“Oprichniks should drink vodka. Pour him some vodka!”
They pour vodka into a crystal glass for me. Silently the servants place the zakuski on the table: beluga caviar, snakeroot, Chinese mushrooms, Japanese soba noodles on ice, boiled rice, vegetables stewed in spices.
I raise my glass and stand, terribly nervous:
“To your health, Your H-h-h-high-highness…”
I am tongue-tied with emotion: this is the first time in my life I’ve sat at Her Highness’s table.
“Sit down.” She waves her fan, and takes a swallow from her wineglass.
I gulp the vodka down and sit. I sit like a stuffed dummy. I didn’t expect to feel so shy. I’m not as shy in front of His Majesty as I am with Her Highness. And besides, I’m not exactly the most bashful of oprichniks…
Her Highness eats her hors d’oeuvres unhurriedly, paying me no mind.
“What’s new in the capital?”
I shrug my shoulders:
“Nothing in particular, Your Highness.”
“And not in particular?”
Her black eyes stare steadily at me. You can’t hide from them.
“Nothing not in particular either. Well, we suppressed a noble.”
“Kunitsyn? I know, I saw.”
Probably as soon as Her Highness wakes up they bring her a news bubble. What else would you expect? It’s government business…
“What else?” she asks, spreading beluga caviar on rye toast.
“Well…you know…somehow…” I mumble.
She stares at me.
“How did you bungle Artamosha?”
So that’s what it is. She knows this, too. I inhale deeply.
“Your Highness, it’s my fault.”
She looks at me attentively:
“That was well put. If you’d tried to dump the whole thing on the Good Fellows, I would have ordered you flogged right here and now. Right here.”
“Forgive me, Your Highness. I was late due to other affairs, and didn’t get there in time. I wasn’t able to forestall events.”
“It happens,” she says, biting off a piece of toast with caviar and washing it down with wine. “Eat.”
Thank God. There are better things to do in my position than just to keep quiet. I grab some snakeroot, put it in my mouth, follow it with a piece of rye bread. Her Highness chews, sipping wine. And then she suddenly laughs nervously, puts down her glass, and stops chewing. I stop, too.
She eyes me intently:
“Tell me, Komiaga, why do they hate me so much?”
I inhale deeply. And exhale. What can I say? And there she is, looking straight through me.
“So I love young guardsmen. So what? What difference does it make?”
Her black eyes fill with tears. She wipes them away with a handkerchief.
I pluck up my courage:
“Your Highness, it’s just a handful of malicious dissenters.”
She looks at me like a tigress at a mouse. I regret opening my mouth.
“It’s not a handful of dissenters, you idiot. It’s our barbaric people!”
I understand. The Russian people aren’t easy to work with. But God hasn’t given us any other people. I keep quiet. But Her Highness, forgetting about food, presses the end of her closed fan to her lips:
“They’re envious because they’re slaves. They know how to pretend. But they don’t really love us, the powerful. And they never will. If they had the chance—they’d cut us to pieces.”
I gather my courage again:
“Your Highness, please don’t worry—we’ll throttle that Artamosha. We’ll squash him like a louse.”
“Oh, what does Artamosha have to do with it!” She whacks her fan on the table and stands up abruptly.
I jump up immediately.
“Sit!” She waves at me.
I sit. The greyhound barks at me. Her Highness paces the dining room, her dress rustling menacingly.
“Artamosha! As if he were the problem…”
She walks back and forth, mumbling something to herself. She stops and tosses the fan on the table.
“Artamosha! It’s the nobles’ wives, they’re jealous of me, they set the holy fools against me, and they in turn stir up the people. This subversive wind blows from the nobles’ wives through the fools and to the people. Nikola Volokolamsky, Andriukha Zagoriansky, Afonya Ostankinsky—what kinds of things are they saying about me, huh? Well?!”
“Your Highness, these stinking curs make the rounds of the churches and spread disgusting rumors…But His Majesty has forbidden us to touch them…otherwise long ago we would have…”
“I’m asking you—what are they saying?!”
“Well…they say that at night you rub a Chinese ointment on your body, after which you turn into a dog…”
“And I run around with hounds! Is that it?”
“That’s it, Your Highness.”
“So what does Artamosha have to do with it? He’s just singing rumors! Artamosha!”
She walks around, muttering angrily. Her eyes glitter. She takes her glass and drinks. She sighs:
“Hmmm…you ruined my appetite. All right, get out of here…”
I stand, bow, and walk backward, step by step.
“Wait…” She stops and thinks. “What was it you said Praskovia wanted?”
“Baltic herring, fern seeds, and books.”
“Books. Well then, come with me. Otherwise I might forget…”
Her Highness quits the dining room, throwing open the doors in front of her. I try to keep up behind her. We enter the library. Her Highness’s librarian jumps up and bows, a moss-covered man in glasses:
“What do you desire, Your Highness?”
“Let’s go, Teryosha.”
The librarian minces along after her. Her Highness goes over to the shelves. There are a lot of them. And there’s a ton of books. I know that our mama likes to read from paper. And not just Pernicious Pugs. She’s well read.
She stops. Looks at the shelves:
“This will burn well and for a long time.”
She makes a sign to the librarian. He takes the collected works of Anton Chekhov off the shelves.
“Send these to Praskovia,” Her Highness tells the librarian.
“Yes, ma’am.” He nods, shifting the books.
“That’s it!” Our mama turns and walks right out of the library.
I hurry after her. She sweeps into her quarters. The golden doors open wide, the tambourines sound, the unseen balalaika strums, and valiant voices sing.
“Go on and hit me, me-oh-mine,
A big fat stick upon my spine!
A stick that’s excellent and fine.
My spine is quilted well, and lined!”
Her Highness is met by a pack of her hangers-on. They howl, squeal joyfully, and bow. There are a lot of them. All kinds: jesters, nuns well read in scripture, wandering minstrels, storytellers, playful souls, and dumpling makers crippled by science, witch doctors, masseurs, spinsters, and gingerbread men who run on electricity. “Best of the morning to you, Mamo!” all these hangers-on howl in unison.
“Good morning, my lovelies!” Her Highness smiles.
Two old jesters run up to her—Pavlusha the Hedgehog and Duga the Devil grab her by the hands, pull her along, kissing her fingers. As always, round-faced Pavlusha mutters, “Pow-yer, pow-yer, pow-yer!”
Hairy Duga grunts along:
“Eur-gasia, Eur-gasia, Eur-gasia!”
The rest begin to dance in a circle around Her Highness. I can see right off—her face grows kinder, her eyebrows calmer, her eyes no longer flash.
“How are my darlings doing here without me?”
There’s wailing and whimpering in reply.
“No good, Mamo! No goooood!”
The hangers-on fall to their knees in front of Mama.
I step backward toward the exit. She notices:
“Komiaga!”
I freeze. She beckons to her chamberlain, takes a gold piece out of her purse, and tosses it to me:
“For your efforts.”
I catch it, bow, and leave.
Evening. It’s snowing. I am driving my Mercedov through Moscow. I hold the wheel and squeeze the gold piece in my fist. It burns my palm like burning charcoal. It’s not pay, it’s a gift. Not much money, only ten rubles, but it’s dearer to me than a thousand…