The Secret Wife(113)
There was more bad news. Two weeks after his return, a lawyer’s letter arrived from England saying that Marta would sue him for defamation if he published the book.
‘That’s that, then,’ he told Tatiana. ‘We’ll have to forget it.’
‘Why don’t you talk to Alfred?’ she suggested. ‘When are you next seeing him?’
Dmitri still had occasional lunches with Alfred A. Knopf in New York City. His company had merged with Random House and he had semi-retired but he still dabbled in editorial matters and kept in touch with his favourite authors. When Dmitri met him that spring, at Barbetta, their usual Italian restaurant, he mused that his publisher had barely changed from the day they first met. The moustache and hair were white rather than jet black, and his waist was a little thicker, but the lively eyes and the gregarious character were unchanged.
Dmitri handed over the manuscript. ‘Prepare to be surprised when you read it,’ he said. ‘I don’t want an advance but my only stipulation is that it mustn’t be published in my children’s lifetimes. Marta might live another fifty years, so perhaps it could be pencilled for publication in 2020. Is it possible to arrange that?’
‘It’s out of the ordinary but I don’t see why not. I could leave it in the archives flagged with a note for someone to revisit it in 2020.’
A week later he telephoned, having read the manuscript.
‘Are you kidding me? We’ve been friends for thirty-five years and you never told me you’re married to one of the goddamn Romanov royal family? Well, I’ll be damned. Is there no chance I can persuade you to publish now? I’m sure our lawyers could see off your daughter’s objections.’
‘No, I don’t want to upset her any more than I have already. But thanks, Alfred.’
He wrote to Nicholas and Marta telling them both he had decided not to publish, and was pleased to receive a postcard from Nicholas. It had a picture on the front of some kids playing volleyball on a beach and it read ‘Thanks for coming over to see me, Dad.’ That was all, but it was nice.
Six months later, Nicholas died of cirrhosis of the liver. Pattie wrote to tell Dmitri since there was no phone at the cabin and she’d been unable to reach him at the house in Albany. At last his boy was at peace, after a tortured life. Dmitri flew to California for the funeral hoping that Marta might be there and that he’d have a chance to talk with her. Perhaps there could still be a rapprochement at this sad time. His hopes were dashed when she didn’t show up.
‘Since Rosa died Marta has never been able to deal with anything emotionally challenging,’ Pattie told him. ‘She pulls down the shutters and pretends nothing is wrong. I’m sorry to say it but I don’t think she’ll ever change.’
‘Is she happy?’ Dmitri asked.
Pattie shrugged. ‘I don’t think her marriage is perfect. She once told me that Stanley has a wandering eye. I guess that makes it even harder for her to forgive you. But she adores her daughter. Elizabeth is the centre of her life.’
When he got back to Albany, Dmitri rewrote his will, leaving enough for Tatiana, should she outlive him, and the remainder of his estate to whichever of his descendants came forward to claim it. Perhaps his little granddaughter would come to find him one day. He surely hoped so.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Lake Akanabee, New York State, February 1975
Dmitri celebrated his eightieth birthday at the cabin with Tatiana. She made his favourite Russian Pashka, a dessert similar to the Americans’ cheesecake, and stuck a candle in the top that dripped wax down the side while he struggled to find the breath to blow it out. They lived very simply now, eating vegetables she had grown in the garden around the cabin and the occasional fish he caught from the end of the dock (although in truth he never had much patience for fishing). They still commuted between there and the Albany cottage but spent most of their time at the lake, keeping the stove stocked with firewood on the cold days and talking, always talking.
They joked that if they were to live another twenty years, they would never run out of conversation. They discussed religion and philosophy and tried to agree upon the ideal political system; they fretted over news reports of the Vietnam War, worried about whether America was right to get involved; they talked about books and music and remembered theatrical productions they had seen back in St Petersburg before the First World War; they talked about people they had known, and they speculated on what Tatiana’s brother and sisters might have been like had they lived. Each expressed whatever was on his or her mind at the moment and it flowed back and forth in a fast-moving current of companionship. If they woke at night when the wind blew hard outside and rain hammered on the cabin’s tin roof, they resumed the conversation they’d been having earlier.
In his head Dmitri sometimes compared the two women he had loved. Sex had never been especially important in his relationship with Tatiana; Rosa had been much more enthusiastic in that department, and she had brought him great pleasure with her skills. There had never been the meeting of the minds he had with Tatiana, though. When you were in your eighties, that became most important. To feel that another human being truly understood the core of you and loved what they saw, while you felt the same about them – that was the best feeling of all. In some ways, he thought, it was the highest achievement of humanity. He had failed in all his other close relationships but at least he got the most important one right.