I endeavored to find a way to keep his focus on me. I still wanted to win a kiss from him, but had not yet conspired to find a place for us to be alone together.
After several weeks, Mother finally allowed Alexander to walk beside me on the way home from church. Perhaps she felt the services had been sufficient to put God in our souls and foremost in our minds, and so nothing untoward could possibly happen.
One Sunday, while the city was enjoying an unusually warm early spring sun, Alexander seemed strangely quiet. I did not think I could ask a man if he needed to stop and rest without insulting his ego, but I needed to say something. “Do you not feel well?”
“Fit as a fiddle,” he said, huffing in the warm air.
“You seem … distracted.”
He pounded his walking stick against the cobblestone, the tiny bear cub atop the cane bobbing up and down. In those days, I still had a rather naïve view of the inner workings of the male mind. I supposed Alexander was attempting to contain his anger, to remain strong, and that were I only clever enough to get him to talk about whatever plagued him, it was a sure sign we were meant to be together. “I hope you feel you can talk to me of any trouble you might face. I would never judge you, nor fear what you might say.”
Alexander stopped to withdraw a linen handkerchief and wipe his brow, but I saw the corners of his lips pulling into a smile and I knew I had said what he wished to hear.
He shoved the handkerchief back into a pocket and withdrew a thin sheet of paper. “From one of my fellow men of letters. Look at this, my Natalie…”
My heart soared. I was his Natalie. In those days, I was still foolish enough to find a man’s presumption of possession flattering. With difficulty, I found it in me to concentrate on the letter he had thrust in my hands. After dismissing one of Alexander’s recent poems, the author referred to Alexander as the descendant of a “blackamoor slave” with insinuation that little could be expected of him due to this fact. Alexander claimed an African ancestor in his family’s lineage, a princeling of that land, and had even started a novel about how this gentleman came to find himself in Russia.
“The impudence! He threatens to publish this dreck. Should I not call this scoundrel to task for his disrespect?”
I envied Alexander the passion so evident in his voice and wished I might speak in such a heated tone whenever Ekaterina said something vexing. “This is certainly not well put.”
Azya, who had been keeping pace close to our side—and apparently eavesdropping—suddenly exclaimed: “How dare they! Who did this to you?”
“Bulgarin, the bast—” My brother Sergey caught up with us and, overhearing Alexander, started to guffaw. Mother and Ekaterina had been walking in front of us and turned to frown. Alexander caught Mother’s eye and concluded: “… bastion of bad taste.”
“This Bulgarin fellow is likely only envious of your talent,” I told him.
The comment calmed Alexander, and he lowered his voice. “I take it he refers to my mother’s grandfather, Abram Gannibal, the close confidante of Peter the Great and a distinguished engineer in his own right. And is the swine not aware my father’s family traces its noble routes for centuries past, back to the days of the boyars in Ancient Muscovy? We’re older than the House of Romanov. Do I not then deserve some measure of respect?”
I wanted to respond, but felt hampered in the presence of Mother. The Goncharovs were still considered relatively new to the aristocratic orders and I knew only too well how easily family fortunes change. The thought left me glum, and between the heat of the morning sun, Ekaterina’s disdainful stare, and Sergey’s attempts to make me giggle by crossing his eyes, I could not summon one intelligent comment. I simply smiled.
I felt empty relying on my beauty alone.
“What of you, my Natalie?” Alexander pressed. “I have made a show of my troubles. Forgive me.” He drew his hand dramatically to his chest. “We speak so little of you on these walks.”
I bit my lip. “I wish there were more to tell of my days.”
“If your days are not to your liking, then you must change their form.” As we turned the corner, he veered to the right to avoid a brood of ducklings splashing in a large puddle. “What do you want most from this life?”
“Marriage. Children. A secure home…” Giving this answer, I felt like an automaton cuckoo in a clock, saying only what was expected.
As though reading my very thoughts, Alexander said, “This sounds more like what you have been taught to answer than the true feelings of your heart.”
