The Mirrored World (14 page)

“No.”

In spite of this, I left my place in the line and hired a droshky to take me straightaway to the church in St. Matthias.

We crossed the river and drove until we came to a shabby neighborhood within this poorest of boroughs. Tumbledown wooden houses, shops, and huts were crowded together like broken teeth, seeming to be kept upright only by their leaning against one another. The unpaved streets were a quagmire, with pigs and starving dogs rooting about in the filth. The air was pestilential, and I kept my handkerchief over my face to blunt the stench. When we came upon the church, I leapt down from the droshky and hastily made my way to its steps.

I found no dearth of the afflicted there, but Xenia was not among them, nor did anyone know her name.

The repeated denials, and the sights and smells of this benighted place wore down my resolve and allowed a small, sensible voice within me to be heard.
Why have you come here?
The woman said that it was not Xenia. And there are many in the world by the name of Andrei Feodorovich. Would you be like her, seeking meaning in every coincidence?

Go with your husband to Italy. Everything is dead for you here.

Chapter Thirteen

I
looked out the carriage window as we passed through the gate of the city and were swallowed into the forest. Later, the terrain changed to wintry swamp and meadows, with snow spread like linen over the sleeping earth. Except for a few feathery stands of birch, the panorama, earth to sky, was unbroken and peaceful. How does the soil rest, I wondered, where it is always warm and never dormant? But beside my misgivings was also curiosity. I had conjured pictures of a place that was like Petersburg in summer, but covered in vines, and I had peopled it with the Italians at court. The Italy of my imagination was a land of dark-eyed women and musici.

Gaspari kept up a steady conversation with an aide to the Prince, with whom we shared the carriage. I can only guess at what this aide must have thought privately of us, the Italian musico and his Russian wife, but when traveling one must put aside the scruples that govern one’s choice of company in the city, and Nikolai Yakovlevich was a young man of lenient character, not above being entertained by Gaspari. As I have mentioned, my husband was an excellent gossip, and our departure from Petersburg had freed him of any remaining constraints on his tongue. He felt no need for discretion, for he intended never to return there. His mood was expansive and, fueled by frequent draughts of vodka to keep off the cold, he amused himself and the young man with his appraisals of Petersburg’s fools and fops. When we stopped at an inn for the night, he ordered warm kvas and invited Nikolai Yakovlevich to sit by the stove with him that they might continue their talk.

“This I will say—” He rubbed life back into his hands. “She was strong as a man. No other country could a woman rule. I think it is these winters. It makes the woman . . . what is the word I want?”

Nikolai Yakovlevich smiled genially but was too politic to supply any word.

“Bold,” Gaspari pronounced. “That is it. These Russian woman is like new steel that is put in cold water to harden.” He gauged the young man’s expression and smiled ruefully. “I do not offend by this? Good. I admire. Myself, I was not made for this cold. I am like the little songbird that forget to fly away when the summer ends.”

At Novgorod, we left the road I knew and turned west to the sea. The journey from here to Riga is three long days at a gallop but five at the Prince’s more leisured pace, for he disliked being woken early. When poor horses were all that could be had at a post station, we added yet another day.

By the fourth, Gaspari’s spirits had subdued. He grew listless and quiet. Following Nikolai Yakovlevich’s glance out the window, he said, “White and white and then more white. Not a pretty village even to relieve the—” He coughed into his handkerchief. “
Pardonnez-moi
, to relieve the dullness. If you will travel on to Italy with us, my friend, you shall see such pretty villages.”

On the fifth day, Gaspari gave off talking entirely and huddled quietly under a fur lap robe, jounced out of a sluggish doze every so often by a rough patch of road or a fit of coughing. By the time we arrived in Riga, he was unmistakably ill.

We were to be guests there of the Governor General, in a castle which housed the local administration. It was an ancient, formidable hulk seemingly little changed in centuries. The Governor greeted the Prince and his entourage and escorted us into a gray hall that was more frigid than the out-of-doors. Here he made such ceremony of his welcome that Gaspari, unwrapped from his travel robes, began to shiver and look pale. I thought he might faint and was obliged to ask that he be shown directly to a room.

