The Imperial Wife (33 page)

“You will remember us, when you are
gosudarina,
” the elder of the peasants calls out to her. It is the first time she hears the word “empress” in relation to herself. If nothing else, he probably thinks he lucked into the best deal of the year.

“Of course I will,” she says. “And you will be generously compensated.”

The group splits a laugh among them. She is not sure if they doubt her identity, her future possible status, or if they have given up any hopes of benevolent monarchic intervention in their daily lives. They are piled back on the cart now, peeling apples.

Alexis climbs into the box alongside the driver and she is left to her own excited thoughts. She slices the remainder of the day into pieces, rehearsing each individual chunk, branding it into her brain. She does not allow herself to think of her old self, little Sophie, the comet, a stranger in a foreign land.

Just as the first cupolas of the capital come into view, a carriage is speeding toward them. Gregory, with Prince Bariatinsky at his side, waves to them from an open door. They are resplendent in full Guards regalia as if on their way to a coronation.

“Get in, get in,” they call to her.

She and Alexis are enfolded into their carriage, and they are traveling briskly on the road. Wedged among these three men, their scent of perspiration mingled with perfume, she realizes this is real. It is happening. Her fate is about to be realized.

Gregory can barely settle in his seat. He alternates blowing into his hands, staring out the window, and gazing at her with fiery excitement. At first, everyone is talking at once, adding his own interpretation to Passek's arrest.

“Stop,” she commands. “The past is history. Let us go over the future instead.” The men had forgotten her; they seem ruffled at her interruption as if the plan did not culminate with her at their helm.

“Forgive us,
matushka
,” says Alexis, and they become men again, plotting the contours of the day. They would start with the soldiers, of course, then move to church and palace. The Guards are theirs to be seized; Gregory has prepared them for the coup. The archbishop of Novgorod would anoint her in front of the cathedral on Nevsky Prospekt. She should stick to the narrative they have prepared, her ironclad reason for rule—her life and, more important, that of the heir to the Russian throne are in danger. Deposing the emperor would have to be done for her son's sake, as well as that of the country. If necessary, she can point to many of Peter's disastrous foreign policy decisions: the absurd war with Denmark that everyone decried, the sentimental return of hard-won Prussian territories.

As the carriage rolls into the city, she rehearses the plea, gradating her voice with the proper modesty.
It is not for my own sake, but that of my country and its holy Orthodox belief that I throw myself at your mercy.

“Perfect,” Gregory says. He plants a fervent kiss on her hand but it feels like he is kissing an idea not a woman. Already, she can feel her very hand becoming less tangible, less fleshlike. The steeples of Moscow burst into view, strips of bright colors and bulbous shapes of cupolas.

They are barely in the soldiers' barracks, when she sees men running toward the carriage, as if timing their footsteps to the drummer boy's instrument. They are batting their hands on the side of the carriage, howling her name.

“I should be on a horse,” she breathes to no one in particular. “High above them so they can see me.”

Before she knows it, she is climbing out to a fresh wave of cheers, a mass of uniforms engulfing her. She feels hands wrapped around her feet and ankles. Rows and rows of eyes and mouths are working in unison. A tide of affection rises in her and the correct words tumble out, mellifluous, directly from the heart.
I throw myself at your mercy.
Applause erupts and there are a few hearty shouts of
Gosudarina!
The colonel pushes his way toward her, bends before her with his cross. He is calling her by yet another new name: Catherine the Second of Russia. There is no reversal now, no sending herself to Zerbst. She will die on this land, and all these men inflate her with a feeling akin to immortality, a rising, impenetrable fullness. She is hustled onto a horse. A queen in black must be in full view as the leader of armies.

The wide plaza of the Nevsky Prospekt is already filled with onlookers who must have heard the news. Children are being raised onto window frames, the elderly hoisted up for a better view. Benedictions are being flung at her from all directions. Now in addition to the blue of military uniforms, there is the black of priests, chaplains, the ordinary curious. She can feel Gregory and Alexis firm behind her, the wall of their bodies pushing her onward to the church. The ringing in her skull turns out to be church bells, bringing with them more people. She feels herself floating above her own body as if an observer to another's coronation.

