by Debra Dean
Chapter Two
It may be that I am among the last persons alive to have seen with my own eyes the palace of Empress Anna Ioannovna’s jester. Even so, everyone knows the story, and in the telling and retelling, from nurse to child, it has acquired the patina of a fairy tale. I have sometimes seen my son, Matvey, smile indulgently when I have said to other guests that I was there and all this is true. I do not fault him. Even to me, the memory seems implausible, but this is just as it happened.
When she was young, the future empress was betrothed to a German duke. Her uncle, the great Tsar Peter, had arranged the marriage and had brought the duke to Russia for a spectacular wedding. There were many weeks of raucous celebration, and on the last night before the new couple were to leave for his homeland, the Tsar challenged the young groom to a drinking contest. Tsar Peter was a man of great appetites, and had the duke known his reputation perhaps he would have declined the challenge. Then again, dukes are not made to be humble. He drank himself into a stupor and fell ill, and on the journey back to Courland with his new wife he died. Though Anna Ioannovna implored her uncle that she be allowed to return to Petersburg, the Tsar wished it otherwise, and so she lived friendless in a foreign country for twenty years until Peter died and she was allowed to return home as Empress of all the Russias.
Because she was cruelly widowed and then prevented by the burdens of state from marrying the man she loved, it became a favorite sport of the Empress’s to arrange the marriages of those beneath her. And thus it was that she contrived to celebrate her birthday and the end of the war with the Turks by marrying her jester to one of her maids.
The nuptials were held at Shrovetide, in the midst of the most brutal winter in memory. People and cattle alike froze on the sides of roads. Birds dropped like stones from out of the sky. Nearly as strange for me, my father returned that winter from the war. I was eight years of age.
It was a shock to have him appear in the flesh. Alongside God, he had been the invisible center of our lives, and in my childish mind my earthly and heavenly fathers had blurred together as one. He looked very much as I imagined God might, tall, with a gray head and barrel chest, very stern and imposing. Even more fearsome, the outer part of his left ear was missing.
He greeted my mother restrainedly, and when she presented him with the son she had borne in his absence, he felt Vanya’s calves and arms, as one might inspect a new horse, and nodded his approval. “He is sturdy.”
My mother drew me forward from behind her skirts. “This is Dasha.” He eyed me solemnly. I was certain he could hear the loud tolling of my heart, and I braced myself to be inspected also, but apparently this was not needed.
“And these are Grigoriy Ivanovich’s daughters, Nadya and Xenia.”
Xenia flew to him, her arms thrown out, and called him Uncle Kolya. Whether surprised or not, pleased or not, the set of his features hardly shifted, but after a moment’s hesitation he obliged her with a kiss and a pat on the head. After this, Nadya also presented her cheek to be kissed. He then turned back to me, expectant. Taking my shoulders in his huge hands, he bent down from his great height. The gash of his ear loomed red and ragged in my vision, and the stubble of his beard raked across my cheek. I burst into tears.
“What is this?” he said.
“She is afraid of everything,” Nadya told him.
I have never forgotten his eye clouding over like a pond with a thin skin of ice. He may have misconstrued my shyness as a want of feeling, but it was not so. I haunted the doorway outside whatever room he was in, held rapt by his voice—a rumble that seemed to begin in the cellar—but if his notice should happen to fall on me, I froze.
Of course, Xenia was not afraid of him. On the contrary, she was rash in her affections and whenever he came home would throw herself at his person with cries of “Uncle Kolya! Uncle Kolya!” Though he was not unkind, I think he was unsure how to answer such insistent affection from one who was, after all, only another dependent. It was Nadya, caring the least, who made herself easiest for him to love. She brought him his slippers and pipe and he rewarded her by absently patting her head and calling her his little lieutenant before turning his attention elsewhere.
With his homecoming, a festive disorder unraveled the quiet habits we had formerly observed. My mother and Aunt Galya, excited to return to society, left us children almost entirely to the care of servants. Meals were arranged round the drills of my father’s regiment, and in the evenings there were suppers and dances that kept them away till morning. Sometimes, though, we were allowed into their rooms as they dressed. We helped to tie their hoops and lace their stays, and we listened to them gossip about who had worn what or danced with whom on the previous night.
