Not that Cat is a mysterious stranger. She’s just an ungrateful child. So far.
And Elena as a hero? A single match cannot light a landscape. Still, watch her. She’s a simple child but a serious one.
All but forgotten in my tower, I thought: In the absence of heroes, we might as well watch children. I studied with my blind eye how my imprisonment had come to pass. My fate was sealed on the day those two girls changed places.
Elena Rudina lunged toward the open door, as if she might be able to grab Cat by the ankles and haul her back inside the compartment. Too late — Cat was already well beyond reach.
Elena craned to the right, looking beyond the end of the train. She could see skirts and sashes and suddenly unruly hair: Cat was rolling and flopping down the embankment on the far side of the tracks like a life-size puppet. When the train obeyed some law of geometry having to do with curves and angles, Elena saw only the bone-grey woods and a covey of pin-tailed snipe.
For her part, as she fell, Cat sensed the train sliding forward like a carpet being pulled out from under her. If she’d tossed the porcelain egg aside, she would have been able to scramble to her feet, to grab hold, pull herself up. But Cat had the egg cradled in her arms, hoping it hadn’t gotten smashed. She couldn’t endanger it now in order to regain the train.
She is at least consistent.
When she could draw breath again, Cat fumbled to her knees. The carriage was moving only at the rate of a stroll. She could hail the conductor. But the train gave a great whistle and accelerated just as Cat screamed, and no one heard her voice — not even herself.
The final car on the train, with its little balcony where she had sometimes liked to stand and watch the forest pass in a swoosh — it grew smaller. Disappeared. Nothing left but clouds of smoke and steam. They were like theater curtains about to pull apart, to Cat’s mounting dread. Exposing a world turned peculiar about her, a world unlikely and unlikable.
In the train, Elena was beside herself. Her throat was locked, and her fingers turned to stone. She had barely ever been in a farm wagon. This iron horse moved with a drive that seemed both animal and industrial.
She was glad that she was near the open door, for she was able to stick her chin out and throw up without making too much of a mess. No one heard her. The whistle of the train sounded just as she was making those unlovely noises.
When she was done, and the whistle left off and a new kind of hustling silence grew in its place, she managed to get to her knees. A voice raked the vestibule from the rear of the carriage. “Ekaterina, are you there? Why aren’t you coming? Monsieur d’Amboise must be engaged or he’d have closed and locked those doors; I can feel the draft. Come at once. Miss Bristol needs a hot towel to her forehead, and my feet are submerged in bath salts. Child, j’insiste.”
Elena let out a wordless throttle of a cry.
“Yes, I know we’ve started up again, I can feel it! Are you indisposed? Travel tummy again? Oh, what indignities the saints and demons march upon me. Well, take care of yourself, ma chérie, and when you are cleaned up, come in. It does feel good to be off and away, at last.”
Elena lurched to the doorway. Best to tell the old woman what had happened, and let her shriek in alarm and arrange a correction. In the wall of the crosswise vestibule, through a door swinging to and fro on a hinge that went both ways, Elena caught narrowing and widening glimpses of the parlor. Upon the carpet sprawled a pale, drawn woman — Miss Bristol, to be sure — a tumble of grey skirting with high-buttoned shoes sticking out. Laid out senseless.
From this angle, the look of a faint wasn’t different from the look of death. Elena was minded of how she was racing away from her mother. She rushed a hand to her chin to catch vomit should it spill again. She turned back from the parlor chamber.
Beyond the transept vestibule where the girls had changed places, Elena found a narrow corridor. It skirted the far edge of the carriage, against the windows, running forward to the other cars. Four doors opened off this passage, and one of those doors stood ajar. Some luck at last. This was clearly Cat’s chamber, for her clothes were everywhere a mess. The precious storybook slid on the floor, the matryoshka was tossed upon a daybed. In the corner stood a copper sink built into the wall, so Elena rinsed out her mouth.
Even the water from the tap tasted rich.
