Debra Dean - The Mirrored World

I recognized Andrei’s bone-handled shaving razor. It had been her morning habit to shave him with this. I imagine his hand was often not sufficiently steady to do it for himself, but she had also cherished this intimate ceremony between them and would caress his smoothed cheek and linger over the dimpled thumbprint above his lip. Now, she unhinged the blade and studied it. A cold fear seized me, and had she been a child I would have snatched the blade from her. But I could not do this. I watched as she put her forefinger to the edge. A scarlet thread appeared, and she looked at it without curiosity. After a long moment, she closed the razor and pressed it upon the beggar. “It is yours now. Take care with it,” she said.

In spite of what she said, most of her possessions seemed to have no hold on her whatsoever. She emptied her own wardrobe of even the undergarments. Other necessaries went missing. Marfa grumbled that she had no ladle for the soup. When I went to mend a stocking, the thimble was gone from the sewing basket, and one night the chamber pot was missing from under our bed. I felt about for it, increasingly discomfited, went into my room and discovered its chamber pot was gone also. At last I had need to stumble down the stairs and out into the frozen yard to relieve myself in the privy.

The mystery of one chamber pot’s disappearance was solved the next day when I saw this same article sitting on the church step. A fool whom Xenia had brought home two days prior was using it to collect coins. I was furious. “It’s all right,” Xenia assured me. “She did not steal it. I gave it to her.”

“It is not all right,” I fumed, and beside myself with anger, I snatched it up and, upturning it, showered coins into the fool’s lap. “It is not, not, not all right, Xenia.” I fled, still clutching the chamber pot until I had rounded the corner, where I threw it down and it shattered on the cobble.

One day, Marfa came to me and asked me to speak to her mistress. The servants were loath to disturb her solitude—whether out of courtesy or fear that she might fling something at them, I cannot say. “I would not trouble her, but there’s the matter of flour.”

“What of it?”

“There isn’t any. And the miller won’t put any more on credit without some payment.”

It turned out not to be so simple a matter as flour. When I looked, there was also no salt or lard and very little of anything else. Even by the spare measure of Lent, the provisions in the larder were meager: small handfuls of this and that, a single onion, a crock of pickled cabbage, a hard sausage that could not be eaten till Easter. Marfa was anxious to account for herself. “What with all the extra mouths,” she explained, “I have twice asked her for money, but she is too much distracted to remember.”

“Just make do with what’s here,” I said. “I’ll speak to her, but we can go for one day without bread.”

Marfa looked doubtful, and it came out that it was not only the miller who was owed.

I interrupted Xenia at her prayers, or what seemed to be prayers; as she did not speak them aloud, it was impossible to know with certainty.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, but I have need of money to settle some debts. It seems we owe all over town.”

She did not answer or give any sign that she had heard me.

“If you will lend me the key to the strongbox, I will get it myself.”

Again, there was no response. She was not being pious, I thought, but obstinate, and I determined to stand and wait until she acknowledged me, no matter how long that might be. It was not as if I were asking her to go round to these creditors herself, or to bake the bread or help with the washing. Looking on her back side, I reflected on the times she had left me to answer for her to callers, and to speak in a whisper so as not to disturb her. The servants went about on tiptoe and let the carpets collect dust rather than make a noise by beating them. Yet she could not be bothered in return to concern herself in the slightest with her own household.

Perhaps sensing that I would not go away, she spoke. “Can it not wait?”

“Not unless you can multiply loaves and fishes.”

She rose from her knees. Feeling about in a drawer, she produced a small iron key, went to the strongbox, and turned the key in its lock.

“Take what you need,” she said, and returned to the icon corner and knelt again.

Except for some papers in the bottom, the box was empty.

“Take what? Where is the rest?”

She regarded me with weariness. “What remains?”

“In here? Nothing. That is what I am telling you.” I turned the box upside down to demonstrate, and a single sheet of paper fluttered to the floor. “Is there some other place where Andrei kept money?” He was not poor. Besides a good salary, he had received lavish sums from the Empress and Count Razumovsky. Andrei and Xenia had never wanted for luxuries. “Perhaps in his desk or dressing table?”

She said nothing, but the blankness of her expression answered for her.

I thought back on the handfuls of coins I had seen her give away over the past month, and realized with horror that together with what had escaped my observation, the total sum of them might be anything.

“So there is nothing more?” I could not make myself believe it.

“Here.” She handed me the paper.

“What is this?”

“The deed to the house.”

“And what would you have me do with it?”

“Sell it.”

“To buy flour? Don’t be absurd, Xenia.” I thrust the paper back into her hand. “If you sell your house, where shall you live?”

“Our Savior lived without a house.”

“That is all fine and well, but what of the souls He has entrusted to you? Where shall they live? Or would you sell them, too?” I asked. “It is not only beggars in the street who depend on your charity, Xenia.” As I said it, I was not unmindful that I was included in this company.

“We have eaten today, and we shall eat again tomorrow.” She said this just as a child might, her face empty of any anxiety.

Something changed for me in that moment. Confronted with the empty strongbox and its promise of ruin, together with her complacency… I left her there and went from room to room with rising agitation, looking for something I might sell.

I felt like a thief, but one who has come to a house already robbed. How had I not seen it? Xenia had succeeded in removing most everything that would fit in her basket. I went to my room and looked over the meager hoard I had hidden away. The cloisonné clock. The jeweled earbobs that were her wedding present from Andrei. Little Katenka’s christening gown and cross. No, these were too precious to be sold. I settled on a brass candlestick chased with silver, half of the pair that had graced the sideboard. This I took to the wretched pawnbroker. It fetched sixty kopeks, just enough to appease the miller and fishmonger, but not the greengrocer. And we would need more wood for the pile and dried fruits for the Easter kulich . I returned to his shop with the clock and sold him the sideboard as well, and these bought provisions sufficient to last through the Easter feast.

Never in my life before or since have I awaited that day with such hunger. Dry as a raisin, some part of me still hoped nonetheless. Xenia’s desolation had so entwined with the Lenten season that she seemed an enlargement of its mood, almost as though she were an actor in a Passion play. I anticipated that with the arrival of Easter she would doff her mourning. It was Xenia’s resurrection I awaited.

At the midnight service, the chants poured into my soul like water, and as the light was passed from taper to taper, I felt my spirits lift on the rising glow. The holy doors were thrown open and we spilt out into the night and circled the church. Buoyed on an upwelling of joy, with the hundreds of voices around me in song, with the tumultuous pealing of the bells, I was exultant. The priest proclaimed, Christ is risen , and every voice answered fervently, Truly He is risen!