The Mirrored World (16 page)

I turned into another street and another, and then she was there, not fifty feet away, walking in my direction and singing some tune. Trailing behind her was a gang of rough boys. They were throwing mud at her. Burbling her private singsong, she tried to disregard their persecution, but when a hard clot hit her in the back of the head it jolted her from her music. She turned and railed at them, thrashing her stick, and chased them back up the street like a fury. I ran after her, shouting her name, and caught her by the arm.

“Xenia,” I cried.

She was rocking back and forth on her heels. Her countenance was a study of grief and her lips made fast little burbling noises, a pattern of guttural utterances that were not quite language.

“Andrei Feodorovich?”

My voice did not reach her nor did she respond to my touch on her arm.

After a time, the rhythm of her babbling slowed and began to separate into words.

. . .
to help me Lord make speed to save me Lord make haste to help me Lord make speed to . . .

Over and over, for I do not know how long a space of time, these same words tumbled like a fast brook, broken only by her breath. Gradually, the words became too soft to hear and only her lips continued to move. Her rocking slowed and at last she grew calm.

“Xenia?”

Her gaze rested on the air. “Listen,” she said.

I heard nothing out of the usual. “What? What is it?” I asked.

She did not answer, but closed her eyes. I closed my eyes as well and heard the angry squabbling of a cock, and at a farther distance the faint clattering of wheels and hooves on cobblestone. Perhaps I had misunderstood. I opened my eyes again. Xenia remained just as she had been, a pleasant smile on her lips, like a person lost in reverie.

My poor Xenia. Had she wandered here in these terrible streets all these years, too addled to find her way home? Had something happened to her to cause her to forget herself, to forget where she lived? She had not seemed to know the house when she saw it, or Masha either. She had not called me by name. Perhaps we were strangers in her eyes.

“Xenia?” My voice seemed loud as shattering glass. “We cannot stay here in the street. Let us search out a droshky, shall we?”

She consented to return to the house, and when we had arrived there, I tried to impress on her that this was her home. She need not ever go back to that place. We cleaned the mud from her and washed it from her garments. Masha roasted a duck for our dinner, and she ate it with relish.

When she had eaten, she stood.

“You may have your old bed,” I said. “I have put fresh linens on it.” I reminded her of the night when she had bequeathed this same bed to me, but if she recalled this, she did not show it. Just as she had done on the previous day, she said that she was needed, and behaved like one who has an appointment to which she dare not arrive late.

I grasped her hand and urged her to sit again. “You are needed
here
.
Please
.”

“I have a place to be.” She said it with good humor but was resolute and would not sit.

I knew not what else to do. I let go her hand. “What place is that?”

“Oh, you know, with God.”

“With God. And where is He?” I pressed. If she would go again, at least I should know where to find her.

Assuming a frantic disposition, she mimicked pulling something apart in her hands. “Where is it? Where is the onion’s heart?” she wailed in mock despair. “Nothing but onion, onion, onion.” She chuckled and invited me to share her merriment.

When I could not, her eyes softened with compassion.

“It is all good. All of it. Listen.”

And then she turned and was gone.

A
gain and again, I retrieved her from the streets of St. Matthias parish. I found her huddled beneath the eaves of the church, or in some lonely alley or stable, out of the wind perhaps but without even the sheepskin and stockings and boots I had bought for her. Even when the snows came, she remained out in the open. That she did not catch her death is, I suppose, all the proof one might want that she was indeed blessed by God, but it frightened me to see that her feet were black and swollen.

“You think them ugly?” She sat next to me in the droshky, wiggling her toes as though she were delighted by them.

“It’s not so much their appearance, but I fear you shall lose them to frostbite.”

She shook her head. “They are hard as a dog’s pads. Feel.” She lifted up a foot that I might touch it. When I hesitated, she barked and made growling noises, then laughed at her jest.

“God lives in my feet. They do not feel the cold.”

Not feeling the cold is the mark of frostbite, but I knew there was nothing to be gained by this argument. I might offer her yet another pair of shoes, but if she agreed to take them they would only end up on someone else’s feet. By slow measures, I allowed that my love would not keep her here, and I could not be her jailer. Instead, I brought food and clothing to her wherever I found her, until I saw that she did not need this help either. I had this small consolation: for one who lived in the streets and on the charity of her fellow man, Xenia did not want for anything if only she would have it. She would not accept alms unless perchance the coin was stamped with the image of Saint George on horseback—and taking this she promptly gave it away again—but because she was thought to be holy, wherever she stopped on her irregular rounds she was tempted with food. She might walk into a merchant’s shop and with impunity help herself to a pickle from the barrel or a fistful of raisins. If she deigned to eat, the merchant believed he would have good luck for the remainder of the day. Similarly, drivers vied to offer her rides so that they might get wealthy customers afterwards.

