The Mirrored World

woman, and even the midwife did not object when Xenia squatted down and, rocking on her heels, began to whisper soft noises near the woman’s ear.

The midwife had made a tent of the woman’s skirts and said to me, “Hold up your cloak. At the least, she should not be exposed to all these eyes.” I did as I was told. It was a small mercy, perhaps, that the woman was too far gone to take notice of those about her. She lay there with her eyes closed, insensible in her pain, by all appearances near death. Then all at once, her face contorted and she arched up and let loose a long, terrible scream, as though she were being torn apart on the rack. The midwife bid her to bear down, though the woman seemed incapable of hearing. When her pains subsided, she panted jaggedly. Xenia’s soft babbling increased.

This continued for what might have been an hour, the woman reviving only when the child stirred within her and caused her to shriek. Increasingly, she was too exhausted even for this and only opened and closed her mouth like a fish. The police came and went away again. The carriage and its occupants left also. Much of the crowd had dispersed and because my arms were too weary, I had long since let the cloak drop.

The woman arched in a final agony, then deflated and went still. “Get the knife from my pack.” The midwife reached back a hand without looking and waggled her fingers. She took it from me. “And the rags as well.” She reached under the woman’s skirts and working there at last extracted a small, bloody mass. She slapped it till a shrill cry broke loose. Then she wiped it clean with the rags and wrapped the scrawny thing in a swath of muslin. She handed me the bundle, no larger or heavier than a loaf of bread, while she finished tending to the poor woman.

Framed in the swaddling was a tiny face, dark and shriveled. Its pale eyes squinted into the light—they were surprisingly patient and knowing. It is perhaps foolish to say it, but I felt I glimpsed some recognition in them—not of me, but of unseen things—as though it had carried into this world some perception from its former realm. I looked to Xenia, but she had gone, slipped away without my notice.

Its mother had died. There being no one to claim the infant, I said I would take it until the family could be found. The weary midwife said it was probably too small to live.

“Poor little motherless thing.” She sighed. “It’s probably just as well it returns to God.”

It was already too late for me to share this view.

For the safety of his soul, I had him baptized at once. I hired a wet nurse, and then we waited to see if he would last the night. He did, and the next day as well, and my anxiety for him lessened by fractions as each day passed. A notice appeared in the Gazette of the accident, the death of the woman, and of the surviving infant. I anticipated the grieving husband or grandmother who would arrive at my door. I imagined, too, how their sorrow might be a little lessened when I put this child in their arms. But despite my noble intentions, I was vastly relieved when many weeks had gone by without such a scene. For a year or two after, though, I carried in my breast an apprehension that was awakened by every knock on my door.

I did not name him straightaway, for I did not yet believe he was mine to name. Having need to call him something, I called him Matvey, gift of God. I thought of the son whom God gave to Sarah in her old age. Sarah laughed at God’s messenger when he said she would bear a son. She was ninety-nine years old, who would believe such a thing? And who would believe that the widow of a eunuch might also become a mother? But when the child is delivered and put into your arms, how can you continue to scoff?

I will grant it is possible that Xenia may have come upon the carriage accident quite by happenstance. I have considered this myself. She may have perceived that the mother would die from her injuries and then come to fetch me there. Even my poor intellect can conceive an argument against divine interference. But any mother must surely feel as I did when she first holds her child. Against this wondrous and inexplicable goodness, reason is a poor adversary. Matvey was my faith, and I was foolish for him.

When he was older and had need of a patronymic, I gave him Gaspari’s name. I did not deceive him concerning his parentage; of course, he knows we are not his true parents. Still, I think of him as our child, as much ours as if he were from our flesh. I sometimes see Gaspari’s gentleness in him. I see, also, Gaspari’s heightened consciousness of his place outside the tightly drawn circles of society. Without relations to advance his cause, an orphan may breach them, if at all, only by great talents or extraordinary charms. Matvey lacks these—he is like me in this—but he will work at a thing until his back is bent and his fingers raw, and for this reason he has recently found a good position on an estate to the south of Moscow. Though he would not have left Petersburg otherwise, and though he asked me to move there with him, there was no question in the end but that he would go and I would not. We are like two stout Tatar horses: made for the humble work of pulling whatever is yoked to us. This is our way.

Chapter Sixteen

We had only just sat down at table last month when the bell was ringing downstairs. Briefly, absurdly, my heart rose, thinking it was Xenia come to bid Matvey farewell, but she had not visited here for nearly half a year and she never rings. Masha came to the table to say there was a woman downstairs wanting food for her child. “Well, invite her in,” I said, but Masha replied that I should come to the door. I excused myself from my company and made my way down the stairs, feeling vexed by each of the fourteen steps to the bottom, and lifted the latch.

The woman on the far side of the door had the thin and exhausted look of one who has lived from hand to mouth for some time. I told her she was welcome and stepped back to let her pass.

“God bless,” she answered, but she showed reluctance to cross the threshold. “It’s not for me that I come.” She drew forward a child hidden in her skirts. Of perhaps three or four years, it was pale and bruised-looking. “I was told I might leave her here. Only for an hour or two.”

“There is enough for you as well.”

“God bless,” she repeated. “It’s only that…” Her glance strayed nervously to the street. My eyes followed, but there was only the drowse of midday and nothing out of the ordinary. The sky outside had turned woolly, signaling that it would snow before long. I had felt it in my joints since I woke that morning, age making me as prescient as Xenia, though my predictions are confined to the weather.

“I left a blanket,” she said. “Near the Anichkov Bridge. I’m afraid someone may steal it. If you will take her, I’ll go back and fetch it.”

I nodded, and she began to pry the child’s fingers loose from her skirt. “The good babushka here will look after you,” she said. The child eyed me with the wariness of a feral cat and desperately tried to reattach herself to her mother. “It cannot be helped,” the mother said sternly, but she was visibly distressed also, and turned and ran away.

I took one of the child’s arms. It was thin as dry tinder. “Come,” I coaxed. “There is food upstairs.”

The others looked up when I returned with a child.

“Where is the mother?” Matvey asked.

“She will be back shortly.” I said this to reassure the child, but in truth I did not believe it.

“Here, you may sit with us,” I said to the child. Osip slid down the bench to make room next to himself, which was generous, as he has come here almost daily for years now and is very proprietary about his place at the table.

Masha fetched a plate, spooned some cabbage and a bit of sausage onto it, and we resumed the talk the child’s arrival had interrupted. Matvey was telling the company what he knew of his new employer.

Although the child was clearly starved, she was too upset to eat. She looked warily round the table, and I cannot say as I blamed her. We made for a strange lot. Besides Osip and Matvey, there was Varenka, who was once a dancer kept by Peter Sheremetyev in his harem until she lost too many teeth and was put out. And next to her, Marie de l’Eglise, who is stranded here by the troubles in France. There were also Nikita, a laborer Xenia sent here after his leg was shattered in a fall from a roof, and Stepanov-Nelidov. He was formerly a prosperous fur trader, though you would not guess it now. He astonishes me by finding his way here when he is otherwise too drunk to remember even his own name. He eats a little dinner, sleeps, and then takes his leave when he is sober again, full of repentance and devastated courtesy. I am never lacking for company if I do not mind whose company it is.

I have said to Masha that I will ruin myself, just as old Leonid Vladimirovich did, by keeping an open house