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The clock above the old cathedral began to chime as Andrey hurried across the plaza. Five minutes to the hour, then. It had run fast since he was a boy.
There was a certain comfort in knowing this. Whatever was to become of him when this business with Goncharov concluded, Naples was still Andrey’s city. She knew him as no flesh and blood woman could, and whatever judgment she passed, she passed it silently.
The final chime died away, leaving Andrey alone on Goncharov’s doorstep with only the stuttering tick of his heartbeat for company. The thin, paper-wrapped package under his arm rustled as he raised a hand to knock?
“Is your mistress in?” he asked when a housemaid answered the door, but the girl was already drawing aside, gesturing for him to follow her inside.
Andrey hesitated at the threshold, looking back at the cathedral clock. Tomorrow, he would fly out to the dacha to meet with Ice Pick Joe. He had already begun to loathe himself for agreeing to conduct such business there. What kind of a man was he, to bring the darkness of his life in Naples to the one place that should have been neutral ground? In another time, or perhaps another life, what promises might he have been able to keep?
Andrey crossed the threshold, chuckling to himself. His life was not his own, and nor was his time. Even now, on what might be his final visit to Goncharov’s door, he was acting as nothing more than a delivery boy. He held the package closer to his chest.
“I am sorry,” said a voice.
Katya stood at the top of the staircase. She smiled at Andrey, a stranger’s smile. But when she spoke, he knew that she understood exactly why Andrey had chosen to come to her door himself instead of arranging some impersonal delivery. He had never been able to let anything go. She understood this, and so he wondered if she hated him as much as he had come to hate himself.
“My husband is not home,” Katya continued, smoothly descending the stairs. She made sudden, sharp eye contact with Andrey. “But perhaps I can take a message?”
Andrey held Katya’s gaze, trying to keep his expression neutral. Part of him wanted to kiss her, to claim the lips that Goncharov had once caressed. Part of him wanted to fall to his knees and beg for her forgiveness.
“Today I am here to speak to you,” said Andrey. With a quick movement of his hands, he attempted to indicate that this was a conversation best continued outside the servants’ earshot.
Katya did not move. Nor did her smile waver.
Andrey fought for control of the conversation. “You played very well in the poker game,” he told her, fidgeting with the string tying his parcel. “I understand that Michailov himself was impressed.”
This was a low blow, and it struck home. Katya lifted her chin sharply. “I did not win,” she said. Was he imagining the faint tremble of rage in her voice? “Surely you have not come to discuss cards?”
“No,” Andrey admitted, glancing at the doorway through which the maid had disappeared.
In Goncharov’s house—in Katya’s house—it was never possible to be truly certain that one was alone. There had been a time when Andrey had found this comforting.
“When I last spoke with your husband, he entrusted me with this package,” said Andrey. Now she would see everything. Now she would truly understand. He held it out to her. “I believe that it is a gift for you.”
Katya swallowed. Andrey watched her throat work, watched her struggle to find the right words. Again he wanted to fall to his knees before her and explain that Goncharov had left him as well. Instead, he brandished the package, holding it between their bodies like a shield.
“Thank you,” said Katya. Something flickered behind her eyes. Compassion? Sorrow? Anger? Andrey could not begin to guess. “Leave it on the front table, please.”
“Of course,” said Andrey, turning to depart. Katya’s voice stopped him in his tracks.
“Andrey. He left his watch in the study.”
Andrey set the package down at last, but the weight of it did not leave his heart. He knew better than anyone that Goncharov would never return to this house. This gift, this last small kindness to the wife he had never told the full truth of his past, would not change that. All their lives had been cast on this dark course from the moment Andrey and Goncharov’s paths had first crossed all those years ago on that lonely Russian beach.
A better man would have found the words to console Katya, but in that moment Andrey’s grief swallowed everything. His heart burned with the knowledge that no friend like Goncharov would ever come again. There would never be another night like the one they had shared at the dacha. Ambrosini and his greed had ruined everything, and Andrey in his pride and fear had never dared to raise so much as a finger against him.
“Goodnight,” said Andrey as he crossed Goncharov’s threshold for the final time, but he knew Katya would not hear him.
Once he was out of sight of the windows, Andrey ducked into the cathedral. He knelt before the altar, though God had long since come to feel like just another creditor he would never be able to repay. Silence settled over Andrey’s shoulders like a secondhand coat, punctuated by the steady tick of the clock overhead.
Andrey closed his eyes. He folded his hands. The tears of a lifetime began to fall at last.