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“Yekaterina?” It was an old woman’s voice, high-pitched and tremulous, drifting from the back room of the draughty tenement apartment in answer to the creak of the front door: “Is that you?”
“Yes, Mamochka,” she called back. She looked up at the tall, lean gentleman, who, stony-faced, regarded her in turn over the frames of his tinted pince-nez. “My mother, sir,” she explained, apologetically. “She worries sometimes.”
“She is right to worry,” the gentleman replied. His voice was flat, neutral, as expressionless as his face. From his accent, he was not a native New Yorker, but then again, a lot of people in the city were not. It was hard to tell from where he might originate. She detected a hint of English, a tinge of French, a dash of German… “This can be a most…dangerous city.”
“So I have heard, sir,” she answered, with the hint of a smile, “but I have lived in Manhattan ever since I was a small girl and I have never come to any harm.”
“Who are you talking to?” her mother demanded, querulously. “Another one of your men?”
“Yes, Mamochka! A client!” She turned back to the gentleman as he paused on the apartment’s threshold. For a second, she was afraid he was having second thoughts about coming inside.
“Shame, Yekaterina! You bring shame on this house!”
“She is old,” she almost pleaded with him. “Sick. Ever since my father died…”
“I understand,” said the gentleman, as if she had just explained some complex mathematical proof to him. He allowed her to usher him inside, to close the door on the dingy tenement staircase, on the sounds of raised voices and squalling babies, on the smells of damp rot and burned food and overboiled laundry. Even at this late hour, New York never ceased its clamour.
He let her take his high silk hat, his heavy topcoat and gold-topped cane, and place them reverently on one of the rickety chairs. Her eyes and fingers lingered hungrily on the rich fabrics, the polished wood… Any one of these items was worth more to her than a month’s work, a month’s rent…
“Please,” she said, turning to indicate the other two chairs and the equally shaky table, the only furniture in the murkily-lit room. “Please, sir, sit down.”
For a moment, he seemed to ignore her, looking around the room at the peeling walls, the bare floorboards, the crudely blocked rathole in the corner. He glanced at the cold, empty fireplace and the single candle burning on the mantel. He seemed to linger over the small framed photograph of her parents, posing stiffly in their best clothes, and the one of her grandmother scowling in widow’s black.
She took the chance to look her client over properly for the first time. Under his hat, the gentleman was completely bald, the smooth skin of his head and face as taut and pale as marble. By taking off his coat, he had revealed the red velvet jacket he wore beneath, a garment perhaps better suited to some opulent smoking room. A strangely dandyish choice, she thought, for one who seemed so reserved and serious. It matched his silk necktie; both were the deep, glistening red of spilled blood. The rest of his clothing was more conventional; snow-white collar and cuffs; dark, sober waistcoat and trousers; grey suede spats to match the kid gloves he had yet to remove; gleaming patent leather shoes. But his heavy gold watch chain, with its ruby-studded fob that matched his tiepin, could have bought him a decent share of this building…and probably some of its occupants too.
His gaze briefly fell upon the single shelf of books mounted on the far wall, upon her grandmother’s smoke-stained ikona depicting the Virgin and Child. “Russian,” he commented ponderously, without looking in her direction. ““Mamochka” is Russian, correct?”
“That is correct, sir.” She waited for him to speak again, and when he did not, added: “My family come from…well, a little town near St Petersburg originally.”
“You speak very good English,” he said. “I can usually detect the hint of an accent.” He showed no indication of irony regarding his own unusual, unplaceable way of speaking.
“As I say, I have lived here ever since I was a small girl, and my father…” She blinked away a tear before it had a chance to flow. “He always insisted we speak English, even among ourselves in the house. He did not want to be known as an immigrant. He wanted us all to be Americans.”
“And why did he want that?”
She tried not to be taken aback by the question. “Well, my father, you see…he did not…” She hesitated, wondering whether the gentleman really wanted to hear such ancient history.
“Go on,” he commanded.
“My father was an idealist,” she told him, hearing the bitterness in her own voice. “He did not love the Tsar or the oppression done in his name. You have heard of the Okhrana, sir?”
“I have.”
“He wanted to come to America because he had heard it was the land of the free.” She quickly swatted another tear from her cheek. She knew there was no surer way to lose a client than to show them genuine emotion. “No secret police or pogroms here. That is what he had heard.”
“And did he find…freedom, I wonder, in New Amsterdam?”
The freedom to be robbed and cheated, she thought. The freedom of a pauper’s grave. But she said: “Please, sir, make yourself comfortable. We should begin.”
The gentleman finally turned his head to look at her, the red lenses of his pince-nez flashing in the candlelight. The eyes behind them were even paler than his skin; he seemed to look deep within her, and not to be impressed by what he saw.
She took a step back, suddenly very uneasy. “Sir…”
“You are correct,” he intoned, moving to the table. “We should begin.”
