The Imperial Wife

by Irina Reyn

  It takes me a minute. “The Order? I can raise it with my consignor but I know she wants to offer it to as many buyers as possible. Sash, just sit tight. Everything will turn out for the best.”

  “How can I sit, Tanyush?” He sighs. “The world, it’s speeding up. It changes with every blink. Time, it is fleeing me.” A wild animal growl erupts in the background. I imagine him calling from a rooftop garden of some over-the-top party featuring tigers and their trainers. (“Sasha had those mimes and acrobats in Monaco, remember? Let’s bring in a few cats from the zoo.”)

  “What do you mean?”

  “Even at gymnasium he was stubborn, secretive. He’s vengeful when he does not get what he wants. You know the man—he starts a war on a whim. He says, ‘I want the Order. Get me the Order.’ Or else, or else. One of my old enemies comes to him and says, ‘Do we have your blessing?’ and he might say, ‘Well, I didn’t get the Order, so why not? Who am I to stop you?’”

  “Sash, who are you talking about?”

  “The president, of course. Tan, haven’t you been paying attention? The president!”

  On the screen, I’m examining the curve of Hermione’s mouth, the gentle rise of her thin lips. Hermione and Carl stepping out for ramen between work on their ambitious novels, the two of them melding into the midtown crowds.

  “It’ll be yours. And when it is, I’m sure he’ll love it,” I say, vaguely, before hanging up.

  “What the hell was that? Lions? I could hear that all the way from my cube,” Regan calls out. Today she is dressed like a prim Dita von Teese, hair curled into a coil, fingernails painted black.

  “So I’m not crazy. You heard it too.”

  Regan comes around to my desk, leans a chin on her forearms. “We’re working for some real creepers, aren’t we?”

  But I regret having dispatched with Medovsky so quickly and have the impulse to call him back and listen to him. The more he calls, the more it becomes clear that he needs me. And I like his booming voice on the other end of the line, projecting the kind of masculinity I didn’t know was lacking in my life.

  “Who’s that little hottie?” Regan asks, pointing to my screen, and I remember Hermione, Carl and Hermione kissing between bites of ramen. I wipe her face away with a single click.

  Catherine

  MAY 1746

  For the third day in a row, she asks for Katya but flinty Madame Krause appears instead. Madame Krause has been making many unannounced entrances lately. She first showed up the morning after the wedding night, flickered over the preserved bedsheets, a delicate, “Have you perchance inspired love in His Imperial Highness?” She appears when the empress is most displeased with Catherine, in order to explore the cause of late-night revelry with her friends or the provenance of a dress that competes too closely with one of the empress’s twelve thousand gowns.

  “Where is Katya?” Catherine demands.

  “Which Katya?” Madame Krause is neat and prim, her darting eyes scan the room for details to fill out her report. “If you have a question about a particular lady, you will want to speak with the empress.”

  Wedged into a corner is the wooden leg of one of Peter’s puppets, flung over the folds of the covers. Madame Krause takes this in. Everyone at court is engaged in the frenzied question of consummation. Has it happened? Is Peter even capable of it? In some quarters, the joke is that the puppets are fulfilling the grand duke’s responsibilities. Of course, the reality is not too far off. Peter prefers puppet reenactments to the sight of her disrobed.

  Catherine raises herself to full height, glaring down at Madame Krause. “I would like to see my lady Ekaterina Vassilievna Zhukova immediately.”

  “I’m afraid that will be impossible.”

  “Must I remind you it is the grand duchess herself inquiring?”

  “The lady you are referring to is gone.”

  “Where has she gone to?”

  “Sent away. By the empress herself.”

  An understanding blooms inside her. She can picture it—the hours before dawn, a huddle of men lighting the way with candles, Katya bundled off into a waiting carriage. She would have meekly asked to see Catherine, to simply say farewell. The hairbrushes, pins, and ribbons she left behind were given away to servants. Catherine’s eyelids prickle.

  Immediately following the wedding, it was made clear that until an heir is brought to term, all distractions of the grand duke and duchess would be excised. Slowly, the empress began prying confidantes away from Catherine. First, her mother was sent packing back to Zerbst.

