Olga Konstantinovna lived and imprinted herself in the memory not for her beauty, but for the desperate impression that it would be impossible to make her happy, no matter how hard one tried, no matter how much love one threw at her feet. The feeling one cannot make one’s beloved happy is no less deadly than poison.

Fortunately or otherwise, not all aspects of Olga Konstantinovna’s complicated personality were passed on to Maria. They instead lay dormant in her, poised to reawaken after generations, open their predatory brown eyes in a great-great-granddaughter and ripen again with stormy passions and misfortunes.

Olga Konstantinovna straightened her spine and walked down the street, trying for the benefit of passersby not to limp.

Chapter 24

Maria took a valerian before going to church. Twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one bitter drops into the glass of water and she knocked it back in one gulp, washing it down with coffee.

She looked at her watch. Autumn time.

Yes, damn it, she’s going to church. How does Tykhon feel when his grandmother drags him there without her knowing?

As she entered the courtyard of the Cathedral of the Dormition, Maria dropped a banknote in front of the beggars at the gate, like her mother used to do (“give them money, because they lay a curse on anybody who doesn’t.”) Dormition? Seriously? Meaning sleep? Most of the cathedral was under constant renovation. Maria recalled the dust-covered icons and the dull, warm gold of the altar.

“Girls are not taken to the altar,” the bearded priest in black said at her baptism with a dismissive wave of the hand. His face was as grubby as those of the icons. Mum kissed his hand. It was unpleasant to see her so severe and yet so meek and compliant. The memory lingered like a bad taste, like a subconscious fear of snakes, or a dream about which nothing remains other than a sense of shame and disgust. The doors of the cathedral were half-open, letting in the damp light of the dying day. Maria entered, stepping quietly, and bought three thin paraffin candles. She looked around, not knowing where to go and cautiously made her way around the perimeter of the church. The old building felt unshakable, its walls cold and mute. The quiet air was disturbed only by muffled voices and the shuffling of feet on the stone slabs. There weren’t many people around.

The faces of the icons looked down without reproach. It was good. Saints don’t care about daily tribulations, paint in hallways, letters, murderers. Saints don’t seem to care at all.

In one corner by an icon, she saw a woman and a daughter about Tykhon’s age. Both were dressed in dark clothes and headscarves. The daughter repeated after her mother, just one beat later, like an echo. The mother moved closer and prodded her daughter in the back, pushing her toward the icon, making sure her lips firmly touched the glass.