t is well past midnight, my Duval watch confirms, its case covered with clusters of diamond petals, one of Catherine’s gifts to me.t is well past midnight, my Duval watch confirms, its case covered with clusters of diamond petals, one of Catherine’s gifts to me.
Dear Varenka, Catherine wrote in her last letter to me. When are you coming back? I picture her at her writing desk at dawn, with a steaming coffeepot on a silver tray.
The candle wavers and hisses. A moth has singed its wings and lies writhing in a pool of molten wax. I make sure the quills are sharp, the ink not too thick, and that I have enough plain paper, for I find the glazed one hard on my eyes. The ink gives off a sweet yet slightly sickening smell. Outside, the November darkness is impenetrable, broken at times by the lantern of a passerby and the howling of dogs. In St. Petersburg, Stanislav used to call such time “unguarded.” It was during the northern winters, when the nights came early and stayed long, that confessions came and secrets were revealed.
“This unfortunate outburst of yours, Varenka,” Catherine had said when she’d summoned me to the Imperial Bedroom later that day. “I won’t let it destroy years of friendship.”
Her silk skirts rustled as she paced the room; the hem of her golden court gown swept the floor.
I watched her face as she spoke. Her blue eyes were sparkling. Her smile was warm. As if nothing had happened, as if I’d imagined it all.
“What you need is a journey, Varenka. One I would’ve liked to make myself. Take Darya to Paris, to Berlin, to Warsaw. She should see the world and be away from this place for a while. Let your daughter come back to court in full bloom.”
“Maman, what are you writing?” Darya asked me this morning. Darya’s Polish is too rolling, too melodious, so clearly touched by the Russian.
She speaks French to me.
I recalled the time when my daughter was five or six, armed with a sack filled with morsels of bread and asking to be taken to the canal by the Summer Palace to feed the ducks. It was November, and the edges of the water were already frozen and slippery. Darya threw bread to make the ducks slide and slither as they rushed greedily over the ice. She thought all these antics were performed for her amusement.
“My thoughts,” I answered.
“What kind of thoughts?” she asked.
“Thoughts I do not want to forget.”
We went to Paris and to Vienna. We walked along wide boulevards, saw glorious paintings, palaces of immense splendor where we were received with courtesy and curiosity. The rumors about me made me smile. A widowed Russian Countess and her lovely daughter, a close friend of the Russian Empress, for signs of imperial favor are not easy to hide.
In Paris, being Catherine’s friend is a coveted distinction. Monsieur Voltaire is trying his best to be considered as such. His letters to Catherine, copied and circulated widely, call her a Philosopher Queen, the Semiramis of the North, the Northern Star that always shows the travelers the right way.
Monsieur Voltaire is besotted by the notion that Catherine is turning barbaric Russia around, undoing decades of unprecedented neglect and corruption, as if France knew no vices of the heart. Catherine drains the Russian marshes by digging canals and cutting down the pine forests, he announces. She has opened a hospital and a foundling home. The Russian Senators have never worked so hard in their lives. “Her motto is Useful,” he tells those who trail behind him in awe. “Her emblem is a bee.”
I was in Paris when the news appeared in all the papers. On July 4, Ivan VI—once the baby Emperor, and for decades Prisoner Number One at the Schlüsselburg Fortress—had been found dead in a pool of blood. I read Catherine’s words quoted in every paper. The serious and dangerous conspiracy was nipped in the bud. The pamphlets that the scrawny printers’ boys pushed into the hands of passersby were less forgiving. Another Emperor so conveniently dead merely a year since the last one died. How many tragic “accidents” can possibly happen at the Russian court? Anonymous writers aired more sinister suspicions. Philosopher Queen, or Messalina who kills and betrays when it suits her?
“I don’t know the Empress that well,” I answered when anyone asked me.
Soon other news from Russia overwhelmed these speculations, for Catherine began buying paintings. Whole collections that had been sitting idly in dilapidated castles could suddenly be sold for ready money. The Empress’s agent paid very well and asked few questions. His only reservation was that Catherine, His Sovereign, endowed with a woman’s soft heart, wouldn’t like anything that suggested death or loss.
