by Debra Dean
“I thought it would be me,” she rasped. “Not you.”
Over the following days I tried to draw her out from her trance, talking on whatever subject came into my head. I shaped my discourse round familiar things, reminding her of times from our girlhood—the day she had fallen into the river, the bonfires built by the villagers to celebrate Shrovetide, the elephant that carried the jester and his wife—anything I could think that might spark some recognition in her face. I sometimes fancied she was listening, but she might only have been entranced by the movement of my lips or the sound of my voice.
Then, one afternoon, I suggested that the bedchamber might use a little airing. Struggling with the latch on the window, I pried it open. The bright smell of fresh snow washed into the room. “There, that’s better, don’t you think?”
“Ice.” The word popped out like a cork from a bottle.
Delighted, I encouraged her further. “Have you slept well?”
“Ice.”
“On the window?”
“The step. I was very cold.”
“Do you want me to close it up again?” She showed no comprehension, so I indicated the glass. “Shall I shut the window?”
“I am dead.”
I startled. During the past weeks I had sometimes had this very thought, that when Andrei died, she had died with him and had left behind a breathing corpse.
“You have been very near it,” I said, “but God has seen fit to bring you back to us.”
She took in the room slowly, as if she were at pains to recall it. Then her eyes lighted on me and recognition pierced her. Her features contracted with agony.
“You were at the palace. You saw what happened.”
“Yes.”
She waited for more.
“He fell down the steps and struck his head.”
She nodded as if to say she knew this much already.
“He didn’t suffer,” I assured her. “He fell and was gone.”
Her eyes drifted to the window and rested there for so long a time that I thought she had returned to her mute state. I was on the verge of slipping out when she asked, “Was he confessed and given the last sacraments?”
I had to admit that, no, he had died too suddenly.
Her eyes shut. “He was not ready.” Her voice was flat. “In the dream, it was me. It should have been.”
She awakened as if she had indeed been dead. But the person who returned to the world was not Xenia. Grief had unyoked her from herself. Dull-eyed, like an animal in extremis, she looked on her surroundings and her loved ones with indifference. Or she might suddenly begin to weep, even to tear at her nightclothes, but what emotions passed over her were like leaves borne on the surface of a river and caught in swirling eddies, unattached to anything visible.
Her speech, too, was oddly disjointed and followed no definite course. I might say a thing to her and she would answer me sensibly only to say another thing so discordant that I was thrown into confusion. Sometimes I would hear her talking in her room, and, answering as I came, find that I had been mistaken, had caught one voice of a private conversation and believed it addressed to me. In truth she had been talking to Andrei.
She did not leave her bed, and then one day I found her in the icon corner of her room, prostrate, and as feeble as if she had crawled across the steppes. This became her practice. She would kneel there for long hours, even through the length of the night, without slippers or a shawl, her gaze fixed on the image of the Virgin of Vladimir and seemingly in prayer. I say “seemingly” because, except that she had moved from her bed to the floor, the distinction between this state and her former oblivion was too subtle to observe. Her mournful appearance and drooping, shadowy eyes were so like the Virgin’s that they might have been reflected in a mirror.
Before the death of her child, she had not been devout beyond the ordinary, keeping the fasts and praying when it was right to do so and no more. But now, while the rest of the world celebrated Shrovetide, Xenia crossed early into a most extreme observation of Lent. She not only prayed but also fasted like a monk, taking only tiny morsels of bread and these only if I chided her. “You must eat if you would recover your health,” I insisted, but she was less pliable now than when I had spoon-fed her. “I do not wish to recover it,” she answered.
The Great Lent came to the rest of us in its customary time. On the first day, the house was readied, the rugs taken up, the curtains and shutters taken down, and everything scrubbed. Marfa and Masha went from room to room with a kettle and a copper bowl into which had been placed a hot brick and dried mint leaves. Pouring water over the hissing brick, they waved the medicinal steam under the beds and into each corner to chase out the wicked spirit of Lady Shrovetide. The good dishes and silver candlesticks were put away, and old sheeting was thrown over the pictures and furniture that we might forget earthly pleasures and prepare our spirits to fast. As custom dictated, we put on our oldest patched clothes and made to go to church.
Xenia surprised us by coming downstairs and professing the desire to go also. She had dressed herself, putting on light clothes unsuited to the season. In the six weeks since Andrei’s death, she had so wasted that they hung loose as sacking on her. Her pale hair was undone and floating about her head, her feet were bare—all this conspired to give her the appearance of a wraith and not a woman of twenty-six years.
“Xenichka, you are not well enough,” I said, but she had no care for her health, and when Ivan opened the front door she ran out into the snow on bare feet. She could not be persuaded by reason to return inside, not even to dress properly. I finally relented and had Masha bring stockings, shoes, and outer garments out to the sleigh. “Keep this about you,” I said, wrapping her in a fur pelisse. I put her feet into shoes and took her purse, which she had stuffed heavy with coins, that she might put her thin hands into a muff.
