The Mirrored World: A Novel

by Debra Dean

  A priest stands beneath the saints. In his stiff-collared stole and miter, he resembles one of their number come to life. He presides with equanimity over the stumbling flock that comes before him in endless, faceless pairs to be joined. Taking their hands into his, he asks them if they wish to have one another and to live together. He asks thrice.

  Be exalted, O Bridegroom, like unto Abraham.

  He hardly looks the part of the joyous groom.

  Do you of a good free and uncoerced will and with good intention take to yourself as wife this woman whom you see here before you?

  Kuzma Zakharovich, I see him now, pondering the lit candle grasped in his fat fingers. He turns his face to the priest before him and then to the girl beside him, with the muddled look of a man who finds himself placed in an awkward position.

  Do you of a good free and uncoerced will and with good intention take to yourself as wife this woman whom you see here before you?

  The Grand Duke’s demeanor is even more strikingly discordant. Though dressed like a monarch, he has the sallow appearance of a sickly child. His recent illness has left him horribly pocked and plucked-looking. He slouches in boyish defiance, makes faces, answers the priest in petulant tones, and pretends to a haughty boredom that he cannot pull off. Every twitch betrays him, as though the clothes are too heavy.

  The priest places the crowns upon their heads, he holds out the goblet with the warm red wine for them to drink, and he leads them thrice round the altar table. He beseeches Christ and the saints to bless their goings out and their comings in, and to bless their union with fruitfulness, to increase their numbers.

  Bride, be exalted like unto Sarah; and exult, like unto Rebecca: and multiply, like unto Rachel.

  Happy and delighted—such words are too much employed for frivolous emotions. The bride is called to be exultant. Xenia has such a look. Her profile is radiant, she is so entranced by her beloved that she might be on an island and he the only other inhabitant. She is very far away.

  And rejoice in your husband, fulfilling the conditions of the law: for so is it well-pleasing unto God.

  Tears are streaming down my cheeks.

  Of Nadya, my only memory is the moment when the priest placed the wedding crown upon her head. It might have been made of thorns. I watch her lift her chin slightly, her throat pulling into taut lines. Her features, set in an attitude of resignation, stiffen. And then she reaches up with one hand to straighten the crown on her hair, and I gasp, thinking of grain clattering onto the floor.

  But no, this must be the Grand Duchess, after all, for the sleeve that lifts to adjust the crown is of richly embroidered silver cloth and is slit open to reveal a lining of white swan’s down.

  Replenish their life with good things. Receive their crowns into Thy kingdom, preserving them spotless, blameless, and without reproach, unto ages of ages.

  Afterwards, in a shower of hemp seed, Xenia ducks her head into Andrei’s shoulder, and he covers her protectively. I am bereft. When the wedding party tries to pull apart the bride and groom, I forget the spirit of the game and tug at Xenia with childish, heartsick ferocity. Dazed with joy and clinging to Andrei, she smiles straight through me.

  Later, her bridal sheets are brought to the wedding banquet and hung so all can see the bloody stains on them. A cheer goes up, and there is much laughter. Love is brutal.

  Chapter Four

  I am conscious that I have violated a tradition of storytelling: a wedding shall signal the happy close to a tale. At this moment, any couple may yet stand in for every other; they are the blank slate on which are chalked our hopeful expectations.

  What comes after the wedding, this is the province of nurses and mothers. They lay bare the mystery with commonplaces. Love and eggs are best when they are fresh. The wife who invites her husband to visit her while she is dressing invites his eventual disinterest. Take your thoughts to bed with you, they intone, for the morning is wiser than the evening.

  For all this common wisdom, though, the heart of each particular marriage remains hidden. While sorting my mother’s effects after her death, I found the packet of letters my father had sent her so many years earlier from the front. They bore no relation to the heartsick professions Nadya had improvised in our games but were, instead, the most conventional of exchanges concerning the progress of the war and the management of my father’s estate and household. Try as I might, I could parse no feeling in them. Each was signed “Your husband, Nikolai Feodosievich,” as though she might not otherwise have known him. And yet she kept these letters until the end of her days. I am desirous to think that my mother and father may yet have loved each other, but their true feelings were so commingled with obligation that it is impossible to know. My father would not have known even how to frame such a question. He was a soldier and hence disposed to thinking not in terms of affection but only in terms of duty.

