The Mirrored World

by Debra Dean

  It was this same chorister. He looked at Xenia with the winking amusement he had shown her earlier and made some remark. Her answer caused him to laugh aloud. They stepped forward, and for the remainder of the dance never ceased their bantering. Xenia gazed at him as though he were not a man but some magical being. She forgot her feet, forgot her counting, and as the chorister tipsily wheeled her about the room, they banked like billiard balls off the other dancers. The minuet was too slow to contain them.

  At the end of the dance, he delivered Xenia back to us.

  “I believe you have lost a daughter?” The chorister bowed low to Aunt Galya with a gallant if unsteady flourish. Recovering his balance, he introduced himself as Colonel Andrei Feodorovich Petrov.

  “In truth, I had half a mind to keep her,” he confided, “but I would not want it said I am a thief. I have little but my honesty to recommend me to a mother, but perhaps this may earn me the gift of the daughter’s company again.”

  It was a pretty speech, and Aunt Galya and my mother shared the view that there was not such a thing as an innocent remark. They turned their efforts to learning if any merits more than honesty might belong to this Colonel Petrov.

  He was from Little Russia and the orphan of a landless noble—not, speaking generally, the lineage of a desirable suitor—but by virtue of his sweet voice Andrei Feodorovich Petrov had been brought as a youth to the Ukrainian chapel choir and there had befriended a fellow chorister.

  As my mother was fond of saying, “Tell me who is your friend and I’ll tell you who you are.” Colonel Petrov’s friend was Count Alexi Razumovsky, whom wags called the “Night Emperor.”

  Years earlier, when Elizabeth had plucked up the young Razumovsky and made him her favorite, Andrei Feodorovich Petrov had been well placed to catch some of the extravagant droppings that fell from Her Highness’s plate. He received from the Grand Duchess a position in the court choir and, after she assumed the throne, a military rank along with a doubling of his salary.

  Not that Petrov lacked merits independent of the Empress and the Count. He was pleasantly featured and had the easy manner of one who desires nothing from his friends but their mirth, and so he had many of these. In fact, he seemed to be so universally well-liked that not even the enemies of his friends would speak a word against him.

  In the carriage returning home, I drifted off listening to our mothers speculating whether one who was so well-connected as Colonel Petrov might ever deign to take a bride with little to offer.

  “With no family to please, he may indulge his own whim.”

  “He could do better.”

  “Of course. But there is no law written for fools. Consider the match that Count Sheremetev made for his youngest son last year. She brought nothing but a few sticks of furniture and a pleasing face.”

  Once home, I followed Xenia and Nadya to our room at a drowsy distance. Nadya was in a fury, pulling ribbons and combs from her hair and leaving a trail of these obstacles in the darkened passage. “You think only of yourself,” I heard her accuse Xenia. “You set your eye on some drunkard, and when he does not ask you to dance, you make a fool of yourself and spoil both our chances.”

  I mewled for Olga to undress me and put me to bed, but she did not heed me.

  “What is this, kitten?” she asked Nadya.

  Nadya brushed her off like a flea from her bosom and squared off to Xenia. “Admit it. You did it on purpose.”

  Xenia did not deny the charge. “I only rearranged the order to put us with our right partners.”

  “Right partners!”

  “I am going to marry him.”

  It irked Nadya beyond endurance when Xenia said things she could not possibly know. “Spare me your drivel. He was amusing himself with you, and you are the only one who did not see it. And what of me? I suppose I am to marry the old man you stuck me with?”

  “Yes.”

  Nadya sneered. “And how shall you explain this to his wife and children?”

  Xenia shook her head, puzzled. “I do not know.”

  On a day in April, some months after the Empress’s ball, the house was made ready—we did not know for what, only that the floors were being scrubbed, the carpets beaten, and each window polished inside and out. Lyuba could not be bothered to make our breakfast, and we were given only bread, after which Olga took us to the banya that we might also be scrubbed. It was not our customary day for bathing, and we were eaten by curiosity to find the cause for all this. Olga only shook her head. “Someone is coming to dine, but that is all I shall say.”

