Надежда Лохвицкая - Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me - The Best of Teffi

His face was tense and tired; he looked ashen. His prickly eyes were deeply sunken. He’d all but turned his back on the lawyer’s glamorously dressed wife, who was again sitting next to him. My own place, on his other side, was still free.

“Ah! There she is,” he said with a sudden twitch. “Well, come and sit down. I’ve been waiting. Why did you run off last time? I came back—and where were you? Drink! What’s the matter? I’m telling you—drink! God will forgive you.”

Rozanov and Izmailov were also in the same places as before.

Rasputin leant over towards me.

“I’ve missed you. I’ve been pining for you.”

“Nonsense. You’re just saying that to be nice,” I said loudly. “Why don’t you tell me something interesting instead? Is it true you organize Khlyst rituals?”

“Khlyst rituals? Here? Here in the city?”

“Well, don’t you?”

“Who’s told you that?” he asked uneasily. “Who? Did he say he was there himself ? Did he see for himself ? Or just hear rumours?”

“I’m afraid I can’t remember who it was.”

“You can’t remember ? My clever girl, why don’t you come along and see me? I’ll tell you many things you don’t know. You wouldn’t have English blood, would you?”

“No, I’m completely Russian.”

“There’s something English about your little face. I have a princess in Moscow and she has an English face, too. Yes, I’m going to drop everything and go to Moscow.”

“What about Vyrubova?” I asked, rather irrelevantly—for Rozanov’s sake.

“Vyrubova? No, not Vyrubova. She has a round face, not an English one. Vyrubova is my little one. I’ll tell you how it is: some of my flock are little ones and some are something else. I’m not going to lie to you, this is the truth.”

Suddenly Izmailov found his courage. “And… the Tsaritsa?” he asked in a choked voice. “Alexandra Fyodorovna?”

The boldness of the question rather alarmed me. But, to my surprise, Rasputin replied very calmly, “The Tsaritsa? She’s ailing. Her breast ails her. I lay my hand upon her and I pray. I pray well. And my prayer always makes her better. She’s ailing. I must pray for her and her little ones.” And then he muttered, “It’s bad… bad…”

“What’s bad?”

“No, it’s nothing… We must pray. They are good little ones…”

I recall reading in the newspapers, at the beginning of the revolution, about the “filthy correspondence between the elder and the depraved princesses”—correspondence that it was “quite inconceivable to publish”. Sometime later, however, these letters were published. And they went something like this: “Dear Grisha, please pray that I’ll be a good student.” “Dear Grisha, I’ve been a good girl all week long and obeyed Papa and Mama…”

“We must pray,” Rasputin went on muttering.

“Do you know Madame E——?” I asked.

“The one with the little pointed face? I think I’ve glimpsed her here and there. But it’s you I want to come along and see me. You’ll get to meet everyone and I’ll tell you all about them.”

“Why should I come along? It’ll only make them all cross.”

“Make who cross?”

“Your ladies. They don’t know me; I’m a complete stranger to them. They’re not going to be pleased to see me.”

“They wouldn’t dare!” He beat the table with his fist. “No, not in my house. In my house everyone is happy—God’s grace descends on everyone. If I say, ‘Bathe my feet!’, they’ll do as I say and then drink the water. In my house everything is godly. Obedience, grace, humility and love.”

“See? They bathe your feet. No, you’ll be better off without me.”

“You shall come. I’ll send for you.”

“Has everyone really come when you’ve sent for them?”

“No one’s refused yet.”

Apparently quite forgotten, the lawyer’s wife sitting on the other side of Rasputin was hungrily and tenaciously listening to our conversation.

From time to time, noticing me looking at her, she would give me an ingratiating smile. Her husband kept whispering to her and drinking to my health.

“You ought to invite the young lady to your right,” I said to Rasputin. “She’s lovely!”

Hearing my words, she looked up at me with frightened, grateful eyes. She even paled a little as she waited for his response. Rasputin glanced at her, quickly turned away and said loudly, “She’s a stupid bitch!”

Everyone pretended they hadn’t heard.

I turned to Rozanov.

“For the love of God,” he said, “get him to talk about the Khlysts. Try again.”

But I’d completely lost interest in talking to Rasputin. He seemed to be drunk. Our host kept coming up and pouring him wine, saying, “This is for you, Grisha. It’s your favourite.”

Rasputin kept drinking, jerking his head about, twitching and muttering something.

“I’m finding it very hard to talk to him,” I said to Rozanov. “Why don’t you and Izmailov try? Maybe we can all four of us have a conversation!”

“It won’t work. It’s a very intimate, mysterious subject. And he’s shown he trusts you…”

“What’s him over there whispering about?” interrupted Rasputin. “Him that writes for New Times ?” [5] After its acquisition by Alexey Suvorin in 1876, New Times ( Novoye Vremya ) became one of the most successful papers in Russia. Though reactionary and anti-Semitic, it published some of Russia’s most important writers, including Anton Chekhov.

So much for our being incognito.

“What makes you think he’s a writer?” I asked. “Someone must have misinformed you… Before you know it, they’ll be saying I’m a writer, too.”

“I think they said you’re from the Russian Word ,” he replied calmly. “But it’s all the same to me.”

“Who told you that?”

“I’m afraid I can’t remember,” he said, pointedly repeating my own words when he’d asked who had told me about the Khlysts.

He had clearly remembered my evasiveness, and now he was paying me back in kind: “I’m afraid I can’t remember!”

Who had given us away? Hadn’t we been promised complete anonymity? It was all very strange.

After all, it wasn’t as if we’d gone out of our way to meet the elder. We had been invited. We had been offered the opportunity to meet him and, what’s more, we’d been told to keep quiet about who we were because “Grisha doesn’t like journalists”—because he avoids talking to them and always does all he can to keep away from them.

Now it appeared that Rasputin knew very well who we were. And not only was he not avoiding us but he was even trying to draw us into a closer acquaintance.

Who was calling the shots? Had Manuilov orchestrated all this—for reasons we didn’t know? Or did the elder have some cunning scheme of his own? Or had someone just blurted out our real names by mistake?

It was all very insalubrious. What was truly going on was anyone’s guess.

And what did I know about all these dinner companions of ours? Which of them was from the secret police? Which would soon be sentenced to forced labour? Which might be a German agent? And which of them had lured us here? Which member of this upright company was hoping to use us for their own ends? Was Rasputin the weaver of this web—or the one being caught in it? Who was betraying whom?

“He knows who we are,” I whispered to Rozanov.

Rozanov looked at me in astonishment. He and Izmailov began whispering together.

Just then the musicians struck up. The accordion began a dance tune, the guitar twanged, the tambourine jingled. Rasputin leapt to his feet—so abruptly that he knocked his chair over. He darted off as if someone were calling to him. Once he was some way from the table (it was a large room), he suddenly began to skip and dance. He thrust a knee forward, shook his beard about and circled round and round. His face looked tense and bewildered. His movements were frenzied; he was always ahead of the music, as if unable to stop…