  For her part, my mother was probably more alike him than he suspected, the chief difference being that showing her husband affection was among her duties. Though she might harshly reprimand a servant or child, in his presence she was always soft-spoken and demure. She deferred to his opinions, flattered his vanities, and endured his rebukes with meekness. Love was a choice she made, and then made again daily for the remainder of her life. From her I learnt that a woman should not expect her happiness to come from the man himself, but from those acts of devotion she showed to him.

  Nadya did not learn this lesson. As Aunt Galya had predicted, Kuzma Zakharovich demanded little of her, but she found married life trying nonetheless. Chief amongst her complaints was Kuzma Zakharovich’s eldest daughter, at seventeen only two years younger than Nadya herself.

  “She conspires to turn my husband against me,” Nadya complained. “She even allows the servants to be insolent. I ring and ring and no one will bring my coffee. They pretend they do not hear me, but I am ringing loudly enough.”

  Nadya even insisted that the girl was trying to kill her. Her proof of this charge was that the daughter had insisted on cooking mutton in the house though Nadya was by then expecting a child and the smells of food made her ill. When the baby came, Nadya claimed to see Kuzma Zakharovich’s daughter give the infant the evil eye. “She denied it, of course, but I know what I saw. If this child dies, it will be on her head.”

  Kuzma Zakharovich declined to be drawn into these quarrels and went hunting instead. Nor could Nadya find a sympathetic ear in her own family. Her mother emptily counseled patience, a game for which Nadya had no talent. More maddening, her own sister could not even be made to see the difficulty. Xenia could not conceive that one whom God had blessed with a mate might have any cause to be discontented. Nadya retorted that Xenia would not be so blithe had God dealt her Kuzma Zakharovich and his daughter. “Your happiness blinds you to the suffering of others.”

  It was true that Xenia seemed uniquely blessed in her match. Andrei treated her with tenderness, and she returned his affection with adoration. A mention of him was sufficient to make her eyes soften, and if he was in the room, though she might seem engaged in conversation and give the outward appearance of attention, I could see that she was wholly preoccupied with him and he with her as well. Without a glance, much less a word or touch, they vibrated as though an invisible string stretched taut between them.

  He spoilt her by buying for her whatever thing she fancied, with no eye to the cost. When she admired in passing Anna Vorontsovskaya’s Chinese fan, he ordered a copy made for her. Her delight in this gift so pleased him that after this he was continually looking for some new thing that should please her. She returned his extravagance. That Andrei might be proud of his table, she stocked the larder with rich foods—ducks and cheeses and kegs of beer—and their house became known for its hospitality. That he might be proud of her as well, she gave attention to her dress and hair. Once, he failed to compliment her on a new skirt and bodice, and at last she got it from him that he did not like her as much in muted hues. It was a beautiful dr
ess, moiré silk the color of dried lavender, but no matter. She gave it straightaway to me and had another made just like it but in bright yellow.

  Because it was her nature to be generous, she was intent that I, too, should know this happiness. As yet, no one had shown an inclination to deprive my family of me. My mother and aunt reasoned that a sixteen-year-old had two or three more seasons of bloom yet, but they did not seem hopeful of my prospects. Xenia took it upon herself to find me a husband. She applied to this task all her customary energies, attaching me to guest lists, lending me dresses from her wardrobe, and counseling me. Once, when I expressed a desire to stay home, she said, “Once you are married, you need never go out again. But if you will only pretend to a little gaiety tonight, perhaps you will feel it, too.”

  We were going that evening to the home of Leonid Vladimirovich Berevsky. In his day, he kept an open house where anyone might come and dine at his table, and on a given evening he might feed the Empress and fifty of her courtiers or no one at all. His chef was famously inventive, for one supper creating a flotilla of ships carved from pineapples, for another decorating cakes with trellises of spun sugar and candied violets. Many went there only to sample what new novelty would be presented.