In spite of its furnishings, the room where he was taken had the appearance of a dungeon. Its dank stone walls were ill-concealed by tapestries and breathed a chill that was not dispelled by the stove in the corner. There was no good in putting him to bed there, so I entreated one of the servants to see that the banya be heated and when this was done took him there that he might sweat out the ill humors. He stayed in the bath almost all of the night and into the next day.

The Prince was to dine that evening with the Governor General, and it had been expected that Gaspari would sing. Much had been made of this, for though the Governor kept a serf orchestra, there was little variety to his entertainments. But when Nikolai Yakovlevich came to inquire after Gaspari, I had to tell him there was no question of it—though my husband’s color was somewhat better, his lungs were still so wet that he had only been able to sleep by being propped upright. In truth, I doubted that he should be well enough to travel the next day.

Nikolai Yakovlevich studied his hands, his mouth twisting thoughtfully. “I regret that the Prince’s chief concern must be the mission entrusted to him.”

His meaning broke over me like a sudden sweat. The Prince would not be inclined to delay his departure on account of an entertainer, more particularly one who could no longer entertain. Nor could we follow at a later time across the Prussian border, not without the diplomatic protection afforded by the crown. If Gaspari could not travel tomorrow, our only recourse would be to remain in Riga until he was recovered and then return to Petersburg.

“Perhaps he will be more rested by morning,” I said.

“We must pin our hopes to that.”

Gaspari would not hear of either staying or turning back. Feeble as he was, he insisted that he should be better on the morrow. “If I must sing for my supper tonight, I will do this also.” He rose and made to dress.

Never before had I seen him risk his voice for any cause. Not even Her Imperial Majesty could command a performance from him if he was sick. Yet, had he been able to dress unassisted, I do not think I could have dissuaded him from his rash course.

As it was, he was overtaken by a fit of coughing before he had gotten further than his stockings and garters. I helped him back into his bed.

“If you would travel, you will need all your rest.”

The next day, we continued on, through Courland and into Lithuania. His condition worsened throughout the day such that by the time we arrived in the evening at an inn, he was shaking with fever and had need to be lifted from the carriage and borne inside. A healer from the nearby village was sent for.

Perhaps the old woman was told something of her patient by the innkeeper’s wife, who brought her to the door. Or perhaps it was only a mistrust of all foreigners that caused her to peer in at Gaspari with such dourness. Whatever the cause, she would not cross the threshold of his room without first seeing the contents of my purse. After tucking the coins into her apron, she unpacked her glass cups and put them on the stove to heat.

“Are we in Prussia?” Gaspari whispered. His eyes were glazed.

“Very close.”

“How many days to Leipzig?”

“I do not know.”

He nodded and his eyes closed again.

The healer came to the bedside with a cup. When she turned back the coverlet and opened Gaspari’s nightshirt to put it on his chest, she started back at the sight of his bosom, and the cup dropped from her hand and shattered. She cried out something in German.

“He is a musico,” I said helplessly. I did not know the German word but doubted it would mean anything to her had I known it. “Look,” I said, and reached down to Gaspari’s throat and touched the cross round his neck. “Tell her,” I said to the mistress, “he was made like this for God’s glory.” The two women exchanged rapid, guttural words before the mistress turned back to me and shook her head.

“He is sick,” I pleaded, and I tried to offer more coins to the old woman, but she backed away from me as if I were a demon, hastily gathered up her paraphernalia, and left.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and rested my hand on his brow. It was hot and dry. A tear leaked from the corner of one of his closed eyes and trickled onto the pillow.

I went from the room and found the mistress in the passage, returning from having let the old woman out. I asked her for the makings of a plaster. “At the least, you can spare my husband some flour and mustard and a rag.” I was trembling with fury. “Oh, and a broom to sweep up the glass. I will not trouble you to sweep it yourself.” She looked on me with a closed and wary expression and shook her head.

“Not even this?” I was beside myself.

“More slow, please,” she said in halting Russian.