I blame myself. I should have bid Grishka carry her inside and sit guard at the door rather than take her with us. In the last hour of the service, she did not rise up from the prostrations and lay with her forehead resting on the cold stone floor. Looks and whispers were directed at her, but no matter; after the service I had more cause than this to rue my mistake.
Outside the church, a throng of beggars, the poor and those others whom we call blessed, were gathered to receive alms. The feeble and lame lay on the ground from the doors to the street, and those who were able-bodied crowded close round the emerging worshippers and murmured their supplications.
The sight of these beggars revived Xenia. She slipped from my supporting arm, took back her purse, and began to thread her way amongst the unfortunates, exchanging handfuls of coins for their blessings.
“Signorina.” A strange and gawky man in boots and a heavy fur cloak bowed to me, wishing me good morning. It was the musico Gaspari. Without paint, his features were almost plain, and I would not have known him except for his accent.
“I wish to offer you my sorrow.” The lilting voice was disconcertingly at odds with this likeness of a man.
“Thank you. You were most kind on that terrible night.”
He demurred, shaking his head.
“Did you stay on that night and pray over him?”
“I cannot read the Russian prayers, signorina. But yes, I stayed.” He clutched his cloak closer about him to ward off the cold.
Not only his appearance but also his manner was changed from our first meeting. To be sure, none of us is the same person at church as at a party, but without the trappings of female garb he seemed less in command of his person. The Roman goddess at the masquerade had been witty, even haughty, but this pallid creature was so undistinguished that even his extreme height did not lend him presence.
“His wife, Xenia Grigoryevna . . .” A delicate hand started to flutter and then, deprived of a fan, wilted. “I saw her inside. She is recovered?”
I looked about but did not see her. “She is not yet well but is better than she was.”
“I may ca
ll on her?”
From habit, I replied that she would be grateful, though in truth she certainly would not. She had received no one since Andrei’s death. I looked about for the sleigh, thinking that perhaps she was waiting in it, and I might get away. Near the street, a knot of people had gathered round a half-naked woman, one of the klikushi who are possessed by demons and are often taken with fits when they visit a church. Then I saw I was mistaken. It was Xenia.
When I got to her, she was trying to remove her chemise, but her fingers trembled so that she could not undo the laces. I grabbed her hands to still them. “Are you mad?”
“I am out of coins,” she said. Her voice quaked from cold, but otherwise she seemed unperturbed.
Looking for something to cover her, I saw the trail of her clothing, each garment now in the possession of a beggar—her skirt covering the lap of an old woman, and beyond that her shoes and overshoes, the fur pelisse and its matching muff, and so on to the empty coin purse.
I snatched the pelisse back and wrapped it round her shoulders. “Would you freeze to death? Is that your wish?”
She considered this; the prospect did not seem to disturb her.
Chapter Nine
That Lenten season, I had no need of bells to call me to prayer nor icons to put me in mind of our Savior’s suffering. I had Xenia. Very early every morning, she set forth to matins. I went with her, but my own piety was a fraud, compelled as it was by apprehension of what she might say or do were I not there to prevent it.
Before leaving the house, she stuffed her purse with kopeks and silver rubles she had taken from the household strongbox and filled a basket with bread she had taken from the kitchen. These she distributed to the unfortunates outside the church, who began to greet her by calling her matushka, “little mother.” As she emptied her purse and basket, she drew from them stories of how they had come to their situation, labyrinthine tales of illness and death, lost positions, failed crops, violent or cheating masters. Once when I was late in rising, she had already gone, and when I arrived at the church, I found her sitting on the ground in the company of the beggars, quite as though she meant to set out a begging bowl herself.
More respectable persons kept a discreet distance. Her look barred their approach, and those few who braved addressing her were rewarded with disinterest or, worse, her unmodified thoughts. A singer in the choir who had regarded himself as a rival to Andrei tendered his condolences to Xenia. He heaped extravagant praise on her husband and claimed a great affection for him.
Xenia cut him off. “You were jealous of him.”
“It was I who brought the largest wreath for his casket,” the man protested. “I might have expected a word of thanks.”
“You already have your reward. He is dead.”
Feeling the eyes of those round us, I hurried her into the church. “You should not have done that.”
“His compliments were lies. He showed no affection to Andrei while he lived.”
“He meant no harm,” I answered. “It is what people say when someone has died.”
She slapped my hand from her shoulder. “What do I care about that?”
When she was safely in prayer beside me, I tried to turn my mind to God but I could not, except in anger. Is this what you want, I demanded, that she should wreck herself so publicly?
After the service, she asked again to be taken to Smolenskoye cemetery. She had not yet been to his grave, for I had feared it might further unhinge her, but plainly I had no power to protect her from herself.
“As you wish,” I replied.
Her eyes sharpened inquisitively.
Yes, I knew the pettiness of my tone, the martyred weariness, but I thought myself justified in it.
For all my misgivings, the cemetery did not disturb her. She did not even weep at the sight of his grave but stood looking on the new stone and the raised mound of snow as though she were absorbing the truth of them. Then she sat right down on the ground beside his head. She ran her fingers over the letters of his name. After a while, she said, “Leave us.”
