The Winter Palace (33 page)

The Holsteiners in their blue uniforms camped at the outskirts of the Oranienbaum grounds. Food had to be carried to them from the palace kitchens. The footmen charged with the task were bitter about having to serve “these snotty Germans.” The Empress had already been approached a few times, begged to interfere.

I watched Elizabeth’s face, blotched and reddened with fury. I watched her circle the room, the sound of her heels on the floor punctuating her words. The problem was to go away. She didn’t care how.

“Make sure I don’t hear another word of this matter, Varvara.”

I curtsied and took my leave.

In Oranienbaum I asked to see the Grand Duchess. It was important, I told the haughty maid who tried to make me wait.

Catherine was in her study, writing, with just little Bijou for company. A bouquet of red roses stood in a crystal vase on her desk, with water stains around it, for the maid’s vigilance did not extend to bringing a doily. Seeing me, the Grand Duchess put the quill away. Too quickly, for she let a large drop of ink fall.

“Varenka,” she exclaimed, sanding the page to stop the stain from spreading. “Just the person I wished to see!”

I attempted to give her an account of my mission and of Elizabeth’s displeasure, but she hardly listened. Her skin glowed, her hair, left unpowdered and tied with a simple yellow ribbon, shone.

“He is here, you know,” she said. “Again!”

“Count Poniatowski?” I guessed.

She nodded. Count Poniatowski had been a frequent guest at Oranienbaum, she told me, for the Grand Duke wished to hear of his father’s military exploits. Forty-six years ago, at the Battle of Poltava, old General Poniatowski had fought at the side of Charles
XII
of Sweden against Peter the Great.

“War! That’s all they talk about,” Catherine said, rolling her eyes.

It was not the famous Russian victory over Sweden that excited her husband, not his grandfather’s strategy, nor his political vision. All he wished to know from his Polish guest was how the defeated King of Sweden managed to fool the Russians and escape from the battlefield with General Poniatowski’s help.

It was becoming too easy, I realized, reporting on the Grand Duke’s blunders.

“This is not quite what the Empress should hear now,” I warned.

“Why not, Varenka?” Catherine shot me a playful look. She bent over Bijou and scooped him up. “Perhaps this is exactly what she should hear!”

Tossed and tumbled, Bijou began to bark with excitement.

This hilarity was getting too loud. I put my finger on my lips.

Still laughing, Catherine set the dog down and embraced me. “I’m only teasing you, Varenka. Don’t be so serious, please. Let’s go to them now. Let’s have some pleasure, shall we?”

“May we join you, gentlemen?” Catherine asked, as we entered the Grand Duke’s study.

In the corner,
Das Fräulein
jumped up as if she saw a ghost.

The Grand Duke was tracing a line with his finger on a military map. He was back to wearing his blue Prussian uniform. I had seen his valet singe holes in it with burning coals, making them look like musket shots. Count Poniatowski stood beside him, nodding at something he had just heard. His colors were earthy, the warmth of clay and rust, his elegant fitted jacket lined with flecks of gold. At the sound of the Grand Duchess’s voice, both men turned toward her. Two faces, one pockmarked and reddened with excitement, the other handsome and composed.

Count Poniatowski bowed. The Grand Duke flapped his hand, waving us in.
Das Fräulein
was staring at the floor.

I wondered what pleased Peter more, our unexpected visit, which—judging by his triumphant glare—he took for the manifestation of Catherine’s marital interest, or
Das Fräulein
’s annoyance at it.

Catherine turned to Count Poniatowski.

“My husband assures me that you tell most amusing stories.”

“I try to please.” Count Poniatowski made another bow.

“Tell my wife of the
maire
of Paris,” the Grand Duke demanded, chuckling.

Such exchanges must have happened before, I thought. There was a note of amused indulgence in Count Poniatowski’s voice, a promise to please his host, even at the cost of repeating himself. His hand, emerging from a lace cuff, made sweeping movements as he spoke.

The mayor of Paris had received him in a pink bonnet, the Count told us, then led him to a room where chamber pots stood in a row, each half filled with sand. Every few minutes, the mayor begged his pardon and attempted to relieve himself. Each time into a different chamber pot.

