The Winter Palace (18 page)

But it was the women in that kingdom of the Far East who truly terrified the author of this account—not the women posing as vendors, selling poisoned food to the enemy, or sprinkling lethal powder on a sleeping man. It was the
vishakanyas
, the maidens of death, who were truly to be feared, beautiful girls fed from childhood with small doses of poisonous herbs or the venom of snakes and scorpions. Their bodies absorbed the toxins slowly, leaving them unharmed. But while the touch of their hands could weaken a man’s grip on this world, and a simple kiss could plunge him into a battle for his life, there was no escape from their sensual embrace. The poison seeping through their skin would slow down a lover’s heart, thicken his bile, clot his blood.

Vishakanyas
were demon lovers, for a night of passion with them meant death.

The Empress didn’t like to waste time. The wedding took place the following week in the palace chapel. “A great honor,” I was assured by the new Chief Maid, who congratulated me stiffly on my “elevation.” She did not call it unexpected and gasped with false cheerfulness as she pronounced the names of the guests to attend the ceremony: “The Empress. The Grand Duke. The Grand Duchess. And the Chancellor himself.”

The new Chief Maid praised Elizabeth’s thoughtfulness, the size of my dowry, the generous imperial gifts to me. If she knew—as I did—that my husband had managed to borrow money against the prospect of marrying a “favorite of the Empress,” money he doubled at faro, she refrained from saying so.

The white satin dress in which I would stand at the altar was one of the Empress’s gifts. It used to be hers, from the days when she was still slim. It must have been trimmed with precious stones once, but they had been cut off carelessly, leaving small tears behind. “You only see the holes if you know they are there,” the seamstress who did the hasty fitting assured me.

The Grand Duchess came while I was being dressed, the skin beneath her eyes smudged with purple shadows. A new maid-of-honor trailed at her heels, pensive and unsure of what was expected of her.

“My gift is so small, Varenka,” Catherine said, handing me a tube tied with a ribbon. “But I hope it will please you.”

I was not to open it until I arrived in my new home, she told me.

She was happy for me. Marriage was a blessing, she said. A woman’s highest duty, a woman’s happiness.

We both knew she could not say anything else.

Was Egor one of Elizabeth’s lovers? I wondered. This strapping, lissome man who grinned as he looked at himself in the mirror, like a rat swimming in a bowl of fresh cream, as the saying goes. Earthy, roguish, flushed with his own power. Just what Elizabeth prized in her men.

Did he win me in the lottery of Elizabeth’s bedroom on the nights when she was drunk, giddy, and insatiable? Or was I merely a consolation prize?

They all dreamed of it, the guards, as they brushed their uniforms and polished the silver buttons, young men rinsing their mouths with vodka and chewing on parsley sprigs to sweeten their breath. The night duty was the most sought after, an investment worthy of a hefty bribe that would make their commander rich.

I had often seen the doors of Elizabeth’s bedroom open silently right after midnight. “Go on,” the guards would urge one another, knowing that nothing but humiliation awaited those who did not please her. They had heard stories of naked men clutching their uniforms, dressing hurriedly in the musty dusk of service corridors, ears red with shame. But in the taverns, after a few shots of vodka, no guard spoke of defeat. “You get better broth from an old hen,” they claimed. “From the belly down, women do not age.”

On my wedding day, as my fingers brushed the smooth white satin of my dress, I promised to honor and obey the man who stood beside me, in sickness and in health. Twice for good measure, once in front of an Orthodox priest and then before a Roman Catholic, for, as the Empress realized to her displeasure after having blessed me with the icon of St. Nicolas, I had never converted from my father’s faith.

I felt my husband’s hand pulling me down, to my knees. I heard his voice praising the Tsarina’s generosity.

Catherine and the Grand Duke came to my wedding. She in a sapphire-blue dress lush with silver embroidery, he in the green Preobrazhensky uniform the occasion demanded, with his wig freshly curled and powdered, a gold-tipped cane in his hand. The Duke said something to his wife. She nodded and gave me a quick look before she lowered her eyes.

He had come, too, the Chancellor of Russia. When the ceremony ended, I saw him tap on his snuffbox, open it, and offer some to Egor. “Queen’s Scotch, perfumed with bergamot,” he told my new husband, taking a fat pinch for himself. “A gift from one of my new English friends.”

