‘It does not matter to him what he copies. It is only important that he copies something.’ Raisa snatched the paper back and returned it to Grisha, placing an arm around his shoulder and pulling him to her tightly. Grisha moaned and resumed his copying.
Dr Meyer looked down at his wife and son in disbelief. ‘You defy me in this? After everything.’ He broke off. ‘Of course! What should I expect?’ Dr Meyer almost seemed to bow to his wife as he made to go inside. A strange smile settled on his lips. ‘At least do me the favour of consuming the chocolates I have bought for you at considerable expense. Perhaps you will find it possible to obey me in that.’ He lurched towards the open door, his shoe heels clacking on the boards of the veranda, as he fled the possibility of any response.
A moment later a door slammed inside. She felt the reverberation in the boards beneath her chair.
Raisa slipped the ribbon off and pulled away the wrapping. She removed the lid from the box and gazed almost with disgust at the gleaming dark spheres. Yes, she would obey him in this. She wouldn’t be able to stop herself. It was this that disgusted her. She was appalled too by the sense that her husband was counting on her greed. She felt little stabs of misery accumulate into a bitter resentment.
Suddenly she knew that it was within her power not to eat the chocolates. She would not, after all, abase herself in his eyes, in the world’s eyes.
To gorge on chocolates that were melting unappetisingly, on a day when it was too hot really to eat anything: she would not do it. The sense of rebellion that came from this decision liberated her. She looked down at the spreading bulk of her own body, and felt that she had taken a stand against the enemy that her life had become. She did not smile but she bowed her head, in solemn self-respect.
She heard footsteps approaching from inside, and looked up to see Polina, flushed in the face, carrying the samovar. The girl’s youthful, lithe figure mocked her, as did the heedless beauty of her features. Raisa felt her resolve desert her as she looked at her maid.
Self-pity took its place. It was hard to believe that she herself had once been just as slim. She even began to feel sorry for Polina, knowing that the day would come when she too would lose her figure and her looks. It was not pleasing to realise that she found this thought oddly consoling.
Polina laid the samovar down heavily. She bowed her head in a kind of curtsy, without meeting her mistress’s eyes. The box of chocolates was thrust in front of her.
‘Will you not have one, Polina?’
‘No thank you, Raisa Ivanovna.’
‘You must help us out. We have to eat them all before they melt.’
The girl wrinkled her nose in an expression of distaste. Raisa was mortified. She felt the existence of a different hierarchy from that of social class, one in which the privileges of youth outranked all others. Now all she wanted was for Polina to be gone, taking her haughty disapproval with her.
And so, she pushed the first chocolate whole into her mouth. It liquefied instantly, filling her mouth with the cloying cream of its praline centre.
Raisa kept her eyes on Polina as she worked her mouth around the chocolate. As she swallowed the soft globule of sweetness, she became aware of a slight, bitter aftertaste. Even so, her hand went back to the box. And quickly, the aftertaste gave way to a pleasant and addictive tingle, an eager craving in her mouth. She appeased it with a second chocolate that dissolved as quickly as the first.
‘Chocolates, Grisha!’ She shook the box at her son.
Grisha looked up from his copying. An immense smile spread over his face when he saw the chocolates. Raisa took it in eagerly.
‘Chocolats!’
‘Oui, chocolats!’ Raisa was teaching her son French. She had been surprised at how quickly, and delightedly, he had picked it up. To realise that there was another way of referring to the world, that the objects around him could be dressed in different words, seemed to have opened a door in his mind. Her husband had watched with a vague, suspicious disapproval, but so far had said nothing.
‘Chocolat!’ repeated Grisha, the word bubbling through the sweet it named, now reduced to a sticky mush in his mouth. Raisa did not dare look at her maid, knowing the disgust she would find on her face.
‘Shall I serve the tea, Raisa Ivanovna?’
Raisa nodded, still without looking at Polina. The slight bitterness that she had noticed before had returned. She looked at the box, as if to confirm that they had indeed come from the usual confectioner’s.
Polina passed her a glass of tea. Her heels stomped sternly on the veranda.
‘Will there be anything else?’
Raisa shook her head, as she hurried another chocolate into her mouth. Polina took her noisy disapproval back inside.
The maid’s departure was liberating. Raisa and Grisha devoured the chocolates in an absorbed frenzy of consumption.
Raisa stared at the box, empty now apart from one remaining chocolate. It shamed and depressed her to look at it. To leave it was almost worse than to eat them alclass="underline" the solitary chocolate exposed her weakness. But her self-disgust was becoming physical.
All she could taste now was the bitterness. She looked at her son. His expression was uncertain, almost fearful.
‘Ho-cla!’ he said, seemingly unable to form the word correctly.
The tingling had spread from her throat over the whole of her mouth, even numbing her lips and tongue. She felt that if she tried to speak, she wouldn’t be able to. She began to be aware of a hot, parched sensation. She sipped her tea, but couldn’t taste it.
Raisa noticed the look of panic on her son’s face. His hands went to his throat. ‘Grisha? Are you all right?’
He gasped harshly, trying to expel his fear, the flesh of his soft palate grating in a desperate hawking.
Raisa felt the tingling intensify into a fire in the flesh of her mouth and throat, as a numbness spread through her chest and out from her stomach. Her heart began to palpitate wildly.
A sudden, sharp cry from Grisha. He jumped up. The wrought-iron chair behind him fell over. The crash of the chair was strangely distant and muffled. He clutched one hand to his mouth. The fist of the other was pummelling his belly.
A thick, dark liquid seeped through his fingers. He took his hand away. His body shook in a violent convulsion that ended in a loud retch. His neat pages were covered in a viscous murky puddle.
Grisha turned a distraught face on his mother. For a moment, there was an edge of outrage to it, as when any child seeks out its parent to explain the unfairness of the world. But that gave way to simple fear.
‘Oh, Grisha,’ began Raisa, stretching out a consoling hand. But the nausea hit her now. A systemic convulsion took hold of her and her own vomit chased the words out of her mouth.
A high-pitched keening came from somewhere. It seemed to answer the pain Raisa was feeling, but she was not aware of making the sound: it was as though something inside her was being stretched and twisted and squeezed by iron hands.
And where was Grisha now? The table and the chairs on the veranda swam and merged, and somewhere in this swirl of detail was her son. Her eye picked out the discarded ribbon of the chocolates. Then she was aware of a fist beating down upon something solid and smooth.
Raisa’s heart now felt as though it had been filled with mercury, her pulse laboured and erratic. Her breathing came unevenly, her lungs no longer certain what was expected of them. She felt a sudden hot weight in her bowels. A liquid gurgling came from Grisha.
‘Mama!’ Her vision came and went. She saw eyes, his eyes, fearful and imploring.