“You are only good at suddenly appearing,” she says, anger bubbling up from the dark cauldron inside her. “And then suddenly disappearing.” After what he has just told her, she no longer wants to love him, not even a little bit. She wants to hurt him and make him suffer like she is suffering. She wants to punch him straight in the pit of his stomach, a blow that will bend him in half and force him to whimper in pain. “You’re no different from any other man. You pretend that you care; you fold me into your arms as if you loved me; you get inside me, all the way down to my soul; and then you exit and abandon me again. And then, in case you hadn’t done enough damage, you get married.” She spits the word married out of her mouth as if it were a moldy crust of bread.

He sees the fury in her eyes and turns away, not able to face her.

“I know I hurt you.” He stares at the floor, and Sasha stares at his profile. “Honestly, if we could be together, you would be so disappointed. I’ve always wanted to be the man you wanted me to be, but I can’t. I never could. I came here to tell you that I hate myself for what I did. I hate myself as much as you hate me.”

“So why, then?” she shouts. “Why did you do it?” Why did you have to marry someone else, with me right here, waiting for you all these years, like a fool, like the Ivanovo idiot Grishka, always clinging to our shed in the rain, always begging. She doesn’t say anything about clinging or begging aloud, but somehow, Andrei hears her silent question.

“You know I love you, and I’ve always wanted to be with you. Only you,” he says, although she knows, of course, the proverbial “but” will follow next, already chomping at the bit, ready to gallop out of his mouth. “But I simply couldn’t. I made a deal with the Devil. I had to. I can’t tell you more than this. It was beyond my control.”

So here it is, his explanation, as murky as this January night. There is always something beyond his control, always something he cannot tell her.