“I don’t know where the two little ones are.”
Not knowing what I did-that the young ones had been on the balcony above the front entrance-the two parents turned and went separate ways, disappearing toward the back of the house. I nearly called out to them, nearly shouted, “No, your children were on the front balcony, looking at all the excitement. They must be lying out this way, out front-look this way! The force of the blast must have hurled them out here, into the front garden!”
Instead, it was I who went searching for the children.
I stepped over a body, broken and bent in a very strange way, and made my way over a pile of shattered wood. The carriage that had brought our fake policemen was heaved on its side and mostly destroyed, and the horse that had pulled the carriage hung there in its harness, stabbed in the side with a board and bleeding like a river. If the poor creature wasn’t already dead, it would be in a second. Noticing that there was something odd about the horse, I looked closely and saw that stuck to its side, right there on the hide, was a person’s ear. Two steps beyond was a man, lying facedown and moaning. I stooped by his side, listening as he tried to speak. I couldn’t understand a thing, and simply watched as he took a deep breath and then expired, blood pouring from his mouth. A little gray cat came running out of nowhere, frightened and excited, and scampered over the dead man’s back.
Off to the side I saw some scraps of railing and clambered in that direction, and there, under the debris, I found the two youngest children of Mr. Minister Stolypin. Lifting up a large board, I first found the boy, who was perhaps three years old, certainly no more than four. He was lying quite still, his legs twisted in opposite directions-broken, I was sure-and he had a gash in his forehead. At first I thought he too was dead. When I brushed the grime and debris from the child’s face, however, he blinked twice and looked up at me sweetly.
And with a faint smile, the boy managed to utter, “You’re a nice uncle.”
Fighting back something-just what I didn’t know-I managed to say, “Don’t try to move.”
The boy thought for a moment, and replied, “I can’t.”
Trying to make sure he was comfortable, I pushed everything aside as best I could, leaving him lying there quite calmly. Just a few paces away lay the other child, the girl, who was perhaps a teenager. She lay beneath a large piece of wooden furniture, which I grabbed and hurled aside. There were rocks and some other things covering her too, and these things I quickly pulled from her body. Looking for injuries, I could see none until my eyes came to her feet, both of which seemed to have been all but blown off.
When I lifted part of a desk off her arm, her body quivered, and she opened her eyes and gasped, “What kind of dream is this?”
“It’s not a dream, my child,” I replied.
“Oh.” Coming quickly to her senses, she asked, “Can you tell me, please, does Papa live?”
As much as I wanted to deny it, I could not lie, and said, “Yes.”
“Thank God. And thank God it’s me who’s hurt and not him.”
Her devotion touched something long forgotten inside me, and I knelt by her side and took her hand and held it and said some kind of comforting words, something even religious. I had seen enough bad accidents in my village to know she might actually live, but I was likewise certain that if she survived she would definitely be maimed for life. Glancing down at her damaged feet, I was sure she would never walk again.
As I crouched by the girl, holding her hand and soothing her, I suddenly felt a firm hand on my shoulder. Turning and looking up, my heart leaped when I saw that it was none other than the bastard, Mr. Minister Stolypin, bearing over me in his ink-stained finery. My first thought was that I had been found out and he himself had come to do me in. But rather than punching me or ripping out my throat or stringing me up from a tree, he looked at me gratefully.
“Thank you, my good man, for finding my daughter,” he said, tears of relief filling his eyes.
I should have shot him right then and there and finished the job, but of course I had no gun. It occurred to me that I should have shoved him back and strangled him to death, but he was a bigger, stronger, mightier person than me. In fact and quite oddly, I realized that there was not a crumb of strength left in me. I felt completely drained, and it was all I could do to stand.
And so as I rose directly by his side I nodded toward his daughter’s mangled feet, and quietly offered but one thing, perhaps the only piece of village wisdom that I, a peasant, could give to such a highly placed Minister, saying, “The doctors will want to amputate-do not let them.”
This man, nothing more at that moment than the most devoted of fathers, gasped in horror and half fell against me, clutching my arm for support. Despite all that I had been taught by my comrades and the hatred that burned within my own heart, I steadied Stolypin, hanging on to him until he regained his composure.
Then finally dropping to his knees by his daughter, Stolypin gently said, “My beautiful Natasha… do not worry, my sweet one, everything’s going to be all right.”
“You’re here, Papa, and not hurt.”
“Not in the least, and I won’t leave your side.”
I disappeared then, traipsing off through the mayhem completely unnoticed, not a soul suspecting me of my role in this messy affair. I walked all the way back into the city and across the Troitsky Bridge, where I paused midway and stared across the vast waters of the Neva River. From there I proceeded through the Field of Mars, eventually finding my way into the much less glorious corners of the capital, where my comrades took me in. They tried to feed me tea, but I refused. I told them everything-excepting how I had come face-to-face with our number-one enemy, not to mention the human words we had exchanged, which became the darkest secret of my life.
Yes, and although we had failed to eliminate our target, I later heard that thirty people had been killed immediately by the blast, and that many more died in the following days. It was a pity that so many had to give their lives for the cause, but such was the price. And while we failed to eliminate our main target -the Minister himself-news of the attack spread through the Empire so that everyone learned of our determination to help the downtrodden and needy. In that way we succeeded greatly, and in that way we were more greatly feared than ever.
I heard, too, that when young Natasha was rushed to the best hospital the chief doctors were, just as I had guessed, determined to cut away both of the girl’s feet, certain that that was the only way to save her life. With tears streaming down his big cheeks, Stolypin, perhaps heeding my words, pleaded for the doctors to wait at least until the next morning, and to this, despite their fears of gangrene setting in, they agreed. The girl, I was told, survived the night without incident, and the doctors waited another day after that, and then another. Much to their astonishment and the joy of father and mother, the child began to improve almost miraculously, and her feet, though forever maimed, were saved. I heard, too, that a peasant from the Tobolsk District had a very strong desire to bless Stolypin’s injured daughter with an icon, and he was granted entry and came to her and prayed by her side. Perhaps this was why she recovered so well. This peasant-his name was Grigori Rasputin.
That was the first time I had ever heard the name.
As for the youngest child, the boy, in the following weeks I went to great lengths to learn his fate, and found out that both of his legs had been broken, as well as his hip. However, a medical sister told me that I mustn’t concern myself, that both he and yet another of the Minister’s children, a daughter whose kidney had been torn by the blast, were recovering just fine.