Through the plate glass of the large bay window I can see out onto the street, where a warrant officer is teaching new recruits to poke bayonets into a scarecrow. The recruits have grey, damp-chilled faces. A despondent-looking woman with a sack stops and stares at them.
What could be more dismal?
The telephone rings.
“Who is it?”
“Rozanov.”
In my surprise, I ask again. Yes, it’s Rozanov.
He is very cryptic. “Has Izmailov said anything to you? Has he invited you? Have you accepted?”
“No, I haven’t seen Izmailov and I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“So he hasn’t yet spoken to you. I can’t say anything over the telephone. But please, please do accept. If you don’t go, I won’t either.”
“For heaven’s sake, what are you talking about?”
“He’ll explain everything. It’s not something we can talk about on the telephone.”
There was a click on the line. We had been disconnected.
This was all very unexpected and strange. Vasily Rozanov was not someone I saw a lot of. Nor was Izmailov. And the combination of Rozanov and Izmailov also seemed odd. What was all this about? And why wouldn’t Rozanov go to some place unless I went too?
I rang the editorial department of the Stock Exchange Gazette, where Izmailov worked. It was too early; no one was there.
But I didn’t have to wait long. About two hours later Izmailov rang me.
“There is the possibility of a very interesting meeting… Unfortunately, there’s nothing more I can say over the telephone… Maybe you can guess?”
I most certainly could not guess. We agreed that he should come round and explain everything.
He arrived.
“Have you still not guessed who we’re talking about?”
Izmailov was thin, all in black, and in dark glasses; he looked as if he had been sketched in black ink. His voice was hollow. All rather weird and sinister.
Izmailov truly was weird. He lived in the grounds of the Smolensk cemetery, where his father had once been a priest. He practised black magic, loved telling stories about sorcery, and he knew charms and spells. Thin, pale and black, with a thin strip of bright red mouth, he looked like a vampire.
“So you really don’t understand?” he asked with a grin. “You don’t know who it is we can’t discuss over the telephone?”
“Kaiser Wilhelm perhaps?”
Izmailov looked through his dark glasses at the two doors into my study—and then, over his glasses, at me.
“Rasputin.”
“Ah!”
“Here in Petersburg there’s a publisher. Filippov—perhaps you’ve heard of him? No? Well, anyway, there is. Rasputin goes to see him quite often; he dines with him. For some reason he’s really quite friendly with him. Filippov also regularly entertains Manuilov, who has a certain reputation in literary circles. Do you know him?”
Manuilov was someone I had come across a few times. He was one of those “companion fish” that are part of the entourage of great writers or artistic figures. At one point he had worshipped Kuprin, then he had moved over to Leonid Andreyev. Then he had quietened down and seemed to disappear altogether. Now he had resurfaced.
“This Manuilov,” said Izmailov, “has suggested to Filippov that he should ask round some writers who’d like to get a glimpse of Rasputin. Just a few people, carefully chosen so there’s no one superfluous and no chance of any unpleasant surprises. Only recently a friend of mine happened to be in the company of Rasputin—and someone covertly took a photograph. Worse still—they sent this photograph to a magazine. ‘Rasputin,’ the caption read, ‘among his friends and admirers.’ But my friend is a prominent public figure; he’s a serious man, perfectly respectable. He can’t stand Rasputin and he feels he’ll never get over the disgrace of this photograph—of being immortalized amid this picturesque crowd. Which is why, to avoid any unpleasantness of this kind, I’ve made it a condition that there should be no superfluous guests. Filippov has given his promise, and this morning Manuilov came over and showed me the guest list. One of the writers is Rozanov, and Rozanov insists that you absolutely must be there. Without you, he says, the whole thing will be a waste of time. Evidently he has a plan of some kind.”
“What on earth can this plan be?” I asked. “Maybe I should stay at home. Although I would, I admit, be curious to get a glimpse of Rasputin.”
“Precisely. How could anyone not be curious? One wants to see for oneself whether he really is someone significant in his own right or whether he’s just a tool—someone being exploited by clever people for their own ends. Let’s take a chance and go. We won’t stay long and we’ll keep together. Like it or not, he’s someone who’ll be in the history books. If we miss this chance, we may never get another.”
“Just so long as he doesn’t think we’re trying to get something out of him.”
“I don’t think he will. The host has promised not to let on that we’re writers. Apparently Rasputin doesn’t like writers. He’s afraid of them. So no one will be telling him this little detail. This is in our interests too. We want Rasputin to feel completely at ease—as if among friends. Because if he feels he’s got to start posturing, the evening will be a complete waste of time. So, we’ll be going, will we? Tomorrow late—not before ten. Rasputin never turns up any earlier. If he’s held up at the palace and can’t come, Filippov promises to ring and let us all know.”
“This is all very strange. And I’ve never even met the host.”
“I don’t know him either, not personally—nor does Rozanov. But he’s someone well known. And he’s a perfectly decent fellow. So, we’re agreed: tomorrow at ten.”
I had glimpsed Rasputin once before. In a train. He must have been on his way east, to visit his home village in Siberia. He was in a first-class compartment. With his entourage: a little man who was something like a secretary to him, a woman of a certain age with her daughter, and Madame V——, a lady-in-waiting to the Tsaritsa.[1]
It was very hot and the compartment doors were wide open. Rasputin was presiding over tea—with a tin teapot, dried bread rings and lumps of sugar on the side. He was wearing a pink calico smock over his trousers, wiping his forehead and neck with an embroidered towel and talking rather peevishly, with a broad Siberian accent.
“Dearie! Go and fetch us some more hot water! Hot water, I said, go and get us some. The tea’s right stewed but they didn’t even give us any hot water. And where is the strainer? Annushka, where’ve you gone and hidden the strainer? Annushka! The strainer—where is it? Oh, what a muddler you are!”
In the evening of the day Izmailov had come round—that is, the day before I was due to meet Rasputin—I went to a rather large dinner party at the home of some friends.
The mirror above the dining-room fireplace was adorned with a sign that read: “In this house we do not talk about Rasputin.”
I’d seen signs like this in a number of other houses. But this time, because I was going to be seeing him the next day, there was no one in the world I wanted to talk about more than Rasputin. And so, slowly and loudly, I read out: “In this house we do not talk about Ras-pu-tin.”
Sitting diagonally across from me was a thin, tense, angular lady. She quickly looked round, glanced at me, then at the sign, then back at me again. As if she wanted to say something.
“Who’s that?” I asked my neighbour.
“Madame E——,” he replied. “She’s a lady-in-waiting. Daughter of the E——” He named someone then very well known. “Know who I mean?”
1
“Madame V——” probably refers to Anna Vyrubova (see