‘Then I was wrong. If we are to be blessed … then it will happen at the right time. I can’t continue to focus on it. It’s too much for me, Georgy, can’t you see that?’ I nodded. I didn’t want us to argue and even the effort of holding this conversation at all was affecting my headache so badly that I thought I might be sick. ‘What time is it anyway?’ she asked me a moment later.
‘A quarter past seven,’ I said, glancing at my watch. ‘You’ll be late if you don’t hurry up. We’ll both be late.’
She nodded and reached forward to kiss me, smiling a little as she did so. ‘Then I’d better hurry along,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you this evening. I hope your headache disappears soon.’
We parted and I went to the front door of the flat, but before I could open it, I heard her walking quickly through the kitchen towards me; as she grabbed me by the arm, I turned around and she threw herself into my arms. ‘I’m so sorry, Georgy,’ she said, the words muffled as she buried her face in my chest.
‘Sorry?’ I asked, pulling away from her a little and smiling in confusion. ‘Sorry for what?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, puzzling me even further. ‘But I do love you, Georgy. You know that, don’t you?’
I stared at her and laughed. ‘But of course I know it,’ I said. ‘I feel it every day. And you know that I love you too, don’t you?’
‘I’ve always known it,’ she replied. ‘At times, I don’t know what I ever did to deserve such kindness.’
On any other occasion I would have happily sat down with her and listed her attributes, the dozens of ways I loved her, the hundreds of reasons why, but the dead thumping behind my forehead was growing worse by the minute so I simply reached down, kissed her softly on either cheek, and said that I had better get some air quickly or I would collapse with the pain.
She watched me as I climbed the steps towards the street, but when I turned back to wave, the door was already closing behind me. I stood there and stared at the frosted glass, through which I could make her out as she stood pressed up against it, her head bowed slightly. She held that pose for five, perhaps ten seconds, then walked away.
Contrary to what I had hoped, I was feeling even more unsettled by the time I arrived at the library, but I made an effort to ignore my pain and continue with my duties. By eleven o’clock, however, the pain had spread to my stomach and limbs and I became convinced that I must have picked up a bug somewhere, which would not be cured by a long day of activity. It was not a busy day, though – we had no acquisitions to catalogue and the readers’ room was unusually quiet – so I knocked on Mr Trevors’ door and explained my situation. The combination of my pale, perspiration-tinged face and the fact that I had not taken a day’s sick leave in all the time that I had been employed there ensured that he sent me on my way without complaint.
Leaving the library, I couldn’t face the walk back to Holborn and took a bus instead. Its movement as it shuddered along Theobald’s Road towards our home made me feel even more ill and I worried that I might either vomit on the floor in front of me or be forced to jump off the moving bus to spare my disgrace. At the end of my journey, however, lay the only thing of any interest to me at that moment – my bed – and I focussed on it and tried to ignore the suffering which was threatening to overwhelm me.
Finally, at half past eleven, I walked carefully down the steps towards our flat and opened the door, letting myself in with a great sigh of relief. It felt strange to be in the flat alone – Zoya was almost always here when I was at home – but I poured myself a glass of water and sat at the table, thinking of nothing in particular as I took a few cautious sips, hoping that it might help to settle my stomach.
Taking that day’s
Times
from my briefcase, I glanced at the headlines for a moment and my eyes were taken by a report about the uprising in Georgia. The Mensheviks were battling the Bolsheviks for independence, but their struggle appeared to be failing. I was well aware of the numerous insurgencies and uprisings that were taking place throughout the various parts of the empire and of the number of states that were striking out for sovereignty. I usually read
The Times
during my tea break at the library and paid special interest to any story which related to my homeland, but I had paid particular attention to this one in recent weeks on account of the Menshevik leader, Colonel Cholokashvili, who had been part of a delegation sent to Tsarskoe Selo during 1917 to report to the Tsar on the progress of the Russian armies at the front. He was younger than the other representatives at the palace, and I had been fortunate to engage in a brief conversation with him when he was leaving and he had said to me that guarding the life of the Emperor and his heir was of as much importance as safeguarding our borders during the war. His words had been of particular importance to me at the time, for I had become worried that I was forsaking my true duties by remaining in the employ of the Imperial Family when tens of thousands of young men my own age were dying in the Carpathian mountains or on the battlefields of the Masurian Lakes.
