The Lost Season of Love and Snow

by Jennifer Laam

  “And what of you, angel?” He tilted his head at the soft brown notebook beside me on the nightstand. “Did I not hear your own quill scratching before the little one was born?”

  “Don’t peek,” I told him, suddenly shy. “Not yet. It is only a first draft.”

  He said nothing, but managed a smile so winning I could not find it in my heart to ask why he had been reluctant to answer my question and diverted attention away from his own writing so quickly.

  * * *

  Alexander had said that since we were parents now, we shouldn’t live as nomads, and yet I could not help but think that after moving not once but now three times over the course of our short marriage, we should be considered such. I wondered if we might save money by living in the same manner of those in the deserts of the Near East, and merely roll up our tent and pack our belongings on a camel when we tired of one place and wished to move to another.

  At least Alexander had the sanctuary he desired, and a spacious study with giant picture windows and a balcony. I envied him such a marvelous space for his creative endeavors. After a few days of shifting his shelves and desk and swivel chair into different configurations—to the endless delight of Masha, who crawled about, tossing his bound journals to the floor and tearing expensive Goncharov paper from his notebooks—he eventually settled in. When I rose in the morning to have my hot cocoa and English buns, I heard the nib of his quill scratch on paper. Visiting his study, I saw he had set to work once more, but had deleted so many lines and rewritten them in such small and tight script that they would be nearly impossible to transcribe into a legible hand.

  Happiness in our new flat was disrupted that September when we received word my grandfather, Afansy, had passed away. I spent an afternoon locked away in my room, sobbing, not for the man my grandfather had been at the end of his life, but for the one I knew as a child. He had held me on his shoulders while we toured the factories and shared the story of all the Goncharovs who had come before. He taught me to ride, letting me choose any horse from his stable, insisting I could manage any mount—at least until my father’s accident. After that, everything changed. The Goncharovs changed.

  Once I calmed myself, remembering Afansy had lived a long and, for the most part, content life, I made my way out of my room, calling for Masha to be brought to me from the nursery. When I reached the parlor, daughter in my arms, I discovered my grandfather had delivered a most unusual inheritance.

  The life-size bronze statue of Empress Catherine that once graced Afansy’s basement now stood watch between Alexander’s bookshelves and the low mahogany divan Aunt Katya had given us as a housewarming present. I stood before the statue, Masha mewling softly. Catherine’s gaze fixed straight ahead, right at me, with such steely determination that even Masha could not find it in her to howl at this strange new toy. I couldn’t shake the same feeling I had when young, that the statue somehow held Catherine’s spirit.

  “Take a look at our own empress,” I whispered in Masha’s ear. “We may be born women, but we are not trapped by our bodies, nor by fate. We have no limitations.”

  I beamed at my daughter who gave the most delightful smile in return. She was already forming dimples that made her look a bit like her Aunt Katya.

  “Where in the name of all that is damned and all that is holy are we supposed to put this old girl?” Alexander asked, disrupting my thoughts. He entered the room, tucking the evening papers under his arm.

  “I consider it an honor to host the great Catherine.”

  Alexander greeted Masha with a kiss on the forehead before tenderly brushing his lips against my mine. “You’re feeling better?”

  “Better.” I managed a smile. “Just admiring our gift. It’s a … surprise.”

  “And where shall we store this honored guest?”

  “The nursery? Perhaps Grandfather meant her as a gift for Masha.”

  “It’s no gift for Masha.” He started pacing and rubbing his hands, a nervous habit from his childhood he had rediscovered in recent months. “Afansy asked me to dispose of this thing for a bit of cash. I failed and now we’re stuck with her.”

  I did not feel “stuck” with Catherine. “We could keep her in the parlor to amuse visitors.”

  “We shall need to take care with what we say in her presence. For all we know, she is one of Tsar Nicholas’s secret police force come to spy on me, convinced I am plotting the second coming of the Decembrists, no doubt. Or perhaps she is here to watch you. I have it on good authority the tsar has spoken of passing by your window when riding about town and complains when he finds the shade drawn.”

