My mother hated Sankt Peterburg. It wasn’t the capital of Russia, she said, it was the capital of the material world, Peter the Great’s little window onto Europe which had let in this terrible draft, and made our country ill…with two different sorts of consumption. I had read how even our great Leo Tolstoy had said the capital city was “stupefied and deadened by wine, wealth, and lovemaking without love.” Yes, call it Sankt Peterburg or Petrograd, the capital had lost in the struggle of the spirit over the flesh, the very struggle my father was determined to fight every single day of his life.
And which the Heir Tsarevich Aleksei Nikolaevich himself was now facing.
I looked past my father, past the small blue robe draped on a bedside chair, and stared at the young boy, lying there on his nickel camp bed. Never had I seen such pain, such a blatant fight between good and evil. And in this child I saw not just an illness but a terrible metaphora for all the woes facing the Empire. Here was a young boy afflicted by a sickness brought into Russia by his Western relatives, a disease against which even the best Western doctors were powerless. Only Papa-who’d walked barefoot out of the depths of Russia -and his crude, backward spiritual treatments had offered any hope, let alone comfort. Yes, lying here before me was the body, the vessel, of a small boy, torn between East and West, ancient and modern. Looking at him, one couldn’t help but wonder if the sickly dynasty was strong enough to go on or if the time had come for it simply and easily, to die away.
“Help me, please, Father Grigori,” Aleksei beckoned, reaching up from the bed. “I hurt.”
“I am here, Alyosha. And through me God’s will shall be done. He has seen and heard your suffering, my child, and he has chosen to remove your pain.”
“Thank you, Father Grigori.”
“I have done nothing,” said Papa, whose greatest skill was, undoubtedly, his ability to calm people. “It is God Himself whom you must thank.”
“Da-s,” he said, and closed his young eyes in serene prayer.
My father started chanting and mumbling, and as the words of the Lord fell upon the child, covering him in a blanket of sweetness, I could feel his tension passing. I too closed my eyes, found my lips mumbling, praying, calling to the heavens for serenity and peace, comfort and warmth. I bowed my head and emptied my body of myself. Yes, we have power, all of us, to affect things, just as things themselves have power as well. Like a dream out of nowhere, an image of a blue heart-shaped diamond came into my mind’s eye. I could see it as clearly as if I were holding it. I knew what it was. I had read about this gem in our papers, and the ladies had talked of it at the tea table. It was huge and gorgeous, supposedly stolen from the eye of an idol, a terribly famous diamond that had belonged to many doomed personages, including the ill-fated Marie Antoinette, the Hope family of bankers, our Prince Ivan Kanitowsky, and now an American heiress. Death had followed the diamond everywhere and, I was sure, would continue to do so now that it had left Russia for America. So if death could be attached to an inanimate thing, couldn’t goodness be tied to something as well? Absolutely, I thought, reaching into my dress and clutching the small Orthodox cross that hung from my neck. Yes, there was hope.
“Death is not here today,” I mumbled aloud, not sure how or why I knew this, but certain that I did.
“It has passed us by,” muttered my father, mid-prayer.
A shiver traveled my spine, reached a crescendo, and flowed down my arms and out my fingertips. What was it that I was feeling, this glory, this exaltation now surging through me? And where was it coming from?
“It comes from on high,” said my father, as if he’d heard my silent question. “Dochenka maya, please come here.”
I trembled like a schoolgirl called on by a dominating teacher. The fingers of my right hand clutched the fine curtain. Did Papa intend to involve me in some way?
“Come, child of mine,” my father beckoned, holding out his hand with its incredibly long, gnarled fingers.
There were so many things I didn’t understand about my father. Then again, all that mattered was what he could do right here and now. Papa, I realized, was like Chiron the centaur, who had been wounded by a poisoned arrow but did not die, and who could heal everyone but himself. If only the entire country were here, right in this bedchamber, there would be no shouts for my father’s death, there would be no calling the Empress a traitor. Quite the contrary. She and my father were doing everything they could to save the Heir and the Empire.
Following my father and his unspoken movement, I proceeded around the nickel bed, while Papa continued to the kiot, which was filled with a glittering mass of gold-covered and bejeweled holy icons and flickering lamps. As his hand stretched upward, I knew at once which icon he was reaching for, the radiant Kazanskaya, Our Lady of Kazan, the painted image covered in a mass of gold, seed pearls, emeralds, and diamonds. Depicting the Holy Mother and Child, this icon had over the centuries become linked with the destiny of Russia. While the original rested in town in the Kazanski Cathedral on Nevsky Prospekt, there were many miracle-working copies, of which I could only hope this was one. In our own family this icon was of particular importance for the story of my namesake, little Matryona. In the 1500s a soldier’s house had burned entirely to the ground and everything was thought lost, icons and all. That night, the soldier’s daughter, Matryona, had a vision of the Holy Mother in the ashes. No one believed her, but Matryona insisted, and in time a spade was got, the girl’s mother dug, and the icon was found, completely undamaged. Ever since, many miracles had taken place before this icon, including when it was taken into battle and victory was secured, first over the Poles and much later over Napoleon.
Papa reached up, placed one hand just before the icon, and intoned, “O Most Holy Mother of God, Thou who saved Thine image from harm, we beseech Thee to save us, Thine unworthy ones!”
My father stood there, mumbling and chanting, trembling and shaking. As he called to the heavens to pour forth from and through this religious image, I watched-and felt it, a power, a kind of divine security. Slowly, Papa turned to me, his eyes not blinking, but steadfast and remarkably intent.
“Matryona, daughter of mine,” he said, his voice unusually deep and strange, “turn and place your hands over the boy’s pain.”
I panicked. I had seen death, but only at a distance. I had heard pain, but only from afar. I looked down at my open palms, which were staring blankly back up at me. What were these simple hands and what could they do? Might I hurt the boy instead of help?
Suddenly Papa was touching me on the forehead, saying, “Your wisdom and faith are not here.” Next he was pressing his flat hand against my chest and over my heart. “But here.”
Startled and worried, I raised my eyes.
“There is no fear here tonight, my Matryona. Trust me. Tonight you must help me reach from the icon to the boy, which you can do. It is time for you to realize your own strengths, of which you have a great many.”
As soon as he said it, I realized my father was right. I didn’t know if I’d inherited something from him, much in the same way as a singer or painter or sculptor inherits gifts from her parents, or if in fact I had merely observed and absorbed my father’s skills. But I felt something, a power perhaps, albeit nascent. Or perhaps what I recognized was simply belief, a trust that these things can be made to happen, that the power of prayer can indeed beckon God to shine down and heal someone.
I turned to the bed and stared at the Heir Tsarevich, who lay there against his sheets like a pallid ghost hovering in a pale cloud, his eyes sunken and rimmed with ashen circles. Several days ago he’d nearly died from a simple nosebleed. Today he’d fallen, and now his leg was horribly bloated and twisted; blood had rushed to the contusion on his knee, filling the entire joint and forcing him to make more room by bending it up. A deep wave of pity surged in me and I wanted to cry out, but Aleksei smiled weakly up at me. He will take his cue from me, I thought, so I must convey my belief and my hope. I must give him my strength so he can find his. So I smiled warmly down upon him.