enough. It wouldn't even have to be any different than this. We could stay here, except that you would sleep in my room.”
“How lovely.” She stood up and paced the room. “A mere change of rooms, and we go on just as we are. How can you even suggest it? We're all starving, none of us has a sou, and you want to get married. Why? Why? I don't love you, I don't even know you, nor you me. … Antoine, we are strangers!”
“We're not strangers, we're friends. And some of the best marriages start that way.”
“I don't believe that. I want to be in love with the man I marry, madly, passionately, totally. I want it to be wonderful and romantic.”
He looked so sad as she shouted at him, but she was shouting more at the fates that had put them there, than at the man who had bought her her favorite perfume.
“Your grandmother thinks we could be very happy.” But it was the worst thing he could have said, as she strode around the room again in barely controllable fury.
“Marry my grandmother then! I don't want to get married! Not now! Everything around us is sick and cold and dying. Everyone is starving and poor and miserable. What a way to start a life!”
“What you're really saying is that you don't love me.” He sat down quietly, willing to accept even that. And suddenly his own quiet actions subdued her. She sat down facing him and took his hands in her own warm ones.
“No, I don't. But I like you. I thought you were my friend. I really never thought there was anything else behind it. Not seriously anyway. You never said …” Her eyes filled with tears.
“I was afraid to. Will you think about it, Zoya?”
But she shook her head sadly. “Antoine, I couldn't do it. It wouldn't be fair to either of us. We both deserve more than this.” She glanced around them, and then back into his eyes. “And if we loved each other, even this wouldn't matter. But it does. I just don't love you.”
“You could try.” He looked so young, despite his injuries and his losses.
“No, I couldn't. I'm so sorry …” She left the room then, and quietly closed the door to her own room, leaving the perfume and the scarf and gloves on the table. He looked around him then, and turned off the lights and went back to his bedroom. Perhaps she would change her mind. Perhaps her grandmother could convince her. She had thought it such a sensible plan. But he knew it was born not of love, but desperation.
“Zoya?” Her grandmother was watching her from their bed, as she undressed, facing the garden. Evgenia couldn't see her face, but she suspected instinctively that she was crying. And as Zoya turned around in her nightgown, her green eyes were blazing. “Why did you do it, Grandmama? Why did you encourage him to do that? It was cruel to both of us.” She thought of the pain in Antoine's eyes and she felt terrible. But not terrible enough to marry him out of pity. She had to think of herself too. And she knew she didn't love him.
“It's not cruel. It's sensible. You must marry someone, and he'll take care of you. He's a teacher, he's respectable, and he loves you.”
“I don't love him.”
“You're a child. You don't know what you want.” She suspected also that Zoya was still dreaming of Clayton, a man more than twice her age, from whom she hadn't heard since November.
“I want to love the man I marry, Grandmama. Is that so much to ask?” Tears rolled down her cheeks, as she sank into the room's only chair and clutched Sava.
“Normally, no, it's not. But in these circumstances, it is. You have to be sensible. I'm old, I'm sick. What are you going to do when I die? Stay here alone and go on dancing? You'll become old and hard and bitter. Stop this nonsense now. Accept him, and make yourself learn to love him.”
“Grandmama! How can you say that!”
“Because I've lived a long time. Long enough to know when to fight and when to give in, and when to make compromises with my heart. Don't you think I would like to see you married to a handsome prince, back in St. Petersburg, in a house like Fontanka? But there are no princes anymore, they're all driving taxis. Fontanka is gone, Russia is gone. This