The Mirrored World (11 page)

I recognized Andrei’s bone-handled shaving razor. It had been her morning habit to shave him with this. I imagine his hand was often not sufficiently steady to do it for himself, but she had also cherished this intimate ceremony between them and would caress his smoothed cheek and linger over the dimpled thumbprint above his lip. Now, she unhinged the blade and studied it. A cold fear seized me, and had she been a child I would have snatched the blade from her. But I could not do this. I watched as she put her forefinger to the edge. A scarlet thread appeared, and she looked at it without curiosity. After a long moment, she closed the razor and pressed it upon the beggar. “It is yours now. Take care with it,” she said.

In spite of what she said, most of her possessions seemed to have no hold on her whatsoever. She emptied her own wardrobe of even the undergarments. Other necessaries went missing. Marfa grumbled that she had no ladle for the soup. When I went to mend a stocking, the thimble was gone from the sewing basket, and one night the chamber pot was missing from under our bed. I felt about for it, increasingly discomfited, went into my room and discovered its chamber pot was gone also. At last I had need to stumble down the stairs and out into the frozen yard to relieve myself in the privy.

The mystery of one chamber pot’s disappearance was solved the next day when I saw this same article sitting on the church step. A fool whom Xenia had brought home two days prior was using it to collect coins. I was furious. “It’s all right,” Xenia assured me. “She did not steal it. I gave it to her.”

“It is
not
all right,” I fumed, and beside myself with anger, I snatched it up and, upturning it, showered coins into the fool’s lap. “It is not, not,
not
all right, Xenia.” I fled, still clutching the chamber pot until I had rounded the corner, where I threw it down and it shattered on the cobble.

One day, Marfa came to me and asked me to speak to her mistress. The servants were loath to disturb her solitude—whether out of courtesy or fear that she might fling something at them, I cannot say. “I would not trouble her, but there’s the matter of flour.”

“What of it?”

“There isn’t any. And the miller won’t put any more on credit without some payment.”

It turned out not to be so simple a matter as flour. When I looked, there was also no salt or lard and very little of anything else. Even by the spare measure of Lent, the provisions in the larder were meager: small handfuls of this and that, a single onion, a crock of pickled cabbage, a hard sausage that could not be eaten till Easter. Marfa was anxious to account for herself. “What with all the extra mouths,” she explained, “I have twice asked her for money, but she is too much distracted to remember.”

“Just make do with what’s here,” I said. “I’ll speak to her, but we can go for one day without bread.”

Marfa looked doubtful, and it came out that it was not only the miller who was owed.

I interrupted Xenia at her prayers, or what seemed to be prayers; as she did not speak them aloud, it was impossible to know with certainty.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, but I have need of money to settle some debts. It seems we owe all over town.”

She did not answer or give any sign that she had heard me.

“If you will lend me the key to the strongbox, I will get it myself.”

Again, there was no response. She was not being pious, I thought, but obstinate, and I determined to stand and wait until she acknowledged me, no matter how long that might be. It was not as if I were asking her to go round to these creditors herself, or to bake the bread or help with the washing. Looking on her back side, I reflected on the times she had left me to answer for her to callers, and to speak in a whisper so as not to disturb her. The servants went about on tiptoe and let the carpets collect dust rather than make a noise by beating them. Yet she could not be bothered in return to concern herself in the slightest with her own household.

Perhaps sensing that I would not go away, she spoke. “Can it not wait?”

“Not unless you can multiply loaves and fishes.”

She rose from her knees. Feeling about in a drawer, she produced a small iron key, went to the strongbox, and turned the key in its lock.

“Take what you need,” she said, and returned to the icon corner and knelt again.

Except for some papers in the bottom, the box was empty.

“Take what? Where is the rest?”

She regarded me with weariness. “What remains?”

“In here? Nothing. That is what I am telling you.” I turned the box upside down to demonstrate, and a single sheet of paper fluttered to the floor. “Is there some other place where Andrei kept money?” He was not poor. Besides a good salary, he had received lavish sums from the Empress and Count Razumovsky. Andrei and Xenia had never wanted for luxuries. “Perhaps in his desk or dressing table?”

She said nothing, but the blankness of her expression answered for her.

