The Imperial Wife

by Irina Reyn

  On the floor, I lead him past dark galleries—a collection of Jewish artifacts consigned by an old Philadelphia family—past my and Regan’s cubicles and into the viewing room. I flip the lights, aware for the first time that the room is windowless, carpeted, and I’m alone with this man. The fake Burliuk is occupying the same lowly position on the floor, its face turned to the wall as if in shame.

  “Why don’t you have a seat? I’ll bring it out at once.” The back of my knees are clammy with sweat. “The consignor was very strict about who can touch it, but I’ve got the clearance from our president to name you as a serious buyer.”

  Looking behind me, I see his spread legs in that fine Italian wool, arms crossed behind his head. He smiles. “Good call.”

  I stride past offices of individual specialists, surrounded by the proof of their obsessions. Their desks mirror mine—digital printouts of Chinese porcelain or rhinoceros horn carvings on Robert Chen’s desk or Iranian calligraphy on Liliane Goncourt’s. Once we were all having a drink together after work and I asked them if they were ever bored of their specialties. Didn’t they feel hemmed in by the narrowness of their expertise? Didn’t they too long to break free, to start over, to swap fields?

  “Beautiful,” Igor says, when I return with the Order on the velvet tray. His fingers are unnecessarily brushing mine, neither taking the object out nor giving it up. “I can feel it was truly hers.”

  “Can you?” It slips out, a hopefulness. I almost say, Me too.

  What about you? Liliane shot back at me. Do you like being a Russian specialist? I didn’t know how to answer. Why did I take the job if I fantasized every day about having nothing to do with anything Russian? I wanted Russia’s hold on me to loosen, for it to be merely an ominous country growing only more ominous on the other side of the world. But Carl never understood that I know more about Russian art than anyone in the world, and there’s a responsibility to make sure the world does not misinterpret the Russian intention, that it is correctly understood.

  I find myself lecturing to Igor, a long string of information he probably already knows. “The Order first left the country in 1926. The Soviet Union was in a financial crisis after the revolution and Stalin was desperately trying to obtain any foreign capital he could. The royal jewels were his most valuable commodities. An American diamond merchant bought it and displayed it at Wanamaker’s in 1935. Imagine Catherine the Great’s regalia on view at a Manhattan department store. That’s where my client’s grandfather saw it.” At least we hope it belonged to Catherine, I think but don’t say.

  “Interesting, yes. I imagine many valuable things were allowed to leave Russia this way.”

  I look away, quickly. “Can I ask what you would do with the Order if you won it in the auction?”

  He pulls me down on the couch next to him, a man who likes people to inhabit the spaces he expects of them. “I know what you are worried about, Tanyechka. Trust me, I am good man, not like Medovsky and the others.”

  “I’m not implying…”

  “I made money honest way, by making smart financial decisions. I want to give this back to my country. It is most important to me that the Order is viewed by the people. It is our heritage.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s great, that’s exactly where I would love it to go.”

  “But I want it to be in museum, for people to see the history of Russia. This belonged to the greatest empress in history.”

  It’s not easy to maintain professional decorum in your workplace at this hour. There’s no Regan to rescue me now, no phone calls to offer diversion. Just me and a man who might be carrying a gun, or worse.

  “I have met with Nadia Kudrina at Christie’s but I would never consider working with an amateur like her. What I see in you is the proper intentions, a clean heart.”

  He is pressing all my buttons. I’m embarrassed to feel a flush of gratification suffusing my cheeks. “Thanks for saying that. You know Nadia Kudrina is hardly an expert in the field.”

  “Exactly. You are the only specialist to trust.”

  The hairs on my arms are pricked, at attention. A rarefied aura of privacy surrounds us, the unrelenting tick of the Sotiau mantel clock. It seems like the perfect time to broach the subject. “You say you’re a good man. Should I assume you’re active in philanthropy?” I choose my words carefully with meaning.

  His eyes never leave mine, steady, unblinking. “Surely you must know I am one of Russia’s premier philanthropists.”

  “So you must care about the New York Foster Care Alliance.”

