The Last Tsar (17 page)

Anya behaved wisely. Trying to justify herself would have meant fanning suspicion, so she responded with the offended coolness and contempt of the unjustly insulted. And with rudeness. This last was new for Russia’s mistress, but it proved the best medicine. Soon Alexandra was complaining to Nicky: “her humour towards me has not been amiable this morning—what one would call rude.” To rudeness Anya added yet another kind of medicine. “She flirts hard with the young Ukrainian,” the empress wrote querulously, but “misses & longs for you.” The storm was already abating, however. And soon: “I only dread Ania’s humour”—and, humbly—“I will take all much cooler now and don’t worry over her rudeness … we are friends & am very fond of her & always shall be, but something has gone.”

Everything fell back into place.

In battling Alix’s jealousy, Anya could be perfectly calm. Next to her stood someone who would never allow her to be insulted, her strongest partner in these games with Alix: Rasputin.

Anya had heard of Rasputin from the Montenegrin princesses. When she saw him, she appreciated him immediately.

Rasputin had been long awaited in the palace. At the very beginning of Nicholas’s reign, as the family searched in vain for popular truth seekers and the Montenegrins seduced the Anglo-German princess with the mysterious world of sorcerers and holy fools, he was approaching.

When they went to the canonization ceremonies at Sarov and the mysterious wilderness—here, indeed, the devil took on the guise of the saint: the image of the wise, meek Serafim would be adopted by the Holy Devil—Grigory Rasputin.

“In the village of Pokrovskoe there is a pious Grigory. Like Saint Serafim, and the prophet Elijah, he is given to shutting the sky—so that drought befalls the land until he commands the heavens to open and pour down life-giving rain.” Thus recounted Father Feofan, rector of the Petersburg Theological Academy, to his admirers the Grand Dukes Peter and Nicholas Nikolaevich. And here were the Montenegrins, the grand dukes’ wives, bringing news to the palace: just like the Venerable Serafim, Grigory walked about his village surrounded by innocent girls, and just like him he preached humility, love, and kindness and healed the sick.

Late in 1903, Rasputin appeared in the halls of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy wearing a greasy jacket, oiled boots, and baggy trousers that hung down in back like a torn hammock, his beard tangled and his hair parted like a tavern waiter’s. He had hypnotic gray-blue eyes, first gentle and kind, then fierce and angry—but usually guarded. His speech was strange, too, almost incoherent, lulling, somehow primordial.

While the Montenegrins were passing on to Alix their ecstatic tales of the Holy Man, Anya decided to bring him to the palace. Like a brilliant director she staged her scene: the appearance of the Holy Man before the empress.

It is late at night, she and the tsaritsa are playing Beethoven four-handed. At about midnight, on Anya’s instruction, Rasputin is led silently into the half-lighted room. The empress is seated with her back to him. She continues to play with Anya. The clock strikes midnight.

“Don’t you feel something happening, Sana?”

“Yes, yes,” answers the empress, a little frightened.

Then Anya slowly turns her head, and the poor tsaritsa, obediently, does as well. When the nervous Alix sees the vague figure of a muzhik in the doorway, like a vision, she is struck by hysterics. Rasputin comes to her, hugs the tormented woman to his chest, and strokes her quietly, gently murmuring, “Be not afraid, my dear. Christ is with you.”

Rasputin is one of the most popular myths of the twentieth century. The madness of Russian debauch, the sexual power that vanquished Petersburg society, the diamonds and luxurious furs thrown at the oiled boots of the devil-muzhik, and this muzhik, who defiled the marital bed of Russia’s first family in full view of the country—all this has sold millions of books.

Rudnev, the investigator of the Special Commission of Inquiry, later compiled a very interesting memorandum: “One of the most valuable materials for illuminating the personality of Rasputin was the observations journal kept by the surveillance established for Rasputin by agents of the secret police. The surveillance was both external and internal, and his apartment was under constant watch.… Since the periodic press paid inordinate attention to Rasputin’s unruliness, which became synonymous with his name, the investigation has given this issue proper attention. The richest material for illuminating this aspect of his personality came from that permanent secret surveillance of his apartment, which made it clear that Rasputin’s amorous exploits did not go beyond nighttime orgies with young women of frivolous conduct and chanteuses, as well as with several of his suppliants.… As for his proximity to ladies of high society, in this respect the surveillance and investigation obtained no positive materials whatsoever.”

