deprived of his company.
At last our caravan reached the lake. There being no suitable lodgings in the vicinity, scores of tents had been erected in a meadow overlooking the water. Our spirits were lifted to have finally reached our destination and to find it equal to all that had been said of it. The lake, glassy and round as a mirror, looked like a circle cut from the sky and set down there. Cottony clouds floated on the still blue surface, and lily pads and cattails garlanded the rim. Andrei jested that the city of Kitezh had risen again.
The legend goes that five hundred years ago, a city of golden-domed churches stood there. This was in the time of Batu Khan, when his barbarous warriors swarmed across the land, setting fire to every village and town, slaying without mercy old men and mothers, and sweeping up children onto the backs of their horses to be sold into slavery. Even the great Kiev was laid waste, its churches and libraries burnt, its streets turned to rivers of blood, and not a single person spared to mourn the dead. Then Batu Khan turned his army towards the city of Kitezh. In anticipation of the coming terror, the people built no fortifications and made no preparations to defend their city but instead prayed fervently to God to spare them.
It is said that as the Mongol horde approached the walls of the city, fountains of water sprouted from the ground around them. Khan’s army retreated and watched from a remove as God caused the city to be swallowed into a deep lake.
Many pilgrim to Lake Svetloyar to pray and to drink from these waters. Holy persons have sometimes reported seeing the lights of the invisible city glimmering in the black depths or hearing, faintly, the tolling of bells and the murmured prayers of the ancient inhabitants. There are even stories of pilgrims who have gone there and never returned, or they have disappeared for a time and then reappeared on the banks of the lake with no memory of where they have been.
That evening, we processed down to the water, where hundreds of candles had been set adrift and twinkled in the summer dusk. We knelt in the damp grasses and turned to watch Her Imperial Majesty take the final steps of the pilgrimage. On her left was Count Razumovsky and close by, Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov. At the edge of the water, Razumovsky helped the Empress to kneel onto a carpet. Her confessor said the prayers and then, dipping a goblet into the lake, held it for her to drink. When she had drunk, she held a plump hand out, not to Razumovsky but to Ivan Ivanovich. He handed her onto her throne, which had been carried from Petersburg, and she rested her tired feet on a stool.
Across the dark water came the high note of a hand bell, icy and ethereal. Then another bell and another, and beneath these sounds, a slow, upwelling chant. The hum of whispers occasioned by Her Imperial Majesty’s slighting of her favorite fell away, and all eyes turned towards the water. The Empress had commissioned a song to be written for the occasion of our arrival. I knew that Andrei, with the choir, was installed on a barge tethered somewhere off the shore to sing it, but peering into the gloaming I could not discern the source of the music. It was as though a fissure had opened up, sonorous and deep, and was breathing out the sounds of the ancient city, and the even more ancient sounds of the earth itself. Whales and beetles, grass pushing up through the soil, the slow exhalation of mountains and tides, the buzz of everything, living or not, swelling and contracting and pulling the soul down into its music.
A chorus of supplications rose to the heavens. Save us, O merciful Lord, they sang, in this our time of trouble. And the waters began to rise and to turn back the barbarians, who fell away in fear and awe. The waters filled the streets and crept up the walls of the houses, rising above the roofs, and still the voices could be heard praising God. One by one, the domes of the many churches disappeared until the Mongol’s last sight of the city was a gold cross hovering above the water. The voice of the choir grew triumphant. It extolled the long line of holy ones from Kitezh to our present mother, Elizabeth, whose prayers had sheltered Russia from its enemies. At the end of time, the choir sang, this golden-domed city would rise up again, a new kingdom on earth. The hand bells accompanying the choir rang out and then died. We on the banks strained to hear the last tones melting into the silence.
As the choir sang, Xenia had clasped my hand hard. Tears had shone in her eyes, and they had a bright, ecstatic look. Now, the courtiers stirred to life and began to talk amongst themselves, but she remained still and as vacant in aspect as one in a trance.
“The choir sang as I have never heard them,” I said to her.
She did not answer, though she was usually happy to hear the choir praised, making no distinction between this and praise of Andrei in particular. People hurried past us, heading back up the rise to where a supper had been laid on long tables in the open air. At long last, like a person returning from a great distance, she blinked and her eyes took in her surroundings.
“The choir sang as I have never heard them,” I repeated. Still caught in reverie, she nodded.
She was uncommonly quiet for the remainder of the evening, and not even Andrei’s merriness roused her from her distraction. He expressed concern that the journey had overtaxed her. “Are you unwell?” he asked.
“No, no, I am fine. It is…” She scanned the air for more words but did not find them. “Do you not feel it?”
“What?”
“That our lives are shadows. You, me, all this, it does not mean a thing.”
He was at a loss how to answer.
“No, that sounds horrible, I am not expressing it well. What if the lake, the trees, the heavens, everything we can see, is a forgery, like painted scenery? Lovely as it is, what if it is not real and there is something else?”
With a little shake of her head, she fell back into silence. She was quiet and more distractible the next day, but she gradually returned to herself once we had left Lake Svetloyar and come home again.
The Metamorphoses Ball
Chapter Five
With each passing season, my father grew less willing to assume the expenses attendant on my being out in society, and my prospects dimmed a little further. I can fix no moment when expectation gave way to anxiety. Where once I had wondered at intervals whether the husband in my future might be kind or cruel, as the years passed I found myself thinking less about his character and fearing only that he might not exist. It was akin to awaiting the arrival of a distant guest to a party: in the whirl of other guests, his absence may not even register at first, and when it is noted, there is perhaps only a slight vexation at the person’s lateness. But as time goes on, this vexation changes to apprehension and then distress, until his absence casts a longer shadow than his presence might ever command.
In the winter of my twentieth year, the matter came to a head. At the same time that my brother went into the Guards, my father was retired from it. Freed from his service to the crown, he was now able to remove his family from the city and live out his remaining years on his own land.
Going with them would settle my fate—my father’s estate was on the Kashinka River, six days’ journey from Moscow, and there were no eligible men in the vicinity. Aunt Galya proposed that I stay behind with her under the roof of her elder daughter. I cannot guess whether my aunt had anticipated Nadya’s answer when she made the suggestion, but Nadya was indignant. She had already to contend with Kuzma Zakharovich’s wretched daughter and her own mother, and now she should take in a cousin as well? Her sister had no burdens, she countered; why should not Xenia do her share?
Andrei and Xenia showed great kindness in making me welcome, even insisting that it was I who would be doing them a service by keeping Xenia company when she could not travel with Andrei. And so, I went to live with them.
My things were sent ahead, and when I arrived, I learnt that she had put my bed in the upstairs room next to hers. This room had been kept unfurnished in expectation of children. Now, the door stood open, and I saw
