The Mirrored World (9 page)
Our sleigh moved to the head of the line, and Grishka leapt down. Andrei said something, but the wind off the river whipped it away. Smiling, he took a step up towards me, and reached out his hand. Suddenly, it was snatched away. The bell of his skirt flew up, and he disappeared behind an explosion of white underskirts and dark limbs.
It was over in an instant. In retrospect, I can only guess that he caught a heel in the wig and, being drunk, could not recover his balance. In a blink, he was sprawled motionless in front of the sleigh, the rigid hoop of his skirt obscuring his face from me. I ran down the stone steps to where he lay. He seemed to be looking up at me. Round his head, a red flower bloomed in the snow.
I sank to the ground and, lifting his head, rested it in my lap. It was heavy as iron. The bee buzz of the crowd seemed far away and had a quality like silence. I waited. Faces wavered into view and then faded back into darkness. No priest or doctor came. I grew first cold and then numb. After an indeterminate length of time, Ivan and Grishka lifted Andrei’s body and carried it away.
“Signorina?”
A light hand rested on my shoulder. “You must go to your friend. I will take you, if you please.”
I
returned to Andrei’s house in the company of Gaspari, with Andrei’s sleigh bearing his body behind us.
When I entered the drawing room, Xenia was curled on the divan under a lap blanket. She sat up and looked at me drowsily. On the point of making some remark, she suddenly blanched, her eyes fixed at my waist. Looking down, I saw my tunic and breeches were stained with blood.
“There was an accident,” I began, but my throat closed.
She sprang up and ran past Gaspari, out into the dark, where she was met with the sight of Ivan and Grishka bearing her husband’s corpse from the sleigh.
Xenia howled. I have never heard such a terrible noise except from wolves. Then she threw herself at his body with such wildness that the alarmed servants laid him down where they were and withdrew. Bent over him, she keened, stroking his face and then shaking him as though to force him back to life.
I went to her and put my hand to her back. At my touch, she wrenched herself round to face me: green fires pulsed in her eyes, violent and remote as the aurora lights. I was afraid.
By now, the whole of the house had been roused from their beds, and one by one they gathered at the door. Their grief chorused beneath hers.
I know not how long Xenia went on, but at last her strength gave out. Drawing her breath in hiccoughs and gasps, she slumped over the body and was too exhausted to resist when I lifted her off him. I gave orders that she be carried to her bed and that Andrei’s body also be taken inside. A soft voice behind me said, “I have send my carriage for a priest.” Turning, I saw the musico. I had forgotten he was there. Tears had etched runnels in his powdered and rouged cheeks. He looked ludicrous.
“I may do some further service?” he asked.
I thanked him and said that I could manage, but he seemed not to understand. He made no move to take his leave.
“Without the carriage, I have no means home,
signorina
. And I cannot danger the voice.” He patted his throat. I noticed then that he was shivering with cold.
“Oh, forgive me. Come inside. We will wait for the priest together.”
I have no further recollection of that morning. In the front hall, I sat down that my boots might be removed, and rested my head against the wall. As soon as I was off my feet, I was gone.
When I awoke, it was still dark. Or dark again, I did not know. I smelt incense and heard the murmur of someone praying, and instantly remembered, though what I remembered had the quality of a dream. I stood up and moved like a somnambulist towards this low voice. In the drawing room, Andrei’s body had been laid out on a table. A cloth had been spread over him to serve as a funeral pall and hide that he was still clothed in Xenia’s dress. Two candlesticks were placed at his head, and their dim pool illuminated Andrei’s features as well as the face of a priest bent close, reading the prayers.
As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up, so man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.
His voice was low and intimate, as though he were in private conversation with Andrei.
O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that thou wouldest keep me in secret till thy wrath be past.
I had the strange thought that I should not disturb them, but I stayed in the doorway for a time, letting the words crest over me.
Without benefit of a taper, I felt my way up the stairs and to Xenia’s room. She was still clothed and propped upright on her bed, but she did not respond to my coming in. When I asked Masha if her mistress had slept, she said no, and then yes, and then that she did not know. She crossed herself and wept.
“Xenia?” I whispered. She did not answer. Her face was gray, and her eyes, though open, were entirely empty. I was put in mind first of Andrei lying downstairs and then of the wax effigy of Tsar Peter that resides in the Kunstkamera. Seated on a great throne, it glares so steadily that one is compelled to look away. Only upon nervous sidewise glances can one detect the ruse: though it is in all other ways the perfect copy of a man, the figure is too still and the enamel eyes have no animation. Even so, it is too disquieting to contemplate directly.
