Amid the bustle and laughter, I saw how much we needed this, saw the wisdom of this extravagance. We’d missed Christmas and New Year’s and Epiphany. No birthday or name day had been acknowledged. This would be all of them rolled into one. I touched my crown and wondered how I looked. There were no mirrors at Ionia. Ukashin felt they were especially harmful to women, that they pulled our souls out of our bodies and left them floating between dimensions, and I wondered if that wasn’t true enough, though I would have liked to have seen my own face that day. I felt the neat crown, my bones, the arch of my brow, my lips, soft. Did I have circles under my eyes? Was I still attractive? Would Kolya want me if we met again? Me with his child in my arms.
We watched the last low, red rays of the winter sun descend, turning the snow to blood. Anna, once the principal alto of the Mikhailovsky Theater, began to sing “Along the Quiet River.” From the hall, Ilya joined her, and then Katrina’s soprano—my God, the Mikhailovsky Theater really lost some talent when these three left Petrograd. The other girls took up the song, and the men.
There is no sound on earth as beautiful as the harmony that can arise from a group of people who sing together day in and day out. Floating on a current of song, we descended in a procession in that lilting, gliding step I’d finally mastered—male, female, male—down to the front parlor, where the rugs had been rolled up and the long plank table had miraculously appeared. We never ate in this room, preferring not to sully it with such third-dimension activities. But here it was, the table, covered with patterned quilts and decorated with colored eggs and pine boughs. Already enthroned at the table’s head, looking like something out of One Thousand and One Nights, was our master, while at the table’s foot, his regular chair from the back parlor was draped in a blue cloth. Could it be that Mother was coming down at last?
We circled the table seven times—once for each of the seven dimensions—to finally stop at our places, marked by elegant place cards painted by Lilya. Ukashin filled a goblet from a big crock of wine and we passed it from hand to hand around the table. Bogdan beamed with pride as he handed it to me—herbal, sharp, and green. Under normal circumstances I would have drunk deep, but the smell was abhorrent in my current condition, and I was happy to pass it on. The baby was more enthralled by the marvelous smells emerging from the kitchen. Hurry up! it shrieked as the elaborate toasts unfurled, to the heavens and the earths and the devis and guardians, the Mother. Hurry up and bring out that rabbit stew! I want bread! Roasted chicken!
The open seat awaited.
Avdokia stood in the doorway, and with each toast, a new unspoken comment radiated out from her eyebrows and her big nose, her mouth growing smaller with disapproval. Idiots. Swindler. I knew she was afraid. What will we all eat come spring? Yes, it was foolhardy to have a feast, my sweet old dear. Yes, it was insane. But we were not driving this train, she and I. We had not laid the rails.
At last she and Katrina began bringing in food. Oh glorious! Ruby borscht and big round loaves of bread. Pickles and smoked sprats followed by russet chickens in nests of potatoes, eggs dyed golden with onion skins and red with beets. Who could begrudge such bounty? We gorged, we drank. Calories pumped through my body, as intoxicating as wine, the baby floating in that heavenly sap of my blood. We sang old children’s songs. Ukashin told a funny story about the Laboratory, and suddenly they all began to open up, trying to top one another with stories about the strange characters they had left behind, encounters between socialites and beggars, a man who kept a lizard in his mouth. Ukashin laughed and told jokes and drank right along with his disciples. Even Andrei drank, though it seemed to make him all the more melancholy. But for the rest, how they needed a night like this, of revelry, of bounty. Healthy young people couldn’t live on oatmeal and the fourth dimension forever. All that vitality and beauty and smoky desire needed to have its day.
After the meal, the offerings began. Natalya and Bogdan presented an original pas de deux to the accompaniment of Andrei’s piano. It was about the love affair between the moon and the sun. I recognized bits of Ukashin’s energy-accumulating choreography grafted onto modernist stylings from the Diaghilev ballet—The Firebird particularly. Oh, such grace in our midst! Natalya’s lithe legs dabbed and fluttered like the legs of an egret through a marsh, and her turns and arabesques were kissed with moonlit delicacy. Bogdan’s robust sun courted her with flashy leaps and turns. That such artistry, such ability, should dwell among us seemed unthinkable, like watching Karsavina dancing on the tiny stage at the Stray Dog. He lifted her on his shoulder and carried her away, careful to avoid the beams.
