With each passing season, my father grew less willing to assume the expenses attendant on my being out in society, and my prospects dimmed a little further. I can fix no moment when expectation gave way to anxiety. Where once I had wondered at intervals whether the husband in my future might be kind or cruel, as the years passed I found myself thinking less about his character and fearing only that he might not exist. It was akin to awaiting the arrival of a distant guest to a party: in the whirl of other guests, his absence may not even register at first, and when it is noted, there is perhaps only a slight vexation at the person’s lateness. But as time goes on, this vexation changes to apprehension and then distress, until his absence casts a longer shadow than his presence might ever command.
In the winter of my twentieth year, the matter came to a head. At the same time that my brother went into the Guards, my father was retired from it. Freed from his service to the crown, he was now able to remove his family from the city and live out his remaining years on his own land.
Going with them would settle my fate—my father’s estate was on the Kashinka River, six days’ journey from Moscow, and there were no eligible men in the vicinity. Aunt Galya proposed that I stay behind with her under the roof of her elder daughter. I cannot guess whether my aunt had anticipated Nadya’s answer when she made the suggestion, but Nadya was indignant. She had already to contend with Kuzma Zakharovich’s wretched daughter and her own mother, and now she should take in a cousin as well? Her sister had no burdens, she countered; why should not Xenia do her share?
Andrei and Xenia showed great kindness in making me welcome, even insisting that it was I who would be doing them a service by keeping Xenia company when she could not travel with Andrei. And so, I went to live with them.
My things were sent ahead, and when I arrived, I learnt that she had put my bed in the upstairs room next to hers. This room had been kept unfurnished in expectation of children. Now, the door stood open, and I saw beyond the threshold that a curtain had been made for the window, my personal linens were already unpacked in the wardrobe, and the icon that had guarded my sleep since birth hung in the corner. I demurred, saying that I should be content to sleep with the servants, but Xenia shook off my protests.
“Nonsense. If it’s bad luck to buy the cradle before the child, maybe it’s just as bad to keep a room empty.” Her manner was so easy that I didn’t guess at the time what this kindness must have cost her.
The first year of their marriage had passed without any sign of a child, and then a year became two and then three. In the fourth year, she had got with child but her womb would not hold it and it was lost before it quickened. She rarely spoke of her disappointment, but after I moved into their house I came to sense that it was never far from her thoughts. She kept in her room a little icon of Saint Paraskeva, who gives children to barren women, and a candle was kept lit before it. Each month, when her blood came, she was prone to tears over the littlest things.
The Imperial family was also waiting on the Grand Duchess to produce an heir for the throne. From the start of their marriage, the Empress had insisted that the ducal couple should be locked together in their bedchamber each night, like prisoners, so that they might get a child. One of Catherine’s ladies-in-waiting whispered that in this enforced privacy, Peter spent all night playing with his tin soldiers, lining them up in formation across the wide plain of their bed and engaging them in mock battles, or sawing on his violin whilst the Grand Duchess tried to sleep.
As time ticked on, the Empress was observed to be increasingly impatient and irritable towards her. She accused Catherine of conducting an affair and set spies on her to report her every move. The Grand Duke, meanwhile, showed no interest in his wife and flirted openly with the Princess of Courland, who was hideous and seemed to have nothing to recommend her save that she would speak in German with him.
It was rumored that in the end Her Majesty had given up and looked the other way so that Catherine might take a lover. Shortly after, she was with child. Rumors were thick that Sergei Saltykov was the father. If true, the child’s parentage became moot, for in May Catherine miscarried whilst traveling. Though she had made every effort to please her husband and her Empress, this grave failure could not be offset by any amount of charm.
Of course, I was not privy to any of this directly but heard it through Xenia, who heard it from I know not whom. Xenia felt a heightened sympathy for the Grand Duchess, and took Her Highness’s sorrow as her own. Every conversation turned to the loss of this child and would end in tears. The Grand Duchess’s circumstances merited sympathy, certainly, but hardly so extreme a response; in truth, I felt she became a bit tiresome on the subject.
We were dining one evening at the house of one of the Roslavlev brothers, a captain in the Izmailovsky Guards, and the buzz about the table concerned a Mademoiselle Shavirova, one of Catherine’s ladies-in-waiting, who was thought to be the Grand Duke’s most recent infatuation. That afternoon and in the presence of the Grand Duchess, the two of them had sat with their heads bowed together and giggled through most of the concert.
It is safe to say that no one at the table cared for the Grand Duke, but though tongues were loosened by a good deal of wine, they were not so loose as to say a word outright against him. Instead, their mirth was directed at the mademoiselle, who was, it was agreed, the least attractive of the Grand Duchess’s ladies. Someone ventured the opinion that love could not possibly be this blind. Another agreed that it was not love but spite against Catherine for her attentions to Saltykov.
This is the way of life in Petersburg—even the lowliest person in society watches the court from whatever his distance and follows the rivalries and intrigues like a sporting match—but Xenia could not treat the gossip as mere diversion. When someone at the table said that the Grand Duke must surely be deprived of his wife’s affection if he sought solace from such a toad, Xenia spoke as if she were defending her own honor.
“Does this not better prove that his wife is deprived of a child through no fault of her own?” She clutched her napkin so fiercely that her hand shook.
The hour was late when we left, and we had all drunk too much. The three of us stumbled into the dim interior of the hired carriage, and Xenia and I plucked pillows from beneath our skirts and fashioned little nests for our heads. Andrei slouched onto the opposite bench and was lost up to the waist beneath the foamy horizon of our skirts. As soon as I was off my feet, I was overcome by the groggy weight of my limbs. Reaching above my head, Andrei opened the pane of the carriage lamp and blew out the flame. The carriage’s interior disappeared.
I let my eyes close. The carriage lurched forward, and behind my lids the world rolled and swayed, my blood sloshing like a tide with the rocking of the carriage. I listened to the sounds of the carriage rattling, the steady drum of hooves, the creak of the wheels beneath us. I was faintly aware of low voices.
“My God, Xenia. Such a rash tongue.”
“I could not help myself. To think how she must suffer.”
“It’s bad, I’m sure. Still, I’m not inclined to suffer for her in exile. We’d make poor martyrs, you and I. At least I should.”
“Forgive me.” Her voice broke. “I want only to please you, and I am such a disappointment.”
“No, no. Not ever.” Andrei’s voice gentled. “You are as close to heaven as I am likely to get.”
“How could you not be disappointed?” she insisted. “I’m empty.”
“It will come. Give it time.”
She wept in soft, ragged breaths. “I pray. I search my heart. Why cannot I…”
“Darling.” His voice thickened. “Hush.” There was a long silence—just breathing—and a rustle of silk like dry leaves.
“She will wake,” Xenia whispered.
