Heart of Iron (3 page)

This was clearly not about me, as the emperor did not even glance in my direction. “Countess,” he said. “There is no reason for you to be unhappy — your niece will not be hampered by the inheritance laws. You yourself have not been so encumbered.”

“I was lucky not to have competition from male heirs,” Eugenia parried. “But even then, if it weren’t for my father’s kindness and forethought, the Menshov lands would be in the hands of some cousins thrice removed.”

The emperor shrank deeper into his chair, looked very old, and murmured something conciliatory. By then, those who were queued behind us waiting to pay their respect to the emperor had clustered closely around us, and I found myself quite mortified, the center of a sizeable crowd that surrounded Eugenia, me, and the emperor with his retinue. Even I knew this was not a proper way to make one’s debut.

Aunt Eugenia drew closer, her bony finger in his face. “You better fix those laws so that I never see another deserving woman tossed out of her house and sent to live with her relatives,” she said.

“But my dear,” the empress said. “Most women are not equipped to run an estate. Why, just look at your own sister.”

A terrible smile spread across my aunt’s features; she no longer looked plain but petrifying, a Fury of old come to avenge the crimes committed against widows and orphans. “Please do not fault my sister for not knowing the things she was never taught,” she said, still addressing Constantine, “and I shall never fault your brother for not learning what he was taught.”

I could not help but notice that one of the officers, wearing an especially ostentatious pair of epaulettes, turned crimson. I pegged him for Prince Nicholas.

But Eugenia was not yet finished with the emperor. “That reminds me,” she said. “You’d best make sure your university starts accepting young ladies, to better prepare them for the rigors of governance. Then you can change the law with no worries.”

With that, she turned abruptly, her black skirt swirling, and dragged me along with her. The silence behind us was all the more profound as the orchestra started playing the first bar of a waltz, a waltz, I realized, I would never dance, because now I was the niece of the crazy Countess Menshova who — unorthodox even in her youth — had finally fallen off her rocker in her dotage, and spoke of governing as if it were her birthright. Elizabeth and Catherine the Great notwithstanding, everyone seemed to agree that Eugenia was too bold, and they whispered and stared at us. I could not stop blushing.

My mother, oblivious as always, wandered over to us, and smiled at me. “Look at that,” she whispered proudly. “All the eyes are on my little duckling.”

Before she had a chance to insist that I should go and dance with some nice young man or another, two officers approached us.

“Countess Menshova,” one of them said. “The emperor is concerned that the excitement of the season has reflected poorly on your nerves — he fears you are overwrought. Perhaps you would be more comfortable at home.”

The other said nothing, but his posture indicated that if Aunt Eugenia did not leave, he would not hesitate to forcibly exorcise her from the premises. We had no choice but to follow this polite but firm advice.

“Come along, Sasha,” Eugenia said. “Apparently, age and wisdom do not always nest together.”

Before that day, I had never considered that dying of embarrassment was not just a figure of speech but a distinct possibility.

The rest of the season went slightly better — I had an opportunity to meet several young women close to my age, from the families of Golitsyn and Obolonsky, Lermontov and Muraviev — all old families, which shared history with mine. There were balls and there were visits, tea, walks, and carriage excursions. The young women were neither mocking nor particularly kind to me, and I suspected that the rumors of Eugenia’s outburst would die if only I could let them. As it was, every time I walked into a room and people stopped talking, I suffered a long spell of blushing and mortification, convinced they were talking about her — about us.

Meeting young men was especially vexing: most of them managed to be simultaneously terrified and scornful of my aunt, and while I suspected that my looks would not detract from the appeal of my future titles and fortune, the mere idea I was related to Eugenia made me, if not a monster in their eyes, then something at the very least deeply unpleasant, like a toad or a water snake.

We stayed in St. Petersburg through most of the winter, and I watched the black Neva waters grow at first a lattice and later a carapace of green ice, turning into a gigantic chrysalis suspended between the gray stone walls, and I wondered if any of the submarine boats were caught under it.

