“I thought you were marvelous,” I said.
“Your skills far surpass mine. How old are you … if it’s not too presumptuous.”
I had not the experience to determine if the question was presumptuous or not and so simply answered: “Sixteen.”
“Sixteen years old and already wearing a charming tiara, as though crowned the most beautiful woman in Moscow.” His breath misted in the air. The men in bulky overcoats pitched curious looks in our direction, for one of them had poked the other and pointed at Alexander. “When I was but sixteen, I was no beauty. Not as I am now…”
He stopped tapping his walking stick and rubbed his hands together as he said this, and I knew he was trying to be funny, but I didn’t think it kind to laugh. Though Alexander’s features were not traditionally handsome, even I knew of his popularity with the ladies in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and all other points of the empire if rumors were to be believed. Lacking that which made some men fetching had not hindered Alexander’s power to attract. Surely he knew this.
Still, I did not laugh.
Despite its thick lining, my pelisse was no match for the stubborn chill of the night. I shivered and drew it tighter around my chest, but tried to appear sophisticated and nonchalant, as though accustomed to spending evenings out in the cold wind with the most famous poet in Russia. Alexander stole a glimpse at my feet, the tips of my satin slippers peeping out from beneath my gown, and then his focus moved once more to my face.
“Though I suppose I had my moments,” he said. “At sixteen, I was in the junior class at the Impérial Lycée, a year away from being graduated. I had my own room. My own writing table on which to place a sheet of paper and scribble my thoughts. Can you imagine the thrill of such a space?” He flashed a roguish smile that made my heart pump faster and I longed to keep him out here to myself as long as possible. “My imagination soared.”
When I attempted creative work at home, I was always interrupted by one of Mother’s endless needlework projects or Ekaterina’s complaints about a rude shopkeeper. I longed for the luxury of privacy. “I’ve heard it said you read for Derzhavin as a schoolboy.”
Derzhavin was the most celebrated poet of Catherine the Great’s time. As a child, before misfortune diminished our family’s finances, I lived for a short time with my grandfather on his estate near Kaluga. In the basement of the main house, he kept an enormous bronze statue of Catherine that I always found an excuse to visit, trying to imagine a world where a woman might rule men. Ever since, I had taken a particular interest in Catherine’s reign and knew Derzhavin’s epic “The Waterfall” practically by heart.
“I did!” Alexander declared, clearly pleased. “My chum Delvig was keen to meet Derzhavin and declared he would ‘shake the hand that had written “The Waterfall.”’ He made me wait with him in the school’s foyer. When at last the front door creaked open, we heard the tap of his cane against the marble floor.”
To illustrate the point, Alexander pounded his walking stick on the cobblestone once more, startling the men in the courtyard who slowly backed closer to the mansion’s thick, lemon-yellow walls. My teeth chattered, but I endeavored to extend my time alone with Alexander. “Were you two humble students allowed to meet the great man?”
“He had more pressing matters. A footman asked if he needed anything. Derzhavin responded with equal gravity.” Alexander’s voice rumbled as he impersonated the poet. “‘My good man,’ said he, ‘where is the privy in this place? I need to piss like a workhorse.’”
Alexander stifled a laugh, punching his fist to his mouth. A few sputters escaped and then he doubled over and his laughter was so infectious I started to giggle as well. “I suppose you were all quite disappointed your hero was given to such base human needs,” I said.
“Never, my dear lady! I found him all the more appealing for it. However, I can’t say the footman felt the same. The fellow’s cheeks reddened until he looked like an apple. Once they had shuffled away, Delvig turned to me, said, ‘Great man, my arse!’ and stormed off.”
My corset stays tore into my stomach as I laughed. I still felt amazed I was even speaking to a man such as Alexander Pushkin, let alone that he was comfortable enough to say “arse” in my presence. Without thinking, I grasped Alexander’s wrist.