He hushed her again. Something brushed against me. I opened my eyes but saw nothing. And then the moon sailed out from the clouds and silvered the velvety darkness into forms: one white breast, freed from Xenia’s bodice and Andrei’s profile poised over it. His head closed over her, and he began to suckle like an infant. Xenia’s eyes were closed, her pink mouth slack, and I thought she might be asleep, except that she whimpered softly and sucked in her breath. Or perhaps this was me, for Andrei lifted his head. I clamped my eyes shut, shame flushing through me. When next I dared to steal a look, he had receded back into the dark. Xenia’s breast was tucked back into its corset, but her fingers stretched out blindly, catching air, opening and closing like a sea flower. She sighed, lolled to her side, and curled into herself. Andrei began to hum some air I did not know. If you look on me fair, he warbled, I shall not fear to die. And I shall not want more Heaven than what is in your eye. The notes lingered lazily between the throb of blood in my ears. This poor sinner only prays to be kissed to Paradise.
Perhaps she knew I had heard them. The next morning, she told me that she had been to a priest some weeks earlier. As she spoke, she held one hand in the other and absently dug a thumbnail into the soft flesh of her palm.
“I begged him to pray for me, to cure me of my barrenness.”
A practical man, the priest had first asked her whether she had sat on the ground as a child, for the cold might have made her infertile. No? That was good, he said. And did she ever lie with her husband on Saturdays or holy days? Xenia had replied that they refrained when it was right to do so. Well then, the priest pursued, when they did succumb, did she take pleasure from it?
“I had to confess that I could not help myself.” She studied her palm and made another mark.
Here the priest found his answer: this barrenness was God’s punishment for her lust. The act of fornication was evil, even between husband and wife. The only justification for this act was the children that came from it; without them, the soul remained stained. The cure was to repent of her sin and in future to avoid tempting her husband to his own damnation.
In desperation, she had proposed to Andrei that they should keep separate beds. But he could not be made to share her remorse and had laughed at the priest’s suggestion. If they kept themselves chaste, how might they get children?
“I am so weak, Dasha.” She looked confusedly at her hands, and her eyes filled. “Even at my soul’s peril, I cannot bring myself to stop.”
It may be that God looks with forbearance on such sinners. Night sounds from behind her door announced her continued failures, but within a few months of our conversation, I noticed that she had tied an acorn to the delicate cross and chain at her throat. Our peasant women wear them to assure an easy confinement. She did not speak of her expectation directly, though, for fear of bringing ill luck, nor would she suffer anyone else to. When she told her servant Marfa that her bodices should need to be let out, she answered the old woman’s happy tears with childish insistence that she was only growing large on sweets; when she was sick to her stomach one morning and Marfa tried to soothe her by saying that this predicted a boy, Xenia spit thrice over her shoulder and ordered Marfa from the room.
Its presence swelled nonetheless, and though she forbade acknowledging the child, Xenia could not keep her hands from straying to her belly. Out of doors, she rested them there as though to shield the child from strangers. If her back or her feet ached, she would smile tiredly and say that it must be gout giving her trouble. She was more changeable than even she had been before, by turns gay and apprehensive. Then one day her labor was upon her.
A bed was prepared on the floor of her room and the midwife sent for. When this gaunt old woman arrived with her daughter, a copy of the mother but for a strawberry across her cheek, she sent everyone else from the room. For long hours, we waited in the passage, and so that her labor might be easier we pretended not to hear the moans coming from behind the closed door. She called out for Andrei, but he had gone downstairs because he could not bear anymore to hear her pain. Just after midnight, the midwife’s daughter came out and handed me a packet of herbs.
“Boil this in water, and bring it back in the pot.”
“Is she dying?” The sounds had become so terrible that it seemed no one could live through such agony.
The woman nodded to the herbs. “The willow and figwort will help her. Go on.”
When I finally returned with the brew—how long should it boil, I wondered, and in how much water? One frets such things to tatters when the real worry cannot be addressed—I had time enough to glimpse Xenia through the opened door, wretched, white, and slick with sweat.
A few hours later, the daughter emerged again to report that Xenia had delivered a girl and both were well.
“May I see her?” I asked.
“She wants the father.”
I went to fetch Andrei and told him that he had a daughter. He looked at me and said nothing, and I thought he might be disappointed by the news of a girl. But he was only slow to understand from having drunk too much. “A daughter, did you say?” He rushed up the stairs and did not emerge again for an hour. When he came out holding a little coffin—it was the afterbirth, to be buried under the house for good luck—he was as happy as I have ever seen a person.
It is custom to wash the newborn with cold water or roll it in the snow to harden it, but Xenia would not give up her child for this, no matter that the midwife contended that this would protect it from weakness and diseases. When the woman attempted to take charge of the matter forcibly, Xenia pushed her away and ordered her out of the house.
Xenia was like a she-bear with its cub, her affection was so fierce. She could not tolerate the briefest separation from the baby, and though I had cleared my things from my room, the distance from her own room was too great; she had the cradle hung next to her bed so that she might hear if the infant whimpered. She would not even give it up to a wet nurse but insisted on feeding it herself. Her mother’s horror at this did not dissuade her; to Aunt Galya’s protest that she was still unclean, she said, “Why should God give me milk unless He meant it to feed my baby?”
After the baptism, when Xenia was permitted to return to society, she did so with reluctance. While out, she marked the hours till she could return home again. Aunt Galya warned her that such unchecked love for a child was dangerous. “You should not give your whole heart to anything mortal, daughter.” Xenia was too far gone to heed her mother’s counsel, so Aunt Galya appealed to Andrei. “If you indulge her in this,” she warned, “you will ruin mother and child both.”
However, Andrei was himself smitten with the child, and he could not be shamed into exercising his authority. He permitted Xenia to name the child Catherine, which served no purpose, being neither the child’s saint nor the name of anyone else who might protect her, and was only a fancy prompted by the news that the Grand Duchess was also with child again. When Xenia wished to make me the godmother, he did not object to this either, though it would have been wiser to choose a person with influence. For the baptism, he bought a gold cross for the infant’s neck and a smock edged in lace, and nearly every week, he returned home with some new gift: a glass pendant to hang over the cradle, a silk pillow for the baby’s head. If the child fussed and Xenia could not calm it, he sang airs to it himself, even leaving his guests downstairs to do so.
Aunt Galya threw up her hands. “How may a child learn obedience if she rules the parents? The egg cannot teach the hen.” There was nothing more for her to do than leave this topsy-turvy household and return to Nadya’s.
Xenia did indeed seem under the spell of her child. She would unswaddle the baby many times a day only to stare, fascinated, at the perfection of its tiny limbs. It was pretty, no harm can come from saying it now, though none of us would breathe it aloud at the time. She would giggle and say, “Is she not the ugliest creature you have ever seen?” and then she would kiss its toes and round belly and press her nose into its skin to inhale its yeasty smell.
Babies die, it is a sad but common fact of life.
