by Irina Reyn
“I’m so glad,” I say.
They’re different, Carl’s parents, more effusive, and this new attention frightens me.
“My dear, we’d love to honor you at our next gala,” Frances says, not letting go of my arm, two hands warming both sides of my hand. “As a Russian-American who’s done so much for the art world.”
“That sounds great.” Hadn’t I once dreamed of being embraced by her like this, the ultimate proof of my belonging in their family? But now all I want is to hear Carl’s voice. “I should get home.”
“Of course. We’ll see you soon anyway.”
Leaving the glowing grandeur of Worthington’s behind, I’m once again on the windswept streets of midtown. It’s late enough that the majority of passersby consists of dog walkers or postcollege kids stumbling to the next Irish pub down in Murray Hill. Behind me looms that square glass building infused with light, with the rosy sheen of money. Oh, the price of admission, I think. The high price of admission.
Catherine
JULY 1762
She is the mistress of the palace, of an entire empire, and she finds it suits her, as if she has been practicing the role for decades. One could even say she is fulfilling an ancient destiny inscribed on her very tissue. Private plans she cradled inside while she was grand duchess threaten to emerge all at once. She wants to fill the library shelves with Montesquieu and Voltaire and Diderot and her beloved volumes of Bayle’s Dictionnaire historique et critique, meet with Starov to build a pavilion extension onto the Winter Palace, hire a French chef, rearrange the furnishings to accommodate the work of the state rather than the frivolity that permeated the reign of the former empress. She remembers Count Gyllenborg’s expression, his pity for her distance from the cultural center of Europe. She will buy whatever European art is best then, and a lot of it. She wants to immediately draw up plans to erect side panels in Moscow churches in honor of Saint Catherine, to build a throne in the martyr’s name, order an icon of Saint Catherine with the likeness of her own face. It is crucial everyone believe that she and Saint Catherine are one, that her right to rule has been ordained by the saint herself.
When the Orlovs burst in for the meeting, she is still giddy with the fact that it is in her power to grant meetings, that she is in fact an actual empress with whom people want to meet. The brothers are grave countenanced as usual; Alexis roiling with common sense, Gregory not so different in conducting the crown’s business than in manifesting efficient ardor in the bedroom.
“We must discuss the gosudar,” Alexis says.
She groans. “To what end? Is he not in comfortable confinement until his room at the prison is ready?”
The matter of her husband deadens her fresh elation every time. Peter being held at the stone house at Ropsha, surrounded by the glittering fishing lake, preparing—even if he does not know it yet—for incarceration. She tells herself that she takes no real pleasure in the reversal of fortunes but he has become a problem to be solved. During the first four days since his abdication and arrival at Ropsha, he has sent at least three letters addressing her properly as Your Majesty. Always ending with the same request: he will make no further claims to the throne if he is reunited with that kitchen wench Vorontsova. That he has no realistic idea of the fate that awaits him should not surprise Catherine, but it galls her. Those letters have gone unanswered.
How could she forget the many times he has humiliated her in the past months? Calling her dura—“idiot”—in the middle of a large dinner, parading that Vorontsova as her successor, forcing her to relinquish her own beloved Order of Saint Catherine. Each slight was a dagger’s parry. I beg Your Majesty to have confidence in me and to have the goodness to order the guards removed from the second room as the one I occupy is so small that I can hardly move in it. She has ignored his letters that begged a return to Germany, a rendezvous with his mistress. But she did fulfill the more reasonable desires: the transport of his favorite bed and his loathsome dog, the arrival of his doctor. When she thought of him, it was with the sharp pull of guilt and most of all a longing to eradicate all traces of his memory. She most preferred imagining him at peace, wandering the Ropsha grounds among sparrows and starlings and cranes. Also I beg you to order that no officers should remain in the same room with me since I must relieve myself and I cannot possibly do that in front of them.
“Why must we speak of the gosudar? I suspect he is secure at Ropsha,” she says.
“We hear he is ill.”
