“Not the fairy tales again,” Meredith said. “Now I know why you’re so successful. You’re obsessive.”
“And you aren’t?” Nina laughed at that. “Come on. We can make her tell us the story. You heard her tonight: she said there was no point arguing with me. That means she’s going to give up fighting.”
Meredith stood up. She was a little unsteady on her feet, so she clutched the back of the chair for support. “I knew better than to try to talk to you.”
Nina frowned. “You were talking to me?”
“How many times can I say it: I am not listening to her stories. I don’t care about the Black Knight or people who turn into smoke or the handsome prince. That was your promise to Dad. Mine was to take care of her, which I’m going to do right now. If you need me, I’ll be in the bathroom, packing up her things.”
Nina watched Meredith leave the kitchen. She couldn’t say she was surprised—her sister was nothing if not consistent—but she was disappointed. She was certain that this task was something Dad had wanted them to do together. That was the point, wasn’t it? Being together. What else but the fairy tales had ever accomplished that?
“I tried, Dad,” she said. “Even getting her drunk didn’t help.”
She got to her feet, not unsteady at all. Tucking the decanter of vodka under one arm, and grabbing Mom’s shot glass, she went upstairs. At the bathroom’s half-open door, she paused, listening to the clink and rattle that meant Meredith was back at work.
“I’ll leave Mom’s door open,” she said, “in case you want to listen in.”
No answer came from the bathroom, not even a pause in crinkling of newspaper.
Nina walked across the hallway to her mother’s room. She knocked on the door but didn’t wait for an invitation. She just walked in.
Mom sat up in bed, propped up on a mound of white pillows, with the white comforter drawn up to her waist. All that white—her hair, her nightgown, her bedding, her skin—contrasted sharply with the black walnut headboard and bed. Against it, she looked ethereal, otherworldly; an aged Galadriel with intense blue eyes.
“I did not invite you in,” she said.
“Nope. But here I am. It’s magic.”
“And you thought I would want vodka?”
“I know you will.”
“Why is that?”
Nina moved to the side of the bed. “I made a promise to my dying father.” She saw the effect of her words. Her mother flinched as if she’d been struck. “You loved him. I know you did. And he wanted me to hear your fairy tale about the peasant girl and the prince. All of it. On his deathbed, he asked me. He must have asked you, too.”
Her mother broke eye contact. She stared down at her blue-veined hands, coiled together atop the blankets. “You will give me no peace.”
“None.”
“It is a child’s story. Why do you care so much?”
“Why did he?”
Mom didn’t answer.
Nina stood there, waiting.
Finally Mom said, “Pour me a drink.”
Very calmly, Nina poured her mother a shot and handed it to her.
Mom drank the vodka. “I will do it my way,” she said, setting the empty glass aside. “If you interrupt me, I will stop. I will tell it in pieces and only at night. We will not speak of it during the day. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“In the dark.”
“Why always—”
The look Mom gave her was so sharp Nina stopped abruptly. “Sorry.” She went to the light switch and turned it off.
It was a moonless night, so no silver-blue glow came through the glass. The only light was from the crack of the open door.
Nina sat on the floor, waiting.
A rustling sound filled the room: her mother getting comfortable in the bed. “Where should I begin?”
“In December, you ended when Vera was going to sneak out to meet the prince.”
A sigh.
And then came her mother’s story voice, sweet and mellifluous: “After she comes home from the park, Vera spends the rest of that day in the kitchen with her mother, but her mind is not on the task at hand. She knows her mama knows this, that she is watching her carefully, but how can a girl concentrate
on straining goose fat into jars when her heart is full of love?
“Veronika, pay attention,” her mama says.
Vera sees that she has spilled a big blob of fat on the table. She wipes it up with her hand and throws it into the sink. She hates goose fat anyway. She prefers rich, homemade butter any day.
“And you throw it away? What is wrong with you?”
Her sister giggles. “Maybe she is thinking of boys. Of a boy.”
“Of course she is thinking of boys,” Mama says, wiping the moisture from her brow as she stands at the stove, stirring the simmering lingonberries. “She is fifteen.”
“Almost sixteen.”
Her mama pauses in her stirring and turns around.
They are in the kitchen, in the last days of summer, preserving food for winter. The tables are full of berries to be turned into jam; onions, mushrooms, potatoes, and garlic to be put in the cellar; cucumbers to be pickled; and beans to be canned in brine. Later, Mama has promised to teach them how to make blini with a sweet cherry filling.
“You are almost sixteen,” Mama says, as if it had not occurred to her before. “Two years younger than I was when I met Petyr.”
Vera puts down the slippery pot of goose fat. “What did you feel when you first saw him?”
Mama smiles. “I have told this story many times.”
“You always say he swept you away. But how?”