  “He must be someone of importance,” Nadya prodded. “Is it Uncle Kolya’s commander?”

  Olga gave a look that said she knew well enough but not even the torments of the rack would loosen her tongue. “You will know soon.”

  “It is your husband,” Xenia said to Nadya.

  So far as I knew, our mothers had not yet narrowed to a single person the possible candidates for Nadya’s hand. Still, had Xenia said that the moon was a pancake, I should have believed her.

  “How do you know?” Nadya demanded.

  “I dreamt last night that an egg rolled in the door. Lyuba picked it up and was going to use it for a cake, but then she gave it to you instead.”

  “What piddle!” Nadya said, but she was pale.

  Though most of Xenia’s dreams had no more relation to our lives than a hand does to a sack of grain, on some few occasions a remembered dream of hers had replayed itself in our waking lives. Once, she had dreamt of a hare, and the next day a hare had come onto the path where we were walking. It stopped, rose up on its hind legs, and in the manner of a person who sees someone on the street he thinks he may know, it looked at us briefly before springing away. Another time, she dreamt of someone drowning, and a week later a boy in the village fell into the river and was lost. As Nadya had said, even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while. Or maybe it was only that Xenia was more attentive to all the minute shifts and eddies in the atmosphere that pass beneath the notice of others—a rustle in the grass, a whisper in the servants’ hall.

  Whatever the explanation, Aunt Galya came to our room later that day to oversee our dressing for dinner and instructed Olga to change Nadya’s skirt.

  “There is someone coming whom I’m anxious you should impress.”

  Outside, there was the rattle of an approaching carriage and horses, and with it the baying of hounds. Aunt Galya sprang to the door. “Nadya, hurry,” she scolded, as though Nadya had been dawdling. “We mustn’t keep him waiting.”

  From the window, we watched the carriage clatter into the courtyard, trailed by a roiling pack of dogs. A footman leapt down, opened the carriage’s door, and with difficulty helped to extricate its contents. The low door and narrow step from the carriage necessitated a hazardous shifting and resettling of the occupant’s considerable girth, but once he was aright and rebalanced on his spindly legs, we saw it was the elderly gentleman with whom Nadya had danced at the ball. He made his slow way to the door and was lost to our view.

  “Stop looking at me,” Nadya hissed, and when this had no effect, “You don’t know a thing. You cannot.” She bit her lip, turned, and ran after Aunt Galya.

  My father and the egg-shaped gentleman were taking their leisure in front of the stove, and after they had finished their vodka we all retired to the dining room and took our customary places round the table, excepting Nadya, who was seated directly across from our guest that he might have an unimpeded view of her. His glass was filled first, and then my father lifted his own.

  “My family is honored by your presence, Kuzma Zakharovich. In your long service at court, you must have dined in very auspicious company.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m honored, sir, to have you at my table.”

  The good man nodded absently and began to eat, freeing us to follow. At
first, I kept my eyes on my plate, stealing only occasional glances by first lifting my napkin to my lips, but each time I looked, Kuzma Zakharovich was so intent on his food that I shortly dispensed with the subterfuge. He worked at the meat, his lower lip thrusting out wetly and then receding, thrusting and receding, and his jowls rolling like a ship in heavy swells. Stopping to wet the mess with a slurp of wine, he then continued until, with a final effort, he swallowed the morsel.

  My father was not himself a man given to easy conversation. He tested various themes without success before he hit upon the solitary enthusiasm of Kuzma Zakharovich beyond his digestion.

  “Have you had good hunting this season?”

  The gentleman’s countenance brightened visibly. “At Peterhof this past month, the Empress’s guests shot three hundred and twelve fowl. A goodly number of them wild geese.”

  Between mouthfuls of soup and eggs and pickled cabbage, Kuzma Zakharovich privileged the table with an accounting of various takes, divided by the quantities of each species, and, further, by the individual tallies of each member of the party.

