A Woman Loved Read online

  Oleg smiles through a fog of images: a white-and-gold salon, a mirror going up, a vaulted alcove … Lessya’s lips are freezing cold. He comes back to the present: a bedroom in a communal apartment, fifteen occupants housed in seven rooms, a shared kitchen, a single bathroom. A daily hell, yet one where you can be happy (in his parents’ time they used to say: “If you’re in hell, enjoy the fire …”). He’s happy to feel the snow on his girlfriend’s coat as she hands it to him, the warmth of the body that briefly squeezes against him. Happy to see Lessya settling down amid the disorder and, by her presence, creating harmony within it. Happy to make his way along the endless corridor where the exhalations of lives crammed together hang in the air, and to find himself in the kitchen—bliss, he is alone! And to slide his coffeepot onto the stove that is laden with heavy saucepans full of family soups. A transom is open—the chill air sharpens the scent of roasted beans. He’s giddy with happiness: waiting for him at the other end of the communal labyrinth is a woman he loves …

  Still in the corridor he peers into his room: Lessya is reading, stretched out on the sofa. With a girlish pout she puffs away a lock of hair tickling her cheek … He has recently taken to noticing details he would never have remarked on but for his obsessive scrutiny of Catherine the Great’s life. The woman historians call “the Russian Messalina” but who, for Oleg, is gradually turning back into a child of long ago—a little German princess watching the snow as it falls on the Baltic …

  He longs to tell Lessya how picturing that forgotten child makes it possible to imagine another way of living. And loving …

  “Erdmann, undo your bootlaces. You’re going to need a rope!”

  Lessya is being melodramatic: this comes with the territory in their world of young filmmakers. But he gasps as if he had been hit in the solar plexus.

  “No, it’s the truth. You’d better go hang yourself! Your screenplay’s clinically insane. And it’s not even funny! Look at me: am I laughing? No. I’m frankly confused. This mirror, this alcove, what’s all that about? Can you picture the audience’s faces? They’re not going to be laughing either …”

  Oleg hands Lessya a cup and tries to remain calm.

  “Look, it’s not a script that’s meant to be played for laughs …”

  “Excuse me? You’re not going to tell me this grotesque vaudeville is meant to be taken seriously?”

  “Yes, I am. This is just the way I see history …”

  Still clowning, Lessya chokes on her coffee. Oleg feels too weak to fight back …

  “How many pages have you read, Lessya? Eleven? You’ll see. Later on, it all falls into place. Chronologically, biographically … Catherine’s childhood in Germany, her arrival in Russia, where she’s going to marry the future Peter the Third. She’ll take lovers and when her husband comes to the throne, her lovers’ll kill him. Then she’ll reign, introduce reforms, defeat the sultan, seduce French philosophers … Don’t worry. All the historical details will be accurate, down to the width of the crinolines … Now, wait a minute. You’re not going, are you?”

  His voice lurches into a plea and he realizes that to hold on to Lessya he would even be prepared to write a platitudinous biopic: childhood, youth, illustrious reign …

  “Yes, I am. There’s going to be a party at Zyamtsev’s. He’s just been given the green light to make his film. And as he’s not your best buddy … Besides, you’ve got work to do. You’ve got a good story line! First of all young Catherine in her dreary little principality back in smalltime Germany and then, hey!, we see her at the head of an empire! It’ll be a great rags-to-riches movie. But there’s just one thing. Promise me you’ll scrap the first eleven pages …”

  Lessya grabs the little pocket mirror lying beside the typewriter, and starts putting on lipstick.

  He goes with her to the entrance hall. In the kitchen a woman is sitting on a stool, her gaze lost amid the swirl of snowflakes outside the dark window. “The boozer,” whispers Lessya, with a wink at Oleg.

  The door bangs shut, he goes back past the kitchen, greets the woman: “Hi there, Zoya. Thank you for opening the door to my friend just now …” The woman nods, lost in a dream. She has a fine face, aged by weariness and, doubtless, by drink … He has never seen anyone come to call on her. From time to time Zoya’s ancient kettle appears on the stove, a utensil probably dating back to the time of the Second World War.

