The Past
Valya
From Saint Petersburg to Paris
It had not been difficult to corrode a family already rotting from the inside out.
Over the years, the grand duchess’s husband had more affairs, even buying dachas and palaces for his mistresses, who would, in turn, birth him illegitimate children.
All Valya had to do was confirm the affairs or babies being born, rumors of which she heard at the Marble Palace besides seeing them in the coffee grounds; fan the grand duchess’s rage at her husband; and dissuade her from leaving Russia, as she was Valya’s key to Petersburg’s upper crust and to the family she had sworn her vengeance on.
Why is that woman here again? Valya would frequently hear the husband demand, complaining of the grand duchess’s mystic leanings.
He complained in vain. Valya was already indispensable, all trust placed in the coffee beans, which, over time, became even more aromatic, rare, and costly.
Certainly, the grand duchess had no trust left for her philandering husband.
Every breath of a rumor, every hint of a decision, went by Valya first. By the time the husband had a stroke and died—more than seven years ago now—the couple had not spoken in years.
It aided Valya’s plan that the grand duchess’s younger son lived a dissipated life and was a revolutionary.
All it took was a coffee reading at one of his soirees to give him a little push to steal a cache of precious diamonds from his mother, with his American courtesan mistress as his partner in crime.
The grand duchess already loathed the woman, wouldn’t let the son marry her.
Free yourself, Valya advised the fool of a boy.
He tried. Instead, he was caught, found guilty of stealing, declared insane, and banished from Russia.
The youngest son died of a brain hemorrhage through none of Valya’s arts.
She had marked the elder and last son, the new Grand Duke, as her next victim.
But she had to wait to strike at him. He was always out of town, always traveling, always in exile of some kind.
Valya made sure to keep herself out of his way so he would not know or recognize her.
She would eventually need the anonymity.
Thankfully, fortune-telling was a ladies’ business, and not many men, including the Grand Duke at the time, took an interest in it or in the “old women” who knew the art.
But fortune-telling was drying up in Russia, especially since wives like the grand duchess no longer held much power.
Instead, it was the mistresses, the courtesans, the grand dukes, who were all leaving Russia in the dust for Paris and taking their power and money with them.
Many also started to whisper about a coming revolution.
It confirmed what Valya saw in her coffee grounds.
Blackness, clouds and clouds of it. Yes, something was coming, sometime, and she would not be in Russia to meet it.
So that was how Valya and her daughter ended up in the French capital in January of that year, a cold and bitter time, made worse by the fact that Valya was back to selling fortunes on the streets, this time in Montmartre.
One night, her daughter lay in her cot staring up at their moldy ceiling. Yet the sun had already set, the lights had already flickered on. Their work was about to begin.
“Why, Sveta, it is almost nine o’clock.” Valya clapped her hands.
“Up, up!” But a dark premonition stirred in her soul.
She had recently seen in her coffee cup a volcano, family problems coming to a head; a snake, a decision to be made; a saw, difficulties to overcome; and rocks, misfortune. The symbols did not bode well.
“For what?” Svetlana’s laugh burst out like a firework.
“Telling petty fortunes in cabarets? Humiliating ourselves with cheap fortune-telling tricks on the streets as the police hound us, threatening arrest and worse? Especially that policeman. We have traded in princesses for prostitutes, princes for factory workers and drunken men who call themselves artists. We have been here for months! You said we would be hobnobbing with grand dukes and their mistresses, with le Tout-Paris, not—”
Valya held up a hand, her rings sparking in the oily candlelight.
“It takes time to build the foundations for this business, to properly clothe ourselves, to seek out the most ideal contact to introduce us to society. Or no one will pay us any heed. We cannot go from the slums of Montmartre to the H?tel Continental. It is simply not done.”
But her impulsive Svetlana did not wish to wait for success.
She wanted to run toward it, headlong, with the wind streaming wild through her hair.
“Why preoccupy ourselves with empty introductions? We want Le Grand-Duc. His patronage, his introduction. And we know he frequents Maxim’s.
” Svetlana waved a hand at the wall where they had been painstakingly taking down the names of noble Russian expats and visitors, the notes on their partners and families, the information on their lifestyles, personalities, and propensities, not to mention the places and parties they frequented.