By the time I finished the article, I found that both my headache and stomach upset had begun to subside a little, but I thought I would spend the day in bed nevertheless and hopefully wake up feeling fully restored.
I opened the door to the bedroom and stared.
Lying across the bed was Zoya, her eyes closed, her arms spread out from her sides, blood seeping from a pair of deep wounds which had been etched across her wrists, a reddish-black puddle blending into the blanket beneath her. I stood at the doorway, frozen, horrified, experiencing the most curious sensation of
incomprehension and impotence. It was almost as if my brain could not fully assimilate the scene that was presented to it, and because of that was unable to offer instruction to my body as to how to respond. Finally, however, with a great animal roar that emerged from the pit of my stomach, I ran towards the bed and lifted her in my arms, tears streaming down my face as I looked into her eyes and shouted her name over and over in a desperate bid to revive her.
Within a few seconds, her eyelids flickered slightly; her pupils focussed on my own for a moment before she looked away and an exhausted sigh escaped her lips. She did not welcome my presence; she did not want to be saved. I ran to the wardrobe, grabbed a pair of scarves from a shelf and brought them back to the bed, locating the place on each arm where the knife had entered and binding the wounds tightly, cutting off the flow of blood. A deep cry was coming from Zoya’s mouth now as she begged me to leave her alone, to let her be, but I could not, I would not, and having secured her arms, I ran out on to the street and down to the end of our row of houses, where, to our good fortune, a doctor’s surgery was located. I must have looked like a lunatic as I ran inside, wild-eyed, my shirt, arms and face covered with Zoya’s blood, and a middle-aged woman sitting in the reception area let out a terrible scream, perhaps mistaking me for a crazed murderer intent on doing them harm. But I had enough wits about me to explain to the nurse what had happened and to ask for help, to demand it, and now, quickly, before it was too late.
In the days that followed, I often wondered about the headache and stomach bug which affected me on that day. It was so unusual for me to have suffered from them and yet, had I been in my usual good health, I would have remained at the library of the British Museum for the entire day and been widowed by the time I returned home.
Considering the life that I have lived, the people I have known, the places I have seen, it is unusual for me to be intimidated by someone simply because he holds a position of authority, but Dr Hooper, who took care of Zoya while she was in hospital, awed me slightly and made me anxious of appearing foolish in his company. He was an elderly gentleman, cocooned inside an expensive tweed suit, with a neatly trimmed Romanov beard, piercing blue eyes and a trim athletic body unusual in a man of his age and rank. I suspected that he terrified the doctors and nurses under his charge and did not suffer fools gladly. It annoyed me that he did not see fit to talk to me during the weeks when my wife was recovering from her injuries at the hospital; whenever I passed him on the corridor and attempted to converse with him, he begged off on the grounds that he was too busy for me at that moment and referred me to one of his juniors instead, none of whom seemed any more informed about my wife’s condition than I was myself. The day before I was due to take her home, however, I phoned his secretary in advance and begged for a meeting with the doctor prior to his signing her out. And so, three weeks after I had discovered Zoya bleeding and dying on our bed, I found myself seated in a large, comfortable office on the top floor of the psychiatric wing, staring across at this most senior doctor as he examined my wife’s file carefully.
‘Mrs Jachmenev’s physical injuries have healed perfectly well,’ he announced finally, setting the file aside and looking across at me. ‘The wounds she inflicted on herself were not deep enough to lacerate the arteries. She was lucky with that. Most people don’t know how to finish the job correctly.’