Inside the church, the archbishop Dmitry is already awaiting her, his eagerness no less urgent than her own. She can barely hear his voice when he pronounces her sovereign—
gosudarina
—for all the bellowing in the aisles, and outside the church. She surveys them all, the soldiers shedding the hated Prussian uniforms Peter imposed on them, onlookers stumbling in from the street, women with babies pressed to their chests. Behind her, the wall of icons gleams gold, saints nodding in approval. The archbishop is administering one oath of allegiance after the next, a few dissenters are reprimanded. She is an actor on the largest of stages, aware of her appearance—free of makeup, lacking in adornments, her hair unpowdered. She affects the right pose, humbled yet deserving. A true
gosudarina
. A deserving
gosudarina
. A
gosudarina
selected by God himself.

“The heir,
matushka,
” Alexis whispers when the ceremony is over. She nods. From now on, they communicate by muscle memory, like a string of dockworkers emptying a vessel. To capture a country, one needs to complete each step: military, political, divine. The Winter Palace is next. She must publicly enact the reunion with a son she never sees, to confirm the final image of ascension. To play it safe, protect herself against dissenters who will point to her foreign birth, she decides to hoist up Paul and declare herself regent, the caretaker of the country until he comes of age. As a German with no dynastic right to the Russian monarchy, this will be the moderate route. No one will dare argue with Peter's deposing.

Once she leaves the church, order breaks down at her horse's side. Pushing hordes are creating panic in the streets. A man screams as he is trampled. It frightens her, how quickly revolt can be stoked when masses of people gather. She gulps away dread—what if she is torn to shreds?—and proceeds down Nevsky Prospekt.

She had never been more than a guest here, she thinks when the familiar palace comes into view. The sight of it tweaks at her insides. The empress thought her invisible, a silent womb. She stops before the front staircase, taking in its small deteriorations. Then she begins to climb. Once inside, her eyes adjust from throbbing morning light to the palace's dank interior.

“Where is he?”

But he is already being brought to her, the boy in nightdress, frantically blinking off sleep. She can see he has been briefly informed in the warm nest of his bed, but he still looks terrified at the human swell surging behind her. He is craning his neck nervously for a glimpse through the gates. Her son is frail and bony and overwhelmed. She reaches for him.

“Come, Paul, come to your mother.” How odd to say the word. None of her pregnancies, successful or otherwise, inspired in her the idea of
mother
. And he may as well be a stranger, this eight-year-old child quivering away from her, clutching at Panin.

“Take him,” Panin says, unfurling the boy's fingers from his arm. He barely looks down at Paul, his gaze firmly on Catherine, on the outline of her black dress, the sweep and color of her natural hair. “You are very regal today, very beautiful. You know the world awaits you, don't you?”

“Yes, I know.” And she does believe it. They are dragging the child toward the front windows, his feet almost elevated off the floor.

Panin is firm. “Then do what you need to do. What we need you to do.”

She grabs her son in a bearlike embrace and thrusts him out onto the balcony. For a moment mother and son are conjoined breath, openmouthed, flaring nostrils, chests rising and falling in rhythm. Her name is being yelled down below and she yanks herself out of this alignment with Paul. Remember, she tells herself, the people are branding you into their memories—each move, the very tiniest of acts, declares your intentions. She must make them unambiguous. She glances up above the heads of the crowd into the vastness of the sky as if in search of that comet to tell her what to do. The quiver in her arms reminds her that time is passing, and if she does not act, a choice will be made for her. She must decide right now. Regent or queen, queen or regent. Or dead.