  Once more in his room Oleg gathers up the scattered sheets, the pages Lessya advises him to scrap: the mirror going up, the alcove revealed, the mirror coming down … The shadowy figures come and go, every one of them, for Catherine, epitomizing the impossibility of being loved.

  That night insomnia pays him a visit, a familiar caller. Lessya had referred to his screenplay as “a grotesque vaudeville.” But is life truly anything else?

  A year before he had submitted the idea for this film to his teacher—his master—Lev Bassov. The old man listened to him with a sympathetic expression, then began addressing him like a convalescent who needs gentle handling. “Look, it’s a tough subject … For a lot of reasons: both practical, because it would cost a fortune (costumes, battle scenes …) and political, well, I don’t need to spell those out. What’s more, there’s enough material here for several full-length films. There’s the coup d’état in 1762, Catherine’s untimely pregnancy, the murder of the tsar. And what about Potemkin? A character like that’s going to act everyone else off the screen. And Pugachev and the peasant uprising? It’s true Pushkin wrote a pretty brief short story about it, well a narrative writer can just say—’Pugachev ordered the attack and the city fell.’ But you try filming it with four hundred extras! And the trickiest thing, by the way, is not the need to compress time. No, it’s the human mystery. Her son Paul: who is he really? An idiot who loves all things German and whom his mother detests? Or a tragic individual destroyed by this hatred? No, if you do a complete A to Z of Catherine you’ll get just another costume picture. Or maybe a cartoon film. You’re not thinking of going into animation, are you?”

  The idea had made them both laugh and Oleg promised not to follow in Disney’s footsteps. He began reading, piling up the mountains of books that were taking over his living space. Catherine insinuated herself into every corner of his thoughts and, at night, into his dreams. The air was impregnated with the aroma of “the Catherine century,” as the Russians call it, the fragrant and bitter scent of old leather bindings … His research became painful to him, his most private moments were invaded by hundreds of historical figures, tormented, extreme beings, characters with larger-than-life destinies. And all these had to be moved deftly from one scene to the next, in a film of an hour and forty minutes.

  He lived through periods of despair, time and again he decided to abandon the whole thing. Then one day the thought struck him: it really did need to be filmed like an animated cartoon.

  The great mirror rises, the alcove is empty, the young lover, Mamonov, has just told Catherine he loves another woman. The empress weeps, grows bitter, meditates on revenge … The mirror falls. Behind it now the tsarina, who is over sixty, is in the arms of a new favorite, aged twenty-two. The mirror rises. The war against Turkey. The mirror falls. July 1789. The faithless Mamonov is cruelly punished. Mirror. In Paris the wretched French rabble are taunting the king—Ormesson was right! Mirror. Catherine rereads Montesquieu’s Persian Letters. Mirror. The favorite is called Zubov (“tooth” in Russian). “I’d like to get my teeth into him,” grumbles Potemkin, who divides his time between fighting the Turks and the delights of his own harem, which includes five of his nieces. Mirror. Louis XVI’s guards are decapitated, their heads, hoisted aloft on pikes, follow the king’s carriage … Mirror. Catherine gets up at five o’clock as usual, rubs her face with a lump of ice, makes herself coffee. From Paris her ambassador informs her that the people have amused themselves by curling the hair of the heads mounted on their pikes …

  History: a gory animated cartoon, in black and red. Catherine comes
to loathe the French philosophers’ delightful doctrines.

  The insomnia continues. “Your script’s crazy,” that’s what Lessya said … Oleg gets up and, without switching on the light, makes his way between the piles of books, climbs onto a chair, leans on the wardrobe. There is a greenish glow from the lamppost out in the street, just enough to locate that glass cylinder. It looks like a lamp held in a bronze ring. But in fact it is an old magic lantern. He grips it carefully, sets it on the table. The mechanism is broken, once upon a time, activated by a spring, figures cut out of black cardboard would slowly rotate: ladies in crinolines, gentlemen in wigs … Oleg makes the cylinder turn by hand, the glow from the lamppost projects a procession of phantoms across the door of his room.