For weeks beforehand, much of their talk concerned preparations for the jester’s wedding. As best I could piece together, the jester had formerly been one of the Empress’s advisors but had done something to provoke her displeasure and had been sentenced to death for this. But rather than have him executed, the Empress in her mercy stripped him of his title and made him her jester and cupbearer. Now she was going to marry him off to one of her servants. It was to be a great spectacle. Hundreds of exotic peoples were being brought in from the farthest reaches of the empire to lead the wedding procession. And hidden from view by high wooden barriers, something was being erected on the frozen river for the nuptials.
On the morning of the wedding, Olga took us to watch my father in the parade. A throng, festive in spite of the bitter cold, lined Neva Prospect. From far up the avenue, we could hear cheers and the percussion of military music, and then we saw the approach of the regiments. Mounted officers were flanked six-deep, their red breeches and green coats repeated over and over like the infinite reflections between two mirrors. As the Semeonovsky regiment passed, we scanned the rows of officers until we spotted my father, a full head taller than his fellows and looking grand as a statue on his bay horse. As he passed, we cheered loudly. Though he did not break his somber gaze, I felt sure he saw us. We followed him down the avenue, threading through the crowd and keeping pace with his progress until we reached the Admiralty Meadow, where the regiments broke off like ice floes into an open sea of horses and uniformed soldiers. We lost sight of him momentarily, but then Xenia spied him again. He was in the company of a fellow officer who often brought sweets to the house and whom we called Uncle Petya.
“Uncle Kolya! Uncle Petya!” she cried.
Astride their horses, they moved in our direction, soldiers and onlookers parting like the Red Sea at their approach. They brought their mounts alongside us. My father said to Olga, “I thought I saw my daughter in the street, but I told myself I must be mistaken.” I could not read in his aspect whether he approved or not.
“They wished to see you ride in the parade.”
“No, I think they have come to see the elephant,” Uncle Petya said. “Is that not so, girls?” He looked up the avenue. “Ah, even as I speak . . .”
What looked to be a mud-and-wattle hut was erected in the center of the avenue on four stone gray pillars. Atop this was strapped an iron cage, like a second storey. The whole contraption towered over the onlookers, of a scale more rightly associated with the surrounding buildings than with a living creature. But the pillars were not stationary after all, and they were bearing the hut towards us.
Even when I recognized it as an animal, its features were bewildering. What appeared to be a long tail hung from the approaching end, swaying from side to side like a pendulum. Flaps like dusty carpets waved at each side of its head. It had no fur but was cloaked in an ill-fitting gray hide that hung from its bones like poorly tanned leather, and in its lumbering wake it left a trail of prints in the snow as large and deep as soup tureens. As it drew alongside us, the beast’s eye looked out at the world with the patience of an elderly monk.
Within the cage on the elephant’s back was the bridal couple. In their appearance they were as startling as the beast on which they were conveyed. T
he woman was dressed in the finery of a bride, but her face was shriveled as an old cabbage, and she shrugged beneath the weight of a large hump growing from her left shoulder. The groom, decades younger than she, was the most unhappy man I had ever seen. Something in his glum physiognomy was familiar.
The crowd began to hoot and make clucking noises.
“It’s the Easter hen!” Xenia said.
“What’s this?” Uncle Petya asked.
Xenia told him where we had last seen the bridegroom: on the previous Easter, he had been made to sit in a huge straw nest at the entrance to the Winter Palace and give out eggs as gifts from the Empress. When commanded, he would begin to cluck, to bob his chin and flap his arms, and then he would withdraw from beneath himself a colored egg for the petitioner. What had made the performance amusing to the crowd was his great, pained dignity: even as he flapped his arms like wings, his expression had remained that of a man trying by force of will to rise above his own ridiculousness.
“I do not think he liked to give up his eggs,” Xenia said.
