of the persuasions was the silvered hand mirror he presented to her at the betrothal dinner.
It was to the benefit of Xenia that never before or since has the Russian court been so musical. Empress Elizabeth Petrovna’s was the reign of song. On Monday afternoons, there was dance music, on Wednesdays, Italian compositions, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays, musical comedies. The evenings were taken up variously with allegories composed in Her Imperial Majesty’s honor, an opera, or the newest play from France. An army of artisans—playwrights and musicians, seamstresses and carpenters—worked by lamplight late into the nights penning and producing new amusements. Companies of dancers and singers, got up in folk costumes and dancing the mazurka one day, were swirling about the stage the next, swathed in the filmy attire of gods and goddesses. At any or all of these entertainments, the members of the court choir might perform, with Colonel Petrov numbered among them.
Our mothers could not gain her entry to the more exclusive amusements of the court, but Xenia became a devotee of the public concerts. She came home after these elated or dejected, depending on whether Colonel Petrov had sung.
How long could it have been before he noticed her, there in every audience and so clearly listening only to him? His eyes met hers and his mouth bowed slightly, not quite a smile but enough for Xenia. He sought her out at the end of the concert, and in the aftermath the exchange between them was studied like egg whites.
“Did you note how solicitous he was of Xenia?” my mother said. “He asked twice if she enjoyed the concert.”
“He likes to be flattered,” Aunt Galya answered. “It is one thing to be agreeable, daughter, and another to be so eager. You should not give the impression that his attentions matter overly much.”
“But they do.” Xenia said this so simply that Aunt Galya could only sigh and shake her head.
“All the more reason then to be circumspect until you know his intentions.”
My mother intervened. “There’s no need, Galya. These two are berries from the same field. When I let it drop that we sometimes stroll in the Summer Garden, he asked straight out if we would be there tomorrow.”
“You told him yes?” Xenia was desperate.
“I said that we might stroll in the morning, provided it did not rain.”
It didn’t rain and he was there, circling about at the palace entrance. He asked that he might call at the house, and before the day was out he had proposed marriage. Though this relieved our mothers of the burden of feigning happenstance, they had still to slow the galloping pace of the young lovers for the sake of appearances.
I remember one more such afternoon in the garden. Xenia and Andrei were strolling together, and as is the custom during the betrothal, others were in attendance: my mother and aunt, myself and Nadya, and a few other women of our acquaintance who enjoyed being included in the periphery of any courtship. The young couple walked a short distance ahead of their entourage, and this was all the privacy they would be allowed until the wedding night.
Andrei and Xenia were so entirely absorbed by each other that they walked the long avenues without stopping, undiverted by statues or fountains or other whimsies. We in pursuit also made only cursory note of them, watching instead the pantomime before us. Out of earshot, Andrei inclined his head into the space between himself and Xenia and spoke in low tones. We could not hear his words, but such looks of ardor passed from him to her, and even his bearing bespoke the constraints on his liberty. Xenia returned his rapt gaze and nodded in eager agreement to each of his utterances, and this seemed to feed his fervor all the more.
Later, Aunt Galya quizzed Xenia. “What was said between you?”
“He instructed me on the superiority of partes singing.”
“And what else?”
“That is all.”
Apparently, Andrei Feodorovich was quite passionate on the innovation that had come from his native Kiev. Xenia repeated his claim that man was not intended by God to sing all in unison. Just as Christ was both human and divine, the lower voice in partes singing represents the earthly, and the higher voice embodies the spiritual. The ancient chants would deny the physical by bending all registers to one sound. Not so in partes. The two voices each sing their own nature, and the sounds they make when they come together are rapturous and complete. The physical becomes spiritual. Or so was his explanation.
There was something in this our mothers did not quite approve, but they had no talent to parse such a difficult theological argument. “I am not, after all, a student of church music,” Aunt Galya said.
However, Xenia understood his meaning well enough. She whispered to me later, “I think he would teach me to sing in his bed.”
At the close of summer, Grand Duke Peter wed our present Empress, Catherine. A week following the Imperial wedding, Nadya was married, and a fortnight after this, Xenia followed suit.
There is a cathedral, wan light falling in dusty shafts from so high up that it dies before reaching the stony depths. There, in the dimness flecked with a thousand candles, a crowd waves like grasses on the floor of a sea. Attached to this impression is the sweetish smell of beeswax and incense and warm bodies. The bee buzz of the crowd.
This is most certainly the Cathedral of Kazan, where the Grand Duke and Duchess wed, for my cousins and their grooms would not have merited such a buzz.
A woman with a long white face and reddened lips directs her comment to a dowager whose crepey bosom rests atop her corset like two wrinkled peaches. The older woman answers something, but I cannot hear what.
Strange that I cannot entirely tease apart which impression belongs to which day. Perhaps it is that every wedding is so much the same—such endless repetitions and circlings are required to make two persons one. But the more likely explanation is this: though marriage was the end towards which we’d been unspooling since birth, I was stunned by the arrival of it. There is no word in the language to denote being orphaned of sisters by marriage. Did it exist, it would describe my inchoate and confused emotions. Even Nadya’s leaving was so peculiarly painful to me that I recoiled from feeling the greater loss of Xenia. I pretended poorly to the general happiness.
Over the immense royal doors behind the altar, Christ is enthroned and is judging the proceedings. He is flanked by a solemn jury of saints—John the Baptist, Theotokis, the archangels Gabriel and Michael, the apostles Peter and Paul. Thin feet hang beneath their rigid robes; their long fingers gesture stiffly. Their impassive countenances suggest that though they pity the dwarfed creatures below, their thoughts are elsewhere. In orderly rows, their elongated figures tower up and up towards heaven.
A priest stands beneath the saints. In his stiff-collared stole and miter, he resembles one of their number come to life. He presides with equanimity over the stumbling flock that comes before him in endless, faceless pairs to be joined. Taking their hands into his, he asks them if they wish to have one another and to live together. He asks thrice.
Kuzma Zakharovich, I see him now, pondering the lit candle grasped in his fat fingers. He turns his face to the priest before him and then to the girl beside him, with the muddled look of a man who finds himself placed in an