There are mysteries that cannot be reasoned. Hail falls out of a clear sky and crushes the ripening field to rubble in an instant. The peasant who looks on and sees his broken stalks and blackened field may have lived well and piously or not, it does not change that his family will starve. And just so, a woman wakes one morning and finds her beloved daughter glazed with fever. The child shrieks and cannot be soothed. She twists away from the breast, her brow is hot as a stove, and even Saint-John’s-wort and Epiphany water will not cool it. The doctor is called but can do nothing. And though the woman prays desperately and unceasingly, the child’s cries shred the air for hours on end until, the only thing worse than these cries, they weaken and stop. By next morning, the child has grown too languid even to move her limbs, and there is only the rise and fall of her ribs, soft and rapid as a trapped bird. The hours eclipse, day to night to day again, before the tiny flame gutters and goes out.
Though we may try to tilt the universe with prayers and spells, medicines and every precaution, in the end the rain falls equally on the just and the unjust. What can be done but to face this mystery squarely and go on?
But Xenia could not accept it. “The air hurts.” She said it with a wide-eyed wonder at her own pain. She suffered agonies of self-reproach, blaming herself for every sin her mother had cautioned her against—obstinacy and indulgence and putting another before God—and others that no one would have thought to reprove her for. If only she had done this or refrained from that: she continually uncovered fresh faults.
“When I think how I have lived…” She said this to Nadya, choking on her tears and then going on with rigid determination. “When I recall that I have spent whole days pondering whether to have a gown styled in the French or the Spanish fashion, how my hair should be arranged, whether to put a beauty mark on my cheek or on my shoulder, as though any of it mattered! As though it were not all foolishness and frippery!”
Nadya was offended. “You might think that no one had ever lost a child before you. This was not even a son.”
Xenia scourged herself further, saying that Nadya was right, her grief showed a lack of humility before God’s will. She wept bitterly and long at this.
Five days after the death of Xenia’s child, the Imperial family was at last given an heir, the Grand Duke Paul. Overjoyed, the Empress whisked the new infant from his mother’s arms and installed him in a room adjacent to her own that she might look after him personally. Or so it was reported. The Grand Duchess, having acquitted herself of her duty, was left untended in her birthing bed for days. It was from this bed that she received report that Elizabeth had sent her lover, Saltykov, off to Sweden to announce the birth to the king. When he returned in the new year, he would be sent away again.
Petersburg drowned in celebration. Such giddy exultation—every night a supper, a ball, a concert, and more than the usual number of drinking parties. Hymns were composed to glorify the infant, and Andrei was continuously called upon to perform the celebratory offices of the choir, though these did not fully account for his many long absences.
There was talk, of course—half the English Embankment had been woken by loud and ribald singing, and the next morning Andrei had arrived late to the Empress’s chapel, wobbly-legged and with stains on his waistcoat—but Xenia did not hear the talk, for she could no longer tolerate society. The prospect of enduring endless, nattering gossip, of having to dance and pretend to gaiety… she could not do it. Invited by Madame Polianskaya to yet another supper honoring the royal birth, she told Andrei that she would rather the skin were flayed from her flesh. He was left to devise a more suitable explanation for her absence.
The face Andrei kept turned to the world remained merry, but inside his own door he swung at times to the other extreme and became morose, as though mirth had exhausted him. But whether gay or sad, he drank as though feeding a fire, and his mood would burn itself out only after hours or even days of intensity.
Xenia had never seen her husband’s excesses as faults. She had once explained it to me thus: an unrestrained nature came with his gift. It was what made him sensitive to every note of music, why his voice could move others to tears. Araja or Teplov might pen the notes, but Xenia saw their scores as merely a poor representation, as far from the music itself as a drawing of a horse is from animate flesh and breath.
“They’re only scratches on a page,” she said. “But when he sings, one feels the presence of God in the air. It reverberates in the bones. Truly, it shatters me, it is so real.” Andrei was an open conduit through which this terrible power surged; how could he be other than passionate?
Now, though, she was too far sunk in her own misery to recognize the form his grief took. Nightly, we sat up awaiting his return and listening to the crackle and boom of fireworks that convulsed the sky over the city. When he finally came home, so dissipated that he could not keep his feet, she brought him his kvas, warmed with honey and herbs for his throat, and then sat in silence, watching him drink.
“Go to bed,” he implored us. I bid him good night and waited for Xenia on the stair, but she did not follow.
“I cannot sleep,” she said to him. “My heart is too loud. It keeps beating and beating, like an imprisoned creature pounding to get out. I beg God to still it, but He will not.”
“You might yet have another child, even many more.”
It was said with gentleness, but she was stricken. “I have lost my happiness. Do you think I may simply forget our Katenka? I don’t have your capacity.” She hid her face in her hands and did not see what I saw: the surprise of hurt in his eyes, the way his jaw slowly worked at this bile before swallowing it. Afterwards, he often stayed away past dawn and even for days at a time.
The air in Petersburg was thick with talk of the infant Grand Duke. We refrained from any mention of it in Xenia’s presence, but the world is full of babies, including one under her own roof that belonged to the servant Masha. This child’s crib hung from a rafter in the corner of the kitchen, close to the hearth and out of the way. It lay there most hours unnoticed, sucking on its soska, the little cloth bag of gruel that kept it mostly quiet. But Xenia was so susceptible to this child’s presence that if it did cry, wherever she might be in the house she heard it. Her mouth and eyes would tighten as though she were being tortured, as though the Secret Chancery were pulling out her fingernails one by one. If no one happened to be in the kitchen to still the child, Xenia was compelled to go to it; she could not help herself. I sometimes found her at the crib, clutching the baby to her breast and soothing it. But more often, her own face mirrored the tearful infant’s, and then she would rebuke Masha for allowing the child to be soiled or hungry. Masha was not neglectful, or no more so than any mother whose labors are divided, but because Xenia was so sensitive, the whole household tried to keep the child from her notice as much as was possible.
Of all Xenia’s former pleasures, only hymns that were sung in the church still soothed her. You might not think it to see her—she would listen with water coursing down her cheeks—but no, she said, the music was a relief. “I do not think.” Sometimes at home she hummed a line of the litany, repeating the same phrase over and over. If I happened upon her then, she would startle, bewildered, as though she had wakened in a strange place, and then her countenance would assume its remembered sorrow.
Four months after the death of the child and a week before Christmas, Xenia sent for me where I was dining at Kuzma Zakharovich’s. Aunt Galya had arranged it in order that I should meet a certain gentleman there, an acquaintance of Kuzma Zakharovich visiting from Moscow. I knew nothing else of him except that he was unmarried and in need of a wife. I suspect Aunt Galya had only surmised the latter, for when we were introduced, it was evident he knew nothing of me either and was surprised to have me sprung upon him, as it were.
We had not yet sat down to supper when Xenia’s houseboy, Grishka, came with a message saying that his mistress required me urgently. I immediately made my apologies and departed.
When I arrived at the house, I saw Xenia’s figure through the open doorway of the drawing room. “I’ve come as quickly as…” The words dried on my tongue when she turned and I saw it was Andrei. He was wearing an apricot-colored damask gown of Xenia’s that had been let out and refashioned for him, but not skillfully. His broad chest strained against the bodice, and incongruous tufts of dark hair curled over the top. Balancing on his head was a lady’s powdered wig.
