Empress of the Night (21 page)

She is aware of his head touching hers as they examine the drawing in silence, pretty enough to be framed and placed somewhere where she could see it. Not too often, but often enough to consider the matter of traps and empty threats.

“Don’t think of traps, Katinka.” Grishenka’s voice breaks into her thoughts. It still astonishes her, how he answers the questions she hasn’t yet asked.

The plant, he tells her, is interesting not because of its ingenuity but because it bespeaks profound transformation from one mode of existence to another. This plant is on the verge of breaking through to the animal level.

She, too, can read his thoughts. If a plant can become an animal, lovers can separate and yet stay closer together. United in ways others can never fathom.

“A hybrid on the verge of spiritual advance,” Grishenka tells her. “Our teacher.”

The vision that he spreads before her is of two giants, walking hand in hand. Towering above the crowds. Free with their desires. Indulgent of their weaknesses. Proud of their strengths. The court will watch them with rapt attention, but they will be like two conspirators, laughing at the bewilderment they cause.

“Spoilt children of Providence, Katinka. We’ll want something to happen? All we’ll have to do is desire it.”

His mind is busy, bubbling with plans. His good eye probes the defeated Ottoman Porte like a butcher taxes the flesh on a fat hog.

The Black Sea is never frozen; its ports need not shut down for the winter. The south is warm and fertile. Where wild hordes of horses and Tartar brigands roam, he sees future towns, hamlets, gardens. He wants to build the longest barge, invite more foreigners to settle the empty lands. Bring the greatest happiness to the greatest numbers.

There is no stopping us, Katinka
.

We have the strength. The wisdom. The courage
.

This is the Russian century
.

Russia can never be shoved aside. By anyone
.

This is what we bestow on those who come after us
.

We give them strength
.

We give them dreams
.

Only then can we die in peace
.

Potemkin’s voice is bright with exultation. It rises and falls like a priestly chant. His eye flames with the visions he delights in.

Believe me, Katinka. I’ve seen the future
.

They’ll bless us
.

We have won already
.

She, too, feels victory in her bones, though her confidence does not come clad in mystic visions. It is born out of careful calculations of gains and losses. Of strong nerves and a steady hand.

Usurpers can be lured into complacency and vanquished. An enemy can be outwaited and outfoxed.

A grandson, fresh and unspoiled like a swath of a new fabric, can replace an imperfect son.

“We
are
the children of Providence,” Potemkin declares every time he arrives from the south with stories of blossoming orchards, rivers teeming with fish. Abundance is reflected in new deeds, land charts, statutes. Drawings of new towns, columns of numbers.

Russia is getting richer. A lot may yet have to be done, but a lot has
been done already. Where only fear once ruled, order has prevailed. Where poverty and superstition paralyzed the will, the light of reason shines on new schools, houses, hospitals.

Fat, thriving, flourishing, robust
are the adjectives she uses: for fields, herds of cattle, immigrants from Bavaria, Baden, Hesse, and the Rhineland she has invited to Russia to settle.

Solid. New
. Statues, pavilions, bridges, apartments, palaces, gardens.

Swarm
is a noun she likes to roll with her tongue, the orgy of abundance.

Augment
is a favorite verb.

On the grand scale, when all accounts are added up, losses subtracted, her ledgers are a thing to behold.

Potemkin comes and goes. His visits are a disruption, welcome and yet exasperating. He claims time and space. In her study and in her boudoir. Sometimes they make love—more a gesture of possession than lust—but mostly they confess to the messiness of their days.

The candlelight is kind to their aging bodies, picks up the glow of flesh, not the wrinkles. According to the gossip their spies collect in the salons and the streets, they are insatiable. Catherine throws her doors open and calls in one guard after another to service her. Sends back the ones who cannot please her fast enough. Potemkin’s women loll on ottomans dressed as odalisques, awaiting his arrival. He keeps ancient vases filled with precious stones for them to dip their perfumed hands in. He has made porcelain casts of his engorged penis and gives them as souvenirs to cast-off lovers.

“Are you really that vulgar, Grishenka?”

“Would it surprise you if I were?” He winks and grins with such childish pleasure that she laughs.

They finish each other’s thoughts. She insists he should wear thicker furs and coats for the winter. He thinks she works too hard. She still hasn’t learned ruthlessness in assessing people’s qualities. Gets tempted by potential where she should demand proof of past performance. “I’ll look for another secretary,” he promises. “Have I not found Lanskoy for you?”

Sasha Lanskoy is her Favorite.
Sasha is, as you have promised, a gobbler of poetry, history, philosophy, and art
, she writes in a letter to Potemkin.
Keen on acquiring a limitless knowledge of what is of highest quality in human endeavors. Cheerful, honest, and very sweet
.

She calls him Sashenka.

Her first gift to him was a gilded copy of Algarotti’s
Newtonianism for Ladies
, a promise to explain not just the nature of light and colors but a proof that an open mind can examine and refute the stale evidence of the past.

Levitsky, who has been commissioned to paint him, complains that Sashenka won’t stand still long enough. “He bounces, Your Majesty, upsetting the august proportions I’m trying to render.”

The painting, now finished, annoys her, though she doesn’t quite know what is the most irritating. Her own bust right over Sashenka’s left arm? The marble face with empty eyes and a double chin? The ample folds of Sashenka’s breeches? The engorged knot of a tassel near his groin? The handle of his sword standing erect? But Levitsky wouldn’t dare to insinuate, would he?

“A splendid portrait,” Sashenka has exclaimed. Since he is entranced, she has no heart to voice her misgivings.

Monsieur Alexander is also fascinated by Sashenka’s portrait. At seven, her eldest grandson is chatty and fearless. Constantly seeking her hand, turning his face up to her as he asks his endless questions.

