Rasputin's Daughter Read Free

biscuits and sweets, nuts, dried fruits, cakes, and other delicacies that appeared day in and day out for our stream of guests.
    By the sounds from the salon, I assumed that was where I would find Papa. In fact, he was not there. Rather, I found the lone balalaika player, strumming the melancholy tunes of our land, and two women, both huddled on the floor. One was our eternally loyal maid, Dunya, one of Papa’s earliest disciples, who’d followed us from Siberia and who was, I couldn’t help but notice, getting fatter by the week. The second was Princess Kossikovskaya, a young beauty of the best society. The princess had a number of diamonds sparkling in her rich brown hair and hanging from her ears, while strands of huge pearls drooped from her neck, but right then and there, hunched over on her knees, she didn’t look so elegant. She was quite drunk.
    And when I heard the beauty retch, I understood why Dunya, who was holding a basin to the young woman’s smeared lips, hadn’t answered the phone.
    “Dunya, where’s Papa?” I demanded.
    “Back in his study,” she said, with a quick wave over her shoulder.
    I bit my lip, for it was not without some dread that I hurried out of the room and down the hall. Reaching the door of Papa’s room, I raised my hand to knock-but hesitated. We were never, ever supposed to interrupt when Papa was healing someone…and yet if he was being summoned by the Empress, wasn’t that more important? 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