Russian Treasures

3. THE COUP

Lubochka was wracked with unrequited love. Klim had passed her over for a shameless imposter, a woman Lubochka had foolishly believed to be her friend.

Sablin could sense that something was wrong and had come to the conclusion that his wife was having a bout of “nerves.” In an attempt to help her, he brought Lubochka a thick medical book describing the symptoms of and remedies for melancholia. She threw it across the drawing room in a fit of temper.

“You should never have married a real live woman with feelings and warm blood in her veins!” Lubochka cried. “The best match for you would have been a skeleton from a dissection room. Then you could have counted her ribs whenever you liked and stood her in the corner if you felt she was getting in your way.”

“Darling, do be reasonable—” Sablin began, but Lubochka didn’t care about being reasonable anymore. Her heart was broken, and nobody could care less.

When Klim came back from the country, Lubochka could tell immediately that something was wrong. Pale and tight-lipped, he entered the house, and without stopping to greet her, he headed straight to his room.

Within an hour, Marisha rushed in to see Lubochka, looking bewildered.

“He’s ordered me to sell all the possessions his father left him to the neighbors,” Marisha said. “He told me not to worry about getting a good price and to get rid of it all as soon as possible. He said he’d had enough and was leaving at the earliest opportunity.”

Lubochka gasped. It was obvious that Nina had rejected her Argentinean admirer. What a fool! What a complete and utter fool!

The whole day Lubochka wandered around the house, trying to come up with a way to stop Klim from leaving. But what could she do? She had no power over him.

At dinner, he offered Lubochka’s husband a choice: a long-term lease of the house or redemption.

“He doesn’t want me to pay interest,” Sablin marveled when he and Lubochka were about to go to sleep. “Can you believe we’ll finally have a house of our own? But I hate to profit off your cousin in this way.”

He glanced at Lubochka lying beside him.

“I think Klim isn’t looking too healthy,” Sablin said. “I hinted that I’d be happy to refer him to an expert, but he’s scared of doctors just like you.”

Lubochka could only feel astonishment at her husband’s ability to misjudge and misinterpret the whole situation so spectacularly.

Lubochka’s father, Anton Emilievich Schuster, was the executive editor of the local paper, the Nizhny Novgorod Bulletin. Slim with a solemn narrow face and a gray beard, he was a man of culture and huge erudition who lived in a 17th-century stone tower surrounded by his large and motley collection of antiques, books, and rare objects.

Lubochka liked to visit her father. It was a tradition of theirs to have dinner together once a week. But this Saturday, the dinner table was set for three.

“Are you expecting someone?” Lubochka asked her father, unfolding the napkin on her lap.

Anton Emilievich glanced at his watch with a meaningful look. “Just wait a little, and you’ll see!”

She noticed that many of the Rogovs’ possessions—including the iron safe—had made their way into her father’s collection. Anton Emilievich had taken everything that Klim’s dubious neighbors hadn’t had time to get their hands on.

Klim had bought a ticket to Moscow, and Lubochka tried to prepare herself for what was to come. What was she going to do when he left? Her life would be changed irrevocably.

The brass doorbell jingled in the hall.

“That’s him!” Anton Emilievich exclaimed, jumping to his feet. A minute later, he ushered the newly arrived guest into the dining room. He was a common soldier—not an officer but one of the ordinary rank and file.

“Here he is, my one of a kind,” Anton Emilievich exclaimed. “Osip Drugov. What’s your patronymic?”

“Petrovich,” boomed the soldier in a bass voice.

Lubochka cautiously offered him her hand, and he clasped it firmly in his great rough paw. “Pleased to meet you.”

Osip was tall and broad-shouldered. His face was ruddy, and the whites of his blue eyes were yellowish and threaded with tiny red veins. When he reached for a piece of bread, the folds on the back of his neck—brown from the sun—stretched out to reveal the pale skin beneath.

“Comrade Drugov is something of a hero,” Anton Emilievich said to Lubochka. “He was one of the leaders of the 62nd Regiment rebellion. Soldiers who had recovered from their injuries were being forced to board trains heading back to the front, and Osip Petrovich and his colleagues managed to get them away from their escorts.”

Anton Emilievich was trying to sound ironic, but Lubochka detected an unfamiliar, ingratiating note in his voice. He fawned on Osip. “Do please help yourself. This trout is excellent—it just came today from the farm.”

