“It’s your first grown-up party. Enjoy yourself, and stop worrying.”
I heard Papa call my name from downstairs and took one last look in the mirror. My body was swathed in a confection of forest-green silk and cream tulle, colors that set off the dark hair and eyes I’d inherited from Mama. My hair had been twisted into an elegant chignon that made me look years older. For the first time, I felt the shiver of pleasure that comes with self-transformation. All the powers of subterfuge I perfected in the years to come had their roots in this moment, when I stared into that mirror and saw someone else.
Another shout from Papa.
“Coming!” Miss Fields called back.
She nudged me away from the mirror and toward the door. “Time to go.”
I descended the front staircase with Miss Fields close behind, feeling like a queen trailed by her lady-in-waiting. Below, my admiring audience awaited: Mama, Papa, Vasily, and—to my great delight—my uncle Sergei, Mama’s younger brother. Slight and dark featured like Mama, he shared her love of art and literature but not her erratic moods. The fact that he was in his early thirties and not yet married subjected him to incessant teasing, but he never seemed to care. “When I crave domestic bliss, I come to your house,” he once told Mama, to which she replied, “Oh yes, I’m a model wife.”
That’s when I learned adults sometimes say the opposite of what they mean.
Secretly, I was glad we didn’t have to share Sergei with a wife and a horde of children. Though he was constantly dashing off to Paris or Vienna, he visited our house often, always making time to talk to me. Unlike most adults, he actually seemed interested in what I had to say.
I rushed toward Sergei, and we kissed each other’s cheeks.
“I thought you were in Italy!” I exclaimed.
“And miss the party of the year? I wouldn’t dare.” He took hold of my arms and twirled me around. “What a vision.” Then, looking over my shoulder, he called out, “Good evening, Miss Fields.”
“Good evening, sir.”
Sergei enjoyed practicing his English with Miss Fields, though his flowery language sometimes made her laugh. “Your uncle turns the simplest conversations into poetry,” she once told me, and I couldn’t tell if she was making fun of him.
“Do we have you to thank for Nadia’s astonishing transformation?” Sergei asked her.
“I didn’t make the dress, so I can’t take all the credit.”
Still, she smiled proudly, and their shared approval made me prickle with satisfaction. In their eyes, I was no longer a little girl.
Papa was done up in his full regalia, his medals shimmering in the lamplight. Mama looked breathtaking in her deep-blue ball gown, a sapphire necklace twinkling in the spot where her bodice plunged. Vasily already looked like a soldier, in his gleaming boots and scarlet jacket. Sergei wore a tuxedo rather than one of his usual rumpled suits. Everyone looked so polished, so elegant. Like true Shulkins.
Old Ivan, the butler who had kept the house running since my grandfather’s time, stood at attention by the entrance and opened the front door at Papa’s signal. The Mercedes was waiting outside; a trio of maids stood by with our coats. Encircled by my family, I said a hurried goodbye to Miss Fields; she had strict orders to bring me home from the ball at ten o’clock, and I didn’t want to waste any time. She beamed as if she were seeing off her own daughter.
“You’ll dazzle them all,” she said, and her confidence enshrouded me like protective armor. I gazed out the car window as we sped off, mesmerized by the eerie glamor of Saint Petersburg at night. Buildings that were imposingly elegant by day looked mysterious by lamplight; the canals were inky black, streaked with wisps of fog. As we drove along the brightly lit, pulsing Nevsky Prospect, swerving around old-fashioned carriages and other, slower automobiles, I was convinced this would be the most wonderful evening of my life.
With such expectations, it was perhaps inevitable that I’d start off disappointed. My cousins’ mansion—with its heavy silk draperies and vast, echoing rooms—felt more like a museum than a home, and the party was similarly stuffy. It took nearly half an hour to pay respects to all my relatives, bowing down to kiss the hands of great-aunts I barely knew. At dinner, I was seated with the grandmothers and elderly spinsters—the social nonentities banished to the back of the room. But once the tables were cleared and the music started, my gloomy mood lifted. Women swept by, their dresses moving in seductive whispers while swords tapped against the legs of their escorts. My feet shifted from side to side, tempted by the rhythmic lure of a waltz. Though I stayed close to Mama, she paid me no attention, and I hoped if I stayed quiet enough, she’d eventually forget I was there.
“May I?”
Sergei stepped up to Mama and held out his hand. She smiled and nodded, and they spun into the swirl of couples, moving in effortless harmony. I hadn’t known he was such a good dancer, and I wished with a pang of jealousy that I was the one in his arms.
Things hadn’t always been easy between Mama and Sergei and Papa, I’d been told. Sergei, the publisher of a literary magazine, and Papa, a government minister, disagreed about politics, economics, and nearly everything else, and in the early days of her marriage, poor Mama was forced to play peacemaker when her brother and husband’s arguments escalated into shouting matches. Those fights were now remembered with rueful grins, anecdotes from a distant past. Though Papa still referred to Sergei as a raving radical, and Sergei joked about Papa being an old fossil, each respected the other’s intransigence. For while Sergei might lecture about workers’ rights and Papa might grumble about some people having no respect for tradition, they were both members of the same tribe. A tribe that kissed women’s hands and bowed their heads to those with superior titles and knew how to make a Viennese waltz look effortless.
Vasily had taken advantage of Mama’s inattention to sneak off with a few of our older male cousins, and I wondered if I could make a similar escape. Maybe to the dining room, where I’d seen servants laying out punch bowls and trays of desserts.
“Nadia Antonovna?”
A gangly boy who seemed to be all legs and arms had come up behind me. Though he was at least a head taller than me, his cheeks were still youthfully soft. I had no idea who he was.
He gave me a quick, practiced bow and announced, “Mikhail Nikolayevich.”
The same few names had been used for generations in the Shulkin family; you had to use both your own and your father’s for people to know where you fit in. Knowing this Mikhail was Nikolai’s son, however, wasn’t enough. I could think of half a dozen Nikolais who were part of the extended Shulkin family. When the boy explained further—and I realized he was the son of Prince Nikolai, the richest and most revered of all the Shulkins—I was mortified.
“I’m so sorry,” I stammered. “It’s only there are so many cousins, and I can hardly keep track of the ones in Saint Petersburg, let alone the ones in Moscow . . .”
“Please, don’t worry,” he said. “I think we’ve only met once. At my grandmother’s funeral?”
I remembered the train ride, in a luxurious private carriage; it was the farthest I’d ever traveled from home. But I couldn’t remember anything of the service itself.