A troupe of musicians came down towards us along the muddy paths between tents and stalls, and the jolly noise of drums, flutes and bells mercifully swallowed Tanya’s scolding. I fed a couple of nuts to Maggie and followed Tanya and Christina to the stalls with the fire-eaters, jugglers and a magician in the midst of plucking a red ball from a farmer’s grubby ear. The crowd cheered and clapped furiously. Other men pressed forward, wanting to have balls conjured from their ears, too.
Christina pointed to the fire-eater. ‘Have you seen those muscles? He eats fire all right,’ she giggled. I sighed inwardly. If the monks didn’t find a husband for her from among the serfs in the village soon, we would be the ones leaving a little bundle on the edge of the forest.
I strolled on a few paces to a juggler with a long white beard and a bare chest weathered by the sun. A vermillion dot was painted on his forehead, heavy earrings had weighed his lobes down and his white hair was slicked back and plaited: still, his eyes shone bright and clear. He must have seen so many things in his life! I, on the other hand, would always stay here in this village. The crowd fell silent as he added a fourth and fifth club to the three he already held and said in broken German: ‘Two clubs – for bunglers! Three clubs – for fools! Four clubs – is good! Five clubs – for masters!’
Christina squeezed in beside me and Maggie’s little hand slid into mine. Tanya joined us, too. The clubs flew straight up in the air, high and fast, their wood shimmering in the sun. As he juggled, the old man got his helper to throw him a sixth club, and a seventh. I gasped and then watched breathlessly; the colourful musicians marched noisily past again.
When the juggler took off his cap to ask for money, we walked on, past the barber-surgeon, where people with all sorts of aches and pains queued up. I heard a man’s horrified gurgle as the barber pulled the wrong tooth, while there was cheering from the puppeteer’s stall: I headed towards it. The play was in full swing. We sat down on the grass with the other onlookers. Surely we could watch for a little while without having to pay? It seemed to be set in a fortress. One puppet wore a glittering round cap, with the Russian double-headed eagle embroidered on its jerkin. That must be the young Russian Tsar. A soldier puppet stepped out in front of it and the man beside me burst into laughter.
‘What’s this about? Is that the Tsar?’ I whispered.
The man beside me nodded. ‘Yes. Two years ago, Tsar Peter wanted to visit the fortress in Riga. He’s hardly ever in Moscow, did you know that?’ I shrugged and he carried on, ‘But the Swedes wouldn’t let him. An ordinary soldier barred the way to the Tsar of All the Russias, and the King of Sweden –’ here he pointed to a third puppet, sitting on a stool ‘– refused to punish the man. The Tsar is said still to be furious about the insult. He’s sworn revenge on all Swedes.’ He blew his nose into his fingers. The Tsar-puppet was having a temper tantrum, stamping wildly on its crown. I laughed loudly, along with the others, and was feeding Maggie the last of the sweetened nuts when a shadow fell across me, blocking out the sunlight. A voice said in Russian, ‘That’s the girl.’ I looked up. It was the man from the riverbank.
3
Surrounded by his three companions and a group of monks, he looked even wealthier today amidst us souls, peasants, idlers and scoundrels. His low-slung belt was richly embroidered, and despite the warm spring sunshine the wide collar of his dark green velvet coat was once again trimmed with fur. Tanya jumped up, dragging me to my feet along with her.
One of the monks pointed to me. ‘Tanya, is that your daughter?’
‘No, otets.’ We addressed everyone who had power over us as ‘father’. ‘Marta is my husband’s daughter. But I’ve raised her. Or tried to anyway,’ she added bitterly. Her grip on my wrist was painful. ‘Has she done something wrong?’
The Russian stroked his beard and smiled at me. I couldn’t see his eyes, shaded by his large, flat beaver-fur hat. The monk seized me by the chin. He stank of pickled onions and vestments that had been too long in the wearing. I wrinkled my nose. Couldn’t priests wash themselves, or at the very least change their underwear? The monk stared at me brazenly before letting go of me. He turned to Tanya. ‘Go home. We’ll come to your izba early this evening.’
‘But it’s the dance this evening,’ Christina cried out. ‘I’ve been looking forward to it all winter.’ All of us had been looking forward to it all winter.
