The Winter Palace (22 page)

“Devushka,”
the midwife said. “A girl.”

Pushed out of the depth of my pain, she was covered with my blood and already wailing. Healthy and alive.

Mine
, I thought, bracing myself for Egor’s disappointment.

In the street I heard a sleigh come to a stop. Horses neighed. In the commotion that followed I heard whistles, catcalls, and laughter.

As an old custom demanded, Egor’s comrades would take him to the
banya
and lash his back with birch twigs. They would taunt him as his skin reddened, as tiny beads of blood mixed with his sweat. The bathhouse demons had to have their revenge on a man whose firstborn was not a boy.

On the morning after my daughter was born, I’d fallen into a heavy, dreamless sleep. A murmur woke me. By the window, I saw Egor holding Darya. I was still very weak, but I rose on my elbows.

“You won’t have your soldier,” I told my husband.

He turned toward me and asked, “But she will live, won’t she?” His voice quivered with wonder. I stretched out my hands, and Egor placed Darya in my arms, gently, like the most fragile of china.

“Yes,” I promised. “She will live.”

Through the closed doors I heard the clinking of cups on a tray. I smelled sweet bread and felt my stomach rumble. Outside, in the street, dogs were barking themselves into a frenzy.

Darya
, Egor had named her.
Darenka
.

I did not resent Egor’s choice. In Polish, my daughter’s name evokes a sumptuous gift, a magnificent offering worthy of the Queen.

Darenka wrinkled her tiny nose and then sneezed. “My little princess,” Egor cooed, and I thought that maybe I didn’t know everything about him, after all.

In the slow days that followed, as the evenings grew longer, I held my daughter, cradling her in my arms, listening to her breath. She was perfect, I thought, fresh, unspoiled. I touched the folds of the skin that hid her eyes when she cried. I licked her tiny palms with their mysterious web of lines, tracing each tapered finger with my tongue. I kissed the soles of her feet, as smooth as her rosy cheeks.

I marveled at how well her small, warm body fitted into mine as we lay together on our big canopied bed, on the white crisp linen, which seemed to hold the scent of the wind. How wide she opened her mouth in eager search of my breast. I watched the tremor of delight when I placed my nipple, wet with milk, into her toothless mouth. I shivered with love when she closed her gums on it and began suckling, her grip latched just at the edge of pain. I was no longer alone. I was no longer a voyeur watching myself live.

Darya.
Darenka
.

Masha gasped in bewilderment at my refusal to hire a wet nurse. I heard her warn Egor that I’d wear myself out, that he should talk sense into me. “A good strong country girl,” she would praise this or that candidate. “Go to your wife,” I would hear her urge Egor. “Tell her now.”

With Darya snug in my arms, I’d close my eyes and wait for the door to open, for Egor’s steps, hesitant, drowning in the thick carpet. For the whiff of the distant stables his clothes always carried, softened by the scent of snuff.

He would reason with me.

“You need rest,
kison’ka
. You need to heal. It’s for your own good.”

I let him speak, as he leaned over to see Darenka’s face, drifting into sleep. I heard his words turn into whispers and wane, and I knew he would let me do as I wished.

Alone with Darenka, her lips suckling on my nipple, I tried to remember my parents’ faces. Not the way they looked in their coffins, wax-like and shriveled, but at these precious everyday moments when they were alive. I recalled the tiny room in Warsaw where I sat, curled by my mother’s side, watching her turn the hems of my dresses. I recalled the way her face lit with hope on the day when we arrived in St. Petersburg and the time when she hung the Virgin pendant around my neck. I remembered my father peeling an apple so carefully that the peel formed a long unbroken line and then cutting it into fat wedges that—even in the dead of winter—smelled of autumn sun. How they would have loved Darenka, I thought, promising to take my daughter to visit their graves and to pray for their souls.

Time was gentle to us then. I murmured into my daughter’s tiny ear, already ticklish, nudging her into a shadow of laughter, the words of her first story, the story of her birth:
I lay in pain for two days, and you had to be turned inside me before I pushed you out of my womb
, I told her.
Death was lurking, waiting for both of us, my darling, but we escaped. I am your mother, and you are my daughter. With me you are safe. I’ll never let anyone hurt you. I won’t let you die, and I’ll never leave you before you are ready
.