  No pause, no space for even a breath. I’m pretty sure he has no idea what the New York Foster Care Alliance does. “Yes, I do. Very much.”

  “My mother-in-law’s on the board.” My mind snaps to Carl, of the poignant way he never forgets to ask about the kids. How he would rush away in his gym clothes, later admitting he’d been out with one of them, playing basketball in Chelsea Piers or renting bikes or devouring ice-cream cones. I have waited and waited. To save your marriage, I think, you need a large gesture. “They do very important work with at-risk kids.”

  “Please say no more. We understand each other.”

  I don’t hear the door swinging open, because my eardrums are pounding. But it’s Stasia, my favorite from the cleaning crew, a tough Polish lady who considers art a great “scam,” thinks Picasso’s nose obsession is a result of excess masturbation, and brings in homemade potato-filled pastries when I work late.

  “Good evening, Ms. Vandermotter. I will leave this room for last.”

  “Thanks, Stasia. We won’t be much longer.”

  “Vandermotter.” Igor chuckles. “A nice Russian name.”

  The sound of the vacuum outside drowns further talk on any topic. I feel frozen on the couch beside him, the Order directly between us. What would I do if he kissed me? But Igor rubs his chin with a thumb, lost in thought. “Shall we?” he says, looking directly at me. When the thrumming inside me subsides, I realize he means for us to leave.

  Catherine

  FEBRUARY 1762

  The hallway is long and dark and no one is accompanying her to this particular ceremony. As is the case so often these days, she is left alone until her official presence is needed. Day after day, she is nudged to the side. She does not mind. Her job, now that the empress is dead and her husband has been crowned Peter III, is to wait and see. Not a day goes by that he does not blunder or offend some dignitary. To the horror of many, the rules of the palace have been loosened. Drunk courtiers are pissing in daylight, flopping about like fish in the courtyard. The churches are ransacked for valuables. Foreign dignitaries are leaving the capital by boat and sled.

  She is seven months swollen with a third child, Gregory’s this time. Now that an heir is firmly in place and the old empress gone, no one bothers to take notice of her wider skirts and draping shawls. She is biding her time, her body given over to yet another somersaulting creature inside her, slowing the progress of her inflated ankles. If only she could spend days resting in bed, but the atmosphere is treacherous and requires alertness.

  In her hands, Catherine holds the box that contains the Order of Saint Catherine, the one she has worn slung across her chest on countless occasions. The one that kept her company during her first night with Sergei. Once in a while, during a dull moment at a ceremony or opera, she would look down at its face, her spirits momentarily bolstered by the woman in its center. Catherine and Catherine and Katya, the triptych of Catherines that rule her life. Saint Catherine, the beauty, the scholar, the brave soul ready to battle an emperor for the lives of persecuted Christians. The woman who insisted she would stay a virgin until she found a man worthy of her. When it is too painful to remember her friend Katya, Catherine turns her thoughts to Saint Catherine. No wonder she stayed a virgin; a worthy mate is no small feat for a woman whose entire scope is the world. Who knows that more intimately than she?

  But now she must close her heart to Saint Catherine in order to hand he
r away in a farce of a ceremony she hopes will end mercifully, quickly. Perhaps if she slows her pace, one leaden foot in front of another, she might delay in reaching the abrasive sounds of birthday revelry that greet her from the palace mouth. But too soon, she is waiting outside the hall, fingering the box’s brown satin for the last time.

  “Ma stoicienne, charmante princesse.” The French ambassador Breteuil greets her when there is nowhere else to go but inside, where bottles will litter the tables and barely lucid men gamble. “I must commend your noble conduct in the face of such arrogance.”

  She does not want to meet his eyes, to confront his pity.

  “We, the right people, are all on your side,” he whispers. “None of us can tolerate that conduct, the disrespect to you.”

  “I appreciate the sentiment, Louis.” She wants to have him removed—his blather could easily get her into trouble—but there is no one left to do her bidding.

  Instead, he edges closer, the heavy gold ring on his scaly finger scraping the fabric taut against her belly. “You are as much loved as the emperor is hated.”

