Unfair accusations make me angry, and I didn’t feel like running after my accuser to justify my actions. I wrote a letter to Edna, but she didn’t answer, and I’m not sure if she even read my explanation or just threw it away.
Perhaps, in other circumstances, I might have found a way to make peace with her, but I can’t deal with this right now. I can do little to help Nina with her court case and my sense of powerlessness in the face of the blunt and clumsy legal machine is overwhelming me.
I wanted to talk to Felix about the investigation but I couldn’t find him. Neither Johnny nor the other boys at the police station know where he is. They seem to think that he’s gone on vacation. But how could he have left without saying anything to anyone?
Nina is incredibly lucky to have Tony Aulman on her side. He is a brilliant lawyer and has found an ingenious loophole in the law. It turns out that the International Settlement police don’t have the right to initiate a case against Nina at all due to the fact that she has not committed any crime on its territory.
Tony believes that if he put some pressure on the judge who signed the arrest warrant, Nina will eventually be released. The irony of all this is that I, who have always condemned bribery and backroom deals, am now ready to worship the ground that Aulman and his connections walk on.
After a lot of trouble, I finally gained permission for Katya to be baptized, and brought Father Seraphim to Nina’s house. In Shanghai, there are dozens of Russian priests without parishes, and they make some extra income by administering the sacraments as and when they are required.
Most of the time Father Seraphim has to work as a whipping boy at the Big World entertainment center. The audience at boxing matches gets great pleasure seeing their plucky Chinese fighters vanquishing such a huge “white ghost.”
During the ceremony he was terribly ashamed of his beaten-up face, but I told him that neither Nina nor I condemned him for it. After all, he needs to make a living as much as the rest of us. However, Nina was not very happy about Katya being baptized by a gladiator priest with a black eye.
I had hoped that our shared concerns would bring Nina and me closer, but everything I do seems to upset her, and even if she doesn’t say it to my face, I can sense it.
When I come to see her, I try to be as circumspect, businesslike, and serious as I can, feeling like a sapper trying to defuse an unexploded bomb. No matter how carefully I tread, an explosion could occur at any moment for the most trivial reasons.
When Nina learned that I was sharing an apartment with Ada, she hit the roof.
“You’ve done well for yourself,” she said in a tone that implied that I was an incurable philanderer.
As with Edna, it was useless to appeal to reason, and the only answer I got to all my protestations of innocence was: “You must take me for a complete idiot.” But at the same time, Nina wants me to believe that her relations with Jiří and Daniel Bernard were also completely innocent.
I can’t imagine what Nina and I are going to do when she is finally released from her house arrest. Will she just turn to me and say, “Thank you for your help. But that’ll be all now”? Or will she decide to try to make a go of it?
If she decides the latter, what we are going to do about Ada? She’s too young to get by on her own, and if she were to live with us, I know that she would be unbearably jealous. Teenagers are a handful at the best of times.
Ada doesn’t yet know that I have achieved a reconciliation of sorts with my wife. I’ve told her that I have a lot of work on and that is why I have been coming home late. I can’t face telling her the truth. If I were to mention Nina and Katya, Ada would only try to persuade me that I’m going to be stuck in a loveless relationship with the mother of another man’s child.
Babies often resemble one of their parents, and I wish I could find at least some of my features in Katya’s little face. But unlike Nina and me, she is blonde, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t dispel the image of Daniel Bernard’s golden mane from my mind.
I’m constantly trying to convince myself that bloodline and paternity issues are of no importance to me. Whoever her father is, it’s thanks to Katya that I now have a means of winning my wife back, and hopefully, one day getting my life back on track.
Mr. Green was visibly upset. “What’s the matter with you, Mr. Rogov?”
Klim had promised to write an article about a gang of thieves that had been operating in the locker rooms at the Chinese baths, but he had come into the office empty-handed.
“This isn’t like you,” the editor-in-chief said. “Maybe you’re not well? Or has something cropped up in your private life?”
Klim was looking over Mr. Green’s shoulder out of the window. It was raining. The snow had melted, and the city had become gray and brown.
“Go home,” Mr. Green said, “and don’t show your face in here again until you’ve sorted out whatever it is that is bothering you.”
Klim silently put on his coat, went outside, and got a tram.
Mr. Green had a point: Klim hadn’t been able to concentrate on his work at all that day. Thanks to Tony Aulman’s efforts, all the allegations against Nina had been dropped, and today the judge was due to revoke her house arrest.
Klim couldn’t believe that finally the changes he had waited for so long were about to happen in his life. Yesterday he had bought a pram with a pink silk lining for Katya. Nina had been excited. “Now she’ll be able to go for lots of walks.”
“Don’t think that I don’t appreciate what you’re doing,” she had said to Klim on his way out. “I just have too much going on. Come back tomorrow. I should get back home from the court by eleven.”
Klim jumped off the tram steps at the intersection of Nanking Road and Tibet Road. At the crossing he saw a large crowd gathered. Little boys had climbed street lamps and were calling to each other, “Oh! Wow! Look at that!”
The first thing Klim noticed was a set of long black skid marks on the road, then a broken pram with a pink silk lining lying on its side on a nearby waterlogged lawn.
A police officer in a raincoat cut through the crowd, shouting, “Are there any witnesses? Did anyone see what happened?”
“They were hit by a black car,” a voice in the crowd answered.
“It didn’t even stop. The nanny and the baby were killed instantly.”
Klim came closer. The wind threw a fine drizzle onto his face. Reflections of the buildings in the puddles swam before his eyes, and then out of the corner of his eye, he saw two figures on the pavement. One big one and one small one. Klim already knew who they were, but could not bring himself to look at them.
I feel like everything inside me is hardening and stiffening like brittle salt crystals.
There’s nothing between Nina and me except our irreparable misfortune. Why do we need to see each other? What do we possibly have to discuss? The depth of each other’s grief?
Nina is either completely hysterical or searching for someone to blame. When I came into the house she looked at me as if I was Katya’s murderer. After all, if I hadn’t bought that damned pram, Nina wouldn’t have sent the nanny out for a walk.
“You don’t even want my daughter to exist,” she told me and then threw herself on the sofa sobbing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I just can’t carry on living like this. My life has no aim or meaning anymore.”
And I, of course, mean less to her now than ever before.