The Fortune Teller's Fate

by Audrey Berger Welz

  Lillya was slender and tall, with red-gold curls and the grace of a natural athlete. She seemed younger and more carefree than her husband, a man whose family tradition was to walk the high wire. He was kind with a somewhat sardonic air and a dry sense of humor.

  My mother had told me stories of the Vronskys. “They are favorites of Empress Alexandra. Sometimes in the summer the empress invites Lillya to the Winter Palace, just to watch her white Lipizzaner stallion dance in the czarina’s private garden. Then they sit under big umbrellas with iced drinks and play cards.”

  The light from the chandelier overhead sparkled in my crystal glass, but the sparkle that captured me the most was the glint in Vladimir’s eyes when he smiled at me.

  Our parents gossiped about dancers, circus people, even the royal family. I hardly heard most of it. I was trying too hard to keep track of the bewildering number of forks and spoons. But when I heard my mother telling the Vronskys about the ice carvers we’d seen, I looked up.

  “A long tradition in our St. Petersburg, sculpting with ice on the Neva,” Anton Vronsky said, turning toward my mother. “Surely you’ve heard of the accidental empress and the ice palace on the Neva?”

  My father frowned a little—he never liked to hear the royal family criticized—but my mother ignored him, holding up her champagne glass and gazing at the little strings of bubbles rising in it instead.

  Lillya, her eyes gleaming, began. “It was a very hard winter—seventeen forty, wasn’t it? I suppose she wanted to distract her people from the cold. She certainly put on a grand show. Elephants and camels—”

  Vronsky guffawed. “You’re too sweet-minded, darling. It was a monstrous joke, plain and simple. She was angry with her Prince Michael for marrying an Italian Catholic. She’d already made him a jester, but that wasn’t enough. She had a taste for matchmaking, and she got the idea into her head to marry him to her own servant, a Kalmyk hunchback.”

  “Good thing attitudes have changed,” Lillya stated, her eyes flashing. “Your own mother is a Catholic Italian, isn’t she?”

  “Please tell me about the ice palace and the elephants!” I cried, forgetting my shyness, and Vronsky turned to me in some relief.

  “The wedding was set for February, which happened to be the tenth anniversary of Anna’s coronation. She had an architect supervise the construction—all made out of ice blocks, three stories tall, with ice statues decorating every room. Even the bed was carved of ice.

  “The bride and groom were carried all around the city in an iron cage on the back of an elephant, in a parade of farmyard beasts as well as exotic animals. When they got to the ice palace, a guard was posted to make sure they spent the whole night inside. There was a stove, but I don’t think it could have helped much. They both nearly died from the cold.”

  I shivered, thinking of that poor couple. Vladimir, sensing my distress, smiled at me and began talking about his favorite clown at the circus and the tricks they played on each other, and I soon forgot about everything else, basking in his attention.

  After dinner, our parents sat down to play cards.

  Vladimir and I sat on a small velvet settee in the corner and looked through an album of circus pictures. Then he showed me a small watercolor a patron had painted of his mother, dressed in a dark green riding costume and standing gracefully upright on her stallion’s snowy back. “He’s called Pluto Gaetana,” Vladimir said. “The czar bought him from Emperor Franz Joseph especially for my mother. She says Pluto Gaetana is horse royalty.”

  I knew Vladimir was showing off. Still, I wished the evening would never end and I wondered when I’d see him again.

  Outside the front door, Chayka was stamping his hooves on the snow, plumes of white streaming from his nose into the sharp night air. Some of the neighbors had stacked snowballs into pyramids in front of their houses, with candles flickering inside them. They gave the street an enchanted look.

  My father wrapped my mother and me up in an enormous bearskin to keep us warm. Secure in my mother’s arms, breathing in her soft fragrance, I tilted my head back to look up at the stars while she told me the names of the constellations and pointed out the planet Venus.

