The Imperial Wife (15 page)

“Let's drink,” someone calls out.

The rabbi, left alone, seems confused by the milling crowd. A flourish of silver hair glistens in the incandescent light. I find him lingering by the door as if deciding to eat or go, to run away from this crowd or hang around and make himself available.

“Rabbi, excuse me. First of all, thank you for the talk. That was very informative.”

His dense eyebrows lift in welcome. “Well, I certainly hope I galvanized some of you.”

“This is a bit off topic. I was actually wondering whether there are any actions we can take—you know, as Jews—to hasten a favorable outcome in a marital disagreement?”

“If you're talking about whether Jews believe in karma, the answer is we believe in
hashgacha
—providence. It tells us that we can ask God to change, to alter what came before and even repent. Even if what we have done in this relationship may have consequences that are unchangeable. Acting with pure, warmhearted intention's important. Focusing on what you can control in yourself rather than trying to influence others. There's
teshuvah,
of course, the doing of good deeds.”

I think about how best to phrase it. “Actually, that's not exactly what I meant. I was wondering when being proactive is preferable to being patient. You see my husband left and I think I know why…”

But Alla's approaching with the sleeping man tucked under her elbow and the rabbi takes his opportunity to slip out the door. I watch him in the hallway stabbing fruitlessly at the elevator button.

“So let's cut to the chase,” Alla says. “This is Grisha. Meet Tanya. Tanya, meet Gregory. You're both sort of unattached. For the moment.”

You've got to do something. A Russian woman acts.
I look at Grisha. He is almost entirely bald and dressed in violet jeans looped by a fabric belt. A tight, white button-down shirt reveals a proud smattering of chest hair. A gold hand dangles from a necklace.

“So what do we have here?” he says, looking me up and down.

“I'll get you a both a cocktail.” Alla floats away with an apologetic smile.

Grisha's kiss of greeting is the opposite of Igor Yardanov's, a wispy nothing scraped against my skin. He's inserting an abridged autobiography into the gaps of my silence. CEO of a development consultant firm, maybe I've heard of it? Plays tennis three times a week. Have I stayed at Koh Samui in Thailand? Have I seen the Gauguin show at the Met? Which other boards do I belong to? The lectures at the JCC's Emerging Leaders' series is really strong this year. Isn't it?

He escorts me to the buffet, offers me rolled-up roast beef, a wedge of knish. A hand continues to linger at the small of my back as if to guide me or keep me from tripping. I feel hot and uncomfortable and find myself staring at his downy arm hair. I see Alla lingering nearby, but I'm at a loss as to how I'm supposed to be. Like I'm single? Like I'm open to a date? I've forgotten all the steps, the push and pull of enticement, the small touches of his arm, the flirty repartee.

My phone rings, and I think, Saved by
hashgacha
! Carl probably thanking me for the takeout food. “I know how you love the lula,” I'll say. And that will be the first step. That's how our fights usually ended, one person sublimating an irritation in an act of kindness.

But it's Regan with an emergency, a lot pulled at the last minute. I want to weep with the disappointment of it, not to mention the additional work it will entail.
Don't give in to learned helplessness. Don't catastrophize!

“I'll take a cab and meet you in the office?” Regan says, over a cacophony of drumming.

“I'll try to change his mind on the way. Just a case of cold feet or did he get a better deal?”

“Who knows? Good luck with that. I'm heading over.”

“You rock. See you soon.”

I find Grisha on my way out but he's already deep in conversation with an elegant woman in a hot-pink skirt. Her entire body is coiled into him, rapt with attention. He turns to me with a shrug, as if to say,
You snooze, you lose
.
You think I care that you're the CEO type? You think that'll make it easy for you out there?

“I'm so sorry, but I've got to run.” At the bar, Alla is frantically miming a square in the air, the act of taking it out of a purse. Reluctantly, I add, “So, can I give you my card?”

“Well,
poka
then.” Grisha pockets it. And he turns away.

 

Catherine

MAY–JUNE 1744

“Any doubts?” the empress says. She is perched on the settee, watching the maids' efforts. It took three of them to work the red material over Sophie's head.