  How Johanna had lingered beside the carriage, arranging Catherine’s necklace, smoothing her brows, the mournful way she whispered, “And so it is done.” As the carriage containing her mother pulled away, Catherine realized she would probably never see her family again. And now Katya is gone. She looks down at the Order across her chest, the one she wears daily. The saint is the only friend she has left.

  She had expected marriage to lend her security at court. Free of the pressures of her uncertain position, she imagined unfettered hours with Katya and the cheerful Zhenia, the only other of her ladies she truly trusts. But instead she and Peter are confined in a royal prison, their every move monitored by spies. She has heard that Bestuzhev has advised removing the last of her independence and the empress finds fault with her on a daily basis. “Why are you wearing that? Take it off,” she said about a newly commissioned emerald necklace, and Catherine looked up to find the empress’s own neck draped in emeralds. She wonders if the empress has informants who know about her empty nights with Peter, when they slumber as far away from each other as possible.

  She is not a terrible person, this Madame Krause, and in her eyes Catherine spies sympathy. After she completes the inspection, she turns back to Catherine. “It is no good, you know. Your friend won’t be brought back and you will find no news of her. I assure you she is in a hospitable place back with her family. They want it that way, for you to focus on your tasks.” Her tasks, Catherine thinks bitterly. If only they all knew her husband curled back at the thought of touching her. She is pretty sure they have to touch in order to produce an heir.

  The woman sits on the edge of the bed, yanks one of Peter’s puppets by its ankle. Sniffs: “Your husband is neglecting his duties.”

  “Please, Madame Krause. He needs them.”

  Despite herself, she feels protective of Peter, of the puppets he loves like his friends, the toys that respect him more than anyone else at court. If they fail to follow military command, they are reprimanded, always with cause. It is the one domain in which he holds any power.

  She expects a flinty, a huffy, “We’ll see.” These wardens have the ear of the empress, they can wield it to garner favors for themselves. But to her surprise, Madame Krause only smiles, presses a finger to her lips, and says, “Shhh. It will be between us.”

  * * *

  Luckily there are still the other ladies, Zhenia and Vika, who plait her hair and share her suppers late into the night. Zhenia is the pretty but peasanty one with a shadow of dubious paternity, a mother who was once a serf and managed to marry the widowed landowner. Her laugh is too brawny and explodes at inappropriate moments, but she never complains, and these days, good humor is the difference between survival and despair. Vika condescends to Zhenia by speaking only in French and reminding them all that she hails from one branch of the Rostovs, one of Russia’s oldest and most noble of families. They are grumpy with each other, but vie for Catherine’s attention, Zhenia with her anecdotes and gossip, Vika with her knowledge of European fashion and court intrigue. With them, she can talk girlish things, mocking Bestuzhev’s lumpy nose or the strange dress of inexperienced visiting dignitaries. They pull apart the most recent balls, who arrived later than seven-thirty, who bungled their entrance by passing through a door meant for another rank.

  Their hands are brisk with needlework, their mouths full of pleasing stories. They are available for her amusement, and when the absence of Katy
a crashes into her, gripping her by the neck, they smooth it away with their silly chatter. Without them, her rooms are hollow—the upholstered French armchairs lack bodies, the dressing table looms ghostly in the corner, the daybed remains undented. They pile on Catherine’s new jewelry and imitate the empress’s appearance at a ball, her grand, horselike entrance. When her rooms are too quiet, when solitary night descends, they bring with it the music of their voices.

  “What a beautiful ring the grand duchess wears, perhaps too beautiful.” Zhenia flutters around in character as the empress, as if to say, We are safe here, you are among friends. But the enemy may be stalking the halls, sniffing around for wrongdoing. To avoid her wrath, she may just want to remove that ring.

  “I will return it to you as soon as the birthing pains begin,” Vika chimes in. But it is the wrong thing to say. Catherine is all too aware that the empress waits, ready to fly into a rage. It has been almost an entire year since the marriage.

  “Be quiet, you fool,” Zhenia snaps, red-faced. “The grand duchess has plenty of time.”