So, there were no “ladies of high society”! But what was there?

Grigory Rasputin was born in the village of Pokrovskoe, in Siberia, the son of the peasant Efim Novykh. His father was a terrible drunkard who suddenly saw the light, stopped drinking, and saved up a sufficiency. Then his wife died and his muzhik despair kicked in again: he began drinking and lost all his money. His son Grigory was well known at this time for his own dissolute life. As Rasputin he went to Tobolsk, worked as a waiter in a hotel, there married the servant Praskovye, and she bore him three children: a son and two daughters.

Grigory himself described this dissipated beginning to his life
poetically and tenderly: “When I was fifteen in my village in the summertime and the sun warmed me and the birds sang their heavenly songs I dreamed of God.… My soul yearned for the distance.… Dreaming many times I wept and did not know myself where these tears had come from or why.… So my youth passed. In a kind of contemplation, a kind of dream. And later, when life brushed me, touched me, I ran into a corner and prayed secretly. I was not content and could not find the answer to many things; I was sad. I began drinking.”

What sweet speech. The gift of seduction.

Until the age of thirty he smoked and fornicated and even worse—he stole. But just as he was about to turn thirty, it happened: a novice monk met him on the road and their conversation set the errant soul on the correct path. The mysterious life of the holy man Grigory began with that moment. During the threshing, when the servants laughed at his holiness, he thrust his shovel into a heap of grain and set out for holy places. He walked for more than a year, came home, dug out a cave under his cattle shed, and prayed there for two weeks. Then he went off again to wander, praying at holy places. He was in Kiev, like Venerable Serafim, and then in the Sarov wilderness itself, then on pilgrimage in Moscow, and on through Russia’s endless towns and villages.

He returned home after long wanderings, and as he was praying in church, in front of the people, he beat his brow on the floor in his zeal. From that time he was given to prophecy and healing.

Vera Leonidovna:

“This was a fantastic man. When the fashionable restaurant Vienna opened, I was taken there by Artsybashev, the author of the play
Jealousy
. What a success I was in that play! Also with us was an incredible man well known throughout Petersburg, Manusevich-Manuilov. There were rumors that he was an agent of every possible intelligence service at one and the same time. It was he who made the suggestion: ‘Let’s go see Rasputin.’ It was right next door to the Vienna, on Gorokhovskaya Street. Artsybashev refused, but I’m a daredevil. Rasputin was sitting in the dining room between two girls, his daughters. His eyes bore into me—I have a physical memory of the sensation. The table was laden with flowers and across sat the young, pale blond Munia—Maria Golovina, the empress’s lady-in-waiting. People kept calling and stopping in constantly. Women came by. Maria kept running to open the door, as diligent as a servant, and then he said to her: ‘Write.’ And he began to speak. It was all about meekness, about the soul. I tried to remember it and later, when I got home, I even wrote it down, but it wasn’t the same
thing. Everyone’s eyes had ignited. There was an ineffable flow of love. It was intoxicating.”

I was reminded of this story in the archive. The empress’s dark blue notebook. On the inside cover of the notebook is written its owner’s name: “Alexandra.” Next to this elegant signature is Rasputin’s scribble. Grigory wrote without punctuation: “Here is my peace my glory the source of light in the world a present to my dear Mama Grigory.” He called her “Mama”—the Mother of the Russian Land. Nicholas was “Papa.”

“A present to my dear Mama”—these are his oral teachings, painstakingly recorded in Alix’s elegant hand.

She took them with her to Tobolsk and Ekaterinburg. She would keep rereading them until the day she died.

Here are some of them:

“Whosoever cares only for himself, he is a fool or a torturer of the Light, the ministers we have in general care only for themselves—Ach! That is not the way! Our homeland is broad, we must make room for people to work, but not the leftists or the rightists; the leftists are stupid and the rightists are fools. Why? Because they want to teach with the stick. I have lived fifty years already, my sixth decade is beginning, and I can say: Whosoever thinks he is learned and has studied—wise men speak the truth—he is a fool.

“The Mother of God was intelligent, though she never wrote about herself.… But her life is known to our spirit….

