familiar. It was none other than Vladimir Purishkevich, who was known across the country from his portrait, which regularly appeared in the journals.
“We shall celebrate, gentlemen, the end of the Elder,” said Purishkevich, “and give thanks to God that the hands of royal youth have not been stained with that dirty blood.”
Oh, God. Oh, Lord in Heaven. What had happened down there? What had those men done to my father?
Wanting nothing more than to attack them, I nearly burst out of the closet right then and there. Instead, I held myself back and only leaped from the closet once the five men had disappeared through the mirrored door and into the salon. Shaking so terribly I could barely walk, I charged back down the stairs. Reaching the very bottom, I came to a heavy oak door, which I hurled open. The first thing that hit me was the smell of fresh paint. The room, a sophisticated bonbonnière, had obviously only just been completed, yet it looked straight out of an ancient Russian palace, with its low arched ceiling, a thick carved column, heavy moldings, and walls painted dark brown and red.
“Papa?” I called into the dimly lit space, softly and hesitantly.
Stepping in, I entered an otherwise cozy room. My eyes scanned this way and that, somehow taking it all in: a warm fire burning quaintly in the granite fireplace, a gorgeous ivory crucifix placed on the center of the mantelpiece, a hand-carved chest, red brocade curtains draping from the small windows, and a tea table covered with an assortment of petits fours, little pink and brown pastries that had obviously been chosen because they complemented the colors of the room.
The first thing that crossed my mind was how stupid these men had been. My father would never have touched any of those little cakes. Of course, poison had always been the favorite weapon of the higher-ups, for well-bred people hated the mere thought of soiling their hands with death. But if these children from the higher stratum of society thought they could kill the infamous Rasputin by feeding him poisoned pastries, that proved how little they knew or understood my father and his convictions.
In the flash of a second, I pictured Prince Felix offering my father the plate of petits fours and heard Papa’s disdainful response: “I don’t want any of that scum. It’s too sweet, it darkens the soul!”
Seeing the untouched glasses of wine, I was perplexed. If they had dropped poison into the glasses, why had my father avoided that as well? Had he had a vision? If he had indeed refused the wine, I was sure Prince Felix had flown into a panic and the rest transpired quite quickly.
My voice quivering, I called again. “Papa? Papa, are you here? It’s me, your Marochka!”
Taking another nervous step forward, I saw that the room was actually divided into two parts. The front half with the fireplace was more like a tiny dining room, while the back served as a sitting room. Looking through the arch into the rear, I saw a settee and, on the floor in front of it, a white polar-bear skin. And crumpled next to the white hide lay a dark figure.
“Papa!”
He didn’t respond, didn’t even flinch. With tears gushing from my eyes, I rushed to him, dropping to my knees. He was rolled on his side, his front facing away, and touching him carefully I felt something warm and sticky.
“God, no!” I wailed, staring at my sodden-red fingers.
I held my hands above him, slumping onto the floor. And then, without even thinking, I did exactly as we had done at the palace when Papa had healed the Heir. Simply, I splayed my fingers wide and laid my hands directly upon my father. Emptying my soul, I closed my eyes and pointed my head to the heavens.
“Dear Lord, please have mercy! Please don’t take him! Please, Heavenly Father, give him back to us!” Bowing my head over my father, I beckoned, “Papa, come back! It’s me, Maria, your Marochka-come back to me!”
And he did just that. He returned.
Whether it was the Lord Our Father who infused life back into him, or whether Papa himself was able to summon the last of his strength, I didn’t know. But he gasped terribly, spit some blood from his mouth, and then-with one horrible tremor-started breathing once again.
“Papa!” I called, bending down and smoothing his hair.
“Dochenka? Dochenka maya?” Little daughter? My little daughter?
“Da, da, Papa! It’s me, your Maria!”
“Oi,” he moaned. “I just saw my own father. He was right here. Did you see him?”
I shook my head but had no doubt of my father’s claim. Papa was dying and had crossed over to the other side, where he’d been greeted by his loved ones. Only my pathetic pleading had pulled him back to us, the living.
Moaning deeply, Papa said, “Felix…he betrayed me…”
“Yes, Papa, he shot you! I know. But I’m here now. I’m going to take care of you. I’m going to get you out of here!”
“Da…must leave…”
So the prince and his group had tried to poison Papa by offering him tainted sweets and wine. When that hadn’t worked, Prince Felix had simply shot him. In any case, somehow my father still lived, but if I didn’t get him outside and find help, he would certainly bleed to death from the bullet wound.
Invoking the age-old fear of every Russian peasant, I said, “Papa, you have to get up. The prince and the grand duke are going to come back-and they’ll kick and beat and whip you!”