My surprise and discomfort were reflected in his own face. “It’s another of her wretched fancies.” He waved a naked forearm—like a mutton shank edged in white lace—in the general direction of the Winter Palace.
The Imperial ball that evening was to be a metamorphoses, the men compelled to dress as women and the women to don breeches and jackets.
Our sovereign, he mused, was partial to these evenings because she had once looked so well in men’s clothes, with her fine legs shown off to advantage. “No doubt, her pleasure is increased by how ludicrous everyone else looks.” He swayed across the room, swatting at his skirt with annoyance. “Have you come to gawk at me?”
I didn’t know where to rest my eyes. “Is Xenia ill?”
“No, cousin, not ill.” He picked up a wineglass sitting beside an empty decanter. The glass was all but empty as well, but he lifted it to his lips anyway and, tilting back his head, caused his towering wig to list dangerously. He caught at it and grimaced, as though the victim of a prank.
“She slept poorly and has been in a state all day, insisting that we mustn’t go to the palace tonight.”
He readjusted the wig, trying without success to prop it in such a way that he might rescue the last drops from the bottom of his glass. “God knows, I would happily oblige her if I could, but we have been particularly invited.”
Empress Elizabeth’s constant entertainments, once a source of delight, had become a tedious obligation and a formidable expense. By Imperial edict, dresses might be worn at court only just the once, and to enforce this, pages were set at the door to dab ink on the skirts of departing guests.
Still, those favored with an invitation to the Winter Palace balls were compelled to attend, and Andrei worried that Xenia’s absence might be reported. The recent poor health of Her Imperial Majesty had made her intolerant of others’ excuses. Last month, she had sent cadets to Alexi Arkharov’s home to see if he was indeed ill. When he was discovered with nothing more than a slight cough, she had ordered him dragged out into a snowbank and left there until he was adequately sick.
“Perhaps my wife will listen to you,” Andrei said. “I cannot bend her.”
“I shall try.”
“And if you would indulge me further, tell Ivan to fetch up another bottle.”
I found Xenia in bed, sunk against a raft of pillows. Since little Katenka’s death, she had lost all color in her face and her eyes had become dull, but tonight they held a glitter like fever.
“He must think I do not love him. I promised obedience, and now when he asks it… I thought I would give up my life for him, but it seems I cannot.”
I put my hand to her forehead. “In heaven’s name, what are you talking about?”
She grasped my hand to still it. “I dreamt my own death.” Her eyes were far away. “I was falling. I was tumbling down the front steps of the palace, but I could see it happening, as though I were watching from a high window. Someone screamed, and then I was lying on the snow at the bottom of the steps.” She gazed at the far wall as though a drama were playing out before her, and she narrating as it unfolded. “A darkness bloomed round my head. At first I thought it was a shadow thrown on the snow by torches.” Her voice broke, and she fell silent for a moment before resuming. “There was a confusion of voices, but I remember someone said to send for a priest. Another person argued no, a priest might arouse the suspicions of Her Imperial Majesty. ‘If she asks,’ this person said, ‘you must say only that a guest has fallen. You know how she abhors any mention of death.’ That is how I knew.”
“Xenia—” I began.
“I felt such agony, and when I woke, I knew it was a warning from God.”
What answer could I make to this?
Xenia, though, had devised a plan. I should go in her place. It was a metamorphosis, after all. If I wore her costume, kept to myself, and said nothing, no one might discover the ruse.
An outlandish scheme, perhaps—only in plays are such swapped identities believed—yet saying no to Xenia was more unthinkable to me than her plot. Perhaps it was not such a leap as I imagined. After all, who knew her better than I? I allowed myself to be persuaded.
Her costume had been laid out over a chair: one of Andrei’s uniforms, a pair of stockings, and small buckled shoes in a man’s style. The jacket and breeches were too long for my person, but this did not dissuade Xenia.
“Grishka is of your proportions.” She sent for him, and when he appeared asked him to relinquish his new livery. The poor boy misunderstood and was distraught at what he might have done to provoke the loss of his position. Xenia explained that I was merely borrowing his garments for the evening, which did nothing to relieve his confusion. “Go on”—she motioned for his baize jacket, which he abashedly removed. She waited for the rest, but then relented. “See that your breeches are sent back up straightaway.”
“We can tack some lace at the sleeves and neck,” she said to me.
Once we had bound my breasts, the jacket fitted me, as did the rest of the livery. With my hair pulled back into a tail, I resembled to the passing eye a boy in service. But I bore no likeness to Xenia.
“Nor would I resemble myself if I were costumed. That’s the entire point of the metamorphosis.”
Had he been sober, who knows if Andrei would have allowed this charade to go forward. As it was, when we came downstairs he was far enough into his wine to have abandoned discretion. He gaped at me, making me painfully conscious of my legs, their shape exposed in the tight cloth of the breeches.
“What is this? Are you coming to the ball as our footman?”
Xenia revealed her plan, and Andrei laughed. “So I am to go as you, Xenia? And Dasha is also to go as you? If only you will come as yourself, we might be a holy trinity.”
She looked miserable.
“It’s madness.” He chuckled. “No one will be deceived.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Nonsense, I’m not complaining. One wife at home, another at court—were I not wearing a skirt, I should be feeling quite vigorous right now.”
From a long way off, I could see the Winter Palace, its windows lit like a row of polished gold ingots. As we neared, I felt fresh stirrings of apprehension; when we passed through the gates and I saw the line of sleighs disgorging their occupants, my apprehension spilt over.
Grishka waited, his hand held out, his eyes trained fixedly on nothing, his features rigid with the effort to disregard his own livery and the ridiculous picture we made: one footman helping another to alight. He then offered his hand to Andrei, who was obliged to accept it in order that he might manage his skirts. Snatching his fan back from Grishka, Andrei took my arm in his free hand only to drop it again so that he might lift his hem as we mounted the steps and then marble staircase inside. I had no need of his hand anyway; being costumed as a man, I could move unencumbered. Not a thing prevented my taking the steps two at a time, save my dread of arriving at the top.
On the landing, an Imperial page received our invitation and announced us. My knees turned liquid. I had no skirt to hide their quaking, no fan to hide the rising color in my face. Andrei whispered in my ear, “Don’t look so stricken. Pretend an interest in who else is here.”
At a glance, the scene appeared the twin of other Imperial balls: hundreds of lavishly costumed persons so crowded into the room that their skirts touched, color to color, like a jumble of mosaic tiles. If only I could step back, I thought, the confusion might resolve into a design. My desire to withdraw was made all the more powerful by the airless stench in the room. I felt faint and patted my pockets for Xenia’s little enameled box of herbs. I distinctly remembered tucking it in my jacket. But no, that had been the other jacket, the one of Andrei’s that had been too large. Andrei grasped an elbow to still my skittering hands.
He guided me into the room. “Don’t let yourself be engaged in conversation.”