“Never fear releasing prisoners or resurrecting sinners to a just life. Through their suffering prisoners … come to stand above us before God….

“Love heaven, it comes from love, wheresoever the spirit, there are we. Love the clouds—for that is where we live….”

The inordinate influence of a semiliterate muzhik on the mistress of all Russia. Because he ministered not only to the unfortunate son’s body but also to the tormented empress’s soul.

From his lips poured a stream of great Christian truths, with which she cleansed herself from the day’s trials. An aficionado of religious books and, of course, a hypnotist, he was able to become the longed-for “holy man” of whom she had dreamed in the Sarov wilderness. Saint Serafim resurrected. To Grigory she entrusted her soul.

In the beginning when he first entered the palace, Rasputin was meek and radiant. Later, when he was already settling into his role of holy man, he would be by turns familiar, ferocious, mocking, and threatening with the tsarist couple. There was no pose in this. He was stupefyingly simple and natural.

Rasputin’s mystery lay not in his power of miracle working. That power is indisputable, and it saved Alix’s son repeatedly. He did not even necessarily have to be physically close to Alexei. A twentieth-century sorcerer, he was already using the telephone and telegraph.

The stories have been told a multitude of times.

A call from Tsarskoe Selo to Rasputin’s apartment: the boy is suffering. His ear hurts; he cannot sleep.

“Have him come here,” the holy man addresses the empress over the phone. And very tenderly to the boy who has come to the phone: “What is it, Alyoshenka, burning the midnight oil? Nothing hurts, your ear does not hurt anymore, I’m telling you. Sleep.”

Fifteen minutes later, a call comes from Tsarskoe Selo: his ear does not hurt, he is sleeping.

In 1912 the heir is dying at Spala. He has a bruise, and he is getting a blood infection. But Alix, her face racked by night vigils, triumphantly shows the doctors Rasputin’s telegram: “God has gazed on your tears and accepted your prayers. Be not sad. Your son shall live.” The distinguished doctors can only shake their heads sadly: the terrible finale is inevitable.

But the boy … the boy soon recovers.

During the war Nicholas takes the heir with him to Headquarters at Mogilev. Alexei gets chilled and catches an ordinary cold. But the boy is not ordinary: as he is blowing his nose the blood vessels burst and the blood begins to gush—and this blood the doctors can no longer stop. Alexei is sent to Tsarskoe Selo on the imperial train along with Gilliard and the powerless Dr. Derevenko. The tsaritsa awaits him at the platform in Tsarskoe Selo.

“The blood has stopped!” Gilliard announces triumphantly.

“I know,” Alix replies calmly. “When did this happen?”

“Somewhere around six-thirty.”

Alix holds out Rasputin’s telegram.
GOD WILL HELP YOU, BE HEALTHY
. The telegram had been sent at six-twenty in the morning.

In 1914 Anya Vyrubova incurs life-threatening injuries in a train wreck between Petersburg and Tsarskoe Selo. She is lying unconscious in the railroad guard booth with broken legs and a fractured skull. Rasputin approaches Anya. He is standing over her bed, his eyes are popping out of their sockets from the terrible strain, and suddenly he whispers gently: “Anyushka, wake up, look at me.” She opens her eyes.

How must Alix have felt about the person who resurrected the dead right before her very eyes! The only person who could save—and so many times already
had saved
—her son! Could Nicholas deprive her of her son’s healer? And her soul’s? Getting rid of Rasputin would mean killing her. And the boy.

So he suffered all of it. He even played along.

He acquiesced to Alix’s request to eat a miracle-working crust of bread from Rasputin’s table and comb his hair with his miraculous comb. Alix had a sacred belief in their miraculous power. He had to pretend that he too believed.

But Nicholas was not simply playing along. For him Grigory was the result of his own truth seeking, which began with Klopov, the destitute landowner who had become for a time Nicholas’s “man of the people,” and was now finding its culmination in a genuine muzhik in the palace. The union of “people and tsar” had come to pass. Naturally, he knew of Grigory’s debauchery. Unlike Alix, he did not try to construct any mystical justifications for him. He accepted it as the debauchery of the real people, proving yet again that his people were not ready for a constitution. Through this wildness he glimpsed in Grigory common sense, goodness, and faith. For him Grigory’s voice was the voice of the people.