Maria kept her word and made a mustache out of my hair. I was secretly hoping for an elaborate concoction, like the one decorating Commandant Mishkin’s face. Instead, Maria produced several thin strips of sheer fabric covered in sparse hairs and a small bottle of glue. When she glued it to my face and held up the mirror, I laughed. As a woman, I was plain, but as a boy hussar with a nascent mustache, I looked… handsome. Maria nodded, pleased. “You look like you are about seventeen,” she said. “Don’t tell anyone you are older or no one will believe you. If your mustache gets dirty, replace it promptly; the glue dries fast. Now we need to work on your walk.”
I just had to think of the way Eugenia moved around the manor in Trubetskoye — with long, hasty steps, her footfalls loud and haphazard, and tried to do the same. Maria nodded, smiling. “You’re good at it,” she said. “Have you practiced before?”
“No,” I said.
I did not ask the questions on my mind, foremost among them my conviction that Maria herself had helped many women appear to be men, and perhaps had done so herself. I could see the advantage, of course, but I had no idea that such behavior was in any measure common. As it seemed impolite to ask, I practiced walking like a man late at night, after all the seamstresses were sent home, in Maria’s vast and empty atelier. I weaved among the gypsum dummies, most wearing half finished dresses and frocks, sack jackets and evening coats, several drowning in a sea of handmade lace. I walked among them, practicing bowing and shaking their imaginary hands. I practiced talking.
“Don’t try to make your voice too low,” Maria advised. “It will sound artificial. Just lower it comfortably, and the rest will be attributed to your youth.”
I waited to have her cut my hair until the last day of the exams.
I think my lack of nervousness helped with the examinations, for my grades were better than the previous quarter. I was pleased and Eugenia ecstatic; nonetheless, my thoughts were with Jack.
We had it all planned out. On the night of the last exam, Jack was to obtain the papers and then I was to meet him at the Moscow Train Station. Eugenia took me to Maria’s to have my hair cut, and helped me pack when we returned to the dormitory — I had some civilian clothes as well as spare britches, six shirts of good cotton, and my underclothes. It all fit into a single satchel. Anastasia cried a little, worried I would need all the dresses and lace and pretty things I was leaving behind. In truth, I too felt like crying, even though I kept reassuring the silly girl I would be back soon.
Eugenia, always preoccupied with practical matters, gave me some last minute instructions. “You’re Alexander Menshov now,” she told me. “No need for fancy aliases, and it was easy enough to get you papers in this name. I’ll tell your mother you are visiting classmates in Crimea — it is warmer there, she’ll understand. You know how to handle yourself, so I won’t nag you without need. But tell that Englishman that if he dare lays a hand upon you or shows any disrespect, I shall have his hand and his heart brought to me.”
“Aunt Genia,” I said, sighing. “You do love melodrama too much.”
She stared at me. “Fancy that,” she said after a few silent minutes. “Now I’m starting to think this is exactly what Pavel looked like.”
She dabbed at her eyes as I searched for something to say. “Don’t worry,” I finally managed. “I am not he. I will not die, I promise.”
She sobbed outright at that, and hugged my padded body to her chest. “You have no idea, Sasha, how frightened I am. The situation here now, the possible threat of war looming… you are too young to remember the Bonaparte, but I do. The terrifying thing is, if there is a new war, young people will be fighting it, and we, the old ones, we’ll mourn and watch and relive our past losses and then lose even more. So you make sure it doesn’t happen.”
I pulled away. “I’ll do what I can, Aunt Genia.”
She dried her eyes and smiled then. “Time for you to go, young hussar. You’ll miss your train.”
“I’ll try to avoid wars,” I said, and picked up my satchel.
Everyone was asleep when Eugenia and I snuck out of the dark and quiet house, and walked to the Palace Bridge where we hailed a coachman. She kissed me goodbye once more, and I was on my way to the station.
At night, the building of dark granite and light gray marble towered against the sky pale with moonlight and impending snow. The station seemed deserted, but once inside, I discovered there were quite a few people, some stretched out on the wooden benches asleep, others sitting on their sacks and parcels. A few urchins played marbles by the far wall, away from the ticket windows and the gates leading to the tracks. I drew my pelisse around my shoulders, moved my satchel from one white-gloved hand to the other, and went to buy my ticket.
At this dead hour of the night, only one train left the station — a train to Moscow that ran primarily for the convenience of business travelers. It departed St. Petersburg at one in the morning and arrived in Moscow at one in the afternoon, early enough to conduct necessary business and possibly head back the same day. In my childhood when we visited relatives in Moscow, the journey from St. Petersburg took more than a week, and I felt nostalgic. One had to be determined to travel in those days. Nowadays, it seemed almost too easy, too casual.
That was Eugenia again, speaking in my mind, and I shook my head, dislodging her. With all her love of progress, she did miss those days, and Mishkin was correct about her essential old-fashionedness. I, of course, was happy with the speed of modern travel — it meant we would arrive to China in two weeks’ time. If everything went well, we would be back before February when the next quarter started. Oh, how I hoped we would avoid complications! I let my hand slide over the front of my jacket. Under all the gold braid and over the whalebone, I could sense the faintest rustling of paper, the theater programme with Wong Jun’s message. The message he promised would make our task possible.
I paid for the ticket and looked for a place to sit. A gangly young man, a student by all appearances, slept stretched out on one of the benches. I remembered I was currently a man in military service. I cannot describe the satisfaction I felt when I dislodged the young man’s scuffed shoes with a swift kick of my polished boot.
He woke up and glowered, but when his gaze fell upon my uniform his grumbling turned into a loud yawn and he sat up, surrendering half a bench with an almost apologetic expression. I settled down and smiled to myself.
The clock above the ticket window showed half past midnight, and I hoped Jack would be on time. As the minute hand crawled closer and closer to twelve, I prayed the train would be delayed. But a man in a tall red hat announced the train, and passengers woke up and stretched and shuffled wearily toward the gaping mouth of the gates, beyond which I could see only the glow of a gaslight and the white sifting of another snowstorm. Jack was still not here.
We had decided long in advance that if one of us was to be delayed, the other was to go to Moscow anyway and wait in an appointed place. We had selected a tavern Jack knew of not too far from the Kremlin. I had memorized the simple directions to it. Waiting in St. Petersburg would have been too dangerous, especially if the missing one was caught or found out. After waiting three days in Moscow with no sign of the other, the one who was still free was to continue on to China alone. I did not like that idea — even with Wong Jun’s letter, I lacked any proof of my words. Worse yet, I had nothing to bargain with — and it would not be unreasonable to expect bargaining, for one’s life or freedom at the very least.
I settled in an unoccupied compartment of the last carriage, and watched the platform through the thickening snow as it fluttered about, whipped by the wind into elaborate whirlwinds and eddies; occasionally it even looked as if it was falling upward. Every time I saw a human figure, I clung closer to the window, but was rewarded with nothing but disappointment — it was never Jack.