At irregular intervals separated by a day or a month, she began to call here of her own will. Just as she used to when she still answered to Xenia, she often brought with her a beggar or unfortunate to be fed or otherwise tended to.

It was never only to visit; always she came with some pretext that she was needed. One afternoon, she arrived by coach and burst through the door like the fire brigade, shouting, “Tell Masha to put on the kettle! I am here!” just as though I had urgently sent for her.

I had not, of course, but as it happened, her visit aligned with my feeling my loneliness acutely. I had that morning passed the shop on Galernaya Street where I had used to buy Gaspari’s tea. I had turned and gone inside. The merchant, a man in his middle years, was brown and thin as a tea leaf himself. I imagined him to be of Mongol blood, a cousin perhaps of one of the traders who led the camel caravans up from Peking on the tea road. It was said to be a journey of more than a year through mountainous terrain, and breathing in the aromas of the shop I could not help but call up exotic scenes of men dressed in rough furs and turbans and huddled round a smoking campfire, their beasts laden with the precious cargo.

He remembered me, though it had been a very long time, and asked after the health of my husband. I cannot say why, but I did not want to tell him that Gaspari had died, and so I bought a small packet of tea. For the length of my walk home, I had reproached myself for such foolishness. You are as wasteful as Leonid Vladimirovich, I thought, but you do not have a daughter or son who will take you in when you become a pauper. I had made myself miserable with worry and self-loathing.

Now, I offered Xenia the more comfortable chair, but she preferred to stand at the stove. She held her gnarled hands close over the tiles to thaw them. Masha brought the tea, and the room filled with a cottony quiet.

Ours was an odd kind of visiting. She could not be engaged by idle gossip, for what happened yesterday or the previous week did not hold her interest. I had learnt not to ask after her health and she did not ask after mine; the body and its various aches and failings did not concern her. Living so entirely in the present moment had also made her immune to either expectation or worry for the future, so there could be no talk of civic affairs. If I told her of what I was reading, her attention drifted and she would begin to hum.

Indeed, she had so entirely lost the art of conversing that we sat for the better part of an hour without a word passing between us. Strange as it may seem, though, I was not bothered by this. A wonderful peacefulness came to me merely by my being in her presence.

“Do you remember Leonid Vladimirovich Berevsky and his daughter?” I said at last. “Do you remember the evening you rescued her little dog from dancing?”

She gave no sign to indicate whether she did or did not but only sat in that way of hers, smiling benignly.

The steam from my glass unfurled the scents of smoke and camel’s sweat. I looked at her and she at me, and in that moment it did not matter whether she recalled any of our shared past or what we had been to one another; in her gaze, I felt utterly and inescapably beheld.

Chapter Fifteen

I
had passed six years as a widow when Kuzma Zakharovich died. Perhaps it was only to observe the forms that caused Nadya to send me the notice, or perhaps the years had softened her bitterness towards me. I went to the house the next morning.

There was a wreath on the door and many persons already in the anteroom. I supposed several of them to be Kuzma Zakharovich’s children. I looked about for my aunt but did not spy her, nor anyone else I knew. But Nadya was there with the priest and several others, in the next room where her husband lay. In the threshold, I watched her leaning on the arm of a young officer of perhaps eighteen or twenty years. She was weeping. Though she had always had a capacity to act what was needed, her grief looked genuine. It emboldened me. I went to her and offered my condolences. She seemed faintly puzzled to see me but was courteous and introduced me to her son, who was a child when I had last seen him.

“And the baby, little Sasha, is he here also?”

She pointed him out, and two others who had come after him. I confess, I felt a prick of envy, but I was glad for her, too, that she had children to cushion her grief. I admired them to her, and she accepted my compliments.

I asked Nadya if her sister knew of Kuzma Zakharovich’s death.

Nadya’s mouth hardened. “To what address should I have sent the notice? And to what name?” She did not wait on an answer. “It does not matter. Surely she knew of his death even before I did. Is this not her reputation?”