But Osip paid no attention to his host’s efforts to impress him. “It’s unfair to send men back to be slaughtered while any man whose mother or father can afford to pay sits in safety away from the front,” he said, fixing Lubochka with a stare. “I went straight to the newspaper office, and I met your father there.”

Lubochka huddled back in her chair, her whole body sensing the contrast between the nervous agitation of her father and the confident power exuded by his guest, who was neither offhand nor insolent but felt at liberty to do and say whatever he pleased.

“Did Father interview you?” she asked with a forced smile.

“We talked about things,” Osip said. “I told him, ‘I’ve shed blood for you,’ and all that. ‘I’ve been wounded twice and suffered from shellshock, so you have to help us. And if you won’t write about the demands of the people, we’ll confiscate your newspaper.’”

Anton Emilievich roared with laughter. “I was flabbergasted! So I said, ‘Who the hell are you?’ And he said, ‘I’m a Russian Bolshevik.’”

Now, Lubochka understood. The Bolsheviks were a small left-wing political party gathering momentum with young radicals and deserters from the front joining them, and now, they were calling openly for a coup d’état.

Lubochka’s father in his wisdom could tell that important events were afoot. Recently, he had taken to saying that they were living like goldfish in a glass bowl. They saw everything in a distorted light without actually caring about what was going on in the world outside. Meanwhile, however, the glass in the bowl had cracked.

Anton Emilievich wanted to find out what was going on in the barracks and factories—that was why he had invited a Bolshevik to dinner.

Osip Drugov said things that made Lubochka’s hair stand on end.

“We don’t want Russia to win this war—this is the kind of war that should be lost. It wouldn’t be a defeat for us. It would be a defeat for the Provisional Government. The bourgeoisie has forced us to kill our own brothers, workers from Germany and Austria-Hungary. Just think of it—how many people have died! And for what? Now that we have weapons in our hands, we’ll put them to use against our real enemies—the landlords, the factory owners, and the other oppressors of the working people.”

“And how will you tell who are the working people and who are the freeloaders?” asked Anton Emilievich politely.

“It’ll be easy. Those people who are of some use to society may live. And as for the freeloaders, we’ll string ‘em up from the lampposts. Now, you, Anton Emilievich, have a very useful profession—”

“Wait a minute,” Lubochka interrupted. “So, you think I should be strung up from a lamppost? I don’t work for a living, after all.”

Osip wasn’t in the least embarrassed. “That’s only because bourgeois society sets restrictions on what you can do. A woman Bolshevik came to our hospital and talked to us about women’s rights. Think how useful women could be if they had the chance to work like men! What would you like to do, for instance?”

Lubochka looked around the room and the dining table. “I suppose I’d like to open a restaurant.”

“I’m afraid that’s out of the question. We intend to ban all private property. But we’re going to need people in public catering who know what they’re doing.”

“Visit us again,” Anton Emilievich told Osip as they said goodbye. “Lubochka is having a birthday party soon.”

Osip turned toward her and looked at her with a piercing gaze, showing such frank and obvious sexual interest that she felt slightly weak at the knees.

“What would you like me to get you as a birthday present?” he asked.

“What kind of thing can a Bolshevik get?”

“Everything. The whole world.”

“Then I’ll have that.”

“Right. It’s yours.”

Mr. Fomin, the chairman of the city’s Provisions Committee, sat at his table in the Oriental Bazaar sweating, his broad shoulders bowed by worldly cares, his throat tightened with anger and jealousy as he stared at the dancing couples.

He had asked Nina to come to the restaurant on purpose. There would be people around him, and they wouldn’t allow him to do what he wanted to do most of all.

Nina ran into the half-empty room, blushing with anticipation. She put her wet umbrella on a chair and sat across the table from Fomin. “Tell me all the details! Whom did you meet in Petrograd?”

Nina was uncommonly smart, quick, and self-assured and looked nothing like Fomin’s own sturdy girls who had been living in Geneva with their mother, safely in neutral Switzerland since the beginning of the war.

Fomin tried to be calm and sober while telling Nina the news, and she was so excited that she didn’t notice his mood at all. She gasped, wrinkled her nose, and, like a little girl, bit her lower lip, trying to stop herself from laughing in sheer delight. “Oh, I knew you’d make it happen!”