“Is that so? How does he fare? What is the cause of the illness?” She hopes her voice is not too seeded with hope.
The brothers exchange a brief glance. “A severe headache, it is reported, stomach ailments. His Holstein physician has been sent for, as you requested.”
“I am relieved to hear it.”
She is aware of a carefulness to their dialogue, all three of them waiting for a dictate, a final decision of some kind. Alexis is pacing the rug, Gregory’s palms curl the back of the chair. Now that she is empress, she views her lover differently, through the affectionate lens of a mother loyal to an impulsive child.
Gregory blurts, “But surely he must be rendered harmless. How do we know he has permanently abdicated his right to the throne?”
The day is hot despite the flung-open windows, her lover always made uncomfortable by his uniform’s restraint. The chair tumbles back, and he hastens to readjust it.
“How do you propose we accomplish this harmlessness?”
Dura, she hears Peter’s mocking voice. He was seated alongside Vorontsova, and the guests pretended not to hear the word, busying themselves with the contents of their plates. They darted glances to express their private sympathies, but she was certain they were titillated by the prospect of a fiery reaction. Dura. The trigger had been a minor one as usual. She had refused to rise for some inane toast he proposed to drink to his Holstein uncles because it was a politically idiotic, unpatriotic act. But to her surprise the word dura unraveled her. She wound up openly weeping in front of all those guests, the shame of the epithet mingled with a quiet spite of playing the victim. Peter threatened to jail her for the slight against his uncles. Only at the last minute, someone convinced him to retract, to have mercy for her. That person saved her life.
Would it not be convenient if Peter were gone, vanished? To be utterly free of him in body and symbol? But she remembers the boy she first met, her childhood friend with his wooden soldiers. She recalls entering the palace for the first time in the dead of night, his shy greeting (I could not wait), their games of blindman’s bluff. Walking in on Brummer beating Peter with a branch over the railing of his bed, the look of hopelessness on the boy’s face when it was clear she was repulsed by his cheeks distorted by smallpox.
“If you will allow us to come up with a solution,” Alexis says.
She hesitates. “Propose it.”
“You would not even have to trouble yourself with the details.”
“The prison should work fine. There have been no disturbances with the crazy Ivan.”
“Allow me to remind you of your meeting with Panin, Your Majesty.” A voice floats from the other side of the door. She recalls the rest of the morning’s agenda—landlords insisting she draft a decree on hard labor for impudent serfs. It is one of those acts she has no enthusiasm for—had she not once argued against the institution of serfdom altogether?—but the first lesson of reigning such a vast realm is that compromise is necessary even when it contradicts your personal beliefs.
“I suppose I can leave this in your hands,” she says. “But now I must meet with Panin.”
“Of course, matushka. We will take care of it,” Alexis says, bowing. The brothers are so similar in many ways, but Alexis has more hair overall, bushy eyebrows set over his eyes. They are filing out of the room now, but she is unclear on what had been decided. Should she call them back, be clear in voicing her opinion? It has been the most exhausting week of her life and the heat renders her limp. Musing returns
her to Peter, the day he cut out a hole in the wall to peep in on the empress getting dressed. In his efforts to stretch to the opening, he overturned her mother’s toiletries, spilling powder all over her dressing gown.
In the bowels of the palace, she hears the cry of a baby girl so recently inside her belly. The sound of an eight-year-old boy’s feet running up the staircase. On her desk, a mountain of paperwork awaits, silly Peter manifestos to be undone, laws revoked, revised. She can push him further down the priority queue, let him enjoy the freedom of a still lake. A more resolute plan can be carved out later. There on top of the pile lies his most recent letter, and she pushes it to the side. Once again, I beg you, since I have followed your wishes in everything, to allow me to leave for Germany with the persons for whom I have already asked Your Majesty to grant permission. I hope your magnanimity will not permit my request to be in vain. She turns back to the Holy Synod documents, requesting a return of relics to the Church that Peter had seized when in power. The boy, her husband, is forgotten.