  “ . . . of these, Count Betsky shot sixty-eight.” Kuzma Zakharovich paused, allowing us to digest this number and himself a spoonful of mushrooms. “Twenty-seven of them quail,” he added. “However, the official tally counted only twenty-three, as four were winged and not recovered.”

  What would it be to sit at breakfast and dinner for the rest of one’s days and listen to a droning recitation of favored personages and the creatures that had fallen for their sport? I watched with horrified fascination a bit of bread wobbling on his lower lip.

  “ . . . of course, these numbers are nothing as compared with those of our dear reposed Empress.” Kuzma Zakharovich’s eyes grew rheumy.

  The late Empress Anna Ioannovna had been a devoted huntress—she was said to keep loaded guns at various posts throughout the palace so that she might walk down a corridor and shoot at gulls through the windows—and it was she who had made Kuzma Zakharovich Grand Master of the Hunt. So continually had he been at her side—praising her aim and advising her how she might stock her parks next season with tigers from Siberia or peacocks from India—that he was widely thought to have her ear. As a consequence, his company had been sought after and endured, and his first marriage to a niece of Count Peter Saltykov had excited much envy.

  His star had fallen somewhat since then: Anna Ioannovna had died, and the new Empress preferred dancing to shooting. Her Imperial Majesty Elizabeth had replaced him as Grand Master with her own Count Razumovsky, who was, according to Kuzma Zakharovich, an indifferent hunter. And now Kuzma Zakharovich’s wife had died in childbirth. But as he said, the Lord had provided comfort for this most recent loss: she had left behind not only a newborn son but six other children as well.

  With the mention of his wife and children, his gaze turned to rest on Nadya with the dispassion of a man judging the weight of a doe.

  “Does she ride?”

  “She has had little opportunity,” my father answered, “but she is teachable.”

  “Well, no matter,” Kuzma Zakharovich conceded. “She seems in all other ways adequate.”

  With that, our part in the matter was concluded. We were excused so that the gentlemen might discuss the terms of the contract and fix a date for the betrothal dinner.

  When the door closed behind us, Mother and Aunt Galya began to chatter about Nadya’s marvelous good fortune.

  Nadya herself did not see it.

  “You are too innocent to know your own luck, lamb,” Aunt Galya said. “Old men make the best husbands. They are not forever coming to your bed with their needs and when they do, they are more easily satisfied. And think, he has no mother to rule you. You should count yourself lucky.”

  “But he is dull,” Nadya objected.

  Aunt Galya dismissed her. “He is rich.”

  Nadya lifted her head a little. “Is he?”

  “Two hundred a year. This in addition to the first wife’s dowry village. And he is on familiar terms with persons of influence.”

  Nadya was brought round to recognize the advantages in becoming Kuzma Zakharovich’s wife. Not the least of the persuasions was the silvered hand mirror he presented to her at the betrothal dinner.

  It was to the benefit of Xenia that never before or since has the Russian court been so musical. Empress Elizabeth Petrovna’s was the reign of song. On Monday afternoons, there was dance music, on Wednesdays, Italian compositions, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays, musical comedies. The evenings were taken up variously with allegories composed in Her Imperial Majesty’s honor, an opera, or the newest play from France. An army of artisans—playwrights and musicians, seamstresses and carpenters—worked by lamplight late into the nights penning and producing new amusements. Companies of dancers and singers, got up in folk costumes and dancing the mazurka one day, were swirling about the stage the next, swathed in the filmy attire of gods and goddesses. At any or all of these entertainments, the members of the court choir might perform, with Colonel Petrov numbered among them.

  Our mothers could not gain her entry to the more exclusive amusements of the court, but Xenia became a devotee of the public concerts. She came home after these elated or dejected, depending on whether Colonel Petrov had sung.

