Rasputin's Daughter - By Robert Alexander Page 0,4

Absolutely, I thought, and I knocked firmly, albeit hesitantly.

A moment later came his gruff reply. “Da, da. Please enter at once!”

His study was small and narrow, with an icon and its oil lamp in one corner, an old oak desk, and, of course, his pathetic leather sofa, which was nearly rubbed bare. Perched on a chair in front of the sofa was Papa, wearing loose black pants, tall black leather boots, and a lilac kosovorotka, a shirt buttoned at the side of the collar. Every day any number of women begged for Papa’s attention, but I had no idea how he treated them. Peering in now, however, I saw my father leaning forward and holding his visitor, none other than Countess Olga Kurlova, by the knees. The countess, wearing a pink Parisian silk dress that appeared loose, perhaps even unbuttoned in the front, was one of the great beauties of the Empire, with thick blond hair and cheeks that were high and distinguished. She was from Moscow, I knew, and though her family was neither so very noble nor, from what I heard, so very rich, she was a favorite in the capital, sought after by society for her seductive looks and keen wit.

As if I had walked in on a pair of lovers, Countess Olga gasped and clutched at the top of her dress.

“What are you doing here?” Papa asked with a scowl. “I thought it was our other guest. You know you’re not supposed to bother me when my door is closed.”

Averting my eyes, I said quietly, “There’s a call of urgent business…from the Palace.”

“What’s that you say? Speak up, child!”

“There’s a call from the Palace…. It’s urgent, Papa.”

All but forgetting about me, my father turned to the luscious countess and bragged, “Ah, Mama needs me. Mama needs me at the Palace.”

Horrified that a peasant would refer to so lofty a personage in such coarse terms, the countess stared at him in shock. While some members of the court were permitted to address Her Majesty by her first name and patronymic—Aleksandra Fyodorovna—her lowly subjects were supposed to refer to her either as the Tsaritsa or the Empress. Never, ever, as Mama.

“I don’t need them, I can just go back home to Siberia,” my father boasted, holding up a sloppy finger to make a fine point. “But they wouldn’t last six months on the throne without me! Really, not six months!”

“The phone, Papa!” I reminded. “You’re wanted on the telephone!”

“Of course…yes, the telephone.”

He kissed his right hand, then used that same hand to massage Countess Olga’s right knee. The countess, though, was none too pleased and jerked back, whereupon the back of the old leather sofa fell off. The visiting beauty uttered a stifled scream.

“Ah, now, don’t you worry, my tasty dish,” muttered Papa, as he slowly and drunkenly pushed himself to his feet. “One of those fat sisters from the women’s monastery slept on that sofa last week and broke it.”

Almost without effort, Papa bent over the countess and lifted the heavy piece into place with one hand. Swaying slightly, he then leaned down and patted his guest on her head.

“We’ll continue our purification later.”

“Papa!” I insisted.

He stretched one hand toward me and called weakly, “Yes, yes. Come help me, malenkaya maya.” My little one.

Understanding that he’d drunk too much, his “little one” was not eager to go to his side; I would have preferred simply to leave the room. But my mother in Siberia had long ago forgiven Papa his excesses, grateful for the three children he had given her, not to mention the finest house in the village and a field to till. So, as the oldest Rasputin female in the Petrograd household, I had no choice but to overlook things also.

Looking down at the countess one last time, Father made a drunken sign of the cross over her and intoned one of his favorite sayings: “Remember, great is the peasant in the eyes of God!”

As I helped him from his study, I stared at this terribly plain, even homely man, who was nothing less and nothing more than a muzhik—peasant—from Siberia. He was not dashing and debonair like the fathers of my classmates, many of whom were princes or counts. Instead, here was a person of only medium height, a semi-illiterate ox of a man who had toiled in the fields for years. He had light blue eyes, the kind that made people feel uncomfortable, his nose was long and slightly pocked and his skin