Instead of raising Paul ahead of herself, instead of triumphantly holding him aloft, she drops him to the ground and remains standing alone, framed by the balcony. A fresh wave of cheering erupts. The message is clear. It is not her son who is emperor, but she who is
gosudarina.
She will be ruler even if she spends the rest of her days convincing the country that she belongs here. She feels the boy clawing at her dress like a puppy who has been briefly loved and discarded. He is trying to scramble to his feet. His muscles are tensed under the white shirt, she can feel the ropelike ripple of them. But she keeps a hand on the windswept peak of his head, both as a calming mechanism and also to keep him down, out of sight. It is not yet his turn. She alone must be mounted in their consciousness.

“Ura!”
they shout in approval.

She waits a few beats, then retreats into the palace. Her mind is already settling on the next act—gaining the unequivocal support of the administration—but then notices that he is still out there, her son, cowering on the balcony planks. She feels a momentary ache. An ancient instinct awakens in her of protection, the desire to wrap him, swaddle him into a cocoon. He looks pitiful in his fetal curl, hands squashed at his ears. She turns back, starts to say,
Do not be frightened,
or at least perceive the plump curve of his jowl, offer a pat on the shoulder. The residue of his childish freshness remains on her fingers. But Panin gets there first, bending over the boy.

“Wait, let me speak with him,” she tries. But he is being shuttled away, out of sight, the faintest blur of white nightdress before he is gone. And Gregory is back at her side.

“The Senate and Holy Synod are waiting.”

He directs her toward the rows of waiting men. A lump in her throat persists, and cannot be budged. She experiences a feeling of overlooking something, and she flattens the folds of her dress in search for it. A stinging prick of the chest? A momentary anxiety? Little Paul is long gone now, his voice too.

Her hand is being pressed, a surge once again pulling her, this time into the cabinet. In that meeting, she will repeat the words she rehearsed in the carriage. That she, guided by divine forces, decided to sacrifice herself for a country being steered in the wrong direction. Because no one else can accomplish this task, it has become her divine duty to save Russia from its dangerous course.
Overcome by the imminent peril with which our faithful subjects were threatened, and seeing how sincere and express their desires on this matter were: we, putting our trust in the Almighty and his divine justice, have ascended the sovereign imperial throne of all the Russians, and have received a solemn oath of fidelity from all our loving subjects.

There, that is done. She turns to her lover. What next on today's agenda?

Oh, yes, she remembers. Inform her husband that he is no longer the emperor.

 

Tanya

PRESENT DAY

As a specialist, you never sleep the night before an auction. Your mind constantly revolves around opportunities you may have missed, clients whose bidding power you've overlooked, bidders who need extra prompting to get into the fray. The day has barely cracked when I hail a cab to the office, standing outside in ridiculously high heels, Central Park tinged a hooded blue.

Before seven, and I'm already at the office checking faxes on who has registered to bid, which lots are amassing interest. The business day has long ago opened in Moscow and I'm busy working the phones, wheedling clients into bidding. The trick is getting the players on the phone. I entice them with the possibility of a deal, knowing that once they register, they won't be able to stop. There's a primal instinct of competition pumping through their blood. Once they've set their minds on a particular lot, a client can go up two and a half million in five minutes.

“Maybe there's a good reserve on the Nesterov, Vitya,” I say, casually. “You know I can't tell you the number, but trust me, it's worth getting on the phone for. Shall we try it?”

For example, I know Vitya's personal tics, his rivalries with my other clients, his impulsive decision to grab at yet one more thing. He wants to be wooed and enticed, because he's itching to enter the game and win. I offer him a buyer's premium as an extra incentive. And behind my shoulder stands the specter of Marjorie, holding the sheet for last season's underperforming auction. If I don't succeed in roping in Vitya, I'll probably lose my job. Luckily, he trusts me.

“If you think so, Tanya,” he says, and agrees to go higher.

And I'm forced to do the same for Volodia and Grisha and Borya and, finally, Sasha Medovsky. But with Sasha, I do something I've never dreamed of doing in the past, something that goes against the very instincts of an auction specialist, not to mention one who has just received the unequivocal news that a client's desired lot is bona fide authentic. I insert a seed of doubt.