Uncle Petya laughed. “I should not want to give up my eggs, either. What say you to that, Nikolai Feodosievich? Would you not be sad to give up your eggs?”
My father remained grave. “I say that Prince Golitsyn should have considered this before he defied his sovereign to marry.”
“Is that why he looks so sad?” Xenia asked.
“This wife is his punishment for the first. She was a papist.”
Xenia asked my father what was a papist, and he answered that it was one who followed the Pope in Rome.
“Is it wrong to marry a papist?”
“It is a sin. And an even weightier sin to defy the Empress to do it.”
Her eyes followed the iron cage. “Did he love the papist very, very much?”
My father’s expression hardened slightly more. “That does not matter. It is too dear a price.”
“I shall pay more, I think.”
Behind the bride and groom, scores of couples were parading two by two astride all manner of beasts. It was akin to Noah’s menagerie, had he been asked to collect two of each people as well. A couple with the tawny skin and slant eyes of Tatars rode on camels. A pair of Finns followed on dogs, others on bulls, donkeys, miniature horses, and reindeer. The riders themselves were as various as the beasts that bore them, and were costumed in curious native garb. A Tatar bride with a ring in her nose balanced atop her head a tall red beehive ornamented with pieces of tin and coins. Her dress was similarly adorned with bells, so that she jangled musically as she rode. A red-haired pair from the far North was clothed from hood to boot in fancifully worked skins, and another couple, the man indistinguishable from his mate, was costumed in pantaloons with an open skirt and sash.
“Now, there’s a striking fellow,” Uncle Petya said. The man he indicated resembled the knights in old tales, clad in a tight-fitting waistcoat and breeches and carrying a bow and quiver. He had long whiskers, and his head was capped with metal like a silvered melon. “Xenia, would you like your uncle to buy you a husband like that? He is not your Prince Golitsyn, but I’ll wager he’s a prince of some sort.”
Xenia was strangely quiet and only shook her head.
“No? What of you, Dasha? What, no takers for this fine fellow?” Uncle Petya turned to Nadya. “But I am forgetting myself; it is the eldest sister who chooses first.”
“Doesn’t he already have a wife?” Nadya asked.
“Quite right,” Uncle Petya said with mock solemnity. “He does. Ah well, girls, don’t despair. There are a hundred more here to choose from. We shall find you husbands yet.”
There was not quite a hundred more but so many that by the time the last couple brought up the rear of the pageant they were trailed by lamplighters, and the Admiralty clock was chiming three.
I did not understand then what I know now, that half the jest lay in asking us our opinion. Tsar Peter had made it law that a girl could not be married without her consent, but it was a law observed mostly in the breach. No good father would allow such an important decision as marriage to rest on the affectionate inclinations or disinclinations of a girl. To be led by the heart was foolhardy: one need only look to the terrible fate of Prince Golitsyn to know this.
The next day, we went to the river to see the folly that had been built there. All these years later, I cannot recall my first glimpse of it without a shiver. Seen from a distance, the jester’s palace seemed to shimmer and float just above the surface of the frozen Neva, a trick of the eye, like a dwarfed reflection of the Imperial palace looming on the far shore. As we approached, though, the chimera did not dissolve. If anything, it grew more wondrous.
In every aspect but size it was the counterfeit of a real palace—it had fine windows and even a pediment adorned with statues—but it was fashioned entirely from ice. Guarding it were cannons also made of ice, and at intervals they fired crystalline balls. Two glassy rows of statuary shaped like potted orange trees beckoned us towards the front doors. We walked past the balustrades. Through milky blue walls, shadowy figures could be seen moving about within. It had the appearance of a spectral dwelling that housed souls caught between this life and the next. Night hovered close at the gloomy edges of the February afternoon. Another cannon report shattered the air like thunder.
