Chapter Forty Two
Alexei
I am slowly going insane. It is a drawn-out process, but the effect is undeniable.
Anatoli advises me to disconnect the cameras.
He says it would be a simple matter to invent a reason that Katya needs to vacate her home for a few hours, have men slip in under the disguise of a utility company investigating a potential problem, and tear everything down.
It would solve my voyeuristic problem, eradicate my ability to watch her.
A cleaner break than I have been able to achieve thus far.
Still, I cannot bring myself to do this. I cannot surrender this one part of her that is still mine.
This is also the primary cause of my unraveling.
Every day, I see her doing a little worse.
It starts with lingering over a bottle of wine every night.
Not even one of the sweet wines she prefers.
Most nights she is up until dawn is peeking over the horizon.
Then she collapses on her bed and lays like the dead for hours.
I am not entirely certain she is even sleeping.
I know she is awake one afternoon because I see her fingers drift lazily across the mattress, as if searching for a companion who is no longer there.
But eventually they fall flat once more, and she does not move again until nightfall, though her eyes remain open.
She stares at the ceiling, but she sees nothing.
I do not understand this. She should be thriving.
It has been months. I am sure certain memories are painful still, but she does not even attempt to heal herself, to replace these bad memories with new ones.
She needs to get out of the house, make those plans she talked about, meet people, make friends.
Teach, like she has wanted all her life.
But she does not do any of these things.
She does not adopt the fucking cat she wanted.
She does not change into any of the bathing suits available to her.
She does not sit on the beach, even though winter is approaching and the time for her to do so is growing short.
She is still as pale and colorless as she was her last days with me.
Some nights she cooks. Most evenings she seems to get bored halfway through, leaving whatever she was assembling where it lays, half completed, on the stove or the cutting board.
One night she makes it nearly to the end—she is chopping some leafy green vegetables for what looks like a salad, and then she makes an amateur mistake.
She drops the knife. And tries to catch it as it falls.
Luckily, the consequences are minor. A small cut on her palm, easily patched with a bandage.
But two nights later, the bandage is gone, and as she sits in her chair at the window, I see her picking at the scab that has formed. The same way she did in the shower. As if hurting is preferable to feeling nothing at all.
This dark road she travels is one that I placed her upon. This is my fault. My responsibility. I have never been one to shirk them, and Katya—she comes before all else.
Once, many months ago now, Anatoli asked me what the limits of my obsession were. I laughed at him, secure in my certainty that I could control all things. I was wrong. Some things are beyond my limits. There is no limit for her.
It is not even a difficult decision in the end.
And so I call for Anatoli, and when he arrives, I tell him the only thing he needs to know.
I tell him I need him to kill me.