Then I flicked my eyes to Magdalena and Alexi, giving them a signal while you were still murmuring delirious nothings beneath me.
Then they pinned you down by your shoulders, one on each side. You laughed at first, thinking it a game, but then the smile fell from your face. You tried to wrench out of their grip, but Alexi and Magdalena held you down with the full weight of their bodies, already breaking out in a sweat.
There was only one of you and two of them, but you were older and stronger by far. We didn’t have much time.
I reached underneath the bed where I had hidden my contraband and produced an item that felt heavy as treachery in my hands. A rotting rod from a stairwell bannister, wrenched free and filed into a sharp point at one end. It was heavy enough to bludgeon a man to death with. Or run him through.
You blanched when you saw it. Genuine terror passed over your face in a wave. Then the anger rose up, and you bared your teeth at me.
“I told you to stay out of my rooms! What stupid little idea has gotten into your head this time? If I die, you all die with me.”
It was the gambit of a doomed man.
The first stirrings of power thrummed in my chest. So this is what it felt like, to hold a lover’s life in your hand.
“No we won’t,” I said. “I read about that too.”
This melted the edge off some of your rage, and I saw a flicker of vulnerability cross your face.
“Constanta,” you pled, with that same wild raggedness in your voice that rose up when you undressed me, that same desperate sheen in your black eyes I only saw when you called me a treasure. “I love you. Look at me, Constanta, my jewel, my wife . I love you. Don’t do this.”
I saw every soft moment we had shared flicker over your face, and you were so beautiful. Desperate, vulnerable. Fear for your life made you look like a man who could really love and be loved, like you might hand over your heart and all its secrets without my having to crack your ribs open to get to them. Magdalena must have seen it too; she squeezed her eyes shut and wrenched her face away even as she perspired with the effort of restraining you. Alexi only looked scared, a child caught between two warring parents. I was grateful for his innocence, and his strong arms.
“Constanta,” you said again, inclining your mouth up to me as though you were offering a kiss. “Put that down, beloved. I’ll forgive you. Stop this now and I’ll forgive you, and we’ll never speak of it again.”
Every kindness you had ever shown me revolted inside me, rioting up in mutiny against my purpose. Every smile or small gesture was as sharp as a pinprick, inviting me to see the bright spots embroidered through the ugly tapestry of our marriage.
But a few flourishes and embellishments couldn’t change the fact that the very fabric of our life together was tangled and suffocating. I had given you a thousand second chances, made a thousand concessions. And this wasn’t just about me anymore. It was about Magdalena, and Alexi. How long before you tired of your wind-up soldier and your painted doll and smashed them to pieces?
“Is that what you told the others?” I asked hoarsely. Tears, hot as fresh blood, spilled from my eyes. “Before you killed them?”
Your affect swung from light to dark, a tempestuous shadow settling over your face. Your eyes went from deep, inviting waters to sharpened slate, your mouth tightening into a poison snarl. This was the man I had lived most of my life with: arrogant, cruel, and enraged at the slightest whiff of insurrection.
“Put the stake down, Constanta,” you ordered. Harsh, curt. The way you would speak to a dog. “Listen to me. Don’t make me angry.”
I choked back a sob as I raised the stake above your chest, gripping the wood so hard splinters bit into my bloodless fingers.
I took one ragged breath, two, then squeezed my eyes shut tight.
Don’t ask me why I did it.
I was tired of being your Magdalene. I was tired of waiting expectantly at your tomb every night for you to rise and bring light into my world once again. I was tired of groveling on my knees and washing blood off your heels with my hair and tears. I was tired of having the air sucked out of my lungs every time your eyes cut right to the heart of me. I was tired of the circumference of the whole universe living in your circled arms, of the spark of life hiding in your kiss, of the power of death lying in wait in your teeth. I was tired of carrying around the weight of a love like worship, of the sickly-warm rush of idolatry coloring my whole world.
I was tired of faithfulness.
I made you into my private Christ, supplicated with my own dark devotions. Nothing existed beyond the range of your exacting gaze, not even me. I was simply a non-entity when you weren’t looking at me, an empty vessel waiting to be filled by the sweet water of your attention.