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Anya heard the villagers talk.
They were from St. Petersburg via Copenhagen. Their names were Gleb and Anna Anderson, and of course it should have been Andersen, the way the Danes wrote it, but someone in French customs had misread Gleb’s handwriting and of course, now it was legal. Gleb complained about it, but Anna said it was too much effort to fix it now, so to the tiny village of Gordes, in Provence, they were Monsieur and Madame Anderson.
Gleb had what could be called a charming smile if you didn’t look too closely at the effect it had on Anna. When he spun the story, her smile went a bit too blithe and a bit too wide, and her knuckles went white around the suitcase she carried. Her husband would put his hand on the small of her back and she would tense up for a moment, then finally relax. His features, tense and charming, would go a little less fey and bit more genuine, and the villagers would let out their breaths without really remembering why they were holding them in the first place.
In short order, the Andersons purchased a small farm house from one of the local lavender farmers about a week in, seemingly determined to stay in Gordes, which seemed an odd decision to the locals. Anya-as-Anna would smile, however, and when Gleb was silent she would fill the empty space with talk of how quiet Gordes was, and how charming it was, and so unlike Petersburg—
And Gleb would quietly say Leningrad, and Anya would purse her lips so tightly they turned white for a long moment, and then she would continue on, cheerful Anna once more.
They went to Avignon for a weekend soon after they settled in Gordes and the villagers assumed the farmhouse would be sold back—but instead, Anna came back in a sun hat and Gleb returned in a soft linen shirt, both singing “Sur le Pont d’Avignon,” and the villagers of Gordes shrugged, figured there was some reason that a pair of healthy, handsome young people didn’t want to live in a city in this, the Year of Our Lord 1928, and decided not to inquire further.
Anya heard laughs about the fact that the farmhouse remained standing, and the lavender farms surrounding it managed to bloom, and why, it looks like young Madame Anderson was trying to start a vegetable garden while young Monsieur Anderson volunteered with the commissaires!
But Anya also noticed that the dark circles under both Andersons’ eyes had begun to disappear. She felt less stiff with each passing day, and watched as Gleb slowly ceased looking over his shoulder each time he entered a store or building. And so the villagers of Gordes took it as a blessing and carried on with their own lives, and slowly stopped asking questions as they settled into their new, strange lives.
“The hell do you mean we’re not going to Marseille?!”
Perhaps questions should have been asked.
“Anna, Countess Lily Malevsky-Malevich is going to be passing through Provence this weekend with some new lover—“
“Vlad Popov, and don’t think it isn’t,” Anya hissed, abandoning her dicing of the zucchini to lean against the counter. Despite the slouch in her back, her shoulders were tense, and it seemed to Gleb that she wasn’t tired of the argument; instead more like a cat ready to pounce. Her blonde hair was tied back in a braided bun, and the edges were pinned back with bobby pins, but thanks to the heat of the kitchen it was beginning to frizz and stick to her forehead.
“And if it’s Vladimir Popov, we need to be even more careful about not going to Marseille!” Gleb tried, his voice raising unwillingly. He took a deep breath, attempting to regain his typical calm demeanor.
“Oh, you think it’s a real threat? What’s Vlad going to do if he sees me? It’s not like they got me an audience with the Dowager the first time around,” Anya hissed, “And Marseille is a big city, one of the largest in France. We could have disappeared in Paris, Gleb, and lived in a city—“
“You said you’d follow me, Anya—“ he slipped, calling her by her Russian name rather than her new French-Danish one, and stopped, floored by the slip.
“And what if I’m sick of you telling me what to do, huh?” Anya yelled into the space he left, releasing the countertop to gesticulate frantically with both hands, knife still clutched in her right hand, “All you try to do is control me, I don’t have a job, I have only the money you give me—“
“I never said you couldn’t get a job—“ Gleb tried, and Anya waved the knife again. He backed up against the other side of the kitchen, taking a breath.
“And yet, every time the paycheck comes in, you talk about how it’s fine that I’m staying at home,” Anya snarled, “Just because you’ve got the money doesn’t mean you get to make every damn decision in the household!”
“No, I make the decisions here because I don’t want the two of us being killed!” Gleb snapped, and in a heartbeat Anya had crossed the kitchen and the kitchen knife that still smelled like summer squash was at his throat. Gleb froze.
He wondered if it had ever felt like this for Anya, when he tucked his fingers under her chin. He wondered if the soft, worn leather of his gloves had ever felt this sharp to her, to the young woman who was now his wife in the eyes of the law.
“I didn’t come to France to be bossed around,” Anya seethed, “I came to France to find my family. That didn’t happen. I came to France to remember my past. That did. What I didn’t come to France for was you, telling me what I can and cannot do!”
“You’re my wife, ” Gleb huffed, shifting as much as he could to avoid the press of the knife.
“In name only!” Anya yelled, her voice shifting up several octaves in the span of those three words, “Are we even married on paper?”
Gleb licked his lips, thinking about their forged papers sitting upstairs in his study.
“…technically,” he said slowly, knowing in his bones that there was no answer that would satisfy Anya at this point. A small part of his mind wondered where she would hide his body, if she accidentally killed him.
“I’m going to Marseille this weekend,” Anya hissed, her blue eyes glinting in the late afternoon light. Her hair shone like burnished gold, and Gleb thought he’d never seen anything more beautiful nor terrifying. The cold line of the knife at his neck slowly seared into a burning heat.
He stayed silent.
“And when I come home, I’m getting a job somewhere,” she whispered, “I don’t care if it’s in a grocery store, or out in the lavender fields. I’m not just going to sit here and rely on your money, Gleb Vaganov.”
There was a line of warmth trickling down Gleb’s neck. He closed his eyes.
“Anya,” he said softly, smelling iron mixed with lavender on the breeze, “Anya.”
Anya took a step back, and the knife’s line of pressure left his neck. Gleb took a shuddering breath, sliding his sweating palms down his thighs. His mouth moved noiselessly around a Russian curse, before he managed another breath.
“Alright,” he breathed.
“You’re bleeding,” Anya said succinctly. Her voice held the tiniest tremor of guilt.
“Yes, thank you for that,” Gleb replied, straightening up and brushing sweat and imaginary dust from palms. His gun, an ever present constant in Leningrad, remained upstairs in a drawer in his desk. A mistake, he thought, to think that France was safer. A mistake to think my wife was safer than Leningrad’s streets.
“Gleb,” Anya said quietly, and placed the knife back on the wooden cutting board. She drew closer, wiping sweat from her forehead before wetting a dish towel down at the tap. Gleb leaned against the counter once more, shifting so he didn’t touch the places he had just been clutching, and closed his eyes.
The cool water against the cut on his neck was a relief.
“I’m going to have to call in sick,” he said, feeling sweat trickle down his back, “There’s no going to work like this. No one is buttoned up in this weather.”
“We’ll go to Marseille,” Anya said, and Gleb felt something in his spine uncoil in defeat.
“We’ll go to Marseille, I’ll take the gun, you’ll wear your sun hat and we’ll be fine,” he continued, “Fine. It’ll all be fine.”
The sun was too warm on his face, making the space behind his eyelids glow red-brown.
The dish towel and its soothing coolness was removed. Gleb did not open his eyes, trying instead to sink into the linoleum counter at his back.
In the space between the dish towel leaving and the sun burning the water from his skin, a pair of warm lips pressed themselves to the thin cut on his neck.
Gleb felt his heart jump in his chest.
He didn’t open his eyes until he heard the repetitive chopping of the knife on the cutting board begin again.