Alexander stared at the patch of exposed skin above his gloves, where my flesh pressed his. Suddenly shy, I withdrew my hand and took a deep breath. The cold air roughened my nostrils and throat. I averted my gaze, poking the cobblestone under my satin slipper. “Was this the last you saw of the famed Derzhavin?”
“Certainly not.” Alexander still stared at the spot where I had touched him. A few droplets of snow speckled his black whiskers and he withdrew a handkerchief from his front pocket to pat his face. “We were all scheduled to recite poems for him as part of our final exams. I confess, I was nervous waiting for the other poor devils to deliver their lines. Watching the old man’s head slip to his shoulder as he nodded in and out of sleep.”
“He fell asleep during the exams! The boys must have been mortified.”
“Indeed, they were. I was mortified as well. What if the great Derzhavin should snore in the middle of my recitation? And then I decided to view his somnolence not as a problem, but a challenge. Someone needed to rouse the poor man from his torpor and it might as well be me. I strode to the center of the room, surrounded by my instructors and their pretty wives all dressed to the nines, stepped onto one of the diamond-shaped tiles, and gave the best reading of my life. At least I thought it so. Then I saw it happen: the old man awoke and cupped his hand to his ear so that he might better hear my words.”
I could picture the scene: Alexander as a brash young man, his olive skin and mass of wild black curls, hand flung high in the air as he read a particularly dramatic line. “Did you ever shake the hand that wrote ‘The Waterfall’?”
“After my recitation, I fled the room. Truth be told, the pressure grew too immense and the fact that he adored my poem felt devastating.” Alexander fingered the little cub atop his walking stick, and then shook his head and screwed his eyelids shut. Faint creases appeared at the corners of his eyes. “Success alarmed me. I feel a fool saying that aloud.”
“It’s not foolish at all! You dreamed of success. Once attained … well, what then?”
Alexander opened his eyes and his gaze fell squarely on my mouth. I understood him. Perhaps he was unaccustomed to feeling understood. I felt certain then that he would try to steal a kiss. Without thinking, I closed my eyes, wanting to feel his lips on mine, choosing not to worry who might see. I was ready.
I waited, but felt nothing. I opened my eyes once more to find Alexander grinning. My lips were still foolishly pursed, but he had not taken advantage. He tossed his walking stick into the air and caught it deftly in one hand, as though celebrating this small victory.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the gentlemen by the fountain re-enter the mansion. The cold now felt like painful pinpricks of ice, reality sinking in once more.
“We should return before we are missed,” Alexander said. “I trust Tolstoy to keep your aunt occupied, but the poor chap can ramble and I don’t want her to suffer too long.”
I nodded, trying not to betray my disappointment. We needed to return to the ball, but the night was not yet over and already it seemed an eternity until I might again see Alexander.
* * *
“Aren’t we fancy?” Ekaterina declared as we alighted from our carriage and navigated the slippery walkway to our house just before midnight.
“What do you mean?” I spoke against my better judgment, for I knew Ekaterina was trying to provoke me and I should refrain from snapping at the bait.
“You were on the dance floor all night! With the same partner for the most part. That dark fellow?”
After our initial waltz, Alexander had asked me to dance again, but by no stretch of the imagination had he monopolized me. “I danced with Alexander a few times, no more tha
n was appropriate. And that ‘dark fellow’ is the author of Evgeny Onegin and other works.”
“Oh, everyone knows Alexander Pushkin,” Ekaterina said slyly. “He has been involved with a number of elegant ladies, from what I understand.”
“How would you know?”
Ekaterina shrugged. “I’m only repeating what Aunt Katya said.”
As we crossed the threshold into our dim and silent home, I tried to compose myself. Ekaterina wanted to embarrass me. I would not allow guilt to sully my complexion when we spoke to Mother.
The fire in the hearth had already been put out and the front room was chilly. I thought Sergey would have remained near the door to harass us the instant we arrived home, but Mother must have shooed the boys off to bed. She sat alone in her armchair with the lazy tabby prostrate on her lap. I did not understand how either of them could tolerate the cold, nor the dank scent of mildew. I wanted nothing more than to sink under the blankets of my bed.