  Chapter 3

  St. Petersburg

  The day before my universe split in two, my mother decided we’d take the carriage to Nevsky Prospekt. It had been a lazy, golden morning. Like most within our social class, my mother hid her jewels, but every once in a while when she got bored, to my father’s great dismay, she would spread them all over her bed and rummage through them as though they were trinkets. At least, that’s how I remember those bright hours as a child. The brooches, rings, and bracelets, and the little cameos on chains looked so delicious I wanted to eat them, but she dressed me in a beautiful gown and draped me in her jewels instead. If someone had told me I was a member of the imperial family, just then, I would have believed them.

  There was one small, simple brooch the shape of a circle that had a little emerald in the middle. I told her it reminded me of the color of Vladimir’s mother’s eyes. “Funny,” she said. “Lillya gave this to me. The circle represents love eternal. I don’t think she’d mind if you had it. She said someone special gave it to her when she was a girl and it was best she pass it on. We’ll leave it here for now.” Then she scooped my necklace along with the rest of the jewels back into their wooden box and asked my father to have our carriage brought around.

  When she told Mme Strachkov, my rather harsh governess, that I’d be excused from French and piano for the day, Madame opened her mouth to protest. But after one look at my mother’s face, flushed with pleasure, she closed it again without a word. My mother had been pale and quiet for the last few days, quite unlike herself, and as gruff as Madame was, I could tell it worried her.

  “We’ll have tea, just like they do in England!” my mother said. “Then we can look at books at Schmitzdorf’s. And you can help me choose flowers for the house.”

  My mother loved flowers more than anything, other than dancing and music. We spent hours together in the little garden she’d set aside for herself behind the house. Alexi kept a bigger vegetable garden—I loved to help him pick early peas, though he complained that not too many I picked ever made it into the house—but my mother’s garden was only for beauty. She delighted in having the latest plants from all over Europe. Her English friend Winifred, whenever she went back to England, would bring seeds or cuttings for my mother: lupines, cottage pinks, shy violets, and the primroses. I was told a famous English gardener had bred them herself.

  But my mother also adored Dutch bulbs and was always begging my father to ask his European business contacts to bring them over. “‘Greuze,’ they’re called,” she told me as she cut the deep-violet tulips in the little garden behind the house. “They’re named after a French painter. Do you remember the painting we saw in the Hermitage—the one with the young girl in a lilac tunic? Well, when I saw the painting for the first time, I came home and ordered these bulbs from Holland immediately. Dutch tulips were the very latest thing then. When I saw them bloom, I knew you would have a dress of that color one day, too.”

  She laid the tulips in the wooden trug I held for her and then reached for some others with deepest purple streaks. “These are called ‘Gloria Nigrorum’—‘Black Glory.’ People thought they were ‘broken,’ because of the way the colors separate. It’s a weakness, really, a virus that makes the streaks, but at one time they were rare and valuable.” She laughed. “One rare tulip bulb was once worth nearly as much as a house. I read a story that a sailor ate a rare bulb thinking it was an onion—he could have sold it and fed the ship crew for a year.” She stroked the petals with a little frown. “Funny to think it was really just a disease. Anyway, now they’re only beautiful, but isn’t that enough?”

  In the house, she let me put the flowers in silver pitchers, dropping them in and letting them arrange themselves as t
hey fell. I stroked the silky petals and buried my face in one to breathe in the faint scent. My mother laughed as she dusted the pollen off my nose. I cherished moments like this, when I had her to myself. She made me feel as if I were the only one in the world.

  But on that June day we needed more flowers than my mother’s little garden could ever hold. My father was a partner in a textile factory in St. Petersburg, the Petrovsky & Sutton Spinnery, and the next day he would be entertaining very important guests.

  “Of course, Archie and Winnie will be here,” my mother told me. Archie Sutton was my father’s partner, a short, rather chubby English gentleman who wore spectacles as round as he was; his wife Winifred, my mother’s best friend other than Lillya, was half his size with dirty blonde hair and always seemed to be somewhere else. Sometimes I played with their daughter Rosie, who was around my age. “There’ll be another couple—the Bradleys, I think they’re called. Imagine, they’ve come from right across the ocean! Your father hopes he can convince them to sell him their cotton exclusively.”