“I tell you what. Let’s contrive for me to meet Le Grand-Duc at Maxim’s. My face and cards will do the rest.”
“You aren’t fit to meet a grand duke. Why would he talk to a poor, desperate girl like you?”
But Svetlana only read the challenge in her words. “I am doing this, Valya. If it works, you will have your revenge, and I will have my freedom. It remains for you to decide if you wish to join me—but only as my equal.”
As soon as they had arrived in France, her daughter started to call her Valya and told her she was no longer interested in being a fortune teller, with or without her.
She wished only for peace (what that was, Valya had not the dimmest idea).
Suffice it to say, her daughter was tired of the hustle—one big gamble, and she was done.
“What are you willing to give up, Sveta?” Valya asked Svetlana now, taking a measured step toward her.
“Are you willing to fake your way to the top? To give up everything, even yourself? If you accept his patronage, he will have all the power, you none. Men like him always do. And they always use it to their advantage against women like us. How far are you willing to go to keep him? Lie, cheat, steal—sleep with him, or his friends? And when he finds out…” Valya left the rest to Svetlana’s imagination.
“I know what I am willing to give up. You need not worry on that account.”
If Svetlana had her freedom, Valya would not lift a finger to help her. “It seems I cannot stop you. I will do this but only to see my plan through. Then we will go our separate ways. I will be your partner, but no more.”
“Fine,” Svetlana said, widening the rift between them until Valya could no longer see her clearly.
To her surprise, Svetlana pulled off the stunt at Maxim’s, started to read cards for the Grand Duke and his friends at Paris’s premier establishments, then only for the Grand Duke in his private rooms at the H?tel Continental.
Then, as his family was visiting from Russia, he invited Valya and Svetlana to move into his palace near the famed Bois de Boulogne. That was what had sealed their fate.
Summer 1899
“I do not like it, Sveta,” were Valya’s first words to her daughter in days.
They were trudging through the Bois de Boulogne, the air humid, the summer dense and crowded in Paris, even in this oasis of a park. It mirrored her mood; she kept seeing symbols of swollen clouds, sharp-edged saws, and piles of rocks at the bottom of her coffee cups.
“Well, if it were up to you, Valya, we would still be in the slums of Montmartre,” Svetlana shot back, as she was wont to do these days.
“Which is where we will return to, or worse, if you do not slow down.”
“I cannot slow down. I want to be free.”
There was something in the way she spoke that snagged at Valya.
Svetlana was rosy, a little breathless, and had stars in her eyes.
If Valya didn’t know any better, she would say her daughter was in love.
But that was impossible. Valya knew the Grand Duke was a means to an end, nothing more. But perhaps she did not know all.
“We need to make as much money and meet as many patrons in society as possible, then give the Grand Duke what he deserves and disappear. But we need to bring in allies.”
They passed a gregarious group of passersby reeking of wine, buzzing with drink and chatter. “Which allies?” Valya asked, once the passersby and their noise had receded. Her daughter’s intrigues were tiring her. All she wanted was to return to her fortune-telling.
“Mila, definitely. She will likely bring Dasha. Coralie. She will want to bring Marie-Louise, of course, given her limitations. Klara, though I don’t know if she is the sort of charming the Grand Duke will expect. Maybe several others from Montmartre.”
“It would not be wise to spread ourselves too thin. Or allow too many to know of the scheme. We must only work with those we trust. No talk, absolutely no rumor.”
Valya saw Svetlana wince at the word scheme. “Must you put it like that?”
“Well, if you intend to do it, you will need to be able to say the word. It is a scheme, Sveta.”
“I prefer to think of it as giving back.”
“It is stealing,” Valya said flatly. “But you said you know what you are willing to do for this venture. So as long as the Grand Duke is ruined or dead in the end, you are free to act as you please.” She paused, considering. “Do you think they will come?”
“It is impossible to say no to this much money, the rare opportunity into the most exclusive circles in émigré Paris. And protection. The police are in the Grand Duke’s pocket. No, they, we, have nothing to lose.”
“Fine. Then gather the girls and bring them to the Moulin Rouge tonight. I will have a talk with them beforehand so they don’t overstep. Nothing and no one will interfere with my plan for the Grand Duke.”