The Mirrored World: A Novel

by Debra Dean

  “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.”

  Chapter Seven

  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 glar
es 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.

  Unloosing the Material World

  Chapter Eigh
t

  I found I could feed Xenia by pressing a spoon to her lips till they opened, ladling in a bit of broth, retrieving the spoon, and holding her jaw shut till she swallowed. It required the unflagging persistence of a mother bird. I took Andrei’s place in their bed that I might look after her, and my sleep was as restless as it had been when we were children and last shared a bed. Muffled sobs seeped into my dreams, along with muttered sounds that might have been words. Once, she cried out, “Blood! Blood!” her voice choked with anguish. When I tried to rouse her, she clutched blindly at my arm. “There is so much greed in the world.” She keened and mewled but could not be roused from sleep, and in the morning she was just as she had been, vacant-eyed and mute. Then one night I awoke and felt her watching me.

  “How long has it been?” The voice, though feeble, was her own.

  “A week and some. A week and two days.”

  “You’ve returned, then.”

  I answered that I had not left, except to go out for necessity.

  “Moy solovushka,” she whispered.

  It was her pet name for Andrei, “my nightingale.” I thought she was asking for him, and I was loath to tell her again what had broken her in the first place. I cast about for some way to couch the truth in gentleness or avoid it altogether.

  “Do you suffer?” she asked.

  Her gaze seemed directed behind me, and I looked there. The room was black and still, and I could see nothing. It came to me then: it is on the ninth day after death that the soul is said to leave the body. On the fortieth day, it departs this world. Between these two points lies a blank space that the Church does not account for, but peasants will tell you that the soul returns home and takes up residence behind the stove. She thought he was in the room with us.

  My senses stretched taut against the darkness. Her breath caught. And released. Caught, caught again, then released, thick with tears.