Where Silence Becomes Home. Tom 3

She showed the selection to Nonna only from a distance, without letting her read the letter.

“Do you like it?” Dmitry’s sister asked.

“Some of the things are beautiful.”

“That is not an answer.”

“Then I do not know yet.”

Nonna did not try to draw out more. Ksyusha closed the screen and caught herself wanting to hear Dmitry’s opinion of this very wording. He would have noticed at once that the company was already offering a ready-made image without having got to know Ksyusha herself. But asking him would have meant having to open the whole letter.

In the dark glass of the studio booth she saw her reflection: headphones, plain clothes, a sheet of lyrics in her hand. Ksyusha looked at herself and thought that she did not need anyone else’s “direction for growing up”.

In the evening Ksyusha added two more questions: “Who decides the image?” and “Can I refuse a particular campaign?” Then she made a separate line: “Who is the person they are offering me to become?” The answer came out short: “I do not know her.”

She already understood that she would not sign the contract as it stood. But admitting it to Dmitry was still hard, because the conversation concerned more than the dangerous clauses. She would have to say that for the first few minutes the letter had brought her joy; that a separate offer had confirmed that her voice existed outside their shared work; that part of her had not wanted to hand this feeling over for discussion.

The joy was what she hid most deeply.

Once again she decided to tell him after supper. But when the plates were cleared, Nonna started an argument about dates, and Ksyusha let that conversation take up the whole evening. Then she went to bed, knowing that there would never be a convenient moment for the admission anyway.

Chapter Six

Silence

For the first week the letter was her secret, one that stirred her soul.

On Friday morning she answered the sender briefly but politely: she thanked him and said she was still studying the terms. The reply came almost at once — she was again invited to talk at any time convenient to her. Attached to the letter were a provisional recording schedule and concepts for the artist’s visual image.

The photographs showed a girl of similar height, build and hair colour. She stood in an empty hall looking into the lens. The photographer had clearly tried to make loneliness part of her image. Ksyusha could easily picture herself in her place. But admitting that someone else’s team had invented “this image” even before their first conversation with her turned out to be harder.

Ksyusha opened the letter in the evenings, when Dmitry was working in the study, reread the clauses, pictured the album cover, her own name without an “and”, without brackets, without the word “jointly”. Her imagination slipped her posters and interviews in which for the first time nobody would ask, “And how did you meet Dmitry Rusov?” — only, “Tell us about your music.”

She liked imagining it. Too much to admit it even to herself without a certain shame.

In the daytime she worked through vocal parts, answered messages, helped Nonna check the addresses of venues. The letter stayed beside her even with the screen dark. It created a small private space that no one else had entered yet. Sometimes this felt like freedom, and sometimes it made every ordinary conversation a little more complicated and a little less honest.

On Sunday Dmitry suggested she listen to a new harmony. Ksyusha sat down beside him in the study, put on the second pair of headphones, and for the first few minutes really did hear only the music. Then she thought: if the contract were signed, would even home drafts like this need approval? Would she be able to record a line for his song without the company’s permission? The contract gave no clear answer.

“You do not like it?” Dmitry asked.

“I do. I was thinking.”

“About what?”

“About the second verse.”

That was how she first lied to him about the letter, although formally she had told the truth.

The second week began with a question she did not want to ask herself: what if he was against it?

She began to watch his reactions to other people’s offers more closely. When Marina forwarded an invitation to a small joint broadcast, Dmitry calmly said that Ksyusha could accept it on her own if the format interested her. When Nonna suggested moving a rehearsal to view a venue, he was the first to point out that the decision should depend on Ksyusha’s schedule. Time after time Dmitry’s behaviour disproved her fears, but Ksyusha still went on expecting a painful reaction from him.

She was not afraid of a prohibition: Dmitry had never forbidden her anything. She was afraid of something else. His name had stood beside hers on release cards and on the rare posters, all along their shared road. What if a contract that moved his “name” into a footnote hurt him more than he would let himself show?

She ran through the conversation in her head dozens of times, changing his reaction each time: now he calmly nodded and said, “It is your decision”; now, for a second before he nodded, something in his face changed — that barely perceptible thing she had learned to notice in her years beside him.

None of the versions gave her any peace.

On Tuesday she opened a draft message to Dmitry: “I need to show you a contract.” She read it, deleted the word “need”, then put it back. A message to a person in the next room looked absurd. She put the phone down and went to the study door.

Music was playing inside. Dmitry was recording a melody on the voice recorder, quietly repeating one turn of phrase. Ksyusha stood at the door and decided not to disturb him. An hour later he came out himself and asked whether she would like a walk. They went two blocks, bought bread and came home. She said nothing.

Later Ksyusha admitted to herself that she had been protecting not his working minute but one more day of silence.

One evening, lying awake, she asked herself directly for the first time: what if we break up over this?

At first the thought seemed absurd: there was no reason to break up. But the longer Ksyusha kept silent, the more easily she invented possible quarrels and answers from Dmitry.

By the middle of the second week another voice began to sound in her — quieter, but more stubborn.

Who said she was obliged to account for herself? She was an adult, she earned her own money and answered for her own voice — in every sense. Dmitry had no right to limit her choice. But he did not even need to say anything to limit it, if she herself looked at his possible reaction before looking at her own wish.