His voice was tender and he had slowed his steps enough that we fell behind the rest of my family. He placed a gentle hand on my arm to indicate he wished me to stop for a moment. I paused and he looked deep into my eyes, as though trying to determine the nature of my soul and what might be hidden beneath my polite exterior.
No one in my life had ever bothered to look at me this way, nor thought to ask what I might desire. When I met Alexander’s gaze I felt a deep, piercing longing, for I had found not only a man who made me feel I would yield to anything, but at the same time made me stronger, as though I was finally living as my own true self.
“I do not yet know what I want from life,” I whispered, no longer feeling empty. “For now I only want to discover it for myself and control my own destiny.”
* * *
Though I felt confident with my answer to Alexander’s intense question, I still feared I was too uneducated for the greatest poet of our land. These fears seemed founded when Alexander announced the tsar had granted him an opportunity to tour the south and the Caucasus to research new writing projects. He would be away from Moscow for several months, likely not returning until late autumn. Tipping his hat, he declared he would see us all when he returned. And though his gaze fixed on mine for several moments before he left, he gave no indication as to what might happen between us then.
I fixed a smile to my face when he shared this “good” news, and tried not to think about the women he might stay with along the way, well-educated and sophisticated ladies, nor brood over whether Alexander would even wish to return to Moscow. I could not even blame this turn of events on Mother and her dull talk of bread. I hadn’t found a way to get Alexander alone and steal a kiss, and I felt certain my own failure to speak intelligently had destroyed my chance to find happiness with him. After such a long trip away, I felt assured he would forget me.
Without Alexander’s Sunday visits, my life once again fell into a dull routine, and even as the weather grew warmer and flowers blossomed, I felt as though I were receding into a flat and barren existence.
And then his first letter arrived by post: a short stanza dedicated to me, with a note on the side stating he hoped I enjoyed the verse and had not overstepped his bounds. I brought my hand to my mouth and let out a little cry of delight. On the back of the poem, he’d sketched a picture of my face in profile with charcoal pencils. It was the view he would have had of me when we were attending services, my eyes squinting. In the portrait, I wore my hair in an elaborate bun with curled braids to each side of my ears and the same tiara and cream-colored gown I had worn to the ball where we first met.
I allowed myself to hope I had not been such a fool after all, that Alexander’s absence truly had been motivated by his need to write. I tacked the picture near the looking glass, to Ekaterina’s consternation. “It’s not like you can’t see yourself in the mirror.”
“I don’t have anywhere else to display it and I think it’s a nice likeness, don’t you?”
Ekaterina snorted, which I took as grudging agreement, and then commenced brushing her thick hair. “You can let the little poet moon after you as you wish, but I suppose you remember he was friends with Decembrists. I hear they couldn’t hang them all on the first try. They had to redo the whole affair with three of them, and even then their bodies were twitching for twenty minutes. Can you imagine?”
My hands clenched into fists. Of course I could imagine, just as I coul
d understand the horror gripping their families’ hearts as they watched, and all of the large and small ways the tsar could punish those left behind: devastating finances, sending his secret police to keep watch for any sign of sedition, not-so-veiled threats of torture.
“You know how the court of the tsar works. One insult to a powerful man, rumors spread, and you’re ruined.” Ekaterina leaned forward, jutting her chin at me, a smudge of face cream still clinging to her cheeks. “Why would you desire such a life? Mother will never consent.”
I stared blankly at my own hairbrush on the vanity. Ekaterina didn’t understand what it felt like to want more from life than a snug home and pretty trinkets. She thought only of comfort, not adventure. Besides, Mother had been looking at her account ledgers more frequently of late, no doubt calculating how much lower her monthly expense would be with one less daughter at home. “Mother will be glad enough to have me off her hands.”
“Then why did she not entertain your poet’s proposal?”
My head shot up. Ekaterina set her brush down next to mine, leaned back, and crossed her arms triumphantly.
“Alexander has proposed?” How could Ekaterina know and I didn’t? I couldn’t believe even Mother would be cruel enough to keep such information from me.
