Lost Roses

by Martha Hall Kelly

  The autumn moon crept by the skylight Papa had cut through the roof, the one he made so the man in the moon could visit me at night. The moon was sharp, almost full; the old man up there was protecting me, for that was where Papa was.

  Would he see me grow up and marry and fill the house with children? Mamka had seen I would someday have a child. But that would never happen. Certainly not with Taras.

  I sat up on my mattress. Such thoughts were childish. I would never leave our izba. I’d be stuck there in the woods forever, if Taras had his say. Though I wore the same linen dress the village girls did, a long, shapeless, high-waisted sarafan, and covered my hair with a kerchief, he still wanted me. He would never put a child in my belly, of course. That was the most important part of the arrangement.

  At least Papa had fixed me a perfect world up there, my bed snug as a ship, with a rope ladder down the side. Next to my bed I pinned up pictures of the tsar’s four daughters, the grand duchesses. I never tired of studying their dresses, hair, and jewels. I kissed my fingertips and pressed them to each girl in turn. Olga, the eldest, who loved to read, and then Tatiana, who they called “The Governess.” Maria, the sweet one. Anastasia, the clown. And the dark-haired boy, Alexei, their brother and the heir.

  I ran a finger down the row of our books standing on the bookshelf that ran the length of my bed. Cervantes. Dostoyevsky. The Brothers Grimm. A whole book of famous paintings. Who needed the schoolhouse when I had Mamka and all these teachers? Papa alone had taught me the history of the world.

  I eased the ladder down the side of the oven and climbed down, quiet, to not disturb Mamka, and slipped my wrapper on over my chemise and bloomers. I started Mamka’s groats cooking. It was an important day, so I was quick about it all. I would walk to the village to sell my oil, then on to my first day working at the countess’s estate.

  A floorboard creaked behind me.

  I stood with a jump to find Taras standing there. The calm of the morning vanished in a second, causing my temper to flare. He seemed especially large that morning. “Why do you scare me? You should be out—”

  He shrugged. “Already shot a doe this morning.” He kept his gaze on mine.

  At twenty years old, four years my elder, Taras stood as tall as the doorway with legs like poplar trunks, his chestnut hair parted down the center and tucked behind his ears. How much I’d loved him before he went to prison. Before he’d come back so changed.

  “Hunting in the tsar’s woods? You’ll hang for sure. Work at the linen factory.”

  “And put more money in that bourgeois pig’s pocket?”

  “Mamka needs bread. We have an agreement, Taras.”

  “Exactly.”

  I tried to step around him to the dustpan. “I’m busy. Maybe tomorrow.”

  He caught my wrist, thankfully my left, since my right was still healing after he’d broken it.

  “Please, Taras.”

  “Did you make more oil?” he asked.

  My free hand went to the vial in my wrapper pocket, cold and smooth. “I need to sell it.”

  My oil was prized in the village. Some said it was magical and cured the aches, but it was only linseed oil with a touch of peppermint.

  He nodded toward the woodshed.

  I tried to pull away but he held me fast. “During the day, Taras? But Mamka…”

  He brought his face close to mine. “You made a promise and you need to keep it.” I knew the signs that one of his black times was coming. Heavy breathing. A faraway look in his eye.

  He released my wrist. “Your Papa himself said it. Men must desire their wives, wives must respect their husbands.”

  “We are not husband and wife and never will be.”

  He started toward the door to his shed. “I don’t have to stay here and take this.”

  I followed and found him ramming a shirt into his rucksack on the bed. The room was warm but dark and his bed sat neatly made in one corner, a fire glowing in the little iron stove. A thin slant of light hit his collection affixed to the wall—my father’s old knives, a scythe as tall as a young boy. The woodworking tools he’d crafted himself lay neatly arranged on the workbench: maple-handled awls and chisels, a tiny iron letter “T” that he used to brand his initial into the knife handles.

  “I could have been halfway to Lake Baikal, but I’m here.” Were those tears? He needed me to keep him calm, for Mamka couldn’t take another one of his episodes. Plus, Mother and I were lucky he brought us food. Taras could live alone in his little hut in the woods and let us starve.