Mama wipes her brow again and reaches out for the wooden chair in front of her. Pulling it back a little, she sits down.
Vera almost makes a sound; that’s how shocked she is by this. Her mother is not a woman who stops working to talk. Vera and Olga have grown up on stories of responsibility and duty. As peasants beholden to the imprisoned king, they have been taught their place. They must keep their heads down and their hands working, for the shadow of the Black Knight falls with the swiftness of a steel blade. It is best never to draw attention to oneself.
Still, her mother is sitting down now. “He was a tutor then, and so good-looking he took my breath away. When I told your baba this, she tsked and said, ‘Zoya, be careful. You will need your breath.’ ”
“Was it love at first sight?” Vera asks.
“I knew when he looked at me that I would take his hand, that I would follow him. I say it was the mead we drank, but it wasn’t. It was just . . . Petyr. My Petya. His passion for knowledge and life swept me away and before I knew it, we were married. My parents were horrified, for the kingdom was in turmoil. The king was in exile then, and we were afraid. Your father’s ambition scared them. He was a poor country tutor, but he dreamed of being a poet.”
Vera sighs at the romance of it. Now she knows she must sneak out tonight to meet the prince. She even knows that her mother will understand if she finds out.
“All right,” her mother says, sounding tired again. “Let’s get back to work, and Veronika, be careful with that goose fat. It is precious.”
As the hours pass, Vera finds her mind more and more distracted. While she prepares the beans and cucumbers, she imagines an entire love story for her and Sasha. They will walk along the edge of the magic river, where images of the future can sometimes be seen in the blue waves, and they will pause under one of the streetlamps, as she has often seen lovers do. It will not matter that he is a prince and she a poor tutor’s daughter.
“Vera.”
She hears her name being called out and the sound of it is impatient. She can tell that it is not the first time she had been spoken to. Her father is standing in the room, frowning at her.
“Papa,” she says. He looks tired, and a little nervous. His black hair, usually so neatly combed, stands out in all directions, as if he has been rubbing his head repeatedly, and his leather jerkin is buttoned crookedly. His fingers, stained blue with ink, move anxiously.
“Where is Zoya?” he asks, looking around.
“She and Olga went for more vinegar.”
“By themselves?” Her father nods distractedly and chews on his lower lip.
“Papa? Is something wrong?”
“No. No. Nothing.” Taking her in his arms, he pulls her into an embrace so tight that she has to wiggle out of it or gasp for breath.
In the years to come, Vera will replay that embrace a thousand times in her mind. She will see the jewel-tone jars in the candlelight, smell the dusty, sun-baked leather of her father’s jerkin, and feel the scratch of his stubbly jaw against her cheek. She’ll imagine herself saying, I love you, Papa.
But the truth is that she has romance and sneaking out on her mind, so she says nothing to her father and goes back to work.
That night, Vera cannot lie still.
Every nerve ending in her body seems to be dancing. Sounds float in through her open window: people talking, the distant patter of hooves on cobblestoned streets, music from the park. Someone is playing a violin on this warm, light night, probably to woo a lover, and upstairs, someone is moving around—maybe dancing. The floorboards creak with every step.
“Are you scared?” Olga asks for at least the fifth time.
Vera rolls over onto her side. Olga does the same. In their narrow bed, they are face-to-face. “When you are older, you’ll see, Olga. There is a feeling in your heart when you meet the boy you’ll love. It’s like . . . drowning and then coming up for air.”
Vera hugs her sister and plants a kiss on her plump cheek. Then she throws back the covers and springs out of bed. With a small hand mirror, she tries to check her appearance, but she can see herself only in pieces—long black hair held away from her face with leather strings, ivory skin, pink lips. She is wearing a plain blue gown with a lace collar—a girl’s costume, but it is the best she has. If only she had a beret or a pin or, best of all, some perfume.
“Oh, well,” she says, and turns to her sister. “How do I look?”
“Perfect.”
Vera smiles broadly. She knows it is true. She is a pretty girl, some even say beautiful.
She goes to her bedroom door and listens. No sound reaches her ear. “They are in bed,” she says. Moving cautiously, she tiptoes over to her window, which is always left open in the summer. She blows her sister a kiss and climbs out onto the tiny ironwork grate. With every careful step, she is sure that someone from the street below will look her way and point and shout out that a girl is sneaking out to meet a boy.
But the people on the street are drunk on light and mead and they barely notice her climbing down from the building’s second floor. When she jumps the last few feet and lands on the small patch of grass, she cannot contain her excitement. It spills over in a giggle, which she stifles with her hand as she runs across the cobblestoned street.
There he is. Standing by the streetlamp at this end of the Fontanka Bridge. From here, everything about him is golden: his hair, his jerkin, his skin.