“Over and over?” she asks. “Just like that?”
I bite back a smile. She’d sometimes do this—ask questions she knew the answer to, especially when drunk. “You would very much like me to read to you, Tanechka. Over and over.” She also liked me to repeat things as though I was certain of them, like strong arms around her.
I read more. I feel her rise and fall with the words. After a long silence, she says, “It makes me feel lost and lonely.”
“I’m here,” I say.
She sighs.
“Come.” I reach around and nudge her head toward my shoulder. Miraculously, she complies, leaning her head on my shoulder. I begin again to read, trying to conceal my excitement over her having almost voluntarily laid her head on my shoulder. The poem always did crack her open. Or maybe it’s the drink.
“You would destroy my dream to be pure,” she mumbles between stanzas. “More.” She holds the glass out for me to fill. My heart pounds. I fill it full of pink champagne and read on.
Chapter Eighteen
Tanechka
The old book is fragile. The binding threadbare. The pages inside are loose, liable to fall out.
Viktor holds it carefully. Reverently.
I stare at his hands, so strong and sinewy. His fingers are thick and his knuckles rough with life, but he cradles the book as though he loves it, and from the way he reads, I think that he does.
Watching him cradle the book in this way makes me feel so very melancholy.
I don’t know whether it is because of the poem or because of not remembering the poem. It doesn’t matter. I hear the poem now, and it twists me inside. The poet lives his life in a prison cell, but when he sees beauty outside, he’s not sad anymore.
I finish the drink. Bubbles and candy. I put down my glass wishing for more. I look over at the icon of Jesus and try to remember the way the light shone out from his eyes and the way it lit the faces of the goats.
Jesus feels far away.
Viktor transfers the book to one hand and stretches his free hand around my shoulder, pulling me closer. I shouldn’t allow it, but I feel so tired and lonely, and I think I’ll just rest a bit before fighting him again.
A truce. Peace.
I shouldn’t allow it. He knows how to make my body feel good.
He pulls the band from my hair and makes it fall out. He takes a ribbon of my hair between his fingers, smoothing his thumb up and down. I resist the impulse to turn my face to his hand and kiss it. He knows too many things about me that I don’t know.
“Lisichka?”
“I don’t remember,” I tell him sadly. “It makes me feel lost not to remember things you know.”
“I remember for both of us.”
“That’s trouble, I think.”
“Never trouble, Tanechka.”
I smile. Or more, my cheeks smile of their own accord. The drink has a hold on me now, but it feels good. I notice my glass still has pink in it. I thought I’d finished it. I finish it now. It’s good and sweet, and I want more of this feeling. Perhaps I’m drunk.
I like it.
“I don’t want to be a bad person,” I say. “The kind to hurt people and kill people.”
“You’re not a bad person,” he snarls. “You were never a bad person, okay? Never. And any kozel who would dare to suggest it—”
He stops. Because it’s me who suggested it.
“I’m sorry. I don’t let anyone say anything bad about you, that’s all, and you shouldn’t, either. There were infinite sides to you. You hurt people, and you saved people. You loved fiercely and wildly. You thought deeply. You and Mischa and Yuri and the group of us, we were a family. We would die for each other.”
Something in his voice catches.
“We would die for each other, and we’d want to die if we ever hurt each other,” he adds.
I feel this surge of warmth for him. It’s usually too much for me to look at him—the pull of him. But now, my senses dulled by drink, I like it.
So many nice things about Viktor. His neat, close-cropped hair, so forceful and intense like him. His rough, musky smell. I loved the way he shed his stark black jacket. And his white shirt, open at the collar, tie loose; this feels familiar, like so many things about him. The way his strong, corded neck rises from this civilized shirt. I think of his chest under there, hard and scarred.
Quickly I look down. “Why can’t you just let me be good?”
“I’ll let you be good when you stop thinking you’re bad.” His gaze falls to my chest, then back up. “You wear my shirt.”
I put on his shirt because all of the clothes he supplied for me are tight, but I see my mistake now. I should’ve seen it when I first donned it, surrounding myself with his smell, with him.
“You want to corrupt me, I think. You come to me and read to me, and I feel too much, and I don’t know what any of it is.”
He kisses my cheek. His touch is a familiar anchor. I feel like I’m drifting. The poem made me feel too emotional.