The Jewel of St Petersburg (60 page)

T
HE ATMOSPHERE WAS CLAUSTROPHOBIC. THE BIG UNTIDY man who swaggered into the room was wearing an expensive black satin tunic and high black boots, but Valentina recognized him at once.

“I remember you,” he declared. “The little nurse who slapped my face.”

Father Grigori Rasputin pointed his finger at her, his strange blue eyes fixed on Valentina as he strode toward her. She leapt to her feet. She intended to seize him before he could be distracted by anyone else. The room was large but stifling, as dust floated in bars of sunlight that bleached the carpet and softened the sweets and biscuits spread out on the oak table. Damask chairs lined the walls, jammed together to accommodate as many petitioners as possible, their faces tense and suspicious of each other, stealing sideways glances. They had stood in line hour after hour on the stairs outside the apartment and now waited nervously for their turn.

Except it seemed to Valentina that there was no certainty, no order in which they were invited to rise and enter the inner study, no way of knowing if their turn was next or in two hours’ time. Or not at all.

“Father Grigori, I need to speak to you.”

He gazed greedily around his room, examining the upturned faces, and smiled at a woman in a low-cut dress and ruby earrings that blazed in the sunlight. “All need to speak to me,” he murmured, “because I am the path to the Holy Khristos.”

“This is urgent.”

“Come with me, my child of Christ.”

He wrapped an arm around her waist and led her away to the coveted door of the inner sanctum. She heard the desperate sighs behind her. His study was long and thin with a striking icon of the Virgin of Kazan in one corner lit by a red lamp. An old desk, a battered leather sofa, not much else in the room except a large Bible open on a low table in the center. The place was musty, like Rasputin himself, unwashed and in some way uncivilized, though she couldn’t quite work out why.

Rasputin sank to his knees immediately in front of the gilded image of the Virgin and bowed his head. His black hair was long and lank, his lips large and red. Valentina remembered those lips, remembered the sour taste of them on her own. She shivered, impatient to be away from this place, but had no idea whether he would be minutes or hours on his knees.

“Father Grigori, my sister is dying.”

He responded in a way she didn’t expect. He laughed and lumbered to his feet. “My child, we are all dying.”

“Father, I have not come for such words. I heard that you can heal people. Please ... heal my—”

“Child,” he said in a slow sonorous voice, “you are in far too much of a hurry. You are trying to rush through life, but what you must take time to consider are your sins.”

The way his strange eyes stared at her. She felt her thoughts loosen a notch. Felt her cheeks flush red.

“Sin,” he said, his voice penetrating her mind, “is our path to Almighty God. We sin and we ask forgiveness, that is how we enter into his arms.” He moved closer, and it was a wrench to make herself look away.

“I’m not here to talk of sin. Healing is what I need.”

“We all need to be healed.” He laid a heavy hand on her shoulder.

“Can you help me, Father?”

“Yes.
Da.”
He leaned down to kiss her forehead, but she was ready for it this time and stepped back. “Ah”—he smiled at her, his mouth a dark red cavern—“a nervous fawn.” The smile widened. “I like those best.”

She looked at the door. She could leave. “Father Grigori, they say you work miracles on the tsarevitch for his mother and father, the tsarina and tsar.”

The eyes drooped, half-closed, and it was a relief. She flicked a tongue across her lips.

“God has granted me the honor of being the channel of his power and his love to that child, the next emperor of Russia.” He turned abruptly and sat down on the sofa. “Come here.”

“Will you help me? I have money, it’s not much, but ...” She placed a small pouch of gold roubles on the table.

“Kneel here.” Rasputin’s voice was powerful in the narrow room.

“I’d rather stand.”

“Then you are no good to me because you are too proud.”

“Katya. My sister’s name is Katya Ivanova. She has cholera. Please”—she moved closer and sank to her knees on the bare boards in front of him—“please, help her.” The weight inside her chest was crushing her. “Please, help Katya.”

He placed his hand on the top of her head, heavy and possessive, and she felt a heat in her mind, churning her thoughts until she almost lost track of why she was here.

“No,” she whispered and swayed back on her heels, so that his hand fell to his side.

“You are strong.”

He made a sound, an odd growl in the back of his throat. Uncivilized. Lecherous. Unclean. A semiliterate peasant. He was all these things, but she could feel his power and touched his knee with her fingers.

“Help me, Father Grigori.”

He stared at her for a long time, his lips moving in silent prayer, her fingers the only connection between them. His eyes grew rounder, became a more vivid blue, but then seemed to glaze over, and for the first time since becoming pregnant Valentina felt violently sick. He reached forward, took her face in his hands, dirty fingernails scratching at her skin, and his mood seemed to change.

“You would have been sweet and tender,” he said with a sad smile. “You would have been luscious and fragrant, my tempting little fawn.”

“I am not your little anything. But I need you to help my sister.”

“She is beyond my help.”

“No! Please!”

