CHAPTER 14

Knowing what had to be done, I hung up the earpiece but just stood there, trembling and trying to collect my thoughts.

“What is it? What happened?” demanded Varya, for she could see the terror and the fresh tears in my eyes.

I reached out for her and she ran to me. Clutching her hand, I blurted it out.

“The Heir Tsarevich…Aleksei Nikolaevich…he got out of bed and tripped over one of his toys, and now he’s bleeding inside his knee. He already lost so much blood the other day that now he’s unconscious. The Empress fears his end is just around the corner. The Tsar is racing back from the front, but she’s not even sure his train will carry him home in time.”

As would any Russian of any age or social standing, Varya immediately understood the potential catastrophe. If the Heir Tsarevich were lost from this world, it would not be simply a tragedy for the House of Romanov, it would be a major national event that would alter the political landscape. Indeed, it could change the course of the war itself. The Empress, who had struggled for years to give birth to a male heir, knew this all too well, just as she knew there was only one way to save her son.

“We’ve got to find Papa,” I said, turning and dashing toward our bedroom. “I’ve got to get dressed, and we have to go out and find him. It’s the only way, he’s the only one who can save him!”

Of course I was right, and Varya knew it, just as she knew that Dunya’s orders for me to go to bed and stay there were now irrelevant. Instead, my younger sister acted as my dresser, helping me to pull on underlinens and socks, a warm blouse, and a heavy dress. We both worked briefly on my hair, rubbing it furiously with a towel, but it was to no avail. My hair was still most definitely damp even as we rushed to the front door, laced our shoes, threw on our cloaks, and grabbed our gloves and knit hats.

Minutes later, as the two of us bolted from our flat and down the stairs, I wondered if it was hopeless. The Empress had already sent her fastest motorcar, and it would be here in perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes. Was there any hope that I could find Papa by then? Might we have to go driving about the city, from restaurant to restaurant and from one notorious flat to the next, in order to find him? Dear Lord, if luck were with us, it could still take hours, and even then we might find Papa in a drunken stupor. If so, would I again be able to rouse him to sobriety? And what if we didn’t find him at all? What if Prince Felix and Grand Duke Dmitri had lured him away, either to a hidden Khlyst-type orgy of nobles or into a grand-ducal plot? As we raced down the stairs, past the security men posted on each of the floors, that worst-case possibility rolled right over me. If the grand dukes had today, right now, put an end to my father, they had not taken steps to protect their House but instead to extinguish it, for I knew what they chose not to believe: Without Papa there was no hope for the Heir.

It all seemed utterly hopeless when Varya and I hurried past the guard and the doorman downstairs, past the little iron stove, out the door, and into the frigid air. We rushed onto the front sidewalk and came to a skidding halt. I glanced down toward the Fontanka, turned, and looked up the street toward the train station. Which way? Through which alley? Into which home? Panic surged through me as I realized I had no idea where even to begin. Papa could be a few blocks away, and just as easily he could be on the other side of the city.

Wait…

Given that my father’s doings were more reported than even the Tsar’s, he’d probably been tailed by a squadron of agents. On the other hand, if he’d gotten away without being followed, it was for a purpose, and no one knew more of my father’s intimate doings than our housekeeper.

“Varya, go up to the market and find Dunya. Tell her what’s happened, tell her we need to find Papa, tell her everything,” I commanded, worried that, if I went, Dunya would simply drag me back to the apartment and throw me in bed. “I’m going to talk to the security agents. Either Dunya or the agents must know something.”

“Right,” replied my sister, turning and running off at full speed.

I glanced back at our apartment building. Should I go up and speak with the agent who’d been discreetly hidden outside our door? Should I see what the agent downstairs had noted in his little black book? No, I thought, glancing at the motorcar parked across the street, its engine idling, its windows iced over. If you needed to know what a snake was doing and where it was going, you went to its head, for everything else couldn’t help but follow.

So I did just that. I crossed the snowy cobbles and went up to the back window, knocking firmly on it. Immediately something inside shifted—there were two men in there, I realized—and then the next moment the window was lowered by its leather strap. A heavyset man with a Ukrainian face stared out at me, his skin pale, his cheeks wide, his forehead large, and his mustache as big as a walrus’s. Of course there was no need for introductions. I’d never seen this man before, didn’t know his name, but I knew what he was doing here, just as he surely knew everything about me, right down to what I had worn yesterday.

“I have to find my father!” I pleaded.

The man stared suspiciously back at me. Only his fiery left eyebrow moved, and barely so at that.

“It’s an emergency. Do you or your men have any idea where he is?”

The long hairs on his upper lip quivered ever so slightly.

