2009
After Daria’s egg retrieval went off perfectly, I set out to Lada Kravets’s dacha to give a report on the situation. Fifteen eggs had been collected. I expected most of the mature cells to fertilize normally, but we wouldn’t know for a few days whether we could celebrate the success of this milestone in the project. You looked tired, too, when you met me on the porch, even though the hand that you placed on my waist was steady, and the nip at my lip familiar.
“Where’s the girl?” you asked.
“I left her to rest at the villa.”
“It was a good idea to plan that trip to Nice. Will she be able to travel?”
“Yes. Daria is fine.”
I checked the time on my phone. In five hours, Daria would be on her way to France with her mother. I’d pitched the trip to her as a well-deserved vacation. This precaution was clearly necessary. You rubbed your forehead as if it ached.
“Is the situation here that bad?”
“It’s tolerable.”
I pressed my fingers to the sullen groove at the side of your nose and whispered that soon this would all be over, that I could handle everything, that I was good at this. Somehow, I felt as if you needed reassurance, too. I hadn’t seen Lada Kravets for a while and didn’t know what to expect. I took a few deep, slow breaths, and you followed suit as I held your arm all the way to the library door. I’ll never forget the sight we encountered there. Despite the freezing weather lurking outside, the room was full of whirring fans, and every horizontal surface and shelf was full of half-empty water glasses, I even spotted ice cubes that had slipped from tongs and now lay melting here and there on the floor. Lada Kravets had opened the top buttons of her shirt and rolled her sleeves all the way up, and dark bows of dried blood were visible under her fingernails. Her neck and arms looked mangled.
“Don’t tell the doctor anything about this,” she whispered after seeing us. “It’s so itchy. Water from the monastery is the only thing that helps.”
Lada Kravets shoved a sloshing glass into my hand. She wasn’t the only one of my clients who had rashes or weak nerves. However, she was the first one whom a doctor had declared healthy because he didn’t dare mention either condition. I considered it wisest not to interfere either, and I didn’t dare think what would happen if none of the eggs transferred from the tissue culture fluid to the petri dishes successfully fertilized.
On the coffee table was a stack of magazines, which I noticed you glancing at. Our eyes met, and you picked up the topmost example, a horoscope magazine, and browsed it for a moment until you gave me a surreptitious nod. I breathed a sigh of relief, but at the same time I was irritated. The stars were favorable for Lada Kravets this month, but how did you put up with it all? I was there only for the first time, and yet I was already imagining uncomfortable situations Lada Kravets might end up in. I amused myself with the thought of what would happen if she got an old-fashioned rural doctor for her birth who would throw cold water on her or hit her. Visions of such a situation helped me tolerate the humiliation. Hand on your heart, didn’t you ever feel like screaming that enough was enough?
“Last time only one prime-quality embryo transferred. The others were too weak.”
Lada Kravets pulled her blouse away from her skin as if the dampness of the fabric was too much for her. Apparently once a doctor had told her that weaker embryos should be transferred directly and stronger ones should be frozen.
“Maybe we should do something different now,” she said. “Let’s just use the strong ones. The strong always survive. There’s no reason to hold them back.”
As Lada Kravets recalled her failed embryo transfers, the fingers picking at her shirt began to move violently like the needle of a sewing machine. Forming words became difficult for her, and she had to chew them thoroughly before being able to spit them out. She’d blamed herself for the previous failure, until the security cameras revealed that the problem had been the bad life the donor was leading. She should have been monitored more closely during the process. I looked at Lada’s hand. I could easily imagine her attacking anyone who caused her disappointment on this topic.
“This time nothing like that will happen. We’ve been keeping an eye on the donor twenty-four hours a day.”
“Are you sure?” she demanded.
“Roman can give you the details.”
At which you began to review once more the steps that had been taken, as Lada Kravets asked clarifying questions. I responded to those that were in my area of responsibility. I heard my voice, its documentary conviction, though we didn’t know yet how the embryos would do, how well the fresh transfer would go, or whether the damn bitch would even get pregnant or just have another series of miscarriages. And if Lada Kravets succeeded in giving birth to a living child, would the couple want siblings for the little thing? Then I would be standing in this same room again explaining these same things. And what if Lada beat another donor? Or what if she was left childless but our relationship continued, and you and I wanted a baby? Would the prima donna be able to cope with the belly of someone else in her inner circle swelling when hers wasn’t? Would our future be eternally dependent on Kravets whims?
The floor under me had turned to quicksand, and my eyes blurred as I found myself wondering whether the crystal chandelier in this room had ever collapsed. It had to be heavy enough that if it fell, it could kill.
Excusing myself, I left to look for the bathroom. After removing my tight boots, I lay down on the marble floor in the pool area, pressing my forehead against it as if it were the glass protecting an icon and took slow, deep breaths. After I got home, I would have to accelerate my plans for Daria. I hadn’t been reading the fashion magazines lately, and I hadn’t been thinking about Daria’s modeling portfolio, let alone presenting my intentions to her. Any thought of the photographers I knew had felt somehow exasperating and making contact too laborious. In my free time, I preferred to focus on us and to try to forget everything else. But Lada Kravets tantrumming in the library was a good reminder of why I needed to get my act together. Our relationship was new enough that I couldn’t count on your help if the Kravetses were disappointed again. I would have to secure my future elsewhere, and for that I needed Daria.
She still had a couple of years left. After that, she would be too old for modeling.
In my bag, I found an old barberry candy, which covered the taste of bile in my mouth as I pulled my boots back onto my feet. I was ready to continue. This time we wouldn’t use Viktor’s worthless sperm. This time nothing would go wrong.
As I returned to the library, I stopped for a moment to listen to the chirping coming from the birdcages. I imagined that exotic avians were part of the elite lifestyle, and for Lada Kravets maybe they were a substitute for children. The parrot was eating a peanut. Cracking the hard outer shell with its beak, it deftly removed the brown seed coat, which floated in a spiral to the bottom of the cage.
Later I learned that President Yanukovych had also filled his dacha with birds. He was afraid of gas. The twittering would stop if the ventilation system was sabotaged. The president was so afraid of poisoning that he only ate meat from his own animals, only drank milk from the cows in his own barn. He had an entire zoo on his property.
When the revolution rolled through the gates of his palace a couple of years later, I thought about how pointless all of the precautions had been. Birds could sound the alarm about foreign substances in the air produced by a complex air filtration system, but they couldn’t predict the people’s rage, even though the signs had been palpable in the atmosphere for a very long time.