‘What happened?’ I ask. ‘Tonight, I mean. After I left. How did she become worse?’
‘It was unexpected,’ she says. ‘But not unusual, if I’m honest. I’m afraid the last stages of the disease can be unpredictable. A patient can be no better or worse for weeks, even months on end, and then one day she can suddenly become very ill. We moved her out of the ward and into this room so you would have some privacy.’
‘But she might…’ I hesitate; I want neither to fool myself nor to be treated like a fool. Still, I need to know. ‘She might improve yet, do you think? As quickly as she became worse, she could become better?’
Dr Crawford stops outside a closed door and offers me a half-smile as she touches my arm. ‘I’m afraid not, Mr Jachmenev,’ she says. ‘I think you should just focus on spending whatever time you have left together. You’ll see that Zoya is still attached to a heart monitor and a feeding tube, but other than that, there are no more machines. We feel it’s more peaceful this way. It offers the patient more dignity.’
I smile now, I almost laugh. As if she or anyone else could possibly know how much dignity Zoya has. ‘My wife was raised with dignity. She is the daughter of the last martyred Tsar of Russia, the great-granddaughter of Alexander II, the Tsar-Liberator who freed the serfs. The mother of Arina Georgievna Jachmenev. There is nothing you can do to diminish her.’
I want to say this, but of course I do not.
‘I’ll be at the nurses’ station when you need me,’ says Dr Crawford, opening the door. ‘Please, come and get me any time you want.’
‘Thank you,’ I say and she steps away now and leaves me alone in the corridor before the door. I push it open.
I look inside.
I enter.
‘Is it safe?’ I asked her as we sat outside the café in Hamina, on the south-eastern Finnish coast, looking towards the islands of Vyborgskiy Zaliv in the distance, towards St Petersburg. Of course, Zoya had planned this all along. It was to be our last trip together. It was she who had chosen Finland, she who had suggested that we travel further east than we had originally planned, and she who had insisted upon our taking this last voyage together.
‘It’s safe, Georgy,’ she told me, and I said that if it was what she wanted, then it was what we would do. We would go home. Not for long. A couple of days at most. Just to see it. Just to be there one last time.
We stayed in a hotel next to St Isaac’s Cathedral, arriving in the late afternoon, and sat by the window staring out at the square, two tall mugs of coffee before us, finding difficulty in speaking to one another, so moved were we to be back.
‘It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?’ she asked, shaking her head as she watched the people walking quickly along the street outside, doing their best not to be run over by the cars driving quickly every which way. ‘Did you ever think you’d be here again?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I never imagined it. Did you?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said quickly. ‘I always knew we’d come back. I knew it wouldn’t be until now, until the end of my life—’
‘Zoya…’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Georgy,’ she said, smiling tenderly and reaching across to place her hand on top of my own. ‘I’m not trying to be morbid. I should have said that I knew I would come back when I was an old woman, that’s all. Don’t worry, I have a couple of good years left in me yet.’
I nodded. I was still growing accustomed to Zoya’s illness, to the idea of losing her. The truth was that she looked so well it was difficult to believe that there was anything wrong with her. She looked as beautiful as she had on that first evening when I had seen her standing with her sisters and Anna Vyrubova at the chestnut stand on the bank of the Neva.
‘I wish we had brought Arina here,’ she said, surprising me a little, for she did not often speak of our daughter. ‘I think it would have been quite something to show her where she came from.’
‘Or Michael,’ I said.
She narrowed her eyes and looked less certain. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, considering it. ‘But even now it might be dangerous for him.’
I nodded and followed her gaze outside. It was night-time, but darkness had not yet fallen. We had both forgotten, but remembered at the same moment.
‘The White Nights,’ we said in unison, bursting out laughing.
‘I can’t believe it,’ I said. ‘How could we have forgotten the time of year? I was beginning to wonder why it wasn’t getting any darker.’
‘Georgy, we should go out,’ she said, filled with sudden enthusiasm. ‘We should go out tonight, what do you think?’
‘But it’s late,’ I said. ‘It may be bright, but you need to rest. We can go out in the morning.’
‘No, tonight,’ she pleaded. ‘We won’t stay out for long. Oh please, Georgy! To walk along the banks of the river on a night like this… we cannot come this far and not do it.’
I gave in, of course. There was nothing she could ask of me that I would not agree to. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘But we must dress warmly. And we cannot stay long.’
We left the hotel within the hour and walked down towards the banks of the river. There were hundreds of people strolling along arm in arm, enjoying the late brightness, and it felt good to be at one with them. We stopped and looked at the statue of the Bronze Horseman in the Alexander Garden, watching as the tourists had their photos taken in front of it. We said little to each other as we walked, knowing where our feet were taking us, but not wanting to destroy the moment by speaking of it until we arrived.
Passing by the Admiralty, we turned right and were soon confronted with the General Staff quarters circling Palace Square. Before us was the Alexander Column and standing before it, as bright and powerful as I remembered it, the Winter Palace.
‘I remember the night I arrived here,’ I said quietly. ‘I can recall passing the column as if it was only yesterday. The soldiers who brought me here dumped me by the side of the palace, and Count Charnetsky looked at me as if I was something he had discovered on the heel of his boot.’
‘He was a grump,’ said Zoya, smiling.
‘Yes. And then I was brought inside to meet your father.’ I shook my head and sighed deeply to prevent myself from becoming overwrought with memories. ‘That’s more than sixty years ago,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘It’s impossible to believe.’
‘Come,’ she said, leading me forward towards the palace itself, and I followed her cautiously. She had grown silent, her mind no doubt filled with many more memories than I had myself of this place; she had grown up here, after all. Her childhood, and that of her siblings, had been spent inside these walls.
‘The palace will be locked at this time of night,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow, perhaps, if you wanted to go inside—’
‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘No, I don’t want that. Just this. Look, Georgy, do you remember?’
We were standing in the small quadrangle between the front gates and the doors, the twelve colonnades surrounding us where the horseman had gone by too quickly, startling her, and she had fallen into my arms. The place where we had kissed for the first time.
‘We hadn’t even spoken to each other,’ I said, laughing at the memory of it.
Zoya leaned forward and embraced me once again, standing before me in the place where we had stood all those years before. This time, when we separated, it was difficult to speak. I could feel myself growing overwhelmed with emotion and wondered whether this had been a bad idea, whether we should have come here at all. I looked back towards the square and reached into my pocket for my handkerchief, dabbing at the corners of my eyes, determined that I would not lose control of my emotions.