“Within a week of meeting you, he sent that fellow Tolstoy to Mother on his behalf.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” I cried.
“Mother saw no need. For God’s sake, he hardly knew you. Foolishness of the highest order.”
That proposal may have been impulsive, but if another were offered, I would make sure Mother had no grounds to refuse. My destiny might already have been decided—perhaps was even visible in some carnival fortune-teller’s magical ball—but I intended to take every opportunity to ensure my life unfolded the way I desired.
Five
While Alexander was away, Sergey and Azya attempted to lift my spirits by performing impromptu musical numbers in our parlor. Azya sang a folk tune while Sergey crouched and kicked his feet out from under him, eyes crossed the entire time. This show distracted me well enough in the evening, but when I lay abed at night, shivering and waiting for the blankets to lose their chill, I couldn’t help but imagine Alexander’s adventures with elegant women. I tried to pour my heart into poems and lyrics, attempted to express the pain and beauty of how deeply I missed Alexander, but all my words seemed feeble. In the end, I tore the thick paper from my notebooks and shredded it into tiny pieces, frustrated at my lack of talent.
On the few occasions when other men approached me, I laughed at their jokes and blushed at their compliments. In the case of one attractive prince, I even allowed my hand to rest on his arm. Except that only reminded me of the time I had spent in the courtyard with Alexander at the dance master’s ball, and my attempts at flirtation ran dry. Needless to say, men did not flock to the Goncharov household, and I resigned myself to the idea of spending the rest of my life in our cold parlor knitting with Ekaterina and Mother until I finally withered away from boredom.
At the end of November, Aunt Katya paid us a visit and deftly sidestepped my brothers to inform me she had secured a spot for me in a tableau vivant at a reception to honor the tsar’s visit to Moscow for the start of Advent. I might even have an opportunity to be presented to the tsar. I was to appear in a tale from the Aeneid, looking on in horror as my sister Dido, the Queen of Carthage, prepared to run a sword through her chest and throw herself into a funeral pyre over her failed love affair with the Trojan warrior Aeneas. The thought of performing before the most powerful man in Russia, the most powerful man in the world as far as I was concerned, left me struggling to catch my breath.
Ekaterina wormed her way into hearing distance and quickly cut in: “Before the tsar! But Natalya has no acting experience.”
This wasn’t strictly true. I had appeared as Pyramus in a production of Pyramus and Thisbe orchestrated by one of our governesses, though I only secured the part because the governess determined that the tallest girl in our group should play the male lead. Even so, I thought I had done a fine job of it. When the time came for me to pretend to kiss her, the girl who played Thisbe had leaned in close and whispered, “Do it.”
Aunt Katya immediately dashed my dreams of becoming a great actress: “It’s a tableau, not the London stage. She is only required to stand there and look decorative.”
My governess had told me to imagine the story of Pyramus and attempt to relate it to my own life. I tried to do the same for Dido’s sister, but couldn’t envision either Ekaterina or Azya throwing themselves into a fire nor claiming their own life with a sword. Ekaterina would find it gauche and Azya would cry too much to manage the logistics. Nevertheless, my role in the tableau was a great honor and I endeavored to make the most of it, practicing my expression of horror for hours on end in front of our looking glass until Ekaterina scowled and said, “Think you can manage this grand drama without your spectacles? It would be a fine thing for you to trip over your own feet and fall offstage before the tsar and his court.”
I stuck my tongue out at her, but that never provoked my older sister as it did Sergey, and Ekaterina walked away as though she hadn’t a care in the world.
Ekaterina’s comments undermined my confidence. No one wanted to see Dido’s sister in spectacles. (“Why does a girl need to see anyway?” Sergey had said once, before I stomped on his toes until he howled.) On the other hand, I didn’t wish to make a fool of myself. The evening of the tableau, Mother caught me trying to stash the spectacles away in my reticule and promptly snapped them out of my hands. “In front of Tsar Nicholas? Are you mad?”