I thought back on the handfuls of coins I had seen her give away over the past month, and realized with horror that together with what had escaped my observation, the total sum of them might be anything.

“So there is nothing more?” I could not make myself believe it.

“Here.” She handed me the paper.

“What is this?”

“The deed to the house.”

“And what would you have me do with it?”

“Sell it.”

“To buy flour? Don’t be absurd, Xenia.” I thrust the paper back into her hand. “If you sell your house, where shall you live?”

“Our Savior lived without a house.”

“That is all fine and well, but what of the souls He has entrusted to you? Where shall they live? Or would you sell them, too?” I asked. “It is not only beggars in the street who depend on your charity, Xenia.” As I said it, I was not unmindful that I was included in this company.

“We have eaten today, and we shall eat again tomorrow.” She said this just as a child might, her face empty of any anxiety.

Something changed for me in that moment. Confronted with the empty strongbox and its promise of ruin, together with her complacency . . . I left her there and went from room to room with rising agitation, looking for something I might sell.

I felt like a thief, but one who has come to a house already robbed. How had I not seen it? Xenia had succeeded in removing most everything that would fit in her basket. I went to my room and looked over the meager hoard I had hidden away. The cloisonné clock. The jeweled earbobs that were her wedding present from Andrei. Little Katenka’s christening gown and cross. No, these were too precious to be sold. I settled on a brass candlestick chased with silver, half of the pair that had graced the sideboard. This I took to the wretched pawnbroker. It fetched sixty kopeks, just enough to appease the miller and fishmonger, but not the greengrocer. And we would need more wood for the pile and dried fruits for the Easter
kulich
. I returned to his shop with the clock and sold him the sideboard as well, and these bought provisions sufficient to last through the Easter feast.

Never in my life before or since have I awaited that day with such hunger. Dry as a raisin, some part of me still hoped nonetheless. Xenia’s desolation had so entwined with the Lenten season that she seemed an enlargement of its mood, almost as though she were an actor in a Passion play. I anticipated that with the arrival of Easter she would doff her mourning. It was Xenia’s resurrection I awaited.

At the midnight service, the chants poured into my soul like water, and as the light was passed from taper to taper, I felt my spirits lift on the rising glow. The holy doors were thrown open and we spilt out into the night and circled the church. Buoyed on an upwelling of joy, with the hundreds of voices around me in song, with the tumultuous pealing of the bells, I was exultant. The priest proclaimed,
Christ is risen
, and every voice answered fervently,
Truly He is risen!

Together with Gaspari and a mother and child whom Xenia had found outside the church, we returned afterwards to the house lit bright and the table laden with food and decorated with pussy willows and flowers. The servants were happy to the edge of tears, and we exchanged colored eggs with kisses on the cheek. I gave Xenia her egg, kissing her thrice. She did not crack it but put it instead into her basket to be given to the poor. When Gaspari also presented her with an egg, she reciprocated by withdrawing mine from her basket for him. He was on the point of cracking it, but then stopped and handed it back, gesturing that she should return it to the basket.

Vodka was poured out and, raising my glass, I inhaled it like a clean, sharp draught of winter air. I have never felt such thirst, such hunger. We ate the
kulich
, the paskha, the lamb. It was wonderful. There were eggs and more eggs, wine and more vodka, and I ate and drank as though I had fasted for a year.

Xenia ate nothing but seemed content to sit at table and collect eggs. Several times throughout the meal, I saw Gaspari repeat this ritual of giving her an egg, accepting another in return, and then handing it back to her. At last, I thought to peek under the table and saw her basket on the floor beside her chair, heaped with red eggs as well as pieces of
kulich
.

The table was strewn with egg peelings and walnut shells, the plates wiped clean but for bits of gristle and bone. I was sated, heavy-limbed, and light-headed. Across the table, Gaspari stood. With no more preface than this, he clasped his hands at his breast, rested his gaze above our heads, and parted his lips.

The air was pierced with a startling sound, high and clear and powerful. The sound expanded and held for an impossibly long time before gliding to the next note and the next. He seemed not to breathe but only to exhale music, warbling and sliding over vowels and consonants as endlessly as water rounds over stones in a shallow stream.