  My father, who’d just walked into the room, smiled at my mother. “I have high hopes for this meeting, it’s true. George Bradley’s said to grow the best cotton in Georgia. It will make our fabrics the envy of St. Petersburg. But no need to get worked up, Katya. I imagine this Bradley is a simple kind of man.”

  My mother leaned over toward me and spoke in a stage whisper, “Your father’s idea of entertaining is a game of cards and a bottle of vodka, but I hear that Georgia planters are very genteel. And there’s Mr. Bradley’s wife to consider. We have to show them we’re not all big, rough Russian bears like your papa.”

  My father laughed. “I don’t think they’ll mind if I’m a big Russian bear, my dear, as long as I’m a big Russian bear who will buy all their cotton. But you two go bring home all the flowers in Hertzner’s, if you think it will help, and get yourselves something sweet. Archie says there’s a new English confectionary just a few doors down—maybe you’ll see Winnie there.” Then he went off, whistling, to ask Alexi to harness Chayka and bring him round.

  Chapter 4

  I felt so elegant, riding through the streets to Nevsky Prospect with the roof on the barouche pushed back. It was unusually sunny. I wore a hat to shade my face; I remember that it itched when I put it on. But I wanted to please my mother, and I was happy to see her feeling better.

  We went to Schmitzdorf’s first. My mother found a copy of Chekhov’s new play, The Seagull, and some sheet music for piano from Swan Lake, and then she bought me a special collection of my favorite Russian fairy tales. We carried our presents to the tea shop next door where we sat at a little table. I turned over the pages of my new book, looking at the beautiful illustrations, wondering which story I would read first.

  “Just think, we’re drinking the exact same tea that Pavel, the proprietor, invented for the czar,” my mother told me. “It’s made with a fragrant citrus called bergamot and flower petals, and it came all the way from China on a caravan. These men take a very dangerous route by land and therefore tea of this quality is very scarce, so we must savor every sip.”

  The hot tea felt tickly going down my throat. Fascinated by the sensation, I didn’t notice anyone approaching until a shadow crossed the illustration I had turned to.

  My mother coughed to get my attention, as lightly as a butterfly flapping her wings. “Donatalia, let me introduce you to Mademoiselle Pavlova.”

  “Anna,” the girl said, holding out her hand. I couldn’t help gaping at her. Tall and thin, almost angular, her short dark hair held off her forehead with a deep red satin band, she seemed another breed from the neat, compact ballerinas I’d seen with my mother. This girl seemed so frail, yet I knew she was special.

  Anna chatted politely with us for a few minutes, then left—she had to go buy some thread to mend her toe shoes, she said.

  My mother watched her walk away. “Anna’s been attending the Imperial Theatrical School since she was ten. You’ll go there too. She’s the one you’ll study and watch.” There was such certainty in my mother’s voice. There was no maybe in her tone. Suddenly I saw my destiny laid out before me like a straight, clear, shining road.

  When our teacups were empty and our pastries had been reduced to crumbs, we walked to Hertzner & Co., the best flower shop in all of St. Petersburg. The shopkeeper knew our family, and he bowed to my mother and shouted to his assistants, who brought out the freshest, most beautiful bouquets—lupines, lilies, roses, snapdragons—too many to fit in our little carriage. The owner clapped his hands and shouted to a man at the back of the store. Soon a cart was brought around, pulled by a donkey, ready to carry flowers to our house.

  When we returned home, my mother and I filled the parlor and music room with blossoms of every hue. I lay on the floor, turning over the pages of my new book, and listening to my mother play a piece from Swan Lake.

  I could not have been happier. But I was still a child, too young to see what awaited me.

  ¯¯¯

  I’d always loved it when my mother tucked me in at night. “Are you in bed yet?” she’d call from the upstairs hallway. Each night, when I said yes, she’d come in to say good night as a different character. I don’t think she even knew who or what she would be until she stepped through my door. One night she might lift her arms as if she were an animal standing on its hind legs. Or she’d open her mouth wide and blow as hard as she could. “I’m coming for you,” she’d say and snort through her nose. Then, somehow, she’d shape her body until she looked like a dragon, or a dog, or a horse.

