Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [58]
Felix Yusupov, his future murderer, learned of this astonishing interpretation of Rasputin’s escapades from his friend Maria Golovina, the tsaritsa’s lady-in-waiting: with tender sympathy, she explained to Felix as she would to a not very bright child: “If he does this, then it is with a special purpose—to temper himself morally.”
The holy man, taking on the sins of the world and through his fall subjecting himself to a voluntary flogging by society, as the holy fools did back in ancient Russia—that is how Rasputin mystically explained his escapades. “The tsaritsa had a book, Holy Fools of the Russian Church, with her comments in places where it talked about the manifestation of idiocy in the form of sexual degeneracy,” recalled Father Georgy Shavelsky, the archpresbyter of the imperial army and navy.
Rasputin and Anya were the two people closest to the family. Two people who gave birth to terrible myths on which the coming revolution would feed: the spineless, pathetic cuckold of a tsar, and the tsaritsa in the brazen embraces of an adventurist muzhik, a tsaritsa who rumor asserted gave her friend as mistress to the tsar.
A great number of obscene drawings circulated throughout Russia right up until the revolution. One of these “graffiti”: a bearded muzhik (Rasputin) and in his arms two broad-hipped beauties (the tsaritsa and Anya), and all this on the background of brazen virgins (the tsaritsa’s daughters) dancing zestfully.
Chapter 5
THE TSAR’S FAMILY
Meanwhile, the family lived in nearly idyllic seclusion. Few knew of their real life. An enchanting portrait of them was left in the memoirs of one of those few, the woman who had done so much toward the family’s ruin—Anya.
It is early morning. The family is waking up. Alix’s dream has come true: it is all as it was in her childhood, when she had just such a large family as this. Through her “tireless labor of love” a family has been created. And she—wife and mother—is its shelter and support.
The Alexander Palace has long been cramped for five children. Next door, the enormous Catherine Palace stands empty. But she does not want to change quarters. This is not merely habit for the old hearth but an awareness: our life together, in this small palace, unites us, bonds us.
Her daughters. We know very little about them: shadows in the bloody reflection of impending tragedy.
Her Victorian education, the legacy Alix received from her English grandmother Victoria, she passed on to her daughters: tennis, a cold bath in the morning, a warm one in the evening. This was for the good of the body. And for the soul—a religious education: reading books pleasing to God, strictly observing church rituals. “Olga and Tatiana were at mass for the first time and bore up for the entire service excellently,” a gratified Nicholas would record in his diary.
When Olga was quite tiny, the older girls teased her: “What kind of grand duchess are you if you can’t even reach the table?”
“I don’t know myself,” Olga answered with a sigh, “but you ask Papa, he knows everything.” “He knows everything”—that was how Alix raised them.
Wearing white dresses and colored sashes, they descend noisily to the empress’s lilac (Alix’s favorite color) study: there was a huge rug, so cozy to crawl over, and on the rug a huge box of toys, which were passed down from older to younger.
They were growing up.
“Olga has turned 9—quite the big girl.”
Olga and Tatiana—these names frequently appear together in their diaries and, later, when Nicholas went to Headquarters, in his correspondence with Alix. Here they are quite little: “Olga and Tatiana rode their bicycles side by side” (Nicholas’s diary).
“Olga & Tatiana returned only at about 2.” “Now O. & T. are at Olga’s Committee” (from letters of the tsaritsa).
And so on.
Olga was a snub-nosed blonde, enchanting and impetuous. Tatiana was more focused,