As she was spitting into the basin, she heard footsteps hurrying along the passage from the utility car ahead. Monsieur d’Amboise’s voice said something in French, and he closed the chamber door. He must have thought she was Cat. He was giving her some privacy. He followed the plaints of Great-Aunt Sophia, and his voice was soothing. The old lady seemed to calm down.
What to do, what to do!
Elena pulled aside the drapes hung at the window. Bars fastened against the glass would prevent her from climbing out and escaping that way. The world slipped by. After a few moments, after a final field with three abandoned heaps of last year’s bad rye, she saw no more evidence of Miersk. Elena was already farther from home than she’d ever been before.
If she told the great-aunt and the butler and the governess what had happened, they’d have to stop the train and go backward. But what if they had Elena arrested? What if they thought she had pushed Cat out the door? And the precious egg had surely shattered in the fall. All of Miersk, pooling every kopek, couldn’t hope to pay to replace such a treasure. Not in a century of servitude.
No. Better to escape on her own and to go find Cat. Make sure she was all right. Take care of her until her disappearance was noted. Eventually the train would have to come back to retrieve their castaway. And by then Elena and Cat could have invented an excuse for whatever had happened to the porcelain musical egg. It surely must have smashed to shards.
Elena opened the door of Cat’s chamber an inch. Along the passageway, she could hear the muttering of the butler and the great-aunt. They conferred in the parlor chamber at the end of the car. Elena tiptoed out.
Monsieur d’Amboise must have closed the two outer carriage doors. But a key still trembled in each. It would only be a matter of opening the door when the train slowed. She could throw herself out — and follow the tracks backward.
And what luck, for just now the train was entering a curve, slowing down.
Elena reached the door through which she’d arrived. She pushed the curtain aside. Through the high narrow glass, she could see nothing but a distant slope of ropy larches.
She heard Monsieur d’Amboise call something in French. He said again, as a question this time, and yes, that was her title, Cat’s title. “Mademoiselle Ekaterina?”
She turned the key in the door. Over the clattering of the wheels, she didn’t think it could be heard in the parlor beyond.
“Venez, Mademoiselle Ekaterina, immédiatement, s’il vous plaît!”
Elena put one hand on her throat. The other hand gripped the door latch. Then she pressed the door open.
Wind rushed in. Just as she feared, a throttle of machinery and a cloud of grit. As she flexed her calf muscles to push, she glanced down to see how far she would go, to ready herself for the impact. But there was nothing there.
She had nearly jumped to her death. The train had slowed down because it had reached the repaired trestle. A narrow, dried-up streambed far below winked up like a tarnished necklace of stones.
Of course. When the engine had left, earlier today, it must have been testing the bridge to make sure it held.
She crouched to think what to do next. The draft caused the parlor door to swing open. Three grown-up voices cried out in annoyance, because smoke, dead leaves, and detritus funneled farther into the parlor at the back of the carriage.
“What are you doing, you mad child?” cried Miss Bristol, up on her elbows by now. Monsieur d’Amboise strode toward the vestibule, toward Elena. She could see his shape like a dreaded Cossack. He would pitch her out the open door, and then she would fly through the air to her death….
She scurried bac
k into Cat’s room. She slammed the door, rammed home a bolt. She leaned her back against the door. She could hear Monsieur d’Amboise locking the outside door she had opened. Such silence returned as there could ever be on a rattling train.
He was at her door, knocking. “You are not allowed to open doors in this train, Mademoiselle. Have you picked up habits from that ragamuffin child with whom you were wasting your time? Your great-aunt has a dreadful cold, and you will catch one yourself! What have you to say for yourself?”
She had nothing to say for herself. She had nothing to say for Cat.
Another voice: Miss Bristol at the door. “Let me in, young lady.”
Elena couldn’t help it. A vacuous weeping poured out of her, as wordless and wet as sobs in any language.
Monsieur d’Amboise: “She is distressed over leaving the peasant child.”
“She is poorly behaved. She needs castor oil or a proper caning.”
“Her voice is hoarse. She’s caught a catarrh from that dreadful draft.”