  I froze, trying to force the memory of the tsar’s leering face from my mind. Alexander was rubbing his hands so furiously now that I feared he might scrape a layer of skin right off, and so I kept my tone measured for his sake, betraying none of my true panic. “You cannot be serious. That sounds like a tale designed by jealous rumormongers only to make you angry. Besides, if the tsar insists on a show at my window he shall remain forever disappointed.”

  Alexander forced his hands apart and gave an abrupt, mirthless laugh. “Perhaps it is all part of a grand plan to keep me in an agitated state.” He held his shaking hands aloft. “My mother used to bind my hands behind my back to stop me from chafing them. Do you think I should reinstitute the practice? Would you help me with that, my love?”

  I raised my eyebrows high, unconsciously imitating my Aunt Katya, but could not let the subject drop so easily. “I have a solution. Let’s move Catherine to my bedroom. We shall lay a trap for Tsar Nicholas. We’ll leave the curtains open, and if it’s true he chooses to play the peeping pervert, he shall find his own grandmother staring sternly back at him.”

  This time, Alexander’s laugh was genuine. “You have beaten the tsar at his own game. There must be some great reward in that.”

  “We shall make our own reward for the shades shall frequently be drawn.” I adjusted Masha to hold her over my shoulder with one arm. “Perhaps my grandfather thought the empress would inspire us to create more strong Russian children.”

  “The great Catherine listening in on every private moment between us? I should have to blindfold the good woman before I could even consider such a thing.” A mischievous smile played on Alexander’s lips and he curled his hand into a loose fist and bopped it against his mouth. He had placed a blindfold over my own eyes at times during our lovemaking, insisting it heightened other sensations. He had been right.

  Despite a pleasurable evening, both of us eager to play games with the blindfold once more, sleep did not come easily for me that night. How easily I envisioned the tsar keeping watch under my bedroom window. I tossed and turned while Alexander grumbled beside me. After an hour or so, he took the pillow from his side of the bed and retired to his study. Eventually, sleep overcame my senses.

  When I opened my eyes again, an apparition had formed before me. I recognized her feminine figure: the elegant posture, beautiful simplicity of her face, and clear, purpose-driven eyes I had always so admired. Her bemused expression was half-cloaked by shadow in the pale moonlight. She said nothing to me but I heard an echo of my husband’s voice, merrily declaring we needed to take care for the great Catherine could now listen in on all we said. With graceful little fingers, she beckoned me to lean forward until our noses nearly touched.

  “Men are not worth the trouble. Their egos are never satisfied. Men bring naught but pain. Tend to yourself. That is the path to true happiness.”

  The words cut deep into my heart and surprised me. After all, Catherine had enjoyed intriguing men in her life. I had thought her a woman capable of power and romance at once. “How can you of all people say such a thing?”

  She poked me gently in the chest. “You are a woman of passion and ambition, yet you consider yourself second to your husband. See the error of your ways. Put your desires before that of any man.”

  The walls of the room began to spin. Slowly, I realized I inhabited an alternate rea
lity. As I came to my senses, my eyes opened once more, shaking. At first I thought somehow Catherine had commanded the earth itself to quake and then I realized Alexander was hovering above me, jostling my shoulder.

  “You were screaming,” he said, face pale. “I could hear it even from upstairs.”

  I sat upright and struggled to find my spectacles on the nightstand. When the world was again clear, Catherine no longer stood at my feet, and yet her words lingered in my mind.

  “I believe I saw a ghost.”

  Alexander’s features relaxed and his eyes widened in mock amazement, though I detected a hint of genuine worry in his expression as well. “Pray tell. Only I hope it was not your dear Afansy checking up on his beloved statue, still waiting for me to sell the poor old girl to some lonely country manor.”

  “No.” I opened my mouth, feeling a fool for what I was about to say but also finding no way to keep the words in. “I know it was just a dream, but I saw Catherine. She spoke to me. It seemed real. I cannot explain it.”

  “Sounds like something worth committing to paper. What did she have to say?” Alexander reached under the blanket and tickled the inside my thigh. “Tell me she didn’t spy on us in the bedroom. Tell me she didn’t offer advice on that part of our lives.”