I had a swift, piercing memory of my hands touching him and suddenly found it hard to breathe, as if each of my breaths could turn into tears. When the Chancellor stepped toward me, I fixed my eyes on the silver buckles of his shoes, shiny against the scuffed leather.

“Happiness, prosperity, advancement.” He delivered his list of wishes as if talking to himself. I turned away, but I was not fast enough. “You can thank me now,” the Chancellor murmured in my ear, “for not taking more than you could spare.”

I felt color rise from my cheeks to the roots of my hair.

“Pity that you’ve backed the wrong horse,” he whispered, then walked away.

There was no proper wedding feast at the palace; we were not that important, although the Empress had a fiddler brought so that she could dance with the groom. “A good Russian husband, Varvara,” she declared, panting with exhaustion when the music stopped and she’d lowered herself into an armchair. “Just the thing to dilute that Polish blood of yours.”

I saw the Empress run her fingers through my husband’s hair when he bowed in front of her, and only then did I know the depth of my own illusions.

Only a few weeks before, I thought myself indispensable. But in my mistress’s eyes, here was the sum of my worth: a discarded lover and a dress she no longer wished to wear.

My husband’s regiment threw a celebration for us. There were platters of venison, a roasted piglet with an apple in its browned snout, giant bowls overflowing with
bliny
, buckwheat, sour cream, and caviar, all drowning in an unending supply of vodka and champagne. Increasingly drunken guests demanded we kiss yet again, striking the rims of their glasses with forks as they did so. Egor obliged willingly, more and more intoxicated with his triumph, his bitter tongue pushing its way through my clenched teeth, his hand digging through the folds of my dress. I considered the wisdom of downing enough vodka to feel numb, but something in me urged me to stay sober, to watch and listen, to wait and never forget.

How reckless he was on that day, how sure of his immense good luck, Egor Dmitryevich Malikin, a man of unbounded optimism, secure in his conviction that all obstacles could be eradicated. Had he not been blessed by fate? Rewarded handsomely for his service?

Egor’s comrades followed us in a merry convoy to our home on Apothecary Lane just off Millionnaya Street, filling the rooms with banter and jostling. On our way we passed the house Catherine and her mother had occupied during the months of the Grand Duke’s illness, and I tried desperately to think of the time I’d spent with Catherine there, the happiest time since my parents died. In our new apartment, Egor’s servants lined up in the hall, eyeing me with apprehension, wondering what kind of mistress this new bride would turn out to be. A woman with a lazy eye whom I took to be the cook held out a basket tray with bread and salt. A brown hound growled at me from under the table.

I had been well instructed in my wifely duties. In the bedroom, I knelt to remove Egor’s boots. As the custom demanded, a whip was hidden in one of them, to remind me of the price for disobedience. My husband was my master. Without his consent, I could do nothing.

I was not a death maiden. My body did not kill. My thoughts poisoned nothing but my own heart.

“How did it happen?” I could not stop myself from asking Egor that night.

He had been standing guard outside the Imperial Bedroom with others when the Empress opened the door, he told me. She had asked who would like to marry one of her maids. She’d even said my name: Varvara Nikolayevna.

He’d seized his chance.

Like a serf woman auctioned off by her owner to breed more slaves, I thought.

“Why me?” I heard myself ask.

“I can spot a good racehorse when I see one,” my new husband told me in a voice he must have thought tender. It was the way I walked through the corridors of the palace. Head high. Chest forward. My eyes bold. My heels hitting the floor with assurance.

He was startled that night to discover how hard-edged I could be, how bitter a reward taken as a right. And I? I waited for the morning. Then, as soon as Egor left, I threw the soiled sheets into the flames, and sat staring at the smoke of the burning fabric, acrid and thick.

I tried to call it home, this high-ceilinged apartment with windows on Apothecary Lane, seven rooms in all. My husband had rented it from a German merchant who assured him that we would smell the sweet air floating from the nearby Summer Garden and, on a quiet morning, even hear the blue monkeys chatter in their cages. All I smelled was soot and boiling cabbage. All I heard was the hammering of the cobbler who rented the cramped rooms in the back of the house.