The monk gave Tanya a searching look. She shrugged, turning her face plain and blank. It was the serf’s only and oldest weapon against our masters, whose power inevitably made them our enemies. We had to bear their constant meddling in matters sacred to us: family or work. How often were their orders frustrated by the mental void in which we took refuge?
On the way home Christina sulked and Tanya’s face was pinched with anger. She spat noisily, and repeatedly, as she walked. When I tried to tell her what had happened beside the river, she just said, ‘Shut your mouth. I knew it – all someone like you does is make trouble for us!’ Maggie cried, and fell over three times on the short walk. After the third time, I picked her up and carried her on my hip, her warm little body pressed close to mine. Already I sensed it was the last time I would hold her like this.
I was almost relieved when at last, towards evening, there was a knock at the door of our hut. The silence in the mir was eerie as everything that was able to walk was at the fair. Waiting for the unknown is a punishment in itself. My father had asked what had happened, but all he learnt was that the monks wanted to come and see me. He sighed, got up from the oven, which took up a whole corner of the izba, and poured himself more kvass into a shallow bowl. Then he sat on the bench in the ‘red’ corner of the hut – meaning the good, clean corner – dusting the icon of St Nicholas that was painted in cheap earthen colours on a rough wooden board. He looked at the plain wooden cross beside it and frowned, as if thinking for a moment. In the end he shrugged his shoulders and left both objects hanging there, side by side. My father patted the bench next to him and I sat down.
‘What have you been up to, Marta, hmm? It’s all right, you can tell me.’ To my surprise, he was smiling.
I shrugged. ‘Nothing special. A Russian who’s staying with the monks wanted to grope me by the river yesterday. So I threatened to smash his skull in.’
My father laughed so hard he began to cough. The smoke from the flat oven that filled our hut had made him sick a long time ago. ‘You call that nothing special, eh? Good,’ he wheezed, when he was able to breathe again.
Tanya eyed me coldly. Nothing more was said until the men came.
They pushed the door open themselves. As they stepped over the raised threshold my father’s face suddenly emptied of expression, just as Tanya’s had done earlier. He rose briefly, crossed himself with three fingers in the Russian manner, and then sat down again.
The man from the riverbank for a moment covered his nose with his elbow – coming in from outside, the stench of six people living in a small space hit him full on. He looked around in disgust at the izba, whose four walls held our pitiful life together. Boiled moss was wedged between beams to keep cockroaches away. His gaze took in the modest heaps of clothes and blankets we left folded on the floor. Our six coarsely carved wooden bowls were stacked in the corner, beside the vat of water. We relieved ourselves in a second bucket that we emptied onto the street. The corners of his mouth twitched before he wiped his muddy heel on the straw that covered the floor. I hated him for this haughtiness. This, after all, was my home.
‘Brat,’ said the monk to my father. Brother.
My father murmured, ‘Welcome, otets.’
The monk bowed to our icon and crossed himself. ‘Good that you keep your icon clean.’
My father smiled and the monk continued: ‘We have a guest at the monastery. Vassily Gregorovich Petrov, a merchant from Walk. He needs a maidservant and has been so gracious as to think of your family.’
Gracious! I almost choked with fury, but Tanya leapt up and pushed Christina forward. S
he curtseyed clumsily to Vassily and licked her lips. ‘My lord. Big houses need many servants. I’m telling you, my lord, no one works as hard, no one is as skilful, as my Christina. Look at her, my lord, isn’t she an angel?’ She tugged at her daughter’s plait until her blonde hair fell loose over her shoulders. ‘Her delicate skin . . . and such beautiful teeth!’
She forced open Christina’s narrow jaw to reveal her teeth, like at the cattle market in spring! It was so revolting even the monk raised his eyebrows. My father turned his face to the wall. Vassily seized Christina’s wrist, where the veins shimmered blue through her pale skin. He shook his head.
‘She’ll die after a single winter. I can’t afford to feed useless mouths.’ He pinched her narrow hips, making her wince. ‘She’s no good for childbearing either.’ The monk stroked his matted beard. ‘No, I want that one. She’s healthy and strong as a horse.’ He pointed at me. I felt faint.
Tanya cut in again: ‘She has bad blood and she’s stupid and lazy to boot.’ She didn’t mean to give up that easily.
