CHAPTER 2

There was no doubt about it, the horrible events of two years ago had been largely my fault.

My father had left Sankt Peterburg to visit a monastery and then return home to our village in Siberia. Varya and I, accompanied by Dunya, followed a week later, taking the train to Tyumen, where on a warm July day we transferred to a riverboat for the last hundred versts. Not long after we’d left the dock, the small cabin in which the three of us were packed became unbearably hot and stuffy.

“I’m going up top for some fresh air,” I said, rising to my feet.

My sister didn’t even look up, for she was already engrossed in a novel, her head propped on one of our bags. But Dunya, whose only duty was to guard us as carefully as a Cossack, immediately dropped her knitting into her lap.

She muttered a hasty, “But—”

“You’d better stay here,” I interrupted, knowing she was loath to let us out of her sight. “It wouldn’t be a good idea to leave Varya here alone.”

“Very well, but be back in thirty minutes—no more!”

Before she could say another word, I slipped out. It was only within the last two months that Papa had permitted me to travel the streets of the capital without an escort; Varya, because she was younger, was still not allowed to go farther than the corner store. And relishing my new freedom, I scurried down the narrow corridor of the steamer, out the door, and up the steep stairs to the top deck, which was totally empty.

All at once I was intoxicated by the magic of my Siberia.

Grabbing hold of a side railing, I peered over the edge at the flat, dark waters of the River Tura, which gave way to the churn of the boat. Gazing upward, I breathed in as deeply as I could, filling my lungs with the rich scents of the endless pine forests on the left and, off to the right, the loamy soil of the wild steppes. I was glad to be going home, glad to escape the capital with its endless buildings and incessant gossip. Here, where the nobility had never held land and so serfdom had never existed, everything was free and open, a nearly endless expanse of opportunity that existed nowhere else in my country.

Suddenly a lyrical voice sang out in the language of my heart:

“I have outlasted all desire,

My dreams and I have grown apart;

My grief alone is left entire,

The gleanings of an empty heart.”

I had thought I was quite alone, yet when I turned I saw a young man with long brown hair and a short beard, half chanting, half singing the words of our greatest writer. He had a smooth dark complexion and wore clothes that were suitably clean but by no means new. I supposed him to be four or five years older than I. In his hands he held a book; I stole a glance at his trim, clean fingers.

When he turned his rich brown eyes upon me, I couldn’t help but call the next verse back to him:

“The storms of ruthless dispensation

Have struck my flowery garland numb—

I live in lonely desolation

And wonder when my end will come.”

I was immediately taken by his smile, kind and small. Moving along the railing toward me, he opened his mouth as if to ask me a question, then gazed down at the open book in his hands. He didn’t know the poem by heart, as I did, yet he recited the last lines beautifully, not only as a literate man but with passion, his voice rising and falling.

“Thus on a naked tree-limb, blasted

By tardy winter’s whistling chill,

A single leaf which has outlasted

Its season will be trembling still.”

When his voice trailed away and was replaced by the churning of the steamer’s boiler, I said, “Of Pushkin’s earliest poems, that is my favorite.”

“Mine too.” He bowed his head to me and said, “They call me Sasha.”

“Maria.”

“Where are you coming from?”

“Sankt Peterburg. And you?”

Though he said he was a native of Novgorod, Sasha was actually traveling from Moscow, where he was attending the university. He was on his way to visit a friend in Pokrovskoye, and when I told him that was my home village, his eyes lit up.

“Say,” he began, pensively tugging on his beard, “if you’re coming from the capital and you’re on the way to…to…well, I heard down below that the famous Father Grigori is on board. You wouldn’t happen to be—”

“Yes, I am his eldest.” I felt my cheeks flush warmly. “But like all rumors, the story you heard is not quite true. While my sister and I are on board, my father is not. He’s already at home.”

“Oh, that is my loss, for it has always been a keen desire of mine to meet him.”

I was never eager to speak of my family—in fact, my father encouraged me not to—so I glanced at his book, and asked, “What do you study at the university, literature?”