I agreed that it was.

Xenia was known widely to have predicted the death of our beloved Empress Elizabeth and again, more recently, the murder of the Empress’s predecessor, Ivan Antonovich. Poor Ivan. While but an infant, he had been unseated from the throne by Elizabeth Petrovna and then locked away in a dungeon for twenty years. It was said by some that his confinement had deprived him of his wits. And then to be murdered in his cell by his guards, the only companions he had known all his days. On the heels of this sad rumor had come the further rumor that Xenia had predicted it. On the day before his death, it was said, she had walked the streets of her parish, weeping loudly and shrieking of blood.

I was reminded of her dreams. Of her husband’s death and the blood pooling round his head. Of her subsequent horror at the sight of her own blood. But the general populace could not know these things. They did not know Xenia, only the holy fool called Andrei Feodorovich.

I
left Nadya’s house and walked. I altered my route home that I might pass by the old Winter Palace, which was then being dismantled. It was open to the sky, the roof and walls stripped down to the timbers, and birds swooped in and out of what had been the grand ballroom and the reception rooms and private quarters.

The old opera house attached to one end of the palace was still intact; it was being saved for some other use. As I watched, laborers emerged from the open back wall, carting rubbish to the street—heaps of old rope, moldering canvas, and a ceramic shell I recognized, one of several that had once hid the footlights. I followed a laborer inside.

The interior was dim and musty and sadly decayed. Emptied of its chairs and draperies and gilded fixtures, it was like a great beast being stripped to the bone. A few warped backdrops and set pieces leaned against the side walls, and one of these was familiar to me. Most of the paint had flaked from it, but the scene still ghosted from the canvas: stands of palms and hanging flowers, a plashing fountain, faded peacocks and tigers and, like bookends with their trunks raised, a pair of elephants. It was the garden of Poro, the Indian King.

The memory of Gaspari’s ethereal voice slipped between my ears, sharp as a newly honed knife.

As I stood in the empty theatre, I remembered that I had now been widowed in almost equal measure to the time I had been married. I was not quite thirty-six years of age, and years stretched before me, years that I would have need to endure without him or children who might remind me of him.

I recalled Xenia saying that this emptiness was sweet. Perhaps the saints are right in thinking that the depth of one’s love is measured by the capacity for suffering, yet one cannot help but question those who court it with such fervor. Even Christ, who submitted willingly to his suffering, first prayed that the cup might be taken from him.

T
he next week, as I was sitting at my mending, I heard the sound of Xenia’s stick upon the stair. I was glad it was she, for my bleakness on the day of Kuzma Zakharovich’s funeral had not left me. I was taken aback, then, when she crossed the threshold shouting.

“Get up!” she scolded. “Why do you sit and sew buttons when your son waits on you?”

“I am Dasha,” I reminded her. “I do not have a son. Here.” I set aside my mending and patted the cushion beside me. “Calm yourself. I will tell Masha to make us tea.”

But she would not sit. “There has been an accident. Your son,” she insisted, shaking her head in violent little jerks. “Your son.”

I wondered if she had confused my door with someone else’s. I knew she visited others; stories trailed her erratic rounds, and among these were accounts of her coming to a house with tidings of death or illness. I could not entirely discount the possibility that somewhere in Petersburg was a woman looking for her son, and Xenia had brought terrible news of him to the wrong address.

“Hurry,” she commanded, and she turned and went back down the stairs. There was never any arguing against her. I followed.

She had kept a droshky waiting at the door, and the driver conveyed us over to the Petersburgskaya Storona and then to the particular corner where she directed. A carriage was stopped in the middle of the street, and a crowd had gathered round it. Seeing us alight from the droshky, someone recognized Xenia and escorted us into the crush.

At its center, a young woman lay on the ground, moaning. She had been struck by the carriage. Though it was forbidden to go at a gallop within the city, it was a law widely flouted, and these carriages were a menace. The onlookers said she had been knocked down as it flew wide round the corner, and she was trampled beneath the wheels. There was much blood, and one of the woman’s arms lay at an unnatural angle.

However, it was not only from her injuries that she suffered. The woman was large with a child, and the blow had jarred it in her womb. They had tried already to carry her from the street, but the woman was too broken to endure being moved. It seemed evident she would die. Because no one knew her, the woman’s family could not be located, but a midwife had been found to do what she could.