How touching, I heard. And how very Russian.
I reminded myself: To govern is to understand the weaknesses of the human heart. And to use such weakness to your own advantage.
I told myself: You have no right to expect anything else.
Have you not called yourself her friend, too? Were you not a shrewd keeper of her secrets?
We arrived here in Warsaw in the first week of September, right after the royal election that—just as Catherine had desired—made Stanislav the King of Poland.
A blue, frosty afternoon darkened slowly as we approached the Vistula River through a maze of twisted streets. As I opened the coach window to let in some air, I heard the buzz of voices outside but couldn’t make out what they said.
I had been away for almost thirty years, but as we approached the center of the city I was able to point out to my daughter the cathedral spires against the reddening sky, the roof of the royal castle. I was amazed by how much smaller everything seemed. By the time we reached Senatorska Street, where I had rented an apartment, the darkness was broken only by the lights of lanterns, flickering like fireflies.
“The streets are so muddy,” Darya complained.
Now, a month later, she is still not impressed by Warsaw. Palaces here do not stretch for the whole block; there are no canals. Parks are shabby and crowded, bridges narrow.
I’ve heard the two of them whisper in Russian. Masha, trusting my daughter with stories of her longing.
Not for St. Petersburg, not for the life at the court, but for Russia, where the northern wind blows over expanses of dark green forests. For January nights, white not from the sun that refuses to set but from the silver light of the moon. For ice floes screeching as they rub against one another, for rocks in which precious stones look like frozen drops of blood. For sacred places from where, in a solemn moment that comes when you least expect it, you can peek into the other world.
Masha’s good eye is sad and empty; her breath carries the sweet scent of vodka. She defends herself against my questioning with a grimace of denial.
“When are we going back?” she wants to know.
I tell her I don’t know, and my old servant walks away unhappily, shuffling her feet.
“She wants to die in Russia,” Darya tells me. “She wants to be buried in the village where she grew up. Next to her mother.”
Masha speaks of death as if it were a return from some long journey. She wants to be buried with her face turned to the sea in the sandy land of the north, where bodies do not rot. She longs for a simple grave with freshly cut branches of fir on the bottom to make the rope slide from under the coffin with greater ease. A grave on which old women from her village would scatter bread crumbs, and where they would come to sit and wonder to what distant roads Masha’s life took her and if she ever peeked into that other world.
“Barbara.” Stanislav calls me by my Polish name when he comes to see us. “A friend from such a precious past.”
Here, he wears his thick black hair tied in the back. Time is kinder to men: At thirty-two, he does not seem a day older than the day he left St. Petersburg four years before.
He doesn’t ask for reasons of my journey.
Prince Repnin has just delivered Catherine’s official words: Poland chose her new King well. The Empress of All the Russias predicts a grand future for Stanislav, his family, and his country.
“You saw her a few months ago,” Stanislav says. “Did she speak of me?”
“Of course,” I lie. I cannot bear to hurt him.
In my front parlor, Stanislav sits in silence, his handsome profile lit by a ray of pale sun. What is he thinking of? Their Dream? Of two mighty Slavic nations ruled by reason, a Philosopher Queen and a Philosopher King working together for the good of their subjects?
No one whispers in this country. Merchants complain of clients who do not pay their debts; doctors and pharmacists are eager to discuss the details of their patients’ cures. Everyone has plenty to say about Stanislav. Income from his estates amounts to no more than fifty thousand zlotys; a certain Szydlowski is pushing his daughter at him. Even the Poniatowskis’ coat of arms—ciołek, a young bull—is a source of national merriment. The jokes are predictable: the speculations on the courage of cattle, or on turning the Polish court into a barn.
Here, they don’t like Catherine.
In the streets of Warsaw the Russian troops, invited by Stanislav’s uncles “to assure peace,” are no longer blamed only for stolen chickens and broken fences. The Russians are like locusts, I hear. They leave trampled fields. They leave bastards in the bellies of peasant girls.
