The young princess had been led to believe there was some family connection: were they cousins? She had no mother to ask, her father was always away and when he was home he had no time for her, and the old princess, her grandmamma, wouldn't say, she wouldn't be drawn on the subject at all and would only purse or nervously wet her lips. The nurse she had remonstrated with already for filling the 'child's head with nonsense' and was told never to repeat, even if begged, that 'ridiculous tale again!'. The old princess could be quite severe when she wanted to and the new nurse was justifiably upset and frightened. She had presumed the story was local knowledge; it was told often enough whenever the estate was mentioned, inside by the servants and outside by the villagers.
The young princess did of course beg every night for two weeks, trying every voice and every method to get her own way. She even tried Cook, a man-servant and a groom, and lots of other hangers-on, Grandmamma's old suitors, when they came to visit, but all to no avail. Their lips were sealed, or more likely had been sealed by Grandmamma's threats.
Time passed, but as she grew older, her interest was again reawakened. So she decided to write down all that she knew and all that she'd heard from whispers behind doors and in the corridors – if it was nonsense, why couldn't it be told? - and from it piece together the full story, but being still a girl, and an unworldly one at that, she wrote it as if it were a fairy tale out of a book. Here is what she wrote:
On a summer night, a princess attended a ball given by a queen. The first of many that summer, though none would be as magnificent or as wonderful as this one. All the guests there were young, beautiful and brave, but the princess found the women boring and the men too fawning, and was more taken with the opulent surroundings: the gold, the marble, the crystal, the silk and jewels on display. She liked lovely things.
In the course of evening, in-between dances, she was drawn to the dark garden with its huge trees and white fountain, its water plashing. There she met a sullen, brooding stranger, who had no airs or graces about him at all. He was polite, but curt. His clothes were fine, but not as adorned as those inside, and his looks were as dark as the night.
The princess fell in love. And there the matter should have ended, for the man she loved had the rank but not the wealth, but no, after a series of garden meetings, there was a wedding. Some gossips said a child was already on the way.
It's true a child was born quite soon, but only eight months or so after, which wasn't uncommon (I'm told) for a first confinement. The child was a girl, a small red screaming bundle, who was there one night, safe in her cradle, and the next gone. The estate was searched and every servant questioned, but the child was not discovered.
The princess was quickly with child again, and another girl was born. But the same occurred; the child was taken from its cradle, never to be seen. Five more – all girls – disappeared, in spite of guards. Until the princess (her confinement cleverly concealed) gave birth to an eighth who for the first two days of her life was kept hidden, watched over and nursed by the princess alone. The estate then rejoiced for the curse it seemed had been broken.
Years passed. The child grew into a girl, a girl about to turn seventeen. On the night of her birth, she took a company of friends on a moonlit river outing. They dressed all in white and boarded a large boat. It is said they met with another party of girls who had called to them from the river bank; the princess hearing them had risen and stepped over the boat's edge.
Picture credit: La Berceuse, Madame Roulin Rocking the Cradle (A Lullaby), 1899, Vincent van Gogh (source: WikiArt).
See First
Love by Ivan Turgenev, translated from the Russian by Isaiah Berlin
(Penguin Classics).
Written in lock-down May 2020.
