He had seen the pink dawn over Île de la Cité, the blossom-lined paths of the Tuileries, the tamed cranes in the
ménagerie de Versailles
. The birds follow the visitors there, he had said, for they want to be noticed.
“Do you know what else he said, Varenka? ‘Just say the word, Sophie, and I’ll take you to see them.’ ”
Catherine and Stanislav. When he smiled, she smiled; when she frowned, he became thoughtful. So why do I also remember sadness?
Accounts of the Lisbon earthquake were trickling in every day, hushed, impossible. A hundred thousand perishing amid the debris. Homes crumbling, crushing those inside. Bodies piling up, mountains of twisted limbs, cast aside by the surgeons as they tried to stave off gangrene.
“How can it be, Maman?” Darya asked me, afraid to fall asleep. “How can the earth move?”
I held her in my arms, wishing her never to know the swiftness with which life can turn upside down. I whispered promises that earthquakes did not come to St. Petersburg, that such grand upheavals happened far, far away. “I’m here with you,” I promised my daughter. “I won’t go anywhere.”
It soothed her for a few days, but then came the night when she woke up screaming, “Papa is far, far away!”
Nothing I did or said that night would console her. It was Masha’s voice that finally lulled her to sleep with the old song she used to sing to Egor when he was little:
In the night, when the seas are rolling in
In the night, when the stars are shining clear
All Catherine’s escapades that winter began with furtive signs exchanged among her small coterie led by Prince Naryshkin. A tap on the right shoulder at the opera, a beauty spot on the chin. No words were necessary. She perfected the art of feigning fatigue, locking the door to her bedroom, demanding to be left alone, so that she could sneak out in disguise.
Whenever I could, I helped her. But there was only one more time that December that I accompanied Catherine to the Naryshkins’ parlor.
Stanislav was already there when we arrived. I caught a whiff of violet water, mixed with snuff. Behind him, Sir Charles hovered.
“Look at them, Varvara Nikolayevna,” the British Ambassador said to me, drawing me aside.
Catherine and Stanislav had moved across the room, into the shadows beyond the circle of candlelight. That night her disguise was a simple maid’s dress, hair tied into a knot, so plain-looking beside Stanislav’s elegant court jacket, the color of ripe aubergines. Deep purple, I decided, suited him better than white and silver. Their heads touched.
At least they were away from the palace, I thought.
“Our children,” Sir Charles called them.
It was impossible not to look.
Outside the parlor, the Neva, frozen solid, snowbanks lining the streets; inside, the warmth of the tiled stoves, the smell of melting wax, and the flurry of voices. It didn’t surprise me how quickly the talk turned to the news from Lisbon.
“Fate,” I recall Stanislav saying that evening in the Naryshkin parlor. “The divine plan for which there is no remedy.”
“But surely God teaches us lessons,” a voice argued.
Stanislav shook his head. “Lessons for which we are not ready and which we cannot comprehend. In spite of all the signs, premonitions, the movements of the stars and planets.”
“Let’s drink to ignorance, then,” Prince Naryshkin quipped, raising his glass. “My virtue of choice.” At the other end of the room, someone giggled.
Catherine was shaking her head.
“No,” she said.
Too loud
, I thought.
Too impatient
.
There was a hush.
“A catastrophe is not merely an act of blind fate,” she continued. “And we
can
learn from it.”
Her eyes brightened as she spoke; her voice soared. Her argument was simple: Those in Lisbon on the day of the quake were doomed, but not by fate. Mankind could think ahead, prepare for contingencies. If those who planned the city believed in smaller settlements, in living closer to nature, in lighter houses, evacuation would have been possible.
“It is in the human power,” she insisted, “to limit suffering.”
“Hear, hear,” Sir Charles echoed. The British Ambassador, too, believed in the power of human will. “We have faculties of reason,” he said. “We have traits of character we can change.”
I watched Stanislav’s cheeks flush. “Fate does not free us from trying,” he countered, “but we are not omnipotent. Think of the stray bullet that ends a soldier’s life. How can his will stop it?”
Voices rose, some puzzled, some adamant. “What if he ducks?” I heard someone ask. Someone quacked in response. Someone else called for more civility.
I was no longer listening.
