Debra Dean - The Mirrored World

“No, no, kitten.” Olga corrected me gently, and, closing the book, returned it to its place. “You do not want to do that. It makes a woman barren.”

There was no fate so fearful as this, and Olga’s warning should have been sufficient to cure me of my fault, but it was not. I had such a hunger for words that I took to spying on my brother whilst he was at his lessons. Afterwards, I would hide myself in the wardrobe for hours, the Psalter opened on my lap and a candlestick set on the floor beside me. In its flickering light, the strokes and curls on the pages slowly began to yield their mysteries. Then Nadya had found me and reported to my mother. I was whipped not only for my disobedience but also for taking a taper into the wardrobe and thereby endangering the lives of my family.

Now, fingering the lace, my mother lamented, “What man will want a girl who defies her parents to read?”

“I’ve heard that the German princess is fond of books,” Aunt Galya said, but this was no comfort to my mother.

“My daughter can ill afford such quirks.”

Aunt Galya hit upon an inspiration. “Why not bring her out with Nadya? She is young, as you say, but such a season will not come again with all its chances to make a match. And if it happens not this year, she will have that many more years to try.”

My aunt pleased herself further with the argument that in truth it would represent an economy to bring out all three girls at once. We might share dresses and ribbons and whatnot, and the savings from this could even be put towards engaging a French dance master.

On the morning of our first dancing lesson, Olga dressed us in our mothers’ hoops and skirts. We were further outfitted with heeled slippers, fans, and little porcelain bonbonnieres. So attired, we seemed suddenly to outgrow our childhood and the confines of our bedroom as well. With whalebone panniers strapped to our hips, our skirts extended us each to the width of three persons, and we maneuvered in the small room like the square-rigged ships one sees crowding the Neva, under full sail and narrowly avoiding collision at every tack. Only by turning sideways were we able to pass through the door and sidle down the corridor to the drawing room. Though my mother’s slippers were stuffed to hold my foot, and the extra length of her skirt pinned up so that I should not trip, I preened, newly a lady, and anticipated the impression I would make on the dance master.

When finally he was announced, though, it was he who was to be admired, not we. Monsieur La Roche was a knob-kneed man with rotting teeth and a horsehair wig so puny that it rested atop his own hair like a weasel slaughtered and powdered to serve the purpose. But as befitted one who was French, he was full of condescension. As we were introduced, only the languid transfer of his gaze from one of us to the next distinguished him from a portrait. Without breaking his pose, he uttered a few syllables in his native tongue. As Monsieur La Roche spoke no Russian, our instruction was conducted entirely in French, a language known to us formerly only through our mothers speaking the occasional phrase.

Society may be a masquerade, but I discovered that it was not sufficient merely to don the costume. As with any theatrical, there were lines to be learnt and attitudes to be committed to memory, and with them the intricate language of the fan by which such attitudes were signaled. To touch your left cheek with a closed fan meant no , the right cheek meant yes , and if you then unfurled the fan before your face, this signaled to the observer that you wished him to follow you. A dozen different meanings were assigned to fluttering the fan, depending upon rapidity and placement.

It was too much for me to remember, hampered as I was by my great fear of forgetting. Even a curtsy was more exacting than it appeared. I dipped, positioning my foot precisely so and sweeping my arm out slowly, now sliding my fan open and holding it just so, then casting my eyes downwards in a show of modesty. Resting, I then prepared for the final challenge: to undo all I had just done and haul up the anchor of my skirts whilst conveying the impression of floating.

With painstaking slowness, we progressed to the various figures of the minuet, which were a trial to Xenia as well. She had a natural expansiveness of gesture common to tall people and a restlessness particular to her. Though she might tamp down her spirit to fit the small, slow movements that Monsieur dictated, her face reflected like a glass all the effort it cost her, and she instantly undid any success with a burst of jubilation that caused him to chide her again.

Nadya’s talent for imitation answered Monsieur’s haughtiness with her own. She even improved upon it. “Oui, c’est ça exactement!” he exclaimed as she rose from her curtsy. That she did not care if he praised her seemed to please him all the more—she had mastered the aloofness that underpinned every other attitude. From a resting posture of aloofness, one need make only minute adjustments to signal displeasure or its hardly perceptible opposites, approval or amusement.

After several weeks, Monsieur at last satisfied himself. He posed us each with an imagined partner, and taking himself to the rented pianoforte began to plink its keys. This was Xenia’s downfall. She was entranced by the melody: her arms lifted of their own accord, and her head swayed like a daisy in the breezes of the music. Springing off her toes, she gave the impression she might well take flight with the next step.

“Non, non!” Monsieur railed at her to be still, but it did him no good. She was sweeping across the floor, lost to delight.

Exasperated, he sent for baskets, and commanded that they be filled with grain and tied to the tops of our heads like hats. This was to encourage a still bearing. Thus burdened, I felt like one of the little horses one sometimes sees in the country half-buried under sheaves of rye. On my little heeled hooves, any movement threatened to topple the load.

He began to play again. Formerly, I had managed to follow most of Monsieur’s instructions by observing Nadya. Now I could not do even this for fear that in turning my head, I might spill the grain. Paralyzed by apprehension, I lost the power of locomotion. Monsieur barked out my name and, snapping a finger, issued a command. I could only gape. He left the pianoforte and marched towards me, repeating the command in a Gallic crescendo. I tapped my right cheek with my fan— yes? —and then splayed it open rather prettily in the desperate hope this might assuage him. It did not.

“Non, non, non! Le pied gauche!” he raged, this time stamping his buckled shoe and gesturing to it.

I stamped my foot in imitation, and a few grains spilt from my basket to the floor. Forgetting, I looked down, and a shower clattered round me like hail.

“Petite idiote! Pas comme un cheval de fiacre! Avec la délicatesse!”

“No, stop it!” Xenia commanded. “Do not berate her!”

Monsieur La Roche swiveled on his heel, and I thought he might strike her with his stick, but Xenia stood her ground. Chin lifted, she had the regal bearing of an Empress, never mind that no Empress has ever worn so ridiculous a hat.

“Speak to her in Russian. We will not tell.”

His haughty air deflated, and his glance went to Nadya and then round the room to Olga and my brother, Vanya, who sat at the window, and to me again. He looked like a thief who has been caught with his pockets full of his master’s silver.

“With the left foot,” he muttered. His pronunciation exposed him at once as a Russian. “Delicately. As though you are stepping on live coals.”

Twice a week, Empress Elizabeth hosted a lavish ball in the Winter Palace. The smaller one was held for some two hundred of Her Imperial Majesty’s friends and the inner circle of the court, but several times this number might be invited to the larger of the balls, virtually every person of noble rank in the city minus only those who had earned her displeasure. This was to be our proving ground.