I hesitated. “I will wait in the sleigh.” She did not answer.
She was gone so long that I began to worry and to repent my former harshness, but at last she appeared from out of the trees and without a word climbed into the sleigh. I could not read anything in her countenance; she was only quiet.
The large circle of Andrei and Xenia’s friends who had called at the house after little Katenka’s death kept away now, as though so much sorrow and ill fortune were a contagion. I do not fault them. Had she been receptive to their sympathy then, she might have had it now. No matter; she did not want it. She would not receive even her own mother. After that incident, a friend of Aunt Galya’s would not be put off by my saying that Xenia was indisposed to visitors and insisted on going upstairs, since Xenia would not come down. “She only thinks she wants solitude,” said this woman whose name I have forgotten. She knew what it was to mourn a husband, the woman said, “but trust me, too much solitude is the worst cure.” Finding Xenia in her room, she tried to comfort her with assurances that this grief would pass.
“I thought I should have died with my husband,” Madam Somethingorother said. “Nothing could console me. My appetite suffered, and I took no pleasure from my friends. I could not be amused. Then one day”—the widow’s round face brightened at the memory—“I was brought a little china dish of strawberries and cream. Eating them, I thought I had never tasted anything so lovely. And after that, all my old delights returned to me, one by one.”
Xenia looked at her, impassive. “So you believe I may also become an idiot again?”
This is not to say we were entirely without company. Gaspari was insensible to her slights. The first time he called, she happened to wander into the drawing room shortly after him. She was wearing Andrei’s jacket, a habit she had acquired that seemed to comfort her. He stood and bowed, and she perused his person.
“Are you the eunuch?”
He answered with no sign that the question was rude. Thus encouraged, she sat down beside him. “Did it hurt when they cut you?”
“I do not remember it. I was given opium.”
“My heart has been cut out of me, yet I still feel such pain.”
He nodded. “There is no opium for this wound,” he said, touching his breast. “I am sorry for the loss of your husband.”
With matching graveness, she replied, “And I am sorry for the loss of your eggs.” They sat together without speaking for another few moments and then, abruptly, she stood. “I must return to my prayers.” And with this, she turned and left the room.
When he took his leave, he presented his card and asked me to extend to her his apologies for having come at an inopportune hour, promising to try again for a more agreeable time.
We were host as well to increasing numbers of beggars. Though Xenia was discourteous to her friends, she took exceeding care of those beneath her, and those most in need she brought back to the house with us. She offered them food and a place to sleep and whatever else they expressed a desire for. One cannot fault such behavior; those who have read the Domostroi will recognize that these acts conform exactly to its prescriptions for Christian charity. That said, so literal an interpretation was exasperating. Many of these unfortunates were pulsing with fleas and stank so strongly that Marfa would not tolerate their sleeping in the servants’ room. I tried to make Xenia see reason. Where were we to put them? Her answer was to bed the worst offenders in front of the stove in the drawing room that they might be out of the way, and to have their food brought there also. The stench could never be aired entirely from that room, but as we no longer had respectable visitors, it was, I suppose, a moot concern.
More troubling than what came into the house was what left it. I discovered that in addition to the bread, Xenia had been tucking into her basket whatever other thing caught her eye—the porcelain bonbonniere on her dressing table, a silvered candlestick. I could not curb her genero
sity. I tried bargaining her down to sensible sacrifices—an apple in place of the inkwell, an earthenware mug for a porcelain cup—but the ploy failed, and so I began to hide certain of her more precious things, reasoning that she might otherwise regret later having given them away.
One day, she pulled from the basket a particularly fine pair of gloves and handed them to an orphan. They were made of delicate white kid worked with silver thread, and I had coveted them once. When the child pulled them onto her filthy hands, I flinched.
“Xenia, if you must, it would be better to sell the finer things and then give the profits to the poor.”
She didn’t answer but looked on me with something like pity. I felt that she could read my thoughts.
“They are too thin,” I protested. “They will not even keep her hands warm.”
Perhaps it was to appease me that some days later she determined to pack up her court dresses and the rest of her finery and take them to a pawn shop. Heaped on the bed and floor was a colorful froth of skirts and bodices.
“Oh no, darling, I did not mean that you should sell these,” I said.
“I cannot stand the sight of them.”
“Maybe not now . . .” Someday, I thought, she would come out of mourning and return to society. She would want to marry again. I started to pick up a matching bodice and skirt, yellow brocade with gold lace trim, that I might return them to the wardrobe. “Later, you may think differently.”
“She is gone!” Xenia shrieked. “Are you too dull to see it? There is no point in keeping her things.”
She snatched the bodice from my hands and in doing so tore loose a piece of lace. Fiercely, she ripped it away from the sleeve and then tore the lace from the other sleeve for good measure. She grabbed up two handfuls of the skirt, meaning to rend this to pieces also, but the fabric would not give. Her features strained with the effort and then went slack, and quick as the storm had erupted it was spent, and she was overcome with remorse.
“I’m sorry.” She held the skirt back out to me. “Please take it. You should have something pretty to wear when your husband calls.”