* * *
She rises to a day of great industry. There are letters to be written, a stream of visitors and well-wishers to be greeted. A few cheerfully accompany her to prayers. She moves easily from task to task. There is a stimulating variety of errands—discussing the erection of the library, conferring about the Poland problem, seeking a southern cavity to the sea, the imperial dinner menu, informing foreign states of her position as sole autocrat. Her former talents for pleasing others are put to good use. People who enter her chambers are immediately set at ease, the visits all ending in the kissing of her hand, a satisfying stream of gratitude.
Simple meals are delivered to her: cold sturgeon and soups. During the day, she socializes little, a quick dispatch of the meal, then back to work.
For the first time, the faces that greet her in the halls are uniformly benevolent. She sees no condolences in their expressions or distress or wickedness. They bow to her, call her gosudarina or Your Majesty even if she begs them to do away with formality. She is no longer at the margins of the court, but is the axis on which it turns. In between meetings with senators and ambassadors, she takes a moment to breathe, to sip at her tea. If she does not attend that night’s opera, there is always the quiet game of piquet. She has written to her friends in Europe, and to her old lover Stanislaw, inquiring about art she can buy in bulk. She can already picture it—Russia holding the world’s greatest art collection. No more shame about not knowing Colley Cibber and whether or not his is the dullest play of the London season.
Only the thought of Peter pulls at the fringes of her contentment. At night she sleeps lightly, ready to defend herself against the slightest sound. Once she used to lie in bed waiting for his footsteps, for some kind of turn in their relations. This passive expectation for the boy to enfold her in his arms. And now she waits for footsteps of a different sort, prepares for the possibility of revenge from his allies. She hears his hiccupping, mocking laugh in her dreams, and awakes bathed in sweat.
* * *
Matushka, Little Mother, most merciful Gosudarina, sovereign lady, how can I explain or describe what happened? The rider, cap in hand, hands her the paper scrawled with erratic ink. The expression on the man’s face is of terror. Catherine tries to suppress her own panic, to give the impression of a monarch in control.
“What is the matter?” Catherine asks. Her mask is strewn across the table with its pair of excised eyes. Still in her ball gown, still recovering from hours of feverish dancing, she scrutinizes the page. The handwriting does not appear to belong to Alexis Orlov but to a drunk man, a man out of his wits; she can barely make any sense of it.
Matushka, he is no more. She almost does not need to read on. There will be many questions regarding her complicity, so she forces herself.
“I was handed this to deliver to you right away,” the man chatters as she scans the lines. “I swear, that is all I know.”
To her surprise, she feels herself go cold, the tips of her fingers numb. She stares out the window. The masquerade’s revelers are tipping out of the front gates to their carriages. Drunken laughter swells the corridors. A speckled house sparrow tangled inside the curtains is fluttering for its freedom. She releases the bird into the night sky, an act that soothes her, and also buys her time.
Her first reaction is one of logistics. If it was indeed murder, Alexis was too smart to poison Peter and leave any residue. A knife wound would look equally bad. Then it must have been suffocation, the brute force of hands on Peter’s tiny, hapless neck.
How could any of us have ventured to raise our hands against our Gosudar, sovereign lord. But Gosudarina, it has happened.
“Any word back, Your Majesty?”
She finds her voice. “No. Thank you for your prompt relay.”
Back to Alexis’s jagged scribble: We ourselves know not what we did. She can imagine the fear on Peter’s face, his weak wrists batting away his attackers. The muffled screams, high-pitched and unnatural. His lifeless body would resemble one of his puppets. A flood of relief follows remorse inside her, the two sensations alternating in waves. She considers burning the letter, then realizes its disappearance would throw suspicion on her. It remains under her pillow for the night. In the morning, points of ink stab the white linen.
Gregory arrives at her cabinet at first dawn with a hasty peck on her cheek. He peers at her warily, meaty hands limp at his sides. Murderer, she now thinks, unsure if she is addressing herself or him. Neither of them speaks.