‘There was an awful lot of blood,’ I said, hesitant to relive the experience but feeling that it was necessary that he know the full story. ‘I thought … when I found her, that is … well, she was very pale and—’
‘Mr Jachmenev,’ he said, holding up a hand to silence me, ‘you’ve been in here two, three times a day since your wife was
admitted, have you not? I’ve been impressed by your attentiveness. You might be surprised by how few husbands bother to visit their wives, regardless of the reasons for their admission. But during that time you must have noticed an improvement in her condition. There’s really no need for you to worry about any of her physical problems any more. There might be a slight scarring on her arms, but it will fade in time and become barely noticeable.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, a sigh of relief escaping from me. ‘I must admit that when I found her, I immediately thought the worst.’
‘Of course you know my speciality, however, and I am more concerned with her mental scars than her physical ones. As you know, every attempted suicide must be thoroughly evaluated before we can allow the perpetrator to return home.’
The perpetrator
. ‘For their sake as much as anything else. I’ve spoken quite extensively to your wife over the last few weeks in an attempt to find the root cause of her behaviour and I must be honest with you, Mr Jachmenev, she does give me cause for concern.’
‘You mean she might try this again?’
‘No, I don’t think that’s likely,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Most survivors of suicide attempts are too ashamed and shocked by their actions to try a second time. Most, you understand, don’t really mean it in the first place. It is, as they say, a cry for help.’
‘And you think that’s what it was?’ I asked hopefully.
‘If she meant it, she would have found a gun and shot herself,’ he replied, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘There’s no way back from that. People who survive want to. That’s in her favour to begin with.’
I wasn’t so convinced of this in Zoya’s case; after all, as far as she had been concerned I was not going to return home for another six hours at least. She would never have survived the bleeding for that long, regardless of which veins she had cut. And where, after all, would she have found a gun? Perhaps, I
considered, Dr Hooper was judging us all by the standards of his own armoury. He looked for all the world like a man who spent his weekends rifle in hand, slaughtering all forms of wildlife in the company of minor royalty.
‘And in your wife’s case,’ he continued, ‘I think the shock of the attempt, coupled with her feelings towards you, might prevent such a recurrence anyway.’
‘Her feelings for me?’ I asked, raising an eyebrow. ‘She wasn’t thinking of me when she did this thing, though, was she?’
The words were unworthy of me, but, like Zoya’s, my own mood had swung from positive to hideously bleak over recent weeks. There were nights when I lay awake, thinking of nothing other than how close she had been to death and how I could possibly have survived without her. There were days when I berated myself for not recognizing her suffering and coming to her aid. There were times when I pressed my fists against my forehead in frustration, angry that she thought so little of me that she could cause me so much suffering.
‘You mustn’t think that this is about you,’ said Dr Hooper finally, seeming to read my mind as he stepped around from the desk now and sank into an armchair beside me. ‘It’s not about you at all. It’s about her. It’s about her mind. Her depression. Her unhappiness.’
I shook my head, unable to take it in. ‘Dr Hooper,’ I said, choosing my words carefully, ‘you must understand, Zoya and I have a very happy marriage. We rarely argue, we love each other very much.’
‘And you’ve been together …’
‘We met when we were teenagers. We married five years ago. They have been happy times.’
He nodded and made a church steeple out of his hands, pointing his fingers towards the heavens, and breathed heavily as he considered this.
‘You have no children, of course,’ he said.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘As you know, we have suffered a number of miscarriages.’
‘Yes, your wife has spoken to me of that. Three, is that correct?’
I hesitated for a moment at the memory of these three lost babies, but finally nodded my head. ‘Yes,’ I said, coughing to clear my throat. ‘Yes, it has happened three times.’
He leaned forward and looked me directly in the eye. ‘Mr Jachmenev, there are a number of things which I am not at liberty to discuss with you, things that Zoya and I have spoken about in confidence, under the auspices of doctor and patient, you understand?’
‘Yes, of course,’ I said, frustrated at not being told exactly what was wrong with her when it was I, above all others, who wanted to help her. ‘But I am her husband, Dr Hooper. There are certain things—’
‘Yes, yes,’ he said quickly, dismissing this as he leaned back. I felt that he was examining me carefully – analysing me, even – as if he was trying to decide for himself how much he could permit me to know and how much he should leave out. ‘If I was to say that your wife is a very unhappy woman, Mr Jachmenev,’ he said finally, ‘you would no doubt understand.’