“There cannot be any more children,” the midwife had said.

I’d heard her words, but their meaning had not touched me yet.

At the news of my daughter’s birth, Egor’s regiment presented us with a beautifully carved cradle. At Darya’s baptism, Colonel Zinovev stood as her godfather beside Madame Choglokova’s oldest daughter, an honor we merited at Catherine’s request, since the Empress would not allow her to accept my invitation to stand as godmother herself.

With Masha’s help, I arranged the baptismal gifts in our parlor, on a table covered with white damask, so that our visitors could admire them. A golden cross from her godfather. A chalice and a set of silver spoons in an ivory box from her godmother. Catherine’s gift, a rosary bracelet of black pearls from Monsieur Bernardi’s workshop, came with an inscription:
For Darya Egorevna, whose future will always be in my heart
.

With Egor at my side, I sat through rounds of visits as custom demanded, strangely soothed by the gasps of admiration:
How perfect she is! How tiny! How glowing!
I smiled as our visitors hung over the crib, pointing out resemblances. My nose, but Egor’s dark eyes. His lusty bawl, but my smile.

Darya Egorevna.

May she always be with those who love her.

May she prosper and be safe.

I wiped tears off my cheeks.

“May God grant her all this,” I whispered.

In our apartment on Apothecary Lane, all locks and hinges had been oiled; our servants were ordered to wear soft slippers and keep their voices hushed. The cradle was beside my bed, but a spare room had already been turned into a nursery with canary-yellow walls and a cedar chest. The room smelled of varnish and paint. My daughter had enough cambric shifts for five infants, half a dozen shawls, a silver-fox throw to keep her warm in the winter, and an expensive china doll with a velvet bonnet.

Her father’s gift.

Once, by candlelight, I saw Egor bend over Darya’s crib, his voice rising and falling, soothing her whimpers. She gurgled in response, a string of sounds still incomprehensible. He picked her up and held her close to his face, smiling at her in an uneasy happiness I recognized so well.

In the street, a beggar boy was singing off-key, an orphan’s song. Soon he would knock at our kitchen door for a bowl of hot soup, a thick slice of buttered bread, and a few moments by the fire to ward off the November chill.

Another gurgle came, muted in bubbly spit.

I watched Egor place Darya back in her cradle and rest his right hand over his heart as if he was making a vow.

The beggar’s song ended, and I stepped back, careful not to make a noise.

How dreary this time is, how slow! It stretches endlessly before me, like St. Petersburg nights during the months of winter, chilling the bones and the flesh. Sometimes nothing but a mad gallop through the fields can keep my tears from choking me
, Catherine wrote.

For Christmas, the Chancellor of Russia sent the Grand Duchess a case of Hungarian claret and a few rare books acquired for her in Paris.

Both gifts had been returned.

“Was the book Machiavelli, or would that be too crude?” I asked the Chancellor when he came up to me that evening.

It was not the first time that he had sought me out at the Russian Theater, where Egor insisted we show up once a week, ever since I felt well enough to go out. The Chancellor always waited for the time my husband joined his fellow officers, and he always spoke of Catherine. The Grand Duchess, he told me, possessed a rare spirit. She had a unique combination of composure, courage, and quick wit. The Grand Duke would do well if he paid heed to her advice.

Slick words
, I thought.
Palace words
.

“Let’s give up on blame, Varvara Nikolayevna. Let’s try a little more tact. Or even perhaps some Christian forgiveness.”

I noted how blackened the remaining teeth in his mouth were, and how long cuffs trimmed with lace were meant to cover the age spots on his hands. There had been talk of mercury cures and far too much vodka, talk confirmed by his reddened nose and bloodshot eyes.

There was such sweet pleasure in the shift of power between us. I dipped into it. I could not resist.

“Have you begun packing already?” I asked.

Ivan Shuvalov, rumor had it, had called the Winter Palace “no better than a drafty dump.” A house should be like the setting of a jewel, to match the grandeur of its owner. What was good for Peter the Great when he was still building Russia’s glory no longer sufficed for his daughter, who was now ruling over an Empire. Why suffer the sooty walls of times long gone? The low ceilings, the simple furniture any clumsy apprentice could have made? Where is the lightness and light of the present? The new horizons? The new vision? The new pride?

