by Debra Dean
There was the morning up on Drake Island when the ponytailed roofer found Marina curled up in the fireplace of a mansion under construction out on Channel Bluff. It was Monday morning, and she had been missing almost thirty hours.
As the young man described it later, he thought at first that Marina was dead. She looked just like a ghost in a horror movie, he said, all gray-faced and wearing a dirty cotton gown. But when he prodded her shoulder, her eyes opened and she started mumbling. He thought she might have had a stroke, but then he figured out that she was speaking a foreign language. He said something in Spanish—kind of dumb, he admitted, but he had panicked and it was the only foreign language he knew—then he mimed for her to stay where she was and ran back to his truck to call for help. He’d heard about the old lady who’d gotten lost over the weekend, and he figured this must be her. It wasn’t every day you ran across an old lady in a nightgown, he explained. So he called the sheriff and he got a flannel shirt out of the back of the cab, and a thermos of herb tea. He got her arms threaded into the shirt and helped her sip some tea, and she looked a little better, kind of dazed but smiling. She started looking around and pointing, first in one direction, then another, and saying something. He looked, but there wasn’t anything to see, just two-by-fours and joists, the skeleton frame of the house, and the trees beyond. The young man shrugged, saying No comprende, but she was insistent, repeating a couple of words over and over. She pulled herself to her feet and, hanging on to his arm, started kind of leading him around the perimeter of the room, stopping every couple of feet and pointing. He remembered he was worried because she was barefoot and there were nails and wood scraps all over the floor. “Look out,” he said, and she nodded, her eyes lit bright, and said, “Look.”
“Look?” he repeated.
“Look,” she answered, and pointed. “It is beautiful, yes?”
“What was beautiful?” Helen had asked the young man, puzzled.
“Everything, man. That’s what was so amazing. There’s a killer view of the straits, but she was pointing at everything, you know, this dead madrona tree out back, and these bands of sunlight coming through the roof in the garage.” Here, the young man’s expression had turned very earnest. “It was like she was saying everything was beautiful.”
The doctor said Marina was in shock, but Helen has always preferred the young man’s explanation. “You had to be there,” he insisted. “She was showing me the world.”
An Excerpt from Debra Dean’s
The Mirrored World
TWICE A WEEK, EMPRESS ELIZABETH hosted a lavish ball in the Winter Palace. The smaller one was held for some two hundred of Her Imperial Majesty’s friends and the inner circle of the court, but several times this number might be invited to the larger of the balls, virtually every person of noble rank in the city minus only those who had earned her displeasure. This was to be our proving ground.
As our mothers maneuvered us through the throng, Xenia scanned the room hungrily. “Dasha,” she elbowed me and jutted her chin upwards, “the Kaleidoscope.” Over our heads hung a gilt chandelier, its crystal pendants refracting each flame into a galaxy of lights.
We arrived at a clutch of women on the perimeter, the wives and widows of the Semeonovsky regiment, and our mothers set at once to work, offering commiseration on a husband’s gout, congratulations on a son’s promotion, and so forth. One might have thought they intended no purpose here except to reassure themselves on the health and well- being of each one of the women’s relations. In truth, their goal was this: that one of these women might send a page to retrieve an unattached son or nephew.
“And your youngest,” Aunt Galya inquired, “Grigory Vasilievich, he must be almost grown by now. That is he?” She feigned shock. “In the blue waistcoat? No, it cannot be. But he is a man already! The day is long but a lifetime is short, is it not so? Only yesterday my little Nadya and Xenia were in their smocks, and look at them now.”
Whilst our mothers labored on our behalf, what was required of us was only that we display a quiet demeanor and be at the ready if called upon. But Xenia could not attend to this little task. Her concentration continually reeled out to follow pairs of dancers revolving past us.
“Oh, look!” she cried out. She pointed to a lady’s enormous fan of peacock feathers blooming, eye by eye, with exquisite slowness.
The wives and widows turned as one, first to the spectacle of Xenia’s pointing finger and then to the lady with the peacock fan. Two eyes had been cut out from the feathers, and through these the lady’s own eyes were visible.
The women took note of the fan without wonder. “It is a poor copy. Princess Dashkova’s had the edges tipped with gold.”
It is a commonplace that few who admire a painting have any acquaintance with a brush. Likewise, those viewing fireworks marvel at the counterfeit of a flaming bird or a flower blooming in the night sky without a notion how the effect is achieved. But here, the spectators were also the actors. There was no ruse of the tailor with which they themselves were unacquainted, no paint they would mistake for a blush. They, too, had bathed themselves in pigeon water and applied to their own skins pomades and powders and patches. They, too, had endured hours at the hands of their hairdressers and slept in chairs to preserve the sticky confection atop their heads. As such, they were severe critics of their fellows. Xenia’s delight showed a lack of discernment, and it made her seem impressionable as a peasant in their eyes.