That year, it did not snow until December, and until then the frozen cobbles sung under the thick soles of my winter boots, and I wrapped myself in my coat, while drinking in the sights. I still preferred my solitude, going for walks whenever the wind ceased cutting like a knife, and the damp cold off the Finnish Gulf retreated, allowing the sun to shine.

Anichkov Bridge quickly became a favorite destination thanks to the savage though immobile life of its rearing horses. I could stand and look at them for hours on end; it was a childish conviction, but I believed at times that the moment I would turn away they would spring to life, their muscles knotting and sliding under their stone skin, and thunder away down the embankment, and then I would feel a fool for having turned my back on them. Thus compelled, I stared at them until the cold stung my eyes with bristling tears and my hands grew numb; I stomped my feet to keep warm and stuffed my mittened hands into my sleeves. In retrospect, I recognized this behavior as the first sign of my willingness to search the world for the unusual, a quality foreign to both my mother and my aunt. Yet, it was the latter who furnished me with the opportunity to realize this secret potential.

We returned to Trubetskoye in late January, and as much as I missed Anichkov Bridge, I was relieved to be home. My mother cried a bit because she missed her friends, and Eugenia threw herself into business affairs, since she could not quite believe that the estate had not fallen apart without her. We celebrated Maslenitsa with its usual abundance of blini, and welcomed Great Lent as a relief from such excess. We observed the holy days on my mother’s insistence, even though Eugenia was of the mind that such pettiness as keeping track of who ate what when was unbecoming to a deity who had any ambition of looking important.

Before Lent was over, a letter was delivered. The three of us were resting after our supper in the parlor, where the fire burned brightly and my mother’s aging cat purred asthmatically in her lap. My mother was knitting, and Eugenia worked on an estimate for the next planting season. When the letter was brought to us, my mother grew agitated at the sight of the imperial seal, convinced that the emperor wanted to honor poor dead Papa in some extravagant fashion; I suspected the emperor had finally recovered from the verbal lashing he had received from Eugenia (the letter was addressed to her), and had come up with a deserving repartee three months later.

I was closer to the truth — the envelope contained two items. The first one was a new
ukaz
, which Eugenia glanced at briefly and then read more closely. She let out a great whoop of joy. “Ha!” she yelled, jumping up and twirling in the most undignified manner. “The old goat listened! Look at this—‘St. Petersburg University welcomes young ladies from noble families among its hallowed walls… ’ Nonsense and circumstance… ‘to be housed in the newly remodeled dormitories at the Vasilyevsky Island… chaperons… ’ ” She looked at me brightly and laughed. “Well, you get the idea.”

I did, and felt a little nauseated as I eyed the second piece of paper that Eugenia let drop to the floor in her haste to read the imperial
ukaz
. Presently, Eugenia picked it up and glanced at it, her grin growing even wider. “This is for you,” she told me, sly. I took the letter with trembling fingers, and stared at the list of the first ten noble young ladies to occupy the newly renovated dormitory come next August. I recognized most of the names — Golitsyna and Obolonskaya, and Dasha Muravieva was there as well. But my main consternation was directed at the last line — Trubetskaya, Alexandra.

“Why, Sasha, that’s you.” My mother pointed over my shoulder and beamed; I was not certain if she fully realized what was happening and why I felt simultaneously terrified and elated, but she smiled, Eugenia smiled, and somehow I felt quite certain that the positives would outweigh the sheer terror of having to attend the university — something I frankly had not previously considered but evidently acquiesced to.

I was not the only one with apprehensions, as it turned out — five out of ten young ladies named as the occupants of the newly renovated dormitories expressed their gratitude but turned down the appointments, citing various obligations and excuses, from a case of nerves to the impending matrimony. “Same thing, really,” Eugenia judged. “Cowards.”

I did not allow myself to feel bad about my lack of matrimonial prospects, and spent the summer focusing on my education. Miss Chartwell felt her reputation was at risk, and she spent entirely too many lovely summer days making me conjugate English verbs and calculate derivatives (my hatred for Herr von Leibnitz I could not describe), with an occasional foray into Spinosa or Pushkin.

