Gossip abounded about that too, of course; about Tonya. The only child of a notoriously reclusive family, not seen in the Imperial Court for decades—
There are rumours enough to float a barge, in this city.
‘Dmitry knows about my walks,’ says Tonya. ‘He doesn’t mind.’
‘He forgets that a wife is different than a pet, a servant or an employee.’ Rub, rub, rub. ‘He’s had too many of all those. Anyway, I’ve come to say that you’d do better to stay home, darling, what with the demagogues, the radicals, the demonstrators on the streets. And you yourself so inexperienced, so young, so provincial …’
The Countess is still speaking – Tonya? Tonya? – but Tonya is no longer listening. The demagogues, the radicals. There he is, every morning, standing up there, speaking of freedom. Looking like freedom. She thinks of the way he said her name, Antonina, the way it came off his tongue, his way.
Anastasia remarks that Tonya looks different lately. Maybe it’s the good eye going bad too, seeing things, but Tonya doesn’t say so. Your face is so bright, child, Anastasia says, like you don’t view me as a chore any more. Anastasia pats Tonya’s hand, says she’s glad Tonya is here, says she always wanted a daughter. This makes Tonya think of Mama, who would never keep a room this dark, for then people wouldn’t be able to see her. What good is beauty, Mama would say, if it is left to fester?
Sometimes it feels disloyal to be spending this much time with Anastasia, with Mama gone and never coming back.
‘Have you thought of anything I can do for you?’ asks Anastasia. ‘Anything that might help make you feel more settled?’
‘I have everything anyone could want,’ says Tonya. What other answer can she give? That she daydreams about someone she has hardly spoken to – though he speaks to her, more than she can say? That she has read every book in this house several times over; that sometimes she entertains the incredible idea of crafting a story of her own, perhaps of unrequited love, like Turgenev, or starry skies and gooseberries, like Chekhov?
Her mother-in-law laughs. It sounds odd, a bit tinny. ‘You’ll think of something,’ she says. ‘There’s always something.’
Tonya has never observed Petrograd from the Vyborg side before. It has obviously been snowing all night, for there are no tracks on the Liteyny Bridge, no boot-prints except her own. The river below is near frozen. It’s hard to imagine that people will emerge from their warm beds in the coming weeks to see anyone speak, even someone with a voice like Valentin Andreyev’s. But the city must be growing on her, because this view is appealing, even pretty.
She senses someone beside her at the rail, and she stiffens.
‘You’re not from Piter,’ he says. ‘Nobody who is born here, looks upon that part of our city as you are doing now.’
She forces herself to glance at him. He is facing the river, away from her, but something has shifted between them, is shifting still.
Her stomach churns. ‘What do you mean? What part?’
‘Your part,’ he says. ‘The centre. Nevsky.’
‘What’s wrong with Nevsky?’ Tonya ignores her own heartbeat, loud in her ears. ‘It looks a fine place to live.’
‘It is a gilded walkway for tourists. And it’s not where people live. It’s where they go to escape their lives.’ He flashes her a smile. ‘But we are all tempted there sometimes.’
She bites her lip to keep from smiling back. ‘Did you not say this was where you would give your speech?’
‘I told you it was.’
‘But there is nobody here.’
‘There’s you. Do you want me to shout, or will you come closer?’
How far will she go? How far has she already gone? They are right next to one another. She moves closer anyway. She hears her own intake of breath, and his, and then she understands that he does not want to be here, along this river, alone with her, wasting his time, his morning, like this. He wants to be amongst the masses, in the noise, in the fervour. In the fire.
And yet he is here.
‘Don’t you think it’s been long enough?’ His voice is low, amused. ‘These past few months, upon seeing you, I would tell myself: She won’t come tomorrow. There’s no chance of it. Today is the last you will ever see of her. But recently I’ve begun to wonder if today is not the last day. If today is the first day.’
These past few months.
These past few months, at night, before falling asleep, Tonya has often closed her eyes and toyed with silly, steamy thoughts of Valentin. Of him lying beside her in bed, murmuring, trailing his mouth across her skin. But as soon as she opens her eyes, the idea seems laughable. Her bed is full of drapey lace and silk sheets and crochet pillows. Her room is painfully crowded, with its wreath-patterned wallpaper, its eighteenth-century Italian landscapes, the gilt vases and the vanity and the rose-oil lamps burning at all hours, so that it always smells like a bath. Valentin Andreyev does not fit anywhere in it.
He is only a dream, just like her nightmares.
‘This speech sounds quite unlike your others,’ she says unevenly.
‘It is less rehearsed.’
‘I should go.’
‘If you want to go, then go.’
‘It’s not possible for me to stay,’ she stammers. ‘You know I’m married, I’m—I’ve been mistaken. I’m sorry. You won’t see me again.’
Valentin bends his head to hers. He tugs at her shawl, and it falls away. She is exposed now to the frigid air. She realises her own hands are reaching up to touch his face, to meet around his neck. It feels exactly as it does in her daydreams. Nobody has ever mentioned that. She almost wants to say so, but only to slow down this moment, to bask, to bathe, to drown in it. Valentin kisses the curve of her brow bone and it burns, worse than the cold.
CHAPTER THREE
Rosie
Moscow, July 1991
Deep within a birch forest, a road runs through like a scar. Along this road is a young traveller, but she is trapped behind a panel of glass. She can’t reach out to touch the supple white trunks of the trees, all aglow in the afternoon sun. She can’t feel the wind that breathes across the leaves, that slips between the branches. Instead she presses her face up to the glass and uses her finger to trace the shape of everything she sees.
It sounds like the opening of one of Mum’s fairy tales.
But that traveller is only me, and the glass is only the tinted window of the black Mercedes that met me and Alexey at Sheremetyevo airport.
‘It won’t be long now,’ says Alexey.
The birch forest fades as we approach Moscow proper. Decaying tenements and Stalinist architecture spring up on all sides while the traffic builds, slows to a trickle. Our driver, who’s on loan to Alexey Ivanov from the government, curses as he changes lanes.
‘How are you doing back there?’ asks Alexey, glancing over at me.
I smile uneasily. It is sweltering. My shoes have congealed around my feet. I haven’t slept in almost a full day, and I’m ravenous. I wish I’d accepted his offer of a snack at the airport, even if all they had were shrivelled sandwiches, reminiscent of the ones Mum used to make for me. She’d slap on the mayonnaise between voracious swigs of vodka: Thwack. Thwack-thwack. Even now I can see the mayonnaise flying, hear the pickle slices screaming, taste the vodka in the bread.
‘Doing great,’ I say.
The driver brakes hard, and my handbag tumbles off my lap.