  “Stop it.” I batted his hand away, giggling, and kissed his cheek.

  “Then what did she say?”

  Men bring naught but pain. Minding my words, I stilled my tongue before I could speak. I did not think Alexander would appreciate the great woman’s advice for me. “I can’t remember anymore. You know how it is with dreams. In your memory for a moment and then fleeting as the wind.”

  Alexander seemed to accept this, and eventually the apparition of Catherine dissolved into no more than a vague memory. But from then on, I took care when passing by her statue.

  * * *

  The following summer, I gave birth again, this time to a red-haired little boy. Though he resembled my husband’s carrot-topped brother, I named him after Alexander and we called him Sasha. He was sweet enough, but unlike his sister, reluctant to leave the womb. He came during the humid days of July, right after the white nights of the northern summer, and his labor took two full agonizing days.

  Afterward, as I cuddled the sweet bundle in my arms to nurse him, Masha held her father’s hand and regarded her new brother with a mixture of wonder and disgust. I began to consider if there might be a way to prevent another baby, at least for a little while, so my body might recover, though that was but wishful thinking in those days.

  Soon we fell into a routine. While Alexander wrote, I spent mornings with Masha and Sasha, took a respite midday as they napped, and then shared luncheon with my husband and later reviewed the household accounts. Despite a new infusion of capital from my late grandfather’s estate, the numbers troubled me. I thought Alexander might insist on being paid in gold rubles rather than the creditor’s slips that so often failed to be worth the designated amount. I resolved to confront him with this idea.

  I looked all around our flat for Alexander and was surprised to find him at last crouched before the statue of Catherine, one of his notebooks splayed on his lap and a charcoal pencil in his hand. He was drawing furiously, as he liked to do when pondering ideas for a new work. I wondered if Catherine had inspired some idea or another and my heart soared. My grandfather’s gift was not as useless as Alexander had previously supposed. I peered over his shoulder, expecting to see a likeness of Catherine rendered on the paper.

  Instead, Alexander had sketched a rough outline of another statue, one Catherine had gifted to the city of St. Petersburg before either of us was born. It was the equestrian statue that stood near the banks of the Neva. The actual statue portrayed Peter the Great on a majestic mount, his long arm outstretched, indicating where his new city would stand.

  When I looked closer, I saw the statue, at least in my husband’s rendition, had come alive, for the horse was in motion, but there was no rider. “What is that? What are you doing?”

  He lost his balance and fell to the floor with a thump. “Hurting my arse, apparently.”

  “I’m sorry.” I started to laugh. I had not realized his concentration was so intense my soft words would startle him easily. “I was curious. I thought you were sketching the great lady.”

  “Not at present.” Alexander rose to his feet, rubbing his backside with one hand while clutching the notebook in his other. “I have thought about her quite a bit as of late. After she appeared to you in your dreams. It wouldn’t do to ignore such a sign.” Alexander began to pace, curling his free hand into a fist and pounding the notebook with it as though keeping time with a tune in his head. “Your great Catherine wants me to speak of the statue she erected to celebrate her great predecessor Peter. It might be intriguing to write about the storm that nearly drowned our city in 1824 as well. You remember?”

  I was but twelve at the time, and yet word of this disaster had reached even Moscow. “I do. They say the streets were flooded so high carriages were useless and boats used instead.”

  “I am not sure yet how it connects to this.” He opened the notebook once more to the image of the horse and tapped it with a finger. “I endeavor to find out. I believe I shall soon have something new for you to transcribe.”

  “Then I expect you will need more time in your study.” My lips trembled for it was good to see him excited about his work once more. “We’ll stay out of your way.”

  “I am thinking rather that I shall spend the time traveling. I believe I should like to go research the history of Catherine’s old enemy Pugachev and his insurrection and then go to the countryside and write in peace.”

  My lips stilled. I did not think my own husband would find it necessary to leave me in order to work, and I couldn’t help but worry how the tsar would react to Alexander’s newfound taste for the history of rebellion. “For how long?”

  The question seemed to confuse him. “As long as it takes.”