By the time my departure for the university had arrived, my head felt as if it had swollen three sizes. I suspected, with a hint of wistfulness, that I would probably never be as smart again — and it was all thanks to dear old Miss Chartwell.

The Englishwoman had grown resigned to my leaving, and she came with the rest of the household to bid me goodbye. Her eyes had turned suspiciously red-rimmed and she kept swiping at them with her handkerchief — for her, it was a display of emotion much more extreme than my mother’s unabashed keening.

I felt my eyes water as well when I embraced, in turn, my mother and Eugenia. “Worry not about your governess,” Eugenia whispered. “I’m not letting her go, and you will see her when you come back home for winter recess.”

I hugged Miss Chartwell, tears now running freely down my face, and promised to see her come winter. And with that, there wasn’t much to do but to get myself into the coach where my suitcases and a maid — barely older than I and who was leaving home for the first time as well — were already waiting.

The coach took us to the train station. Ever since the railroad had reached Trubetskoye the spring before, the village had rapidly begun losing its backwater status. As much as I feared the railroad’s presence would disrupt the village’s unhurried, pastoral appeal, I also felt reassured my separation from home would be neither final nor lasting. Returning home would not even be arduous since getting to the capital was now only a matter of a short carriage ride and a day on the train.

From the first time I set a foot onto the throbbing, chugging step of the train, I fell in love with its power and its iron solidity. My maid Anastasia found a free compartment, which she busily filled with our belongings, and I settled on a seat by the window. The great puffs of steam exhaled by the locomotive hid the sight of the train platform and the peasant women with their wicker baskets containing produce and geese. It was like flying through the clouds, with one or another detail of the surroundings momentarily snatched and cast in naked relief before being hidden again in the dense fog. Only the sharp voices and laughter of the women on the platform reached us and convinced me that we were still moored to the earth rather than hurtling through the unending expanse of the summer sky.

Then it was time. The train gave a low whistle, prompting everyone to board in a hurry, and chugged slowly away from the platform. The steam cleared and I watched the yellowing fields run past the windows, faster and faster, and then a forest of tall spruce and ash trees walled the train tracks in on both sides. The train passed lakes and crossed over rivers, it entered villages and towns, piercing through them like a sewing needle, and continued on its way as the scenery opened in front of it and closed behind. I remained transfixed, my forehead pressed against the window, until it had grown dark.

Only then did I notice that Anastasia and I were not the only passengers in the compartment — we had been joined by a small, dark-skinned and narrow-eyed young man dressed in a silk tunic with a high buttoned collar and matching trousers. A plain white cap covering his long braided hair. He sat next to Anastasia, on the bench opposite me, and smiled when he noticed I was looking at him. He introduced himself as Chiang Tse. “I am a student at St. Petersburg University,” he informed me in English. “But I come from the glorious city of Hong Kong, the port of a thousand masts and home of the air dragon ships.”

“Sasha Trubetskaya,” I said. “I mean, Alexandra. I’m going to the university too.”

Chiang Tse proved to be a pleasant companion — now that I could not look outside, I was just as content to talk. Anastasia lit the gas lantern mounted on the wall of our compartment, ran to the restaurant carriage and brought us tea, and the three of us spent a pleasant evening trading stories and carefully skirting around the anxieties of starting a new life as a student.

I learned from Chiang Tse that there were very few Chinese students at the university in St. Petersburg — there were several more at Moscow University, he said, because it was marginally closer to his homeland. He had great hopes for the railroad currently being constructed. The route cut across Siberia and offered an easy passage between Europe and Asia — it had now almost reached Beijing. “I understand there is some apprehension about the Orient moving suddenly close,” he said and smiled to show he was only joking.

I smiled back. I could imagine what it was like for him — to be so alone and far away from his compatriots, to be so different from his new classmates, to anticipate their mistrust, their inevitable disapproval. I understood because the same was true for me, and I felt like crying again, even though it was hardly an opportune moment. I could not help but think the girls who declined the imperial invitation were correct to do so — despite being Eugenia’s niece, I did not seek to attract attention or to struggle against the current; the only reason I went was because I feared disappointing her more than I feared scandalizing the entirety of polite society.