Fomin could barely hold his emotions in check. Why has all this happened to me? he thought. However, he had no one to blame but himself. It had been he who had invaded Nina’s life, a big balding man whose belly hung over his belt. But how could he stop himself when he had seen her perishing, crushed by her grief and tormented by her mother-in-law? Apart from him, Nina had no one else to rely on except her younger brother.

Fomin had no illusions—he was well aware that she thought of him as no more than her patron. She listened attentively when he gave her advice and was grateful for all the help he gave her. Fomin’s office was full of little gifts that she had given him—tiny jars of jam, knitted mittens, and the like. Nina was under no obligation to pay him back for what he had done, but she had decided in her own naïve way to show her gratitude: You gave me something, so I’ll give you something in return. If you don’t want my jam, well, there’s nothing I can offer you besides myself.

Fomin knew that they had no future and that their little adventure could only end tragically.

Nina took a notebook from her bag and began to calculate something.

“Do you think the current ruble exchange rate will last until winter?” she asked him, meeting his stare. And only then did she realize that Fomin was about to explode.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, worried.

The walls were shaking around him; his whole world was crumbling to dust. Should he kill himself in front of her? Or smother her and then shoot himself?

“Sofia Karlovna told me everything,” he said colorlessly. “While I was away, solving your problem, you had an affair with the prosecutor’s heir.”

Nina put her pencil down. It rolled across the table and fell on her lap.

“Don’t you understand that Sofia Karlovna wants us to fall out?” Nina asked quietly. “She was the one who sent Mr. Rogov to Osinki.”

“He stayed there for three weeks!”

“So what? I owe him twenty-seven thousand. I had to work something out.”

People started looking at them, but Fomin didn’t care. What could Nina possibly “work out” with Rogov? The same arrangement that she had worked out with him?

“Will you at least let me explain to you how we spent those three weeks in Osinki?” Nina asked and began to describe how they had visited her mill and gone mushrooming and how she had refused to go to Argentina with Klim.

“If you don’t believe me, ask Zhora and Elena,” Nina added. “They’ll confirm everything I’ve told you.”

Suddenly, Fomin felt exhausted. His jaw was trembling, and a cold drop of sweat trickled down his temple.

“Why did you refuse to go with Mr. Rogov?” he asked.

Nina opened her notebook in the middle and moved it toward Fomin. “Here’s my balance sheet. As you can see, we’ve had very good results even before we won that state contract.”

She leaned back and crossed her arms. “I had my workers sewing canvas sacks. That is exactly what is in high demand among people who carry flour from the grain-producing regions.”

Fomin looked at her with a wry respectful smile. “You are a crazy woman. Mr. Rogov has offered you beaches and palm trees, and you have turned them down for a pile of canvas sacks.”

“I don’t need someone else’s achievements,” Nina said. “I want mine. Something that I have earned and that no one will take away from me.”

The church was full of people. The flickering reflections of the candles shone in the gilded robes of the priests and the silver frames of the icons. The voices of the choir singing “I Call to You, Lord” flew high up into the dark vault above.

Nina was crossing herself without grasping the meaning of the service. She looked around at the anxious faces—at a young woman kneeling with a black lace veil over her head and an old man trying to light a candle with a shaking hand. Next to him, a portly merchant’s wife dipped her finger into the oil of a sanctuary lamp and anointed her eyelids and the eyelids of her little son.

Nina had got exactly what she wanted: she and Klim had signed all the requisite papers, and her bank account had just received funds from her state loan. And yet she somehow felt deflated and unhappy.

In the past, Nina had always known exactly what she needed to do and diligently pursued her goals in order to never again experience the shameful poverty that had been a permanent feature of her childhood.

Her father had been a skillful tailor and charged up to thirty rubles for a fine dress, but he had also been a gambler, capable of blowing the family’s entire savings in a single night and forcing Nina’s mother to borrow money to feed her children.

If it hadn’t been for a casual acquaintance with Count Vladimir Odintzov, who for some inexplicable reason had fallen in love with her, Nina would have been condemned to the same grinding poverty that had marked her mother’s life. Nina owed Vladimir everything and felt guilty at even thinking about another man. Fomin didn’t count, really—at least that was what she told herself—but after Nina had met Klim, the revered remembrance of her dead husband seemed to have lost all its meaning like an old theater ticket. Nina believed that one day she would answer for this at the seat of judgment, and it struck superstitious fear into her. After all, she had already received much more than a girl of her background could ever dare hope for.

