by Lara Vapnyar
Victor was impressed that I was a writer. He found one of my old stories on the Magazine’s website and read it in one sitting. He didn’t like it at the beginning, but by the end he was choking back tears. He sounded sincere, and I was moved. He said that he had recently sold his business, because it wasn’t safe for him to remain in Russia. He had two children from his first marriage, who still lived in Moscow. He used to read them bedtime stories on Skype, but now his daughter had outgrown them, and his son hadn’t been that interested to begin with.
I said that I had two children too. He said he knew that. He’d read it in an interview. He also knew that I was married. “Unhappily, I take it?” I nodded. Then he checked the time and asked if I wanted to hear the story behind that extra ticket. I nodded. “Okay,” Victor said, “I’ll give you the short version.” For the last few years he had been living in Italy. He came to New York to propose to Alexandra, his girlfriend of two years, but it was only here that he found out that she’d been cheating on him for the entirety of the past year. A cruel grimace distorted his features, and for a second he looked like an enraged lynx. That moved me too, the fact that he was capable of love rage. I felt like I owed him a straight story too. I told him exactly what was going on in my life, about the Escher house, about Len and B. and how much I longed to find a way out. I was afraid that Victor would judge me, but he seemed moved by my honesty.
On the steps leading to the Met, Victor asked me if I believed in signs. “Astrological?” I asked. “No,” he said, “religious ones.” He was an Orthodox Christian. Like B.! Like B.! Like B.! I thought. Why, why, why couldn’t I stop thinking about B.?
Victor said he liked to read ancient religious texts. There, characters would always receive signs from God. Like a dove flying right over their heads, signifying a turn for the better, or sudden lightning in the dry sky, warning about imminent disaster. Most of the characters either missed or disregarded the signs, but the wise ones took them seriously. There was one time when Victor wanted to take Alexandra to church to pray for his dead brother. Victor was still living in Moscow then, and Alexandra had come for a visit. There was one church he particularly liked. It was always open and there would always be somebody in there. Praying, lighting a candle, or sitting quietly in the pews. But that time, when he brought Alexandra, the church was locked. Bolted shut!
“So you believe that was a sign that your relationship would end badly?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Victor said. “I’m fascinated by signs, but I don’t know if I believe in them.”
We walked into the building, and only there, while moving toward the ticket check along with the crowd, did I remember that I still didn’t know which opera we were about to see. “I thought you’d never ask,” Victor said. “Lucia di Lammermoor.”
I never liked Lucia di Lammermoor, and also I could never enjoy listening to opera in the opera house. There were too many distractions. The grandeur of the building, lavish decorations, tons of extras, but especially live animals. In this performance, the scene of the hunt boasted two live greyhounds. Our seats were in the front orchestra, but I leaned in even closer to see the dogs better. The larger one looked languid; she moved slowly in a peaceful and superior manner. The smaller one didn’t look as confident; she lagged behind. I wondered if the animals were given some sort of mild tranquilizer before the show.
“Not an opera lover, are you?” Victor whispered. I was embarrassed. I closed my eyes and forced myself to listen. The music swelled; the voice of Lucia went up and down and then up again, where it stayed for a breathtaking (in the literal sense) never-ending vibration. I was holding my breath along with the singer when I heard a strange commotion a few rows behind us. I turned back, but I couldn’t see anything. Somebody in the back gasped, then yelped. An old patrician-looking couple in front of me both turned back and said, “Shh!” the man stretching the sound, but the woman in a sharp tone. The commotion didn’t stop. If anything it was getting worse. Somebody started to scream; then another voice yelled for help. A group of ushers rushed there, and I half rose in my seat to see what was going on. I saw an old man slumped in his seat asleep, and a younger man next to him fanning his program over the old man’s face. Other people tried to make it past them to the exit. I looked at Victor; he took my hand and squeezed it tight. Soon the security guards and the paramedics arrived. The singing was still going on; then it stopped abruptly, and the curtain went down. There was a loudspeaker apology for the brief interruption. One of the patrons had gotten sick. They were asking other patrons to remain in their seats until the sick person was removed. Then they would continue the performance. The paramedics secured the old man on a stretcher and wheeled him down the aisle to the exit. My seat was the closest to the aisle, and one of the paramedics, a plump, bearded young man, bumped into my shoulder. I got a glimpse of the old man’s face, white, immobile, his eyes open and white, the irises of his eyes rolled all the way to the back. The fat paramedic caught me staring and covered the old man’s face with the edge of the blanket, then changed his mind and uncovered it. There were gasps and groans all over the place. The young man sitting next to Victor said: “Oh my fucking God!” I turned to Victor and asked what he thought happened. He said: “The old man died.” There was not a note of shock or hesitation in his voice. It occurred to me that he must have seen many people die. Then he told me to get up. I said that nobody was allowed to leave yet, but he insisted that we do. We both got up and walked into the aisle; there he took my hand and led me to the exit. Victor walked so fast that I had to run to keep up with him. We didn’t stop until we’d gone out of the building and reached the fountain in the middle of the plaza. It took me a while to catch my breath.