  That evening we were served a dish of roast suckling pig stuffed with quails, these in turn stuffed with mushrooms. Leonid Vladimirovich’s daughter sat at table with her little pug dog seated on a chair next to her. Eufimia, short-limbed and fat, bore an unhappy resemblance to the bug-eyed little beast, a likeness she had witlessly enhanced by dressing the dog in a collar of the same gold lace that trimmed her own bodice.

  “He is very clever,” Eufimia said. “Observe this.” Pulling the leg off a quail, she held the tiny drumstick just above the dog’s nose. “Didi, demonstrate how Mademoiselle Talyzina danced the mazurka at court.” She waggled the drumstick just out of its reach, and it rose onto its hind legs, tottering and spinning. Everyone laughed and applauded. Someone hummed a tune to accompany the dog, and others began to call out the names of various persons for Didi to imitate.

  Count Razumovsky whispered, “Would that the mistress had the charms of her pet.” I could think of no witty answer but smiled encouragingly. Gospodin Chogalovsky on my left repeated the remark to the person on his left and I watched it circle the table, a discreet whisper, a titter, a shared glance, until it reached Xenia. Inclining her head towards her neighbor, she listened, but her fierce eyes remained fixed on the dog. By now, it was wheezing desperately from its exertions. It collapsed onto its haunches but then struggled back up when Eufimia dangled the drumstick in front of its nose.

  Xenia rose. “May I try?” she asked Eufimia. She waited, holding out a hand.

  Reluctantly, Eufimia passed her the drumstick. “Hold it just above his snout,” she instructed.

  “Like so?” Xenia held out the drumstick but so low that the dog lunged and snatched a bit of greasy meat from the bone. She feigned surprise and dropped the drumstick to the floor, whereupon the dog fell off its chair and began to devour it.

  “Oh, dear.” She could not keep from laughing. “Good boy, Didi! Look with what relish he enjoys his meat.”

  “I can’t think who he puts me in mind of,” said Gospodin Chogalovsky. Someone volunteered the name of an Austrian attaché with famously bad table manners.

  “Yes, that’s him exactly!”

  The game turned to one in which Didi was encouraged to eat in the manner of various people we did not like. Scraps of food were tossed on the floor, and the dog happily snuffled them up.

  Eufimia pouted. “No, make him dance.” She held up another drumstick but could no longer engage her dog’s attention.

  One of Eufimia’s several suitors—she might be unattractive, but she stood to inherit much charm—volunteered that he would happily dance if he might feed from her hand. With a simper, Eufimia held up the drumstick and requested the figures of a sarabande. He obliged, to more laughter. Such was the nature of our amusement most evenings.

  Andrei, being attached to the court, was compelled to move in its seasonal cycles, quitting Petersburg in the spring for more hospitable climates. From Petersburg to Moscow, to Oranienbaum and the summer palace at Tsarskoye Selo, to monasteries and country estates and back again—the Empress was a restless traveler, and wherever she went an endless line of carriages and carts snaked behind her carrying all her furniture and her several thousand dresses and shoes, and behind them her vast retinue, often nearly a quarter of the populace of Petersburg, a moveable city of pilgrims journeying endlessly from shrine to shrine, seeking some new diversion.

  Because Xenia could not bear to be apart from her husband, she often numbered amongst these travelers. Even I, who had no relation to the court, was brought along on one such journey, an Imperial pilgrimage to Lake Svetloyar. Xenia had arranged it. A pilgrimage, she reasoned, would provide opportunities for informal meetings and conversation. And I should not have to dance.

  The court left Tsarskoye Selo after the roads were dry and traveled first to Prince Merchersky’s estate near Nizhny Novgorod. After a week of the Prince’s hospitality, the vast machine of the Empress’s retinue set out on foot for the lake.