Then brown-eyed Anna rose and began to sing—of all things—the mezzo’s great “Habanera” from Carmen. Miraculous—the gentle girl who sewed our rags and patches strutted around the table, transformed into the sultry Spanish seductress, while Ilya, Katrina, and Lilya played the other parts. Flush with food and wine, framed by those bright faces, Ukashin looked like a crow among songbirds, his plummy eyes slightly glazed. Was he drunk? Who could tell? The man had the energy and strength of four. There wasn’t that much wine—it had just gone to everyone’s heads.
When the “Habanera” finished and its performers rejoined the group, water and wine were passed around again. Ukashin rapped the table. “Marina Ionian, you think we have forgotten you?” He swept an expansive gesture in my direction, almost knocking over his big goblet.
All these lovely faces. My friends. Maybe this wasn’t a mistake after all, this feast, this place, my having landed here, even with my doubtful heart. At that moment, I felt such love for these exceptional people, their sweetness, their dedication. Taking pleasure in one another’s unlikely company. I rose and recited my poem.
The Egg rolled onto the stage
Alone.
No one in the house…
Moving my gaze from face to face, as each imagined the Egg’s emergence. Was it a prison break? Or an expulsion from paradise? Ukashin remained unreadable, like a match behind a hand on a battlefield. He was wondering, I could tell, if I was sincere or mocking him. But there was no mockery in my poem. I had found the place where I could write without lying. I’d left that cart behind where it belonged.
And by the fire
late at night
Each,
(fingering
a shattered shard of the Primordial Egg)
falls silent,
dozy, dreaming of
that sweet embrace.
The company was silent as the poem, which, like a thick, fatty yolk, dripped from their faces. Still dreaming around the fire, fingering their own bit of the cosmic shell, perhaps remembering their own mothers, their own homes, which they’d abandoned to follow the Master. They turned to Ukashin, waiting to see if it was all right to approve of me.
Slowly, a smile appeared on his complex face. I could see him congratulating himself on his own wisdom, having gradually led me into harness like a skittish horse. And now that the others saw it was good, they felt free to applaud and embrace me.
It was an evening full of wine, more singing, skits and monologues—it reminded me of long summer nights here when I was a child. Four of the girls sang in close harmony. Boys did Cossack dances with knives in each hand. Magda danced a real gypsy dance, with much flashing of teeth and shaking of shoulders, claiming her rights as the authentic Carmen. Even Ukashin made an offering, an athletic Circassian dance. He was at least forty but as energetic as a twenty-year-old, doing the spins and leaps and even walking on his hands! Urah! The windows dripped with steam. I spun and clapped and whistled with the others. But the chair at the foot of the table remained empty. I wondered if Mother could hear this up in her lair, if the sound of our gaiety reached the fifth dimension, or if she’d had to place a wet cloth across her brow and cotton wool in her ears.
Between dances, the Master fell into the seat next to mine, clapped me on the shoulder. “We’ve had a theorist and a prophet, and now we have our bard!” He kissed me on both cheeks. “We m
ust talk. We need more of this. Maybe you’ll write us some songs…and an invocation.”
At one point I caught a glimpse of Pasha and Katrina disappearing together into the hall. Did the Master notice? But he was drunk, busy dancing with Natalya. Yes, a real carnival was taking place, and Ukashin was allowing it. This must have been what the Laboratory was like before the spartan life of Ionia. Andrei had fallen asleep at the table. Gleb and Ilya were arm wrestling. This was the time I could have had Bogdan if I wanted to, but it came to me—there was no one guarding Mother’s door. I would never again have a chance like this. I practiced invisibility, blending with the woodwork as I slid out of the room and glided up the stairs.
