She held it up to the light. “Look.”
It is a raven’s feather, I thought. My countenance must have shown my ignorance.
“It is black, but look what happens.” She rolled the quill slowly between her fingers. “Do you see it, the blue? And now emerald…” Colors shimmered on its oily surface. “And there is purple! And even red. It is like the Kaleidoscope!”
I saw then that it was an astonishing feather.
When I parroted her admiration, she handed it to me without a blink. “It is yours,” she said. In this same manner, she later gifted me with the bird’s skull and the skipping stone and various insects and wildflowers—my own museum of wonders and curiosities.
What consumed her one moment was forgotten in the next, but while in the grip of a passion, she could not be swayed from it, no matter how reckless. She ate wild mushrooms without first bringing them home for Olga to inspect. She approached mangy cats and dogs in the street and would coax into friendly submission even those who warned her off with low growls or arched backs. None ever bit her, but the reward for her undiscriminating friendliness was that she smelled of garlic from Olga continually treating her for ringworm.
One summer, when we were at my family’s country house, she determined that the view of the river must be incomparable from the vantage of a particular tree limb stretching out over the water. She knotted her smock round her waist and, catching at a low branch, shimmied up the trunk to a high limb and then to a higher one yet.
“Oh, Dasha,” she cried. “It is even finer than I imagined. This must be how angels view the world. I wonder if I can see our house.” She wriggled like a caterpillar out on the limb until she was perched high over the fast water.
“I am an angel,” she proclaimed, and held her arms out from her sides like wings.
When she fell, the water closed over her and she disappeared. I splashed into the river and stopped shin- deep, stricken. A little farther downriver she reemerged, gasping and thrashing at the surface, then sank and did not come up again.
Like Lot’s wife, who turned into a pillar of salt, I was still gazing on the place where she had last gone down when I heard her call out.
“Here I am.”
Turning, I saw her staggering up the towpath. Her wet smock was pasted onto her dripping skin, and she alternated between coughing and laughing.
“I am a fallen angel.”
A world that has angels must also have its demons. In the way of children, rank within our little society was determined by our relative ages. By virtue of a year, Xenia’s sister, Nadya, might order us about and strike us without cause, and she was not shy to do either.
One of our pastimes was to reenact stories we had heard from our mothers. Nadya played a grand duchess or a German princess, Xenia was the noble lady’s younger sister or a lady-in-waiting, and I was cast as a servant. My little brother, Vanya, served as was needed for a pet spaniel or monkey. In whatever configuration, though, the game turned on Nadya’s being endlessly demanding and capricious. She might send one of us to fetch something, a ribbon for her hair or a tray of sweetmeats, but when we returned with the imaginary item, invariably the ribbon was the wrong color—she wanted the green, not the yellow—the sweets were inferior, and she had not asked for her pet monkey after all but for her parrot.
Once, she asked me to bring a letter that had recently been sent her by an admirer. Dutifully, I left our room, waited a bit, and then returned with the imaginary missive.
“Well, where is it?” Nadya demanded.
“Here, my lady,” I said, and pretended to pinch something between my thumb and forefinger.
“No, fool. The letter I want is in the drawer of my dressing table. It is tied with a blue ribbon.”
I broke the spell of the game. “Do you mean my father’s letter?” I whispered, like an actor seeking a prompt.
She glared at me with convincing menace. “
I remained motionless, considering whether to go out into the passage and try again.
She rebuked me with a slap. “Go!” she shrieked.
I ran to my mother’s dressing room and slid open the drawer. Inside was a fine handkerchief of embroidered linen that had been given to her by Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna when my mother left her service to be married. Next to this was the packet of letters written by my father. The most recent had arrived only the previous day. My mother had sent for the priest to read it to her and take down a reply, and afterwards had put it away here, together with the others.
I hesitated. On occasion, I had been allowed to open the drawer and look at the handkerchief, but never to disturb the contents. If I were discovered, I would be punished, but if I did not return to Nadya with the letter I should also be punished. Weighing the two dangers, I chose to dodge that which was nearer. I slipped the thin envelope from the top of the packet and carried it back to Nadya.
“Here, my lady.”
She took it from me and opened the envelope. Glancing cursorily over the paper, Nadya read aloud: “‘To the most beautiful lady in all of Russia—’”
“Is that what it says?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“But I mean, truly?”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
I did not know how Nadya might have learnt to read. Still, it was the accepted condition of being youngest that everyone was gifted with knowledge unavailable to me.
“‘To the most beautiful lady in all of Russia,’” she began again. The letter went on to proclaim my father’s admiration in many florid phrases. He pleaded that my mother send some sign that his affection was reciprocated.
I had no memory of my father, though he had been a constant, unseen presence in our household. His name was repeated in our daily prayers, and when any decision was to be made, my mother invoked him, wondering aloud if Nikolai Feodosievich would approve of this or that.
“‘If you do not care for me,’” Nadya continued to read, “‘I shall surely die.’”
I was caught in the spell of hearing his words and peered over her shoulder that I might see them as well. “What is this?” I asked, pointing to an intriguing shape like a rowboat reflected on water.
“That? That means ‘send.’”
“And this?”
“That is ‘die.’ It’s simple,” Nadya said. “Look.” She drew her finger slowly under a line of mysterious strokes and curls and pronounced their meaning. “‘To the most beautiful princess in all of the Russias.’ Now you read it.”
I tried to link the images to words, but what had meant “send” in one line meant something else in the next.
“I cannot.”
“It is the same words,” Nadya snapped. “‘To the most beautiful princess…’ Just repeat what I say.”
But I wanted to read it for myself. I stared fixedly at the place where Nadya pointed and saw what looked like snippets of black hair. Flour laced with weevils. A regiment of tiny soldiers on new snow. But no meaning in any of it. The insects on the page blurred.
“Look!” Nadya pointed to an inky puddle on the paper. “Now you have spoilt it.”
I began to cry in earnest.
“Be quiet,” Nadya snarled. “They will hear you.” Her warning served only to raise the pitch of my wailing. She pulled off one of her shoes and raised it threateningly. “I said be quiet. Do you want a whipping?”
Xenia also tried to quiet me. “Don’t take it to heart, Dashenka. It was only pretend. Nadya can’t read either.”
When Nadya turned and struck her across the cheek, Xenia did not cry out or even flinch. Oddly, her silence
