Your fears, however, were not put to rest.
“She needs to see a doctor. A psychiatrist, something. She needs treatment, Constanta. To be brought under control.”
You were pacing the living room, fuming and fretting while Magdalena slept in your bed. The fatigue was coming for her again, and you feared what would happen when it had her completely in its clutches.
“She’s sick,” I said, as mildly as I could manage, keeping my eyes on my embroidery. I wanted to advocate for her, but I also wanted to avoid your wrath. You had been good-humored for a time after you brought Magdalena to live with us, but now your temper was getting shorter and shorter again. “She doesn’t need to be brought under control, she needs the right medicine.”
“And what medicine might that be?”
I flicked a quick glance up to you, and then down at the French knots I was stitching.
“Fresh air. A bracing walk around the city by herself.”
“When she’s not distraught, she’s agitated and restless. I take my eyes off her for a moment and she gets into trouble; she can’t be trusted.”
“Equally sharp minds to correspond with,” I went on, swallowing my fear. I had to ask, for Magdalena’s sake. I had to. “A friend that isn’t also a lover.”
“What does she need strangers putting foreign ideas in her head for, turning her against our kind? She has us both, she has power, she has the world on a platter. She should be grateful.”
Your voice had the thin insinuation of a threat in it, and my blood went cold at the sound. My mind rushed back to those letters I had found. So many other lovers who had simply disappeared off the face of the earth, wiped clean from your memory except for a few mementos.
Had any of them been sick like Magdalena, losing their shine when they could no longer dote on you and smile for you every hour of the day?
“Is that what happened to the others?” I said, before I could stop myself. This conversation had been festering in the back of my mind for years, and I could scarcely believe it was truly happening now. But here we were, at the awful climax of so many smothered arguments. “Were they not grateful enough for you?”
I bit off the words in a fit of anger, a thousand tiny slights bubbling to the surface in one foolish, reckless moment. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, my blood ran cold. God. What had I done?
You turned to face me slowly, bafflement and anger written equally across your features.
“What did you say?”
I opened my mouth but no sound came out. My practiced stitching stuttered, and I stabbed my thumb with the needle. I barely felt it, I was so scared.
“Did you go through my things?” you asked, crossing your arms. I was suddenly aware of how tall you were, of how small I was by comparison.
I shook my head rapidly, my embroidery abandoned in my lap.
“N-no, I don’t know what you mean. I just… I assumed there were others. Before us. You’ve lived a very long time, my lord.”
You stared at me for a long time, weighing me like gold that you suspected was little more than painted tin.
“There were others,” you pronounced eventually.
The words went through me like an electric shock. I had all the evidence of your past love affairs I needed, but to hear it straight from your lips… It wasn’t the loving that made me sick, it was how much you had hidden from me, and for how long.
“What happened to them?” I asked, my throat dry. If I had come this far, I might as well ask the question that haunted me at night. There was no unsaying what I had said and I would hate myself forever if I fled the conversation now. “Where are they now?”
“Fled or dead,” you said, eyes glittering dangerously. Your arms were still crossed across your chest like a child being reprimanded by his governess, but your jaw was set like a warrior ready to strike. It always amazed me, how you could play victim and aggressor at the same time.
“Who killed them?” I asked, my voice barely louder than a whisper. For a long moment, there was silence, broken only by the ticking of the faithful German clock in the living room.
You crossed the room to me in long strides, and for a horrible, impossible instant I thought you might strike me. But you went down on one knee instead, taking my wounded hand in your own and fixing me with your heaviest look.
“You’re young, unschooled in the ways of love. Love is violence, my darling, it is a thunderstorm that tears apart your world. More often than not, love ends in tragedy, but we go on loving in the hopes that this time, it will be different. This time, the beloved will understand us. They will not try to flee from our embrace, or become discontent with us.”