“What if someone should address me?”
“Smile or be aloof, depending on the person. But keep quiet.”
Although the scene was familiar from other such gatherings, there was an ineffable difference, a slight distortion as if reflected in a poor mirror. The ladies appeared taller and bulkier than their male partners, who, for their part, seemed to have shrunk like old men, their shoulders and calves thin as sticks. As we neared, this dissonance grew, persons changing sexes or wavering uncertainly between one sex and the other.
A stout merchant’s wife rumbled in a basso profundo about the difficulty of keeping her troops supplied. “I have been six weeks now awaiting a signature.”
Her companion, a swarthy woman in yellow brocade, nodded glumly. “It’s true. She schools us, her children, in the virtue of patience.” The woman absently plucked feathers from a fan clutched in her thick-knuckled hand. “My wife has borne two children while I await some word on Prussia.” Before my eyes, her face sprouted stubble and she assumed the appearance of a poorly camouflaged man. All about us, such transformations unfolded as we moved into the room. It was unsettling.
Andrei scanned the room like a hound searching the scent. At last he found it in the person of a very long-limbed woman standing near a window at the far end of the room. She stood apart, not only by virtue of being alone but also because she stood a full head taller than anyone in the room. Further, she alone had disregarded the injunction to wear breeches and was costumed instead in a hoopless white gown that skimmed her form. I guessed by the crown of olive leaves in her hair that she was meant to be one of the Roman goddesses.
Andrei approached and addressed her in Italian. Her fan swished open in greeting, and she loosed a trill of words. Like birdsong, it was exquisite to hear. Andrei’s low and labored Italian alternated like a duet with her lilting voice. Though I could not translate their words, the matter revealed itself in their expressions and gestures. Andrei was flattering her. It looks the same in any language. With an expansive gesture, he praised her appearance. She held her pose but indicated modesty by the transfer of her gaze downwards. He repeated himself in more insistent tones; again, she demurred by tilting her chin and showing her profile, but I saw she was pleased.
She bore a startling resemblance to the cranes we sometimes saw, posed and motionless, in the marshes near our country house. Her arms were exceedingly long and seemed too delicate to support even the weight of a fan. Her head, dominated by a beakish nose, balanced precariously on a reed-like neck. She had small, dark eyes. Another woman of just her proportions might have been thought ugly. But she carried herself with such elegance, each gesture arrived at and held with such attention, that like the crane’s, her awkwardness was made graceful. Once I had formed this idea of her, her white breast seemed the counterfeit of the bird’s and the lace half-concealing it resembled feathers. I fairly expected her to spear up a fish at any moment.
Directing her fan at me, she warbled a question.
“La mia moglie,” Andrei answered. “Xenia Grigoryevna.” He turned to me. “Xenia, may I present Signor Francesco Gaspari.”
I was shocked, and not solely to discover that he was a man. You see, I knew the name. Who did not? It was lately on the lips of all Petersburg society, in loud praise for the purity of his singing and also in salacious whispers. He was what is called a musico. A sacred monster. A eunuch.
Lifting my hand, he kissed it a moment longer than was fashionable. “Sono incantanto,” he said, followed by a ripple of syllables beyond my understanding. I felt myself coloring and was relieved when Andrei coaxed his attention outwards. He asked the musico some question, and the two began to speak in lowered tones, though Gaspari’s voice still tinkled an octave higher than Andrei’s.
“La Principessa di Courland,” Gaspari whispered, and raised his eyebrows meaningfully. “Sta conversando con l’ambasciatore olandese. E quella è la sorella del Signor Shuvalov.”
In past seasons, the cognoscenti had reserved all their raptures for another musico, Lorenzo Saletti. No one, they had said, could equal his Berenice. One might have thought that his being of middle years, wrinkled, and shaped like a dumpling would have marred his impersonation of a young maiden, but not so; for the aficionado, it was the voice alone that mattered, and there was even said to be a particular thrill in such confusion of the senses. However, when Saletti left the employ of the Imperial court and returned to Italy to recover his health, allegiances had shifted with alacrity. In Araja’s most recent opera, the famed Giovanni Carestini had sung the primo uomo role, and in place of the departed Saletti, this Gaspari had taken the secondary part. These two had dazzled Petersburg with their bravura. They were said to be like a pair of preening peacocks, unfurling glorious trills and flourishes, one displaying and then the other answering with mounting virtuosity until women fainted from their chairs. Such sweet tones were too divine, the cognoscenti crooned, to come from mortal men.
Even up close, there was no telltale sign of manhood, no shadow of a beard, no Adam’s apple. Gaspari’s wrists were slender as a lady’s, and his figure had the soft and rounded shapes no man can feign. Yet he was not quite female, either. He had the appearance of having been put together from the parts of different persons. I cannot explain how this worked on me except to admit that I could not easily wrest my eyes from him. He was at once repugnant and fascinating.
I could pick out only the occasional name from the stream of their conversation, but I followed their eyes and the movements of Gaspari’s fan. Like a weather vane in a shifting breeze, it wavered and held in one direction and then in another as he pointed out various persons in the room. Their disguises were no hindrance to him; he seemed to know the identity of everyone. Perhaps it was for this reason that Andrei had sought him out.
Gaspari’s fan singled out a thin-faced woman in the lacy garb of a dandy and identified her as Countess Stroganova. Her name, I recalled, had been linked to his. If the rumors that circulated round him were to be believed, his being unmanned was no impediment to his skills as a lover. He was as famous for his love affairs as for his voice, and it was said that certain practical ladies in the court preferred him over men who might get them with child. Others whispered that, though he was himself without sensation, he could pleasure a woman until she was nearly dead of it.
My glance stole from the Countess back to Gaspari, and I found him looking at me knowingly. “We are not…” he began, and then halted. Tapping his temple with his fan, he asked Andrei, “Che cos’è la vostra parola per ‘sembra’?”
“Appear.”
He turned back and ducked his long neck towards me to whisper, “We are not what we appear, signora. Yes?”
It was the sort of banal observation that persons say when they are in costume and cannot think of an original remark, but I heard more in it, as though he were confiding something to a fellow conspirator.
The musicians lumbered into a solemn polonaise and every eye turned, anticipating the arrival of Her Imperial Majesty. It was not she, however, but the Grand Duke and Duchess.
Had one but the wit to see it, the future was writ large in their appearances. Everything that made Peter seem unfit to rule was magnified by his being in feminine attire. He looked feeble and foolish, a sickly girl with narrow shoulders and lanky, thin arms. It did not go unremarked, moreover, that his gown was made of Prussian blue, like a thumb in the eye of his people. By contrast, Grand Duchess Catherine had elected to dress in the uniform of the Preobrazhensky Guards, her thick chestnut hair tied with a simple ribbon beneath the hat. She was splendid and strong and carried herself with such uncompromising dignity that she might have been born to wear breeches.