I think some in the crowd hoped that Xenia might save her, for they parted to allow us to come next to the woman, and even the midwife did not object when Xenia squatted down and, rocking on her heels, began to whisper soft noises near the woman’s ear.

The midwife had made a tent of the woman’s skirts and said to me, “Hold up your cloak. At the least, she should not be exposed to all these eyes.” I did as I was told. It was a small mercy, perhaps, that the woman was too far gone to take notice of those about her. She lay there with her eyes closed, insensible in her pain, by all appearances near death. Then all at once, her face contorted and she arched up and let loose a long, terrible scream, as though she were being torn apart on the rack. The midwife bid her to bear down, though the woman seemed incapable of hearing. When her pains subsided, she panted jaggedly. Xenia’s soft babbling increased.

This continued for what might have been an hour, the woman reviving only when the child stirred within her and caused her to shriek. Increasingly, she was too exhausted even for this and only opened and closed her mouth like a fish. The police came and went away again. The carriage and its occupants left also. Much of the crowd had dispersed and because my arms were too weary, I had long since let the cloak drop.

The woman arched in a final agony, then deflated and went still. “Get the knife from my pack.” The midwife reached back a hand without looking and waggled her fingers. She took it from me. “And the rags as well.” She reached under the woman’s skirts and working there at last extracted a small, bloody mass. She slapped it till a shrill cry broke loose. Then she wiped it clean with the rags and wrapped the scrawny thing in a swath of muslin. She handed me the bundle, no larger or heavier than a loaf of bread, while she finished tending to the poor woman.

Framed in the swaddling was a tiny face, dark and shriveled. Its pale eyes squinted into the light—they were surprisingly patient and knowing. It is perhaps foolish to say it, but I felt I glimpsed some recognition in them—not of me, but of unseen things—as though it had carried into this world some perception from its former realm. I looked to Xenia, but she had gone, slipped away without my notice.

Its mother had died. There being no one to claim the infant, I said I would take it until the family could be found. The weary midwife said it was probably too small to live.

“Poor little motherless thing.” She sighed. “It’s probably just as well it returns to God.”

It was already too late for me to share this view.

For the safety of his soul, I had him baptized at once. I hired a wet nurse, and then we waited to see if he would last the night. He did, and the next day as well, and my anxiety for him lessened by fractions as each day passed. A notice appeared in the
Gazette
of the accident, the death of the woman, and of the surviving infant. I anticipated the grieving husband or grandmother who would arrive at my door. I imagined, too, how their sorrow might be a little lessened when I put this child in their arms. But despite my noble intentions, I was vastly relieved when many weeks had gone by without such a scene. For a year or two after, though, I carried in my breast an apprehension that was awakened by every knock on my door.

I did not name him straightaway, for I did not yet believe he was mine to name. Having need to call him something, I called him Matvey, gift of God. I thought of the son whom God gave to Sarah in her old age. Sarah laughed at God’s messenger when he said she would bear a son. She was ninety-nine years old, who would believe such a thing? And who would believe that the widow of a eunuch might also become a mother? But when the child is delivered and put into your arms, how can you continue to scoff?

I will grant it is possible that Xenia may have come upon the carriage accident quite by happenstance. I have considered this myself. She may have perceived that the mother would die from her injuries and then come to fetch me there. Even my poor intellect can conceive an argument against divine interference. But any mother must surely feel as I did when she first holds her child. Against this wondrous and inexplicable goodness, reason is a poor adversary. Matvey was my faith, and I was foolish for him.

When he was older and had need of a patronymic, I gave him Gaspari’s name. I did not deceive him concerning his parentage; of course, he knows we are not his true parents. Still, I think of him as our child, as much ours as if he were from our flesh. I sometimes see Gaspari’s gentleness in him. I see, also, Gaspari’s heightened consciousness of his place outside the tightly drawn circles of society. Without relations to advance his cause, an orphan may breach them, if at all, only by great talents or extraordinary charms. Matvey lacks these—he is like me in this—but he will work at a thing until his back is bent and his fingers raw, and for this reason he has recently found a good position on an estate to the south of Moscow. Though he would not have left Petersburg otherwise, and though he asked me to move there with him, there was no question in the end but that he would go and I would not. We are like two stout Tatar horses: made for the humble work of pulling whatever is yoked to us. This is our way.