“A broom,” I repeated, and made the motions of sweeping. She nodded energetically and quite nearly ran down the passage, returning shortly with what I had asked for. When I nodded and held out my hand for it, she wagged her forefinger, and said something in German.

I followed her back to the room, and as she swept, I tried to think how my paltry words of German might be bent to acquire a plaster.

The Empress Catherine has since made it fashionable to play at dumb charades—my grandchildren love the game—but I doubt even the most skilled player could puzzle out such a challenge. I patted and rubbed my chest and then pointed to Gaspari. She nodded and lifted up her own bosom as if to say, yes, we all three shared this attribute in common. I shook my head and repeated my gestures, first miming scooping up paste into my hand, but fixed as she was on Gaspari’s deformity we made no headway. I asked her if there was someone who spoke Russian. She fetched the innkeeper, I found Nikolai Yakovlevich, and we four at last blundered our way to understanding, whereupon she took me to the larder and gave me what was needed. I returned to my husband.

“I am putting this on your chest,
cuoricino mio
.”

Gaspari’s eyes were closed, and he was past the effort of answering, but he nodded.

“It will be warm.”

I spread the rag over the delicate skin of his chest and then, dipping my fingers into the brown paste, gently smoothed it onto him. When I was finished, I wiped the paste from my hands and continued to smooth out the skin on his brow and temples. I knew each blemish, each line, the blue thread that ran under the skin on his temple, the mole on the lobe of his ear. Each in its familiarity was infinitely dear to me, and I tried to make him feel this through my touch. I ran my fingers down the long slope of his neck to the clavicle, and they came to rest in the hollow of his throat where an Adam’s apple would be on another man. His heart pulsed into my fingers. Memorize this, I thought.

His eyes opened and he reached up to grasp my hand. “I hoped . . .” he began. His voice was low and clotted. “ . . . To see Italy again.”

“I know, dearest. We shall go when you are well again. Nikolai Yakovlevich has said we might try again this summer. He thinks we shall have peace by then.”

“You won’t leave me here?”

“Leave you? No. I would never leave you.”

He was quiet for a moment. With my free hand, I smoothed his hair, felt his scalp.

“But you will go back to Russia,” he said, and then waited for me to understand his meaning. “So I shall return there, too.”

I
observed the departure of the Prince and his entourage from the inn the next day, watching their carriages until they were only a line of black specks on the snow, listening to the last faint sound of harness bells, and then not even that. My German hosts spoke freely between themselves as though I were not there, and this sense of being a spectator to my own life was increased by my understanding nothing of what was said. By the quickness with which they averted their eyes when I looked, I suspected they were discussing my circumstances. This was affirmed by the mistress coming to me and, still speaking in German but more slowly, gesturing to the dining room and making the motion of putting fork to mouth. Certainly, it is a universal instinct to feed those who are troubled. I had no appetite, but courtesy forbade my declining, and so I sat at table with them and obligingly spooned food into my mouth. The husband and wife looked on with approval, and the serving girl watched from the corner.

“Sehr gut,”
I said, though in truth I might have been gumming rubber and paste.
“Danke.”
They urged more on me, but their eyes were so full of sympathy that my throat closed up and I could not swallow any more. After this, I stayed in Gaspari’s room. A coach brought new guests to the inn; I heard the muted sounds of voices and of snow being knocked from boots.

Between the mistress and her servant girl, a steady rotation of this and that was brought to the door. Gaspari’s linens were changed and fresh plasters applied, the wicks trimmed, and the stove banked or fed. Upon leaving, they removed the untouched plates of food. For long hours, there was nothing left for me to do but wipe Gaspari’s brow and listen to the terrible bellows of his breath.

I remember thinking to myself, you are watching your husband die, and in a matter of hours, at most a day or two, he will be gone from this earth. I tested the assertion in my mind, and it seemed both unreal and irrefutable. Tears rose up and puddled in my eyes, but they were like drops leaking through a chink in a dam and gave no relief.

When the moment of his death did come, there was nothing to mark it but a cessation of breath and then a profound stillness. He was there and then, quite visibly, he was not. I marveled at this. Absent the spirit and the promise of heaven in his voice, what remained was so plainly a mask.