Strange: the night before the formal betrothal, Sophie slept well for the first time since her arrival in Russia. Until this one, every night had been pocked by interruptions. The very slither of a mouse across the floor startled her awake. Her dreams were nothing more astonishing than reality transposed—Peter refusing to carry out his duties as husband, the disfavor of Her Imperial Majesty, the arrival of her charming rival Marianne from Poland, forgetting all her Russian during her confession of faith. But the night has actually been still, unmarred. She is refreshed. Filled with the keenest impatience.

“Doubts? I have written my father about the matter of the conversion. He has reservations as you know, but my own mind is at peace.”

The empress looks taken aback and Sophie wonders if she meant doubts of a different kind, perhaps about the actual union. The empress is kneading the material of her skirt. “This is very expensive fabric, you know. Gros de tours. It holds up nicely over the course of a day, especially after all that kneeling.”

The dress is strapped onto Sophie, her body made to conform to the stiff fabric. The empress is wearing the same dress, but hers is embellished by brilliant jewelry while Sophie's only options for accessories are a smattering of pendants gifted to her in the aftermath of her illness.

The pause in the conversation is long, unsettling. Sophie turns to the empress and looks directly into the woman's eyes. “This is the most beautiful gown I have ever had the privilege of wearing.”

“Yes, yes,” the empress says, distracted. “This must be an exciting time for a young girl.” Again, she seems to want to impart more, a longer disquisition on conjugal bonds and duty perhaps. Sophie wonders if the empress will speak in greater confidence about Peter's character. But whatever moment she was trying to fashion between them is lost to the rush of logistics. They are telling her that the time has come to form the procession.

The palace chapel is thronged with shrieking onlookers, but for some reason, kneeling at the cushion, Sophie is not nervous. The chatter behind her continues even as the archbishop begins speaking. She has studied the intricacies of the conversion ceremony with Teodorsky, and is pleased to find she anticipates each element. The oil arrives on schedule, is dotted on the forehead, eyes, neck, and throat and just as quickly dabbed off with cotton. When it comes time to recite the faith, the Russian words unspool easily in her mind and off the tongue. Her dear governess Babette would have wept with pride. My little sheep has talent for recitation, her nanny might say, kissing her forehead. She wonders what Babette made of her sudden departure, if she wept or sensed something was amiss. She wonders if Babette found a new post. Sophie finds Katya's face among the maidens.

When her new name is first spoken around—Ekaterina, Catherine— she meets Katya's eye. In name, they are true mirror sisters now. When the empress first told her the plan for her renaming, she had initially been dismayed.

“May I ask the reason?” she asked. “Is my name not amenable to the Russian language? I have met several Sophias here.”

“No need to regale you with the full story,” the empress said, “but that was the name of my father's half sister, and the less said about her the better. My mother's name will do quite nicely. She was a marvelous person,
matyushka,
smart as a whip. I sometimes say my father was truly ‘great' due to her influence.”

Ekaterina. The name, spoken aloud now, turns Sophie into a new invention: an Imperial Highness, the Grand Duchess Ekaterina Alekseevna. Even her patronymic is a lie, her father's name being Christian August, the “Aleksey” chosen for its royal heritage as the patronymic of the empress's mother. All Catherine knows of the first Catherine, the one responsible for the precious order she wears at all times, was that she was exceedingly beautiful and of a luminous disposition. She had started off as a housemaid, then became Peter the Great's mistress and wife before becoming empress after his death. Catherine likes that she has landed in a realm where this is possible, the elevation of housemaid to empress.

Where she and the first Catherine part ways though: she will not be achieving the throne as mistress. She will not be making her Peter a “great man.” His inability to rise to that moniker is apparent already.

They are now formally engaged to be married. Catherine is vaguely aware of the empress pinning a diamond pin to her shoulder, her very chest glowing with the blue of sapphires.

*   *   *

As soon as the betrothal is over, they are kids again, playing blindman's bluff. Peter is It. They cannot help laughing at the figure he casts swatting about the apartments in search of victims. His underdeveloped body spasms with laughter; through his uniform, she can make out the ribs of his chest. When he senses someone to tag he pretends to be lost and then lurches forward. But Peter's talent in the role of It seems to be limited to catching prey, Catherine notes. He is hopeless at properly identifying the person, thus is forced to remain It round after round. Catherine whispers to his equally daft courtiers to give him some kind of hint so the game might finally conclude.