“Exactly.” Now it was Sasha’s turn to blush as he bolstered his confidence and confessed, “Actually…actually, I’m a writer.”

“Really?”

As it turned out, we were both aspiring poets, only Sasha was rather more advanced, having published not just two poems at the university but one in a national poetry magazine as well. Of course he was smart, that much I could tell by the sweet squint of his eyes, by the way he used his hands, and, naturally, by his passion for the written word.

“What do you love about literature?” I asked.

“It’s so democratic. I know not everyone can read in our country—that will change—but anyone can pick up a book.”

“And what writers have meant the most to you?”

Our discussion took off like a racing troika, surprisingly fast and impetuous. Of our great writers of the last century, we both cherished Pushkin most of all for the way he spoke not to the upper class but to us, the common people. Sasha enjoyed Lermontov for his emphasis on feeling, while I found magic in Gogol’s strange mix of language. As to Dostoyevsky, however, we both found his stories too morose and too filled with sorrow.

“Have you heard of Tsvetayeva? She’s quite young, but I really like her work—she has such passion and intensity,” I said. “Plus I like how she relies on fairy tales and folk music. She will be very famous, I think.”

“Perhaps. What do you think of Anna Akhmatova? You know what she said, don’t you? ‘I am the first to teach women how to speak.’”

The conversation went on and on, our words tripping over one another, and I completely lost track of the time. I’d never been able to talk about these things with any boy, let alone a man, and that Sasha could be so interesting, let alone so interested in what I had to say, was nearly the most exciting thing I’d ever experienced. How could he know so much, how could he anticipate what I was going to say, how could he take my thoughts and expound upon them so easily?

Suddenly, like the crack of a thunderbolt, a grandmotherly voice shouted out my full name: “Matryona Grigorevna Rasputina!”

I jumped like a common thief, even more so when I realized that Sasha was holding my hand. Spinning around, I saw Dunya, huffing and puffing, at the top of the steep stairs.

“You are to come down at once!” she snapped.

“Yes…yes, of course. Just give me a minute. We were talking about poetry, and—”

“Now!”

Right in front of Dunya, Sasha lifted my left hand to his firm soft lips and kissed it. “Will I ever see you again?”

I glanced at Dunya’s disapproving scowl, turned back to Sasha, and in a quick whisper said, “Meet me here at ten tonight…and bring some of your own poems!”

Softly, he replied, “Only if you will.”

I scurried off, but as I started down the steps I turned and saw Sasha staring after me with sweet eyes and a soft smile. My cheeks suddenly bloomed with a girlish blush, and I practically flew down the stairs, along the deck, and back into our tiny cabin. And my cheeks continued to burn as I dropped on the berth next to my sister, even more so when I noticed Dunya glaring at me.

“You shouldn’t talk to strangers, young lady,” she admonished as she picked up her knitting. “You know very well what men want!”

I couldn’t stop myself from grinning like a complete fool. “No, I don’t. What do they want, Dunya?”

She shook her head in disgust. “And you most certainly shouldn’t let someone kiss your hand!”

Varvara dropped her book. “Did someone kiss your hand, Maria? Oi, tell me! Tell me what he looked like! Was he old and ugly or was he young and…and—”

Almost silently, I mouthed, “Handsome!”

Her eyes grew into disks. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” I said lightly, slapping her leg. “Nothing at all.”

But as I reached for my satchel, I knew that something had indeed taken place, something different from anything else. I could feel it in the tightness of my stomach, the way I could still sense his lips on my hand, and how I kept trying to hold his image like a photograph in my imagination.

While I knew our Siberian sun would never set on that midsummer night, I feared the hours would never pass. They dragged by, and I busied myself with sorting through a few of my own poems I’d brought with me. Which would Sasha like the most? Which would win his approval? I didn’t have my favorite with me—a poem I’d written just this spring about the blooming of the birches—and when I tried to write it down from memory, it came out all stupid and clumsy. Frustrated, I tore the paper to bits.