So it was with Xenia. I took her limp hand into mine. Her gaze, directed towards the stove, remained blank. I noted the subtle rising and falling of her chest. “Should I stoke the fire?” I asked, as though I were responding to a subtle hint.
The room was already sufficiently warm, but not knowing what else to do, I sent Masha downstairs to fetch some brandy, and busied myself with the tinderbox. I devoted excessive attention to my task until Masha returned with the brandy.
“Here, this will revive you.” My voice in my own ears sounded like pots clattering to the floor, but Xenia remained insensible. I held the glass up and pressed it against her lips, but she did not drink. “Here, just a sip,” I coaxed. Tilting back her head, I poured the liquid into her opened mouth. It dribbled back out and ran down her chin. “You must try, darling.” She made no answer.
“We should get her out of these clothes and into bed. Sleep is the best thing.” I removed her stockings and wrested her loose of her bodice. Her inert limbs provided no assistance and were remarkably heavy in their inanimate state, but with Masha’s assistance I freed her of her petticoats. We pulled a nightgown down over her head, worked her arms into the sleeves, and then arranged her limbs in an attitude of repose, with her gaze redirected at the ceiling.
I do not recall the feeble winter sun rising or setting, only perpetual darkness broken at intervals by my imperfect vigil. Like the apostles in Gethsemane, I tried to keep awake and pray but could not. So it went for an unmarked procession of time. The priest downstairs chanted the psalms over Andrei’s body, mourners came and left, but I took no notice of them, nor of the servants, who, being so suddenly deprived of both master and mistress, left off their customary duties and gathered aimlessly in the halls and the yard.
At some point, I was called downstairs to see Nadya, who had appeared at the house complaining that she and her mother had not received mourning cards to inform them of Andrei’s death and had learnt of it only as strangers might. “Our mother was offered condolences by a neighbor in the street,” she fumed.
“Xenia is overcome with grief,” I said.
“Do you know he is laid out in a woman’s dress? With only a priest praying over him, and some strange woman? His friends shall think Xenia unfeeling. There is no coffin lid at the door, and the girl told me that no preparations have been made for the funeral dinner.”
When I answered that these duties were quite beyond Xenia’s capacity, that she could not even rise from her bed, Nadya went up the stairs, thinking, I suppose, to scold her sister into action. Finding her immune to rebuke did not soften Nadya’s mood.
“Has she been bled?”
I replied that she had not.
“I shall send my surgeon.” Shaking her head, she left.
Andrei was without family, excepting some distant cousins in Little Russia. As for Xenia’s close relations, evidently Aunt Galya was too distraught by the news of her daughter being widowed to come to the house, and Nadya was too vexed to return. There being no more immediate candidates in line for the offices of family, I elected myself. With Masha, I first washed Andrei’s body and dressed him in his uniform, then had a casket sent from the cabinetmaker. There is a tremendous amount to do when someone leaves the world. I ordered more flour and nuts and vodka, boiled wheat for the
kolivo
, and set Marfa in the kitchen to making blinis. Masha was charged with watching Xenia and changing her bedding while I gathered up her clothes for dyeing. When the surgeon came, I left off plucking a goose and escorted him upstairs.
The surgeon was a brisk man. He gave Xenia hardly a glance before unpacking his instruments and setting the cups onto the stove to warm. Pulling a chair to her bedside, he took her limp arm, pushed up its sleeve, and tied it off above the elbow with a strip of linen. He worked the arm like a pump and then studied its length, flicking his middle finger against the skin.
“She has been like this for near two days now,” I said.
He nodded and took up the other arm. His self-possession was comforting. When he found a vein to his liking, he removed a lancet from its case, cocked the spring, and by means of a button released it, driving the blade into her flesh. Xenia jerked, blood bubbled up, and he covered the wound with one of the heated glass cups. The cup was shaped like a hand bell topped with a brass nipple. Into this he fastened a syringe. This further encouraged the vein to breathe by sucking out the blood and ill humors. When the cup was full, he instructed me to fetch a bleeding bowl from his box. He emptied the cup and put on another. At this, Xenia turned her dull, fish-eyed gaze upon her arm. The sight of her blood seemed to provoke a terror in her, for she started to shriek, to tremble all over, and to sputter unintelligible noises. The surgeon, far from being alarmed, expressed satisfaction at her liveliness and drew yet more blood until her agitation subsided and she went slack again.