  He tries to hold back his tears, bites his lip, quickly gathers up the silhouettes, puts the lantern away before going back to bed. This broken relic belonged to his mother …

  The room where Dr. Rogerson carries out his duties. It is not at all like a doctor’s office. Ponderous decor, classic eighteenth-century French furniture, crimson hangings. The light from a candelabrum picks out the silent presence of a naked young man. He submits to being palpated, tensing while the doctor’s hand explores his genitalia. The patient’s languid acquiescence gives the scene the appearance of a surreptitious sexual transaction … But soon the Englishman utters a satisfied grunt and invites the patient to get dressed. The latter does so—blue uniform, thigh boots, cocked hat: a handsome officer in the horse guards. He leaves the room with spurs jangling.

  He proceeds through a dark gallery, where statues loom as if in the storeroom of a museum: classical profiles—muscular marble … He passes through a winter garden, inhales its muggy atmosphere, and once through a low door in oriental style, he finds himself in a steam room—the pavilion of the Moorish baths. A woman helps him to undress. She is clad only in a shift, which she removes once they have gone into the bathhouse. A candle flame reveals a robust little body with firm breasts. Her nakedness makes her tied-back hairstyle highly provocative. Kissing the guest, she murmurs fond words. Encouraged by her free manner, he clasps her forcibly, and tries to drag her over to a covered bench. Nimble as a lizard, she slips away, skips round the room and, from the bench, beckons to him to come to her. He rushes over clumsily, excited by her giving him the slip. She escapes again, laughing and arousing the man. He catches her again, grasping her fugitive body and toppling her over onto her back, then comes to his senses. He is not there to satisfy his carnal appetite but simply to give proof of its vigor. He feels a hand squeezing his penis, the woman is checking that the passage of time has not weakened the tension in this young suitor’s muscle …

  The wick of a candle is drowning in wax. The snap of tinder can be heard and the fire leaps up. But this is an utterly different place: a bedchamber, with a bed beneath a brocade canopy. The man who struck the light tries to reassure his young wife who has been woken by a noise … They have no time to return to their bed—several soldiers stampede into the room and bind the man. His wife is raped in front of his eyes …

  Soldiers making their escape along a gallery paved with marble. An adolescent girl lost in a vast palace. Terrified by the clatter of their footfalls. Will they see her and kill her to be rid of the witness to their crime? Now she hides in a room that looks like a naturalist’s laboratory. Glass-fronted shelves, jars with strange reptiles preserved in fluid … And suddenly these two jars! Two human heads with wide-open, cloudy eyes. A man and a woman.

  Outside the door the boots thunder by.

  “I must have the courage to look these severed heads in the eye. Only then will I be able to tame this insane country!”

  She stares at the two faces entombed in liquid. She is afraid of nothing now. When she emerges from this cabinet of horrors, soldiers see her and stand to attention. Their officer salutes her. There is an element of theater about this encounter—the only way of not seeing the world through the glazed eyes of the severed heads … Now for more theater. A confession. The adolescent girl, who has grown into a beautiful, voluptuous woman, makes an admission. An army officer accuses her of having known fifteen lovers. “No, only five,” she assures him. The man absolves her and goes off to dine with his mistresses. For dessert there is an unusual dish—a vessel crammed with diamonds. The women help themselves freely … The woman who made that confession is not present at the meal. Meanwhile her footman comes and sets down a great gilded armchair before her: the throne of a vanished country. Thinking what she will do with this relic, she laughs until tears come to her eyes.

  Oleg is fast asleep, but checking off names and dates … The effort of memory wakes him up. For those visions were not fantasy! The episode at the Moorish baths? True. Before qualifying for admission to Catherine’s alcove, her favorites undergo this double examination: Dr. Rogerson attests to their physical health, Countess Bruce makes sure of their sexual vigor. The rape of the young bride? The tsarina’s favorite, Mamonov, abandons her for a lady-in-waiting. Vengeance strikes the lovers during their honeymoon … The heads in alcohol? Back in her youth Catherine had come upon them in Peter the Great’s cabinet of curiosities: Marie Hamilton, a mistress unfaithful to the tsar, and Wilhelm Mons, the tsarina’s lover … A helping of diamonds for dessert at Potemkin’s table? The date of that dinner is on record. Catherine’s admission of her love affairs? The text of her confession exists … A ceremonial chair brought to her as a trophy? The throne comes from Poland after that country has ceased to exist. The tsarina will later turn it into a commode!

