Chapter Text
Home of Viktor Mironov.
November 2, 1888.
Anna Viktorovna Mironova.
Dear Anna Viktorovna,
It is early evening and already I find myself at leisure in my apartment - the result of a particularly uneventful day in the city of Zatonsk. Our walk earlier today, taking advantage of the cheerful weather, was pleasant indeed. I was struck by the quiet and lack of haste, common aspects of life here, that are all but absent in St. Petersburg.
I wonder if you noticed the unusual color of the sun’s light this morning. Softened by the gray and cloudy sky, it suffused our surroundings in a rosy radiance. I had intended to remark on it at the time, but so engrossed were we in other topics that it escaped me. Until now, when I am recalling the loveliness of this morning’s jaunt. I would have liked to have captured it in a photograph - the interplay of light and shadow as they gamboled over the sparsely covered tree limbs, the kaleidoscope of fallen leaves, and your graceful profile. I recall, in particular, a moment when you turned toward me and a narrow beam of the sun’s light illuminated the gentle curve of your chin and imparted a silver shine to a loose curl that laid softly against your skin.
I ask for your indulgence, as I find myself drawn to reverie this evening. The troubling and confounding situation of Morel’s assassination while in police custody has given way to contemplation of expectations and sacrifices - Yermolay and Sofia Yelagina, Darya and Morel, Vladimir and his father. Where Yermolay and Semyon Yelagin embraced false confessions to protect others, Morel and Vladimir deflected responsibility, hid their wrongdoings and caused damage to those for whom they ostensibly cared. Uvakov sent word today that Darya, although a murderer and a thief, had a son, whom she supported entirely on her own. (You may be pleased to know that the bulk of Morel’s ill-gotten gains, those not deemed recompense, will be sufficient to provide for this child for the remainder of his youth.)
I am curious to know what you make of their actions and motives. I find that the competing impetuses arising out of a man’s, or woman’s, desires, fears, and sacrifices combine in inscrutable ways. The whole of a person's being cannot easily be categorized as good or evil. The pursuit of justice is much simpler, however, than determining purity of heart, or even rightness of action, philosophically, I mean. The law is clear in its requirements.
It did not escape my attention that your acceptance of my proposal to escort you from the center of town to your home today involved a modulation of your prior decision, wherein you wished to abstain from such secluded contact. If it was not evident at the time, then I shall make it clear now, the resumption of our genial dialogues humors me a great deal. I do, however, fear that I may bore you with my recounting of details related to criminal cases.
I hope you will consent to join me for more turns in the park, and thus, I will wish for weather similarly fair, in contrast to the season’s customary snowfall and biting wind.
Yours truly,
Yakov Platonovich.