The Mirrored World: A Novel

by Debra Dean

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 dan
dy 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.