Rasputin's Daughter by Robert Alexander Page A

room.
    Dunya and Varya had obviously been busy. Our brass samovar, polished until it glowed like gold and boiling with water, sat by the window, and our heavy oak dinner table, the kind so popular among the city bourgeoisie, was covered with plates of cold zakuski: pickles, sour cream, salted herring garnished with onions, grated carrots mixed with mayonnaise and garlic, salted tomatoes, pickled mushrooms, smoked fish, stuffed eggs, and Papa’s favorite appetizer, jellied fish heads. Tonight, it was obvious we would feast not on fancy city things but real food.
    “Girls, please take your places while I fetch your father,” Dunya said.
    As she scurried off, the two of us stood behind our chairs, and my sister looked up at me, asking softly, “Are you all right, Maria? Why were you so upset?”
    “Nothing,” I mumbled.
    I stared at Varya, who was so proud of studying at middle school here in the capital that even now she wore the black-and-white frock of the gymnasia. She had my father’s blunt chin, his dark hair, his large full lips, and short black bangs, which she kept flipping back. She worshiped Papa, and to her, it wasn’t unusual at all that our humble father should be telephoned once or twice a day by the Empress herself, let alone summoned at any hour to the palace.
    “What happened this afternoon?” she asked, not particularly concerned as she scooped up some carrot salad with her finger. “I heard a woman screaming.”
    I shrugged. “You know how people are always after Papa for things.”
    For the first time ever I was dreading a family meal. What was I going to say to my father? How would I even be able to look at him? But when he came in a few moments later it was not with his booming voice and quick step. Rather it was with a shuffle, for he was walking only with the aid of Dunya, who held him by the left arm.
    “Papa, what’s the matter?” gasped Varya, rushing to his side.
    He looked awful, as if he’d just aged twenty years, and for a brief moment I felt a pang of worry. His hair fell every which way like a field of wheat after a summer storm, his face was pallid, and his eyes were red. He was dressed terribly too, wearing a dirty pair of baggy pants and an unbelted tunic of coarse cotton.
    “I had another dream…another vision…”
    “Please, Father Grigori,” coaxed Dunya. “Just tea and a little food. Then you’ll feel better, I promise.”
    They led Papa along, Dunya on one side and Varya on the other. Back home there was a bent old man who lived in a falling-down hut, and we taunted him mercilessly, calling him a starii xhren-an old piece of horseradish. Right here and now, that was my father. Had he fallen into a pool of remorse? Had he begged God’s forgiveness for the way he’d treated that woman? I could only hope so.
    I stood motionless behind my chair as Dunya poured some tea concentrate from the small pot atop the shiny samovar, to which she added hot water from the spigot. As if it were nothing but cool water from a stream back home, he downed the glass in one gulp. Dunya then poured him another, which he likewise drank to the bottom. And another. Papa sometimes drank as many as fifty glasses of tea in a day, but never like this, as eagerly as a sunburned man just in from the desert. Finally, with his fourth glass in hand, he sat down. Only then did the three of us take our seats.
    “What is it, Papa? What did you see?” begged Varya, her smooth young brow wrinkled with concern.
    “Blood. I have seen the entire River Neva running with blood.”
    Her eyes suddenly beading with tears, Varya pressed, “Whose blood, Papa?”
    “The blood of the grand dukes.”
    “Oh,” Varya said, not without a bit of relief.
    Dunya spoke up softly. “Please, Father Grigori, you mustn’t say such things. Talk like that will only scare the girls, it will only-”
    “I’m not scared,” I interjected defiantly.
    “Let us pray!” intoned Papa, reaching out.
    Beneath the heavy bronze