Mademoiselle Julie s Silk Stocking

My name is Julie, but in Moscow, in this icy, smoky and merciless city, they nicknamed me “Jou-Jou”. A light, almost childish name, like a sigh through a fur muff. I kept a fashionable little shop on Kuznetsky Most: display windows with Parisian silk, the scent of expensive perfume and a hot iron, the slender fingers of young ladies trying on hats adorned with birds of paradise. Outside, though, stood the real Moscow of 1905: thick coal smoke pouring from thousands of chimneys, the creak of sledge runners on packed snow, the shouts of street vendors, the smell of fried pirozhki, horse manure and tar. Above it all hung the heavy bell of the Kremlin cathedrals and the distant, anxious drone of factory whistles from Spasskaya Zastava. The city lived like a wounded beast: it twitched, growled, licked its wounds after Bloody Sunday in January and reared up again.

And then he came — Savva Timofeyevich Morozov. He stepped into my shop on the day when the blizzard was so fierce that the faces of passers-by turned into white smudges. Tall, broad-shouldered, in a long coat with a beaver collar — a block of untamed energy sealed inside an expensive English suit. Snow melted on his eyelashes, and his eyes were the colour of the winter sky just before a snowstorm: grey, weary, yet seeing everything.

He removed his glove and ran his fingers over a piece of Lyon cr;pe, as though stroking living skin. “Who is this for?” he asked quietly. I answered: “For the one you haven’t chosen yet.” He smiled for the first time, and I knew I was lost. Our meetings were secret and scorching. He would come after the theatre or after yet another meeting at the Merchants’ Club, when Moscow was already drowning in bluish gaslight and the smell of wet snow. We met in furnished rooms above the “Yar” restaurant, where the walls were thin and the sheets smelled of starch and sin. He spoke of divorce, of how Zinaida Grigoryevna had long become a stranger to him, of how the factories were sucking the life out of him, of how he wanted to take me to Nice or Biarritz and never hear the word “Morozov” again. I believed him. I sewed myself a wedding dress of white satin, hid it in a locked trunk, and every night pressed it to my cheek as though it were his skin.

Before leaving for the C;te d’Azur he was strangely different. He arrived at night, in May, when Moscow already smelled of lilac and dust. In his embrace there was no longer the usual strength — only trembling. He kissed my closed eyes and whispered: “Don’t read the newspapers, Jou-Jou. Never read them again. It’s all lies there.” Then he left, and the door closed behind him so quietly it was as though it had never existed.

On 14 May 1905 I was riding in a carriage along Kuznetsky. From the very morning the day felt anxious and unnaturally deserted. Tension hung in the air, and even the spring sun could not dispel the grim, expectant silence that had replaced the usual bustle of the shopping street. I was thinking about the letter that was supposed to arrive from Cannes. And suddenly — a scream, piercing, like a knife on glass: “Savva Morozov has shot himself in Cannes!” Read Russkoye Slovo! The world split in two. I jumped out onto the roadway, not feeling my heel snap against the cobblestone. I saw the newsboy: grimy face, torn cap, bundle of fresh issues under his arm. The headline was black and thick, like blood: “Suicide of Millionaire Morozov”. I rushed at him to tear the newspaper away, to rip it up, to trample the lie — and did not hear the horn. I only saw the blinding flash of the headlights of a brand-new Daimler and felt my body lift, spin in the air, then the impact against the pavement, the crunch of my vertebrae and a warm, sticky silence.

I awoke not in a hospital — I awoke above my own body. Moscow suddenly turned grey; the colours faded as though someone had dumped a sack of ash over the city. Sounds reached me dully, as if from underwater: the clop of hooves, the shouts of cabmen, the ringing of trams along the newly laid line on Neglinnaya — everything slowed and became covered in frost. I was weightless. I tried to cry out, but only the rustle of old silk escaped my throat. And then I saw myself: a shattered face, blood on the white dress I had put on that morning to look beautiful for his letter. They were taking me to the morgue on a cart with black curtains. And in that moment I understood: Savva was dead. Truly dead. A bullet to the heart in room of the H;tel Imp;rial in Cannes. He had left and had not taken me with him. Something burst inside me. Not a tear, not a scream, but rage. Cold, white, like the snow that still lay in the dark Moscow back alleys.

In the pocket of my ghostly dress I felt a weight: my morning silk stocking, thin, the colour of ivory. It was the only solid object in this blurred world. Night fell over Moscow like a heavy velvet curtain; the street lamps burned dimly, as if afraid to shine brighter. I wandered along Kuznetsky, past closed shops, past windows with hats, and suddenly saw that newsboy. He was curled up in a doorway at house No. 8, sobbing over unsold newspapers. The headlines screamed about the death of my Savva. I approached — no, I floated silently. The silk in my hand came alive: it stretched, lengthened, became a long white snake. The boy raised his head; his eyes were round as buttons, filled with terror. He didn’t even have time to breathe in. The loop settled on his thin neck softly, almost tenderly. I tightened it slowly, feeling the cartilage crack, feeling the fabric warm from his last breath. And when he went limp, I kissed his icy forehead and whispered: “Now you know what it feels like too.”

Since that night I have remained here forever. Moscow became my prison and my hunting ground. I see everything: how in the basements of printing houses on Varvarka they compose new issues, how on Tverskaya journalists pound the keys of Underwood typewriters, inventing new deaths. I can smell fresh ink and old paper from a mile away. I come at night: a pale woman in a torn wedding dress, with eyes the colour of the dead Moscow River. I smell of expensive Coty La Rose Jacqueminot perfume and decay.

The newsboys fell first, then the second-hand booksellers on Neglinnaya who sold old issues of Niva and Strekoza. Then the writers who chewed over the theme of “the millionaire’s tragic passion”. The last was a critic from Russkiye Vedomosti who dared to call his suicide “the logical finale of decadence”. They found him at dawn in the entrance hall of a building on Sofiyskaya: the silk stocking tied in such an elegant bow, as though it were a bride’s gift.

And even now, at night, when Moscow falls asleep under a heavy sky and a pale moon rises over the Kremlin, I come out onto Kuznetsky Most — and so it will be forever. If you walk past late in the evening and suddenly feel a cold breeze, the scent of lilac and perfume mixed with the smell of printer’s ink and decay — run, don’t look back, because behind you the silk is already rustling.

My name is Jou-Jou. I am the ghost of a bride killed by words. And I will never again allow anyone to read about someone else’s death as though it were just news.