She waited until he had seated himself upon a creaking chair, then crossed to the shelf to take down a small, cloth-wrapped bundle from beside her grandmother’s dogeared prayer-book.
“Yekaterina! Yekaterina, are you making tea?”
“Tea later, Mamochka! I am working now.”
“Working…”
She turned back to the gentleman, as if the last exchange had not taken place. He showed no sign of interest in it. As still and unwavering as the statue he resembled, he watched in thoughtful silence as she returned to the table.
She carefully seated herself across the table from him, setting down the cloth bundle in front of her. She rearranged her patched black dress, letting her shawl fall off her shoulders a little, letting him see an inch or two of décolletage. Some clients, usually the lonely or unhappily married ones, came here as much to see her as they did for her services. The gentleman’s reaction, or lack of one, suggested he was not one of them. She could see he had something in front of him too; the same crumpled flyer, stained with glue and brick dust, he had shown her when he had found her on the stoop downstairs, hawking for business as she did most days and nights. The small fee she had paid the print shop in Orchard Street might have proven a good investment after all.
“Madame Katya,” he read quietly from the cheap, slightly blurred text before him. “Renowned Teller of Fortunes. Your Future in Every Turn of the Cards. Best Advice Given in Business, Travel, Lawsuits, Love and Family Affairs.” He picked up the flyer and gazed intently at it for a moment or two, as if baffled by everything he had just read. “Madame Katya,” he said at last. “Is that your name?”
“It is how I am known professionally.” She tried the smile again, and again received no response. She showed him her bare fingers. “I am not really a Madame.” Or a madam, for that matter, whatever Mamochka might think.
“You seem…old, by the standards of this time and place, to be unmarried.” Something about the way he made this observation made her think he did not mean it cruelly. Did it matter, though, how he meant it? “To be living alone with your mother, that is.”
“I do not think I am old yet, sir,” she gently protested. “And as I explained, my mother is sick. She needs somebody to care for her.”
And besides, she herself was not the marrying type.
“And how much…care can you provide her,” the gentleman wondered, “for…Price, Fifteen Cents Per Reading?”
“My family was not always poor,” she informed him, irked slightly by the bluntness of his words. Some clients, usually the better-off ones, wanted her to know how desperate she was, to be appropriately grateful for their generosity. She was not exactly sure the gentleman was one of those clients either, but she knew she did not like his tone. “But my father…he had bad luck. And then when he died…” She took a deep breath. “I do what I can.” She held out an expectant hand towards the gentleman. “And now, it is traditional to…cross the reader’s palm with silver.”
“Of course.” The gentleman’s face did not move, but his voice perhaps contained the faintest ghost of amusement. “You require an offering.”
“That I do, sir.”
The gentleman discarded the flyer once more and made a stage magician’s pass with his right hand; instantly, there was a bright flash between his gloved fingers. She tried not to gasp as he deftly set the dollar piece spinning across the tabletop towards her, showing first the flickering eagle, then Lady Liberty, then… It represented more money than she had seen in one place in quite some time indeed. “Please,” he said as the coin rattled to a halt, falling Liberty side up in front of her. “Proceed.”
“Are you in the business?” She had thought she knew sleight of hand, well enough at least to spot when a man had palmed a coin. Just now, though…
It had appeared from nowhere. From thin air.
“And what business would that be?” the gentleman asked, icily.
“Do you know Mr Garrick?” she asked him, still a little unnerved by the trick however much she might tell herself that was all it had been. “He is a student of conjuring and prestidigitation too. I have…crossed paths with him from time to time.”
“It was none other than Mr Garrick who gave me your flyer,” the gentleman replied, slightly sardonically. “He told me you were very good at what you do. He said he saw great potential in you. I have come here to judge whether he was right about that.”
A silence fell over the room as they watched each other across the table. A heavy, electric stillness hung in the air, tingling and yet oppressive, making the hairs prickle at the back of her neck.
“Potential…?” she began.
“Yekaterina!” The reedy voice cut through the silence, making her jump. She was not completely sorry that that particular moment had been cut short. “Is he still here?”
“Proceed,” the gentleman urged again, from behind his glinting lenses.
Slowly, her fingers moving lightly yet deftly, almost of their own accord, she unfolded the dusty black cloth. She spread it across the table’s stained and knife-gouged surface and picked up the deck of brittle, yellowed cards within. She began to shuffle them, quickly and with well-practiced skill.
“Many are the secrets and mysteries contained within these cards,” she told the gentleman, as she had told a thousand clients before him. She let her voice grow louder, sharper, ringing with power.
“Your cards are pasteboard and ink,” the gentleman replied dispassionately. “There is no power in them that does not come from the one who deals them.”
