The Secret Wife(79)
He had no complaints about her. In many ways she was the perfect wife: cheerful, affectionate and forgiving. She asked little of him: a roof over their heads, money for food, and not much else. When her mother and sister visited, he was polite and welcoming, although their disapproval of him was visceral.
‘Why do you love me?’ he asked Rosa once. He genuinely couldn’t understand it.
‘Because you need me,’ she replied. ‘Because I want to try and make you happy.’
‘It won’t work,’ he told her. ‘Melancholy is the condition of the Russian soul.’
And yet, Rosa could make him laugh, almost against his will. When she returned from the daily shopping trip, she usually had a vignette of some tiny incident with which to entertain him: a housewife scrubbing her front steps with vigour then a bird defecating on them with a huge splat just as she turned to go indoors; a bad-tempered tram conductor who was unaware someone had stuck a notice on his back saying ‘I’ve not had a bath since 1917’.
They no longer went out in the evenings, because they could not afford a Kinderhüter never mind the cost of alcohol in the cafés and nightclubs, but Dmitri would pour himself a vodka at home. Sometimes they invited friends for supper, but mostly they read books or listened to the radio. He was not unhappy. At night, they often made love. Rosa had a remarkable enthusiasm for sex and a talent for arousing him even when he felt exhausted. Cool fingers, the touch of her lips, her luscious breasts pressed against him, all had a miraculous effect on his libido. She had assured him that it would be impossible for her to get pregnant again while she was breastfeeding little Nicholas, so they were both astonished to find, when the baby was just seven months old, that she was wrong about that. Their doctor confirmed another was due the following year.
‘Wouldn’t it be lovely if we had a bigger apartment, where the children could have their own room,’ Rosa sighed. She didn’t nag – never nagged – but he knew it was a reasonable request. He asked his publisher for an advance against the next novel and managed to pay the deposit on a two-bedroom apartment not far away, where they moved just before a little girl was born in the summer of 1926.
‘Can I call her Marta?’ Rosa pleaded. ‘I always wanted a daughter called Marta.’
‘Of course,’ Dmitri replied, his voice a little husky. ‘Marta is a pretty name.’
The strength of his feelings when he looked at his baby daughter amazed him: a combination of protectiveness and sheer awe at her innate femininity. Even as a newborn she held her hands daintily, like a ballerina, and gazed up at him with innocent adoration. How could they have created someone quite so beautiful? Sometimes he almost fancied she looked like Tatiana – although that was, of course, impossible.
‘Hello, little girl,’ he whispered, and she clutched his finger in a surprisingly strong fist. Nicholas had begun to crawl and annoyed him by grabbing at his papers, knocking over cups, falling down and wailing even though he could not possibly be hurt. Secretly Dmitri admitted to himself that he loved his daughter more. Nicholas was clumsy and needful of attention, reminding Dmitri of himself as a child, while Marta seemed graceful and sure of herself, completely unlike him. When he said anything of the sort to Rosa, she laughed and chided him: ‘They’re babies! You can’t possibly judge their characters yet.’
In summer 1927, Exile was published, and it proved rather more controversial than Interminable Love, with much debate over Dmitri’s views of life in exile. The discussion was taken up by the German press when it was published in translation, resulting in many more sales. The book was reprinted and for once they had a little money to spare. Dmitri gave Rosa cash to buy new clothes for herself and the children, and one summer’s day they took a day trip to the countryside with a picnic that Rosa had carefully packed in a wicker basket.
Watching the children playing on the grass, completely caught up in the moment, and watching Rosa hum as she cut big hunks of bread and cheese to serve with beer and sausage, Dmitri felt the closest he ever came to happiness. He examined the sensation, suspicious of it, feeling he did not deserve it. What about Tatiana? What about the way he had let her down?
Rosa handed him his food, then leapt to her feet, tucked one child under each arm and began to spin them round and round. Nicholas and Marta shrieked and chortled from deep in their bellies and suddenly Dmitri found himself laughing too. It was still an unfamiliar sensation for him but it got easier every time.
On the way back on the train, as the children slept on their laps, Rosa asked him a question that had obviously been on her mind: ‘Would you go back to Russia if the Communists were overthrown?’
He frowned. ‘It’s not going to happen in my lifetime. They are too firmly entrenched.’ He realised from her disappointed expression this wasn’t the answer she wanted.
‘But if they were to fall? What would happen to me and your children?’
‘Rosa, I will always look after you. I promise. You have nothing to fear.’
She was playing with the ring on her wedding finger, about to say more, but instead she turned with an almost imperceptible sigh to look out of the window. Suddenly Dmitri saw the situation from her point of view and realised he was treating her appallingly. She loved him, she had borne him two children, and still he was not committing himself to her. It wasn’t fair.