  “Your friend isn’t coming around?” I asked.

  Vladi, Taras’s fat little former cellmate, came to the izba at the most difficult times, expecting to be included in our meager meals.

  “He called a meeting in town.”

  “All right.” I closed the door. “Just this once.”

  We both knew the rules. I gave him massages and let him watch me undress in exchange for his protection. No mouth-kissing allowed. No touching below the waist.

  Taras slipped his shirt over his head and stood, a shaft of light across his chest, his eyelashes spiky with unshed tears. I ran my fingertips through the haze of dark hair in the valley of his chest, down his smooth belly, like the underside of a turtle’s shell, rippled and hard. Everything about Taras was large. Feet, arms, eyes, as if he’d been born of a giantess. I smoothed his front tattoos, a catalog of his time in Russian prisons. On one shoulder, a hand clenched around the stem of a tulip. On the other, a rose-entwisted dagger. I ran my thumb across my favorites, the two cherubs at flight on the smooth skin of his chest, fat, flying babies holding a banner, which said in blue script: ничего не верить. Believe in nothing. How different he’d looked before he went away to prison, softer and slender, his skin smooth and ink free. Back when he smiled and called me Pet.

  “Hurry, now,” I said. “On your belly.”

  Taras lay facedown on the bed. I pulled off my wrapper, straddled him, and felt the muscles in his back through my thin bloomers. I released the stopper from the vial and Taras breathed deep at the first smell of peppermint.

  “Slowly…” he said.

  “Quiet. Mamka is right outside.”

  I poured a pool onto the small of his back and spread out the oil, to his shoulder blades, over the most magnificent tattoo of the Virgin Mary and child in the heavens, two angels floating above them. My fingers kneaded his back, his skin chamois-leather soft, and rubbed the great clouds and the Virgin’s dress. The peppermint oil grew warmer as my fingers found the knots in his back and glided over the mounded scars of bear claw wounds, thought to be good luck by many. The only good luck about those scars was that Taras stabbed that bear before it could maul him worse.

  “You should have a tattoo, Inka.”

  A shudder ran through me. The thought of a needle piercing my skin made me sick.

  “Maybe a tiny rose. Next to your eye?”

  “On my face?” The horror of it. “Never.”

  After a few minutes of kneading the knots from his back I stood.

  He swallowed hard. “Go ahead. Slowly, now.”

  Looking anywhere but at him, I undid the buttons of my chemise and slid it off. I didn’t have to look to know he was rubbing the front of his pants.

  “Keep going,” he said.

  I stepped out of my bloomers and stood as he watched. As he rubbed harder, I sent myself away, to Mount Olympus, to the entrance gate tended by the seasons. I floated through the clouds, over the gods in their crystal palaces, feasting on nectar and ambrosia to stay immortal.

  All at once, I bent to retrieve my chemise. “That is all.”

  Taras sprang from the bed, wrapped his hand around my upper arm and squeezed. “Stop teasing me. You do it on purpose.”

  He squeezed tighter and I grew faint from the pain
. “No marks. Remember?”

  Taras released my arm, bit the stopper from the vial and poured it down my chest. He kissed my neck and pulled at my breasts with oily hands.

  I shoved him away, but he returned, this time rougher still. Before long I was back on Mount Olympus as a god ran a hot peppermint tongue down my chest. My hands tangled in his hair and smoothed the blue angels on his shoulders. His hand smoothed down my side, toward the V between my legs.

  I pushed him. “No, Taras. You promised.”

  He grabbed my hand, yanked me to him, and a familiar stab seared through my wrist.

  The pain brought me to my knees and water came to my eyes at once. “You hurt it again.”

  Taras knelt and held my wrist as if it were one of the baby birds he rescued and ran his fingers up and down the bone. “It’s just sprained.”

  I stood and stepped to the door, holding my wrist. Today of all days.

  * * *

  —

  LATE THAT AFTERNOON I walked to the countess’s estate, my wrist wrapped in a cold, soaked rag and it felt better. When Mamka asked how that happened, I said I tripped sweeping out the shed.