  Vika seems to shrink deep into her dress. And they all return to their needlework.

  Then Vika is whisked away. With Russia’s new strained relationship with France, orders of French brocades have been canceled.

  * * *

  No amusement until an heir materializes!

  Even the balls are made intentionally dull. Catherine loves to dance, but the guests are at least thirty years old, moving stiffly and gracelessly around the floor. Out of pointed spite, the empress made sure no young people were invited and Catherine is forced to listen to the dull observations of the ancient countesses and princesses. Will this be a good riding summer? Will Chulgakov win at draughts again? Zhenia and Evdotia are kept at a distance, flirting with ambassadors and officers over glasses of fermented juice.

  The entire dance mimics performance, the simulacrum of merriment. It may as well be marriage itself. Catherine wanders around the halls, the smoky card games, the boozy circles of the foreign diplomats, the first flashes of fireworks. There is no one for her to talk to.

  She is drawn into a game of spillikin, the ivory samovar handed to her with the hook. Everyone too scared to breathe as she nears the pile of playing pieces, watching her try to remove one without dislodging the rest. Her hand, bored and unsteady, topples the structure right away. She moves on.

  The dances are lively at least, the Russian folk dances, the Polish minuets. In the past, she would have acted as centerpiece to the constellations of others, but she can take no pleasure from the watching or the participating. These dances used to be suffused with romance, intrigue, flirtation, the sensation of being nimble and daring, pretty. She is still being congratulated on her marriage, and the men sharp enough to notice her detachment from Peter aim to dazzle her with their attention. But she concentrates on providing the proper, appropriate responses.

  She and Peter dance the first minuet, and she is aware of the empress’s impatient eyes roaming their forms, as if trying to answer the court’s most pressing question: have they or have they not? What is the delay? Rumor at court is that Elizabeth is hoping to bypass the ridiculous Peter altogether, to groom Catherine’s future child as heir. In spite of the halfhearted daily guidance of the dance coach, Peter garbles steps, bungles most of the figures, rises when he should plié, missing the beats entirely. The fate of an entire nation rests in her womb.

  “You might want to make more of an effort, at least in public,” she says over the music. She is bolder now with her suggestions to him.

  “What do you care?”

  “Everyone is watching,” she points out. Obviously. She enacts a pretty turn of her heel, to distract the audience from this pitiful lurching.

  The dance is endless. On one of the final turns, she thinks she sees the sympathetic eyes of Katya, and whirls her head to find an old crone who looks nothing like her friend.

  “Who cares if they’re watching? God, why do you?”

  “Because we are married now, and there are expectations.”

  “So what? You know Zhenia and I are in love. Everyone knows I prefer her. I told Count Devier that one could not compare the two of you. He disagrees. We fought bitterly about this, when it is obvious that Zhenia is much, much prettier.”

  She forces her legs onward into the dance, entering the sideways position. There is no sensation in her fingers. It can do that. She can remove the responsiveness from the hopeful valves of her heart, like a surgeon.

  “Is that so?”

  “What? Tell me you did not guess.”

  She is certain that he is no more aware of the intimacies of love with Zhenia than he is with herself, sure that his feelings are the confused fumblings of an adolescent. But still this news cuts her. Zhenia’s betrayal, Peter’s ability to have companionship, and her own gaping solitude have become snarled together. She gathers the remains of her pride.

  “Everyone knows about you and Zhenia? Then I suggest caution in whom you confide.”

  “She is beautiful, for one, which you are obviously not.”

  The hollow in her throat grows deeper, sharper. His limp hand on her waist is pressing the sharp star of the Order against her hip. Every time she looks at the medal’s face, the saint taunts her: for love and for the fatherland indeed. Those saints had high expectations of mortals. And just when she wishes it to be over so she can escape to the privacy of her bedroom, the music spurs them onward.