The Empress agreed with her latest lover. Her Italian architect, Monsieur Rastrelli, had already seen his initial plans for the reconstruction of the palace trampled by imperial heels. “Come up with loftier visions,” Elizabeth had demanded. “Visions worthy of
my
Russia.”

The Chancellor’s cheerful smile did not fade at my taunt.

“Packing? Is that what they say I am doing? All I’ve seen so far are the catalogs of Parisian auctions scattered all over the Imperial Bedroom. And rolls of architectural drawings taking up the surface of the huge desk that is there now. But nothing has been decided yet.”

“The carpenters in town have doubled their rates,” I reminded him. “The masons have tripled theirs. Does that not signify a decision?”

The Chancellor’s eyes narrowed. I could hear his foot tap the floor.

“Perhaps this is the secret of Ivan Ivanovich’s success,” I continued. “He has the courage of wanting more. The belief in what others snigger at. The ability to pluck the strings others consider long broken.”

My breasts were leaking milk. I thought of Darya’s lips on my nipple, her tiny hand gripping my finger.

“Ah, the courage of motherhood, Varvara Nikolayevna,” the Chancellor replied, dropping his voice. “Indomitable. And always infinitely touching. However, you should consider the fact that your husband has been borrowing quite a bit of money. A wiser choice of friends might alleviate—”

I didn’t let him finish.

“I’m not like you,” I said, walking away. “I don’t judge my friends only by what they can do for me.”

Back at the theater seat, waiting for the curtain to rise, I played with the paper leaves of my fan, on which river barges floated among the waves. Beside me, Egor was laughing hard at something his neighbor had just said.

I touched his shoulder. He turned toward me.

“Are we in debt?” I asked.

“Let this be my problem,” he said. His fingertips brushed the top of my hand. They were cold, and I pulled away.

On the first day of the new year, 1750, Egor and I lined up with other courtiers in the Throne Room, shining with gilded stars and decorated with intricate arrangements of hothouse lilies—the pride of the Oranienbaum gardeners.

The conversations around me were meant to be overheard, and thus they were useless: wishes for good health in the coming year, predictable gushings over Monsieur Rastrelli’s newest designs for the Winter Palace. Beside me, Egor sat in silence. “Wasted,” he had grumbled about the hours spent at court. Time, so precious everywhere else, stretched here like strands of hot tar.

I didn’t argue. I didn’t point out the need to look and to remember what I saw.

Elizabeth reclined on the throne, her snugly fitted satin gown shimmering with diamonds, its ivory white broken only by the crimson-and-silver ribbon across her chest. A golden cape lined with ermine and embroidered with two-headed eagles covered her shoulders.

“A daughter, Varvara?” the Empress asked when I kissed her hand, having recited my wishes of happiness and gratitude for another year of her reign. Up close, the double layer of rouge thickened the wrinkles on her face and neck. There was a hint of rot in her breath, softened with cherry brandy and clover. Where Catherine and the Grand Duke should sit, Ivan Shuvalov, the new Gentleman of the Bedchamber, lounged. “The ducal pair have just stepped out,” I had heard, as if one could leave the Throne Room at will.

“Yes, Your Highness,” I replied. “A daughter.”

The Empress gave me a bleak stare, then a smirk.

“Your husband is a patient man.”

I kept my head lowered, but Egor muttered something in response, some promise impossible to keep. Ivan Shuvalov, in scarlet velvet, flicked a curious look in my direction, as if trying to recall where he had seen me before. Behind him, the Chancellor wore an expression of deep satisfaction, as if everything had just gone according to his most wished-for plan.

I hid my disappointment at the Grand Duchess’s absence. Catherine had recently received news of her father’s death, and the Empress had ordered her to stop crying and forbade her to wear black. Eight days of private mourning was enough for a man who had not been a king, Elizabeth said.
Mourning
, I wrote to Catherine,
you carry in your heart. There will be better years; you only need the courage to imagine them now
.

The order to join the Empress for a private event reached us as we left the third antechamber on our way out of the palace. “Are you sure you got it right?” Egor asked the page who’d run after us. The boy gave him a sulky shrug.