When a chorister sang for the assemblage, she gaped at him openly in childish wonder. With his last note, she sprang to her feet and began to applaud with such enthusiasm that she drew the amused notice of those within ear-shot and then the entire room. She alone was on her feet, still clapping. The chorister gave a little bow in our direction, and this only encouraged her further. I blushed for her who had not the sense to blush for herself. Nadya, more quick- thinking, reached up and pinched Xenia hard.
She yelped.
Nadya hissed behind her fan, “Sit. Down.”
If Xenia had forfeited the women’s approbation, Nadya redeemed our mothers’ efforts by behaving precisely as she had been coached. She said little and not a word of it original or sincere, but the airs that she had practiced in our childhood games and perfected under the tutelage of Monsieur La Roche lent her the slightly bored appearance of one far above her rank. She was invited to dance, and when she did the honors and presented herself before the Empress, it was with the ease of one who had at last found her rightful place. As I watched her turn into the figures of the dance, I adjusted my bodice and scratched hungrily. My corset had long since transformed itself into a torture of binding and itches, but Nadya inhabited her own with the seeming disregard of one who had been swaddled in whalebone.
So fine an impression did Nadya make that she was summoned afterwards to be introduced to Countess Chernysheva. By this notice, her value increased again and even spilt over to Xenia and myself. Partners were produced for us as well. It had been decided beforehand that if I were asked to dance I should make a better impression by declining, but Xenia was allowed to be escorted onto the dance floor at the start of a minuet.
She drew notice round the room, the girl who had applauded the singer. However, I do not think she was aware of it. As she danced, her glance traveled about the room, following the chorister. When her escort whispered something to her shoulder, she startled and looked at him as though trying to place where they had met. At this critical moment, she failed to turn to the left and followed her escort to the right instead. Beside me, Aunt Galya gasped.
The circle of dancers had split into two lines, with Xenia amongst the gentlemen and facing her own sex. Looking up the line, she did some swift mental calculation and then made an ungainly dash across the open field. She wedged herself into the middle of the opposite line and, by so doing, further upset the pattern.
Each dancer was now aligned with a different partner. After the shuffle, Nadya drew an unlucky hand and found herself paired wi
th a rotund courtier old enough to be her grandfather. Stone- eyed, she turned to watch Xenia, happy and oblivious, step out to meet her new partner.
It was this same chorister. He looked at Xenia with the winking amusement he had shown her earlier and made some remark. Her answer caused him to laugh aloud. They stepped forward, and for the remainder of the dance never ceased their bantering. Xenia gazed at him as though he were not a man but some magical being. She forgot her feet, forgot her counting, and as the chorister tipsily wheeled her about the room, they banked like billiard balls off the other dancers. The minuet was too slow to contain them.
At the end of the dance, he delivered Xenia back to us.
“I believe you have lost a daughter?” The chorister bowed low to Aunt Galya with a gallant if unsteady flourish. Recovering his balance, he introduced himself as Colonel Andrei Feodorovich Petrov.
“In truth, I had half a mind to keep her,” he confided, “but I would not want it said I am a thief. I have little but my honesty to recommend me to a mother, but perhaps this may earn me the gift of the daughter’s company again.”
It was a pretty speech, and Aunt Galya and my mother shared the view that there was not such a thing as an innocent remark. They turned their efforts to learning if any merits more than honesty might belong to this Colonel Petrov.
He was from Little Russia and the orphan of a landless noble—not, speaking generally, the lineage of a desirable suitor—but by virtue of his sweet voice Andrei Feodorovich Petrov had been brought as a youth to the Ukrainian chapel choir and there had befriended a fellow chorister.
As my mother was fond of saying, “Tell me who is your friend and I’ll tell you who you are.” Colonel Petrov’s friend was Count Alexi Razumovsky, whom wags called the “Night Emperor.”
Years earlier, when Elizabeth had plucked up the young Razumovsky and made him her favorite, Andrei Feodorovich Petrov had been well placed to catch some of the extravagant droppings that fell from Her Highness’s plate. He received from the Grand Duchess a position in the court choir and, after she assumed the throne, a military rank along with a doubling of his salary.
Not that Petrov lacked merits independent of the Empress and the Count. He was pleasantly featured and had the easy manner of one who desires nothing from his friends but their mirth, and so he had many of these. In fact, he seemed to be so universally well- liked that not even the enemies of his friends would speak a word against him.