Was it will that took me out of the bookbinding workshop on Vasilevsky Island into this fashionable salon filled with people for whom my father would have been nothing but a tradesman? Or fate? Was it will or fate that placed me, a bookbinder’s daughter, among these perfumed counts and countesses? What would I hear about myself if I were listening through the panels of their elegant salons? For them, was I a nobody always trying to put herself in the Grand Duchess’s good graces? A guard’s wife desperate for advancement? A spy?
The parlor shrank and expanded, dimmed and brightened. Unwanted, other thoughts rushed in, too. Was I Elizabeth’s only tongue in this room? Was anyone else watching? Reporting the many indiscretions committed so very recklessly? And to whom? To the Empress? To the Chancellor?
In a corner Lev Naryshkin was amusing his guests with a crude imitation of Elizabeth’s walk, his chin held up to hide the “turkey’s throat.” Who was making note of those who were laughing?
“You’ve grown pale, Barbara.” Stanislav’s voice broke into my thoughts. “Is anything the matter?”
Barbara, he called me. My Polish name.
“Be careful,” I whispered, dizzy from my thoughts.
“I am careful,” he replied.
He knew what could happen to a foreigner who lets himself go too far with the Grand Duchess of All the Russias. He knew of Elizabeth’s wrath. Of the knout that breaks the back. He knew of the frozen fields of Siberia.
He brushed my hand with his. He smiled.
No one will find out, I promised Catherine. Not the Empress, not Bestuzhev. Catherine and Stanislav became my secret.
Alone with the Empress, watching her cradle Catherine’s son in her arms, I began mentioning Lev Naryshkin’s name.
“He meows,” I said, “before he knocks on the Grand Duchess’s door. This is their secret sign. That’s when she lets him in.” I wished the Empress to believe that Naryshkin was Catherine’s lover. Stanislav, I wished her to think, was of no importance. Merely a foreign guest in awe of Russian splendors. Amazed and humbled by everything he saw.
“Should I tell the Grand Duchess that Your Highness is not pleased?”
“No, Varvara. Let her play.”
There was more, I told the Empress. Lev Naryshkin was a philanderer. Catherine was on course for another bitter disappointment; she was wasting her time on the intrigues of the boudoir. Time, I hinted, she will not have for politics.
Elizabeth listened, still deciding what use all this was to her, what sordid details she could still get out of me. I could see it in her eyes, watery blue, shiny, studying me.
I thought how the guards raged when they heard that at the
banya, Das Fräulein
now called Catherine “a scheming bitch.”
“She slips out at night in disguise,” I told the Empress. “In a guard’s uniform … or in a maid’s dress. He waits for her in the street. They go to his sister’s palace. She never even asks me about her son now.… She told the Grand Duke she had a headache and could not visit him. She doesn’t sleep much.”
Elizabeth looked me up and down, making her calculations. This is how it was: Women had to be watched. The one overlooked could be the most treacherous of all.
A soft, malicious chuckle, spiced with jealousy. “And what does my nephew Peter say about Naryshkin’s latest conquest?”
“Peter doesn’t know.”
“Then he should.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” I agreed without hesitation. “I’ll make sure the Grand Duke is informed.”
Another pause, another chance to slip in a few chosen words. I spoke of good omens: Darya’s dream of a baby with a golden crown. A baby just like the Grand Duke Paul. The future revealed?
“Only to the eyes of innocent children,” Elizabeth said and sighed.
The mere mention of the baby Grand Duke always altered the Empress’s voice, made it gentle, unsure, almost puzzled. The Tsarevitch smiled in his sleep. He cried when she picked him up.
In his great-aunt’s arms, Paul blew bubbles of spit and pulled at her hair. He was declared musical, like his father, for he moved his hips to the sounds of the fiddle as he crawled and he loved banging cabinet doors. He was brave, for he no longer shrieked with fear when the nursemaids sat him on the big rocking horse that stood in the center of the nursery.
Catherine was not allowed to witness her son’s first smile, nor when he raised his head or sat up by himself. In the first year of Paul’s life, she had seen him nine times only, and never alone. Her presence did not make his face light up with recognition. Her voice did not lull him to sleep.
“You cannot do anything about it,” I told her. “But you can bear it in mind.”
