Debra Dean: The Mirrored World

“Truly,” I added, “there is no cause to seek her further. Andrei Feodorovich would do no harm to anyone. She has been touched by God”—I tapped my temple—“but she always loved Her Imperial Majesty most particularly.”

He crossed himself, but instantly put on again his opaque manner and informed me that I was obliged to alert officials if she should come to this house or if I should hear anything pertinent to her whereabouts, and with that they left. I feared for Xenia if the police succeeded in finding her, for she would certainly be unable to give her interrogators satisfaction.

It is a peasant belief that, as we are all equal in God’s eyes, He must surely confer on fools unseen, compensatory gifts. And so our peasants attend fools with great reverence and scrutinize their gibbering for veiled wisdom and prophecy. Even the more enlightened prefer them in their charity over the ordinary poor. For this reason, the streets are thick with counterfeit fools who don chains and profit by feigning madness. The credulous lump all these together and call them the blessed ones.

Because I have known Xenia as she was—bequeathed every worldly advantage of wit, modesty, and riches—I know she is not a pretender. At the same time, it is hard for me to accept the loss of these advantages as a sign of God’s favor. I should still choose for her the easier blessings.

As so often happens in Petersburg at this time of year, the sun made its first, brief appearance that day even as it was setting. Unexpectedly, it peeked from beneath sodden clouds, flared, and then dropped into a narrow band of sky on the horizon gone suddenly bright. The world, gray since dawn, saturated with color. On the church, the unpainted brick glowed warm as a stove and the tiny icicles on its cornices glittered. The hem of the clouds was streaked vermilion, and even the air itself was amber as honey. For a few moments everything was luminous, like a hand-tinted drawing. And then it was over. The band of light dissolved, and the sky began to fade.

A new church is being built on the grounds of the cemetery. I have watched it go up for two years, until now only the belfry remains to be finished. This last is the slow labor of ants, for the workers must climb to the top of the scaffold and then pulley up each load of bricks. Recently, though, the tower has grown more rapidly, so that it will certainly be completed soon. The workers know me—I go there most every week to tend the graves—and they will wave when I pass. At that hour, though, only two remained, packing their tools, and they expressed surprise to see me.

“This is no time to visit the dead, Matushka.”

I said that I was looking for the fool Andrei Feodorovich.

They know of her, of course, but had not seen her about. When I told them that I had heard she slept there, a look passed between the two, but then the larger one shook his head. You should go home, he told me. It will be dark before long.

The driver did not like the idea of my staying, either. I was only able to quell his misgivings by paying him double the usual fare and promising the same again if he would wait.

I set off down the path that cuts to the river, calling her name. My voice carried so loudly in that silent place that she would surely hear me if she was there, though this did not mean she would answer.

In summer, it is a pleasant place to visit. Past the edge of the city, it is so thick with birch and oak that it stays cool even in the worst of the heat. At Easter or in fine weather, there are others about, and I will sometimes see peasants bathing at the river. But now, in the autumn gloaming, the cemetery was desolate. With the floods, every depression had become a pond, and I had need to pick my way with care, stick in one hand, and to leave the path when it submerged. I should have been uneasy, alone there at dusk and surrounded by the dead, but I was not. Each marker was familiar: the wooden crosses of the earliest residents, the granite slabs with their more recent dates, the white marble tombs of the well-born.

At last I came to Andrei Feodorovich Petrov’s grave, an iron cross and a low fence frosted with new snow. It was deserted, the snow undisturbed. If she had been here, there was no sign of it but only the withered flowers I had left some weeks before.

“Andrei Feodorovich,” I called out, for she will not answer to Xenia. I listened for some answering sound. “Andrei Feodorovich, are you here?” If some person were to have come upon me, what might he have thought of my standing at Andrei’s grave and shouting his name? But I had no concern of being judged: the place was so empty at that hour that no one would come there who was not himself a little mad.

“It is Dasha. Please. I must see you.” This had been all of my plan—to go to Smolenskoye cemetery and find her. I wanted to warn her of the police, though I knew she would not care.

The cemetery was silent as no other place can be. There was perhaps a quarter hour of light left. I should do as I have been advised, I thought, and return home. Instead, I left Andrei’s resting place and followed the path to the river. This river separates the Orthodox buried on the left bank from the foreigners and infidels interred on the right. Across the little bridge, the cemetery is new and untamed, the few markers scattered amongst the trees. In death, as in life, they are lonely in their difference there.

His stone is granite, engraved in both Russian and Italian. It was crusted with snow, and I brushed this away. Francesco Gaspari. 1718–1762. I brushed again. Beloved. The fig I planted in May had dropped its leaves; the first hard freeze would kill it. Every winter, I pull up the dead shrub, buy a fruit, and start another from seed, nursing the tender shoot indoors until it can be planted in late spring. When Matvey was a child, it gave him pleasure to grow this fig for his father, and it became a tradition with us.

I go to Gaspari’s grave nearly every week, and as I weed the plot and scrub lichen from the stone I will talk to him. Our conversation is now the reverse of what it once was, with my carrying the weight of it and his listening. I also look to his neighbors that need tending to, those dead, Germans mostly, without family here. After my work is done, I stay on. Though I am not so entertaining as he was, I have found I have much to say.

I tugged on the fig, but it would not pull up. “I’m sorry I did not come last week. Matveyushka came home with news. He has found a position.

“Princess Dashkova—do you remember her? She was a friend to Grand Duchess Catherine, and after you were gone she had a hand in putting her on the throne. Since then, well, you can imagine, her influence has only grown.” I used my stick to loosen the dirt around the roots. “Well, our Matveyushka will be overseeing the building of a greenhouse for her and will manage the orchards. He says she has two hectares given to stone fruits—plums and cherries and I cannot recall what else—but most of this is sent to market. She would like a greenhouse so she may have melons and cucumbers when there is snow on the ground.”

I yanked again, and continued to work. “He was flush with pride when he told me. For his sake, I made to celebrate. I had Masha bring out a bottle of your Madeira that I had been saving against I know not what. But he will be leaving Petersburg, dearest. And Troitskoye is at best a week from here. It is hard that he will be so far away.”

At last, the fig came up. I smoothed over the soil I’d disturbed.

“He wishes me to close up the house and follow him. ‘You are too old to stay on alone, Maman,’ he said. But how can I abandon the unfortunates? With winter there will be more of them coming to the door.”