Under grave threat my father had ordered us never to discuss his religious activities, never to speak of our royal connections, and never, ever, to mention his visits to the palace. And he was right to be so cautious, especially after the attempt on his life, for which I still blamed myself. Now, however, I ignored all that.

“The Empress telephoned!” I declared. “There’s an emergency, and she’s sending a car for him. Please—I must find him!”

Either out of duty or fear, the agent leaped from the motor, for he most certainly knew that the Empress, with nothing more than a cold shrug, could have him banished to the hinterlands. A second man, a tiny fellow with gold-rimmed glasses, remained tucked in the warmth of the vehicle.

“This way,” said the agent with great authority as he twisted one end of his big mustache.

“Where is he? How far?”

“Just a few buildings away.”

Slava bogu. So Papa wasn’t lost, so he hadn’t been dragged away. My initial panic subsided, but only slightly. I still had to get him and return as quickly as possible. With any luck we might even make it back before the imperial motor arrived.

Unlike the great cities of Europe, the capital of unruly Russia was, ironically, a planned metropolis, conceived of and built by Peter the Great according to his strict vision. Not only had the swamps been drained and the rivers contained, our roads were straight and methodical, lined with brick buildings covered with decorative, colorful stucco. Behind the endless, orderly façades, however, it was a different matter. Archways led to alleys, alleys split into passages, and passages dissolved into nooks and crannies, the lost corners that the lost characters of Dostoyevsky loved to inhabit and wallow in, festering in a dirty stew of anxiety and poverty. And it was through just such a filthy maze that I now followed the agent. We hadn’t lived on Goroxhavaya Street long enough for me to have ever been this way.

Wasting no time, we crossed into the courtyard of the building opposite ours, out its back, into the rear of another, down a narrow passageway, and into an opening behind yet another building. The agent led the way boldly, without any hesitation, as if he’d been down this path many times, and I couldn’t help but wonder what in the name of the devil my father was doing back here. How many times had he been tailed to this seemingly secret location? Was it a tiny bar where alcohol was sold despite the wartime ban? A little café where he could escape his throng of daily visitors?

“Wait here,” commanded the agent, pointing to the snowy ground with a sharp gloved finger. “I’ll bring him right out.”

I obeyed like an obedient mutt, coming to a quick halt. And like a pathetic dog, my eyes trailed after the agent, watching sadly as he continued down to the end of the building and disappeared around the corner. Why, I wondered, could I go no farther? Was there something I shouldn’t see? I gazed up at the back of the innocuous building and noted a handful of plain windows and two large round drainpipes half clinging to the structure. What business did my father have in there?

Out of nowhere I heard Papa’s unmistakable voice, deep and resonant. Immediately I spun around. Had it come from the building behind me? No, I realized, looking at a huge blank wall painted a tired apple green. Papa’s voice had merely bounced off that. Turning back, I scanned the alley, the wall, and heard it again. Not just his voice but the laughing, seductive voice of a woman. I looked everywhere—nook, doorway, rooftop—and then spied it, a fortochka—a small transom window—that was cracked open because, of course, we Russians were addicted to fresh air summer and winter. Yes, I realized, instinctively moving toward it. Papa was in a ground-floor room right over there, the one with the burning lightbulb dangling from the ceiling.

I could have done nothing. I could simply have waited for the security agent to rouse my father and hurry him out. But that was not my nature. And these were not passive times. Besides, I wanted information, bits and scraps that I could glue together to create a realistic image of my mysterious father.

And so, without really thinking, only knowing that I must, I hurried forward. From the side of the building, I grabbed an abandoned wooden crate and dragged it beneath the window, which stood several arzhini from the ground. As I clambered atop the crate, I heard again the deep tones of my father’s voice, which leaked from the window above and flowed over me like a bizarre draft. Strange words spilled over me, things I didn’t quite understand…and yet did, for they were akin to the deep, lustful words that Sasha had once whispered into the tender corner of my ear. My heart clenched, my pulse kicked like a horse. I shouldn’t be doing this, but I certainly couldn’t stop either.

Clenching the edge of the broad metal windowsill, I pulled myself up. Common things came into view: a plain lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, peeling brown wallpaper, a mirror, a torn curtain, a framed print on the wall. This was no luxurious apartment. It was only a single room, tattered, worn, and poor. Then I saw it, or rather him—the back of Papa’s head, his wild hair moving and jerking about. Sitting in his coat, he was facing the other way, and when I peered over and around him, I saw a single woman standing there. With the exception of a pair of stockings that climbed up to her thighs, she was completely naked. Her hair was thick and blond—a mass of curly ringlets—and her lips were painted an unusually bright red. Slowly swaying and dancing before my father, the woman was cupping her enormous breasts in her hands, pushing them up and forward, offering them to my father in much the same way that a luscious, exotic, and terribly juicy pineapple had been presented to me the very first time. She then ground her broad voluptuous hips from side to side, opened her legs a bit, and ever so slowly thrust forward her delicate patch of mounding hair.