As if he’d seen it a hundred times in his worst dreams, my father’s eyes widened in panic, and he reached up to me with one weak hand, begging, “Help me, Maria!”
As far as I could tell, my father had been shot in the stomach. As he struggled to rise, I clutched him around his back, helped him first sit up, then climb to his knees. With each movement he bit his lip and groaned.
“Are you all right?” I asked as he struggled to his feet.
He nodded hesitantly. “We must go…bistro!”
The first few steps were the most difficult. Papa stumbled badly and moved only with great effort. I feared, of course, that we might make it to the stairs but not up the steps. Fortuna
tely, each movement seemed to get easier. Passing through the heavy oak door, we made it to the bottom of the staircase, where we paused, bathed in the distant rhythm of “Yankee Doodle,” which had been started over yet again. All would be lost if any of them came back down.
“We only have to go halfway up, Papa. That’s all. Just lean on me. There’s a side door, and a troika is waiting for us.”
He nodded. “Xhorosho.”
I took a step up, and Papa, clutching the railing, did likewise. I moved higher, and he did as well. And so we proceeded, bit by bit, up and up. Within a few long minutes we reached the side door, which I kicked wide open. A flood of freezing air poured over us.
“Breathe in, Papa! Take in some nice night air! That’s it, doesn’t it feel good?”
Although he could barely swallow even a bit of air, he nodded. “V’koosno.” Tasty.
We stepped directly from the palace into the flat courtyard. Glancing toward the gate, I wanted to pull my father along faster. I wanted to cry out for Sasha. I wanted a doctor. There was hope, always hope. Papa had been horribly wounded when that madwoman stabbed him, his entrails pouring out of his body. And yet he’d survived. Now he’d suffered just a single bullet wound, so couldn’t he…he…
“I see it so clearly now, Marochka,” muttered my father. “I see my mistakes-”
“Shh. It’s okay, Papa. Just keep going. Don’t stop. That’s it, one foot after the other.”
“I forgot. I became vain.”
“Shh. Just keep moving.”
“My mistake was simple. It wasn’t me. Not me who healed people. Not me who…who…”
“Of course it was, Papa. You’ve helped hundreds, even thousands, of people, people who were horribly sick, people who were dying! Even the Heir Tsarevich-you saved him! I saw with my very own eyes how you stopped his bleeding and brought him back!”
“Nyet! It wasn’t me who saved the boy, it was God! I was just the vessel. And I forgot that. I forgot I was just the earthly vessel for the Lord Almighty to do His work!”
I looked up and saw we were halfway to the gate. “That’s it, Papa. Just keep walking, one foot after the other.”
“Da, da, da…that’s what I did wrong. I became vain. I…I took personal glory in my achievements.”
“Don’t stop, we’re almost there!”
“But it wasn’t me…it was Him, Our Father, who saved the boy and all those other suffering souls. It was God who healed them, not me! They were His miracles, not mine, yet I took advantage of it all. The power, the money, the women…I had it all, took it all! And now I’m being punished…punished for my vanity!”
“No, Papa, that’s not true! You gave to so many-you gave and gave! Think how many you helped, think how much money you passed to those in need!”
All of a sudden my father stopped and grabbed his stomach. “Ah!”
Wincing in terrible pain, he tumbled into me, and if I hadn’t clutched him just then, he would certainly have fallen over.
“Just a little farther, Papa,” I said, holding him by the shoulders and begging him onward. “We have to keep moving.”
“I…I…”
He could say no more. Nor could he move. Was it the bullet biting into him? Had it shifted about inside?
“I’m here,” I coaxed. “And you’re going to be okay. Just a little bit farther. Just a few more steps!”
“Ohhhh…,” he moaned.
Oh, God, I couldn’t lose him now, could I? We’d made it out of the palace, we’d come this far. If we could just make it to the troika, if we could just-
“I…I-”
“Calm down, Papa. Catch your breath. We’ll rest here for a minute.”
“I…I fear that my time…has come,” he said sadly, looking up at me.
“No, Papa, you mustn’t give up!”
“When it…it…”
“Shh. Don’t talk. Just be quiet and catch your breath.”
“When it does, my sweet daughter, you…you must let me go.”
Tears welled up in my eyes as I held him. How could I ever let my father go? Overwhelmed, I stared up at the dark heavens above me. It was starting to snow again, the flakes fat and heavy. Was this how it was all to end, here in a courtyard of a princely home? I’d had a vision of something like this, but why, dear God, why hadn’t my gifted father?
Papa asked, “Child, comfort me with a poem, will…will you? How about that one I like so much? You know the one, by that writer, that…that fellow all you girls are crazy about.”