It is the summer of little oversight, as if the entire palace belongs solely to them and their games, but Catherine never forgets that she is future companion to a king. When the merriment crosses inappropriate boundaries, when they become too loud or disturb the empress during her daytime sleep, everyone relies on Catherine's discretion.

“Quiet,” she commands now in a new, imperious tone. The day before, she was on her way to collect portraits of herself and Peter, when she overheard the empress conversing with the doctors.

“Another year? Are you sure?” The empress was in one of her impatient moods. Catherine could hear her skirts brushing across the floor planks. “But we've already done the conversion.”

Lestocq's voice, consoling: “A year passes quickly.”

“But perhaps he can father a child sooner, perhaps the outward signs are deceiving.”

“It is unlikely. His, how to say this, anatomy, is very much a boy's…”

Catherine considers tiptoeing her way back toward her apartments, but Bestuzhev is marching down the hall and he caught her flustered countenance outside the door. His eyes narrowed at her. She rushed away, peeking nervously over her shoulder. For the remainder of the day she rolled the precious word around in her mouth. “Year.” A year is an eternity.

Now, to bring this silly game to its conclusion, she plants herself directly in Peter's way in order to finally be caught. He has detected her presence. She notes that the thin threads of his muscles tense, readying for the pounce.

“What are you doing? Get out of the way!” screeches Evdotya, the least intelligent of her ladies, who, at seventeen, should know better than to squeal at her mistress like that.

“Got you.” Peter's hands are on her shoulders. She can smell the wine on his breath, the residue of charred duck he had for supper. Behind him, their group is convulsed in suppressed laughter, waiting for his conjecture. If he guesses correctly, she becomes It. How she wants him to succeed in this moment, to seize this small victory. He feels the contours of her cheeks and chin with his stubby fingers.

Finally, he says, “I've got it. I know who you are. You are Evdotya. Or should I check lower down to be sure?”

Screaming, gales of it, surrounds her. She pretends to join them in their good humor. Evdotya is clutching her stomach, spasms of laughter convulsing her body. Zhenia wipes her moist face with a handkerchief, the revolving courtiers (what are their names? They are always changing) are patting Peter on the back. She finds none of it funny.

“You are mistaken, it is your future wife,” she says. She pretends to be included in the joke, but her whole body flares with shame. Evdotya is not even pretty, with a lumpy, misshapen chin and ruddy claws for hands. So it is as she thought—Catherine has not managed to make him love her and probably never will.

 

Tanya

PRESENT DAY

Turning the corner with my bag of warm bagels, I see a man sitting on my parents' front steps. He's stout and overdressed for the weather, a ribbed sweatshirt zipped to his neck, a pair of wool slacks riding up his calves. Obviously Russian. Beside him rests a frame wrapped in butcher paper. I freeze, but there's no escape, just a smattering of trees along a long stretch of suburban openness.

Visiting my parents in northern New Jersey is a minivacation for me and I'd been enjoying a quiet morning stroll through Ramsdale. Panera Bread, Dunkin' Donuts, Krazy Bagels, Asia Express. Starbucks filled with teenagers, their heads bowed over their cell phones as if in devout prayer. Gas station attendants pumping gas, leaning back against the pumps to count the bills. Here, on the warm pavement, the world reveals its secrets. The Russian pharmacy with its Polish hand creams, Ukrainian homeopathic drugs, intricate Czech perfume bottles glistening in the window. The Soviet souvenir store—bobble heads of Krushchev next to cheap
matryoshki
in ascending order flashing shellacked gums in their painted-on red kerchiefs. The streets are splashed with young runners, senior citizens pushing before them metal carts. My people everywhere, shifting about with cotton mesh bags, locking SUVs with a decisive beep, lining up for dry cleaning. The spring colors, which glowed dull this morning, now pulse in shades of kaleidoscopic possibility. Ramsdale.