My sister fell asleep around nine, just as I had thought, but Dunya kept knitting away, more and more furiously, the sleeve of a sweater growing longer by the minute. I’d counted on her dropping off long ago, lulled by the churning of the boat and the soft waters we sailed, yet she didn’t. I kept staring at our traveling clock, and when it reached ten-fifteen, I could bear it no more.

“I’m going to the toilet. I’ll be right back.”

Dunya scowled at me and hesitated before nodding. Clutching a folded piece of paper with several of my poems scrawled on it, I charged out. Reaching the end of the narrow corridor, I glanced briefly over my shoulder to make sure our housekeeper wasn’t watching, then burst out a side door and onto the narrow deck. In seconds I was clambering up the steep stairs to the top deck, my breath coming short and quick.

Yet when I emerged above and quickly scanned the broad deck, it was just as I had feared—there was no sign of Sasha. Either he’d broken his promise and not come at all, or he’d been here at ten, waited a few minutes, and given up. Oh, no, I thought, squinting in the sharp bright evening light. I spun around, my dark dress flying wide. There was nothing, no one, only this riverboat and the huge blue sky overhead. My eyes began to well up…what had I expected? What sort of fool was I?

Suddenly a firm hand grabbed me by the shoulder. I gasped aloud, certain that Dunya had caught me, but when I twisted around—

“Sasha!”

Pulling me into his arms, he said nothing. It wasn’t the first time I’d been kissed—there’d been a boy who’d pecked me as crudely as a rooster—but it was the first time a kiss had burned with pleasure. I’d never felt anything like it, the rush of heat that zipped almost instantly from my lips and throughout my body, all the way down my legs. So powerful was it that I jerked away in shock.

“I…I—,” I began, my trembling fingers reaching up and touching his soft beard. “I was afraid I’d missed you.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I couldn’t get away any sooner.”

“I would have waited all night,” he said, bending forward and kissing me on the cheek.

As much as every bit of me wanted him, I wanted at the same time to run away. Maybe Dunya was right. Maybe he was after just one thing.

“Listen, Sasha, I…I can’t stay now. I have to get back,” I said, quickly forming a plan. “We arrive in Pokrovskoye in the morning, but will you come visit me later? At our home?”

“Just tell me where, just tell me when.”

“Anyone in the village can tell you where we live. Wait outside our gate at five. Papa always goes to the post office late in the afternoon. I’ll go with him, and you can greet us when we return. I’ll see that Papa invites you to join us for supper.”

“That would be a great honor.”

“And don’t forget your poetry!” I said, as I scurried off.

“Of course.”

I should have known better. I should have known his intentions were anything but honorable. Then again, how could I have guessed?

At home the following day, I rehearsed in my head how I was going to introduce Papa to Sasha and get him invited to our table. I’d never had a young man call on me. Then again, maybe the moment was lost and Sasha wouldn’t keep his word a second time.

Finally, sometime after four, Papa rose to go to the post office, and I leaped at the chance to accompany him. After he had dictated his telegrams to the clerk, we returned home, my arm looped in his. Of course, by then I was nearly faint with anticipation. In fact, I couldn’t believe it when Papa and I turned the corner past the spinster Petrovna’s little hut and there, in a cluster of six or seven people gathered by our gate to beg Papa’s blessing, stood Sasha, neatly dressed, his hair combed. Thrilled, my hand came up in a small, impulsive wave. As if in embarrassment, he glanced away.

Nearing our home, the sad group of petitioners broke into a pathetic chorus.

“Father Grigori!”

“Help me, Father!”

“Lord have mercy!”

At first I noticed no one except Sasha, of course, but then I saw one man on crutches, a woman in mourning dressed entirely in black, and, then, most terribly, a small disfigured woman, her nose ravaged and half eaten away.

“Father Grigori! Father Grigori!” she called pathetically. “Help me, please!”

