Moaning deeply, Papa said, “Felix…he betrayed me…”

“Yes, Papa, he shot you! I know. But I’m here now. I’m going to take care of you. I’m going to get you out of here!”

“Da…must leave…”

So the prince and his group had tried to poison Papa by offering him tainted sweets and wine. When that hadn’t worked, Prince Felix had simply shot him. In any case, somehow my father still lived, but if I didn’t get him outside and find help, he would certainly bleed to death from the bullet wound.

Invoking the age-old fear of every Russian peasant, I said, “Papa, you have to get up. The prince and the grand duke are going to come back-and they’ll kick and beat and whip you!”

As if he’d seen it a hundred times in his worst dreams, my father’s eyes widened in panic, and he reached up to me with one weak hand, begging, “Help me, Maria!”

As far as I could tell, my father had been shot in the stomach. As he struggled to rise, I clutched him around his back, helped him first sit up, then climb to his knees. With each movement he bit his lip and groaned.

“Are you all right?” I asked as he struggled to his feet.

He nodded hesitantly. “We must go…bistro!”

The first few steps were the most difficult. Papa stumbled badly and moved only with great effort. I feared, of course, that we might make it to the stairs but not up the steps. Fortunately, each movement seemed to get easier. Passing through the heavy oak door, we made it to the bottom of the staircase, where we paused, bathed in the distant rhythm of “Yankee Doodle,” which had been started over yet again. All would be lost if any of them came back down.

“We only have to go halfway up, Papa. That’s all. Just lean on me. There’s a side door, and a troika is waiting for us.”

He nodded. “Xhorosho.”

I took a step up, and Papa, clutching the railing, did likewise. I moved higher, and he did as well. And so we proceeded, bit by bit, up and up. Within a few long minutes we reached the side door, which I kicked wide open. A flood of freezing air poured over us.

“Breathe in, Papa! Take in some nice night air! That’s it, doesn’t it feel good?”

Although he could barely swallow even a bit of air, he nodded. “V’koosno.” Tasty.

We stepped directly from the palace into the flat courtyard. Glancing toward the gate, I wanted to pull my father along faster. I wanted to cry out for Sasha. I wanted a doctor. There was hope, always hope. Papa had been horribly wounded when that madwoman stabbed him, his entrails pouring out of his body. And yet he’d survived. Now he’d suffered just a single bullet wound, so couldn’t he…he…

“I see it so clearly now, Marochka,” muttered my father. “I see my mistakes-”

“Shh. It’s okay, Papa. Just keep going. Don’t stop. That’s it, one foot after the other.”

“I forgot. I became vain.”

“Shh. Just keep moving.”

“My mistake was simple. It wasn’t me. Not me who healed people. Not me who…who…”

“Of course it was, Papa. You’ve helped hundreds, even thousands, of people, people who were horribly sick, people who were dying! Even the Heir Tsarevich-you saved him! I saw with my very own eyes how you stopped his bleeding and brought him back!”

“Nyet! It wasn’t me who saved the boy, it was God! I was just the vessel. And I forgot that. I forgot I was just the earthly vessel for the Lord Almighty to do His work!”

I looked up and saw we were halfway to the gate. “That’s it, Papa. Just keep walking, one foot after the other.”

“Da, da, da…that’s what I did wrong. I became vain. I…I took personal glory in my achievements.”

“Don’t stop, we’re almost there!”

“But it wasn’t me…it was Him, Our Father, who saved the boy and all those other suffering souls. It was God who healed them, not me! They were His miracles, not mine, yet I took advantage of it all. The power, the money, the women…I had it all, took it all! And now I’m being punished…punished for my vanity!”

“No, Papa, that’s not true! You gave to so many-you gave and gave! Think how many you helped, think how much money you passed to those in need!”

All of a sudden my father stopped and grabbed his stomach. “Ah!”

Wincing in terrible pain, he tumbled into me, and if I hadn’t clutched him just then, he would certainly have fallen over.

“Just a little farther, Papa,” I said, holding him by the shoulders and begging him onward. “We have to keep moving.”

“I…I…”

He could say no more. Nor could he move. Was it the bullet biting into him? Had it shifted about inside?

“I’m here,” I coaxed. “And you’re going to be okay. Just a little bit farther. Just a few more steps!”

“Ohhhh…,” he moaned.

Oh, God, I couldn’t lose him now, could I? We’d made it out of the palace, we’d come this far. If we could just make it to the troika, if we could just-

“I…I-”

“Calm down, Papa. Catch your breath. We’ll rest here for a minute.”

“I…I fear that my time…has come,” he said sadly, looking up at me.

“No, Papa, you mustn’t give up!”

“When it…it…”

“Shh. Don’t talk. Just be quiet and catch your breath.”

“When it does, my sweet daughter, you…you must let me go.”

Tears welled up in my eyes as I held him. How could I ever let my father go? Overwhelmed, I stared up at the dark heavens above me. It was starting to snow again, the flakes fat and heavy. Was this how it was all to end, here in a courtyard of a princely home? I’d had a vision of something like this, but why, dear God, why hadn’t my gifted father?

Papa asked, “Child, comfort me with a poem, will…will you? How about that one I like so much? You know the one, by that writer, that…that fellow all you girls are crazy about.”

I nodded and tried to steady my voice, as I recited, as softly as a prayer, the words of the great Aleksander Blok:

“To sin shamelessly, endlessly,

To lose count of the nights and days,

And with a head unruly from drunkenness

To pass sideways into the temple of God.”

“Yes, that is nice, very nice…yes, sideways.” With no small effort, Papa grabbed me by one hand. “My sweet, dear, beautiful girl…I must tell you a secret.”

Biting my lip and trying my best not to break down sobbing, I merely nodded.

“I know for sure that that is Heaven,” he said, weakly pointing to the sky. “But now I…now I see also that this”-he looked around-“is not earth but hell.”

“Papa, no. You mustn’t talk like that.”

He nodded. “Yes, this…this is hell.”

Mopping my eyes with the sleeve of my cloak, I stood paralyzed in fear. If only the world could see him now, Rasputin the devil, for who he really was: my father, a muzhik who, unarmed and unsuspecting, had been shot like a mad dog. How easily he had been brought down…and how easily he had brought himself down. But I couldn’t crumble, not now.

“Papa, listen to me. I have a troika waiting just around the corner. I’m going to fetch the driver, and the two of us will come get you.”

My father’s body went rigid with one huge spasm, and he cried out in pain. I held him around the waist and shoulder and felt his entire body quiver horribly.

“Yes…go,” he finally muttered.

“I’ll hurry!”

Carefully letting go of my father, I started to pull away. He began to teeter to the side, and for a moment I thought he would collapse right then and there in the side courtyard.

Raising his reddened eyes to me, Papa commanded, “Go!”

I gathered up my cloak and started to run. I just had to get the driver to bring the troika right here, and then the two of us would gather up my father and whisk him away. We just had to be quick. I had to be quick.

Dashing to the stone wall, I started over. Oh, Lord, I thought as I lifted my feet, I can climb over, but what about Papa? How would we get him-

I heard it quite clearly then. Just as I landed on the other side of the wall I heard someone shouting the alarm.