The traveler’s charm
, I thought, listening to the waves of laughter that followed these stories. Stories meant to please. Stories interspaced with praises of Russian warmth, Russian hospitality, the glories of St. Petersburg, the beauty of Russian women.

An hour passed, giddy and fading fast. The dark paneling of the Duke’s study softened with early August sunshine; from the Oranienbaum gardens came the smoke of burning twigs.

It was Catherine who firmly took
Das Fräulein
’s arm and proposed a stroll in the gardens. She wished to show Count Poniatowski her new aviary. She had a pair of Chinese pheasants, she told him, some quails, and the birds the Oranienbaum birdman had been trapping for her all summer. Thrushes, magpies, orioles.

“You go,” the Grand Duke said, ignoring the plea in
Das Fräulein
’s eyes. “I’ve seen it already.”

I, too, declined to join the party, eager for my chance to speak with the Grand Duke alone.

On the following day, in Peterhof, I assured the Empress that there would be no more complaints from anyone in the Grand Duke’s retinue. My success was the result of a simple discovery. The Grand Duke’s servants had not been compensated for delivering food to the Holsteiner troops. Once the Grand Duke agreed to remedy his oversight, the patriotic fervor of his footmen had died out and “serving the Prussians” became just another duty in their daily rosters.

The Empress was pleased.

She didn’t ask me about Catherine, and I didn’t mention the Grand Duchess or the Oranienbaum visitor. I didn’t mind being ordered back to St. Petersburg, either. The temporary palace was still half empty. The Imperial Suite was shrouded in linen coverings. The thought of Darya there, alone, with no one but Masha and the servants for company was enough to make me uneasy.

In mid-August, Egor returned to St. Petersburg for the first time since assuming his commission. Leaner and quieter, more of a guest than a man of the house as he inspected our new quarters.

Through the windows came the sounds of the street, the beat of horses’ hoofs, the rattling of carriage wheels, the enticements of sellers. The floors were bare, smelling of pine resin, squeaking under each step.

I watched Egor run his hand over the wooden wall of our small parlor, rub it with his finger. He knocked at it, judging its thickness.

“It’s only for one year,” I told him. “This is not home.”

“Still better than the soldiers’ barracks.”

I could see the tensing of my husband’s jaw when he said it.

During the day, Darya followed her father around, demanding stories of his army life, or showing him what she had learned in his absence: a cross-stitch, a French verse, a curtsy. Egor took her for walks along the Great Perspective Road, from which they returned with bags tucked under their arms. “Let me do it, Papa,” Darya insisted, as she fished their treasures out to show me: a china doll with black shiny eyes, birch-bark boxes with dried fruit and comfits, a length of pearly pink satin for a dress, a string of red beads.

“For me. For you, Maman. For Masha.”

The afternoons were still too mild for fires, too bright for candles. On the table in the parlor, Masha spread her treats:
bliny
, dumplings, bowls of steaming borscht, slices of smoked sturgeon. For Egor, for the visitors who flocked to our rooms, eager for the news.

War, I heard, demanded careful preparations. Gathering of strength. Loyalty. Fortitude. Strategy was paramount. One did not fight on a whim; one imposed the conditions on the enemy.

They listened, Egor’s former comrades, most of whom I recognized from my husband’s days in the guards. Among the newcomers were two Orlov brothers, Grigory and Alexei from the Izmailovsky Regiment. Both barely over twenty, both tall and powerfully muscular. Grigory was the more handsome of the two, though only because Alexei’s face was disfigured by a scar that ran across his cheek. They moved into a house on Millionnaya Street, I had learned, ever since their parents died, and brought the other three Orlov brothers to live with them. Egor praised them for being “thick as thieves.”

Crowding our small parlor, sprawled on the ottomans, perching on windowsills like some giant green birds, they all listened to my husband’s words.

It was the politics that Egor found an irritation. The ever-changing orders. Having to tell his troops that yesterday’s enemy had overnight become an ally. Soldiers needed a simpler world, clear-cut differences, plainly visible goals. They needed one voice issuing commands.

“Hear, hear,” I heard when he finished.

Egor’s former comrades did not lower their voices. They did not hide their tight smiles, the discontent in their eyes.

Bears in a pit
, I thought.
Oblivious of the foxes intent on outsmarting them? Or ruthless enough to ignore the peril?

On Egor’s last evening, after Masha had put Darya to bed, my husband and I finally sat together alone.