“I shall come back this evening,” he promised.
Andrei was laid to rest the next day. My parents had arrived from the country, my brother, Vanya, from his regiment, and together with the other mourners—all but Xenia—we set out just before dawn, our heads veiled, and followed his hearse on foot through sleeping streets. We approached the church, its spires black against a watery sky streaked with red, like bloody rags. The bells began to toll the dirge, from high to low, the last knell so deep it entered the bones.
Inside, the full Imperial choir had gathered to sing the service for their fallen brother. Even Count Razumovsky, together with his brother Ivan, was in attendance. Xenia might have been happy to see Andrei so honored, I thought, and close at the heels of this thought followed the worry that I had not laid in sufficient provisions to feed so many afterwards.
The choir began the Kathisma hymn for the dead, their solemn chants reverberating in the stony air. I listened for a void made by the absence of Andrei’s voice, but in truth I could not hear it. I then fell into the stupor that comes with long and familiar rites and emerged only when the priest called the mourners to the last embrace.
Come ye, therefore, let us kiss him who was but lately with us; for he is committed to the grave; he is covered with a stone; he taketh up his abode in the gloom, and is interred among the dead.
I have heard it remarked by foreigners, in particular the English, that our mourning is a cacophony compared with their own more muted grief. I remember Gaspari once said that not even the warm-blooded Italians make such a noise as Russians. Our serfs rend their garments and pull their hair, nor is it thought unmanly to weep. Even by the measure of our own customs, though, the grief for Andrei was loud.
He made a handsome corpse. Across his forehead lay the crown, a paper band with lettering that petitioned God’s mercy on his soul. But for this, one might have thought he was only sleeping off a night of immoderate pleasure rather than a life of it. I kissed him good-bye.
We emerged from the church, blinking into a day gone bright as a mirror. The sounds of sleigh bells and laughter rang in the thin air, for it was Christmastide. We seemed out of step with the calendar, sealed up in a private and unseasonable grief. I pondered the strangeness of this, that his death could rend to pieces the little sphere I lived in, yet leave no mark on the world beyond. Merrymakers, seeing our solemn procession to the cemetery, crossed themselves, but we did not dampen their revelry. It was considered good luck to be passed by a funeral procession, and they would not see in the open coffin a picture of their own ends.
As for the supper after, it was little different from others but for the absence of the widow, who lay upstairs. Cleansed by their tears, the mourners ate and drank heartily. Silently, they raised their glasses to Andrei’s empty chair with its glass of vodka and black bread.
I
found I could feed Xenia by pressing a spoon to her lips till they opened, ladling in a bit of broth, retrieving the spoon, and holding her jaw shut till she swallowed. It required the unflagging persistence of a mother bird. I took Andrei’s place in their bed that I might look after her, and my sleep was as restless as it had been when we were children and last shared a bed. Muffled sobs seeped into my dreams, along with muttered sounds that might have been words. Once, she cried out, “Blood! Blood!” her voice choked with anguish. When I tried to rouse her, she clutched blindly at my arm. “There is so much greed in the world.” She keened and mewled but could not be roused from sleep, and in the morning she was just as she had been, vacant-eyed and mute. Then one night I awoke and felt her watching me.
“How long has it been?” The voice, though feeble, was her own.
“A week and some. A week and two days.”
“You’ve returned, then.”
I answered that I had not left, except to go out for necessity.
“Moy solovushka,”
she whispered.
It was her pet name for Andrei, “my nightingale.” I thought she was asking for him, and I was loath to tell her again what had broken her in the first place. I cast about for some way to couch the truth in gentleness or avoid it altogether.
“Do you suffer?” she asked.
Her gaze seemed directed behind me, and I looked there. The room was black and still, and I could see nothing. It came to me then: it is on the ninth day after death that the soul is said to leave the body. On the fortieth day, it departs this world. Between these two points lies a blank space that the Church does not account for, but peasants will tell you that the soul returns home and takes up residence behind the stove. She thought he was in the room with us.
My senses stretched taut against the darkness. Her breath caught. And released. Caught, caught again, then released, thick with tears.
“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.”
S
he 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 call 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.