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

“Oh no,” my friend assured me. “I promise you that she has no hidden designs. S——is simply very fond of you and would like to see you. Anyway, it should be a very enjoyable evening. There won’t be many guests, just friends, because they can’t put on grand balls now, not while we’re at war. That would be in poor taste. There will be no one there who shouldn’t be there—no one superfluous. They’re people who know how to give a good party.”

We arrived after eleven.

There were a lot of people. Among the tail coats and evening dresses were a number of figures in identical black or light-blue domino masks. They were the only ones in fancy dress; it was clear they had come as a group.

My friend took me by the arm and led me to our hostess: “Well, here she is. See? I’ve brought her with me.”

A Gypsy was singing in the large ballroom. Short and slight, she was wearing a high-necked dress of shining silk. Her head was thrown back and her dusky face an emblem of suffering as she sang the words:

“Just wait a moment,” the hostess whispered to me. “She’s almost finished.”

And she went on standing beside me, evidently looking around for someone.

“Now we can go.”

She took my hand and led me across the ballroom, still looking.

Then we entered a small, dimly lit sitting room. There was no one there. The hostess seated me on a sofa. “I’ll be back in a moment. Please don’t go anywhere.”

She did indeed come back in a moment, together with a figure in a black mask.

“This mysterious figure will keep you entertained,” said S——with a laugh. “Please wait for me here.”

The black figure sat down beside me and looked silently at me through narrow eye slits.

“You don’t know me,” it murmured at last, “but I desperately need to speak to you.”

It was not a voice I had heard before, but something about its intonations was familiar. It was the same quivering, hysterical tone in which that lady-in-waiting had spoken of Rasputin.

I peered at the woman sitting beside me. No, this wasn’t Madame E——. Madame E——was petite. This lady was very tall. She spoke with a faint lisp, like all of our high society ladies who as children begin speaking English before Russian.

“I know everything,” the unknown woman began edgily. “On Thursday you’re going to a certain house.”

“No,” I replied in surprise. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She grew terribly flustered. “Why don’t you tell me the truth? Why? I know everything.”

“Where is it you think I’m going?” I asked.

“There. His place.”

“I don’t understand a thing.”

“Do you mean to test me? All right, I’ll say it. On Thursday you’re going to… to… Rasputin’s.”

“What makes you think that? No one has asked me.”

The lady fell silent.

“You may not have received the invitation yet… but you soon will. It’s already been decided.”

“But why does this matter so much to you?” I asked. “Perhaps you could tell me your name?”

“I haven’t put on this idiotic mask only to go and tell you my name. And as far as you’re concerned, my name is of no importance. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that on Thursday you’re going to be there.”

“I have no intention of going to Rasputin’s,” I replied calmly. “Of that I can assure you.”

“Ah!”

She suddenly leant forward and, with hands tightly encased in black gloves, seized hold of my arm.

“No, you’re joking! You will be going! Why wouldn’t you?”

“Because it’s of no interest to me.”

“And you won’t change your mind?”

“No.”

Her shoulders began to tremble. I thought she was weeping.

“I thought you were someone sincere,” she whispered.

I was at a loss.

“What is it you want from me? Does it upset you that I won’t be going? I don’t understand a thing.”

She seized hold of my arm again.

“I implore you by everything you hold sacred—please refuse the invitation. We have to get him to cancel this evening. He mustn’t leave Tsarskoye on Thursday. We mustn’t let him—or something terrible will happen.”

She muttered something, her shoulders quivering.

“I don’t see what any of this has to do with me,” I said. “But if it will make you feel any better, then please believe me: I give you my word of honour that I won’t go. In three days’ time I’m going to Moscow.”

Again her shoulders began to tremble, and again I thought she was weeping.

“Thank you, my dear one, thank you…”

She quickly bent over and kissed my hand.

Then she jumped up and left.

“No, that can’t have been Vyrubova,” I thought, remembering how Vyrubova had wanted to see me at that party I hadn’t gone to. “No, it wasn’t her. Vyrubova is quite plump, and anyway, she limps. It wasn’t her.”

I found our hostess.

“Who was that masked lady you just brought to me?”

The hostess seemed rather put out.

“How would I know? She was wearing a mask.”

While we were at dinner the masked figures seemed to disappear. Or perhaps they had all just taken off their fancy dress.

I spent a long time studying the faces I didn’t know, looking for the lips that had kissed my hand…

Sitting at the far end of the table were three musicians: guitar, accordion and tambourine. The very same three musicians. Rasputin’s musicians. Here was a link… a thread.

The next day Izmailov came over. He was terribly upset.

“Something awful has happened. Here. Read this.” And he handed me a newspaper.

In it I read that Rasputin had begun frequenting a literary circle where, over a bottle of wine, he would tell entertaining stories of all kinds about extremely high-ranking figures.

“And that’s not the worst of it,” said Izmailov. “Filippov came over today and said he’d had an unexpected summons from the secret police, who wanted to know just which literary figures had been to his house and precisely what Rasputin had talked about. Filippov was threatened with exile from Petersburg. But the most astonishing and horrible thing of all is that, there on the interrogator’s desk, he could clearly see the guest list, in Manuilov’s own hand.”

“You’re not saying Manuilov works for the secret police, are you?” [7] Alexey Filippov was a banker and the publisher of writings by Rasputin. Ivan Manasevich-Manuilov was a police agent. According to Edward Radzinsky, Manasevich-Manuilov had “suggested that Filippov organize a literary soirée, and he himself had told Tsarskoye Selo about the soirée, attributing the initiative to Filippov. And he had passed on to the security branch […] the list of literary invitees. All the people on it were well-known ‘leftist writers’. Which was why there had been a call from Tsarskoye Selo interrupting the meeting” ( Rasputin: The Last Word (London: Phoenix, 2000), p. 403). Manasevich-Manuilov had evidently wanted to compromise Filippov both in the eyes of the authorities and in the eyes of Rasputin himself. In the original, Teffi refers to Filippov and Manasevich-Manuilov only by their initial letters.

“There’s no knowing whether it was him or another of Filippov’s guests. In any case, we’ve got to be very careful. Even if they don’t interrogate us, they’ll be following us. No doubt about that. So if Rasputin writes to you or summons you by telephone, you’d better not respond. Although he doesn’t know your address, and he’s unlikely to have remembered your last name.”