We climbed the steps. Passing through a doorframe resembling translucent green marble, we entered into the cold blue light of the anteroom. The room and everything in it was fashioned from ice. Light glowed softly through the walls. Objects shimmered like apparitions and rather than casting shadows emitted a subtle radiance. The effect of this was to confuse the senses. As one moved, shapes emerged from the air, what was not quite visible from one perspective taking form when viewed from another angle. On the longer wall of the room, artisans had etched the counterfeit of a tapestry showing a stag-hunting scene. The finely detailed picture could only be viewed straight on; I stepped to one side and the stag and its pursuers vanished. As I moved back again, they reappeared. How long I was thus occupied I do not know, but when I looked up, Xenia and Olga and Nadya had all disappeared. A doorway wavered at the far end of the room, and through it I saw shadows walking about in the blue gloom, but a tingling unease kept me from passing through the door. Instead, I waited. A cluster of people was gathered before a table, and I inserted myself amongst them. On the table stood a clock; it was this they were admiring. One could see through the face of the clock and into a glassy interior filled with an intricate mechanism of cogs and gears.
“It doesn’t move.” Nadya was suddenly beside me.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s made of ice, you goose. It will say eight o’clock for as long as you stand here.”
“I thought it might chime.”
I was foolish, she said. Telling me that she and Xenia had found something much better, she pulled me into the hall beyond the anteroom.
A table had been laid there. Glimmering plates and wineglasses and cutlery that seemed made of fine crystal awaited the pleasure of diners. Ice tapers stood in ice candelabra, ready to be lit, and serving platters held a glittering cluster of grapes, a transparent loaf of bread, a wedge that looked like cheese. As with the clock, every article resembled its counterpart in the world but was drained of color and substance, like a soul removed from its body. All except for this: on a small table in the corner of the room, three playing cards were frozen into the surface. They were just ordinary cards—a two of hearts, a knave, an eight of clubs—but amidst all the translucent delicacies of the room they appeared shockingly solid and coarse.
I ran my fingers over them, fascinated. “Look. They are real.”
Nadya shrugged. “What of it? They must have played cards last night.”
“Who?” I asked.
“That is what I have been trying to show you! The jester and his bride spent their wedding night here.” She was passing through the far doorway. I followed.
Here was a dressing table orna
mented with various combs and brushes, pots and perfume bottles, and over the dressing table was a large, ornate mirror. The mirror was so perfect a counterfeit that I thoughtlessly glanced into it. I went sick with fright: there was no reflection. My limbs felt weightless, and as I looked into the gleaming blankness the disquieting thought rose up in me that I, too, had become a spirit.
“Come here,” Nadya said. At the center of the chamber, an enormous canopied bed had been chiseled, and draperies spilt to the floor round it like frozen waterfalls. Nadya stood beside it, and Xenia was there also, staring into the interior. Though apprehensive, I approached as though unseen forces were pushing me from behind.
“Look,” Nadya commanded, and then her voice dropped to a whisper. “This morning, the guards found them here. They were frozen dead in each other’s arms.”
Trembling, I made myself peer beyond the curtains. I expected to find Prince Golitsyn and his hunchbacked bride, their limbs locked in a stiff embrace, their flesh and bones translated to ice. But to my vast relief, there was nothing, nothing but sculpted pillows and bedclothes.
“You can see where they lay,” Nadya said. It was true: at the center of the bed, the ice had melted slightly and left a shallow depression. It was not hard to imagine the shape of two persons lying side by side.
A strangled whimper came from Xenia. I followed her stricken gaze and looked again into the bed. Frozen into the surface of a pillow was a ragged tuft of hair. It was bloody at the roots where shreds of scalp still adhered.
It has been said that they were brought straight from the church, and that Empress Anna’s guests complained at being made to step out of their carriages and follow the bridal couple out onto the river, where an icy wind cut through their wraps. But their sniping was silenced by the sight of the palace glittering in the frigid moonlight. Inside, they admired the cunning forgeries and paid lavish compliments to the Empress and the architect Eropkin on such a magnificent conception.
Golitsyn and the hunchbacked old maid were whisked into the bedchamber. There, the two were made to undress and were left naked. Guards were set at the door. It being customary on a wedding night to feast while the bride and groom consummate their union, the Empress Anna and her guests then hurried on to the banquet, their receding torches making a trail across the ice.