I wish Klim had never come back, Nina thought. He had mistaken her for a housemaid, immediately recognizing her lower social status, and she had immediately recognized him as a “robber.” But in this instance, he was not so much a robber of personal possessions but her personal affections.

The fact that he asked her to go to Argentina with him meant nothing to her. How could she possibly leave her mill and her brother behind? It would be impossible to take Zhora with them—he would never go without Elena. And her parents would never let her go to a foreign country with god knows who.

If only Klim could be persuaded to stay in Nizhny Novgorod! But what could he do here? Nina thought in despair. Work as a reporter for his uncle’s newspaper? Or just be a rich playboy idler?

It didn’t make sense to even dream about it. There was no way Nina could sunder her ties with Fomin. He had told her straight that he would kill Klim if he “allowed himself to take any liberties.”

Nina left the church before the end of the service. The weather was nasty with drizzling rain and a biting wind.

A boy stood in the street with a pile of newspapers. “Read the latest!” he shouted. “Provisional Government deposed!”

Oh, no, Nina thought. That’s all we need.

People gathered around the newsboy. “What are they saying? Is it another war? Who are we fighting with now?”

“There’s been another revolution in Petrograd,” the newsboy said. “The Bolsheviks have taken power.”

Nina didn’t manage to get a newspaper. She looked around anxiously for another news vendor. People were crowding out of the church—rumors about the collapse of the government had spread like wildfire.

Nina noticed a soldier holding a paper. “Damn, I can’t understand a thing,” he grumbled. “Hey, lady!” he called Nina. “Do you know your letters? Could you read this for me, please? What are they saying?”

Nina took the dirty sheet, which smudged her hands black with printing ink.

“To the citizens of Russia,” she started to read loudly. People moved closer to her, listening intently and trying not to miss a single word. “The Provisional Government has been deposed. State power has passed into the hands of the Revolutionary Military Committee, which heads the Petrograd proletariat and the garrison. The cause for which the people have fought—namely, the immediate offer of democratic peace, the abolition of landed ownership, workers’ control over production, and the establishment of Soviet power—this cause has been secured. Long live the revolution of workers, soldiers, and peasants!”

Beneath this Bolshevik manifesto were a number of reports that made it clear there were disturbances in Petrograd and shootings in Moscow.

“The Bolsheviks have made no secret of their intentions,” said a gentleman in a felt bowler hat. “They wanted to seize power, and they have done so. Now, we’ll see a bloodbath.”

The crowd began to disperse.

Nina wondered what the phrases “the abolition of landed ownership” and “workers’ control over production” actually meant. What if the new authorities were about to take her mill away?

I need to see Fomin, she decided. He’s bound to know what’s going on.

She hurried down Pokrovskaya Street. The reflections of the streetlights flickered in the slush on the pavement, their bleary outlines glimmering in the dusty shop windows.

“Nina, wait!”

She turned her head and saw Klim dressed in an elegant gray overcoat, hat, and suede gloves.

“Have you heard about the coup?” she asked and told him what she’d read in the Bolsheviks’ manifesto. “Do you think it’s serious?”

Klim shrugged. “No idea. Are you in a hurry? I’d like to say goodbye before I catch the train tonight. My luggage is already at the station. Can you imagine, I’ve got a whole compartment to myself and will be traveling to Moscow like a state minister, no less.”

He fell silent, smiling sadly at his own thoughts. “Zhora told me you were in the Pokrovskaya Church. I wanted to see you before I leave—in order to perform an important act of gauchada.”

“What does ‘gauchada’ mean?” Nina asked.

“It’s the word that the Argentineans use to describe a deed worthy of a true gaucho. The gauchos are just regular cowboys, but the people believe they have noble souls and a special talent for selfless deeds. Well—here is mine.”

Klim took a white envelope out of his breast pocket and handed it to Nina.

She looked at him, puzzled. “What is it?”

“Your promissory note. I wanted to give you something in memory of our friendship.”

Nina was taken aback. “Are you giving me back my mill? Don’t you need the money anymore?”

“I have more than enough money to travel the world for the next ten years, and then I’ll come back for you. Hopefully, you might have changed your mind about me by that time.”