  He closes his eyes, takes refuge in sleep. One more detail comes to mind: the monarch whose throne is to be pierced is Poniatowski, one of Catherine’s first lovers. A myopic dandy who had begged her not to make him the king of Poland.

  The hubbub of an argument. The long galleries of the palace merge into the corridor of a communal apartment. Oleg’s neighbors are bickering as they wait in line for the bathroom—the habitual verbal warm-up that will give them the courage to go down to a street still in darkness, and hurl themselves into the assault on a bus.

  He draws the blanket around himself, conscious of being one of the lucky ones who do not have to get up at six o’clock in the morning. And here’s another piece of luck: in his screenplay there’ll be no need for him to describe the characters’ emotions. On the film set the actors will find the right tones of voice, the necessary gestures. Whereas, if he were a novelist … Well, would he write that Countess Bruce slipped away from the candidate’s embraces as nimbly as a lizard? No one ever gave a female lizard the job of testing the prowess of one of her species.

  The idea makes him smile. At last he can sleep a dreamless sleep.

  At the moment of waking the ghosts are gone. Sunlight, hoarfrost crystals on the windowpanes, the rapid jolting of a streetcar down below. On the wall above his bed hang long charts with texts in red felt-tip pen.

  The first is based on the schedule Catherine II drew up in 1781, listing the achievements of the first twenty years of her reign:

  Provincial governments organized according to the new form 29

  Towns built … 144

  Treaties concluded … 30

  Victories won … 78

  Memorable decrees … 88

  Decrees for the benefit of the people … 123

  Total 492

  Despite the extravagant boastfulness of this detailed account, historians uphold it: at her death Catherine leaves behind a modernized country, a powerful army, a good public education system. The Russian Academy is presided over by a woman, the press is encouraged, censorship has been whittled down to “the observations of an illiterate woman”—the way Catherine describes the criticisms she addresses to authors from time to time …

  The second chart summarizes the chronology of her reign:

  1729: Birth in Stettin (Pomerania) of the Princess Sophia Augusta Fredericka of Anhalt-Zerbst.

  1744: The Empress Elizabeth summons her to Russia where, converted to orthodo
x Christianity and rebaptized, the princess is to marry the future Peter III.

  1745–53: Her husband shows little inclination to consummate the marriage. Catherine takes this opportunity to educate herself and study the machinery of power … And to embark on her first love affairs. Peter is operated on for his genital malformation.

  1754: Birth of a son, the future Paul I.

  1761: Death of the Empress Elizabeth. Brief reign of Peter III.

  1762: Coup d’état. Peter III is overthrown, then killed, by men loyal to Catherine. She ascends the throne.

  1763: The start of her reforms. Pilgrimages to the key centers of orthodox spirituality. Her aim: to innovate, like Peter the Great, while demonstrating her faithfulness to Russian traditions.

  1764: A journey to the Baltic provinces.

  1766: The Great Commission sets out the legislative bases for the State; even the peasants have their representatives.

  1767: Publication of the Great Instruction, Catherine’s political credo.

  1768–74: First Russo-Turkish war.

  1772: First partition of Poland.

  1773–75: Uprising led by Pugachev, who passes himself off as Peter III, miraculously preserved.

  1775: Land reform in Russia.

  1779: Freedom for entrepreneurs in Russia.

  1784: The Crimea annexed to the Russian Empire.

  1787–91: Second Russo-Turkish war.

  1793: Second partition of Poland.

  1795: Poland no longer an independent state (third partition).

  1796: Death of Catherine II (November 6).

  For Oleg this framework evokes intimate memories. Lessya’s body molded closely to his own, in shapely abandon, on spring mornings during the previous year. The dawning sun would light up this chart and, as they embraced, they would amuse themselves by giving each other history exams. “What was the date of Catherine’s coronation?” Lessya would ask with a frown. And Oleg, acting the dunce, would say: “Search me. Maybe it was around 1812 …” She would pull his ears and their fight would turn into an embrace …