“Do you accuse me of trickery, sir?” She cranked an insolent eyebrow, facing down his red-tinted stare. She was not Yekaterina, poor idealistic Yuri Ivanov’s spinster daughter, not while she had the cards in front of her. She was Madame Katya. And Madame Katya was wise and mysterious, powerful and respected. She feared no man, not even one who threw silver dollars around as if they were bottlecaps. “I assure you, the cards can provide the answers you need, even if they are not the answers you would wish to hear. I warn you of that now, sir. It is not too late to leave.”
Once again, the gentleman gave what might have been the distant echo of a smile. He did not strike her as one who showed even that much very often or very easily. His attention seemed focused on her hands now as he closely watched all she did with the cards. At the same time, she could see how he was listening to her spiel with a new attentiveness. She felt as if she were being studied, appraised, as if the gentleman were noting and remembering everything.
“Yes, the cards can provide answers,” she continued, “but only to those who know how to ask them the right questions.” When the deck was well-shuffled, she offered it across the table to him. “Please, sir; cut the cards. And as you do, ask them the question you would have them resolve.”
The gentleman took the cards from her, looking down at them for a moment in the same nonplussed fashion as when he had examined the flyer. When he finally cut them, however, his hands moved even more quickly and subtly than her own. And that, remarkably, while wearing gloves.
“I would like to know…” He split the pack three, four, five times, two-handed, one handed. He fanned it out and collapsed it back upon itself. “What does the future hold for you?”
“Sir…” She tried to laugh, but could not quite force it out. Once again, she felt terribly uncomfortable all of a sudden. “Sir, my clients do not normally ask…”
“I am not one of your normal clients,” the gentleman quite accurately pointed out. He leaned forward, making the chair groan, and placed the shuffled deck back within her easy reach upon the black cloth. He tapped it once with two large, leather-clad fingers before he withdrew: “Deal the cards.”
She almost told him to leave. Something about his manner… But then her eyes fell upon the silver dollar, shining like the full moon against the cloth. He would surely take that with him if she ejected him into the night. She took another breath, gathering herself, trying not to look him in the eye as she took the cards in her hand. “Very well.” She began to lay them on the cloth, face down: three cards placed end to end, then two more cards one either side to make seven in all. This was the spread known as The Star. She was too unnerved at the moment for anything more complex. She hoped the gentleman could not see the slight tremor in her hand as she dealt the last card.
“Are we ready?” she asked the air, buying herself a second to regain her poise.
“I am ready,” said the gentleman. “As to whether you are… That remains to be seen.”
He was mocking her, she was sure, even if his granite face betrayed no amusement now. She turned the first card in a flash of anger, revealing a crisscross pattern of pointed blades.
“The Nine of Swords,” she announced. “This card, sir, speaks of…”
“Fears,” the gentleman interrupted. “Worries. Cares.”
She looked up from the table, grimly meeting his eyes once more. “So, you have studied the Tarot too, sir?”
“I have considered it in passing,” he answered, “along with other minor fripperies that some mistake for magic.”
Her anger returned, more than a flash this time: “If that is what you think, why do you waste your time with me? You can buy better entertainments than that for a dollar.”
He did not react to her words, other than to point to the dealt cards with the same two fingers. “Continue.”
She swallowed her rage, not without difficulty, forcing herself to pay attention to the card before her. “If you truly have studied the Tarot, sir, you will know there is more than one meaning to this card. It can also refer to the passing nature of such worries and concerns. The world is not always as terrible as you may imagine.”
“No,” said the gentleman, dryly. “Sometimes it is much worse.”
She turned the next card, according to the order of the spread. This one showed a complex geometric pattern, surrounding…
“The Five of Pentacles,” she informed the gentleman. “This card indicates…”
“Penury,” he cut in. “Hardship.” He took another, very pointed, look around the room. “Desperation and precariousness.”
“And also resourcefulness,” she pointed out. “It can symbolise the ability to solve one’s problems, learned only through experiencing the very hardships of which you speak. The ability to secure the aid one needs to overcome them.”
“Yes,” the gentleman agreed. “And that is in itself a sort of power. However, one still requires that aid.”
“The third card.” Somehow, she was not surprised by what she saw when she turned it. This card was one of the major arcana, showing an elaborate and brightly coloured painting of a tall, commanding figure with a trident in its hand. The figure’s clothing and skin were red.
The deep, glistening red of spilled blood.
“The Devil,” she murmured.
The gentleman leaned forward slightly, the shadows and candlelight crawling across the hard planes and contours of his smooth head. He seemed to be sneering contemptuously at her even as his face remained impassive. “The Devil,” he agreed.
“He stands for violence,” she said, as much to herself as to her client. “Indulgence and gluttony. Enslavement. Addiction.”
“And at the same time liberation,” the gentleman observed, contemplatively. “The opportunity…and the will…to rise above mundanity and mediocrity, to remake oneself; to pursue power, glory, greatness…”
“At the cost of morality,” she countered.
