‘It was …’ Tonya struggles to speak. ‘It was Anastasia who told him about my affair. She does not care for my well-being.’
Natalya rubs her silver necklace. ‘Maybe she regrets the telling.’
‘Or was it you who told him?’ Tonya asks, in a croak.
‘Certainly not, darling. I go about things more quietly than that. Perhaps it was your lady’s maid, the one who sounds like she swallowed a shoe? Wasn’t she the one sent to follow you?’
‘Please,’ Tonya says, her tongue twisting on the plea, ‘would you help me?’
A throaty laugh. ‘With what?’
‘Would you find Valentin Andreyev, and tell him what’s become of me?’
‘I will do no such thing,’ says the Countess, who is no longer laughing. Even if the events of these few months, the founding of the new government, the Tsar being run out of the city, the masses rising up, are amusing to people like Natalya, it’s clearly not amusing to such people when it happens in their households. A revolution on the streets, that’s as may be. But a revolution inside, in here, that is an entirely different thing.
Dmitry is in the doorway. Groggy with sleep, Tonya somehow notices that her husband is dressed in an evening jacket, like he has just come from a show at the Mariinsky. His hair is groomed and slicked, his cravat high and tight. The cloying stench of liquor seems to form a cloud around him.
‘I heard you from downstairs, Tonyechka,’ he says, approaching the bed. ‘Did you have another nightmare?’
The day Tonya first met Dmitry, she was fifteen years old. It was spring and the orchard trees at Otrada were beginning to bloom. Tonya was coming in from the creek with Nelly, the two of them holding up their skirts and bast shoes, giggling madly. She was carrying a spray of wildflowers in her free hand. And then she and Nelly turned, just at the place where Otrada comes into view, and a stranger was standing there.
Right now, he is her only nightmare.
‘I’m not feeling well. Could we speak in the morning,’ Tonya says, not able to raise her voice, to turn it into a question. He is already lifting her bedcovers. He hasn’t come to her like this in months. Longer. Maybe he’s been revolted by the rodent-nest of her hair, the bruised tint of her lips, the bald desperation in her eyes. She’s become something he might scrape off a shoe.
But tonight it appears he has drunk enough.
He removes his cravat. His breath is strong and tarty.
‘Of everything I have ever brought home, of all my collections,’ he says, ‘you are the crowning piece.’
Three years ago, after Nelly ran off, still giggling, the stranger introduced himself. He was from the capital. He was visiting the area and had come to pay his respects to Mama and Papa. His name was Dmitry Lulikov, and someone in the village had told him about Kukolka, the girl who looked like a doll, only he hadn’t believed. He believed now, he said. He offered Tonya his arm.
In taking it, she remembers for the first time, she dropped her wildflowers.
She wonders how they must have looked later, abandoned in the soft earth, the stems broken, the colour faded, the petals crushed into nothing.
The study is darker than ever. The fire has long died, though the grate still shudders. Anastasia lies flat beneath her blankets. Even the pillows no longer elevate her head. She begins to hum, off-key. She has had too much morphine. The body strums, with too much morphine. The brain slows. Tonya saw it with Papa, after Mama died, the way a person’s eyes glide over everything, catch on nothing.
Anastasia’s gaze rotates her way. ‘My son has let you come.’
‘He says you asked for me.’
‘As my dying wish. Oh, child, just look at you.’
‘I’ve been unwell, Anastasia Sergeyevna.’
‘I shouldn’t have told him. Natalya was right. She said to put Mitya’s feelings first. I only thought it would be best … for him to know …’ The old woman’s voice is full of holes. ‘Olenka tells me that your menstruation has ceased, that it has been months now. Dare I take this to mean you are pregnant?’
‘I think so,’ Tonya says, looking away.
‘Why haven’t you told my son? A baby does so much for a marriage—’
‘It’s not his.’
‘How can you know?’
‘He left in December, Anastasia Sergeyevna, and was gone well past a month. I last bled around Christmas.’
He has not gone away since.
There is a long silence in which Tonya thinks Anastasia may have already died, but then the old woman lifts her head from the pillow. ‘You must pretend that it is his, Tonya. You must not say otherwise.’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘For everyone’s good. The baby’s good.’ Anastasia’s head drops once more. ‘Mitya is like his father. You never knew my husband, but he lacked—I daresay he lacked the ability to care for others, or even to think of others. When we were first married, I thought it was merely his upbringing, his privilege; had I known his temperament, his traits, would pass to his offspring, I would have done much differently! But now it’s too late, and once you’re a mother yourself, you will understand. You’ll see how helpless we all are, in loving our children. Whoever your child is, you will forgive him anything.’
‘No,’ says Tonya hazily, ‘I won’t.’
‘I promise you, you will.’ One tear falls, out of the good eye. ‘Now read something to me, child, as you used to, before you go.’
Tonya agrees to read, but mostly because she doesn’t wish to return to her room. There are no books here, and the light is too poor for her to read anyway, so she closes her eyes and recites Pushkin from memory instead: You appeared to me in dreams … in my soul, your voice resounded …
She looks to see if Anastasia is still awake. Anastasia’s eyes are open.
The bad one is clearer than the good one.
It’s not such a bad way to die, listening to Pushkin, and Tonya keeps going, in case her mother-in-law’s spirit is still in the room and wants to hear more.
Dmitry motions for her to make space in the bed. He’s been drinking more and more lately. Perhaps as a replacement for travelling. Tonya slides over, already feeling numb. He says he wants to tell her about Anastasia’s funeral, about how they had a small litia in the church by her dacha. Few people attended. Most of Anastasia’s friends and relations are dead. The rest have fled Russia in the wake of revolution.
Dmitry pinches her chin gently, turns her face sideways.
‘My mother’s last request,’ he says, ‘was for a grandchild.’
It is not a question and Tonya does not answer.
‘Do you not desire a baby? My baby?’
My baby. It would be his baby and not hers. He can’t even think otherwise, because everything else is his. Even if Nicholas II is no longer in power, there are many more in this city who have not given up their thrones, who still rule their own kingdoms. Perhaps there will have to be yet another revolution before the people can truly have anything of their own. Even their babies.
‘I’m not overly fond of children, but I like the idea of someone to inherit everything I’ve amassed, in my time.’ Dmitry wipes something off her cheek. ‘Once you’re stronger, and back to yourself again, we can talk about it some more. Should I have Olenka run you a bath? Or shall I brush your hair for you? Whatever you want, Tonyechka. You’re the only lady of the house now.’
Anastasia was the bulwark, Tonya realises, that kept the most savage part of Dmitry at bay. But Anastasia is gone now, and with her, all pretences. Tonya has never been a wife. She has always been a prisoner. Dmitry has always been her jailer, and he will find out one way or another.
‘I’ll leave you to sleep,’ he says.
‘I am already pregnant.’
Dmitry looks at her as if he hasn’t understood.
‘It is Valentin Andreyev’s.’ Tonya finds herself revelling in each word. ‘Do you know who Valentin is? He is the leader of the Vyborg Committee. He is their speaker in the union. He is head of the workers’ militia—’