Debra Dean: The Mirrored World

I took one of the child’s arms. It was thin as dry tinder. “Come,” I coaxed. “There is food upstairs.”

The others looked up when I returned with a child.

“Where is the mother?” Matvey asked.

“She will be back shortly.” I said this to reassure the child, but in truth I did not believe it.

“Here, you may sit with us,” I said to the child. Osip slid down the bench to make room next to himself, which was generous, as he has come here almost daily for years now and is very proprietary about his place at the table.

Masha fetched a plate, spooned some cabbage and a bit of sausage onto it, and we resumed the talk the child’s arrival had interrupted. Matvey was telling the company what he knew of his new employer.

Although the child was clearly starved, she was too upset to eat. She looked warily round the table, and I cannot say as I blamed her. We made for a strange lot. Besides Osip and Matvey, there was Varenka, who was once a dancer kept by Peter Sheremetyev in his harem until she lost too many teeth and was put out. And next to her, Marie de l’Église, who is stranded here by the troubles in France. There were also Nikita, a laborer Xenia sent here after his leg was shattered in a fall from a roof, and Stepanov-Nelidov. He was formerly a prosperous fur trader, though you would not guess it now. He astonishes me by finding his way here when he is otherwise too drunk to remember even his own name. He eats a little dinner, sleeps, and then takes his leave when he is sober again, full of repentance and devastated courtesy. I am never lacking for company if I do not mind whose company it is.

I have said to Masha that I will ruin myself, just as old Leonid Vladimirovich did, by keeping an open house and table. The jest only half conceals a real anxiety. Every year, I draw water from a little closer to the bottom of the well, and I have feared outliving my money. I also worry that by spending on strangers, I am depriving Matvey of an inheritance. He has never spoken a word of reproach. Still, when I am gone and have left nothing behind, might he not think that I loved him no more than the flotsam that washed onto my doorstep?

In spite of this, I have continued to take them in, those that Xenia sends as well as those who seem to arrive of their own volition. After Gaspari died, I sent half of his money to his mother, thinking that what remained would be sufficient to keep me. Naturally, I had not accounted for the feeding of so many guests. In spite of every frugality, most of the remaining sum was run through in eight years. To make ends meet, I rented the downstairs of the house, but even this did not cover my expenses. I began to look on each person who came here as another debit and to consider how I might prevent Xenia from bringing more.

Then my father died. My mother, who had been by all accounts in the most perfect health, followed him into the hereafter within a few short weeks. I would not have thought her so attached but have learnt it is unwise to judge these bonds by their outward appearance.

In short, being the only remaining heir, I was left the estate unencumbered, and it was sold. Between the modest proceeds and what I receive in rent from the glovemaker downstairs, I have the means to continue on here for perhaps another two or three years. After that, we shall see. I have no gift to foretell the future, not even from one day into the next.

Seeing that the child would not touch her plate, I excused myself and took her away from the table to a quieter corner of the room. I pulled her onto my lap and rocked her. I hummed aimlessly, following with one ear the conversation that continued at the table. Because Matvey would be stopping one night in Moscow, Varenka was telling him something of the city, though it seems doubtful she was ever there. Without teeth, her speech is very mumbled, but the others listened politely—even Marie, who understands no more than a few words of Russian. All except Stepanov-Nelidov. He has most certainly visited Moscow but could add nothing to the general wisdom, as he had drifted into sleep, his chin on his chest and a light snore emanating from his open mouth.

The child squirmed, then gradually her restlessness slowed, and at last she could not fight sleep any longer. As she drifted off, limp and open-mouthed, her breath was a rasping whisper. I adjusted the sharp little elbow that was digging into my side. Except that her belly distended unnaturally, she seemed not to have enough flesh on her to anchor her to this life. Then again, children are sturdier than I credit them or none would live past his first year. With sufficient bread and meat, who knows.

By ones and twos, my guests excused themselves and took their leave. I do not think a one of them has a particular place to go, but they are careful to pretend that they do. In the worst of winter, some will return here at night to sleep, but even then only the sick remain past the morning.

It was nearly two o’clock when the bell rang again. Two policemen were at the door. The more senior of the two asked for “the one who is called Andrei Feodorovich.” I could not tell whether his phrasing denoted honor or suspicion.

“Andrei Feodorovich has been dead now for more than thirty years,” I said.

“We are looking for the fool who goes by that name.”

I was able to say with honesty that I had not seen her since late spring and, for the moment, to be grateful of this.

“What is it you want with her?” I asked.

“There is talk that this person has spoken out against Her Imperial Majesty and means harm to her.” He then cited a rumor that Xenia had been seen in the streets ranting about rivers of blood.

“Yes, yes, so they say.” The rumor had been repeated for some twenty-five years, ever since the murder of Ivan Antonovich. “Even if there were anything to it,” I said, “it is cold gossip indeed.”

He was not pleased by my impertinence. They had been ordered to find Xenia and bring her in.

I expect the recent insurrection in France has made Her Imperial Majesty newly fearful for her crown and alert to any stirrings in the population here. Emigrés fleeing from Paris to Petersburg are bringing with them alarming reports of soldiers and priests and commoners rising up in arms against their nobles and their king.

For all that Catherine is well-loved, it has not been forgotten by some that she came to the throne by means of a coup and that perhaps others had a more rightful claim to it. And while it is strange to think of our most reason-loving Empress being made uneasy by a fool, she would hardly be the first. Elizabeth before her kept poor babbling Ivan Antonovich a prisoner of the crown all her days. Even so, they say, it was fear of him that kept her awake nights. And before that, Saint Basil is said to have caused Tsar Ivan Grozny to tremble when the holy fool presented him with a slab of raw meat, saying that a murderer needn’t bother with keeping the fast. Our Sovereign may not herself credit the rantings of fools, but others do, and when the world has gone topsy-turvy, even a fool may be dangerous to the crown. Especially one such as Xenia, who will not keep silent.

“Do you know her whereabouts?” the officer asked.

“She is a wanderer,” I said, “and comes and goes according to her own dictates. She may stay for five hours or five minutes, but where she goes after is anyone’s guess.”

This was not the whole truth. I did not know where she was at that moment, but only recently one of the unfortunates who come here had brought with him a report that she sleeps in the Smolenskoye cemetery. Then again, gossip needs no carriage, and her fame has grown so great that she is rumored to be everywhere, within the city and without it. If all claims were believed, she would be pilgrimming continually from one holy site to another, for reports of her have returned from as far away as Siberia.