“Mama…Mama…,” he gasped, “will it hurt so much when I go to Heaven?”
With supreme confidence, Papa strode right up behind the Empress, placing his hand directly on her shoulder as if she were nothing more than the commonest of commoners. Startled, Aleksandra Fyodorovna turned, looked up, and, upon seeing him, half swooned to the side, falling upon his thigh like an eager lover. Unable to control herself, the Empress of All the Russias grabbed this ugly peasant’s ugly hand and kissed it passionately.
“Thank you, Father Grigori. Thank you for coming,” she gasped in relief. “Aleksei fell on his knee, and now he needs you badly. We all need you. Help us, please help us!”
My father said nothing, focusing only on the boy. The Empress, whose health and beauty had been ravaged by years of worry and anxiety, started to beg a question but stopped. I knew what it was. She wanted to know what none of those doctors or specialists in the playroom could tell her: Would the boy cheat death yet again? She started to speak but instead started to sob, and seemed about to faint. Indeed, she might have tumbled over had she not been leaning so heavily on her Friend, her Savior, my father.
Practically brushing her aside, Papa pressed himself up against the bed and stared down upon the pathetic child, who gazed up at him with hollow eyes, eyes that expressed nothing but excruciating pain. Pulling aside a light blanket, Papa saw a leg hideously bloated with blood, twisted and bent up to the boy’s chest. Papa made the sign of the cross over Aleksei and placed one of his massive hands directly on the boy’s damp, feverish forehead. He then reached down and closed his fingers firmly around the boy’s right hand. Papa had healed me from the worst illnesses in just this manner, and I knew he could read it alclass="underline" the boy’s fear, the panic of those around him, the hopelessness everyone sensed, and the boy’s pain-the unbelievable pain of the pounding blood that had burst from the veins, swelled the skin, and twisted the limbs.
Without so much as glancing down at her, Papa barked at the Empress, “Leave us!”
Aleksandra Fyodorovna could barely rise, so wrought with worry was she, so pummeled by years of constant fear, the fear that hung like a guillotine over her head every moment of every day, the fear that today the blade might come suddenly crashing down and she would lose her beloved son. She tried to push herself to her feet but could not. She rose, and then sank, and I was about to hurry to her side when a short but muscular figure charged into the room. Rushing right up to her, the man tenderly reached down and took her in his own shaking but loving hands.
“Come, my dear,” the Tsar urged gently, his own tears now controlled. “We must let Father Grigori do his work.”
“Oh, Nicky!” She wept, clutching his arms, kissing his hands. “I…I…”
Then Papa offered the greatest of benedictions. “Do not worry. God has heard your prayers. Now leave us!”
Aleksandra tried to contain herself. The strongest of mothers, the mightiest of tsaritsas, attempted to restrain her joy, but she could not. She fell apart, and tears of boundless relief burst from her eyes.
“Thank you, oh, thank you!” she exclaimed, grabbing my father’s hand and kissing it.
The Tsar, small tears glistening in his eyes, leaned down, kissed my father’s hand, and thanked him too. “Spasibo.”
“Take care, my Sunbeam,” said Aleksandra Fyodorovna, kissing her son tenderly on the forehead. “Rest well, my dearest. Did you hear Father Grigori? You’re in the hands of God. Let’s all get some rest…and we’ll come back later. Everything’s going to be fine. We’ll be back later to kiss you good night.”
“Yes, Mama,” the boy replied softly, as if the pain was already beginning to pass.
Papa didn’t move. He didn’t budge. Not as the Tsar escorted his wife from the room. Not as the doctors and specialists were sent away. Not as the bedchamber and playroom were emptied. My father banished everyone, every last one of them except me, and within moments all was quiet and the door to the boy’s room was shut. Only I was left because only I understood how to serve Papa, only I, his own flesh and blood, could anticipate his needs. Dropping my coat on a chair, I pushed myself back into the tall floral curtains, where I disappeared. My own deep eyes never left Papa, who kept one hand pressed against Aleksei’s forehead, the other clasped around his fingers. Hidden in the vines and flowers of the fine fabric, I stared at my father as he chanted prayers and began the work for which he was both worshiped and reviled, that greatest of Christian gifts, the laying on of hands. But would he be able to perform a miracle yet again?
“Dear God,” I prayed quietly, “please grant Papa strength, please let Aleksei Nikolaevich live through the night.”
CHAPTER 16
For all my frustrations with my father, I knew one thing for sure: He was a healer. I knew this for one simple reason: Whenever I was ill, his presence, his touch, and his prayers not only made me feel better, they returned me with speed to good health.
The horse with the lame leg-the very first creature he had ever healed-knew that as well, as did the babushka, once bent with arthritis and now walking tall. And the boy run over by the carriage, now living in happiness and good health. Also Madame Vyrubova, who survived the train wreck when the doctors thought her lost. Papa had healed hundreds, if not thousands. Indeed, his powers were not limited to mere living creatures. Back home farmers frequently brought him cumbersome bags of seed to bless, and when he did-holding them close to his heart and chanting heavenly words-they grew into the best fields of rye. Everyone in our province was aware of that. Seeds and plants that Papa talked to would thrive, whereas the ones he ignored would more often than not fail.
My own mother believed firmly in my father’s skills. Healers, she said, had always existed across our vast nation, men and women who could bring nature under their control. They were known by the Siberian word shaman, and in the 1700s they were found by explorers all the way from the Urals to Chukchi in the Far East. Like Christ, they were special people with a special touch who could make the blind see and the lame walk. It was only recently that modern thoughts-modern Western thoughts, my mother always added, with great disdain-had torn the fabric of our ancient Russian beliefs, casting doubts and questions everywhere. Whereas before we took understanding and meaning from the sun and the moon, the trees and the plants, the modern scientists of the last fifty years, almost all of them educated abroad, were trying to explain away our natural world, not in a spiritual manner but a logical and mechanical one, continually dissecting everything into neat little black-and-white packages.
“If your father had been born a hundred years earlier,” Mama had said one snowy afternoon, as her thick fingers made a large, square pirog-a savory pie-filled with fish in one corner, wild mushrooms in the next, potatoes and onion in the third, and chopped egg in the fourth, “all Russia would be at his feet. Back then no one questioned the ability or the respectability of a healer. And that’s the difference between your father and the modern scientists and doctors-your father seeks to heal people, whereas they seek to cure them.”