As they processed into the hall, Peter mechanically offered his arm to his wife. She took it without seeming to notice his presence. The assembled courtiers fell into line to be received, and, as the royal couple passed, Catherine obligingly acknowledged her guests. Peter glowered at them, as though he were looking over his subjects for one he might whip. The courtiers fell in behind them, processing into the polonaise.
As they approached our threesome, I dropped into a deep curtsy, noting as I did that without the cover of skirts, my knees splayed unattractively. I raised my eyes in time to see His Imperial Highness salute the musico with an excessive, smirking courtesy. His eyes darted maliciously to gauge his wife’s reaction, but she was resolutely impassive.
“Mi permetta?” Gaspari proffered his arm to me, the fingers extended daintily. “You would do me the honor?”
Having been cautioned by Andrei against speaking, I looked to him now for rescue, but he offered no assistance and, stepping back, gallantly handed me off to the musico.
It was part of the Empress’s enforced amusement that the women should lead their partners. However, a lady up the line was so tentative in this that dancers had begun to pile up behind her, and the men, unaccustomed to the girth of their skirts, threatened to topple the whole pattern like dominoes. Like a troupe of clowns, we made our graceless promenade round the hall until at long last it was cleared of nearly all but the Imperial servants stationed at arm’s length along each wall. A hundred or more of them in their green-and-yellow livery stood at attention, giving the impression of guards placed to prevent any disheartened guest from escaping the dance. I searched in vain for an apricot dress.
“It seems Andrei Feodorovich he has left you in my care.” Gaspari had read my look. “Perhaps he has been discovered by a friend of his wife?” His dark eyes were mischievous.
I felt myself flush.
“I have seen Xenia Grigoryevna.” He reached for my hand and feathered the back of it with his fingers. “She is more white and more tall.”
He smiled and did not let go of my hand. “You do this why?” Tipping his head to one side, he waited on me to answer. For all that it was a pose, his curiosity was not unkind.
“She is my friend and she was… she needed me.”
He nodded approvingly. “That is a good answer. I would like such a friend.” He lifted my hand to his painted lips. “If you are not too fatiguée… ?” The line of dancers had begun to divide into two parallel columns, threatening to strand us between them. “The bird may hide best in the …” He searched for a word. “Many?” He fluttered his fingers.
“The flock,” I said.
“Sì, sì, the flock, sì.” He gestured me towards the line of mock men and fell back with the other mock women.
Through this gauntlet, each couple was compelled to come together and process at a pace measured enough to allow the onlookers’ appraisal. The polonaise is the most stately of dances, designed to display the nobility of the dancer. But garbed as they were, an attitude of nobility was beyond the reach of most. The women took pains to rise above their discomfort; robbed of their wigs and their fans and with their fat or spindly calves on exhibit, they nevertheless cast proud looks down the line, as though to hold themselves aloof from their own ridiculousness. But few of the men troubled to disguise their ill-humor at being exposed to mockery; they resembled humiliated prisoners being led to the gallows. The glittering lights of the candelabra could not dispel the heavy air in the room.
Only Gaspari seemed not to feel it. Perhaps he had long ago accustomed himself to mortification, but standing across from me, he looked enviably at his ease, an elegant and haughty woman among graceless sisters. Such was the confusion worked on me by the metamorphoses that I found myself grateful to be partnered with him, and not only because he seemed disinclined to expose my secret. When he stepped lightly to my side and we moved arm in arm into the maw, I was emboldened by feeling invisible beside him.
The columns blended and divided again, and now first the gentlemen and then the ladies passed through the gauntlet unaccompanied. As I felt each person fall away ahead of me, my dread returned and deepened. My turn came. The line opened and then closed up again behind me, and I processed with painful slowness, like a mouse through the guts of a snake. Step, step, chassé. I repeated it silently. The tunnel of faces down which I moved was interminable, a thousand eyes staring as though to burn away my costume and expose me. I felt particularly conscious of my hands and could not recall what to do with them. Step, step, chassé. Step, step, chassé. At last I reached the end and gasped up air like a dying fish. Gaspari gave me a solicitous look from across the gap before the shifting dancers reeled him away, and with new partners the figure was repeated.
The figures of the polonaise are endless. At some point, I thought I saw Andrei or at least a part of him. He was standing in the company of two others, who hid him from view, but the back of his apricot gown was reflected in the dark gleam of a window. When next I was returned to that vantage point, he was gone.
The dancers began to move sullenly together and apart like the mechanical figures of a clock, excepting when the mathematics of the dance coupled two who were already linked by gossip. When the Grand Duchess Catherine linked arms with Count Stanislav Poniatowsky, the British ambassador’s secretary, their approach was heralded by an airy rush of whispers, like a wave rippling down the length of a pebbled shore. I had become numb to the torment of passing through the line and had fallen to contemplating smaller mortifications—the weariness of my feet within their buckled shoes, the chafing of my bound breasts—when the lady on my left caught sight of a promising diversion and alerted the gentleman facing her.
“Attendez.” She nodded in the direction of an approaching couple. “You know,” she whispered, “she carried on with that creature for months, and right under the Count’s nose. Naturally, he never suspected. It was only her dog that betrayed her.”
Our two lines parted for the couple to pass, and the Countess Stroganova sailed into view, her hand resting at the slender waist of Gaspari.
My mind struggled to reconcile the picture. They looked too much alike to be lovers. With their fingers touching lightly tip to tip, he might have been her image reversed and elongated by the distortion of a poor mirror. I wondered how it would be to lie with someone who was in all ways but one a sister.
“What of the dog?” the gentleman asked. We had come together again with the requisite bows and curtseys.
“When the monster came to their house to sing, her little spaniel ran up to it and licked at its ankles like an old friend. Thus she was exposed.”
At last we were returned to our original partners and rewarded with the promise of supper. The guests waited to enter the adjacent hall in order of precedence, and from this clutch Andrei appeared, looking a bit untidy but merry.
“Xenia, my dear wife!” Each of his exhalations announced how he had spent the past hours. “I thought I had lost you.” He grasped both my hands as though we had been parted for months and, turning, thanked Gaspari effusively for keeping me amused. “I’m grieved to have missed seeing the promenade. A Frenchman would not let me go. You two must promise to dance a minuet after supper so I may have a second chance.”
A page approached Gaspari to direct him to his seat. He took my hand and lifted it to his painted lips. “Arrivederci per ora.”
When he was out of earshot, I whispered, “Signor Gaspari knows I am not Xenia.”
Andrei waved off the news breezily. “It’s no matter. He’s the soul of indiscretion, but there are few here who would deign to hear anything from him but music.”
“Is he to sing?”
“No, he claims the Grand Duke invited him personally. My guess is that it’s His Imperial Highness’s notion of a jest, seating him above the salt like that, a bit of scandal to irk the Grand Duchess.”
Our own seats placed us across from the counterfeits of a young sailor and an older Cossack. Andrei greeted the Cossack, who looked at him questioningly. “It is Colonel Petrov.” Andrei swooped into a low bow, forgetting his wig. He snatched at it, righted the nest atop his head, and smiled ingratiatingly.