How may one describe enchantment? As he sang, his countenance softened, and without benefit of costume or any other artifice of the stage, the Gaspari I knew faded and was transformed into something eerily beautiful. A delicate hand, rising and turning like a vine, seemed to unfurl this otherworldly sound into the air. Though I could not translate the words, there was no need, for the sound went straight to my soul, transcending the poor and broken language we mortals must use. I slipped gratefully out of my body and floated on the current of music, feeling that all of us round the table were a single spirit, a single being. I was filled with such love. The voice soared, wave upon wave, until the last note, quivering with tenderness, put us ashore again too soon.

The musici have since fallen out of favor, and I do not expect to hear such an ethereal sound again until the angels sing me home. It is just as well. Such radiance was not intended for mortals, and to achieve it, hundreds of boys were mutilated, made into monsters so that a few among the wounded might sing. That such beauty should come from such suffering . . . I see it in Xenia also. It is a terrible mystery.

The next morning, I awoke to stabbing light and the sound of church bells ringing, each clang so deafening that I might have been trapped within the bell itself, with the bronze tongue striking my skull. Anyone may ring the bells in Bright Week and so they rang incessantly, as I foresaw they would for days yet. Coupled with this misery, in the previous days the ice on the Neva had begun to break up, and in the lulls between chimes I heard the river’s painful groans, the screech of ice against ice. Against this noise, the promises of spring and our Lord’s resurrection seemed faint abstractions, and the bliss of Gaspari’s voice an improbable memory.

Xenia was in her accustomed place in the corner, her black shape bent before the Virgin of Vladimir. She was as still as a corpse, her countenance empty, her eyes sunken in shadow. Apparently, I had missed the morning service, but Xenia had not: the basket she had filled with red eggs the night before sat next to her, empty.

I saw the truth of our situation with the clarity of a drunkard’s remorse. There was nothing left in the larder, and I would have to sell the sleigh and horse.

Chapter Ten

T
hat same week, Nadya and her mother came to call and brought with them intricately painted eggs, one for Xenia and another for myself.

“Xenia is at her prayers just now,” I said, “but she will be delighted by this.”

Aunt Galya smiled thinly and held fast to the egg meant for Xenia. “We can wait till she is finished. I should very much like to give it to her myself.”

I showed them into the drawing room, grateful as I did that I had not yet found it necessary to sell the chairs, or Xenia to give them away. The sideboard was gone, but the divan and two chairs remained.

They glanced about, poorly concealing their dismay. “A house always looks barren at Lent,” Aunt Galya remarked. “But why have you not put things back in their places?”

Nadya answered her. “Xenia has become a great benefactress, Maman. Isn’t that so, Dasha?”

I nodded. “She is very kind to the poor. They call her
Matushka
.”

Nadya looked as though she had eaten something bitter. “So kind she has given them even the clothes from her back?”

“Just the once.”

A look passed between mother and daughter, and Nadya made her aspect more pleasing. “Let us speak freely. Like sisters. My mother and I are greatly concerned for her. People are talking. Yesterday, it came back to us that she had been seen giving her corset to a person on the street.”

I turned the egg in my palm. On one side was painted the head of our Savior, his eyes two dark and elongated hollows of sorrow. The reverse showed a pastoral scene, a young lord and lady courting in a glade, she perched on a swing and he pushing her.

Aunt Galya put an affectionate hand on my shoulder. “I know you love her and would protect her, Dasha, but consider that you are protecting her from those who love her equally as well. Clearly, she is troubled, and we want to help.”

The promise of help overruled my scruples, and I spilt all the trials of the past weeks, how Xenia had emptied the strongbox, how one moment she was taciturn and the next was taking me to task for putting a portion of sausage on her plate. “She eats only bread now and too little of that. She has no appetite for anything but prayer.
That
she may do for hours. You may as well know that there is no point to waiting on her. She will not come down.”

Nadya was horrified. “She can’t have given away everything?”

“Not all,” I admitted. “I hid some things from her.”

“But the strongbox . . . is all her money gone, then?”

I said that it was, except for the few kopeks that remained from the sale of the sideboard. If Nadya might speak to Kuzma Zakharovich about a loan, I began, but her outraged look silenced me.