Sasha, a stern look on his face, came up alongside this poor woman and helped her, pushing aside the others and nudging her to the front. When she was just steps from my father, Sasha even held back the others, keeping her approach clear and free. But rather than seeking to kiss my father’s hand or falling at his knees for his blessing, this poor woman with the hideous nose reached into the folds of her dress and pulled out a long arching knife.

“Death to the Antichrist!” she screamed as she lunged forward, plunging the blade into my father’s stomach.

Right before me I saw the long knife disappear completely into Papa, cutting him from navel to sternum, and I screamed so loudly that my own ears were deafened. My father, groaning like a wild animal, jerked back, and blood sprayed from him like a fountain. He stumbled away, and as I reached to grab him I saw a mound of pink entrails boil outward.

Again the attacker charged at Papa, her knife raised high, her voice a scream. “Death to the Antichrist!”

In the pandemonium, I searched for Sasha and saw him falling away as the other supplicants rushed forward to my father’s defense. Before the madwoman could strike again, the small crowd of people grabbed her and threw her to the ground, whereupon they immediately began to beat her, mercilessly, their hands and fists and heels and crutches raining down on her.

But still the crazy woman screamed, “I must kill him, kill him!”

And as my father collapsed on the dirt lane, blood and more gushing from him, I caught a brief glimpse of Sasha, not coming to our aid but dashing away. Dear God, I thought, he’s fleeing!

In the end, it was only the swift actions of Mama and Dunya that saved Papa’s life. Sturdy Siberian women, they rushed from our house, my mother already barking orders. Within moments she had commandeered three men to carry Papa inside, whereupon Mama and Dunya threw the dinner dishes from the long table as if they were crumbs. Papa was laid right there, where we should have been eating, and within seconds they were winding him in a wet sheet, which stemmed the flow of blood and kept his entrails from falling out. All of us, however, were convinced that Papa’s end had come. Indeed, by the time a wire had been sent to the closest doctor, who was in Tyumen, and by the time that doctor had come racing into town not by steamer but by troika, a trip that took no less than eight hours on Trakt No. 4—a horrible, bumpy road that linked us with the outer world—it was well after midnight and Papa was clinging to the last threads of life. With no other option, an emergency operation was performed right there on our dinner table under the glow of stearin candles, with my father, who refused to breathe the ether, clutching a gold cross. Fortunately for him, and for all of us as well, he fainted after the first incision.

Papa should not have survived. In fact, the doctor doubted he could. But thanks in great part to his internal strength and great physical vitality—not to mention my constant prayers—he did not pass from this world. A few days later, when he had recovered enough, we took him by telega—a cart without springs—ever so slowly to Tyumen, where Professor von Breden, who’d been sent by the Empress, reopened the wound and made a few things right. After that it took weeks and weeks of convalescing—during which time war broke out, much to Papa’s sorrow—but in time my father was back on his feet. Never, however, did he regain his magnificent strength. In fact, from then on my father lost the look of the holy, that drawn hollow-cheeked appearance of one who observes the fasts. So plagued was he from constant pain that he took to drink as never before, which not only dulled his discomfort but undoubtedly his powers. Soon my father’s appearance became bloated, even corpulent. I never spoke to anyone of Sasha, and months later I no longer cried at the thought of him and his obvious betrayal. How could he have led that crazy woman, who, it turned out, was suffering from syphilis, right to my father?

When Dunya and I finally accompanied Papa back to the capital, we found a greatly changed world. War against the Kaiser had broken out, and spy fever was raging everywhere. Our glorious city, aflame with patriotism, was no longer known by the German-sounding name of Sankt Peterburg but as Petrograd. Even the thousands of Germans settled along our Volga River were being driven from their farms. All this greatly disturbed my father, for he abhorred bloodshed of any kind, and when he made known his opposition to the war, he not only fell out of the Tsar’s favor, he was labeled a traitor by many. In this way, weakened by his wound and demoralized by the defeats our brave soldiers suffered month after month, Papa fell into the greatest depression of his life.