Debra Dean - The Mirrored World

“I was given assurances.” Kuzma Zakharovich shook his head. “By Prince Tatishchev himself.”

“Perhaps the Prince cares less for your welfare than you believe.”

At this, Xenia suddenly clutched her sister by the arm and said, “Your husband still lives and wants only your tenderness. Thank God for His mercy!”

Nadya wrenched herself from Xenia’s grasp. “You! I will not be preached to by you!” Her harshness caught even the attention of the residents, who left off their other diversions. I was reminded of the festival crowds that stop before a puppet theatre in the street to see Petrushka and his foes knock each other about the head.

“Collect yourself,” Aunt Galya said. She then took Xenia’s arm and with her free hand turned her daughter’s face to meet hers. “You said you would part with whatever we asked. So I will ask it: give up your people and your house, and I shall care for you.”

Xenia met her mother’s gaze. “If my peasants wish to serve you, they may. But the house is Dasha’s. It is my wedding gift to her.”

Aunt Galya turned on me, her voice brittle with suspicion. “What is this?”

“I do not know.”

“Have you schemed behind my back? After the love I have shown you?”

Someone in the crowd jeered and said I needed whipping.

“I do not deserve to be used so poorly,” she said.

I protested my innocence, but she shook me off, fury blooming in her cheeks. “Do not compound your sin with more lies.”

We returned from the courthouse even poorer than we had been. The judge had granted Xenia control over what little remained of her estate but at the cost of her family’s protection. She, in turn, had bequeathed me this same house as a wedding gift—and with it the enmity of the person charged with finding me a husband. Mine had been a lost cause well before this—I was then nearly twenty-five, well beyond the age of a bride—but I could no longer pretend otherwise.

In short, because it was untenable for us to remain as we were, two women alone and without means or prospects, I devised the only plan I could think of, that we should go to the country and live again under my father’s roof. I wrote to him asking that he take us in.

Xenia did not like my plan, though.

“Where shall they go if the door is locked against them?” she asked me.

I explained that Marfa would go to live with her brother; Ivan and his son, Grishka, to the village where he was born; Masha would be coming with us.

“And the rest?”

“Who?”

“All the others.” There was no one unaccounted for. She gestured at the window. “Them.”

I understood. She meant the beggars. I answered that they would be taken care of.

She looked at me as though this untruth was a visible blemish on my nose.

“You cannot provide for all the poor, Xenia. You cannot even look after yourself.”

“I do not matter,” she countered. “But if you stayed here, you might look after them.”

“And how shall I do that? I do not have even a kopek to my name.”

“God is bringing a husband for you. Then you shall want for nothing.”

I could bear it no more. I broke into sobs, and once I had started could not stop myself. Xenia patted and stroked my head, but this only loosened my grief further. I was alone and unloved. Only Xenia remained, murmuring in my ear that my husband was coming. But she, too, was gone. Bereft, I exhausted myself in tears.

Masha entered to say that Gaspari was downstairs. I had no desire to be seen in such a state, but neither would I send away our last friend in the city. “Say that I shall be down presently.” I splashed water on my face, then gathered myself together and went downstairs.

He met me with such a look of sorrow that I suspected Masha had already told him our news. But no, he was only mirroring what he found in my face.

“The court has sent away Xenia Grigoryevna?”

“It is not the court’s doing, but we must leave nonetheless.”

I told him all that had occurred at the courthouse, and what I had written to my father.

“I have some monies put away, and this I would give you. You must allow me to do this, dear friend.”

He had been setting aside sums every year so that he might return to Italy. I did not know the amount, but I knew its value.

“I cannot. I have no way to repay you, and it would only forestall what needs to be done.”

He looked stricken. An unaccustomed silence fell upon us. He seemed to be making an effort to say something further, but he could find no stories for me now. Xenia entered, wearing Andrei’s jacket over her dress. Gaspari stood up from his chair and, bowing, offered it to her.

Taking no notice of his courtesy, she announced to him, “I am going away. This shall be her house.”

“Yes. I am greatly saddened to hear it.”

She gave him a look of impatience. “This shall be her house,” she repeated, and pounded the wall as though to give proof there were no vermin in it.

“Xenia, please. Come and sit.” I gestured to Gaspari’s chair. “She is distressed by the prospect of our leaving.”

“Her distress is shared by all those who will miss you.”

“It is well built,” Xenia said, “a good marriage portion.”

Briefly, I held the hope that in his imperfect understanding of Russian, he might miss her meaning, but I saw in his flushed countenance that he grasped it too well. He fingered his handkerchief and seemed to scan it for flaws.

“Were I”—Gaspari faltered—“were I a man like others, nothing could halt me. But I am not… I cannot, how to say…” He fluttered his long fingers pitifully as though to conjure the words from the air. “I am not made for marriage.”

Xenia dismissed his objection. “None of us is made for marriage. It is made for us.”

I tried to put an end to his misery and mine. “Please. You needn’t. She doesn’t know what she says.”

His wretched gaze met mine. “No, she hears the cry of my heart. It does not want you to go. How will I stay on alone in this cold city? They praise my Orfeo and when I sing the part of Procris, they weep. They want to sleep with my Alexander. But I am still the monster. Even when I come to their beds. Who in this cold city hears my heart speak its own words and does not mock me? You, Dasha. If I were whole, I would ask for you so that you might stay.”

I felt the floor tip and slide, right itself, and slide in the other direction. I grasped my chair to steady myself and set the room to rights again. I found my tongue.

“Ask.”

And so he did. Gaspari made the journey to the country to speak to my father and claim me.

How could I have expected any other reception but that which he got? My father derided him. “So she wishes to marry the jester after all,” he said. Apparently, he readily agreed to release me, but he would not release my dowry. Why, he demanded, should he buy a breed horse that had been gelded? And was not his daughter already gaining a house by this marriage? It seems my letter had come to him in the same post with another from Aunt Galya, wherein she made complaints against my character, among them that I was scheming and ungrateful and had taken advantage of her poor daughter’s ruined wit to steal her house.

Gaspari bowed and left without protest. He was loath to tell me any of this at the time; when he returned to Petersburg, he said only that we had all we should expect from my father.

“I will ask my brother, Vanya, to speak with him,” I said, but Gaspari shook his head.

“A brother will not look on me more kindly.”

My humiliation turned to anger. This dowry was rightly mine. Without it, I had nothing to bring to a marriage and was no better than a beggar. With what dignity I could feign, I let Gaspari know that I released him from any obligation.