“I am grateful you do not know me in this hideous getup. But no costume can disguise your beauty, Madame Lopukhina. May I present my wife, Xenia Grigoryevna. I hope you will forgive her; the cold weather has made her hoarse.”
It was Andrei’s habit to be pleasing, and drink only made him more courtly. With each course, he grew more lively and expansive.
At three o’clock, the throne was still conspicuously empty. As no one might leave before Her Imperial Majesty arrived, the assembled guests rose from supper and plodded round the dance floor again like beaten nags. Endless refrains of a minuet issued from the nodding musicians and kept the dancers at their paces.
At last Her Imperial Majesty arrived. Whatever relief might have been felt was snuffed by her appearance. She entered the hall with uncharacteristic slowness and leaned heavily on the arm of Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov, her legs too swollen to bear her full weight.
I have sometimes consoled myself that having been born without beauty, I have not suffered the loss of it. Those who take delight in their own physiognomy and who see themselves reflected in the admiring eyes of the world must feel each wrinkle as keenly as the cut of a razor. At the peak of her bloom, Elizabeth Petrovna’s beauty had been inspiration for the poets and painters of the age and had known no rivals. What rivals appeared later she had quashed, forbidding them to wear pink in her presence or to adorn themselves with jewels that might outshine her own. She had surrounded herself with flatterers and had taken as favorites a string of boys in whose company she might feel her own youth again. Only a monarch may be so self-deceiving, but no amount of fawning could conceal the truth any longer. She was old and sick, and one could see in her eyes the desperate rage of a trapped animal.
Even at her best, Her Imperial Majesty was notoriously hard to please, and the courtiers were in no mood to make the attempt now. As they fell into line to be received by their sovereign and fulfill their duty, they discreetly signaled pages to have their horses readied. The moment the Empress had lumbered past us, Andrei guided me into the throng flowing towards the door.
We emerged into the late December night. The sharp air cut through my cloak and stung my legs but revived me like a tonic. I admired the glittering sky and the lights of the palace falling across the snow in gold stripes. A buzz swelled at our backs as more and more guests emerged from the hive.
Andrei was merry. He snatched off his wig and, tossing it onto the step, stamped on it as if killing a rat.
“What a night! But we survived our test. To think of you dancing with Gaspari!” He laughed. “I am as lucky as a sultan in my wives.” He swooped in and woozily swiped my cheek with his lips, and began to sing the same light ditty I had first overheard in the carriage years before and that so often came unthinking to his lips. If you look on me fair, my love, I shall not fear to die. And I shall not want more Heaven than what is in your eye. The familiar notes thawed the frozen air. This poor sinner only prays to be kissed to Paradise.
Our sleigh moved to the head of the line, and Grishka leapt down. Andrei said something, but the wind off the river whipped it away. Smiling, he took a step up towards me, and reached out his hand. Suddenly, it was snatched away. The bell of his skirt flew up, and he disappeared behind an explosion of white underskirts and dark limbs.
It was over in an instant. In retrospect, I can only guess that he caught a heel in the wig and, being drunk, could not recover his balance. In a blink, he was sprawled motionless in front of the sleigh, the rigid hoop of his skirt obscuring his face from me. I ran down the stone steps to where he lay. He seemed to be looking up at me. Round his head, a red flower bloomed in the snow.
I sank to the ground and, lifting his head, rested it in my lap. It was heavy as iron. The bee buzz of the crowd seemed far away and had a quality like silence. I waited. Faces wavered into view and then faded back into darkness. No priest or doctor came. I grew first cold and then numb. After an indeterminate length of time, Ivan and Grishka lifted Andrei’s body and carried it away.
“Signorina?” A light hand rested on my shoulder. “You must go to your friend. I will take you, if you please.”
I returned to Andrei’s house in the company of Gaspari, with Andrei’s sleigh bearing his body behind us.
When I entered the drawing room, Xenia was curled on the divan under a lap blanket. She sat up and looked at me drowsily. On the point of making some remark, she suddenly blanched, her eyes fixed at my waist. Looking down, I saw my tunic and breeches were stained with blood.
“There was an accident,” I began, but my throat closed.
She sprang up and ran past Gaspari, out into the dark, where she was met with the sight of Ivan and Grishka bearing her husband’s corpse from the sleigh.
Xenia howled. I have never heard such a terrible noise except from wolves. Then she threw herself at his body with such wildness that the alarmed servants laid him down where they were and withdrew. Bent over him, she keened, stroking his face and then shaking him as though to force him back to life.
I went to her and put my hand to her back. At my touch, she wrenched herself round to face me: green fires pulsed in her eyes, violent and remote as the aurora lights. I was afraid.
By now, the whole of the house had been roused from their beds, and one by one they gathered at the door. Their grief chorused beneath hers.
I know not how long Xenia went on, but at last her strength gave out. Drawing her breath in hiccoughs and gasps, she slumped over the body and was too exhausted to resist when I lifted her off him. I gave orders that she be carried to her bed and that Andrei’s body also be taken inside. A soft voice behind me said, “I have send my carriage for a priest.” Turning, I saw the musico. I had forgotten he was there. Tears had etched runnels in his powdered and rouged cheeks. He looked ludicrous.
“I may do some further service?” he asked.
I thanked him and said that I could manage, but he seemed not to understand. He made no move to take his leave.
“Without the carriage, I have no means home, signorina. And I cannot danger the voice.” He patted his throat. I noticed then that he was shivering with cold.
“Oh, forgive me. Come inside. We will wait for the priest together.”
I have no further recollection of that morning. In the front hall, I sat down that my boots might be removed, and rested my head against the wall. As soon as I was off my feet, I was gone.
When I awoke, it was still dark. Or dark again, I did not know. I smelt incense and heard the murmur of someone praying, and instantly remembered, though what I remembered had the quality of a dream. I stood up and moved like a somnambulist towards this low voice. In the drawing room, Andrei’s body had been laid out on a table. A cloth had been spread over him to serve as a funeral pall and hide that he was still clothed in Xenia’s dress. Two candlesticks were placed at his head, and their dim pool illuminated Andrei’s features as well as the face of a priest bent close, reading the prayers. As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up, so man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep. His voice was low and intimate, as though he were in private conversation with Andrei. O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that thou wouldest keep me in secret till thy wrath be past. I had the strange thought that I should not disturb them, but I stayed in the doorway for a time, letting the words crest over me.
Without benefit of a taper, I felt my way up the stairs and to Xenia’s room. She was still clothed and propped upright on her bed, but she did not respond to my coming in. When I asked Masha if her mistress had slept, she said no, and then yes, and then that she did not know. She crossed herself and wept.
“Xenia?” I whispered. She did not answer. Her face was gray, and her eyes, though open, were entirely empty. I was put in mind first of Andrei lying downstairs and then of the wax effigy of Tsar Peter that resides in the Kunstkamera. Seated on a great throne, it glares so steadily that one is compelled to look away. Only upon nervous sidewise glances can one detect the ruse: though it is in all other ways the perfect copy of a man, the figure is too still and the enamel eyes have no animation. Even so, it is too disquieting to contemplate directly.
