“Knock, knock! The ball is next Saturday, Dragana; are you getting ready for it?”
My father came through the open door into my study. I was looking at a butterfly through my microscope. I rose to tell him, “Several species of swallowtail butterflies will be emerging from their cocoons soon. I was planning on a couple of excursions into the hills to watch that happen.”
“Oh shush, shush! The butterflies do that every year, but the Baron has his first commemorative ball for our victory over the Turks only once. Everyone will be there.”
“But Papa—”
“Everyone will be there. You’ve been away a long time, Dragana, you need to meet people again, not butterflies. And it’s a masquerade ball; you’ll have plenty of fun.”
I smiled brightly, having had an idea. “Yes, that sounds like fun! I’ll plan on being there. Thank you, Papa,” I said.
I would go to the ball as a huntress. To my plainest outdoor costume—suitable for trudging through the countryside, clambering over hills, and stalking butterflies or wild strawberries—I need only add my bow and arrows and an eye-mask. Instead of spending hours and hours on costume preparations, I needed simply to make sure those clothes were clean and neat, and that I still had a suitable mask in my wardrobe. I am always happy when I can please my father; he is ever so good to me.
He left and I resumed my microscoping.
My father sometimes laughed at me and said I was too brainy to catch a good husband, but he never stopped me from studying, and he loved it when I showed him new wonders I’d discovered about nature.
Then he would say, “You’d be a good match for the Baron. He loves nature, too.” He meant the young Baron, of course, savior of the Kalzov Valley and man of the world! I knew as much about him as I could and I loved hearing more.
Whenever my father said this I just told him, “You’re very sweet, Papa,” and smiled, because I doubted such a great man would have any interest in bookish little me.
And then Papa would say something like, “Seriously, my dear. I know from personal experience that the Baron likes intelligent women, and if you were to make a match with him, it would be wonderful for the family.”
My father’s personal experience came from being one of the Baron’s inner circle, the men who had helped him drive off the Kalnichovs and Turks last year.
Ten minutes after my father left, I had a less welcome visitor, his fiancée and house guest, Allura Vinzetta. (My mother died years ago, of a fever.) She was a widow whom my father had met just two months ago in Venice, when he came there to spend a couple of weeks before bringing me home from my female seminary there. They were introduced by my drama teacher, Signor Picardi, a repulsive person who, when he wasn’t talking about drama, was talking about whom he met and what they wore, very boring topics to me. Worse, he was a toady and a hypocrite, fawning on people in their presence but turning malicious when they were gone.
When he found out how important my father was in our little valley, Picardi became completely fascinated with him. For me, it was funny to watch, and since they would know each other for only two weeks, I felt no need to caution my father about him—and I couldn’t have cautioned him about Allura.
Three days before we were to return to the Balkans, he proposed to her and she accepted. This gave her just time to assemble the few trunks necessary to accompany us home, and to arrange for another dozen or so to follow her.
I didn’t understand what my father saw in Allura. She wouldn’t be seen unless dressed in high fashion and being followed by servants. Her maid Gina must have applied her makeup with a trowel and her hairstyle alone took an hour to assemble. It wasn’t that I minded my father having an object of affection, or even a new wife, but I knew he could do better … much better.
“Hello, Allura,” I said evenly.
She waddled to my side, in the sort of half walk, half minuet that she clearly thought part of her charm.
“Oh … still at your bugs?” she asked. When she first saw my microscope, she seemed to hope it was some kind of glass-and-metal pet, like a mechanical songbird. That she could have understood my having an interest in. I had been amused to disappoint her.
“Your father asked me to help you with your gown for the ball.”
“Oh, that’s all right—”
“It’s no problem at all, dear. Should we start now?”
I thought about brushing her off, but decided that it was better to be on the good side of my future stepmother. And probably my father really had asked her.
“I think … we will dress you up as … a tigress! Ummm?” she said. “It will suit your coloring perfectly.” She looked at me as if I was six, she had just given me a doll, and she was expecting me to squeal with delight. I fear I only smiled politely.
We spent the rest of the afternoon at her dressmaker’s. Allura ordered me a full-skirted dress with a short train, horizontally striped in orange and black, and an orange and black domino mask with bouncy black whiskers sprouting out from it, all topped by a tall hat with charming little pussy-cat ears peeking out at the brim. Of course the silhouette was totally out of fashion, having been in style about the time I was born. And the stripes were not only vulgar, they were wrong; it should have been a bee costume with antennae, not ears and whiskers!
As I watched the dressmaker pin and fit this hideous abomination (to her credit, with barely concealed reluctance), I remembered the last time my father had asked Allura to advise me, before a small dinner party honoring an aged friend of his, Fridrik Vrhov. She had urged me to quote, at every opportunity, from the works of Goethe. “Mr. Vrhov loves to read him in the original German, you see.” “Delightful!” I replied. “I do too.”
Perhaps needless to say, old Mr. Vrhov had read Goethe only sparingly, in translation, and with no admiration whatever. I came off not as the polished sophisticate Allura allegedly wanted me to appear, but as a caricature of the bluestocking I really was. Meanwhile, she played the gracious, deferential hostess. When the next day at breakfast I made some remark about having been drenched by the Goethe wave, Allura made a pretty apology for having been misinformed.
Now she was dressing me as if I were actively ugly, with much to hide. I was sure that this costume was designed to contrast with hers, to make her look her best, not me.
But there was no reason to protest. My father could afford to let Allura amuse herself with this costume I would never wear, and I had only to stick to my original plan.