Heated bricks beneath their feet warmed the carriage as it rambled through the city to the Hall of Lights where Marga Isalka would present herself to her fellow wardens and her son Grigori would be apologized for -- ill, as they always said, and regretful in his absence.
Ivan noticed his wife's brooch coming undone and fastened it for her, keeping her shoulders swathed in mink. Each time he interfered with her person he felt he was disturbing an artist's still life with apish hands.
"To my knowledge he will not be there. Nor will he be at any other function… You have met the boy, haven't you?"
"At some obligation or another," Aksinya smiled, her hand poised under her chin. Her eyes followed the motions of her husband's hands -- deliberate, denied all dignities in the wake of their indiscretions. Her fingers traced the brooch in an unspoken appreciation -- that odd way they'd managed to retain their most truthful of discourse with nary a word at all.
"The poor thing." Her gaze retracted from him with the topic -- caught refractory visions that cascaded past them in the chill of spring that came as no surprise to Northerners.
A block passed, then another.
"…I pity Runa." At the same time, he knew the girl was worse off in his hands. A cruel joke that an idiot should be her salvation.
All his wife could do was smile to the snow, bury it in the drifts that blew by.
"He isn't attending at all?" She fell to retrograde in the absence of other topics -- in the aftermath of their daughter and her misdeeds discussed.
Ivan shook his head. "No -- if you remember, some days ago I was occupied with finding apartments for him. A rather complicated task as they were to be humble quarters without giving the impression of…well -- of a sanatorium for a cripple."
Everything he did took so much time -- the way he lied to her was shameless, as shameless as he was in his leisure. Aksinya would never know where he spent all those hours, but she would know how he spent them. Surely she would know.
"Ah--" She shook her head -- bore all her afflictions on the tips of her gloved fingers. With a knit brow and a self-effacing smirk she remained evasive, her eyes skimming the distances beyond -- those that kept each of their secrets safe. She feighned memory -- recalled a conversation that dulled to a sickening thrum in the periphery of vials drunk and the bedsheets drawn up.
"Where is my mind. Of course, you'd mentioned that."
They passed old homes and vibrant markets, the carriage slowing with the ebb and flow of the city.
"You did seem a bit tired. Forgive me -- I must seem like a yapping dog to you after your days with Agniessa, when my head is full and I ramble… Did Nieshka ever give a good apology for that tantrum with her music teacher? And not just in a ploy to get back her dolly?"
"Certainly not." Finally, her voice cast alight with an impression of emotion -- laced itself with exasperation that was deep-seated in fruitless loves. She looked back to Ivan with the exhaustion of a mother, the irritation of a teacher, and the helplessness of a caregiver, above all -- above all.
"She simply refuses to recall it ever happened." Her hand fell to her velvet lap, fingers listless in her frustration.
"If this wasn't the first instance of such willful disrespect and ignorance, I'd be at a complete loss."
"She must be too ashamed to speak of it." Ivan feared the trait was heritable. That his daughter's life would be wrought with shame, deviancy, or his mother's madness. He spoke of her when he spoke of the Warden's son. He hoped he would never see Agniessa hidden away, gone imbecile as his mother had deteriorated. But by then he would vanish. Before she grew into pretty stockings and long limbs, he would vanish.
"You hardly defended her upon hearing of her fit the first time," Aksinya resigned, posture worse for wear. Fingers flitted back up to painted lips, silencing any further protests as her eyes escaped out the window once more.
"Oh, I don't defend her, I -- " Empathize, his mind hissed as his voice failed. The sentence simply ended.
She turned to him once more, awaiting completion --