Russian money, Russian army, Russian diplomacy made him King, I hear. What will his payment be in return?
“The Empress cannot afford to listen to her heart,” I tell Stanislav.
He winces at the word cannot.
“That I know,” he says, in the gallant voice of a courtier. “But there are many ways of being true to what one believes.”
“Yes,” I say. “Of course there are.”
I cannot pass by a bookstall without touching books that hide among French snuff, tonics for renewed energy and abundance of good moods that the street merchants sell here. I pick them up, these old volumes, open their pages, examine their bindings. I comment on the deftness of their gilding, the rarity of their leather. Sometimes I ask where they come from. The booksellers tell me of trailing death in search of such books. The best moment to approach a family is right after the funeral, they say. On the fingers of one hand they can count heirs not grateful for the opportunity to exchange the old volumes for cash.
I’m building a library to sustain me during the long and solitary evenings I anticipate, a library that will help me understand the significance of what I lived through and reinforce me in my decision. Candide, ou l’Optimisme has been my latest purchase. Smuggled to Warsaw with much secrecy, I was told, and offered only to the most discerning and reliable patrons. Its author, the elusive Docteur Ralph, is, of course, no one else but Monsieur Voltaire.
But in the evenings, it is Tacitus I lose myself in. I read of decadence that is meant to seduce and dull the conquered, of favors that buy their souls. I read of spies sent out to take note of the sorrow of mourners—for what we mourn betrays us, too.
Holding to power, I read, is like holding on to a wolf.
Pan Korn, who has a small but prosperous bookstore on Krakowskie Przedmieście, has great expectations of the new King. “An enlightened man,” he calls Stanislav. “A man who does not just carry books but reads them.”
Pan Korn might be considered handsome, with his dark brown hair neatly parted down the center, his brow dark and thick, his eyes calm, smiling whenever I appear with Darya.
A bookseller, I think. Not that far from a bookbinder’s daughter.
He offers us tea sweetened with honey and slices of strudel, with walnuts and raisins. He lets Darya roam through the store, to carry off the adventure books she has developed a taste for. Yesterday he presented her with The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, and she is already halfway through it, lost in the descriptions of the deserted island, days filled with useful tasks.
Like others in this city, Pan Korn doesn’t mind telling me stories from his life. His family hailed from Germany but left it when he was so young he has but a passive knowledge of the language of his forefathers.
Why?
The thoughts that make a man pack and leave his homeland are always the same, he says with a smile.
He asks me about Russia. The travelers’ accounts he has read disappoint him. A traveler, he tells me, notices what seems odd and different. Instances that may or may not be important.
“You had a life there,” he reminds me. “Tell me about it.”
I had a life there, but I, too, offer him fragments. Cold gusts of wind stunting the growth of trees. The scent of ladan that hovers over icons long after the Easter procession. The way the ice darkens with the coming of spring, cracking like parched earth.
“You never speak about people,” he points out.
“I don’t want to lie.”
Stanislav’s coronation will take place on November 25. St. Catherine’s Day. Like bringing in the Russian troops, the choice of the day is considered excessive.
A wooden pavement covered in red cloth will lead to St. John’s Cathedral, where Stanislav will be anointed king. I hope the solemn ceremonial gestures will soothe some of the resentment against him.
Warsaw is eager for the festivities. The passage from the cathedral where Count Stanislav Poniatowski will become Stanislav August, King of Poland, to the center of the Old Town has been decorated with fir trees and obelisks. In the Market Square, where the city will welcome the new King, the royal throne faces a Triumphal Arch supported by figures of Love, Peace, Bravery, and Justice. In a day or two Stanislav’s portrait, crowned by the Polish white eagle, will be raised above them, for this is where the new King will receive the keys to the capital.
I note the opportunities that would please Catherine. Here, in the heart of Poland, I could so easily run a salon according to the Parisian fashion. Fashionable, cultivated. Frequented by the King himself. A place to discuss the newest books, meet the best of minds and the most attractive of women. People talk too much here, already; the need to appear important will prompt more indiscretions.