A bargain had been forced upon her. As long as the Grand Duchess did not try to take her son back, Elizabeth would let her have her trivial indiscretions.
In the winter of 1755, Catherine no longer cried about it.
One morning, in the first week of December, I entered Catherine’s bedroom and smelled the sweet scent of violet water. This is when I knew that I had not foreseen everything.
“Was Stanislav here?” I felt my throat tighten.
“He loves me, Varenka,” Catherine said, her eyes besotted, glowing. “And I love him.”
“Oh, Catherine! When did he come here?”
“Lev brought him. He pushed him in.” She giggled, her hand resting on her lips. “It was all his fault.”
She sprawled on the bed, in her cream-colored satin nightdress with pink ribbons, her black hair loose and tangled.
“Did anyone see him?”
“No, Varenka,” she answered. “He left through there.” She pointed to the window.
I prayed Stanislav was wearing a hooded cloak that hid his face.
I didn’t tell Catherine of the attic above the rooms, the loose boards that made it easy to see what was happening below. I scrutinized the bedroom for the traces of the night. The stained sheets, that sweet smell of his eau de cologne.
My face must have revealed my terror.
“It was late. No one saw him, Varenka. There is no need to fret!”
I sprayed the sheets with Catherine’s own perfume. I made her sit at her escritoire and write a note to Lev Naryshkin.
Beloved friend … your most precious visit … still thinking of you
. It would be left on the desk for the maids to see.
She watched me, bemused, shaking her head.
“If we are lucky,” I said, shivering, “we might fool the spies—this time. But only just.”
There is nothing that divides the court more than the frenzy of approaching war. Prussia, lean and hungry, was casting its eyes toward its neighbors. Everyone agreed that this was dangerous for Russia, for it upset the balance of power. But this was the extent of agreement. Depending on whom one listened to, restoring this balance called for different steps.
Arguments sparked.
In the New World the British were relentlessly pushing the French from the colonies. Should Russia cast its lot with France—as the Shuvalov faction advocated—or should she sign a treaty with England, as the Chancellor argued? Who would be more likely, when the time comes, to help clip soaring Prussian wings?
The inner rooms of the Imperial Suite turned into a war cabinet, each faction trying to sway Elizabeth’s mind. Ordered to keep all visitors away, to watch out for anyone trying to sneak within earshot, I heard muffled voices behind closed doors. Bestuzhev’s, Vorontzov’s, the Shuvalovs’. Angry words, threatening, pleading, faltering into resigned silence:
a deal … a treaty … salvation … treason
.
The Chancellor was winning. With Sir Charles’s help, the Russian treaty with England had been negotiated, written and ready for the royal and imperial signatures. But as the papers were couriered between London and St. Petersburg, another seismic shift ripped the shadowy mesh of diplomatic possibilities. Without warning, the King of England withdrew from an alliance with Russia and offered his support to Prussia and Frederick the Great.
The palace seethed with injured pride, and Elizabeth hotly declared the British Ambassador an unwelcome guest.
The Shuvalovs rejoiced.
The Empress was getting restless. Was it because of the British treachery? I wondered. Or the inevitability of battles that could be lost? In one of her dreams, someone whose face she could not see handed her a note.
You have taken what was not yours to take. Your days are numbered. Russia will pay for your sins
.
“It was him. It was Ivanushka.” She muttered the name of the deposed Emperor. “The guards say that lights and shadows come to him, that he sees the future.”
At midnight, having sent her Favorite away to his rooms, she demanded plates of food:
selyodka
, the fat herring from the White Sea; Russian bread smeared with Altai honey; sugared plums dipped in brandy; nuts in drops of chocolate.
Unable to sleep, she wanted to hear of Ksenia, the heartbroken young widow who gave away all her possessions, put on her late husband’s uniform, and roamed the streets of St. Petersburg. Massaging Elizabeth’s swollen feet, I told her stories of Ksenia’s miracles: A baker from Mieshchansky Street who gave her some bread began to prosper himself. A hackney driver who offered her a lift made more money in a day than he had made all month. A mother followed Ksenia with her little son, begging her to bless him, and when she did, the child recovered instantly from rickets.
My rewards were a sigh, a few words muttered under her breath, or her imperial hand, wrinkled and swollen, extended so that I could kiss it before she sent me away.