  Cool darkness gathered as I gave my name to the guards at the gate and walked the road to the estate. Soon I heard music and saw a brick house lit up in a distant clearing. As I drew closer it seemed like a fairy’s palace, the windows aglow, the figures inside shimmering in pale blues and white.

  I stepped to the back door, took a deep breath, entered, and continued through to the kitchen, bright as day in there, with windows high as a tall tree. A tall, blond man in a long jacket the color of new snow called after black-uniformed servants as they rushed silver pots back and forth. It was hard to hear and my stomach complained at the smell of roast chicken and fresh bread.

  “Get that chocolate off to cool!” the man in the white jacket shouted at someone in English. I said a little prayer thanking Mamka for making me learn English.

  A big girl with skinny braids and cheeks flushed so red they looked slapped, hurried by and then stopped in her tracks. “Who in God’s name are you?”

  “Varinka. The countess sent for me.” What a fine uniform she wore, a black dress, crisp white ruffled-edged apron, and black leather shoes.

  “And you’re here to do what?”

  “Kitchen help?”

  “I’m Raisa,” she said, pulling me by the hand into the kitchen. Her hands were rough and red as her cheeks. She led me to the tall white-jacketed man who stood bent at the waist over a tray of fancy pies. “Cook, this is Varinka.”

  I bowed deeply from the waist in his direction as Mamka taught me.

  He kept his eyes on his work. “Stand up, girl,” he said. “Girls curtsey in this house.”

  I straightened, glad he didn’t look at me for I trembled all over. How handsome he was up close, with his thick blond hair and eyes the color of cornflowers. This cook had the look of money about him. Why was he sweating in the kitchen? He placed a white chocolate ear, so thin you could see light through it, on the head of a little chocolate mouse no bigger than my thumb.

  “You the girl the countess sent for?”

  I nodded.

  “Est-ce que tu parles français?”

  “Oui, monsieur.”

  “Good. They only speak French in the dining room.” He set a tiny black tail on the mouse. “Ever serve in a dining room before?”

  “Of course,” I said. “At the seaside one summer.”

  He squinted up at me. “A white tablecloth restaurant?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did they serve?” he asked, one eye narrowing more.

  “Well, stews…” I stood taller. “And only the best venison and pork. The tsar himself ate there once. Asked for a second helping of the venison.”

  The cook shifted his gaze back to his work. “You’re a terrible liar, Miss Varinka. The tsar doesn’t care for venison and you’ve never stepped foot outside this forest.”

  My whole body grew warm. How could I have been so stupid? Would he send me home?

  He picked up a silver spoon. “Haven’t I seen you in the village? With that woodsman?”

  “Taras. My guardian.” Did he see my hands shake?

  “Maybe you’d be better off in the laundry.”

  Raisa stepped closer. “But we’re shorthanded in the dining room tonight.”

  He tossed the spoon into the sink with a clatter. “So you’ll have to do. But just tonight.”

  Raisa led me down a hallway to a special room where the food was kept and I breathed out a big puff of air. “Your cook is handsome. And he speaks such good English.”

  “You would too if you went to Oxford. That’s in England.”

  Raisa pushed a neatly folded pile into my arms, a pair of black tie-up shoes like hers atop it. “Hurry and put these on. The shoes may be too big. I’ll be right back.”

  I undressed, shook out the black uniform dress and slipped it over my head, the fabric sliding down cool against my skin. I kicked off my woven shoes, unwound the length of rough linen, and smoothed one white stocking up and over my knee. I smiled as I fastened a fancy, white apron about my waist and set the black shoes on the floor.

  I looked at all the food kept in that room, so much they could not eat it all at once and needed a special room to hold it. Boxes of flour and tins of fish. A whole crate of oranges sitting on crinkled paper that looked like birds’ nests.

  A knock came at the door and Raisa stood outside the waist-high window, the wavy glass making her just a moving shape. “Ready yet?” she called from the hallway.