“We will all die miserable deaths. But we must live our miserable lives first. Miss Ekaterina, do you require a mustard plaster for your chest?”
Elena could not refuse to answer. They would break the door down. She muttered through her sobs, “No!”
“Yes, her voice is hoarse. She has caught the cold her great-aunt had.” The governess spoke with something like satisfaction, as if she quietly hoped it might just develop into pneumonia.
“I shall fix you a tray, Miss Ekaterina,” called the butler.
“And you would do well to brush your hair,” said the governess. “I caught sight of you tumbling upon the floor. You looked like something the cat dragged in.”
Having secured their authority, or so they thought, they went away mumbling. Elena couldn’t hear their voices anymore.
She sat on the bed. She didn’t know what to do next. So when she saw Cat’s brush upon the nightstand, she picked it up and began to brush her hair.
Cat must have stood there awhile. By the time she accepted that the train wasn’t shrieking to a halt, not backing up to retrieve her — not yet anyway — a pall of evening had begun to shroud the eastern sky. It provoked a fit of desolation.
I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced such a thing. It’s an apprehension of dread. Anything can bring it on: a bad notice in the press, a dubious oyster, an unwarranted accusation. For Cat, it was usually tripped by a certain look the sky can take on as it tends toward dusk. A brooding, tentative aspect. It only occurred when she was alone in a place she didn’t know.
When you’re young, I think, being vulnerable to desolation comes from your not being able to imagine the world beyond you. If these are streets you traveled with your governess at noon, going from elocution lessons to a fork luncheon at your uncle’s, it is easy to imagine what these same streets might look like at dusk. But if they are streets you’ve never explored, and your governess has been carried away by anarchists or hedonists and you are unsure which way to turn, then dusk itself seems to signify the potential danger of the secret world.
Being vulnerable to desolation also arises from being unable to picture a set of choices with which to change your lot in life.
Cat had no choices right now. That she was scraped and bleeding from her fall didn’t make things better. She couldn’t command the train to notice her absence and reappear.
But she also couldn’t wait here in the bracken. She couldn’t just freeze on her feet, clutching the gift for the Tsar. She had to keep it safe, and herself safe in the bargain.
The train’s distancing whistle was being lost within the wind. So far away is the loneliest of sounds. Cat began to climb the bank up to the railroad tracks again.
She circled the shabby train station of Miersk. Beyond the platform, the huddle of cottages pretending it was an actual village.
One of those huts had to be less hostile to a visitor than the rest. The hut that belonged to that girl and her family. But Cat didn’t know which one it was.
The wind became brisker by the moment. Cat tucked her head down and wandered across the half-frozen ruts of the dirt road toward the nearest hut.
A man’s voice called, “Did you manage to get your hands on any food for us?”
Cat didn’t know what to do. The lane was empty; the man must be talking to her. She supposed she had to admit herself to someone, though she had hoped it would be some kindly grandmother.
She turned a little and shrugged. The man wasn’t looking at her, quite. He saw she was cradling something in her arms. “A useful size of whatever it is, black bread or cured salmon,” he cried. “Bravo, my girl.”
He came closer and continued, “But you’re not my girl.”
She dared herself to look at him. It was the doctor with the limp. An older man with fretted skin around his eyes. He smelled, and I don’t mean of hand-milled soaps scented with lavender. But his eyes in their nest of wrinkles were deep, and not unkindly.
“Fair maiden,” he said. Cat didn’t care if he was being courteous or silly. At least he was talking to her. “You seem to have missed your connection.”
“The train left without me,” she managed to say.
“So I see. Have you run away from home?”
“It was an accident. And —” She knew she had to tell him about the mishap. She studied his face and lost her courage. She had met so few truly kind people that she didn’t know how to trust one when he stood right before her.
The old man stroked his beard with obscure purpose. “Well, they will return for you in moments, but you can’t just stand here and let the birds roost on you. I am on my way to look in on Elena’s mother, who is failing. As you may know. You can wait with your friend until the rescue brigade arrives. Elena will be glad to see you.”