  “We could come with you…”

  He took me in his arms. “I take this to mean I will be missed?”

  I tried to hug him back, but my heart was not in it. We had two small children now. He had responsibilities. If I wished to live without a man in my bed, I would not have married. Yet if he truly needed time away from us to write, I knew I should not try to stop him.

  “The idea for the poem about Peter’s statue and the flood is intriguing,” I told him, mushed up against his shoulder.

  “I hope so. What good am I to anyone as a husband, a subject, a man, if I am no poet?”

  “You are that.” The hint of sadness in his tone troubled me, and I hugged him back fully at last.

  “Besides, it’s not as though I expect you to spend every evening moping around this flat and pining after me,” he said. “You are young and beautiful and meant to be admired. Surely you don’t think I am so cruel as to deny you that? Bring the men of St. Petersburg to their knees. A little amorous torture will do those rascals some good in the long run, believe me.”

  The edge in his tone bothered me and I pulled back a bit. If Alexander were permitting me to coquette in his absence, I could only assume he intended to do the same while away. Romantic game playing was not only tolerated but expected, yet I could not help but think this separation would harm our marriage. “If you must go, come back to us as quickly as you can.”

  His smile would haunt me for the rest of my days, for it conveyed nothing but pure love and absolute trust. “I will write to you every day and kiss every letter you send to me.”

  It was one of the last times in my life I would put the needs of a man before my own.

  Twelve

  ST. PETERSBURG

  NOVEMBER 1833–FEBRUARY 1834

  My lady’s maid, Liza, put her hands over her mouth to stifle a smile. She was the same pink-cheeked girl who had been the first to address me as Madame Pushkina.

  “What is it?” I said, making a turn before the full-length l
ooking glass. “Don’t you like it? I’ve spent hours … you’ve spent hours. I thought we agreed.”

  “It’s beautiful! Only…” She lowered her hands and made a quick motion in the direction of my décolletage.

  I looked down. “It is low cut.”

  Liza’s giggle sputtered through her fingers.

  “The actual women of the Minoan culture bared their breasts completely.” I toyed with a bracelet, a gold bangle in the form of a snake that was meant to rest on my upper arm. “Do you think I should consider that instead?”

  She gasped and then it was my turn to laugh until at last we collapsed into a heap together on the divan, fanning our faces and staring at the remnants of the afternoon’s creativity scattered about the room I had designated for sewing: scraps of fabric, discarded paper patterns, gold braiding, and loose laurel leaves. I planned to debut this costume at the Anichkov Palace the last Sunday before Lent, the final and grandest costume ball of the season.

  “The priestesses were certainly daring with their garb.” Liza dabbed her damp eyes with a handkerchief she’d kept tucked in her apron pocket.

  “They were powerful women. I intend to honor them as such.”

  “I’ve heard the tsar is an admirer of women, powerful and otherwise, but I don’t know that he will let you go so far as to display your bosom.”

  “I suppose I could give him a lecture on historical accuracy.” On Alexander’s shelves, I had found a volume on the ancient civilization on the island of Crete and devised the gown based on illustrations of the matriarchal cults of the Minoan culture, particularly the high priestess in the Temple of the Bull. “Besides, I am an old married lady now, a matron with two children. Tsar Nicholas will hardly give me a second glance.”

  “He won’t be able to concentrate, nor look you in the eye.”

  Though my shoulders tensed, we laughed a little more. Alexander had been gone for two months now, but the initial pain of missing him had dulled to a low ache. Fortunately, I found plenty to keep my mind occupied while he was away. I had set up a play school in the nursery where Masha could pretend to be governess every morning and lord over a small army of French dolls Alexander had bought for her. As Masha pretended expertise on mathematics, strutting about with my oval-shaped spectacles perched on her head, Sasha sat in my lap, wriggling his fingers in his mouth. Meanwhile I balanced a slate in one hand and did my best to keep pace with the mock lessons. In the afternoons, while the children napped, I conducted a perfunctory review of the household finances and then dismissed the steward, sure Alexander’s new verse about the horseman would add a fresh infusion of income to our household.