78 The Mother
FIVE INSET PANELS MARKED her door like the spine of a forbidden book, and the scent of an oily incense emanated from the other side. I knocked softly, Fais dodo. The wooden knob turned freely, warm as flesh in my hand. A cloud of incense spilled out like smoke from a badly ventilated stove. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.
In the otherwise lightless room a small comma of flame burned in blue glass at eye level, farther away than was possible given the dimensions of a space I knew as well as I knew my own body. Maybe it was the effect of a darkness like the inside of a jewelry box upholstered in smoke and black velvet, but I was afraid to take a step, as if I might fall down into limitless space.
“Mother?”
Behind the flame, I could just make out two icons with overlarge Byzantine eyes, weirdly animated, as if they weren’t painted but lived within their frames in two dimensions. The darkness was impenetrable but for that small blue flame and those saints.
Then came a clicking sound like the turning of a handful of pebbles from near the flame. It made me aware of the uncanny quiet of the room. I couldn’t hear the party directly below us, perhaps because of the heavy carpet under my feet. It made me dizzy, standing still.
A shadow slipped between me and the flame. A ghost, a spirit. I remained perfectly still, like a rabbit eluding a hawk, which sees only movement. Colored patches appeared in the air, and my scalp tingled, the tips of my fingers went cold. Click, click.
“Mama?”
The elongated form discouraged my approach. My mother was not a tall woman. What if it was not her at all? Perhaps that was why they’d kept me away from her all this time. But it had to be Vera Borisovna. Avdokia wouldn’t have lied about that.
The very air shimmered and swirled, alive as a Viennese ballroom. Was there a drug in the oily incense? I wouldn’t have put that past Ukashin. And here I’d imagined my mother up here with a blanket over her knees, reading Madame Blavatsky.
“Mama?” I whispered.
She didn’t turn but stepped aside so the two accusatory icon faces could observe me. I had the strangest feeling that she was watching me through their eyes, as one might spy on other restaurant patrons through a well-placed mirror. Click, click went the stones. “It’s Marina, Mama.”
“Approach.” The clear high voice came from very far away, the words formed as if she’d had to push them through thick cloth.
With one foot, I felt my way ahead. “I’ve been here for months. They won’t let me see you.”
Her hands appeared, white in the darkness, pushing something around atop an inlaid table that I remembered being in the upstairs hall. Her forearms rested on the dark wood. I saw she was arranging tumbled stones—clear, pointed, smooth—some glowed amber, others red, blue, pale cloudy jade. Yes it was my mother, luminous but indefinite, like the underpainting of a portrait. “Did you know I was here?” She hadn’t seen me since the night Arkady came to claim me. “Why don’t you say something?” I reached out and pulled back the hood draped over her head. Her hair tumbled down, loose, white, wild like a stormy sea.
She continued to swirl the stones on the tabletop.
“Will you stop doing that?” With a sweep of my hand I sent the stones flying. They bounced and scattered, some hitting the wall. “Look at me! You haven’t seen me for almost a year! Don’t you care that I’m here?”
She lifted her blue eyes to me then, wide and transparent as tumbled quartz. “I see you. I’ve seen you all along.”
What was she talking about?
“In the snow. In the tower. In the forest and the storm. Come. Marina. Come home.” She lifted her hand to the room’s corner. I followed her gesture. “Stop there,” she whispered. “It’s too far. Marina!” Her voice rose in urgency. “Heed me!”
And I knew. She was seeing me in my desperate walk through the forest. Right now. In a parallel time. It was her voice I’d heard telling me to stop and take shelter.
“Why did you call me here if you didn’t want to see me?”
She shook her head, and from her throat emerged bubbling laughter—like the water in a springhouse, cool and clear. Was she mad? Or was this a private joke? “Mother—”
Those clear, translucent eyes were on me again. “Don’t mistake me for the one who was. What you remember is a bit of golden shell. The egg has vanished.”
How had she heard that? The hair stood up all over my body. Where was my mother? I wanted to shriek. What have you done with her? The woman who loved hats and parties, who’d translated Apollinaire head-to-head with Anton, who loved white lilacs and risqué Pierre Louÿs novels. This Vera Borisovna wasn’t even looking at me. Rather, she scanned me, as if I were a landscape painting too large to take in at a glance.