He looked at her, smiling. “No thanks needed. A true gaucho never asks for any reward for his noble deeds. You could just hang a commemorative plaque with my face on it at the entrance to your mill. But I’m afraid Mr. Fomin might object.”

Nina put the envelope into her muff. “Thank you.”

They reached Blagoveschenskaya Square in silence. Nina didn’t know what to say. In her experience, men usually tried to settle their scores with the women who rejected them. She never thought Klim would display such magnanimity.

Military trucks drove past and columns of soldiers marched by.

“Tripe for sale—fried, steamed, or buttered!” a street seller shouted at the top of her voice. The corners of her checkered headscarf billowed over her head in the wind.

It was dark and quiet in the Kremlin fortress. Only the windows of the Governor’s Palace shone with a bright electric light. Nina noticed a long red cloth hanging from the railings in front of the arsenal—“All power to the Congress of Soviets of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants!”

Nina walked up the porch steps. “Well—goodbye,” she whispered, her voice faltering.

She felt keenly that her words didn’t do justice to either the gift she had just been given or the fact that she and Klim were about to say goodbye to each other forever.

Droplets of rain shimmered on the fibers of his overcoat. He was clean-shaven and smelled of cologne. He didn’t fit into this benighted country; he belonged on the other side of the world where it was spring now with the purple jacarandas in bloom.

Klim took off his hat and kissed Nina’s hand. “Farewell.”

There were no guards or visitors in the corridors of the Governor’s Palace, and Nina made her way slowly across the entry hall and opened the door that was smudged with muddy footprints. The smell of burning paper hung heavy in the air.

I don’t suppose I’ll ever see Klim again, she thought, and the very idea seemed outrageous to her.

How could she just let him disappear like that? It would be a mockery of everything that had been between them and even common sense itself.

Nina turned to run back after Klim and almost collided with Fomin.

“Follow me!” he ordered, his voice like a prison guard’s.

Grabbing her by the hand, he dragged her into his office. The floor inside was covered with ashes. The inkwell on his desk was overturned, and there were pens and pencils scattered everywhere.

“Listen to me carefully,” Fomin said, standing close to Nina and looking at her with troubled eyes. “Tens of thousands of soldiers have gathered in Petrograd. They’ve been doing nothing but robbing, drinking, and gambling. The Provisional Government tried to send them to the front, but now, they’ve mutinied.” He grasped Nina’s shoulders. “We have to leave immediately! These gangs of armed, hungry deserters will soon be in charge of the country.”

Nina gasped. “What about the Bolsheviks? After all, they’re the ones who have seized power.”

Fomin roared with coarse laughter. “And do you have any idea who these Bolsheviks are? They’re a small group of emigrants and political convicts who have accidentally found themselves at the head of a spontaneous rebellion. It’s the deserters who are propping up the Bolsheviks because they are promising them immediate peace with Germany.

“Now, who do you think is going to feed and clothe our hungry, threadbare, gray-coated heroes? We have three infantry regiments of them in Nizhny Novgorod alone, and these guys have spent up to three years at the front. They have gotten out of the habit of working and become rather accustomed to making a living by slitting throats. Mark my words—they won’t hesitate to loot your house just as they did the Tsar’s Winter Palace.”

“Lord, help us!” Nina whispered.

“They burst into the Palace, broke everything they could lay their hands on, opened up the wine cellars, and now, the whole of Petrograd has been carousing for the third day running.”

“Maybe the rebellion won’t get as far as Nizhny Novgorod—”

“Don’t be a fool! I have it on reliable intelligence that the Bolsheviks will try to seize the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin tonight.”

Nina stepped back from him in alarm. “I won’t go with you—”

“Then who will you go with? Your gentleman from Argentina whom I just met outside on the street?”

The telephone rang, and Fomin snatched the receiver. “Yes… yes… arrested? All right, I’ll be there.” He closed his eyes for a moment and then turned to Nina. “Wait for me here.”

“I told you. I’m not going with you!”

She made a dash for the door, but he yanked her hand so hard that she almost fell over. “Stay here, I said!”

Fomin left the office, and the next moment there was a sudden clatter of footsteps thudding down the corridor and the sound of male voices cursing crudely. Then there came the unmistakable crack of gunfire.

Terrified, Nina shrank back against the wall. “Lord, have mercy on us,” she kept repeating.

She parted the curtains, opened the window, and threw her legs over the side of the windowsill.