Suddenly my father’s right hand came out of nowhere, slapping himself in the head with a loud thwack. Almost immediately his left hand batted at his very own cheek and gave it what appeared to be a painful pinch. Then, with both hands, he started tugging and yanking at his collar, wrestling furiously with himself. Startled, I swayed to the side and nearly fell, and the harlot spied me spying her and screamed. I screamed. And my father, who’d been sitting there, burst to his feet. Before Papa could see me, I leaped sideways off the crate and tumbled to the snowy ground. Shocked, I lay there in the frost. What was going on in there? What had I just witnessed? Papa wasn’t having sexual relations with this woman—at least not yet—for, I realized, she was naked but he was not. Was it an audition of some sort? Could he be treating her for what he frequently called the most tenacious of womanly problems, lewdness?

A pair of hands came from behind, lifting me up, and I half screamed. “Oi!”

Turning around, I expected to see one of the security agents. Instead, whom did I see but Sasha.

“Maria, are you all right?” he asked, gently helping me to my feet.

“What are you doing here? How do you keep popping up?”

He looked at me with a funny grin. “You asked me to come to your house, you asked me to wait by the back door. And I was there, waiting, when I heard your voice and saw you coming out the front. So I followed you. I thought maybe you were leading the way to a café or someplace where we could talk.”

“Oh. Of course.”

“So what’s happened? What are you doing back in this…this alley?”

I wanted to stand there and wallow in confusion, even self-pity. I wanted Sasha to wrap his arms around me. I wanted simply to saunter off with him. But of course I couldn’t.

“I came to get my father.”

“And where is he?”

I motioned up to the window. “Up there.”

“Doing what?”

“I’m not sure, but I have to get him to”—I shouldn’t have said anything, but I just blurted it out—“to the Palace.”

“Really? What’s—?”

We both heard it then, a voice loudly muttering and cursing.

“Sasha, I think that’s one of the security agents. Maybe you’d better not be here now.”

“Right,” he nodded, already slipping away.

No sooner had Sasha melted into the shadows of a doorway than the voice grew into shouting. Turning, I saw not one of the agents coming around the corner of the building, but my very own father. He wasn’t wearing his thousand-ruble fur coat. No, he had on his real coat, the peasant sort, made of wool and long and tight at the waist. And he hadn’t come out to yell at me. Rather, he didn’t even know I was there and was instead just stumbling along, yelling, beating himself with his fists, pulling his hair, even kicking himself.

“You fool! You idiot!” he shouted, cursing no one but himself.

It emerged softly, rolling innocently across my full lips. “Papa?”

He gave himself one last forceful punch in the chest, turned, and saw me. Shocked, he stopped his flaying and stared.

“Dochenka maya,” he said tenderly, “what are you doing here?”

“I…I…”

I had no idea what to say, even where to begin. Instead my hand simply started to rise, and I found myself pointing up to the room with the lightbulb. Amazingly enough, the naked woman with the blond ringlets and the shockingly bright red lips was standing there in the window, a tattered quilt now thrown around her shoulders and her eyes opened wide in shock.

“Oh, her?” My father laughed. “That’s Anisia, the prostitutka. Have you not met before?” Seeing my face twisted by the enigma of his world, Papa said quite innocently, “Yes, sure, I hire Anisia from time to time. She’s very helpful. I use her, you see, to tempt me, to unearth the lust hidden deep in my soul. She brings my terrible thoughts, the very worst ones, right to the surface of my skin. She draws them out of me like sweat in a banya, these lascivious thoughts I don’t even know I’m carrying. And when she draws them to the surface of my consciousness—well, then I can deal with them. Then I can beat them away.”

As if I’d swallowed my tongue, I stared at him, unable to speak.

“Don’t look so shocked, my dear Maria. It’s all very deliberate. Even the saints used to do this, stare at naked harlots in order to find purity of soul. This is the path I struggle so hard to follow as well, not the path of simple Believers but that of a real Christ. How else am I supposed to make my spirit strong unless I continually battle the flesh?” Looking right at me, he hit himself in the face with his own fist. “Besides, I find self-abasement very effective. It keeps me humble and on the right path.”

The joy of suffering. The eternal need to drive Satan out of one’s own body. The never-ending search for self-purification. Beating away sin with sin. All in the glorious quest of repentance and holy forgiveness. What could be more pagan? More Orthodox? And who, I sobbed within, could be more Russian than my very own father, Rasputin?

As I took Papa by the arm, I stole a glance over my shoulder and waved a quick farewell to Sasha, who was only just stepping out of the shadows.