“I’m aware of my weaknesses, Barbara,” Stanislav says. “I also know my own strengths. I’m flexible, I’m patient, I do not take offense easily. I know what is still possible.”
I think of rivers, the quiet relentlessness of their currents.
“Peter the Great himself wanted Poland to be a buffer between Russia and the rest of Europe,” Stanislav continues. “But a weak buffer is of little use. A strong Poland is in Russia’s interest.”
In the royal castle, for years neglected by the Saxon Kings who had resided far away in Dresden, we walk from room to empty room, our steps bouncing off the crumbling walls, ceilings stained by mold. I think of the old Winter Palace, with squeaking floorboards now replaced by marble from the Ural Mountains.
Warsaw needs court painters and architects of renown, a proper court orchestra and a kapellmeister. A royal palace where the King can entertain visitors without shame, where adversaries can meet and find a common ground, he tells me, warming to his subject. The message Stanislav wants to send to the world is that Warsaw, Poland, and the Polish King are worldly, modern, and committed to a strong government.
“Stay here, in Warsaw, Barbara. I have enough enemies and those who wish me ill. I realize that what I can offer you pales beside the splendors of St. Petersburg, but you will be among friends.”
I let him take my hand and raise it to his lips.
I think of spies who’ve crossed to the other side, who’ve served one master by choosing what they reported to the other. Treachery, but possible if one has the strength for another fight, if one believes that a monarch can change the nation he rules.
“I can offer you—”
I stop him before he can finish.
“You offered me far too much already,” I say.
Outside the house on Senatorska Street, a swarm of birds has descended on a bare bush that leans on the fence. Samosiejka, my new servants call it in Polish, for the bush clearly seeded itself. I do not know its name, but I already know it is hard to kill and is forgiving of heavy pruning. Berries are its most attractive feature, pale orange with a small reddish tip, withered now from the cold.
I love the sound of my quill scratching the paper I write on, good paper with a watermark, nib freshly sharpened, black ink drying as I fill the page.
I still have my sources in St. Petersburg. My correspondents, whose names shall remain my secret, offer nothing beyond facts or observations. They are wise. They do not presume.
It is curiosity that compels me to receive these dispatches—curiosity about the people I once loved and hated, whose lives I’ll now merely follow. But there is also a good dose of self-interest in this activity. For only a fool ignores the conditions at sea that might toss a small boat back into a storm. Grigory Orlov is chasing after another maid-of-honor; his brother still keeps a close eye on any handsome young man who tries to approach Catherine. Alexei has already gotten into a nasty fight with a certain Grigory Potemkin, the Horse Guard who handed Catherine his sword knot on the day of the coup, a fight that cost Potemkin his eye.
Catherine’s lavish gifts—smoked sturgeon from Astrakhan and a book by Brantôme—have arrived enveloped in shimmering fabric and tied with green ribbons, sealed at the ends with her emblems: a bee, a pot of honey, a hive. For Darya, who turned fifteen this month, she has sent a marvelous birdcage with a note pinned to an embroidered cushion, an order for Prince Repnin, the Russian Ambassador here, to exchange the note for two parakeets whose antics would capture my daughter’s heart.
When you return, Catherine writes, Darya will make a splendid maid-of-honor, ready for a marriage of distinction. Russia does not forget her friends.
I think of the rain in the darkness outside of the Ropsha palace, pounding the windows. I see trees bent by the wind, weighed down with heaviness, fields soaking up water, churning soil into mud.
That night, on the fifth day after the coup, there had been no unexpected quarrel, no drunken brawl, no accident.
The doors had opened. The scar-faced man who entered Peter’s room carried no weapon. He didn’t need one. His hands could break a horseshoe in half.
He didn’t have to have orders. He knew what the Empress wished for. He knew the price of imperial friendship.
I imagine Peter falling to his knees, sobbing, pleading with the man to spare his life. “Why would she fear a fool like me? All I want is an ordinary life.” His voice, raw and shrill with fear, growing louder, more frantic.