  I’d hide under the covers, but I couldn’t resist peeking, just as she made one last giant leap and bent down to kiss me.

  “You were a dragon tonight,” I might say. “I liked the way you spit out fire.”

  I was beginning to get too old for this, but neither of us were ready to let go of our nightly ritual.

  “It’s cold outside,” she’d say. “I wanted to keep you warm. Now scoot on over.” Then we’d say our prayers together and she’d make up stories or read one to me. Safe in the soft cloud of the rose scent she wore, I’d close my eyes and fall asleep.

  On that night, my mother brought in the biggest bouquet of the flowers we’d bought and set it next to my bed. Then together we read from my new book, the story of the Frog-Tsarevna.

  “During the long white days,” she repeated to me, “they flew about on their fiery, beautiful horses…” My eyes heavy from all the excitement of the day, I closed them; then I jumped on one of their horses and rode it into my sleep.

  When I looked to the left, Lillya was riding beside me, her red-gold hair flying behind her like a flame against the dark trees. Then the horses disappeared, and so did Lillya, and I was alone, surrounded by the scent of lilacs and orchids, lilies and roses. Suddenly a big wind howled, as if the man in the moon had exhaled all the breath he held in his cheeks, and he wasn’t the same man I had known him to be. He blew the color right off the flowers until all that was left were the stems.

  I screamed! My parents tried to comfort me, but I knew my world had shifted.

  The following morning I was anxious. My head couldn’t hold all my thoughts; so some just slipped out. “Papa, I think you’re going to have learn how to make me breakfast.”

  “What a funny thing to say,” he said.

  “I need to meet Archie and prepare some papers for the Bradleys to look over,” he told my mother. “I’ll be back in good time—they’ll be coming over at six.” Then he grabbed his coat and hat and left.

  Later that day, my mother went out for an afternoon game of cards with her friends. When my father returned, she still wasn’t back. He paced back and forth in the drawing room, looking at his pocket watch. Despite his teasing earlier, he knew my mother’s charm would do more than any number of flowers to win the Bradleys over.

  It was nearly six when there was a knock at our f
ront door. “There, it’s the Suttons already,” my father muttered. “Where on earth is Katya?”

  Mme Strachkov went to answer the door, but instead of welcoming the visitors in, she called for my father to join her. Curious, I hid behind the banister and saw that the newcomers were two police officers.

  “We’re very sorry—there was nothing we could do,” I heard them tell my father. I didn’t understand, but by the look on my father’s face and the tone of the officer’s voice, I knew something was wrong. When my father shut the door, I ran to him. His face was white as paper.

  “Your mama’s appendix burst,” he said.

  “What is an appendix?” I asked, but he was too distraught to answer. It was Mme Strachkov who finally made me understand that my mother would never come home again. And it was Mme Strachkov who answered the door later, first to Archie and Winifred Sutton and then to the Bradleys, and quietly told them the news and sent them away. My father sat in a daze all evening, unable to answer the simplest questions.

  That night, instead of going to bed with flowers and fantasies filling my head, I tried to imagine a world in which my mother wasn’t there to brush my hair, teach me French, or make me laugh. That’s how my father explained her death to me: “You’ll have to live without your mother doing those things for you.” It was a concept I couldn’t grasp.

  The next morning, I awoke thinking it had been a bad dream. I ran downstairs, hoping to see my mother in the kitchen. But instead there was my father, pouring me a bowl of Kasha for breakfast.

  Chapter 5

  St. Petersburg

  Over the next few days, all the flowers we’d filled the house with wilted and fell off their stems, just as they had in my dream. Sunk into his own misery, my father didn’t seem to notice. Finally, Madame emptied all the vases and Alexi threw the flowers onto the compost pile. I asked my father where my mother had gone. “How could she disappear? And who is bathing and feeding her now that she is locked in a box covered in earth?”