Malen'kiye Lyudi His parents had been immigrants to Canada, but they had not wanted Anton to be one. At home they spoke Russian because it was all they knew, but they insisted he go to an English school, not a Russian one, and had made him teach his English lessons to them in the evenings. Petr and Vera Ivanov had never gained any real fluency despite this, but Anton had - enough that he had spent the better part of his life answering to “Tony” instead of “Antosha,” enough that he had married an Englishwoman. He was not sure it ever would have occurred to him to go to Moscow without Emma. She had thought it would be entertaining, seeing where his people came from.
Ten years later, near enough to within sight of Siberia, he bowed to a woman as unlike Emma as he thought it was really possible for a woman to be and waited politely for her to gesture that he could sit. Olga Petrovna Vorontsova - no relation to himself - was, he had gathered, what passed for gracious among the velikiye volshebniki. She allowed her staff some dignity and did not allow her many children to abuse them too much. Very modern of her - he had heard she had spent time in Europe, been exposed to ideals outside the old Russian class system for a time, in her youth. He still bowed again before actually taking the seat.
“Thank you, Gospozha,” he said.
“Of course,” said Olga. She had what, after his years in Russia, he recognized as a Petersburg accent. “I trust you are well?”
“I am, Gospozha, thank you. And you?”
“Well, thank you. You wished to speak to me about Katerina Andreyevna?”
Olga Petrovna was also known for being somewhat to the point - not surprising, really, given the size of her family. She could have probably commanded cannon against Napoleon without loss of composure after managing Grigori Andreevich and Tatiana Andreyevna during the times when all six children were in a loud confusion around her feet. “I do,” said Anton. “She is a delight to teach - a very diligent pupil.”
Translation: less brilliant than her sister, but much more obedient and less temperamental. The contrast between the two sisters was almost dizzying: where Tatiana Andreyevna was an irrepressible whirlwind of energy, one moment passionately happy and the next passionately furious without a break, Katerina Andreyevna was almost heartbreakingly conscientious. She sometimes sat working on her exercises with tears running down her face, but they were silent, not passionate or accompanied by shouting and throwing down the pen; she would not acknowledge them or, with the exception of a few rare, childish outbursts, veer off-task. She rarely asked questions, just hunched over her work like a horse pulling a wagon, so he had to guess for himself where she needed assistance or reinforcement. It was in many ways much easier than teaching Tatiana, but that was a complication - with Tatiana, one always knew precisely where one stood. With Katerina, it was another story altogether. Odd, then, that the two were apparently devoted to each other.
“Katerina Andreyevna is a good child,” agreed Olga. “But there is a problem?”
Of course there was a problem. If there had not been a problem, he would not have requested an interview, but waited for Olga Petrovna and her husband to schedule one with him to discuss the progress their daughter had made since the last time they had wished to hear her praises sung.
“Perhaps,” said Anton carefully, hedging his bets. “With her academics, there is no problem - but I am concerned for her well-being.”
Olga Petrovna would have been within her rights to tell him that Katerina’s well-being was a matter for her and the vrachi to attend to. She did not do so. “Indeed.”
“I am afraid, Gospozha - and forgive me if I speak out of turn - but since Tatiana Andreyevna began her studies abroad, I am afraid that Katerina Andreyevna is - well - lonely.”
And it was true. The children apparently did a very good job of keeping each other company when they were all, or even when a majority were, in residence, but now the only ones in the house were Katerina Andreyevna and Alexei Andreevich. Katerina had more of a maternal streak toward the baby of the family than Tatiana did, but playing with a baby was clearly no real substitute for having a child more or less of her own age about: she had been increasingly gloomy, subdued, and withdrawn ever since Tatiana left. He had sworn before he took this job that he would not feel any sympathy or attachment to the children involved - reminded himself that they were velikiye volshebniki, would grow up to perpetuate the very system which had driven his parents to abandon their whole world - but he had not proven as good as his word, and now, just as he became confident that Tatiana had made enough little American friends to keep her from despair, he was concerned about Katerina.
Olga appeared to think about this for a long moment before nodding slowly. “And do you see any remedy to this problem?”
She looked him in the eye and he knew she knew exactly what he was going to say. She had known it before he ever set foot in this room, possibly before he had even asked for a meeting.
“My two daughters are near her in age,” said Anton, reluctantly now. “Perhaps they could serve as her companions.”
And in so doing, spare him the cost of enrolling them in the tiny village school and, with the slightest bit of luck, improve their future. Likely at the cost of subjecting them to even more petty humiliations than they experienced at the village school - but still. Friendship with Katerina Andreyevna could open the door to more tolerable governess jobs than they might have found without a patroness, and if Katerina married very well, she might be one of those women whose husband agreed to pay someone just to be a companion to his wife. There was no chance of them both being employed in the same household, and little of both of them benefiting from such an association at all, but it was better than nothing, which was all he could really offer them here or in Russia. It was not even unheard of - though it would require far more luck - for ladies’ companions to marry up a degree or two….
Olga Petrovna’s expression let him know, without moving enough for him to point to any feature’s change, that she knew all this, but she did not comment on it. Instead, she looked pointedly at his right hand - she wore her own wedding rings on her right hand - and then at his left, which was a mirror image of the one already inspected.
“You have no wedding ring,” she observed.
A natural consequence of not being married, thought Anton, but he refrained from saying it. “My wife is no longer with us,” he said instead, tersely.
“She was not one of us - her name. How do you say it? Ye-mma?”
“Eh-mma,” said Anton, then added, belatedly, “Gospozha. She’s not one of us.”
“Your daughters also speak English, then. Perhaps this would be helpful for Katerina. I will speak with my husband about this. You may go now.”
OOC: velikiye volshebniki: Great Wizards. Gospozha: female honorific, equivalent of ‘madame’ or ‘ma’am’ or in some uses ‘Mrs.’, feminine form of gospodin vrachi: doctors Emma: The Cyrillic letter which looks most similar to the English 'e' makes a sound more like "ye," as in "hear ye, hear ye."