The first thing that I said was this: “A man actually dying on us—now that is an obvious sign!”
“A sign of what?” Victor asked.
“That our relationship is doomed!”
This seemed to startle Victor. He looked into my eyes with a quizzical expression. I realized that I had said something stupid. What relationship? Victor had offered me an extra ticket; he hadn’t even asked me on a date yet. I was afraid that he was busy forming these exact words in his head—What relationship? I haven’t even asked you on a date yet. I tried to come up with something that would make my words seem like a witty joke. But the next moment Victor stepped up and pulled me close, his arms circling me, his hands pressing into my shoulders and back. He kissed me with such force that I couldn’t even tell if I enjoyed it or not. I mean I enjoyed the fact of the kiss immensely, of course I did; I just couldn’t tell if I enjoyed the sensation.
Victor ordered a car to take me back to Staten Island, and as soon as the car drove away, I checked my messages. There were seven new ones from B.
“Katya . . .”
“Are you there?”
“I miss you.”
“Katya . . .”
“I need to know that you’re okay. I’m not going to pester you.”
“Please, say something.”
“Katya . . .”
I felt my pain on reading them wasn’t as acute as before. Meeting Victor must have toughened my heart.
When I got back, the house was dark, except for the feeble light coming from the garage, which meant that Len was still working. He must have heard the car, but he didn’t come out to greet me. I heard some rustling in my mother’s room followed by her calling for me, but I decided to ignore her and rush right upstairs.
She caught up with me as I was about to enter the bathroom.
“How was the opera?” she asked in a voice carefully modulated to express her pain, worry, loathing, and disgust. She managed to look gaunt and deathly pale too.
“Really good,” I said, pretending not to notice her expression. “Great production, they even had live dogs.” (They also had dead audience members, but I didn’t mention that.)
At these words, she clutched her stomach and doubled up as if in pain. This looked so fake th
at I didn’t even get angry. I went into the bathroom and closed the door behind me.
Once in bed, I turned onto my stomach, buried my face in the pillow, and tried to distract myself by thinking about Victor. I hadn’t felt aroused during the actual kiss, but now as I imagined the pressure of his hands on my back (his hands were surprisingly large and strong for his compact frame), his face mashed against mine, his tongue forcefully opening my lips to get inside, I wondered what his dick looked like.
My phone beeped. I thought it would be another pleading message from B. and got angry and annoyed, but when I saw that it wasn’t I couldn’t help but feel disappointed.
The message was from Victor. “I know that you’re thinking about the dead man right now. Try to see it in a positive light. Dying in the middle of your favorite aria is an excellent way to go!”
I wanted to reply that I was actually thinking about his dick, but I thought better of it and wrote: “Thank you. I needed to hear that.”
Victor and I spent the following two weeks as if living out a mellow romantic comedy. I told him that I couldn’t engage in another affair while I was still with Len, and he said that he understood, that he wouldn’t pressure me into anything. Both of us enacted more palatable versions of ourselves. It wasn’t like we put on masks—we remained ourselves; it was that we intuited which version of ourselves would be more palatable to the other and instinctively assumed it, while keeping all the other (less palatable) versions in check.
Victor would come to meet me after class and we would go on long walks, visit museums, have meals together, and simply talk, while exchanging occasional kisses like furtive thirteen-year-olds.
Sometimes (perhaps too often) we talked about Alexandra and B. I complained about B.’s indecisiveness, and his inability to let go, and especially about his insistence that it was easier for him to hurt people he loved because it made him feel less guilty. Usually, Victor listened with patient understanding, but one time he couldn’t resist and said: “He sounds like a whiny asshole!”
Victor never complained about Alexandra, but he kept comparing me to her, greedily hunting for every little thing that made me “better.” For example, he was delighted to know that I was an early riser. “That means you are eager to meet the day!” he said, adding that Alexandra used to sleep until twelve and linger in bed until two or three.
This bothered me, because I felt that Victor was using me to kill his love for Alexandra. He was also trying very hard to interpret our meeting each other as this absolute right meant to correct all the wrong, this absolute good to make up for all the bad.
But then wasn’t I doing the same?
Even sex that I had with Victor felt like atonement for all our problems.
It was exemplary.
My love life hasn’t been that rich when it comes to variety or the number of partners, but I have experienced the six major variations of sex in terms of quality.
Exploratory (Len)
Tender (Len)
Routine (Len)
Mind-blowing (B.)
Painfully sad (B.)
Exemplary (Victor)
If the meaning of the term “exemplary” is not clear, here is how I explain it. Both Victor and I tried hard to prove to ourselves and each other that we could have wonderful sex, and there were moments when it was wonderful, but at other times we tried a bit too hard and it was exemplary rather than good. Kind of like Chicherin’s exemplary English.
