Sofia

Sue Kendall

RASPUTIN

CATHERINE DE MEDICI

SWEENEY TODD

RASPUTIN

1 My Childhood My name is Grigori Yemifovich Rasputin and I was born on 10th January, 1869 in a small village in Siberia, in northern Russia - one of the coldest places in the world. My family were peasants and worked very hard. During the long difficult winters in Siberia, there was very little to do. In the evenings,we usually sat beside the fire and played cards. Summers were hot and I could run outside with my younger sister, Maria, and my older brother, Dimitri. Maria was not very strong and one day, while we were swimming in the river, she drowned. Nobody knew how it happened, but my mother blamed me. ‘You’re responsible for this tragedy, Grigori.’ She said. ‘You didn’t watch your sister.’ Another day,Dimitri and I were playing in the forest, climbing trees and running after each other. Then, we jumped into the river to catch some fish. We held each other’s heads under the water for a long time – just for fun – and he didn’t come up. I tried to pull him out of the river, but he was too heavy for me. I panicked and began to shout, ‘Help! Help! My brother is drowning!’ Suddenly, a man heard me. Hejumped into the water and pulled my brother out of the river. He helped him breathe again and, after a few minutes, Dimitri sat up and
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looked around. He was very angry with me. ‘You tried to kill me!’ he shouted at me. ‘How could you do that? I’m your brother.’ I didn’t answer him. After that, Dimitri got pneumonia. He died a few days later. Then, I was the only child in my family.

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I discovered my special powers during my childhood. In our village, Pokrovskoe, and in many other Siberian villages, people usually met in homes in the evening. One night, everybody came to our house. I was ill all the time, but I listened to the conversations in the other room. My father told his friends about the theft of his favourite horse. As soon as I heard this, I went into theroom in my nightshirt and pointed to one of the visitors. ‘This man stole your horse, Father!’ I said. My parents and the visitors were very embarrassed and said nothing. Later, some of the villagers were curious to see if I was right. They went with my father to the man’s house and saw the stolen horse there. My father brought the horse home and the man was immediately arrested. The next morning,people came to make the sign of the Cross and pray in front of our house, they marvelled at my’ powers’, but this confused me. Soon, this incident became a legend in our village. Every time somebody came to visit, my father told the story of his son and the horse thief. It made me uncomfortable because I didn’t really understand it. Did I really have strange powers? This thought frightened me verymuch. I grew up and became a cart driver like my father. I got married and had three children. I called two of them Maria and Dimitri, after my dead sister and brother. Then, at the age of thirty-three, I drove a very special man in my cart and he changed my life. He was studying to be a priest at the Verkhoture monastery. He told me about his very unusual kind of Christianity and I wasfascinated. At the end of the trip, he convinced me to stay in the monastery and learn the teachings of his group. I stayed there for three months and during this time, I became very religious. After leaving the monastery, I went to visit a religious man in a distant forest, an Orthodox priest named Father Makari. ‘My son,’ he said to me, ‘you’ve got much to learn about the world. You must leave your wife,children and possessions. God has called you.’ I was very excited to hear these words. It was my new dream to dedicate my life to God. I returned home to say goodbye to my wife and family. They accepted my decision. If I was “called to God”, I didn’t have an option, they believed. I completely

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abandoned my family. What did my children think about my disappearance from their lives? I...