‘Shut your mouth.’ Vassily reached into the leather pouch that hung on his belt beside a dagger and pistol. With a cart full of wares, any journey was long and dangerous. He gave the monk a few coins. Tanya pushed herself forward one last time. ‘And what about us? We lose a worker if she goes!’ She held out her hand. My father’s face darkened. Vassily hesitated, but the monk shrugged, so he gave Tanya one silver coin. She bit it quickly and pocketed it.
Vassily turned to me. ‘Pack your things, girl. My cart’s already outside. We’re leaving right away.’
Tanya nudged me along. I was wearing my good linen tunic, its collar embroidered with a floral pattern, over a clean sarafan. Walk was about a three-day ride away; my clothes would be ruined on the journey. When I undid my belt, the monk turned away. Vassily, however, appraised me from top to bottom as I slipped out of my under-dress and put on my simple, long-sleeved day dress with an old tunic on top. My cheeks burned with shame as I wound my braid into a knot and tied my scarf tight around my head. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t make it easy for him.
‘I’m ready,’ I said.
My father hugged me, for the very first time. ‘Look after yourself, my child. Your mother was a good woman. We’ll see each other in the next life, God willing,’ he whispered in my ear.
‘What am I to God?’ I hissed, to stem my tears. Vassily seized me by the wrist. Maggie started to wail. Tanya slapped her face, which only made her cry even more. The monk made the Sign of the Cross over me and I snarled at him. Then I was out of the door and sitting beside Vassily on the driver’s seat. His three men, who hadn’t even dismounted, eyed me briefly. They must have known beforehand that the deal would not take long. I felt sick with humiliation.
Most of the journey to Walk I spent crying beside Vassily. He didn’t say a word to me, but clicked his tongue at the horses that were bridled in single file, driving them at a fast trot along narrow roads between fields where the clods of earth were already dry and gleaming. In the flat, open countryside his companions rode in front of and behind the cart, so that from afar we must have looked like a skein of wild geese in the sky. In the forest, though, they shielded the cart with their horses’ bodies to ward off thieves and wolves. I hardly dared to look around. I knew nothing beyond our mir. In the guesthouse where we spent a night, I was given my own room. Vassily locked me in. I had never been in a room alone before. The straw bed was more comfortable than the hard oven I slept on at home. One of his men settled outside my door, while the other two guarded the cart. Was Vassily afraid I would run away? But where would I go? There was no way back.
4
The first sight of Walk was overwhelming to me. Noise and smoke rose up into the dense blue of the sky and the houses here were much bigger than the ones in our mir. Most were crowded inside the town’s walls, while others sprawled over wide plots of land between the road and the river, built on stilts against the yearly flooding during the ottepel, like the houses in my mir that stood too close to the Dvina. I tried to count all of Walk’s chimneys but gave up as we trundled through the town gates.
I had never seen so many people at once before: the bustle on the streets reminded me of the anthills we used to smoke out in autumn; the insects would flee, running in all directions, which always made me laugh. Farmers were carrying cages of geese and chickens on their shoulders, or driving calves and pigs before them. It must have been market day. Well-dressed gentlefolk placed their shiny leather shoes carefully, avoiding the muck on the streets. Women hurried home with their purchases from the market and red-cheeked boys hawked fresh bread and pastries from laden trays hanging around their necks. Beggars and riff-raff hung about furtively; I had seen their like before on the fairground, probably ready to pilfer an apple here, a bulging purse there. Dogs fought, barking and yelping, over the rubbish thrown in front of the houses; coachmen on other carriages cracked their whips and cursed one another.
This scene beat Master Lampert’s Tent of Wonders hands down, even though my nose was already numbed by the stench. In our mir all smells – slops, stray cattle, rotting vegetables – were lost in the vastness of the plain. Here, the midday sun was trapped by the alleyways, its heat hanging in suffocating clouds. The people of Walk, I later discovered, simply emptied their chamber pots out of windows, right onto the heads of passers-by. But mercifully the smell of human waste was masked by the alluring scent of delicious foods: soups and sauerkraut, cabbage- and meat-filled pierogi, roast chicken, fresh flatbreads, and many, many more things that I, in my poverty, was unable to name but would get to know in the weeks to come.