Two weeks after we met, Victor took me to dinner at the Most Elegant Restaurant in NYC. The atmosphere reminded me of the Grand Wedding Palace where Len and I got married. The memory made me intensely anxious. As did the gleam of the caviar in a tiny silver dish in the middle of the table. As did the quiet hiss of the champagne in our flutes. Victor was saying something to me, but I kept staring into my flute, counting bubbles coming up to the surface in an attempt to calm down. Then Victor covered my hand with his, and its heft and warmth grounded me, made me come back and focus on his words.
He was saying that he knew how crazy this sounded, but he felt like he knew me. And he also felt that we matched incredibly well. In fact, he thought that I was exactly the type of woman he’d always hoped to meet. In other words, he was almost sure that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. Every time he would make a point, he would squeeze my hand a little. I looked at his hand over mine and once again marveled at how large it was. Then I noticed a square white Tiffany box in the middle of the table right next to the dish with caviar. He let go of my hand, prodding me to open it. Inside the white box, there was a blue leather box, and inside the blue leather box, there was a tiny black velvet box with rounded corners.
“Go on, open it!” Victor said.
I thought of the Russian folktale where Koschei the Immortal gets killed. There is an iron chest, and inside the iron chest there is a hare, and inside the hare there is a duck, and inside the duck there is an egg, and inside the egg there is a needle, and if you break that needle Koschei the Immortal will die.
Victor took the little box from me and opened it himself. There was a sparkly engagement ring sitting in a silk cushion. I was still in love with B.; I was still married to Len. In fact there was my old wedding ring embedded in the flesh of my finger. I was sure it would take a lot of effort to remove it. Looking at the new ring made me sick.
Victor saw my reaction, but interpreted it in a different way.
“Do you think I bought it for Alexandra? No! Of course not! It’s a new one. I bought it yesterday.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that this was the ring Victor had bought for Alexandra, but later I thought that even if it was a different one, it still wasn’t meant for me. I don’t think Victor realized that himself, but he had come to New York to propose, and he needed to go back to Moscow engaged, even if to a different woman. Otherwise, he would’ve felt too much like a failure.
I could see how eager he was to make that leap, to do something explosive and huge, the sheer enormity of which had to drown out his pain. Yet he couldn’t help but see that I was resisting going along with his plan.
He squinted at me and said, “Let’s try to be rational about this.”
I saw that rationality was sort of a second religion for him, a more reliable one than Christianity. He believed that if only he managed to stay rational, he could withstand the tumult of the world. I used to believe in rationality too, but I relinquished my faith about the same time that I relinquished my faith in math.
Victor started by asking me a series of questions.
Every time he asked one, he would fling a finger in the air in that showy, superconfident gesture that I learned to love, then learned to hate. But back then it seemed to hypnotize me.
“Are you sure you want to divorce Len?”
Index finger in the air.
“Yes!”
“Are you sure you want to stop obsessing over B.?”
“Yes! Oh, yes!”
Index and middle fingers in the air together.
“Do you think we have a chance as a couple?”
Softer yes.
“Is there any benefit in doing this later rather than sooner?”
I didn’t say anything, because I couldn’t come up with an answer.
“Good,” Victor said, closing his hand into a fist. “The ultimate decision is made. Now let’s discuss how we do it.”
What followed was a very detailed plan of action that Victor had drawn up a few days before, after consulting his lawyer and his accountant. (I later found it very funny that Victor’s accountant knew about his plans to marry me before I did.) Victor started with long-term plans. He would prefer if we lived in Europe together. His home was in Italy, but London was possible too. I would lose my teaching job, but I would have all the time in the world to write my books. He would find a nice place for my mother right next to ours, and he would arrange for my kids to attend an excellent school.
I squirmed, and Victor interpreted that as my unwill
ingness to move to Europe. He assured me that it would be perfectly fine if I decided to stay in New York. I probably wanted my kids to finish their education in New York, and to be near their father until they went to college. He could certainly understand. He was willing to buy an apartment in New York for us all. He would have to spend some time supervising his businesses in Europe, but that was manageable. For this summer, he was proposing a trip to the Alps and then Sardinia? Or he was open to suggestions. He wanted to take all four kids with us (mine and his). He said that while he was sure that his kids would love to be in the company of mine, he was a little worried that my kids would be bored. But he promised to look for some fun activities suitable for their age.
Victor’s short-term plan was more frightening. He was leaving New York in a week. He had some urgent business in Milan, but after that he would be free. He wanted me to spend at least two weeks with him, in his villa on Lake Garda. It was very important for him to see me in his home, on his turf, before we got married.
But, of course, I would have to tell Len first. I would have to be completely honest with him. Then Len and I would tell the kids together. It was better for the kids like that. He had asked a child psychologist specializing in divorce. Then, after we told the kids, we had to start divorce proceedings right away: the faster it was done, the less painful it was. He would pay for a lawyer. He would still pay for a lawyer even if it didn’t work out between us.
The only thing that made me happy about Victor’s speech was the fact that he considered the possibility of us not working as a couple, because that meant that he wasn’t completely insane.
“Have some caviar!” Victor said after he finished. “I’d hate for it to go to waste.”
He took one of the little blinis from the plate, spread some caviar on it, and handed it to me.
I chewed and swallowed without registering the taste.