“Is he your husband, Graman?”

“No.”

“Why is he wearing a wig?”

“It is fashionable.”

“Why does he want to be fashionable?”

“Because he wants other people to respect him.”

“Am I fashionable?”

“Yes.”

“Even though I do not have a wig?”

“A little boy doesn’t need a wig.”

“Do you love him?”

“Yes.”

“More than you love me?”

“What nonsense you speak! You are my little chevalier, my prince. No one else is like you.”

Summer is a traitor and a thief. It tempts with warmth, but it harbors poison.

On Wednesday afternoon, Sashenka Lanskoy swallows hard and winces. “The pain in my throat won’t go away,” he tells her. “It’ll be the death of me.”

“Another falsehood,” she says, trying to cheer her lover. She picks up a handkerchief and makes him spit the words out into it. “There,” she says, throwing the wet handkerchief out of the window. It flutters in the air before a gust of wind carries it somewhere into the Tsarskoye Selo gardens. “Ill humor is a vice,” she reminds him. “You are twenty-six. We still have time to grow old together, though I’ll be at my dotage well before you.”

His face is oval, his cheeks clean shaven, free from rouge. Sashenka Lanskoy prefers simple bob wigs and hair powder with orrisroot, which smells of violets. “You help me think,” he has told her once. “And you give me food for thought,” she retorted.

“All I need is a bit of rest,” he concedes with a smile. “I might even sleep,” he adds, though this would be rare, for—like her—he finds it hard to sleep during the day. Their bodies are well attuned. They both like to wake up early. They both fall asleep as soon as their cheeks touch the pillow.

Sashenka goes to his room to rest and she settles in the Gallery with her book. She is reading Lord Chesterfield’s letters to his son. Filled with excellent advice. Worth keeping in mind for Alexander. Her grandson is ready to learn the importance of good handwriting. Or to be given the first lessons in eloquence properly tailored to different audiences. How would you tell this story to your teacher? Your little brother? Your servant?

Sashenka returns an hour later, revived by sleep, joking at his own fears. His eyes are tawny, like a lion’s. Strangely piercing in a pale face.

“Enough of this service to the Empire! Let’s go for a walk, Katinka,” Sashenka urges, offering her his arm. This eagerness is what she loves in
him. He has put on his white coat, embroidered with silver and red birds of paradise. Her gift to him. One of many.

They stroll around the pond, past the small obelisk where her late dogs are buried. Not all of them, only the most beloved. Sir Tom, so fond of nipping the heels of visitors who moved too fast for his liking. Lady Tomasina, who’d leap into the air at the mere sight of a squirrel.

They talk.

Of the flamepoint embroidery she has become particularly fond of, for the rich colors remind her of peacock feathers. Of another shipment of engraved gems on their way from Hamburg, her gift to him. Of Sashenka’s progress with intaglio carvings. She thinks his precision and dexterity astounding, but he is not satisfied. “I’ve tried carving a heron,” he confesses with a sheepish grin, “but I think it looks more like a duck.”

By the time they are back in the palace, he doesn’t want the day to end. “Just one quick game of reversis, Katinka,” he insists. “I really want to win.”

She makes sure he does. “Look,” she says, showing him her last card, the trump queen of spades. “I’ve been utterly defeated.”

“Tomorrow we’ll play again,” he says and reaches for a glass of raspberry kvass. He flinches as he swallows.

Only then does she notice that his eyes are glassy with fever. “Go to your room, Sashenka,” she says. “Rest.”

He obeys, though reluctantly. By the door he stoops to pick up some invisible speck from the floor. Turns back and hesitates before leaving. An hour later—prompted by the memory of his bone-white face—she sends a page running to his room to check on him. The boy returns immediately.

“Monsieur Lanskoy,” he reports, “has just sent for Doctor Rogerson.”

She sits by his bed and watches him. Sashenka’s eyes are closed but his eyelids twitch sometimes. He is sweating from the summer heat and the fever. The maids have dipped sheets in cold water and hung them in the room. From the garden comes the scented breeze. Birds squabble and sing.

“Sleep,” she murmurs, wiping Sashenka’s forehead with a towel dipped in ice water.

She thinks of what her father once told her. That in the forest, as
long as the birds sing, a wanderer knows that there is no wolf or bear close by.

On Friday, Sobolevsky, the second doctor she has summoned, brings cooked figs with him, soft enough to swallow without pain.

This is the only food Sashenka eats, but he drinks tea and kvass and weak ale.

The doctors are hopeful. He is young. He is strong. He has an excellent constitution. Faithful Vishka, who has just come from the Winter Palace, where she was overseeing the fumigation of the Imperial Bedroom, reminds her that in July the year before, a horse kicked Sashenka Lanskoy so badly that his chest was bruised and he was spitting blood, but a week later he was riding again.

There is solace in such words.

By Saturday, both doctors stress that Sashenka is calmer. This is a good sign, they say. The fever is diminishing.

At midday, there is this odd bout of hiccups that won’t pass, and a purple rash appears on Sashenka’s body, but he is alert and even sits upright in his bed. “Bring me my gemstones,” he tells his valet.

Catherine is worried, but she is not frightened. Since Sashenka complains of being too hot, Vishka has been ordered to find him a cooler room. She recommends a small room on the ground floor, in the west wing. “It may be far away from your bedroom, madame,” she says, “but it is well shaded by the old tree.”

The room has not been used for a while. It smells of mice, but Vishka promises that the maids will scrub the floors with scalding water mixed with vinegar and scent it with perfume.

On Sunday, the room is ready and Sashenka is strong enough to walk there himself. He approves of the red ottoman and the velvet-covered puff to rest his feet on. And the encrusted armoire for his nightshirts. And the rosewood side table with a copy of Lucretius bound in morocco leather.