“I see you have his portrait,” he says. They both glance at the floor where the face of an enhanced version of Peter III scrutinizes them, frameless. She had it wheeled in hours ago, just in case. Its stare trails her from shelves to love seat to window. She is also wearing the jeweled portrait of Peter the empress gifted her on her wedding day. The empress had promised it would be “useful” on certain occasions.
“In his letter, your brother verifies it was an accident,” she begins.
He looks as though something oppressive has been removed, as color returns to his cheeks. He probably expected her fury or, worse, arrest. A glaze of cloud seems to depart, replaced by a cast hard and bronze. “It was no accident. It was God’s will.”
“A stroke.”
“Hermorrhoidal colic, if you like.”
She swallows.
“It affected his brain, then.”
Gregory nods, slowly. “The delirium was followed by exhaustion, and despite all the assistance of doctors, he expired.”
“Inflammation of the bowels.”
“Stroke of apoplexy.”
“They can attest to this?”
“We will acquire their verification. They will find no poison,” he says quickly.
“Of course not. I trust you are telling the truth.” They are heaving a cumbersome load back and forth like a child’s ball. “Thank you. I must compose the statement now.”
“We can attest you were completely innocent of the matter. The man was deathly ill. As he was dying, he demanded a Lutheran priest. You might include that in the report.”
She turns away. “Thank you. You may go.”
He loiters as if torn between attempting an intimate display of regard or one more professional, then decides on an awkward bow. As if to say, We only did what you wanted of us—your supremacy is now uncontested.
“We found this among his belongings. I believe it belongs to you.” He drops a square box on her desk. Brown, velvet, with scalloped edges. She knows its contents like she knows the pathways of her own mind. Wrapped in a delicate silk chamois lies the Order of Saint Catherine.
* * *
It is she at that stone house at Ropsha in her dreams, not the Orlovs. Just Catherine and her husband, and they are children again. She is fifteen, not thirty-three. It is a time before childbirth, before disappointment with love had settled into her bones. They are playing with his soldiers, her husband lining them up in formation, dressing some down, promoting others. She sl
umps in an armchair with one of her books, recalls that sense of unbroken boredom she once suffered when days were an unreasonable length, and the sun did not descend fast enough.
Peter suddenly rises from play. “Something’s wrong? Fetch the doctor.” He is doubled over in agony, looking to her for salvation.
She is slow to unwind herself from the tufted arm, reluctant to respond to that voice, the one that never aged or matured or developed in it any hint of affection for her. Like the strangled croak of a wounded dog.
“I cannot help you. I don’t want to help you.”
“Dura,” he says, his face changing. “Fetch me a doctor. Fetch me Liza who loves me.” He is spread on the couch, the three-tipped hat cascading off his brow. The pillow beside him is soft enough, big enough.
“Do you suppose your Liza is already on her way to help you?”
“And who loves you? Orlov? Paniatovsky? Saltykov? You are nothing, some minor German princess. You are not beautiful. You are not smart. You don’t belong here. I am the grandson of Peter the Great. I am the real heir to the throne. Only prison is good enough for you.” He is fading away into his pain.
“Stop whining already. I’ve had enough. Twenty years is too long for our ill-fated union.”
She collapses the pillow on top of his face, making sure the corners are tightly pressed to block the flow of air. The thought occurs that the pillow is too valuable for the task, specially ordered by the empress from Spain for its colorful embroidery. But it is too late to exchange it with a more disposable item. She is physically stronger than he; that has always been the case. He buckles with the surprise of her attack, hands flailing at her. She straddles him with her thighs, the most sexual position they have ever undertaken during all those fruitless years of marriage. He is trying to unseat her by a frantic gyration of his hips. He mumbles what is probably a string of curses, but soon the sound is thinner, weaker. All she has to do is hold the position and she does, keeps pushing down long past when he has stilled. His body is limp. She continues to thrust and to clamp down until she is absolutely sure. For a marriage to thrive, sometimes the husband must die.