Aunt Galya was also distressed at her daughter’s misfortune. But she knew what it was to lose a husband and all one’s possessions, and perhaps it was this that made her better able to school her emotions.

“What did you hide, Dasha?”

“It is only that I thought she may desire them later.”

She nodded approvingly and encouraged me to list for her the various items, which I did.

“Odds and ends,” Nadya fumed.

A look of reproof passed from mother to daughter. “There are still the serfs. And the house and furnishings,” Aunt Galya said. “But she can’t be allowed to go on like this. We must do what is best for her, however hard.”

The following week, Xenia was served with a summons to show herself in court and answer to the charge that she was alienated, startled out of her mind. If she were found unfit to manage her own affairs, she would be declared one of the
sumasbrodnye
, mad, then dispossessed of her property and given into the custody of her family.

It may be that they were indeed trying to save Xenia from herself. Still, the word itself was shocking. For all her strangeness, I could not reconcile Xenia with that word. If she behaved rashly, well, had she not always been passionate and a bit wild? It was only her profound sorrow that made her like a foreigner amongst us now. Even stripping to her skin on the steps of the church might be deemed an excess of grief. True, I had never seen grief like this, but neither had I known anyone so completely possessed by love of her husband. One could not expect such passion, when ripped from its source, to fade gently. Given time, I thought, the wound might yet heal.

Xenia received the news of the summons with no visible concern. She wished only to return to her room, and when I expressed surprise that she could be so indifferent to her own fate, she asked if there was something else I would have her do.

I
t being common for persons to attempt to seize the property of their relations by falsely declaring them mad, all such cases bypassed the lower courts and were brought directly before the Senate. Thus, on the appointed day, we appeared at the long expanse of red and white buildings that make up the Twelve Colleges and were directed to a vast anteroom. It was teeming with persons, many more than the benches lining the walls would accommodate.

All who had business with the crown were gathered here like waters behind a dike and trickled through a single set of doors. Amongst these were foreign ambassadors hoping to influence the Senate to favor a trade agreement, nobles awaiting civilian appointments or promotions in rank, and merchants seeking military contracts or the rights to sell vodka. Those appealing the ruling of a lower court or seeking criminal review were also funneled here. And one must presume there were other persons in the room like Xenia, who might or might not be ruled mad.

Those petitioners without influence or means to bribe their way through these doors might well linger in the shallows for ten or even twenty years without their suits being heard, and this prospect was reflected in their behaviors. Like the denizens of Hades, they sat or stood in attitudes suggesting they had taken up residence here long ago and had since forgotten the manners of the other world. They scratched themselves freely, yawned, and even slept with their chins on their chests and their mouths gaping. Some had withdrawn so far into themselves that they resembled Xenia; others, more social, played at games of dice or cards and made such a noise that clerks who appeared at intervals to call forward the next case could not be heard above the din. The residents, apparently having lost hope of hearing their own names called, paid them no mind. Looking about, I wondered how a judge might sort the mad from the rest.

Kuzma Zakharovich found us in the midst of this crowd. He wished me good morning and then greeted Xenia in a louder tone as if she might be deaf. She gave him in return a penetrating look, which discomfited him.

“Does she not speak?” he asked me.

“If she is so inclined, but she cannot be depended upon for courtesy.”

He gave her another wary glance. “My wife and Galina Stepanovna are anxious of her whereabouts,” he said, and bid us join them.

Aunt Galya had not seen Xenia since Andrei’s death. “So thin and bleak,” she exclaimed, kissing her. “The Lord gave you such prettiness and only to take it away like this. My poor daughter.”

A hardly noticeable twitch unsettled Xenia’s features, as if her mother’s kiss were a fly lighting on her cheek.

“When we are through here,” Aunt Galya went on, “we shall take you home with us and see that you are properly tended to.”

“You see how she is,” Nadya said. “Your affection is wasted on her. It would be just as well to send her to a monastery.”

“You want feeling, Nadya, to say such things now.”

All of Kuzma Zakharovich’s remaining influence must have been wielded to turn the wheels of Justice, for Xenia’s case was called that same afternoon, and we were ushered past the residents and through the doors, and to a smaller chamber. A judge and a scribe sat behind a long table raised on a dais. The judge wore the robe and long, curled wig befitting his office, and the gray complexion of one who has not seen daylight for many years.

