Debra Dean - The Mirrored World

“Does this not better prove that his wife is deprived of a child through no fault of her own?” She clutched her napkin so fiercely that her hand shook.

The hour was late when we left, and we had all drunk too much. The three of us stumbled into the dim interior of the hired carriage, and Xenia and I plucked pillows from beneath our skirts and fashioned little nests for our heads. Andrei slouched onto the opposite bench and was lost up to the waist beneath the foamy horizon of our skirts. As soon as I was off my feet, I was overcome by the groggy weight of my limbs. Reaching above my head, Andrei opened the pane of the carriage lamp and blew out the flame. The carriage’s interior disappeared.

I let my eyes close. The carriage lurched forward, and behind my lids the world rolled and swayed, my blood sloshing like a tide with the rocking of the carriage. I listened to the sounds of the carriage rattling, the steady drum of hooves, the creak of the wheels beneath us. I was faintly aware of low voices.

“My God, Xenia. Such a rash tongue.”

“I could not help myself. To think how she must suffer.”

“It’s bad, I’m sure. Still, I’m not inclined to suffer for her in exile. We’d make poor martyrs, you and I. At least I should.”

“Forgive me.” Her voice broke. “I want only to please you, and I am such a disappointment.”

“No, no. Not ever.” Andrei’s voice gentled. “You are as close to heaven as I am likely to get.”

“How could you not be disappointed?” she insisted. “I’m empty.”

“It will come. Give it time.”

She wept in soft, ragged breaths. “I pray. I search my heart. Why cannot I…”

“Darling.” His voice thickened. “Hush.” There was a long silence—just breathing—and a rustle of silk like dry leaves.

“She will wake,” Xenia whispered.

He hushed her again. Something brushed against me. I opened my eyes but saw nothing. And then the moon sailed out from the clouds and silvered the velvety darkness into forms: one white breast, freed from Xenia’s bodice and Andrei’s profile poised over it. His head closed over her, and he began to suckle like an infant. Xenia’s eyes were closed, her pink mouth slack, and I thought she might be asleep, except that she whimpered softly and sucked in her breath. Or perhaps this was me, for Andrei lifted his head. I clamped my eyes shut, shame flushing through me. When next I dared to steal a look, he had receded back into the dark. Xenia’s breast was tucked back into its corset, but her fingers stretched out blindly, catching air, opening and closing like a sea flower. She sighed, lolled to her side, and curled into herself. Andrei began to hum some air I did not know. If you look on me fair, he warbled, I shall not fear to die. And I shall not want more Heaven than what is in your eye. The notes lingered lazily between the throb of blood in my ears . This poor sinner only prays to be kissed to Paradise.

Perhaps she knew I had heard them. The next morning, she told me that she had been to a priest some weeks earlier. As she spoke, she held one hand in the other and absently dug a thumbnail into the soft flesh of her palm.

“I begged him to pray for me, to cure me of my barrenness.”

A practical man, the priest had first asked her whether she had sat on the ground as a child, for the cold might have made her infertile. No? That was good, he said. And did she ever lie with her husband on Saturdays or holy days? Xenia had replied that they refrained when it was right to do so. Well then, the priest pursued, when they did succumb, did she take pleasure from it?

“I had to confess that I could not help myself.” She studied her palm and made another mark.

Here the priest found his answer: this barrenness was God’s punishment for her lust. The act of fornication was evil, even between husband and wife. The only justification for this act was the children that came from it; without them, the soul remained stained. The cure was to repent of her sin and in future to avoid tempting her husband to his own damnation.

In desperation, she had proposed to Andrei that they should keep separate beds. But he could not be made to share her remorse and had laughed at the priest’s suggestion. If they kept themselves chaste, how might they get children?

“I am so weak, Dasha.” She looked confusedly at her hands, and her eyes filled. “Even at my soul’s peril, I cannot bring myself to stop.”

It may be that God looks with forbearance on such sinners. Night sounds from behind her door announced her continued failures, but within a few months of our conversation, I noticed that she had tied an acorn to the delicate cross and chain at her throat. Our peasant women wear them to assure an easy confinement. She did not speak of her expectation directly, though, for fear of bringing ill luck, nor would she suffer anyone else to. When she told her servant Marfa that her bodices should need to be let out, she answered the old woman’s happy tears with childish insistence that she was only growing large on sweets; when she was sick to her stomach one morning and Marfa tried to soothe her by saying that this predicted a boy, Xenia spit thrice over her shoulder and ordered Marfa from the room.

Its presence swelled nonetheless, and though she forbade acknowledging the child, Xenia could not keep her hands from straying to her belly. Out of doors, she rested them there as though to shield the child from strangers. If her back or her feet ached, she would smile tiredly and say that it must be gout giving her trouble. She was more changeable than even she had been before, by turns gay and apprehensive. Then one day her labor was upon her.

A bed was prepared on the floor of her room and the midwife sent for. When this gaunt old woman arrived with her daughter, a copy of the mother but for a strawberry across her cheek, she sent everyone else from the room. For long hours, we waited in the passage, and so that her labor might be easier we pretended not to hear the moans coming from behind the closed door. She called out for Andrei, but he had gone downstairs because he could not bear anymore to hear her pain. Just after midnight, the midwife’s daughter came out and handed me a packet of herbs.

“Boil this in water, and bring it back in the pot.”

“Is she dying?” The sounds had become so terrible that it seemed no one could live through such agony.

The woman nodded to the herbs. “The willow and figwort will help her. Go on.”

When I finally returned with the brew—how long should it boil, I wondered, and in how much water? One frets such things to tatters when the real worry cannot be addressed—I had time enough to glimpse Xenia through the opened door, wretched, white, and slick with sweat.

A few hours later, the daughter emerged again to report that Xenia had delivered a girl and both were well.

“May I see her?” I asked.

“She wants the father.”

I went to fetch Andrei and told him that he had a daughter. He looked at me and said nothing, and I thought he might be disappointed by the news of a girl. But he was only slow to understand from having drunk too much. “A daughter, did you say?” He rushed up the stairs and did not emerge again for an hour. When he came out holding a little coffin—it was the afterbirth, to be buried under the house for good luck—he was as happy as I have ever seen a person.

It is custom to wash the newborn with cold water or roll it in the snow to harden it, but Xenia would not give up her child for this, no matter that the midwife contended that this would protect it from weakness and diseases. When the woman attempted to take charge of the matter forcibly, Xenia pushed her away and ordered her out of the house.