“I trust you had a fine time,” Mother said. “Your father would be here to ask himself, only he worked himself to the point of exhaustion today and has taken to bed.”
I tried not to flinch at Mother’s blatant lie. Father likely lingered still at one of the taverns along the Arbat. For all I knew, he was sleeping on the street these days. He had chosen alcohol and misery and despair over his family, and I could no longer find room in my heart for him.
“Natalya had a grand time,” Ekaterina announced.
The harsh lines of Mother’s face shadowed in the dull light from the dying fire. “Oh?”
The tiara felt tight on my forehead. “There was a Christmas tree and I found it lovely.”
“She spent the night dancing with Alexander Pushkin,” Ekaterina said. “The writer? You have heard of him, haven’t you? Didn’t he get in trouble over some rebel nonsense in a poem?”
“That was years ago and besides, Natalya only danced with him a few times.” Azya could always be counted on to defend me. “No more than was proper.”
Mother rose to her feet, dislodging the tabby who emitted a screech of complaint and glared at Ekaterina before darting out of the room. “Girls, you get straight to your beds and tell me the rest in the morning. You need your beauty sleep, after all.”
We nodded and curtsied, and I prepared to follow my sisters upstairs.
“Natalya, why don’t you wait a moment while your sisters go first? I think we should have a few words.”
As I watched my sisters scurry off, the stairs creaking under their heeled slippers, my heart dropped to my stomach.
“Alexander Pushkin. I believe I have heard this name before.” Mother stroked a tarnished silver crucifix strung around her neck on a beaded chain. “The poet?”
“The one.” I was tired and did not know what Mother expected of me.
“He lived in exile for some time under our previous tsar, this poet of yours. It seems such a man will always find himself under the crown’s scrutiny, along with his family and associates.”
Mother drew closer to the table where I kept my notes and inkwell and oval-shaped spectacles. I chewed my lower lip as she removed the spectacles from their fabric case and turned the thin, fragile frames over in her hands.
“Your great-great-grandfather was a practical man. A man of this world. He lived in the time of Tsar Peter and thought to himself: what might this powerful man need? Then he looked to the grand ships being built in the harbor and knew the answer. Such ships would sail through the wind with what? Cloth…”
I bowed my head, bracing for the all too familiar family history lesson that was to follow.
“… and so he set to manufacture cotton and linens and expanded to paper products and made a fortune that brought honor to this family and helped make this empire what it is today. The Goncharovs remained great, retained their fortune … until your grandfather brought the French laundress home with him after the war.”
I had been born in 1812, so I knew of the war with Napoleon only from hearsay, but Mother had told this family story so many times I felt I had borne witness to it. My grandfather, Afansy Goncharov, spent the war abroad. After Napoleon’s armies had been driven from Moscow, and Grandfather finally returned home, we learned he had left his wife and replaced her with a clever Frenchwoman named Babette. As far as Mother was concerned, Babette was to blame for all the family’s financial problems since. How exactly this was so had never been made clear. It seemed more a coincidence of timing to me and yet the legend endured.
Mother would never admit the truth: that it was not some random Frenchwoman, but my father’s drinking—his bouts of crying, his sudden screaming fits on those rare occasions when he did come home—that accounted for our troubles. Ever since he was thrown from a horse and made the decision to soothe the pain of his injuries with drink, my father had been useless. I had been a small girl at the time of his accident, and could only now comprehend the extent of the damage he’d done.
“I appreciate the appeal of poetry, but it is nothing more than fantasy,” Mother said. “In reality, a husband must support his wife and her family as best he can manage. In this world, poets are not capable of such generosity. Better to turn your favor to a more practical man who sees a need in this world, fills it, and is compensated handsomely for his trouble. One who steers clear of politics and the petty intrigues of the tsar’s court. Do you understand?”
I could barely look at her, but nodded.