Vassily saw me staring at a group of men with dark hair and slanting eyes above high cheekbones: ‘Those are Tatars from the East. Bloodthirsty, lazy scoundrels, all of them.’ They frightened me with their bold gazes and the rough animal pelts they wore, wrapped even around their calves. ‘Those fellows over there,’ he said, pointing to fairer-skinned men in tight knee-length breeches, silver-buckled shoes and narrow jackets, ‘they’re Poles.’ The tall, blond soldiers were Swedes from the town’s small garrison; they winked at me before eyeing up the good German girls going from stall to stall with their mothers and maids. Their hair was worn neatly tucked under stiff, puffy bonnets, yet the bodices of their high-necked dresses were laced almost indecently tight, moulding their bosoms and slim waists. I felt like a savage beside them.
A group of Orthodox priests greeted Vassily, and I saw other Russians, too, in their trailing, belted robes with wide collars, their matted beards still sticky from their lunchtime soup. They grinned at me brazenly. I stuck out my tongue at them behind their backs.
‘Is it far?’ I finally dared to ask as I had lost all sense of direction. The sky above us was a mere square, concealed by the towering buildings. Where was the horizon, where a forest or a river? How should I ever find my bearings in such a place? I was wondering when Vassily abruptly pulled on the reins. He whistled and a gate opened in a long, high wall. With a clattering of hooves, the horses turned into a cobbled yard.
‘We’re here,’ he said curtly.
His house was inside the town walls, yet near the river. It was so big – surely several families must live in it. Beneath the house, pigs and chickens were penned in among the wooden pilings. To the right and left were stables for the carriages and horses – I caught the animals’ warm whiff – with a vast vegetable garden laid out behind. Vassily tossed the reins to a young serving boy and lifted me down, brushing my breast with his hand as he did so. I jumped, but he said calmly, ‘Here’s Nadia. Go with her into the house and do as she says.’
I looked up, clutching my bundle. A woman was coming towards us across the yard. Her dark hair was streaked with grey and her eyes bulged slightly in their sockets, like the toads we children used to blow up with straws until they burst. Three hairs sprouted from a wart on her chin; fresh blood and feathers were stuck to the apron around her comfortable waist.
‘Wh
o’s this, my lord?’ she asked, frowning, not even looking at me. She placed her hands on her hips as she spoke to him.
‘A new maid, Nadia.’ Vassily avoided her gaze. ‘She’s called Marta.’
‘Marta what?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Does it matter?’
Nadia showed me to my room. She was short of breath after climbing the sturdy timber ladder leading up to a small, draughty chamber. The floor was bare and between two bedsteads stood an open Russian chest made of oak and studded with iron bands and slate. In a corner of the room, I spotted a bucket. When we entered, another girl rose from her bedstead and hastily placed the tunic she was embroidering into the open chest. I could not help but notice the fine colourful thread she used. She curtseyed quickly to Nadia.
‘Move your stuff, Olga, there’s a new girl. Her name is Marta,’ Nadia said, and turned to me, seeing my face: ‘What? Did you think you’d have a suite of rooms to yourself? Olga is also a kitchen-maid here. She can break you in, teach you a thing or two.’
Olga lowered her eyes, blushing. I noticed how scrawny she looked next to Nadia. Her clavicles were hard-edged beneath her slender neck and her wrists mere bones. She clutched her hands tightly over the ends of her long, thick blonde plaits.
‘Settle in, girl, and don’t give me any cause for complaint,’ Nadia said to me, ready to leave.
‘I will not,’ I said hastily. I had to get along with these women. ‘I work hard. In the monastery, I cleaned the ovens and the floors and kept the store for the monks . . .’
‘Good. I have no time for idle hands,’ Nadia said curtly. ‘Olga, make some space in the chest, will you?’ Olga obeyed, shoving her things to one side. My blouse and spare sarafan, which I had worn at the fair, certainly would not take up much space. But when I folded my clothes inside the chest I was surprised: next to Olga’s neatly folded clothes lay a dress in Western style, some balls of wool tinted the colour of the sky, a comb in a dark and shiny wood, as well as some softly gleaming large buttons, tied together like a posy.
Tsarina Page 4