  * * *

  Is it only a week later? The frost of January. An eternal winter here, the kind that pierces your head and enters your very pores. It seems to her that winters back home were less stinging and gray, cold but not intent on extinguishing a person. They used to have a variety of sky at least, whereas here it plods on, merciless and gray. But the fire warms the room, bathes it in supple glow, and Catherine is in a good mood today. It is one of the few afternoons she has to herself, the empress just risen from sleep and ensnared in counsel with a Scottish dignitary. In the morning, Catherine kept the man company for a while, interested in the exciting details of Bonny Prince Charlie and the failed Jacobite rebellion. But just as the story was reaching its fascinating conclusion with Bonny Prince Charlie fleeing Scotland, the empress’s lady-in-waiting interrupted them and sent her away.

  Now she is playing herself in chess. At the same time, the Bayle dictionary is open before her as well as the novel Tirant lo Blanc, and she moves back and forth between all three when boredom strikes. She makes notes between moves: “Banishing serfdom is inevitable. Man must not live in fear of authority.”

  But just as she grows sleepy for the night, sunk into the recesses of her daybed, she hears footsteps. Peter’s footsteps are easy to discern from the others by the way they slap against wood, erratic and ungainly. She shoves the books he always views with suspicion under one of the embroidered pillows.

  He bursts inside. “You had her sent away, didn’t you? You didn’t want me to be happy, you selfish girl.”

  The news is hardly surprising, but she still feels a stabbing ache of solidarity. She too had so recently liked Zhenia. “You should have been more discreet,” she says. “I warned you at the ball.”

  “But we were all friends, at least we thought so. We all played together.” She has never heard his voice choked with feeling, even as his childishness persists. We all played together? What a shame, she thinks, that we experience the same thin isolation yet we cannot take solace in each other. She has lost Katya and now he has suffered his first major loss.

  She approaches him in sympathy, but her hand is violently swiped away.

  “You betrayed us, and I trusted you,” he says, with a strangled voice. His pupils are dark, eyes bulging. He looks as though he might strike her.

  She spits out, “I keep your hateful secrets.”

  “Who else would be responsible if not you?”

  “Think, you silly child! If your efforts with discretion extended to others, it could be any one of a hun
dred people.”

  The truth drips into his features as they assess each other. For once he has no retort, no sarcasm to offer. A cloudiness leaves his features, and something suppressed and brittle behind them rises to the surface. He understands the full extent of their situation. They are alone, trapped together for life. Outside the window, a frozen, vast nation is to be divided between them.

  Tanya

  PRESENT DAY

  “Cece, over here,” I call out, as if running into my mother-in-law on the street is a moment of serendipity. In fact, I know her schedule so well, it’s easy to intercept her form glistening in the sun at just the right moment. Frances Vandermotter’s gym is around the corner from Worthington’s on Second Avenue, and she often power walks past the gold-stenciled revolving doors at around ten forty-five, blond hair tucked away under a cap, eyes hidden behind raccoon sunglasses. “How’s Armand’s torn meniscus?”

  “He’s better, much. Well, where have you been? It’s been weeks after Greece.” Frances walks into the kiss, arms pumping.

  I’ve been avoiding the Vandermotters’ calls. What would I say? Your son left me, at least I think he left me. Do you know anything? Is he coming back?

  The rain has succumbed to unblemished sky, the kind of cerulean day that renders even overflowing garbage cans charming. Men in ascots idle by their cars in front of Worthington’s, the streets are a blur of suits and hospital scrubs. Exposed legs flash everywhere.

  “How was Greece?”

  “Oh my goodness, who doesn’t love the islands? Everywhere you point the camera, it’s utter perfection. And you? How are things in the office? Isn’t your auction coming up?”

  We step into the tide of lunchtime flurry, women in practical and impractical shoes holding plastic squares filled with kale or leaking containers of soup.

  My in-laws’ passion for travel is secondary to the pleasure they take in recapping an itinerary. Their hotel, their meals, an elaborate recounting of each attraction, sights that they insist are omitted from guidebooks, hidden gems discovered thanks to pointed questions to locals. It took me some time to understand that Carl’s family funneled all their fear, love, and affection into two or three subjects. Travel, the Foster Children’s Alliance, Recollections of a Superior Past. Their firm place in the world blinded me to ways Carl must have been unhappy.