Mother handed me my spectacles. I took them with one hand, removed my tiara with the other, and then positioned them on my face. As though a spell had been cast, the world came into sharp focus around me: the pointed corners of the writing table, the needlework unicorns and maidens on the fading, old-fashioned tapestries hanging from the walls, products of my family’s once lucrative mills, and the last glowing embers of the fire in the hearth.
“You are young and gifted with great beauty. You can attract a practical man. You’re a good girl, Natalya. You understand our family’s precarious situation. Now, off to bed with you. I know at your next ball you will make a wise choice and do that which is right for us all.”
My mother spoke of wise choices as though such matters were clear as day and night, and life provides only one true path to security and satisfaction. I have since learned that the choices we make in this life are a complex, nuanced array leading to both joy and despair. A comfortable partnership with a practical man might have granted me contentment, but I believe I would have spent that life forever looking over my shoulder, wondering what might have been had I chosen the poet instead.
Three
Over breakfast the following morning, Azya spoke of nothing but the ball. As we waited for the chilly room to warm, Ivan and Sergey scarfed down hot buttered buns and slurped cinnamon-flavored cocoa while my sister told them of the dancing and decorations. “They had a pine tree with candles on every branch!”
Mother took a silent sip of her plain black tea. “As in the Protestant lands? I didn’t realize society was so taken with Prussian custom.”
Ekaterina gave a triumphant snort.
“Yes, but it was beautiful!” Azya insisted. “And one of the girls told me at this time of year there are all sorts of spells you can cast to learn the identity of your husband. They say if you look in a mirror at midnight on Christmas Eve, you will see his face.”
“Sounds like a foreign trick,” Ekaterina huffed.
I looked steadily at a pat of butter on my chipped Sèvres plate, a bun warming my mouth. At the word “husband,” Alexander’s face appeared in my mind. That was no trick.
“Not foreign at all,” Ivan cut in authoritatively, his wide forehead creasing. “It’s an ancient Slavic tradition.”
“Either way, it seems like nonsense to me,” Ekaterina said.
“They played mazurkas until the dancers were exhausted, and the waltz at least five times by my count,” Azya continued. “Natalya danced every one of them.”
“Yes,” Ekaterina said
slyly. “First with some man you all know. Tolstoy or some such?”
“The American!” Ivan declared. “Nice fellow. Arrogant, but Natalya could do worse. He said he might visit soon. I wonder if we should expect him.”
I thought Mother would frown again. So, apparently, did Ekaterina, who took a moment away from primly tasting her cocoa to give me a knowing smirk.
“It is a credit to us all that your sister is so popular,” Mother said.
Under the table, Sergey kicked my shin. It smarted and I scowled at him, but he kept his plump features maddeningly neutral. So I kicked him right back and he cried out in pain.
“Her partner for the next few dances was a dark-skinned fellow with the most unusual hair,” Ekaterina droned on, oblivious to Sergey’s yowling. “If you know this Tolstoy the American, perhaps you have met his friend too. Alexander Pushkin?”
“The poet? With our Natalya…” Ivan eyed me suspiciously, as though it was beyond his ability to ascertain why I might be of interest to someone like Alexander Pushkin.
Mother pressed her lips into a thin line and I was sure she was about to say something to Ivan or perhaps even to Sergey for kicking me, but at that moment the one footman who remained in our household entered the dining area. Over the past few months, he had assumed a variety of duties, despite an unavoidable decline in his pay. Now, he hovered patiently at the threshold, waiting to be summoned. Mother nodded and he approached bearing a small visiting card printed in elaborate lettering I did not recognize.
“A visitor this early?” Mother dabbed her mouth with a linen napkin and carefully took the card, dipping her nose closer to it.
Though I couldn’t make out the name of the visitor, I caught the rich scent of sandalwood and citrus emanating from the card stock, the same cologne Alexander had worn the previous night. I recalled the jolt of excitement when his hand touched mine and my heart fluttered, the descriptions in French novels proven correct once more.
The Lost Season of Love and Snow Page 3