  “Going fast as I can.” I stepped one foot into a shoe. She was right about the big fit.

  Raisa talked through the door. “Stay aware tonight. Place the tureen on the sideboard and stand along the wall until you get the signal to serve. Remove the lid, leave it on the sideboard, and serve from the left, of course. She will speak French so you and the other servants won’t be able to eavesdrop on her conversation, but she’ll switch to Russian if she wants something from a servant. And whatever you do, don’t look at her directly.”

  I laced both shoes tight to try to keep them from flopping about when I walked and emerged from the little room.

  “Good,” Raisa said, plucking at the ruffles of my apron.

  “The shoes are too big,” I said.

  “Make do for tonight.”

  We stepped back to the kitchen and watched the cook spoon borscht into a white tureen.

  My head buzzed with orders. Place the tureen on the sideboard. What is a sideboard? Serve from the left. Don’t look at them directly.

  I picked up the tureen with two hands, and relief washed over me, for my wrist did not hurt. Raisa held the dining room door open for me and I stepped through it, my feet wobbling about in my new shoes. I walked into the room, which held a big table, and almost fainted at the blur of colors there. A gold cloth on the table glowed like the sun itself was caught inside and a kind of tall pink flowers I’d never seen before stood in a shimmering bowl at the middle of the table. Above it all a lamp of shining glass pieces blazed as if on fire.

  I shuffled toward what I guessed was the sideboard, a long, low brown chest. The countess sat at one end of the table, looking smaller somehow from the night I saw her at our izba. She wore a white dress, her hair piled atop her head, a sparkling comb stuck there. Mr. Streshnayva, who I recognized from the village since he ran the linen factory, sat at the other end of the table.

  The countess’s older daughter, who was almost the twin of the tsar’s daughter Olga, sat with her younger sister on one side of the table, and a young, dark-haired officer, handsome as Rapunzel’s prince, had a whole side of the table to himself. A young boy sat between the countess and her daughter, in a tall chair of his own, banging on the little table in front of him with open p
alms. My gaze stuck on him, with his golden curls and the face of a cherub.

  I placed my tureen on the sideboard, stood at the wall, and surveyed the scene. Each person had their own china plate and clear glass cup on a high stem like a flower. As a servant tinkled ice-filled water from a silver pitcher into the countess’s glass like a melting river in springtime, each person sat, backs perfectly straight, elbows back, their fingertips just so on each side of their plate. How could a person eat sitting this way?

  The countess stood. “A toast to Maxwell Streshnayva Afonovich Stepanov, who, though his mother won’t leave him properly in his own bed at night to sleep alone, is developing into a fine young man who does not suck his thumb as so many children do and has the vocabulary and intellect of a child twice his age.”

  I could not tear my gaze from the boy in the high chair. He turned to smile at the countess, his blue eyes shining in the candlelight. His skin was the color of an ermine’s winter coat, like that of the baby on the Virgin’s lap at the village church. On his feet he wore white leather moccasins tied with blue satin bows.

  All at once the child began to cry and kick his chair. His mother offered him a biscuit but his howls grew louder. Did she not see he wanted to free himself of that chair?

  From my place at the wall I crouched, screwed up my face in the child’s direction, and he turned to me with a look of surprise. All at once a smile broke out on his face. I tried another face, this time stuck out my tongue.

  The boy laughed outright. “Plus! Plus! Le referais!”

  Of course, he wanted more. Did anyone there play with him or was he just their little pet?

  The boy’s mother raised her eyebrows and smiled at me.

  Mr. Streshnayva held up his glass. “To Max!”

  The countess leaned toward the younger girl. “Do try the borscht, Luba. The tsarina herself gave me the recipe.” She then waved in the direction of the tureen.

  My signal. All at once my knees grew weak. I stood straighter and stepped to the sideboard, wiped my palms down the front of my apron, and removed the lid. The countess gestured toward the younger daughter and I carried the tureen to her side and set it on the table. I dipped the ladle and spooned enough borscht into her bowl to cover the bottom. She looked at me with a grimace and waved me off.