Then the thought came to me with the force of a blow—this was who she’d always been. Yes. Now I saw her, the mystic who’d always been waiting. I saw her the way you finally see the stones at the bottom of a pool when you stop wading and the water stills and clarifies around your feet. She’d only been playing the role of mother. It was that other person, the spoiled housewife, the glamorous society fixture, who’d been the impostor. She had stepped out of that suit and now stood revealed.
She settled her hood back over her hair. She had what she’d always wanted. No children, no husband, no earthly cares. It wasn’t luxury she’d sought—it had never been about that, not beauty, not art. It was transcendence she was after. Ukashin gave her that psychic space, protection, freedom. And what did he get in return? Money, this estate, a mystical figurehead to awe the faithful?
“What about Father?”
She gestured circles with her hands, as if clearing a window or washing a horse. “So much motion. So much red. Your father has that as well.”
Yes, I had that red. It bubbled up now, clouding my aura. She had been posing all those years as my mother, as a devoted wife. I found myself suddenly furious with her. “So you do remember him,” I said. “Your husband? All those years, was that nothing?” Why was I defending him? As if he were still Papa, and not the politician who betrayed me though it meant my death.
“Some realities are tangential.” She shrugged. “It’s no one’s fault.”
Her detachment made me want to slap her. “I saw him, you know. Back in April. He’s in league with the counterrevolution, plotting away. He exposed me as Red. Thought I was a spy. I was almost killed.”
“White becomes red, red becomes white.” Her voice, far away again. “Seryozha’s here.” She glanced up, the way you notice someone entering a room—in that same corner, where there was no one. “Can’t you see?” She held her hand out to my right, where I saw nothing. “He watches you. He misses you. He’s been trying to communicate with you.” She nodded into the nothingness. “Yes, I know.”
I gazed into the dark spot where her focus was trained. I smelled gunpowder. My hair felt electrified. Was it possible she could see my brother between the worlds? What if all this Ionian nonsense was true—energetics and folds in space-time? Ukashin said there was no death, only transition.
“Don’t look. Feel him.”
I closed my eyes and tried, but couldn’t sense anything more. I passed my hands through the space but it was neither cold nor warm, gave no whisper or rustle. I would have given anything to beli
eve he was here, reaching out to me. Seryozha! But I didn’t need a visitation to know that my brother was near me. He would always be near me. But oh, to see his face again—his slightly pointed ears, the way he read while biting his nails abstractedly, the way he mimicked Papa scolding him.
“How old is he?” I asked, my eyes still closed.
“A small boy. Though sometimes he comes as an old man. It depends.”
This was crazy. I opened my eyes. “He’ll never be an old man. He’ll always be sixteen.”
“In some of the streams he dies young, in others he lives to be an old man, or a soldier, even a priest.”
That made me smile. I could only imagine how my sharp, attentive brother would imitate her now, mocking her mystic face. “And what about me? What do you see for me, Mama?”
That glowing spiritual expression dropped away. She lowered her gaze.
I stepped on one of the oracular stones, slipped, caught myself, picked it up. Smooth and hard. I wanted to throw it at her. Not even a word about the baby?
“Go now.” She looked away from me, chin against her shoulder—that profile, still as beautiful as when Vrubel painted it.
What did she see that made her lower her eyes? I felt as if the ceiling were coming down on me. “Tell me.” I grabbed her by the arm, pulled her so she had to face me.
Her eyes looked wild, as if she were in a snare, cornered and fighting for a way out. “The strong must suffer everything, everything! Don’t you understand?” She struggled to break free of my grip, but though she may have been a prophetess she wasn’t much of a wrestler. “I can’t be upset. Let me go! Ukashin!” she called out. Her voice was shrill enough to carry downstairs. “Taras! Andrei!”
“Don’t scream, please.” I let her go, holding both hands up in surrender. “For God’s sake, Mother.”
She only became more agitated. “Ukashin!”