KLARA’S TWENTIETH CHRISTMAS came, and her twelfth with the Koskovs. She received fur-lined boots from Dmitry, piano music from Vasilisa, and a sable cloak from the Chernenkos. My journal records that on January 6, 1823, Dmitry gave a sermon on Job and the hidden designs of Providence. The choir of the Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin gave only a mediocre performance due to sore throats and colds. Snow lay deep in the gutters, fog and smoke filled the alleyways, the sun was a memory, icicles hung from the eaves, steam snorted white from the horses’ frozen nostrils, and ice floes as big as boats floated on the thundercloudgray Neva River.
After our midday meal, Vasilisa and I were in the parlor. I was writing a letter in Dutch about osmosis in giant trees to a scholar at Leiden University. My foster mother was marking the French compositions of some of her pupils. The fire gnawed logs. Galina, our housekeeper, was lighting the lamps and tutting about my eyesight when we heard a knock at our door. Jasper, our little dog of uncertain pedigree, went skating and yapping down the hall. Vasilisa and I looked at each other but neither of us was expecting a caller. Through the lace curtain we saw an unknown coach with a veiled window. Galina brought in a card, given to her by a footman at the door. Dubiously, my mother read it aloud: “Mr. Shiloh Davydov. ‘Shiloh’? It sounds foreign to me. Does it sound foreign to you, Klara?” Davydov’s address, however, was the respectable Mussorgky Prospect. “Might they be friends of Uncle Pyotr’s?”
“Mrs. Davydov is in the coach, too, I’m told,” added Galina.
With a sudden change of mind that I would later recognize as an Act of Suasion, Vasilisa’s doubts evaporated. “Well, invite them in, Galina! What must they think of us? The poor lady’ll be freezing!”
“PARDON OUR UNANNOUNCED intrusion,” said a spry man with expansive whiskers, a plangent voice, and dark clothes of a foreign cut, “Mrs. and Miss Koskov. The fault is all mine. I had my letter of introduction written before church, but then our stable boy got kicked by a horse and we had to summon a doctor. With all this brouhaha afoot, I quite neglected to ensure that the letter I had written had in fact been brought to you. My name is Shiloh Davydov, and I am at your service.” He handed his hat to Galina with a smile. “Of Russian extraction from my father, but resident in Marseille, in so far as I am ‘resident’ anywhere. And may I,” even then, I noticed a Chinese cadence to his Russian, “may I present my wife, Mrs. Claudette Davydov, who, Miss Koskov, is better known to you”—he waggled his cane—“by her maiden and pen-name ‘C. Holokai.’ ”
This was unexpected. I had corresponded with “C. Holokai,” author of a philosophical text on the Transmigration of the Soul, several times, never dreaming that he might be a she. Mrs. Davydov’s dark, inquisitive face hinted at Levantine or Persian extraction. She was dressed in dove-gray silk and wore a necklace of black and white pearls. “Mrs. Koskov,” she addressed Vasilisa, “thank you for your hospitality to two strangers on a winter’s afternoon.” She spoke Russian more slowly than her husband, but enunciated with such great care that her listeners paid close attention. “We should have waited until tomorrow before inviting you to our house, but the name of ‘K. Koskov’ came up only an hour ago at the house of Professor Obel Andropov and I took it as a — as a sign.”
“The professor is a friend,” said my foster mother.
“And a classical linguist of the first rank,” I added.
“Indeed. Well, Professor Andropov told me that the ‘K’ stood for ‘Klara’; and then, on our way home, by chance I glanced out of our coach and saw your father’s church. A hobgoblin told me to see if you were at home, and I’m afraid that I”—Claudette Davydov asked her husband in Arabic how to say the word “succumbed” in Russian, and Shiloh Davydov repeated it for her—“I succumbed.”
“My, my,” said Vasilisa, blinking at the exotic strangers whom she’d apparently invited into her house. “My. You’re both welcome, I’m sure. My husband will be home presently. Make yourselves as comfortable as you can, I beg you. This is not a palace but …”
“No palace I ever saw was half so friendly.” Shiloh Davydov looked around our parlor. “My wife’s been excited about meeting ‘K. Koskov’ since the day I resolved to visit Petersburg.”
“Indeed I have.” Claudette Davydov handed Galina her muff of white fur with murmured thanks. “And to judge from Miss Koskov’s surprise, we both wrote to the other in the mistaken belief that the other was a man — do I surmise correctly, Miss Koskov?”
“I cannot deny it, Mrs. Davydov,” I said, as we all sat down.
“Is it not too much like an absurd farce for the stage?”
“A wrongheaded world,” sighed Shiloh Davydov, “where women needs must deny their gender for fear that their ideas will be dismissed.”
We considered the truth of this. “Klara dear,” said Vasilisa, remembering her duty as hostess, “would you feed up the fire while Galina brings refreshments for our guests?”
“THE SEA IS my business, sir,” replied Shiloh Davydov. Dmitry found the Davydovs’ unexpected company to his liking, and for the men the tea and cakes were superseded by brandy and the box of cigars Shiloh had presented to my foster father. “Shipping, freight, shipyards, shipbuilding, maritime insurance …” He waved a hand vaguely. “I’ve journeyed to Petersburg at the behest of the Russian Admiralty, so naturally I must be discreet about details. We shall be employed here for a year at least, however, and I’ve been granted the use of a government house on Mussorgsky Prospect. Mrs. Koskov, how difficult will it be to engage domestic staff who are both capable and honest? In Marseille, I’m sorry to say, the combination is as rare as hen’s teeth.”
“The Chernenkos will help,” said Vasilisa. “For Dmitry’s uncle, Pyotr Ivanovich, and his wife, finding a few hen’s teeth is a small matter. Is it not, Dmitry?”
“They’ll come wrapped in a Golden Fleece, knowing Pyotr.” Dmitry puffed appreciatively on his cigar. “How do you intend to wile away your months in our frozen northern wastes, Mrs. Davydov?”
“Like my husband, I have the soul of an explorer,” said Claudette Davydov, as if that were a full answer. The fire spat sparks. “First, though, I intend to finish a commentary on Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I had even entertained hopes that ‘K. Koskov’ would pay me the honor of casting her eye over my scribblings, if …”
I said that the honor would be mine, and that we clandestine female scholars were duty-bound to band together. Then I asked if “C. Holokai” had received my last letter, sent the previous August to the Russian legate in Marseille.
“Indeed I did,” said Claudette Davydov. “My husband, whose love of philosophy is, as you see, as deep as my own, was as fascinated as I was to read about your notion of the Dusk.”
Now Vasilisa was curious. “What dusk would that be, dear?”
I disliked lying even by omission to my foster parents, but Atemporality in a Godless, godless universe was not a profitable topic of discussion in our pious household. As I fabricated a prosaic explanation, my glance fell on Shiloh Davydov. His eyes had half closed and a spot glowed in what I knew from my Eastern resurrections was a chakra-eye. I looked at Claudette Davydov. The same spot glowed. Something was happening. I looked at my foster parents and saw that Vasilisa and Dmitry Koskov were as still as living waxworks. Vasilisa still wore her look of concentration, but her mind appeared to have shut down. Or have been shut down. Dmitry’s cigar smoked in his fingers, but his body was motionless.