“Oh, is that her name.” This just slipped out.
His eyebrows raised. “Close friends, I can see.”
“But Elena —”
“Yes, she will be surprised. Come along. Dr. Penkin, at your service.”
And the desolation lifted a little. Though her companion smelled like a walking stable that hadn’t been mucked out since the fall of Constantinople, there was something consoling in the dedicated stab of his cane against the ground. Even his ability to dismiss her problems as uninteresting while he was taking care of them was a relief. Cat felt she was walking into a certain drama unlike anything she had seen in the Christmas pantomimes Miss Bristol took her to in Shaftesbury Avenue.
“Doctor,” she tried again.
“As I’m not your doctor, call me Peter. Peter Petrovich,” he supplied. “Don’t dawdle, child.”
“I don’t know how to tell you … there’s been a dreadful calamity —”
“And here we are,” he said, pushing the door open. “Elena? Shall this be called Surprise Day? A friend has come to call.”
Cat stumbled inside. The entire hut was hardly larger than the parlor in which, even now, her great-aunt was hurtling away from her. One small lamp cast a fitful glow through thready, shapeless laundry drying on a cord strung diagonally across the room. In a gap between an apron and a kaftan, Cat saw a bed nook with raked-back bed curtains. A wasted figure, as good as dead, under blankets. A zigzaggy old woman hunched near the invalid with a rag of a towel, wiping her brow. This was the grandmother type Cat had been hoping for. But she looked weary and anything but buxom.
“Have you brought supper?” asked the old woman.
“Grandmother Onna, your eyes are tricking you,” said the doctor. “This is the young train traveler, stopping awhile as a guest. Where is Elena?”
“She’s not come back with her takings. What have you got there?” the grandmothery creature asked Cat. “I hope if it isn’t ripe, it’s neither stale nor very maggoty.”
“I’m trying to tell you,” said Cat at last. “Elena is gone.”
The old woman straightened up as much as she could, wincing at a pinch in her spine. “Gone where?”
&nb
sp; “Gone on the train.”
“Gone to Saint Petersburg.” The doctor hit his forehead. “Surprise Day for me. That naughty child. And clever. Why didn’t I see this? Hitching a ride with a steam engine. She’ll go far. I mean in life, also on the branch line. But why did she leave you here?”
“She didn’t. It was an accident. I fell just as the train was leaving.”
“Then the train will come back for you.” The grandmother must have seen a lot of the world, thought Cat; she’s taking this in stride. “Elena, bon voyage and Godspeed and don’t forget to wash under your arms, all that. Meanwhile, Miss, I hope that whatever you carry will do for supper.”
Cat didn’t want to reveal the magnificent gift for the Tsar, but she was both guest and prisoner. She saw that she had to offer a glimpse of the Fabergé egg. Reluctantly, carefully, she unwrapped a corner of her shawl.
“Saint Nicholas and all the saints.” The doctor turned pale. “It is too impossible. They will think we have kidnapped you to steal this priceless item.”
“We are yesterday’s dung,” agreed Grandmother Onna, reaching out to touch the egg, but Cat wouldn’t let her.
“Miraculously, it’s not broken,” said the girl. “Should it break now, for whatever reason, you are doomed.”
“Don’t threaten me,” said Grandmother Onna. “This is no egg at all, just silliness. What else have you got?”
Cat found some salt biscuits and a handful of figs wrapped in a handkerchief in her pocket. She’d been intending to give them to Elena. Now she presented them to Grandmother Onna.
The old woman cut up the figs with a knife into four portions.
Cat couldn’t eat her portion and left it on the table. Once it had lived in her pocket, it was peasant food.
Eventually the doctor said good night to Cat and went home. Grandmother Onna indicated Elena’s pallet. “You might as well lay your body down there,” she said. “Keep that jacket on for warmth. Don’t worry about anyone stealing your precious stupid item. The good doctor is too smart to tell anyone it is here. I’ll sleep on the floor next to the bed, to tend to the poor invalid in the night should she need help. She’s sinking.”