In the carriage returning home, I drifted off listening to our mothers speculating whether one who was so well- connected as Colonel Petrov might ever deign to take a bride with little to offer.
“With no family to please, he may indulge his own whim.”
“He could do better.”
“Of course. But there is no law written for fools. Consider the match that Count Sheremetev made for his youngest son last year. She brought nothing but a few sticks of furniture and a pleasing face.”
Once home, I followed Xenia and Nadya to our room at a drowsy distance. Nadya was in a fury, pulling ribbons and combs from her hair and leaving a trail of these obstacles in the darkened passage. “You think only of yourself,” I heard her accuse Xenia. “You set your eye on some drunkard, and when he does not ask you to dance, you make a fool of yourself and spoil both our chances.”
I mewled for Olga to undress me and put me to bed, but she did not heed me.
“What is this, kitten?” she asked Nadya.
Nadya brushed her off like a flea from her bosom and squared off to Xenia. “Admit it. You did it on purpose.”
Xenia did not deny the charge. “I only rearranged the order to put us with our right partners.”
“Right partners!”
“I am going to marry him.”
It irked Nadya beyond endurance when Xenia said things she could not possibly know. “Spare me your drivel. He was amusing himself with you, and you are the only one who did not see it. And what of me? I suppose I am to marry the old man you stuck me with?”
“Yes.”
Nadya sneered. “And how shall you explain this to his wife and children?”
Xenia shook her head, puzzled. “I do not know.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
While the characters in this novel are fictional, the wartime events are drawn from historical records. Readers interested to learn more about the Siege of Leningrad might wish to read Harrison E. Salisbury’s The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad; S. P. Varshavskii’s The Ordeal of the Hermitage; and Cynthia Simmons and Nina Perlina’s Writing the Siege of Leningrad: Women’s Diaries, Memoirs, and Documentary Prose. The State Hermitage Museum also has an expansive website (www.hermitagemuseum.org) that provides history, digital reproductions of the collection, and panoramic views of various rooms in the museum.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people have had a hand in shepherding this book along. My grandparents’ lifelong love affair and their journey with Alzheimer’s provided an initial inspiration. Gratitude goes also to Clifford Paul Fetters, my first and best reader, whose faith never wavered, and to my parents, Beverly Taylor and Ed Dean, for their love and financial support. Thanks to Stuart Gibson and the guides and researchers at the State Hermitage Museum who so graciously answered my endless questions; to Eric Kinzel and Yekaterina Roslova-Kinzel for advice on things Russian; to Cynthia White, Susan Rich, and Linda Wendling for their generous reads; to Mark Elliot for information on the Soviet repatriation; to San Juan County Sheriff Bill Cumming and Undersheriff John Zerby for advice on search and rescue. The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund came through with a grant and the attendant vote of confidence just when it was needed. I am deeply indebted to Claire Wachtel and the good people at William Morrow for their enthusiasm, and most especially to agents Marly Rusoff and Michael Radulescu for voting with their hearts. Finally, to the people of St. Petersburg, Russia, it’s my humble intent that this book will honor their great story.
About the Author
Debra Dean worked as an actor in the New York theater for nearly a decade before opting for the life of a writer and teacher. She lives with her husband in Seattle, Washington. The Madonnas of Leningrad is her first novel. www.debradean.com
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Advance Praise for The Madonnas of Leningrad
“An unforgettable story of love, survival, and the power of imagination in the most tragic circumstances. Elegant and poetic, the rare kind of book that you want to keep but you have to share.”
—Isabel Allende, New York Times bestselling author
“The Madonnas of Leningrad is an extraordinary debut, a deeply lovely novel that evokes with uncommon deftness the terrible, heartbreaking beauty that is life in wartime. Like the glorious ghosts of the paintings in the Hermitage that lie at the heart of the story, Dean’s exquisite prose shimmers with a haunting glow, illuminating for us the notion that art itself is perhaps our most necessary nourishment. A superbly graceful novel.”
—Chang-Rae Lee, New York Times bestselling author of Aloft and Native Speaker
Credits
Jacket design by Honi Werner
Copyright
The Mirrored World excerpt copyright © 2012 by Debra Dean, published by HarperCollins Publishers.
The Madonnas of Leningrad copyright © 2006 by Debra Dean. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
First Harper Perennial edition published 2010.
Library of Congress Catalogi
ng-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 9780061747182
Epub edition copyright ©April 2012
ISBN: 9780061747182
11 12 13 14 15 16 RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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