“Home,” I would say to myself, for what had I ever wanted but a place to call my home? But the word sounded hollow, as if spoken into a well. My husband had bought the ornate mahogany furniture, the ottoman and armchairs, in the parlor. The only thing I could call my own was the old trunk I had brought from the palace.

The lid gave a squeak when I lifted it.

I took out my mother’s muslin dress and pressed it to my face. I could no longer recall her voice, or the touch of her hand. When I felt tears run hot from my eyes, I blinked them away angrily. I looked at the rose-colored walls, the heavy burgundy curtains, the golden tassels reflecting candlelight.
Not mine
, I thought.

Come back here with a son nine months from your wedding day
, the Empress had ordered me when she’d blessed me with the Holy Icon.

I thought of her command each morning when I woke and in the evenings before I fell asleep. Could it be a promise that I would return?

“How often did you have to mount her to get all of this?” I screamed at Egor once. My hand made a circling motion to include the apartment, the servants, his promotion to lieutenant. I saw the shock blaze in his eyes. His lips curled. I saw the glitter of his teeth. His body—the sinewy body of which he was so proud—stiffened.

I thought he would hit me.

Instead, he laughed. A clipped, sour laugh, but in his eyes I saw the flicker of doubt that told me I had won.

It was a hollow victory. I remember the emptiness of waking up every morning, with Egor snoring beside me, muttering something under his breath. I shook off the memory of his greedy touch, even as it etched itself into my breasts, my belly, the pelt of hair between my legs.

I took in the shape of my marital bed, the heavy carved frame, the curtains that could not keep the drafts away. Drawn, our window shutters turned deftly into mirrors that made the room look like a cage, without a way out.

In these first weeks of my marriage, I consoled myself with visions of revenge. I imagined Egor dead, pierced by a sword in a dark alley after some drunken escapade, or, in more generous moments, killed in some distant battle. I imagined the Chancellor’s disgrace—some yet unspecified failure of his diplomatic schemes, or a bribe too tempting to refuse—and the Empress’s summons. I even imagined my return to court, no longer a tongue, a Polish stray, but the widow of a Russian noble, Catherine’s newest lady-in-waiting.

The wedding gift from the Grand Duchess lay safe in my escritoire. It was a drawing in brown ink of a compass, a skull, a roll of paper, and quills, all scattered across the page in a haphazard manner, separated with a thicket of curving lines.

Not a proper wedding present
, she wrote,
but something I’m sure you’ll like
.

I studied the sketch for a long time, intrigued by the strangeness of the design, but I could not understand it. And then, one day, as I was bending over to pick something up from the floor, my eyes caught the drawing from an angle. The picture was a clever puzzle, one of many I’ve seen since. The odd objects I stared at for so long, struggling to penetrate their meaning, were all part of a figure: a woman wrapped in a cloak, a roll of paper in her left hand, her right hand holding a quill. She stands triumphant, undefeated, resting her foot on the skull at her feet.

How did we live? Happily, my husband would have answered.

It never crossed Egor’s mind that I might not share his enthusiasm. Russia was his Motherland, and she had spoiled him rotten. He was young and strong. “I could eat a horse with hoofs,” he bellowed as soon as he entered the house each evening, delighted to hear the cheerful commotion in the kitchen. He patted his belly after meals, to the joy of the cook and the maids. He boasted of his hangovers for which he demanded large quantities of kvass, straight from the cellar—it had to be cool and frothy—and a raw egg that he emptied with a loud suck through a punctured shell. I don’t think he ever knew pain that was not inflicted by a sword or a bullet, pain caused by his own decay. Scars of his fights and skirmishes were badges of honor, evidence of how fast his body healed itself. “Feel it,” he would urge me, and I’d be forced to run my fingers over a scar on his arm, a curious zigzag he swore came from a knife.

My few attempts to open his eyes to the underbelly of our lives were met with incredulous laughter. “We could be watched? Our servants could be reporting everything we say? Is this what you find in these books you read all day,
kison’ka
?”

Was I but a kitten? My anger but a hiss?

He was my husband, the man of the house; he was taking care of all that was important. “How like a woman,
kison’ka
,” he would tease me, “to argue about what she doesn’t understand.”