Olga reproached Kostya for betraying her, though she was aware of the unfairness of her judgment. Nevertheless, she confiscated the letters from him. Kostya held his tongue.
He also felt sorry for his mother; still, he couldn’t agree with her. He felt especially violated by the fact that not only had she broken into the desk drawer where he kept the letters, but that he had a stash of condoms in the far corner of the same drawer. This both embarrassed and infuriated him. He didn’t realize that, blinded by her jealousy, she hadn’t paid the slightest bit of attention to the paper package or its contents.
Meanwhile, it emerged that the cousin of one of her university friends was living in Paris, and knew Oksana from Kiev very well. She shared new information that confirmed Olga’s worst suspicions. It was not a fictitious marriage at all! Oksana, the old vixen, was very much in love with Ilya, and had even given up her two-room apartment for a larger, three-room flat, anticipating the arrival of her young husband.
Tamara begged her: “Olga, enough is enough! Stop dwelling on it. He’s gone—consider him dead. Live your own life!” Olga brushed off her pleas.
Not a year had passed since Ilya’s departure, when Afanasy Mikhailovich died. He was buried at the Vagankovo Cemetery, in a good spot, with other soldiers of the highest rank, but without a salute. No one recalled how, exactly, he had been made a general. During the war he had traversed all of Europe on foot, ending up in Vienna as a lieutenant colonel. He was certainly no armchair officer. He had constructed bridges and built ferries.
Olga hardly noticed her father’s death.
She was furious that now she would be stuck in this Party-owned apartment with her mother, who was on the verge of retirement, and with Kostya and his sweetheart Lena. What would become of her?
What a fool she was not to have left with Ilya when she had a chance! Now everything had been shot to hell, it was all a shambles. This was the hardest thing of all to reconcile herself to. If she had left when the time was ripe, her life would have taken another course.
As the tempestuous hurts and grievances occasioned by her ex-husband turned into rigid, formulaic mantras, her livid anger turned into a hatred every bit as livid. She continued to lose weight and started turning yellow, like a withered onion; her stomach hurt, and she suffered other unpleasant symptoms, besides.
By this time, Ilya had learned to make his way in the West, but success still evaded him. Olga’s correspondence with Ilya was cut short after Olga sent his wife Oksana the letter he had sent her about the necessity of entering into a fictitious marriage to further his plans in life, and about their love, eternal and immortal.
During the second year of their separation, Olga was diagnosed with cancer. She began to undergo treatment at the Oncological Institute, but her condition steadily worsened. The doctors told her friend Tamara, in so many words, that the process was irreversible and that they should prepare for the worst. Antonina Naumovna stopped going to the hospital. She feared more than anything that Olga would die in her presence.
Tamara, a recent convert to Christianity, was tireless in her efforts to guide Olga onto the righteous path of reconciliation and love. To no avaiclass="underline" Olga was completely indifferent to the Church, she refused to see a priest, and was even alarmed when Tamara mentioned one. She blamed all her suffering and misfortune, including her fatal illness, on Ilya. By this time, Ilya had managed to rise out of poverty and obscurity and had moved to Munich, where he worked at Radio Liberty. He broadcast to Russia. Olga never missed a program. At night she would turn on the transistor radio and listen in rapt attention to the penetrating voice out of Munich that defied the censor’s scrambling. What must she have felt during those nights?
Tamara, seeing the bitterness etched on Olga’s face, decided to write to Ilya, informing him that Olga was dying, that God expects forgiveness and love from all of us, and that Ilya would have to make the first move …
The letter contained nothing that Ilya didn’t know already, since he had been corresponding with Kostya and was aware of the sad situation. He was not callous. He spent a long time composing a letter to her, weighing every word, contriving every phrase, and tailoring it to Olga’s needs and expectations.
It was the end of December, and many patients checked out of the hospital for the New Year; some were even allowed to spend several days at home.
Tamara went to Olga’s doctor to ask whether Olga could celebrate the New Year at home too. “I assume all responsibility,” Tamara said.
The doctor looked at her searchingly and said:
“All right, Tamara Grigorievna, we’ll discharge her. If she makes it till then…”
That was when the letter from Ilya arrived. Letter? No, it was a masterpiece. He glorified their past, describing their time together as the best days of his life. He repented of his sins, asked for forgiveness, and hinted (laying it on a bit thick, but still not missing a beat) at their imminent reunion, which grew nearer with each passing day.
And the letter caused a turnaround in Olga’s life and in her illness. She read the letter, put it aside, and asked Tamara for her cosmetics. Looking at her reflection in a small mirror, she sighed and powdered her nose—the powder showed up as a pink blotch on her waxen yellow skin, which didn’t escape Olga’s notice. She asked Tamara to buy her some more powder in a lighter tone.
“This light pink will look like rouge on my complexion!” And she smiled her former smile, which featured four dimples at once—two round ones at the corners of her mouth and two longer ones in the middle of her cheeks.
She reread the letter, reached for her cosmetics, and corrected her face again. Before Tamara left she asked her to bring a good large envelope the next day.
She wants to reply to the letter, thought Tamara. But she was wrong. The next morning Olga placed the envelope with the foreign stamps into the larger one, and stashed it away on the bottom shelf of the bedside table. Tamara had expected that Olga would read her the letter from Ilya; this took her by surprise. At last, Tamara couldn’t contain herself any longer and asked what Ilya had written. Olga smiled a ghostly smile and replied enigmatically.
“You know, Brinchik,” she said, calling Tamara by her nickname. “He didn’t write anything in particular. It’s just that everything seems to have fallen into place. He’s an intelligent man, and now he understands. We just can’t live apart.”
On that very day, Olga got up and made her way down to the dining room.
They say that this is not unheard of; it does happen sometimes. Some backup program in the body kicks in, a blocked switch turns on, something rejuvenates itself or springs to life, who the hell knows … God only knows … the very same thing that happens in miracle healing. Saints who perform wonders in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ know nothing about biochemistry, and biochemists, who are well aware of the destructive processes associated with oncological diseases, are at a loss to explain the workings of the magic button setting in motion this backup program that Father John of Kronstadt or the Blessed Matrona of Moscow knew to press.
After the New Year, Olga didn’t return to the hospital. She began to heal herself, like a sick cat who steals into the woods to eat healing grasses and herbs. Now Olga surrounded herself with herbalists and wisewomen. The well-known herbal healer from Pamir was summoned, and he prescribed infusions and potions. She ate the earth from sacred spots, drank urine. And sages and soothsayers came to see her as well. Where on earth did she dig them up?
Antonina Naumovna, already reconciled to her daughter’s death, was disconcerted by all of this. Death from cancer was more comprehensible than all this healing by methods bordering on the indecent. The doctor who had foreseen Olga’s imminent demise made a house call, examined her, probed and pressed her, and asked her to undergo further tests and analyses. But the patient merely smiled her enigmatic smile and shook her head: no, no, what need is there for that?