The Secret Wife(114)
One spring day he drove to the store in Indian Lake – slowly, peering through the windshield because his glasses were not strong enough and the road appeared as a blur. He bought a few items then on the way back remembered he had forgotten tea, the one thing Tatiana had expressly asked for, so he turned round to get some.
When he drove down the track and the cabin came into view, he saw Tatiana lying on the soil and his first thought was that she must have lost an earring. Trina was sitting nearby, whining. He got out of the car and hobbled towards Tatiana.
‘Angel?’ he called. ‘Is everything OK?’
When she didn’t reply, he limped across and sank to his knees, turning her onto her back. She wasn’t breathing. Gulping back a sob, he put an ear to her chest but couldn’t hear a heartbeat. He had never given artificial respiration but he’d read about it in a magazine so he tried frantically pressing down on her chest and blowing into her mouth. All the time he knew, deep inside, that she had gone. He was simply delaying the moment when he must accept it. The expression on her face was calm. At least she had not felt any pain.
When he had tried to revive her for several minutes without getting any response, Dmitri gathered her in his arms and howled, the sound echoing across the lake. He howled again and again. ‘Don’t go, Tatiana, don’t go, come back, don’t do this to me.’ He cried out loud, tears spilling as he rocked her back and forwards, trying to shake her out of death’s grip. The pain was so appalling he thought he must be dying too and he looked up at the sky and prayed that God would take him now. ‘You don’t understand. I can’t be without her. I can’t survive.’
A light rain began to fall but still Dmitri sat there, holding her, stroking her hair, kissing her cold lips, squeezing her to see if there was one ounce of life left. ‘Can you still hear me, darling? If you can, please try to come back. Oh, you must come back to me. I can’t bear it.’ Her face was changing, tightening in death. The lips were pale and thin, her cheeks alabaster.
Dmitri knew he should call the police. They would come and take her away to an undertaker’s. Perhaps there would be an autopsy to establish the cause of death. What did that matter to him? She was gone and he would never find her again if he searched the world over. I’ll keep her with me a little longer, he thought. Just a while.
The sun had started to lower in the skies when he decided that he did not want anyone to take her away, not ever. He would keep her with him at the cabin. No one need know. He would have to work fast because he couldn’t risk someone coming by and finding them like this. He lifted her head off his lap and rose with great difficulty, his hips and knees locked in place from sitting too long. Trina followed as he staggered to the cabin for his tools and some planks of wood he had bought for repairing the porch. Along with a couple of wooden boxes they used for storage, there would be just enough for a makeshift coffin.
He wasn’t a proficient carpenter but he managed to fashion a coffin of a size that would accommodate her. The edges were uneven, the angles askew, but it would do. He hobbled around looking for the perfect spot. Just to the west of the cabin there was a grassy bank between the silver birch trees, with a view out across the lake. The ground was malleable beneath his spade and the moon came out as he worked. He didn’t stop to eat or drink, not once, because he was scared he might collapse and be unable to finish. His back was aching, his hips and knees screeching complaint, and he was wheezing for breath in the cold night air, but he kept going, deeper and deeper. He welcomed the work because it stopped him thinking about the infinite vastness of his loss.
Tatiana lay on her back, looking more beautiful than ever, the moonlight glowing on her skin, her eyes closed as though she was simply asleep. He hoped she would approve of what he was doing.
Dmitri kept digging until he’d made a hole that would accommodate the coffin, and he lowered it inside. Next he lined it with a rose-coloured satin quilt so the rough wood could not scratch her skin, and he put in a little pillow for her head. Clouds scudded across the moon and stars twinkled but it was utterly silent on the lake, apart from the lapping of tiny waves on the shore and Trina’s snuffling. No owls hooted, no whip-poor-wills sang.
He found he did not have the strength to lift Tatiana so he slipped his hands beneath her shoulders and pulled her, legs dragging, to her resting place. As he arranged her so she was comfortable, he noticed that she was wearing Ortipo’s oval dog tag on a chain around her neck, with the tiny sapphire, ruby and imperial topaz stones set within fancy swirls. On a whim, he took it off and fastened it around his own neck instead.
It was April and he had seen some wildflowers blooming in the woods. Tatiana loved flowers. She should have had magnificent roses and orchids, lilies and cherry blossom, but all he could find were some tiny pink, purple and white flowers hidden in the grass. He picked a few handfuls and sprinkled them around her.
When he was done, the sky was turning salmon-pink over the eastern part of the lake as the sun nudged the horizon. It was time. He lay down and leaned into the grave to kiss her one last time, letting his lips move all over her face, her neck, her hands, in a frenzy of kisses. He could still smell her scent and he took a deep breath as if to preserve it within him forever. Then he wrapped the quilt round her to keep her safe and warm and that’s when the tears started.
As he hammered the lid on her coffin and covered it with soil, he couldn’t stop crying. Something had broken inside him and he knew it would never be fixed.