  Brushing by him, she manages her escape, but there is still the business of entering that room. The laughter on the other side of that door is ghastly, the braying sound of her husband and that mistress of his who has risen in power by catering to his weakness. The court is aflutter with gossip as to whether the two have completed the love act, whether Paul will have a rival heir. Bets are being called. She tries to shut her ears to the tither. All she knows is that her former lady-in-waiting, the dreadful Elizabeth Vorontsova, is currently occupying Catherine’s seat beside Peter. She swings open the door.

  A half-filled goblet and a nest of chicken bones are arrayed before that horrible woman. A gnawed-on tendon is tossed to the side. She and the emperor sit perched with their arms interlocked.

  “Finally,” that woman says by way of greeting. “How long are we supposed to wait?”

  Catherine’s hands quiver with rage, but she coolly watches her husband’s mistress or whatever she is—the woman described at court as a “pothouse wench,” a woman possessed of a “broad, puffy, pockmarked face and fat, squat, shapeless figure,” as she has heard it said—bend her head in anticipation. The table is stilled by her presence. No one picks up any food.

  “What are you waiting for? Come closer,” Peter insists. He is wearing a blue Prussian uniform pinned with the Order of the Black Eagle. He may as well be a visiting ensign, not the monarch of Russia. The guests are a smattering of Vorontsova’s family, the lowliest of Peter’s flatterers, but also an aggrieved Panin, Razumovsky, and other diplomats and men she respects. They are examining her, waiting for her reaction. Panin, mortified, examines his nails.

  Deliberately, coldly, she launches herself past the rouged grimaces. Up close, Vorontsova emits an astonishment in her features that she has pulled off this unlikely rise in fortune. Catherine drapes the ribbon around the neck of the odious woman. It is no easy task to keep her face still, hiding her revulsion at the woman’s foul breath and body odor.

  Nikita, the jeweler, could have easily made Vorontsova her own order, but Peter said, “Why don’t you grant her yours?” For Love and the Fatherland indeed. She looks one last time at the beloved face of the saint, the one she had admired daily since first being awarded the honor sixteen years ago, when she believed there would be love between her and Peter, that they would be partners on the throne, fingers interlaced like Maria-Theresa and Francis. Now from the center, Saint Catherine emanates sisterly support, one she cannot hear at the moment. All she can take in is the deafening boiling of her blood, the child heeling her sternum.

  “We are very pleased to confer this honor upon such a worthy person, a dear friend of the court,” is what Catherine says instead, muttering through her teeth but with the perfect air of bruised pride. The hearts of those watching must reach out to her. When the child inside her is finally removed and the proper time comes, their allegiances will be fixed firmly with her. That too is marriage.

  * * *

  After the proceedings, she discovers Panin in her chambers. He is emerging out of the shadows in scarlet velvet and rubies strung along his fingers. His chin cascades into multiple folds, sinking into the silk of his collar.

  “What are they saying?” she asks.

  “He plans to imprison you in the fortress,” Panin replies, gloomy. “That is the latest talk. Or at least send you to a monastery. Either way, he plots to rid the court of you.”

  “I see.”

  The two of them are murmuring in the privacy of her chamber; his breath smells not unlike Vorontsova’s. The room is increasingly turning into a moat of protection, shrouded by tightly pulled curtains. Only her friends enter it, so she has fewer visitors than ever. She barely throws the curtains open anymore, preferring the void of light.

  “We have little time is what you are saying.”

  Count Panin bows, but his eyes never leave hers. She has often wondered if he is not jealous of Gregory Orlov, if he is waiting for her to tire of him so Panin can step into his place and her bedroom. In each of these tête-à-têtes, he seems about to embrace her. His cheeks are two yeasty loaves of bread.

  “What do you recommend should be our course of action?”

  “It would be easiest to elevate the young Grand Duke Paul of course,” he says, waiting for her reaction.