  How long could it have been before he noticed her, there in every audience and so clearly listening only to him? His eyes met hers and his mouth bowed slightly, not quite a smile but enough for Xenia. He sought her out at the end of the concert, and in the aftermath the exchange between them was studied like egg whites.

  “Did you note how solicitous he was of Xenia?” my mother said. “He asked twice if she enjoyed the concert.”

  “He likes to be flattered,” Aunt Galya answered. “It is one thing to be agreeable, daughter, and another to be so eager. You should not give the impression that his attentions matter overly much.”

  “But they do.” Xenia said this so simply that Aunt Galya could only sigh and shake her head.

  “All the more reason then to be circumspect until you know his intentions.”

  My mother intervened. “There’s no need, Galya. These two are berries from the same field. When I let it drop that we sometimes stroll in the Summer Garden, he asked straight out if we would be there tomorrow.”

  “You told him yes?” Xenia was desperate.

  “I said that we might stroll in the morning, provided it did not rain.”

  It didn’t rain and he was there, circling about at the palace entrance. He asked that he might call at the house, and before the day was out he had proposed marriage. Though this relieved our mothers of the burden of feigning happenstance, they had still to slow the galloping pace of the young lovers for the sake of appearances.

  I remember one more such afternoon in the garden. Xenia and Andrei were strolling together, and as is the custom during the betrothal, others were in attendance: my mother and aunt, myself and Nadya, and a few other women of our acquaintance who enjoyed being included in the periphery of any courtship. The young couple walked a short distance ahead of their entourage, and this was all the privacy they would be allowed until the wedding night.

  Andrei and Xenia were so entirely absorbed by each other that they walked the long avenues without stopping, undiverted by statues or fountains or other whimsies. We in pursuit also made only cursory note of them, watching instead the pantomime before us. Out of earshot, Andrei inclined his head into the space between himself and Xenia and spoke in low tones. We could not hear his words, but such looks of ardor passed from him to her, and even his bearing bespoke the constraints on his liberty. Xenia returned his rapt gaze and nodded in eager agreement to each of his utterances, and this seemed to feed his fervor all the more.

  Later, Aunt Galya quizzed Xenia. “What was said between you?”

  “He instructed me on the superiority of partes singing.”r />
  “And what else?”

  “That is all.”

  Apparently, Andrei Feodorovich was quite passionate on the innovation that had come from his native Kiev. Xenia repeated his claim that man was not intended by God to sing all in unison. Just as Christ was both human and divine, the lower voice in partes singing represents the earthly, and the higher voice embodies the spiritual. The ancient chants would deny the physical by bending all registers to one sound. Not so in partes. The two voices each sing their own nature, and the sounds they make when they come together are rapturous and complete. The physical becomes spiritual. Or so was his explanation.

  There was something in this our mothers did not quite approve, but they had no talent to parse such a difficult theological argument. “I am not, after all, a student of church music,” Aunt Galya said.

  However, Xenia understood his meaning well enough. She whispered to me later, “I think he would teach me to sing in his bed.”

  At the close of summer, Grand Duke Peter wed our present Empress, Catherine. A week following the Imperial wedding, Nadya was married, and a fortnight after this, Xenia followed suit.

  That He will bless this marriage, as He blessed the marriage in Cana of Galilee, let us pray to the Lord.

  Lord have mercy.

  There is a cathedral, wan light falling in dusty shafts from so high up that it dies before reaching the stony depths. There, in the dimness flecked with a thousand candles, a crowd waves like grasses on the floor of a sea. Attached to this impression is the sweetish smell of beeswax and incense and warm bodies. The bee buzz of the crowd.

  This is most certainly the Cathedral of Kazan, where the Grand Duke and Duchess wed, for my cousins and their grooms would not have merited such a buzz.

  Did you note his condescension to Count Razumovsky?

  A woman with a long white face and reddened lips directs her comment to a dowager whose crepey bosom rests atop her corset like two wrinkled peaches. The older woman answers something, but I cannot hear what.