I pray that Peter was too drunk to register the moment Alexei Orlov’s hands closed around his throat. I hope Alexei was brisk, for in the end, when nothing else remains, a swift death is the only mercy.
I pick up a pamphlet Pan Korn found for me. A simple map, a drawing of a manor house with two pillars supporting the front porch. A small estate with a stable, a carriage house, and an orchard of good quality, ten miles south of Kraków. The owner died without direct heirs. The distant cousin thinks his inheritance a burden. Money is more to his liking.
The estate is called Vishin, and I bought it.
It’s far away from the Russian border, I tell myself. The future is more important than the past.
To the hands of the Empress only, I begin the letter I will draft first, then copy in my best hand. Catherine will welcome it, I tell myself. Not having to look at me again. I am the face of what once were her own dreams.
Time has been on my side.
After my months of travel, I already am out of touch with what matters to the Empress. I have become a convert to country life, private, lonely, important to the few.
Darya will not be Catherine’s maid-of-honor. I will make my daughter understand why. I’ll stay in Warsaw until Stanislav’s coronation and then leave for my new home. I want to fade, disappear. I want to be forgotten.
I wasn’t her only tongue, I tell myself. There are some advantages to insignificance.
I’ve paid for Vishin with the money I brought from Russia, the reward for my participation in Catherine’s conspiracy. So far only Pan Korn knows that we’ll be moving right after the coronation, and he has kept it a secret.
I begin my letter with a small borrowing from Monsieur Voltaire, knowing how highly he stands now in Catherine’s esteem. There is a passage toward the end of Candide in which a simple old man declares that since those who meddle with public affairs sometimes perish miserably, all he wishes to do is cultivate his garden.
I’ve found these lines deeply moving and irresistible, I write to Catherine, requesting to be freed from imperial service.
The words that come to me are simple, though I will have to disguise them in my letter: I know what power does to your heart. I know the price of fear. Your world is not the world I want for my child.
The church bells begin to ring. Three times. Na Anioł Pański, they call it here, the evening prayers. Darya is back from her walk. In the hall, as she takes off her coat and gloves, her voice is gay and lively.
“Maman, are you there?” she cries. “I’ve found them!”
She is losing her foreign accent, picking up new Polish words. Once an old man cursed her and Masha when they spoke Russian in the street, a mistake my daughter is no longer making. In a year or so, no one will remember she wasn’t born here.
I hear no more complaints about Warsaw. Darya sleeps well and wakes up determined to oversee the unpacking of her trunks. She will soon have to pack them again.
Now she walks into my room with that effortless grace Stanislav likes to praise. Her sleeves never brush against the arms of the chairs; her buckled shoes never tangle in the folds of the tablecloth.
“What have you found, kison’ka?” I ask.
My daughter sits on the ottoman and turns her face toward me. With a pang, I am reminded that she has Egor’s dark eyes.
After looking at a dozen Amazon parrots and parakeets, pink, yellow, green, Darenka has finally selected Catherine’s promised birthday present. Her two birds are from the Indies, iridescent green with black ruffs. They don’t speak much yet, but she knows how to teach them. The lessons will take place in the evening, always at the same time. First she will have to give them a snack of bread soaked in wine, place a cloth over the cage, dim the lights, and repeat the words or phrases. Then, in the light, she will repeat the words while holding the mirror in front of the parakeets, so that they think another bird is talking.
I watch my daughter’s animated features, the smoothness of her cheeks, the glow of her eyes.
“Remember how the Empress feared you might want to free the birds in Oranienbaum?” I ask.
“What silly things you remember about me,” my daughter says and laughs, bright and gleaming. She rises and kisses me on top of my head, a new habit of hers that makes me feel small.
I summon all the strength I’m still capable of.
“I have something to tell you,” I say.
I poke at the birch log in the fireplace. It breaks into glowing cinders.
“What is it, Maman?” Darya asks. “Is it a surprise?”
I shake my head.
She wrinkles her nose like a rabbit. She is lovely, and my heart sinks.
“Listen,” I say. “I want to tell you a story.”
“Is this a true story?”
“Yes,” I tell her. “It is.”