I tried not to wonder if you had studied your other brides the way you studied us. If you had studied the way they died as well.
Alexi took to the streets of Paris like a fish to water. He would leave for twenty minutes to run an errand and come home bursting with some news of some thrilling performance or political demonstration or literary salon he had been invited to. I have no idea how he managed to make friends so fast, but I was always charmed when he swept Magdalena into his arms and kissed her and started babbling about the newest opera he wanted to sneak her into. You permitted him to accept perhaps one in five of these invitations, but the invitations just kept coming. Paris in the twenties was a living, breathing thing, bursting at the seams with artists and writers and lovers. You and Alexi went out every evening for a walk and a cigarette along the Seine, leaving Magdalena and I two hours of privacy to rest or gossip or tumble into bed.
We took our dinners together every night, with you leading us out on our hunt like a father corralling his unruly brood of children after Sunday mass. Otherwise, you left us to our own devices. You and Magdalena disappeared frequently to hunt for sport, but Alexi and I preferred to do most of our killing privately. I, for my proclivity for stalking my prey into the darkest dens of their sins, and Alexi, for his proclivity to draw his prey into the den of his bedroom first.
I was not invited into his bedroom, at least not at first. That was not the nature of our relationship. We reveled in our love of you, of Magdalena, but the affection between us was more mother and son than lovers. Passion was a boundary line I dared not cross. I wanted Alexi as he was, bright and feckless, and feared jeopardizing the tenderness between us for a few hours of pleasure.
Maybe that’s why I tried in vain to protect him, when the fights began.
Alexi got under your skin faster than I or Magdalena ever did, and the spats started shortly after the honeymoon. First it was just irritation, tight in your voice, then the arguments volleyed between the two of you over the tiniest disagreement. Alexi didn’t have my knack for making himself invisible when you were in one of your moods, or Magdalena’s fawning skill for soothing your temper. He challenged you outright, talking back from the moment he was bitten. Alexi was democratically minded, and he wanted a say in everything, from where we moved to how we spent our days. It reminded me of Magdalena’s keen appetite for planning trips in our early days together, or the way I had opened my arms wide to new places and new people when I was young and still flush with life. I didn’t realize how resigned Magdalena and I had become to our roles as dutiful wives until Alexi came onto the scene, and his argumentative spirit frightened me. For his sake, mostly.
I did my best to get him out of the house when you were at your most irritable, a reprieve you welcomed. Alexi’s energy and appetites were inexhaustible, the enthusiasm of youth captured forever in an undying body, and he demanded more of your attention than you were willing to give.
“He can be so boorish,” Alexi said as we walked arm in arm through one of Paris’ bustling alleyways. Even at night, the city buzzed with life. Cafés spilled light and laughing patrons out onto the street, and the air smelled like coffee and buttered pastries and roasting vegetables. “I don’t know how you’ve managed to put up with him for hundreds of years.”
“By trying to stay off his bad side, I suppose,” I said, allowing Alexi to lead me around a large puddle in the middle of the street. We must have seemed like an odd pair: Alexi young and handsome in his flashy silk waistcoat and cap cocked at a rakish angle, me in a black dress with a high neck and no adornment to speak of. I had always preferred plain clothes, although your wealth opened up worlds of fine fabrics and expert tailoring to me. They reminded me of the simple dresses I wore as a girl and kept any eyes from lingering on me too long. I liked the invisibility plainness afforded me, unlike Magdalena, who thrived when she was the center of attention.
“Where’s the fun in that?” Alexi asked, his laughter bright as a trumpet. He waved at a pretty couple taking wine and cigarettes al fresco in front of a cramped café, and they shouted his name across the street in an attempt to get him to come and sit with them. Another one of his radical friends, I supposed, Nin or Miller or any of their set. Alexi had so many friends their names tended to fall out of my head as soon as he introduced us. I was built for long walks with a single conversation partner, not for Alexi’s raucous roundtable discussions. I hoped he wouldn’t introduce me.
To my relief, Alexi kept walking, leading me down the street to an antique oddities store that fascinated him. Alexi loved you in part because of your connection with the past. He was always asking for old war stories or tales of your tenure in the palaces of duchesses and kings. He was of the opinion that the past was far more romantic than the present, no matter how voraciously he ate up every bit of sweetness the modern world had to offer. Maybe it was because he had also tasted the cruelties of modernity and lived through so much of its upheaval.