I looked up and saw we were halfway to the gate. “That’s it, Papa. Just keep walking, one foot after the other.”
“Da, da, da…that’s what I did wrong. I became vain. I…I took personal glory in my achievements.”
“Don’t stop, we’re almost there!”
“But it wasn’t me…it was Him, Our Father, who saved the boy and all those other suffering souls. It was God who healed them, not me! They were His miracles, not mine, yet I took advantage of it all. The power, the money, the women…I had it all, took it all! And now I’m being punished…punished for my vanity!”
“No, Papa, that’s not true! You gave to so many-you gave and gave! Think how many you helped, think how much money you passed to those in need!”
All of a sudden my father stopped and grabbed his stomach. “Ah!”
Wincing in terrible pain, he tumbled into me, and if I hadn’t clutched him just then, he would certainly have fallen over.
“Just a little farther, Papa,” I said, holding him by the shoulders and begging him onward. “We have to keep moving.”
“I…I…”
He could say no more. Nor could he move. Was it the bullet biting into him? Had it shifted about inside?
“I’m here,” I coaxed. “And you’re going to be okay. Just a little bit farther. Just a few more steps!”
“Ohhhh…,” he moaned.
Oh, God, I couldn’t lose him now, could I? We’d made it out of the palace, we’d come this far. If we could just make it to the troika, if we could just-
“I…I-”
“Calm down, Papa. Catch your breath. We’ll rest here for a minute.”
“I…I fear that my time…has come,” he said sadly, looking up at me.
“No, Papa, you mustn’t give up!”
“When it…it…”
“Shh. Don’t talk. Just be quiet and catch your breath.”
“When it does, my sweet daughter, you…you must let me go.”
Tears welled up in my eyes as I held him. How could I ever let my father go? Overwhelmed, I stared up at the dark heavens above me. It was starting to snow again, the flakes fat and heavy. Was this how it was all to end, here in a courtyard of a princely home? I’d had a vision of something like this, but why, dear God, why hadn’t my gifted father?
Papa asked, “Child, comfort me with a poem, will…will you? How about that one I like so much? You know the one, by that writer, that…that fellow all you girls are crazy about.”
I nodded and tried to steady my voice, as I recited, as softly as a prayer, the words of the great Aleksander Blok:
“To sin shamelessly, endlessly,
To lose count of the nights and days,
And with a head unruly from drunkenness
To pass sideways into the temple of God.”
“Yes, that is nice, very nice…yes, sideways.” With no small effort, Papa grabbed me by one hand. “My sweet, dear, beautiful girl…I must tell you a secret.”
Biting my lip and trying my best not to break down sobbing, I merely nodded.
“I know for sure that that is Heaven,” he said, weakly pointing to the sky. “But now I…now I see also that this”-he looked around-“is not earth but hell.”
“Papa, no. You mustn’t talk like that.”
He nodded. “Yes, this…this is hell.”
Mopping my eyes with the sleeve of my cloak, I stood paralyzed in fear. If only the world could see him now, Rasputin the devil, for who he really was: my father, a muzhik who, unarmed and unsuspecting, had been shot like a mad dog. How easily he had been brought down…and how easily he had brought himself down. But I couldn’t crumble, not now.
“Papa, listen to me. I have a troika waiting just around the corner. I’m going to fetch the driver, and the two of us will come get you.”
My father’s body went rigid with one huge spasm, and he cried out in pain. I held him around the waist and shoulder and felt his entire body quiver horribly.
“Yes…go,” he finally muttered.
“I’ll hurry!”
Carefully letting go of my father, I started to pull away. He began to teeter to the side, and for a moment I thought he would collapse right then and there in the side courtyard.
Raising his reddened eyes to me, Papa commanded, “Go!”
I gathered up my cloak and started to run. I just had to get the driver to bring the troika right here, and then the two of us would gather up my father and whisk him away. We just had to be quick. I had to be quick.
Dashing to the stone wall, I started over. Oh, Lord, I thought as I lifted my feet, I can climb over, but what about Papa? How would we get him-
I heard it quite clearly then. Just as I landed on the other side of the wall I heard someone shouting the alarm.
“He’s getting away! Hurry!” yelled a voice that was much, much too familiar.
Turning around, I saw the small service door flung wide. And standing right there in the doorway, the light pouring from inside and over him, was…was…but how could it be? How did he-? No, this was impossible.
“Sasha?” I muttered.
My entire body flushed with horror. Yes, it was indeed my sweet Sasha. Only he wasn’t coming to my rescue. No. He was…was…
“Hurry!” he shouted over his shoulder into the palace. “Bring a gun. You’ve got to shoot him again!”
I felt like a tiny bird that had flown full speed into a large pane of glass and then, stunned, fallen to the ground. What invisible reality hadn’t I seen before? What hard truth was I facing now? The betrayal was too much, I couldn’t comprehend what I was witnessing. And if I hadn’t been in such shock, I would have cried out in horror. Sasha hadn’t come to our rescue, but to make sure of my father’s death?
“Where, Prince, where?” shouted Purishkevich, that infamous monarchist with the famously pointed mustache.
“Out there!” replied Sasha, pointing directly at my father.
I tried to call to my father, to beg him to run, but nothing came out of my mouth except a horrible piercing cry. I watched as my father glanced back and laid his eyes on the man who I thought was my lover-but who was, in fact, one with my father’s murderers. Oh, dear God, what had I done? What web of deceit had I fallen into?
Finally, I managed to scream, “Hurry, Papa!”
His face awash with terror, Papa hobbled on, hurrying toward me, pleading, “Run, Maria! Get away! Save yourself!”
I couldn’t move. Behind my father I saw Purishkevich struggling to load a revolver. First one, then a second bullet dropped from his shaking hands into the snow. Frustrated and furious, Sasha ripped the gun from Purishkevich and raised it high. And then Sasha-none other than Sasha!-took careful aim at my father.
“No!” I shrieked. “No!”
The very next instant Sasha fired, shattering the night. Before I knew it, something went screaming through the air not far from me. Sasha had missed! Papa, I realized, was still struggling onward!
“Run!” I called to my father.
But before Papa had taken three more steps, Sasha was again raising the gun. How could this be? How could the sweet young man I had kissed so passionately and given myself to now be so consumed with anger? How could his face be twisted with such hatred?
To my horror, this time Sasha took longer, straining to steady his wavering arm. And then, when my father was only some twenty paces from me, Sasha fired a second time-and again missed! With every bit of his strength, Papa pressed on, half stumbling, half running.
“Please, God, give him strength!” I sobbed.
But then several more figures burst from the palace, including Prince Felix and none other than Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, that young dashing member of the royal family, a pistol in hand. My entire body shuddered. The grand duke was an Olympic athlete, a trained soldier, a seasoned hunter-and a Romanov bent on eliminating the “stain” of my father from the dynasty. When I saw him take confident, godlike aim at my father, I knew there was no hope.