Chapter Fifty-Four
Prague, October 1947
Goosebumps broke out all over Dmitri’s skin and the hair stood up on the back of his neck. He looked up and it was her. Tatiana. Utterly herself after all these decades.
He couldn’t speak, but tears welled up. He pressed his knuckles to his eyes in an attempt to stop them.
‘We had best get out of here,’ she said in Russian. ‘Come with me.’
When Dmitri stood, his knees almost gave way beneath him. Tatiana took his arm and led him down a side street into the Old Town. Neither of them spoke, but Dmitri breathed the cold night air deep into his lungs in an attempt to compose himself, surreptitiously wiping his eyes. She turned down a short flight of steps that led to the wooden door of a cellar bar. It was dark and quiet inside, with only three other customers. They took a corner table and asked the waitress to bring two glasses of red wine.
‘Is it really you?’ Dmitri breathed, gazing at her face. She looked almost exactly the same, apart from a deep furrow between her brows and little grooves, like symmetrical scars, on either side of her mouth. Her long hair was pinned into an old-fashioned bun at the back of her head.
‘I brought something so you would be sure it is me,’ she said, and fumbled in her pocket before producing the jewelled dog tag she’d commissioned Fabergé to make for Ortipo.
‘How could you think …?’ he began, a fist squeezing his heart.
‘I heard there have been many people pretending to be my sisters or brother and couldn’t bear it if you hadn’t believed me.’ Her voice was the same as ever, soft and low.
He shook his head in amazement. ‘I would have known you anywhere. You haven’t changed a bit.’
‘Oh, I have.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Of course I have. So have you.’ She looked at his crumpled face, his receding hairline, with a fond smile. ‘I think you are more handsome than ever.’
He felt the tears welling again and blinked rapidly. The wine arrived and they raised their glasses to each other in a silent toast then drank, and he was glad of the warmth in his throat.
‘I’ve read all your books,’ she said. ‘They’re wonderful. I would have known they were yours no matter what name you put on the cover.’ They had been published under the name Dmitri Yakovlevich.
‘Why did you not contact me before?’ he asked. ‘You could have written to my publishers. They would have forwarded a letter.’
‘I only discovered you were a writer just before the war. I saw a newspaper article, with a grainy photograph alongside, and couldn’t believe my eyes. I had been told you were killed at Tsaritsyn in 1919 so my shock then was similar to yours tonight. I rushed out to buy your books straight away and when I read Interminable Love …’ She sighed deeply. ‘It was as if your soul spoke to me through the pages.’
‘It was a love letter to you,’ he said. ‘I prayed you would read it one day.’
Her face lit up. ‘Really?’
‘Of course. Oh, I wish you had got in touch then.’
Her face clouded over. ‘The years under Occupation were difficult. The Germans would have considered it suspicious if I tried to write to the author of The Boot that Kicked at an address in New York. People were executed for less.’
A spasm of pain twisted her mouth and suddenly Dmitri couldn’t bear any more casual chat. He grabbed her hand and looked into her eyes. ‘Are you all right, Tatiana? Is everything all right?’
She gave a little laugh. ‘No, not really.’ She was struggling to contain her emotion but her face gave her away, the way it always used to when she was younger. ‘But seeing you, I am more than all right.’
A blast of love for her knocked Dmitri sideways as though he had been struck by a giant wave in the ocean, as though someone had kicked the chair from beneath him. His face felt hot and he could hardly breathe. The love he felt was every bit as vast and overwhelming as it had been on the night they married in St Petersburg, on the night she disappeared from his cottage in Ekaterinburg. How could that be, when it was more than thirty years since they last saw each other? His ears were buzzing. He even wondered if he might be having a heart attack. He picked up his wine and took a gulp, then another, yearning for intoxication to still his rampaging emotions.
Tatiana put a hand over his and asked, with a smile, ‘Would you like to lean your forehead against mine so we know what each other is thinking?’
He put his arm around her and leaned forwards till their heads touched. She smelled different now. Not jasmine, but a muskier, more womanly scent. Lust swept over him, causing a stiffening in his groin. It was extraordinarily erotic, sitting in that darkened bar with their foreheads pressed together.
It seemed Tatiana felt the same way because she asked quietly, ‘Shall we go to your hotel room?’
He nodded and they rose immediately, leaving the rest of the wine.
Dmitri was nervous as he made love to Tatiana for the first time. He felt shy as he undressed, scared that he would disappoint her. He reached out tentatively, watching her face for signs that it was all right to do so. She was still slender, with long limbs and cool skin, like a china doll’s, although her hands were rough and red, her nails short. He explored her, kissing tiny scars on her arms, noting the softness of her breasts, which were fuller than they used to be. Her tummy was rumpled and he guessed she had had a child. He felt a stab of jealousy. Whose child? Between her legs was warm, with a few grey hairs nestling amongst the brown. He laid his head on her belly and explored with his fingers, while she stroked his back, breathing deeply, pulling gently on his hair.
When at last he parted her legs and pushed inside her it was so excitingly different that he couldn’t last long. With a cry from the back of his throat he came then clung to her in embarrassment. He began to apologise but she pulled his face to hers for a long, tender kiss.
‘My wife,’ he breathed as he pulled away.
‘But you have another wife,’ she said, not accusing but factual. ‘I read about her in an article.’
‘No. Rosa and I never married,’ he told her. ‘I would never have married while there was a chance you were alive.’
‘Poor Rosa,’ she mused.
‘What about you?’
‘I got married,’ she told him. ‘I had to. Besides, I thought you were dead.’
‘Where is your husband now?’
Tatiana put a finger to his lips. ‘Can we please not ask these questions? Not yet. Perhaps never. Some things are too painful to revisit. Can we just pretend that we met for the first time tonight, at Café Slavia?’
That floored him. He was desperate to know where she had been all those years, what had happened the night she disappeared – and yet, perhaps she was right. Certainly it would be better left for another time.
She rose to wash at the basin in the corner of the room and he saw that she was more than slender; her ribs and hipbones protruded as if food had been scarce. He instinctively sucked in his own midlife paunch.
‘Have you had dinner?’ he asked. ‘We could go for a late dinner.’
She shook her head. ‘Breakfast tomorrow will be fine.’
‘I’m supposed to catch a train to Istanbul in the morning to stay with my sister Valerina. She and Vera live there. But I’ll telephone and say I’ve been delayed.’
‘I’d like to spend some time with you, if possible. It’s been so long …’
She unfastened her hair from its pins and he saw it was almost waist length. It suited her. She came back to lie in his arms, her face on his chest, and he marvelled at how well they fitted together, like a familiar pair of gloves.
A question came to his lips and he blurted it out before he could stop himself. ‘Did any of the others survive? Do you know?’