It was of Darya that we spoke first, how her French improved, how her drawing master praised her talent for capturing likenesses of people and animals. How Egor’s commission and my living at court now allowed us to put money aside for her dowry.

The possibilities flew quickly between us, without effort. A future added up, hopeful, expectant. But then silence came, hesitant at first, then darkening and swelling in the dusk.

One of the candles began to smoke. I rose to trim the wick, but Egor stopped me. His hand was cool and dry on mine.

“Please,” he murmured, as if I intended to leave him alone.

I sat beside him.

A shadow flickered across Egor’s face, making him look worn out, as if he had merely paused during some long trek he would soon have to resume.

In the quiet of the evening, his voice sounded hollow.

It was not just the politics that he could not understand, Egor told me. Not just the alliances, shifting from month to month, as if Russia had no one in charge.

Army sword belts fell apart after first washing. The last batch of new recruits had to practice with wooden muskets, for there was a shortage of real ones. There were limits to sacrifice. What was happening in the palace? Was Mother Russia forgetting her sons?

I stirred and cast my eyes toward the door.

“Hush, Egor. There are no safe rooms here,” I whispered. “No one is ever alone.”

He gave me a long look of bewildered hurt. As if my words were an accusation. As if I did not know him at all.

“You didn’t marry a coward,” he said.

I felt the grip of his hand on mine. Stronger than I’d remembered it.

Later, after Egor had left, I recalled these words every time I slipped into my bed at night, snuggling in the familiar spot beside my daughter’s warm, dreaming body. I turned them in my head, assessed their weight.

A boast?

Or a promise?

There is one more memory of this summer—of Darenka, in the Oranienbaum aviary, among parrots, parakeets, canaries, helping Catherine feed them, holding out her small hand, hoping they would come and peck at the seeds she held. The memory of my daughter asking Catherine if she could let the birds out, into the garden, where they could fly where they wished to.

I recall Catherine’s warning.

When she was a child, she, too, once wanted to free birds from her aunt’s aviary. And so she’d left the door to the cage open.

“And what happened?” Darya asked her.

I froze, knowing too well that Catherine would not indulge my daughter’s desire for smooth and joyful endings.

“To me or to the birds?” she asked. “I was sent to bed without supper, and that was that. The birds did not fare so well.”

I watched Darya’s face as she pictured the images of Catherine’s story. Parrots pecked to death by other birds. Sparrows and thrushes her aunt had saved from death an easy prey for cats and neighborhood boys. The bloody scraps, the feathers flying. A cat with a limp bird in its mouth, surprised, perhaps, by the lack of struggle.

“You won’t ever do that to my birds, Darenka, will you?” Catherine asked.

I saw my daughter shake her head, stern and pensive.

In September, the court returned to St. Petersburg and settled down in the temporary palace on the Great Perspective Road. The entire east wing of the palace was taken by the Imperial Suite, the nursery, and the rooms of Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting. The Grand Duke and his entourage were allotted an apartment right beside the Imperial Bedroom.

Peter was not pleased. His Holsteiner officers had been billeted in the house across the street.
Das Fräulein
and his maids-of-honor had to share one room. He had no place for his military displays and his maps.

The walls were thin. If he sneezed, the Empress would hear it.

There was no room in the temporary palace for the government offices, either. The Chancellor and his clerks took over a house on Millionnaya Street. “Noisy,” Bestuzhev complained when I inquired of the new quarters. The hammering and the sawing in the old Winter Palace went on day and night. Monsieur Rastrelli was determined to move the workers inside before the first frosts.

In the palace on the Great Perspective Road, Catherine’s suite—four large antechambers and two inner rooms with an alcove—was in the west wing, close to mine. The Empress, I thought, still wished to keep her far away from her child.

With the arrival of the court, the calm of the summer months ended. Once again I was at the Empress’s beck and call. A servant and a spy.

On the day the Empress arrived, a thief had been caught in the palace yard, his pockets bulging with silverplate. The fireplaces smoked, the floors squeaked. The antechambers teemed with visitors and petitioners. Ambassadors, Envoys, foreign visitors rubbed shoulders with portrait painters and carpenters, nobles and merchants, hoping for a commission. Wisely, Monsieur Rastrelli was keeping out of sight.