A Train to Moscow(57)
She gulps down the cognac that is left in her glass because she no longer wants to be sober. Being sober means she must feel the hurt of this stunning announcement by erupting in anger or disintegrating into tears. She must say something in response to the words that have just crushed her windpipe and left her speechless.
“You have to understand,” he says. “I had to. I couldn’t not . . .” He doesn’t finish the sentence, doesn’t want to repeat the words for what he has done. His eyes are downcast, evading hers.
“You couldn’t not?” she repeats. “What does this mean?” The cognac she has just swallowed instantly makes her drunk again.
Andrei gets up and paces to the wall and then back. “I had no choice. It was a requirement from the ministry.” He pauses. “No. It was my father-in-law’s requirement,” he says. “I can’t explain.” He shakes his head. “It would make no sense to you.”
She doesn’t want to hear how he was forced to marry someone else. “Fuck you and fuck the ministry and fuck your father-in-law,” she says, the drunken words sticking to her upper palate. What she really wants to say is, “Why did you do it? If you had to marry someone, why didn’t you ask me? You know I would have said yes. Why didn’t you come here and ask me to marry you? Why did you marry someone else, someone who knows nothing about Ivanovo, who never rode on the back of a streetcar, who doesn’t share with you the dark secrets hidden in the most remote corner of your soul? Why did you marry her and not me?”
Suddenly she knows why. The words swim up to the surface, struggling through the thick, slow current of her drunken mind. You told me why when I was filming The Tsar’s Bride. The Party told you that you couldn’t marry an actress. And, like a good Party member, you had to do what the Party ordered.
“Why did you come here tonight?” she asks. “To tell me this? To tell me one more time that you couldn’t marry an actress?”
Andrei stands with his head down, silent.
“You are only good at suddenly appearing,” she says, anger bubbling up from the dark cauldron inside her. “And then suddenly disappearing.” After what he has just told her, she no longer wants to love him, not even a little bit. She wants to hurt him and make him suffer like she is suffering. She wants to punch him straight in the pit of his stomach, a blow that will bend him in half and force him to whimper in pain. “You’re no different from any other man. You pretend that you care; you fold me into your arms as if you loved me; you get inside me, all the way down to my soul; and then you exit and abandon me again. And then, in case you hadn’t done enough damage, you get married.” She spits the word married out of her mouth as if it were a moldy crust of bread.
He sees the fury in her eyes and turns away, not able to face her.
“I know I hurt you.” He stares at the floor, and Sasha stares at his profile. “Honestly, if we could be together, you would be so disappointed. I’ve always wanted to be the man you wanted me to be, but I can’t. I never could. I came here to tell you that I hate myself for what I did. I hate myself as much as you hate me.”
“So why, then?” she shouts. “Why did you do it?” Why did you have to marry someone else, with me right here, waiting for you all these years, like a fool, like the Ivanovo idiot Grishka, always clinging to our shed in the rain, always begging. She doesn’t say anything about clinging or begging aloud, but somehow, Andrei hears her silent question.
“You know I love you, and I’ve always wanted to be with you. Only you,” he says, although she knows, of course, the proverbial “but” will follow next, already chomping at the bit, ready to gallop out of his mouth. “But I simply couldn’t. I made a deal with the Devil. I had to. I can’t tell you more than this. It was beyond my control.”
So here it is, his explanation, as murky as this January night. There is always something beyond his control, always something he cannot tell her.
“So you came to my theater and then to my apartment only to let me know that you got married.” The fire in her gut triggered by the alcohol has died down now, and she no longer wants to hurt him. She simply wants him out. Out of her apartment and out of her life. But there still remains an urge to lunge at him, to reassemble the shards of her self-respect, a desperation one feels clutching at the last straw of dignity. “What did you hope to get from this?” she says, even though she doesn’t want to hear his answers. She only knows one thing: she must harden her heart against him, now and for the rest of her life.
He is fully dressed now, wrapping a scarf around his throat, and she averts her eyes because looking at him seems to hollow her stomach.
“I came here to repent,” he says. “I wanted you to taste my guilt and my humiliation.” He starts to open the front door and then turns back for the last time. His sentences are measured, delivered as one might hand over an unexpected gift. “My whole life, I have only loved you. What I did has crippled me. It has flayed off my skin, strip by strip. I cannot look at what I’ve become.” He pauses, and when she peers into his face, she sees hopelessness and torment, but she also sees grief. She has to avert her eyes because she, too, cannot look at what he has become. He raises his hand and runs a finger over her cheek, a tender goodbye touch. “I needed to tell you. I’m not asking for forgiveness. I know there can’t be any. I simply wanted you to know.” He pulls open the front door, then pauses and turns to her. “I need you to know that I love you.”