  She is silent. The other day, she received a note: “Give the command, and we shall place you on the throne.” She threw it into the fireplace. These days, she is receiving advice from all directions. She should be regent. The opportunity for her reign has gone. The opportunity has not yet arrived. She should rule in her own name. The Orlovs and the rest of them keep flinging their own opinions regarding the matter. Wasting time.

  “Which do you advise?”

  “My recommendation? His Majesty can be arrested when he returns to the city. I assume the Orlovs have readied the Guards for the possibility.” Again, Panin pronounces her lover’s last name like a particularly tart rowan berry.

  She hears footsteps in the hall and they freeze, waiting for the rhythm of them to pass. There is a long pause, then a knock, loud and insistent. Their sharp intake of breath is simultaneous. Panin retreats back into the shadows but it may already be too late. She may be headed to Schlüsselburg Fortress, imprisoned next to that poor, slow-witted Prince Ivan. Her heart is dangerously close to fleeing her body. She feels incapable of movement of any kind. The knock repeats, lighter this time.

  “A moment, please.” She forces herself to creak open the door, hand lingering on the knob. In case this is her last day of freedom, she checks her coiffure.

  On the other side stands a frowning Nikita. He is stretching a necklace out to her, and in her breathless confusion she thinks it may be the Order being returned. She feels a wave of gratitude to Peter who must have changed his mind. He knows how much the Order means to her. But the court jeweler clutches in his hands an adornment she had sent to him for fixing, the emerald one with the broken clasp.

  “I’m afraid I must return this to you on His Majesty’s orders. His Majesty insists I only repair Elizaveta Vorontsova’s trinkets,” he says under his breath. He does not fully confront her gaze but none of them do these days.

  She flashes him one of her more voluminous smiles. “Oh, it does not matter. Thank you for informing me. Please relay to His Majesty that he has bestowed on me so many generous gifts that I will certainly not want for this particular one.”

  She pushes shut the door, hand pressed to the palpitating skin above her breast. Panin is watching her. He is following the course of that hand, its indentation on her skin.

  “So what now?”

  “In the meantime, you are still the king’s wife,” he says. “Attend balls, concerts, play your role. And wait. Let us do the rest.”

  She nods, the slightest of motions. The backing away of the sun flings the room into near darkness. She thinks this might be the day Panin finally makes
his desires known. He is edging toward her, the chicken odor almost unbearable between them. But then, just centimeters from her face, he halts. They are breathing in unison, nose and mouth. She thinks he will press his lips to hers. Then he is gone.

  * * *

  Peter plays the violin at Oranienbaum. His eyes are closed, the bow moving with surprising grace. There is a melancholy to the way he gives himself over to music for which he has no talent. His bowing technique has improved, Catherine decides, but then the Italian singers and the court orchestra muffle any unique sounds he is able to extract from the instrument. His entire upper body sways to the music, his jutting chin even more pronounced than usual. Vincenzo Manfredini, the composer of the opera, claps politely.

  If the plan were not under way, and there were no turning back, she would have found it unbearable to be at this hateful palace at all. Peter has brought a coarse decorating touch to the grounds, defaced it with a ridiculous citadel, the “Joke” castle where he frolics with his soldiers. He has made Oranienbaum a giant playroom with Vorontsova, who is now fanning herself in the front row, whispering to a cousin between arias. As is the norm these days, Catherine is a minor guest in a public display of demotion. The solo drags on, Peter never one to leave a stage gracefully. The entire scene feels unreal to her, ossified into the past. Encased in glass, a relic of another life.

  But with the trap for him ready to be sprung, Catherine finds it a relief to be blending into the background. The night before, she doubted whether she should even bother making the trip for this fiasco, but Gregory agreed with Panin. She must act under a pretense of normality. In the meantime, the officers will be told the time is nearing. Everyone knows the arrest of the emperor is imminent.

  “We cannot arouse suspicion. Besides, you love the operas of Manfredini.” Gregory was splayed across her bed, fully dressed, boots and all. How the uniform suited him, as if molded to his body. She loved the decisive movement of his hands, so much more serious and ambitious than her other lovers. He lacked Seryozha’s prettiness, but she had outgrown the need for simple, picturesque beauty in a man.