Chapter 39
Zina
I woke up one morning in June feeling wrong.
There was no other way to describe it. My mouth was sandpaper dry and my bladder too swollen, even after I had relieved myself.
I breathed in a snatch of something windswept and wintry in the tearoom, as when one comes inside with snow powdering their coat.
Something is coming.
I brewed myself a cup of coffee in the kitchen, thinking maybe I would take a peek at the grounds, but I couldn’t even drink it.
The coffee was tepid, watery, too burnt, like back at the Sherbatskys’ flat.
I set the cup down, feeling strange. I usually found comfort in the scent of herbs, but even that twisted to smell wrong.
As though the drying lavender, sage, and thyme had gone rotten. I needed air—now.
I went out into the garden to a cool, overcast day. A rosebush at the edge of our property flowered with intensely red roses. Their vibrant scarlet hue reminded me of fresh blood.
I approached the bush and broke off a single rose, the most perfect bloom on its starved branches. Then I walked over to Mama’s grave and knelt beside it.
I had taken to visiting her as part of my ritual and routine. At first, my words had come out strained and seeming silly to me. Eventually, though, they started to flow more easily, sounding less awkward and stilted.
Something in me whispered for Mama and ached for her presence, her touch, her advice, today more than ever.
I wished I could hear her voice. I wanted to weep.
But I had to be strong—for her and for my grandmother, both battling something much worse than I was.
The grave’s energy confirmed Mama’s battle—unsettling, restless like a ship caught in a storming blue-black sea.
It made me feel cold and shivery and quite dark inside.
I placed the rose on the grave and spoke to Mama.
Then I closed my eyes and concentrated, withdrawing into myself, feeling for the warmth in my chest as it heated up, reaching into the beyond.
Focusing on Mama slumbering on the other side of the grave.
I didn’t hear any sound beyond a subtle inhalation and exhalation, as if she were still breathing, even that deep and dead underground.
Instead of frightening me, this reassured me—that Mama was still there, here, not gone.
Present, alive on some plane of existence, even if imprisoned.
Later in the day, Baba Valya couldn’t stop coughing or burning up. She couldn’t breathe.
Something is coming.
I tucked her into bed and ran over to the butcher’s to telephone Dr. Misha, whether she wanted it or no.
Dr. Misha came and went. He cleared his throat before delivering his prognosis: “I believe she has developed pneumonia. It…doesn’t look good, Zina.
You should have come to me earlier. I will do all I can for her, of course,” he assured me.
“We will do the full course of treatment, everything, but—I want you to prepare yourself.”
We turned to glance at Baba Valya, heard her labored, rasping breathing. She had closed her eyes several hours before and fallen into a deep sleep. She appeared sallow, drained of blood, as dead-looking as the Grand Duke.
After Dr. Misha had gone and Katya had stopped by with a jar of homemade chicken soup, I went back to Baba Valya.
I warded the room, then sat quietly at my grandmother’s bedside, starting my sleepless vigil over her.
Candlelight flickered on the ceiling and walls in eddying puddles of amber, reminding me of olive oil drizzled onto a plate, expanding, swelling into every centimeter of space.
I picked up my grandfather’s book, imagining Ivan Morozov reading the same words I was now.
They kept me from the despair threatening to engulf me.
Would the spirit follow through on his threat, make me go mad, force me into an insane asylum like his daughter—or worse?
What if I wasn’t strong or knowledgeable enough for the expulsion, or to deal with Olga and Alec?
If I wouldn’t have time to perform the expulsion before…
I glanced furtively at Baba Valya’s sleeping form, suppressing the question that was like a knife slipping in between my ribs: What if she dies?
How could I reclaim our tearoom and find Mama on my own?
How could I live without my grandmother?
Except for a father I knew little about, I would be alone, without friends or family or a true home, my own dark little island in the vast City of Light that was Paris. Much as I had been the last few weeks.