The clerk announced the case to His Excellency, who bid the former hunt-master to approach the bench and lay out the matter. This Kuzma Zakharovich did with meticulousness, listing each instance of Xenia’s supposed mad behavior as though he were recounting a season of hunts.

“Have you witnessed these things yourself, Gospodin Sudakov, or only heard them reported?” the judge asked.

“I am but the messenger, Your Excellency, but you may see with your own eyes how the woman behaves, in what manner she answers, and judge in your wisdom whether she conforms to the pictures I have painted for you.”

“Is this she?” The judge indicated Xenia, and when it was confirmed, he bid her step forward. “Do you understand the charge laid against you?”

She did not speak straightaway. I was anxious lest her silence prove the charge better than all of Kuzma Zakharovich’s words, but at last she seemed to find her answer on the floor.

“They say I am mad.”

“And how do you answer to this?”

“It would be a comfort.”

“Answer in a respectful manner. Are you mad or no?”

She looked up at him. “My reason tells me that my husband and child are dead. I long for less reason.”

The judge nodded slowly as she spoke, but it was impossible to read in his face the meaning of these nods.

“Do you understand that should this court find against you, you will not be permitted to marry again? Further, that you shall be remanded to the custody of your nearest relations, and to them shall also go whatever property you may own?”

“It’s no matter.” She turned and looked directly at her mother and Nadya. “They may have whatever they ask. I do not want it.”

“So it seems. Gospodin Sudakov here claims that you have already given the bulk of your property to beggars.”

She nodded.

“And are you aware that there is a law against almsgiving?”

She nodded again.

“How do you explain yourself, then?”

There was another long silence.

“You will answer the court.”

Xenia looked on him wearily. “I did it that I might give my husband’s soul rest. And mine also. But God will not bargain for so little.”

“The law is in place to protect Her Imperial Majesty’s subjects from charlatans who would prey on their sympathies.”

“That your son died was not her fault,” Xenia answered. “Her prayers for his soul were well worth thirty kopeks.”

The judge was surprised from his dignity. He looked her up and down with undisguised confusion, and an emotion burbling beneath his features threatened to unseat him. He waved the clerk to him. There was a whispered exchange between them that somehow also concerned the person of Kuzma Zakharovich.

At last having satisfied himself, the judge put on again his formal demeanor. He did not look again at Xenia.

“The court cannot condone the breaking of its laws. But if it were to declare mad all those who breached this law, the monasteries should overflow with half of Russia.

“Her speech shows reason, and I can find no cause to declare her
sumasbrodnaya.
”

With that, we were dismissed from his presence and other petitioners ushered in behind us.

As we made our way through the anteroom, Kuzma Zakharovich was philosophical. “It is true what they say. Tell God the truth, but give the judge money.”

“You might have thought of this before,” Nadya said.

“I was given assurances.” Kuzma Zakharovich shook his head. “By Prince Tatishchev himself.”

“Perhaps the Prince cares less for your welfare than you believe.”

At this, Xenia suddenly clutched her sister by the arm and said, “Your husband still lives and wants only your tenderness. Thank God for His mercy!”

Nadya wrenched herself from Xenia’s grasp. “You! I will not be preached to by you!” Her harshness caught even the attention of the residents, who left off their other diversions. I was reminded of the festival crowds that stop before a puppet theatre in the street to see Petrushka and his foes knock each other about the head.

“Collect yourself,” Aunt Galya said. She then took Xenia’s arm and with her free hand turned her daughter’s face to meet hers. “You said you would part with whatever we asked. So I will ask it: give up your people and your house, and I shall care for you.”

Xenia met her mother’s gaze. “If my peasants wish to serve you, they may. But the house is Dasha’s. It is my wedding gift to her.”

Aunt Galya turned on me, her voice brittle with suspicion. “What is this?”

“I do not know.”

“Have you schemed behind my back? After the love I have shown you?”

Someone in the crowd jeered and said I needed whipping.

“I do not deserve to be used so poorly,” she said.

I protested my innocence, but she shook me off, fury blooming in her cheeks. “Do not compound your sin with more lies.”