His face came so close to hers she could see the purple pockmarks on his nose and smell the brandy on his breath.

“The Lord God Almighty heals through my hands,” he said, “and sends me visions to help lead sinners to the salvation of their souls. I see your sister. She is soon to be cleansed of all tribulations of this flesh.”

“No! You’re lying.”

“But you.” He slid out his tongue and touched her lips. “You have a girl growing inside you who will one day drag her father from the jaws of a fiery hell.”

No. How could he know? It was impossible.

“A girl?” she breathed.

“Yes.” He laughed. Loud and boisterous, shaking his wild hair, and he dropped his hands from her face. “And she’ll be a good little liar, so you’ll have to watch her carefully.”

Blood pumped through her veins, scalding her skin. Her hands touched the spot where the child lay, and she prayed that it was a boy. Because if it was a boy, Rasputin was wrong.
Let him be wrong.
Wrong about Katya. She jumped to her feet. Enough of his lies. Enough of his games with her mind and his hands on her body. She picked up the pouch of gold and walked out of the room.

K
ATYA DIED THAT NIGHT. VALENTINA HEARD THE SOFT rustle in her throat and saw the fractured moment of relief when her frail body gave up the fight. Valentina didn’t utter a sound but continued to sit, knees jammed against her sister’s bed, holding Katya’s small hand wrapped in hers, denying it the ability to grow cold.

Her mother laid her head on the pillow and wept, harsh grueling sobs, while her father stood stiffly at the end of the bed and demanded of God what they had done to deserve such wrath. All through the day while priests came and went, while candles were lit and incense burned, and all through the next night while Sonya again washed Katya’s body and clothed her in fresh garments, Valentina held her sister’s hand.

Only when dawn fingered the black curtains on the third day did she lay the bone-white hand on the quilt and quietly leave the room. She never entered it again. She walked into her own room, unlocked the drawer, and tore up her list.

T
HE MUSIC WAS HARSH. NOTES THAT GRATED ON JENS’S ears. Chords clashed as Valentina’s hands flew over the keys, darting and falling like broken wings. Sound filled every corner of the music room, stirring the air with rising crescendos and tender aching passages that broke his heart.

He sat there, hour after hour. Watching each vibration of her body and listening to the cries she didn’t make. She played as if a tidal wave of music could flood every corner of her, crowding her veins, her bones, her mind, leaving no room, no space, no air left for grief or pain to breathe. And when he rose from his seat, walked over to the piano and wrapped his arms around her from behind, he pinned her against him so that her hands couldn’t play. They fluttered in desperate empty movements. Her whole body shook until something snapped inside her. She spun around within the circle of his arms and clung to him.

Thirty-seven

T
HERE WAS A LULL IN TIME. ARKIN COULD SENSE THE PAUSE as though Petersburg were holding its breath, and he took extra care to be on his guard, moving from place to place, never staying long in any, always rootless, always shadowless. Yet he could not bring himself to stay away from the Ivanovs. They drew him the way the summer draws swallows.

He watched them, their comings and goings, the mother tall and erect in heavy black weeds, her daughter by her side in black yet somehow not in mourning. There was an alertness to the young Ivanova’s stride and a quickness to her movements, an anger in the slam of the carriage door. He remained out of sight, but his eyes followed her and he heard again her words in his head:
Have you no conscience?
Didn’t she understand? The revolutionary severs all links with the social order and its moral codes because only the exclusion of such values can bring about radical change. The old order
must
be destroyed. She was part of the old social order, hand in hand with her mother.

So why could he not destroy them?

Carriages and motorcars came and went at the house, friends with condolences and young women who he presumed were from Katya’s school days. The funeral itself disgusted him. A long line of carriages adorned with black crepe, horses with ebony plumes, mourning dresses that must have stripped the city of black silk and jet jewelry. If Minister Ivanov did not have money to pay the ransom for his daughter, where did he find the gold for this showy display of grandeur? More credit from banks? While working men and women were given hovels to live in, the rich were given palaces to die in. He spat on the ground outside the church. Death to them all.

Yet still his feet wouldn’t walk away. As he leaned against a wall in the shadow of Kazan Cathedral he cursed that he had ever crossed paths with the Ivanovs. The father emerged first from the massive cathedral doors, but Arkin gave him no more than scant attention. He was the kind of man who called for revolutionaries to be hanged from lampposts as a warning to others. His day of reckoning would come.

Beside him stood his wife, head bowed, a heavy veil hiding her from sight. He wanted to rip the veil from her face, to look into her eyes. To see what lay in her mind. She moved slowly as if it were an effort, but behind her the daughter did not drop her head or lower her gaze. The moment she emerged into the autumn sunlight she stared intently at the crowd of strangers who had gathered outside the cathedral to watch. Her eyes scanned back and forth, clearly searching for someone she expected to see, and Arkin sank deeper into the shadows.

Because he knew that someone was him.