By the time I made it to the backstage area, and a maid had applied carmine rouge to my cheeks and a hint of black color around my eyes, I was convinced I would trip over the unfamiliar folds of the toga and make a fool of myself. Dido was being made up in the chair next to mine, elegant from a distance, but smelling of claret up close. I caught a glance of my brightly made-up face and costumed form in the looking glass, draped in a toga with a crown of golden laurel leaves tucked into my braided hair. I needed to focus, to transcend my petty concerns and make the audience believe I was a Carthaginian maid.
The other girls and I took our places behind the red velvet curtain. The embossed golden double-headed eagles were a clear reminder of who was in our midst. I took a deep breath as the sonorous voice of the master of ceremonies described the scene: Dido had just instructed her sister (me) to construct a pyre and burn her worldly belongings. Now, she would throw herself in the fire and declare eternal war between Carthage and Troy. Slowly, the curtain rose and I stood under a warm spotlight, intense dread gathering force inside of me like a tempest. I fixed my features into a look of horror at the artificial flames constructed onstage and maintained this expression, even when it hurt my face to remain still and the spotlight made a droplet of perspiration slide down my brow. It tickled, but I dared not move. The tsar was watching and held all our fates like crippled birds in his hands. With the favor of the tsar, I could leave my family’s house to seek out my own life. No one could control me, not even Mother.
When the curtain dropped to the thunderous applause of the audience, I felt a surge of satisfaction. I made my way off the stage and into Azya’s waiting arms.
“You looked magnificent! The audience was enthralled. I’ve already heard people whispering about how gorgeous you looked.”
She meant well but the remark irritated me. For once it would have been nice to be complimented for something other than beauty, a trait I had not earned and over which I had little to no control. “It only required the ability to stand still.”
Azya squeezed my hand. “After the curtain fell, I positioned myself near a group who had been sitting with the tsar. He wants to meet you.”
My stomach turned, the image of young officers hanging from gibbets in Palace Square fresh in my imagination. Men killed by order of the tsar. Men who had been Alexander’s friends and read his p
oems for inspiration. And yet, this was my one chance to wrestle control of my own destiny. “It would be an honor to meet Tsar Nicholas.”
By the time we made our way down to the main floor, the velveteen cushioned chairs set out for the audience had been moved to one side to make room for dancing. The great hall of the palace was ornamented with pine boughs and holly and even a tree with candles in golden holders. The scent of the greenery mingled with that of Turkish pipes in the smoking room. It reminded me of Alexander, his feet peeping out from the bottom of the tree at the dance master’s ball nearly one year ago. The intense focus in his pale eyes. The flutter in my heart when I realized the greatest poet in Russia wanted to dance with me.
My train of thought was disrupted when I caught sight of Tsar Nicholas. Tall and broad across the shoulders, he wore a uniform with medals that gleamed in the candlelight, setting him apart from his fawning courtiers. At the time, all I considered was my good fortune at the opportunity to speak to him directly; I would not learn of the tsar’s reputation with women until later. Personally, I did not find Tsar Nicholas a particularly attractive man, but I knew myself to be in the minority among the ladies of Moscow. As a young grand duke, he had been handsome: a strong jaw, soft mouth, and full head of reddish hair. Though now only a few years past thirty, the demands of office had aged him prematurely. His hairline had thinned, his paunchy midsection pressed tight against his uniform coat, and his eyes began to droop in the same trajectory as his trim mustache. Without the signifiers of rank, he would have looked like a middle-aged shopkeeper who kept overly long hours.
I had not intended to catch the tsar’s eye, but he saw me and flashed a sudden smile, greatly improving his looks. He bent to whisper something to one of his courtiers and then the entire assemblage moved in my direction, perhaps eight or nine men, along with three maids of honor hovering on the perimeter. The tsar’s wife, the former Charlotte of Prussia, walked at his side, in a slim crimson gown with embroidered sprigs of mistletoe along the hems and a traditional kokoshnik headdress heavy with jewels, her pretty but sharp Germanic features fixed in neutral affability. They progressed forward as deliberately and gracefully as a corps de ballet, all parts of one single-minded creature.
The Lost Season of Love and Snow Page 6