So it was with Xenia. I took her limp hand into mine. Her gaze, directed towards the stove, remained blank. I noted the subtle rising and falling of her chest. “Should I stoke the fire?” I asked, as though I were responding to a subtle hint.
The room was already sufficiently warm, but not knowing what else to do, I sent Masha downstairs to fetch some brandy, and busied myself with the tinderbox. I devoted excessive attention to my task until Masha returned with the brandy.
“Here, this will revive you.” My voice in my own ears sounded like pots clattering to the floor, but Xenia remained insensible. I held the glass up and pressed it against her lips, but she did not drink. “Here, just a sip,” I coaxed. Tilting back her head, I poured the liquid into her opened mouth. It dribbled back out and ran down her chin. “You must try, darling.” She made no answer.
“We should get her out of these clothes and into bed. Sleep is the best thing.” I removed her stockings and wrested her loose of her bodice. Her inert limbs provided no assistance and were remarkably heavy in their inanimate state, but with Masha’s assistance I freed her of her petticoats. We pulled a nightgown down over her head, worked her arms into the sleeves, and then arranged her limbs in an attitude of repose, with her gaze redirected at the ceiling.
I do not recall the feeble winter sun rising or setting, only perpetual darkness broken at intervals by my imperfect vigil. Like the apostles in Gethsemane, I tried to keep awake and pray but could not. So it went for an unmarked procession of time. The priest downstairs chanted the psalms over Andrei’s body, mourners came and left, but I took no notice of them, nor of the servants, who, being so suddenly deprived of both master and mistress, left off their customary duties and gathered aimlessly in the halls and the yard.
At some point, I was called downstairs to see Nadya, who had appeared at the house complaining that she and her mother had not received mourning cards to inform them of Andrei’s death and had learnt of it only as strangers might. “Our mother was offered condolences by a neighbor in the street,” she fumed.
“Xenia is overcome with grief,” I said.
“Do you know he is laid out in a woman’s dress? With only a priest praying over him, and some strange woman? His friends shall think Xenia unfeeling. There is no coffin lid at the door, and the girl told me that no preparations have been made for the funeral dinner.”
When I answered that these duties were quite beyond Xenia’s capacity, that she could not even rise from her bed, Nadya went up the stairs, thinking, I suppose, to scold her sister into action. Finding her immune to rebuke did not soften Nadya’s mood.
“Has she been bled?”
I replied that she had not.
“I shall send my surgeon.” Shaking her head, she left.
Andrei was without family, excepting some distant cousins in Little Russia. As for Xenia’s close relations, evidently Aunt Galya was too distraught by the news of her daughter being widowed to come to the house, and Nadya was too vexed to return. There being no more immediate candidates in line for the offices of family, I elected myself. With Masha, I first washed Andrei’s body and dressed him in his uniform, then had a casket sent from the cabinetmaker. There is a tremendous amount to do when someone leaves the world. I ordered more flour and nuts and vodka, boiled wheat for the kolivo, and set Marfa in the kitchen to making blinis. Masha was charged with watching Xenia and changing her bedding while I gathered up her clothes for dyeing. When the surgeon came, I left off plucking a goose and escorted him upstairs.
The surgeon was a brisk man. He gave Xenia hardly a glance before unpacking his instruments and setting the cups onto the stove to warm. Pulling a chair to her bedside, he took her limp arm, pushed up its sleeve, and tied it off above the elbow with a strip of linen. He worked the arm like a pump and then studied its length, flicking his middle finger against the skin.
“She has been like this for near two days now,” I said.
He nodded and took up the other arm. His self-possession was comforting. When he found a vein to his liking, he removed a lancet from its case, cocked the spring, and by means of a button released it, driving the blade into her flesh. Xenia jerked, blood bubbled up, and he covered the wound with one of the heated glass cups. The cup was shaped like a hand bell topped with a brass nipple. Into this he fastened a syringe. This further encouraged the vein to breathe by sucking out the blood and ill humors. When the cup was full, he instructed me to fetch a bleeding bowl from his box. He emptied the cup and put on another. At this, Xenia turned her dull, fish-eyed gaze upon her arm. The sight of her blood seemed to provoke a terror in her, for she started to shriek, to tremble all over, and to sputter unintelligible noises. The surgeon, far from being alarmed, expressed satisfaction at her liveliness and drew yet more blood until her agitation subsided and she went slack again.
“I shall come back this evening,” he promised.
Andrei was laid to rest the next day. My parents had arrived from the country, my brother, Vanya, from his regiment, and together with the other mourners—all but Xenia—we set out just before dawn, our heads veiled, and followed his hearse on foot through sleeping streets. We approached the church, its spires black against a watery sky streaked with red, like bloody rags. The bells began to toll the dirge, from high to low, the last knell so deep it entered the bones.
Inside, the full Imperial choir had gathered to sing the service for their fallen brother. Even Count Razumovsky, together with his brother Ivan, was in attendance. Xenia might have been happy to see Andrei so honored, I thought, and close at the heels of this thought followed the worry that I had not laid in sufficient provisions to feed so many afterwards.
The choir began the Kathisma hymn for the dead, their solemn chants reverberating in the stony air. I listened for a void made by the absence of Andrei’s voice, but in truth I could not hear it. I then fell into the stupor that comes with long and familiar rites and emerged only when the priest called the mourners to the last embrace.
Come ye, therefore, let us kiss him who was but lately with us; for he is committed to the grave; he is covered with a stone; he taketh up his abode in the gloom, and is interred among the dead.
I have heard it remarked by foreigners, in particular the English, that our mourning is a cacophony compared with their own more muted grief. I remember Gaspari once said that not even the warm-blooded Italians make such a noise as Russians. Our serfs rend their garments and pull their hair, nor is it thought unmanly to weep. Even by the measure of our own customs, though, the grief for Andrei was loud.
He made a handsome corpse. Across his forehead lay the crown, a paper band with lettering that petitioned God’s mercy on his soul. But for this, one might have thought he was only sleeping off a night of immoderate pleasure rather than a life of it. I kissed him good-bye.
We emerged from the church, blinking into a day gone bright as a mirror. The sounds of sleigh bells and laughter rang in the thin air, for it was Christmastide. We seemed out of step with the calendar, sealed up in a private and unseasonable grief. I pondered the strangeness of this, that his death could rend to pieces the little sphere I lived in, yet leave no mark on the world beyond. Merrymakers, seeing our solemn procession to the cemetery, crossed themselves, but we did not dampen their revelry. It was considered good luck to be passed by a funeral procession, and they would not see in the open coffin a picture of their own ends.
As for the supper after, it was little different from others but for the absence of the widow, who lay upstairs. Cleansed by their tears, the mourners ate and drank heartily. Silently, they raised their glasses to Andrei’s empty chair with its glass of vodka and black bread.