  Within two hours of our departing, word came back through the line that Her Imperial Majesty was fatigued. We were compelled to stop then and there and await carriages to convey us the remaining nine or ten versts to our lodgings. The next day, the carriages returned us to the exact spot where we had previously left off, and we continued walking from there. That afternoon, we made little more progress before the Empress suffered a blister on her heel. Again, we waited for carriages to shuttle us forward in small groups, a tedious process that took longer than it would have to walk the same distance. And so it went. Each day, the carriages deposited us on this same stretch of road and then picked us up again some incremental distance farther on. It was three days before we passed our lodgings on foot and four days before the tail of the line accomplished this same feat.

  Xenia did not forget her purpose in bringing me along, and contrived each day to put us in the company of various unattached men. Into the second week, we stood one afternoon by the side of the road watching the procession of pilgrims pass, until she spotted a page she had met the previous evening. My first thought was that Xenia had misjudged: I had seen this same young man seated at supper next to one of the Shuvalov brothers.

  “Yes, he is their nephew,” she answered.

  “He is too far above me.” I did not add that he was too pretty as well.

  “The heart does not know its station.”

  She took me by the arm and fell in just ahead of the page. When he caught sight of her, she expressed delight at the happy accident of meeting again.

  “This is my cousin Daria Nikolayevna of whom I spoke. Dasha, this is Ivan Ivanovich. He is a great lover of books. I told him last evening that you read.”

  He expressed his pleasure at making my acquaintance and asked if I might commend any books to him. I had read the whole of what was available to me—the Psalter, the domestic rules of the Domostroi, and a pamphlet condemning the aggressions of the former King of Sweden—in short, nothing I might recommend. I returned the question. He recommended a book of lives by a Roman called Plutarch and described to me its virtues. He then kindly offered to lend me his volume.

  Had we more time, we might have gotten on well, for he was frank and intelligent and fond of ideas. But our walk was cut short by a pebble in the Empress’s slipper.

  We did not see Ivan Ivanovich again over the next several days. After Xenia asked Andrei to make inquiries, we learnt that the page had been moved to the head of the procession and was now walking in the company of the Empress herself.

  “I fear the Shuvalovs have designs for him.” Andrei was grim. It seemed the brothers, dangerous and tireless schemers both, had brought their nephew on the pilgrimage with the purpose of introducing him to the Empress. By all appearances, they had calculated rightly the particula
r weakness of their sovereign. This young man, twenty-seven years her junior, had caught the Empress’s fancy, and the enemies of Razumovsky were gleefully predicting that the Count would be out on his ear soon.

  Andrei reflected the gradual darkening of the courtiers’ mood. The lake lay no more than one hundred and twenty versts to the east of our starting point, but it had taken us nearly a fortnight to cover half that distance, for we could walk at best an hour a day before Her Majesty became winded or footsore. Prince Merchersky remarked that the early fathers might never have made it to the Holy Land had they been obliged to wear corsets and slippers. It began to seem we should be on that road forever, and the prospect bred a restive ill-temper which spread like disease in the close quarters. However various were our lodgings en route, they shared the quality of being overcrowded. Xenia and I were compelled one night to lie in a doorsill and were woken a dozen times by people stepping over us. On another night, we slept seated in a long queue of carriages parked before the inn where the Empress and her ladies were bedded.

  Xenia, however, remained cheerful. She liked being out of doors and relished every aspect of travel. As we walked, each new prospect excited her, though its only virtue might seem to be that it was unfamiliar. Even the small hardships, she insisted cheerily, were a diversion from one’s daily routines and familiar discomforts. Why, she might even become a wandering monk. Andrei replied that she would make a terrible monk. “How would you manage without your dresses and baubles? Besides, you have no gift for being alone.” She snugged her arm into the crook of his and said that he was right. Though she could live without her worldly possessions, she would die if deprived of his company.

  At last our caravan reached the lake. There being no suitable lodgings in the vicinity, scores of tents had been erected in a meadow overlooking the water. Our spirits were lifted to have finally reached our destination and to find it equal to all that had been said of it. The lake, glassy and round as a mirror, looked like a circle cut from the sky and set down there. Cottony clouds floated on the still blue surface, and lily pads and cattails garlanded the rim. Andrei jested that the city of Kitezh had risen again.