I sat down and ran my hand across my face in desperation. I loved my wife very much, but there had always been an unspoken thread of torment that had run through our lives. Her pain, her memories, were so much a part of her that she had very little room for anyone else’s; even mine.
‘There are things in life that it is impossible to ignore,’ she said after a few silent minutes, huddled in an armchair beside me, her arms wrapped around her body defensively, her face as white as the snow at Livadia. ‘There are coincidences… too many of them to justify our calling them that. I am a talisman for unhappiness, Georgy. That is what I am. I have brought nothing but misery throughout my life for the people who loved me. Nothing but pain. It’s my fault that so many of them are dead, I know this is true. Perhaps I should have died too when I was a child. Perhaps?’ she added, laughing bitterly and shaking her head. ‘What am I saying? Of course I should have. It was my destiny.’
‘But that’s madness,’ I said, sitting up and trying to take her hand in mine, but she pulled away from me, as if my very touch would set her aflame. ‘And what about me, Zoya? You’ve brought none of those things into my life.’
‘Death, no. But suffering? Misery? Anguish? You don’t think I’ve inflicted any of these things on you?’
‘Of course I don’t,’ I said, desperate to reassure her. ‘Look at us, Zoya. We’ve been married for more than fifty years. We’ve been happy. I’ve been happy.’ I stared at her, pleading with her to allow my words to soften her distress. ‘Haven’t you?’ I asked, almost afraid to hear her answer and watch our lives tumble apart around us.
She sighed, but finally nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You know I have. But this thing that has happened – to Arina, I mean – it’s too much for me. It’s one too many tragedies. I can’t allow any more in my life. No more, Georgy.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘I’m sixty-nine years old,’ she said with a half-smile. ‘And I’ve had enough. I don’t… Georgy, I don’t enjoy my life any more. I never have, if I am honest. I don’t want it. I don’t want any more of it. Can you understand that?’
She stood up and looked at me with such determination on her face that it scared me.
‘Zoya,’ I said, ‘what are you talking about? You can’t speak like this, it’s—’
‘Oh, I don’t mean what you think,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Not this time, I promise you. I just mean that when the end comes, and it will come soon, I won’t be sorry about it. Enough is enough, Georgy, can’t you see that? Don’t you ever feel the same way? Just look at this life that I have lived, that we have lived together. Think about it. How have we even survived this long?’ She shook her head and exhaled a long sigh, as if the answer was very simple and obvious. ‘I want it to end, Georgy,’ she told me. ‘That’s all. I just want it to end.’
The Prince of Mogilev
FOR WEEKS after I arrived in St Petersburg, I found my thoughts drifting back to Kashin, to the family I had left behind and the friend whose death weighed heavy on my conscience. At nights, lying on my thin bunk, Kolek’s face appeared before me, his eyes bulging from his head, his throat bruised and scarred from the ropes. I imagined his terror as the guards led him towards the trees where the noose had been hung; for all his bravado, I could not imagine that he went to his death with anything other than fear in his heart and regret for the decades not lived. I prayed that he did not blame me too much; regardless, it could scarcely compare with how much I blamed myself.
And when I was not thinking of Kolek, it was my family who dominated my thoughts, particularly my sister Asya, who would have given anything to be living where I was now. Indeed, it was Asya who I was thinking of late one afternoon when I first encountered the great Reading Room of the Winter Palace. The doors were open and I turned, intending to leave, but an instinct made me change my mind and I stepped inside, where I found myself alone in the serenity of a library for the first time in my life.
Three walls were filled from floor to ceiling with books and a ladder was attached to each on a rail so that the browser could push himself across the floor. In the centre stood a heavy oak table, on which were placed two large volumes – open, to a series of maps. Great leather armchairs were situated at different points in the room and I imagined myself sitting there for an afternoon, lost in reading. I had never read a book in my entire life, of course, but they called to me, a whisper from the constant bindings, and I reached for one after the other, scanning the title pages, reading opening paragraphs as well as I could, placing my discarded volumes on the table behind me without a thought.
So lost was I in my examination that I failed to hear the door open behind me, and only as the heavy boots marched across the floor did I blink back into the moment and realize that I was not alone. I turned, throwing the book that I was holding in the air in surprise. It fell to the floor, crashing open at my feet, the noise echoing around the walls, while I dropped to my knees and bowed my head in the presence of the anointed one.
‘Your Majesty,’ I said, not daring to look up. ‘Your Majesty, I must offer my sincere apologies. I was lost, you see, and—’
‘Stand up, Georgy Daniilovich,’ said the Tsar, and I stood slowly. Not long before, I had been grieving for my family; now I was in dread that I would be sent back to them. ‘Look at me.’
I lifted my head slowly and our eyes met. I could feel my cheeks begin to redden but he looked neither angry nor displeased.
‘What are you doing here anyway?’ he asked me.
‘I lost my way,’ I said. ‘I hadn’t intended coming in here, but when I saw them—’
‘The books?’
‘Yes, sir. I was interested, that’s all. I wanted to see what they contained.’
He breathed heavily for a moment, as if deciding how best to deal with this situation, before sighing and stepping away from me, walking behind the oak table and looking down at the volumes of maps, turning their pages and not looking at me as he spoke.
‘I wouldn’t have taken you for a reader,’ he said quietly.
‘I’m not, sir,’ I explained. ‘That is, I never have been.’
‘But you can read?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Who taught you, your father?’
I shook my head. ‘No, sir. My father would not have known how. It was my sister, Asya. She had some books she bought from a stall. She taught me my letters – most of them anyway.’
‘I see,’ he said. ‘And who taught her?’
I thought about it, but was forced to admit that I did not know. Perhaps in her desire to escape our home village she had simply educated herself in order that she could, for the length of a story’s few pages, escape to brighter worlds.
‘But you liked it?’ asked the Tsar. ‘I mean to say, something drew you in here.’
I looked around the room and thought for a moment, before offering an honest answer. ‘There’s something… interesting, yes, sir,’ I said. ‘My sister would tell me stories. I enjoyed hearing them. I thought I might find some here that would recall her to me.’
‘I expect you’re starting to miss your family,’ said the Tsar, stepping back now towards the window, so that the soft light shining through illuminated him on all sides. ‘I know that I miss my own when I am away from them for any length of time.’
‘I haven’t had any time to think of them, sir,’ I replied. ‘I’ve been trying to work as hard as I might. With Count Charnetsky, I mean. And the rest of my time I am honoured to spend with the Tsarevich.’