Read Online Enchantments: A Novel of Rasputin's Daughter and the Romanovs by Kathryn Harrison - Free Book Online Page B

was of any use to you. And, of course, I wasn’t. Not that I was vain enough to imagine I would be, only that I didn’t understand what your mother wanted me to do for you. I didn’t imagine a person could go through anything as horrible as … as you have. Now that I know, I’m even sorrier to be so useless. I’ve been hiding in my room, praying she won’t summon me.”
    Alyosha laughed, and winced because it hurt him. “I don’t doubt you have,” he said.
    “Please. I’m talking to you in earnest, Alyosha.”
    “Stop fretting. I told you, or I tried to. I’m past the crisis, or whatever Botkin calls it. I’ll tell Mother I’m sure it’s your doing.”
    “No, no, don’t. Don’t, Alyosha. Please don’t. She knows I’m useless.”
    He looked at me, his arms crossed over his chest, smiling at my using my hands to beseech him. “At least I’ve distracted everyone for a bit,” he said, “given Mother and Father something else to think about, other than …” He trailed off, frowning at me. “You like me now,” he said after a minute. “You like me better than you did before. Why?
    “It’s true, isn’t it?” he went on when I was silent. “If it wasn’t, you’d have disagreed with me.”
    “You make it sound as if I didn’t like you before.”
    “Perhaps you didn’t. Oh, Masha, don’t look so—”
    “I never didn’t like you. I just … now I see how preoccupied with myself I’ve been, with Father’s death. It came between me and … and everything. Between me and the rest of life.”
    Alyosha nodded. “Are you afraid?” he asked after a moment.
    “Of what?”
    “Of living without him.”
    “No. Maybe. I don’t know what I thought it was before—someone dying. Someone who isn’t a stranger but a person you love. Now that I do, it’s … Nothing’s the same. Or it’s me that’s not the same. No matter what I’m doing, or even if I’m doing nothing, it’s like looking at a picture hanging on the wall and seeing it’s crooked. In my mind, I keep trying to adjust it, whatever it is, and stepping back to consider. But it’s me that’s the problem. I’m listing in some way I can’t correct.” I stopped talking, surprised to have found myself confiding in Alyosha, who nodded slowly as I spoke.
    “I think I understand,” he said. “As much as I can, anyway. Actually, I probably can’t imagine at all what you’re suffering. That was a presumptuous thing to say. I just meant I wished I could.”
    “Could what?”
    “Understand. I want to understand. I realized, but not in time to shut up, that I was talking about myself when I asked if you were afraid. Do you know, this is the first time in my life I’ve had an accident without his coming to my rescue? Now I … well, now I know.”
    “Know what?” I asked.
    “What it’s like when he isn’t here,” he said, after I’d given up waiting for any answer at all.
    “Oh, Alyosha. I’m so—”
    “Please don’t tell me you’re sorry again.”
    “But I—”
    “It’s only Mother who’s unreasonable enough to expect you to help. Masha. Masha, please don’t,” he said.
    “It’s nothing.”
    “You’re crying.”
    “No I’m not.”
    “You look like you’re crying.”
    “Don’t you know,” I asked, after drying my eyes on my sleeve, “that when someone says she isn’t crying, you’re not supposed to argue with her?”
    B EFORE MY FATHER died and I came to live with the Romanovs, most of my visits to the Alexander Palace had been accidental, a matter of my being with Father when he was called to tend to an emergency. Most often I was left in the blue-and-gold parlor, and sometimes a lady-in-waiting offered me a book or a paint box and paper. Once, the children’s governess collected and deposited me in the nursery playroom, where I saw something I’d never seen before: a wheeled chair for invalids but made small, for a child. There was a wagon in the playroom too, and a plump little horse