I nodded and tried to steady my voice, as I recited, as softly as a prayer, the words of the great Aleksander Blok:
“To sin shamelessly, endlessly,
To lose count of the nights and days,
And with a head unruly from drunkenness
To pass sideways into the temple of God.”
“Yes, that is nice, very nice…yes, sideways.” With no small effort, Papa grabbed me by one hand. “My sweet, dear, beautiful girl…I must tell you a secret.”
Biting my lip and trying my best not to break down sobbing, I merely nodded.
“I know for sure that that is Heaven,” he said, weakly pointing to the sky. “But now I…now I see also that this”-he looked around-“is not earth but hell.”
“Papa, no. You mustn’t talk like that.”
He nodded. “Yes, this…this is hell.”
Mopping my eyes with the sleeve of my cloak, I stood paralyzed in fear. If only the world could see him now, Rasputin the devil, for who he really was: my father, a muzhik who, unarmed and unsuspecting, had been shot like a mad dog. How easily he had been brought down…and how easily he had brought himself down. But I couldn’t crumble, not now.
“Papa, listen to me. I have a troika waiting just around the corner. I’m going to fetch the driver, and the two of us will come get you.”
My father’s body went rigid with one huge spasm, and he cried out in pain. I held him around the waist and shoulder and felt his entire body quiver horribly.
“Yes…go,” he finally muttered.
“I’ll hurry!”
Carefully letting go of my father, I started to pull away. He began to teeter to the side, and for a moment I thought he would collapse right then and there in the side courtyard.
Raising his reddened eyes to me, Papa commanded, “Go!”
I gathered up my cloak and started to run. I just had to get the driver to bring the troika right here, and then the two of us would gather up my father and whisk him away. We just had to be quick. I had to be quick.
Dashing to the stone wall, I started over. Oh, Lord, I thought as I lifted my feet, I can climb over, but what about Papa? How would we get him-
I heard it quite clearly then. Just as I landed on the other side of the wall I heard someone shouting the alarm.
“He’s getting away! Hurry!” yelled a voice that was much, much too familiar.
Turning around, I saw the small service door flung wide. And standing right there in the doorway, the light pouring from inside and over him, was…was…but how could it be? How did he-? No, this was impossible.
“Sasha?” I muttered.
My entire body flushed with horror. Yes, it was indeed my sweet Sasha. Only he wasn’t coming to my rescue. No. He was…was…
“Hurry!” he shouted over his shoulder into the palace. “Bring a gun. You’ve got to shoot him again!”
I felt like a tiny bird that had flown full speed into a large pane of glass and then, stunned, fallen to the ground. What invisible reality hadn’t I seen before? What hard truth was I facing now? The betrayal was too much, I couldn’t comprehend what I was witnessing. And if I hadn’t been in such shock, I would have cried out in horror. Sasha hadn’t come to our rescue, but to make sure of my father’s death?
“Where, Prince, where?” shouted Purishkevich, that infamous monarchist with the famously pointed mustache.
“Out there!” replied Sasha, pointing directly at my father.
I
tried to call to my father, to beg him to run, but nothing came out of my mouth except a horrible piercing cry. I watched as my father glanced back and laid his eyes on the man who I thought was my lover-but who was, in fact, one with my father’s murderers. Oh, dear God, what had I done? What web of deceit had I fallen into?
Finally, I managed to scream, “Hurry, Papa!”
His face awash with terror, Papa hobbled on, hurrying toward me, pleading, “Run, Maria! Get away! Save yourself!”
I couldn’t move. Behind my father I saw Purishkevich struggling to load a revolver. First one, then a second bullet dropped from his shaking hands into the snow. Frustrated and furious, Sasha ripped the gun from Purishkevich and raised it high. And then Sasha-none other than Sasha!-took careful aim at my father.
“No!” I shrieked. “No!”
The very next instant Sasha fired, shattering the night. Before I knew it, something went screaming through the air not far from me. Sasha had missed! Papa, I realized, was still struggling onward!
“Run!” I called to my father.
But before Papa had taken three more steps, Sasha was again raising the gun. How could this be? How could the sweet young man I had kissed so passionately and given myself to now be so consumed with anger? How could his face be twisted with such hatred?
To my horror, this time Sasha took longer, straining to steady his wavering arm. And then, when my father was only some twenty paces from me, Sasha fired a second time-and again missed! With every bit of his strength, Papa pressed on, half stumbling, half running.
“Please, God, give him strength!” I sobbed.
But then several more figures burst from the palace, including Prince Felix and none other than Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, that young dashing member of the royal family, a pistol in hand. My entire body shuddered. The grand duke was an Olympic athlete, a trained soldier, a seasoned hunter-and a Romanov bent on eliminating the “stain” of my father from the dynasty. When I saw him take confident, godlike aim at my father, I knew there was no hope.
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