“Morality.” The gentleman made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Another word for cowardice.”
The fourth card, when she turned it, was even less of a surprise than the third had been. She looked down in silence for a while at a figure not unlike the Devil, except this one was robed in deepest black and instead of a trident it bore a scythe. It grinned up at her, daring her to speak its name aloud.
“Death.”
“Yes,” the gentleman concurred. “Death.”
“Stands for…well, death,” she went on.
“Is that all it stands for?” Again, she had the idea that he was making fun of her in his own dour way.
“No,” she admitted. “Death can also signify rebirth, transformation…”
“Transformation,” he echoed.
“Yekaterina! Stop shaming yourself with that man and bring me my tea!”
“A fresh start,” she all but whispered.
The gentleman said nothing. He merely stabbed his two fingers towards the cards again. The signal for her to go on.
“The fifth card.” She turned it over with renewed urgency, desperate to see what it was and at the same time terribly afraid. Another card of the major arcana, she saw, but this one depicted a tall, majestic structure wreathed in roiling cloud and stabbing lightning. The masonry cracked and crumbled under the storm’s onslaught; tiny people plummeted, burning, from the building’s shattered windows. “The Tower. It stands for disaster, destruction; the collapse of old systems and the beginning of change.”
This time, the gentleman seemed to find her interpretation less amusing. A tiny, almost invisible crease appeared between his brows, just above the gold bridge of the pince-nez. The closest he came to a frown, she supposed. “Certainly, as with Death, it can mean the end of one thing and the beginning of another…” He raised his gloved hand towards his chin in an attitude of deep thought.
She moved on to the final cards without him, trying to make sense in her own mind of the shape she could see unfolding before her. “The Three of Swords.” She picked it up between finger and thumb, just as the gentleman had with the flyer before, as if that could provide some additional insight. “Grief?” she wondered aloud, dropping the card again as though it had burned her fingers. “A broken heart? Sadness and suffering?”
The gentleman seemed jolted out of his contemplation by these words. “It may also indicate the necessity of confronting a difficult truth, allowing…logic to overcome sentiment.” He himself probably did not have much trouble doing this, she mused. “It may symbolise the freeing of oneself from…personal entanglements in order to pursue one’s true path, however painful that might prove.”
“Yekaterina!”
She turned the last card. She looked down at it for a little while before she named it, tracing the lines of the overlaid blades with the tip of her finger. “The Ten of Swords.”
“And what does that symbolise?” the gentlemen asked her, almost impatiently. She glanced up at him, however, and his pose and expression remained as stolid as ever.
“It can mean…” She hesitated. “It can indicate a betrayal of trust, an act of treachery. And also…the final end of something.”
“Terminus,” he gravely pronounced.
“Yes.”
“And yet sometimes,” said the gentleman, “a final end is not a burden but rather a…release. When one lets go of one’s connections to the quotidian, accepting and following the path that presents itself, however difficult, then one can act decisively, without encumbrance. One can pursue the ineffable without fear or regret.”
Now it was her turn to stare at him, to try to understand exactly what he meant by his cryptic pronouncements, exactly what he was insinuating or implying. All she said aloud was: “And that concludes the reading.”
“And a very good reading it was,” the gentleman replied. “Most illuminating, in fact. Garrick may be a jackanapes, but he is occasionally a perceptive one. He saw potential in you, and he was not wrong.” He paused, taking in the cards, the table, herself, with another penetrating glance. “There is power here.”
“Power?” She pushed her chair back a little from the table, leaving the cards where they lay.
“Do you really believe the turn of a card is random?” he demanded. “Do you think the cards you have drawn tonight were mere happenstance?”
“Were they not?” she asked, trying to regather her earlier insolence.
“They were not. On the other hand, they are nothing more than confetti. Pasteboard and ink. They are merely the medium through which you express your insight, your ability. You do not need them. What you require is…tuition.”
“Tuition?”
“You would have to give up the power you have now,” he informed her, as if discussing the weather or the price of coal. “However, one of your potential should readily be able to learn a different sort of power. A power beyond your current imagining. All it will require of you is a certain…degree of sacrifice.”
“A sacrifice?” she asked, feeling that electric heaviness settle over her again, that same prickling at the nape of her neck.
“Yes. A sacrifice.” The gentleman let his pince-nez slip a fraction down his long nose, fixing her with those eyes; those pale, cold eyes. “Are you interested…Madame Katya?”
She looked at the gentleman, at his marble skin and stony expression, at his red velvet jacket and grey kid gloves. She looked at the peeling walls, the bare floorboards. She looked at the ruby twinkling in his tiepin. She looked at the cards in front of her, and the frightening, enticing story they told.
“Yekaterina!” her mother called from the back room. “Yekaterina, are you there?”
“Yes,” she said.
END?