“Be careful. There’s broken glass on the ground here,” Nina heard Klim’s voice say.

Without asking her any questions, he helped her out of the window.

“Now, run!” he whispered.

They ran, holding hands, splashing through the icy puddles in the darkness. Next to the Kremlin gates, they almost collided with a group of soldiers and hid in the shadow of the wall, waiting for them to pass. One of the soldiers struck a match to light his cigarette, and its flame illuminated his bearded face and gleamed in the polished blade of his bayonet. Barely daring to breathe, Klim and Nina listened to the sound of footsteps and the creaking of machine-gun wheels bumping along the paving stones.

As they got to Blagoveschenskaya Square, they saw people hunched into the upturned collars of their coats, darting in and out between the two main city cathedrals.

Nina glanced at Klim. “Where now?”

“To my house—just in case Fomin comes looking for you at Crest Hill.”

“But what about your train?”

Klim gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “Who cares?”

They were stopped three times on their way home by the patrols. Men in padded jackets and cartridge belts slung over their shoulders demanded to see Klim and Nina’s documents. However, on each occasion, a five-ruble banknote had sufficed to keep them happy.

All the way home, Klim kept a fast hold on Nina’s hand, his heart pounding and his thoughts scattered to the four winds. I suppose my train must have left already, he thought. But it didn’t matter. Something huge and awe-inspiring was manifesting itself; something that he felt he had been waiting for all his life.

“Why did you come back for me?” Nina asked.

“I heard the gunshots,” Klim answered and smiled at his own thoughts. The truth was he hadn’t been planning on going to Moscow anyway. The moment he had seen Nina that night, the matter had been settled in his heart forever.

The electricity was down on Ilinskaya Street, and all the houses looked abandoned. Klim walked up to the porch of his house, unlocked the front door, and conducted Nina to his room.

It was empty except for a bed, a sanctuary lamp that flickered under the icon in the corner, and a portrait of Nicholas II that no one had wanted to buy.

Klim and Nina shed their coats on the bed and sat on the floor, leaning their backs against the hot tiles of a stove.

“The stove is perhaps mankind’s most important invention,” said Nina as she pulled off her wet stockings.

Klim nodded. He felt the tension growing in every fiber of his body.

Nina reached for her muff and took out the envelope with the promissory note. “I won’t take it,” she said.

“Why?”

“I don’t want you thinking that I’m only here to take advantage of you.”

“What else should you do? Of course, you should take advantage of me.” Klim flung the promissory note into the stove.

Nina moved closer and leaned her head against his chest. “Your heart is pounding.”

“I’m not surprised.”

He put his arms around her and kissed the nape of her neck, the side of her face, and the corners of her mouth. Once again, he fell into a world of dreams, luxuriating in it joyfully and losing all sense of place and time. “Nina… darling—”

She sprang to her feet, put her hands on the back of her head, and took out her hairpins one by one. Then she undid the fastenings of her black mourning dress and let it drop to the floor.

“Come here,” she said to Klim. She looked different now, sitting on the bed in her white undershirt and drawers.

He went up to her, untied his necktie, and unbuttoned his shirt.

The creaking of the floorboards in the corridor made them jump. A candlelight flickered in the crack under the door.

“He must have forgotten to turn off the electric light,” Marisha grumbled to herself. “He’ll run up such a bill that he’ll never be able to pay it off.” She tried the bolted door. “Hey, I thought you’d already left!”

“I’m sleeping,” Klim said, his voice hoarse with emotion.

“How come? Did they cancel your train?”

“Marisha, I’m sleeping!”

“All right, all right—tell me all about it in the morning.” Marisha sighed and shuffled off.

Inflamed by the possibility that she and Klim might have been discovered, Nina pulled her undershirt over her head. She looked at Klim triumphantly, brushing the curls away from her heaving breast.

My love, I’ll never leave you, he thought, pressing her to his chest.

The light in the bathroom suddenly turned back on as the electricity was restored. Marisha was right: Klim had forgotten to switch it off.

Nina lay quite still on her back, her eyes closed and her fingers grasping the sheet. Klim pressed his forehead against her shoulder.

“Do you want anything to drink?” he asked.

She gave a barely perceptible shake of her head.

Swaying on his feet, Klim headed to the bathroom. He turned on the tap, drank the icy water from his cupped hands, and then looked at his reflection in the mirror. He could hardly believe what was happening.