Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [493]
It was at the start of May that Dimitri overheard a strange conversation which, even in retrospect, continued to puzzle him.
He and Karpenko were spending the evening with Nadezhda. As usual the time had passed delightfully and after a long discussion about music he had suggested he play them the Tchaikovsky Seasons, only to find that the music was not in the house. He had returned to the apartment, therefore, with the aim of collecting the score and hurrying back to the big Suvorin house to play it.
He knew that his mother was alone that evening, since Peter was out at a meeting nearby. He was surprised therefore, upon opening the door, to hear voices coming from the little drawing room off the hall. They belonged to his mother and to Vladimir. His mother’s for some reason was only a faint murmur, but Vladimir’s rich voice he could hear clearly.
‘I’m more concerned with you. This can’t go on. For God’s sake, my dear, come away with me to Germany.’
Then his mother’s voice, too soft to make out.
‘Nothing will happen to anyone.’
Another murmur.
‘I tell you truthfully, the boy’s better off here at present. There are no better music teachers in the world than in Russia.’
Now there was a longer pause. Dimly he heard his mother say something about a letter. Then his uncle’s voice again.
‘Yes, yes. I give you my word. Of course I can arrange it. If anything happens I’ll get him out. Yes, Dimitri shall go to America if that is what you wish.’
After this there was a long silence, and then he thought he heard his mother sobbing. Instead of collecting his music, he quietly withdrew and returned to his friends saying that he had been unable to find it. But later that night, as he lay awake in his room and listened to the faint tap, tap, tap of his mother’s typewriter he wondered: what on earth would he want with America?
There was no question about it. Mrs Suvorin had scored one of the greatest coups of her social career so far. A personal triumph.
For in mid-June 1910, the week after All Saints Day, she entertained the monk, Rasputin.
He had said he would come in the afternoon and take tea. It was therefore an intimate gathering that Mrs Suvorin had prepared, consisting of family members, some of her more important friends, and those few women who, over the years, had deliberately or inadvertently hurt her vanity, and who now could not fail to be impressed by this visitor who was known to be on intimate terms with the imperial family.
Vladimir was still abroad, but she kindly invited Peter Suvorin and Rosa, and naturally Dimitri and Karpenko accompanied them. And so it was that the two youths found themselves in a company of forty or so persons eagerly awaiting the arrival of the strange man.
It was five years since Rasputin had first appeared before the Tsar, but much about him was still a mystery. People called him a holy man – though he was never a monk, as some supposed. Indeed, though he seldom bothered to see them, he had a wife and family in the distant Urals. And though voices had been raised in the capital about his lewd behaviour, many credited him with supernatural powers. ‘He’s a real hermit from the Russian forests,’ Karpenko told Dimitri. ‘They say he walked to the capital all the way from Siberia.’ He gave a little laugh: ‘He’s supposed to have the power of second sight, you know. Just watch his eyes.’ What everyone knew however, and what made him nowadays a figure to be courted by fashionable ladies, was the fact that he had a devoted admirer in the Empress.
What did she see in him? Few people knew. The imperial household was a little