And I found myself telling him everything as well, about how I have a sister too, and even about my fight with my father that morning, and how I feel so trapped and smothered that I could scream.
He said he felt the same way, that your family can be like chains wrapped around you. They give you their love like it’s a gift, but really it’s a way to bind you down and control you. He said, “I’ll never really go to all those places I want to go, because I can’t just leave.”
I suppose he meant that he has to support his family.
I’m not even sure he’s actually a student at the university. I would have seen him before on campus, somewhere, if he was.
He probably works full-time, and perhaps takes a few classes at night.
I didn’t want to push him, though.
We got some ice cream at this little stand in Sparrow Hills, then we walked across to Gorky park and wandered around until we were so tired, we had to sit. But we didn’t sit on the benches. He spread his coat out under the trees, back off the path.
Then he kissed me again and my god, it was like no kiss I’ve ever had before. My whole body was floating, the time was streaming by like this relentless river, and before I knew it, it was nearly supper time and I was going to be late.
I had to run all the way back to school to get my bicycle, then ride like mad.
Luckily Papa was in his study and Mama didn’t notice anything, except that I was flushed. She thought I was sick and told me to go lie down before dinner.
And I was glad to, because my heart was still racing, and I wanted to lay in my bed and think about Ivan.
Nadia was becoming more and more immersed in her mother’s diary. She knew, of course, that this story could not have a happy ending. Because her mother hadn’t married Ivan. Only four and a half months after that entry, she’d moved to Paris and married Nadia’s father instead.
Nadia could guess the reason why. If Ivan was poor, that was a match that Nadia’s grandparents would never have accepted. Even now, all this time later, the family had hardly accepted Violet and Anton’s relationship, because Anton wasn’t aVor.And that was after he’d already proven himself a capable and loyal lieutenant to Violet’s father for years.
The Lebedevs had the snobbery of a noble family, as well as prejudice against anyone who was not part of the network of the Bratva. Ivan would have had two strikes against him, as a low-class worker with no Mafia connections whatsoever.
Still, Nadia wanted to read more. She wanted to know exactly what happened.
And she wanted to spend more time with this young, rebellious Samara.
Good god, Samara had actually said that humans lived for their passions and interests!
Nadia couldn’t imagine her mother saying anything like that. Not in the time that she’d known her.
What had happened to change her so drastically?
* * *
When they landed in Moscow,Nadia took a cab to her grandfather’s house, but Maxim took his own hired car to the other side of the city. He had promised his father that he’d stay with his aunt in the Taganskaya Area, east of the Garden Ring.
Nadia didn’t mind. Her grandfather was in no state to receive extra visitors, and Nadia herself was not well acquainted with his caretaker, her aunt Rashel. So she didn’t want to make any more of a nuisance of herself than was strictly necessary.
Her grandfather lived in a vast mansion in Zhukovka, a wealthy district on the western outskirts of Moscow. His neighbors included the former president of the Ukraine, and the Jewish construction magnates Boris and Arkady Rotenberg.
Nadia’s grandfather had once been a man of influence himself, until he developed dementia early in his sixties. He had become increasingly erratic and aggressive, until his family had to forcibly shut him up in the mansion—at first with several guards on hand, and later, as he grew weaker and became bedridden, with an army of nursemaids and his youngest daughter Rashel in attendance.
Nadia had only met her aunt Rashel twice before—once when she had visited Moscow as a child, and once when Rashel had come to Paris for Nadia’s father’s funeral. She had not come to Samara’s funeral, but perhaps that was because of the precarious health of Stanislav. It was expected that he might die at any time.
Rashel had struck even ten-year-old Nadia as a strange woman—shy, nervous, eccentric. She had never been married or had any children herself. She liked to paint and draw, as her own mother had done, but unlike Grandma Anatalya, Rashel’s paintings were all wild abstracts or surreal compositions that were too odd and disturbing for anybody to want to hang up.
It had surprised Nadia to read in the journal that Rashel and Samara used to be close, at least as children. Because Nadia’s mother almost never spoke to her sister, as far as Nadia knew. But then, Samara hated to visit Moscow in general. And siblings often grew apart as adults, especially with so much distance between them.
Nadia’s car pulled up the long, heavily shaded drive toward the house. It was a large, Baroque-style building, once very grand but now fallen into disrepair. The numerous white pillars around the entryway looked dingy and sagging, and several paving stones were missing from the walkway up to the front steps.
Still, it gave Nadia a little thrill seeing the twin swans embossed above the doorway, their heads bent together as if they were whispering.
She knocked tentatively, and then a little harder when no one answered. She was beginning to worry that they had forgotten she was coming at all, when at last her aunt pulled open the door.
