And slowly it worked. By Christmas he had recovered from the president’s electoral victory and had developed a powerful polemic against the defeated contender, the worst contender ever, he said at mealtimes, jabbing his fork at us to emphasize his point, there had never been a weaker contender in the history of contending, you couldn’t even call him a true contender, there had been no contest, it was like the guy surrendered before a punch was thrown, so next time round let’s not make the mistake of choosing a clown, let’s make sure it’s a guy with gravitas, who looks like he can lead. Next time. For sure.
By the inauguration the weather in the Golden house was much improved. It was not permitted to watch the ceremony on television, but the mood of the king and queen was jovial, and flirtatious. I knew that Nero Golden’s interior weather was changeable, and that his sexual vulnerability to his wife’s charms only increased as he grew older, and that the bedroom was where she invariably achieved the necessary alterations in his personal meteorology. But I didn’t know then what I know now—that he wasn’t well. Vasilisa, showing herself to be a master of timing, had sensed her opening and made her play. Before any of us, she saw what afterwards became sadly all too plain to us all: that he was weakening, that the time would soon come when he was no longer who he had been. She smelled the first intimation of that coming weakness as a shark smells a single drop of blood in water, and moved in for the kill.
Everything is a strategy. This is the wisdom of the spider.
Everything is food. This is the wisdom of the shark.
MONOLOGUE OF THE SPIDER TO THE FLY, OR OF THE SHARK TO ITS PREY
You see because it was specially made specially with those special crystals that glow in that special way when the flame takes them just so, glowing like diamonds in the Ali Baba cave which I didn’t know was in fact called Sesame yes that was the name of the cave did you know that well anyway that’s what I read in a magazine so when he says Open Sesame he’s addressing the cave by its name and I always thought it was just a magic word, sesame!, but never mind it’s the fire I’m talking about the fire I had made to represent the fire in your heart the fire in you that I love. You know that. I know you do. So here we are as we have been for some time now, are you happy, your happiness is the great work of my life so I hope you will answer yes, now you must ask if I am happy, and I reply, yes, but. Now you will say how can I say but when I know where I was when you found me and where I am now and I agree you have given me everything you have given me my life but still it is yes but, still yes there is a but. You don’t have to ask what is it you must know. I am a young woman. I am ready to be more than a lover although to be your lover is always first for me, you are always first for me, but I wish also to be, you know what I wish, a mother. And I understand yes that this violates the terms of our understanding because I said I would give that up for you and our love would be our child but the body wants what it wants and the heart also, it cannot be gainsaid. So this is where I stand my darling and it is a dilemma and I can see only one way forward although it breaks my heart and so I say to you with my heart breaking as I say it that because of my immense respect for you and my respect also for my own honor which obliges me to honor the terms of our understanding that my darling I must leave you. I love you so much but because of the needs of my young body and my broken heart I must go and find a way to have a child somehow though the idea of not being with you destroys me it is the only answer I can find, and so, my darling, I must say it. Goodbye.
In the game of chess the move known as the Queen’s Gambit is almost never used because it gives up the most powerful piece on the board for the sake of a risky positional advantage. Only the true grandmasters would attempt so daring a maneuver, being capable of looking many moves down the road, considering every variation, and thus being certain of the sacrifice’s success: the laying down of the queen to kill the king. Bobby Fischer, in the much-bruited Game of the Century, playing with the black pieces, devastatingly used the Queen’s Gambit against Donald Byrne. During my time in the Golden house I learned that Vasilisa Arsenyeva Golden was an avid student of the “royal game,” and could demonstrate to me the famous twenty-two-move checkmate in which the Russian grandmaster Mikhail Tal used the queen-sacrifice to stymie his opponent, a certain Alexander Koblentz. Vasilisa and I would play chess in the idle afternoons when Suchitra was away shooting, and she would invariably win, but then show me how she had done it, insisting that I raise my standard of play. And so I see, in retrospect, that she was also teaching me the game of life, going so far as to demonstrate the move she was going to make before she made it. When she asked Nero Golden for a divorce I understood the depths of her brilliance. It was the winning move.
Her request shook him, and at first he retreated into crassness, quarreling with her loudly on the landing outside his office, causing the phantom servitors of the household to scurry for shelter, pointing out brutally that their financial agreement would be terminated by her exit, and that she would leave with nothing except a fancy wardrobe and some baubles. “See how far that takes you,” he barked, and went into his sanctum and slammed the door. Quietly, without attempting to open the slammed door, she entered her clothes closet and began to pack. I went to see her. “Where will you go?” I asked. At that moment, when she turned the blazing force of her gaze upon me, I saw for the first time the witch-queen unmasked, and actually took a step backwards and away. She laughed, and it was not her normal pretty-girl laughter but something entirely more savage. “I will go nowhere,” she snarled. “He will come crawling to me on his hands and knees and beg me to remain and swear to give me my heart’s desire.”
Night fell; night, which increased her power. The house was silent. Petya in his room bathed in blue light lost within himself and beyond his computer screens. Vasilisa in the master bedroom with the door open, seated erect on her side of the bed, fully clothed, an overnight bag packed and ready at her feet, her hands folded in her lap, all the lights off except for one small reading light outlining her trim silhouette. I, the spy, in the doorway of my room, waiting. And in the midnight hour her prophecy came true. The old bastard dragging himself defeated into her presence to acknowledge her majesty, to beg her to stay, and to agree to her terms. Standing before her with bowed head until she reaching up drew him down to her and fell backward onto her pillow and after that allowed him again the illusion of being master in his own house even though he knew as well as everyone else that she was the one on the throne.
—A child.
—Yes.
—My darling. Come to me.
She switched off the reading light.