The words “account for herself” were a convenient thing to hold on to: beside them silence looked like a defence of freedom. But the contract touched their shared recordings. Telling him about it was not yet asking permission. Ksyusha almost reached this thought and each time turned off into the more comfortable argument about independence.

For a couple of days this thought brought her a strange, prickly relief.

She even answered the sender once more, agreeing to consider a date for a meeting. It created no obligations, but after she had sent it her palms were sweating as though the signature were already there. In the evening Dmitry noticed that she was hardly eating.

“Are you unwell?”

“No. Just not hungry.”

He took his hand away from the bread basket and looked at her closely.

“If something has happened, I am near.”

“I know.”

“Good.”

He did not ask again. His patience irritated her: there was nothing to defend herself against.

Left alone, she wrote her signature several times on a scrap of paper. She imagined announcing the contract after signing it, as an accomplished fact. Each time Ksyusha stopped, unable to think what she would say to Dmitry next.

By the end of the second week the home had grown especially quiet.

Once Nonna found her in the kitchen with the contract open. Ksyusha managed to lock the screen, but Dmitry’s sister noticed the movement.

“Secrets?” she asked, pouring tea.

“Work.”

“You can hide it from me. Not from Dima.”

Ksyusha’s head jerked up.

“Why did you decide I am hiding it from him?”

“I did not decide anything. But for some reason that is how you heard it.”

Nonna took her cup and went out without asking a single question. Ksyusha stayed in front of the darkened screen. It would have been easier if Nonna had started pushing: then she could have been indignant and done nothing again, going on defending her right to “independence”. But Dima’s sister had only said out loud what Ksyusha herself had known from the start.

For a few days Ksyusha stopped rehearsing conversations in advance, but she did nothing: she neither turned the contract down, nor proposed changing the terms, nor told Dmitry.

In the third week it became impossible to hide the change.

Dmitry did not watch Ksyusha’s every move, but now he could see it: at supper she dropped out of the conversation, before sleep she held her phone with the screen towards her, and she changed the subject too quickly whenever work outside the studio came up.

He asked nothing.

By the start of the third week he had stopped telling her every little thing about his work. Not out of revenge: Dmitry could see she was only half listening and did not want to talk into emptiness. Ksyusha noticed the change a few days later, when she realised she did not know how the argument about the mastering had ended.

“You did not tell me what they decided,” she said.

“I told you on Monday.”

“Really?”

“You said, ‘That is good.’”

She felt ashamed. One conversation that had not happened was already crowding out others that were perfectly alive.

Dmitry wanted to know what was going on. But in all their time together he had learned that if he started questioning her, she would close up even more. He did not want to decide for her when she should speak.

So Dmitry behaved as usual and waited.

In the evenings Dmitry checked the oil before they lit the lamp, shut the window before bed, left water by the bed. He did not grow cold, nor did he become pointedly attentive. Ksyusha saw this, and still she was afraid of the conversation.

One night he woke up because of the light. Ksyusha was lying with her back to him; her phone lit the edge of the pillow. Hearing him move, she switched off the screen at once.

“Can you not sleep?” Dmitry asked.

“I am asleep already.”

“Convincing.”

She turned over, but kept the phone under her palm.

“Early recording tomorrow. Go to sleep.”

The question was on the tip of his tongue: “What are you hiding from me?” Dmitry almost said it. He imagined her shutting down even further, and chose another.

“Shall I bring you some water?”

“No need. Thank you.”

He lay on his back. In the dark he could hear Ksyusha breathing too evenly, trying to be the first to pretend to be asleep. About ten minutes later her hand found his forearm. Dmitry covered her palm with his, but did not begin the conversation.

In the morning he stood under the shower for a long time, angry. With her — for an obvious secret. With himself — because under the guise of respect he too had been avoiding an unpleasant conversation.

At breakfast she asked why he was frowning.

“I slept badly.”

The answer was true, but not the whole truth. Dmitry heard it at once: now he too was holding things back.

He did not start the conversation before the recording. He decided to wait until the end of the week, and then name plainly what he saw and hear her answer. Two days were left.

He wanted Ksyusha to speak sooner.

He understood that if they did not talk, the silence would show itself in actions. He wanted the words to come sooner.

By the end of the third week Ksyusha already understood what was happening. Afraid of seeming dependent, she was pushing Dmitry further and further away from a decision that concerned them both.

On the last evening of the third week a new letter came. The sender suggested meeting on Thursday and asked her to confirm the time by noon the next day. Ksyusha looked at the date, then at the closed study door.

She could agree to the meeting herself, or refuse. But three weeks of silence had not made the clauses about Dmitry’s songs and their joint recordings disappear.

Ksyusha opened the note “Questions”. Under the first three lines she added a fourth: “Do I want an album, or do I want to prove that I can create on my own?”

The answer did not come at once. She wanted to work, to hear her own voice outside their shared project, to answer for a song of her own. But she did not want to leave. And she had no intention of handing their joint recordings over to someone else’s control for the sake of a contract.

She closed the letter without replying, got up and went to the study.

Now Ksyusha knew what she wanted to say.

At the study door Ksyusha stopped. There was no music inside, only the occasional tap of keys. She raised her hand to knock, but never touched the door.

Dmitry opened it himself a few seconds later.

“Have you been standing there long?”

“A minute.”

“Come in.”

Ksyusha did not go in at once. Behind the door was the familiar home space: the lamp over the desk, the monitor with a paused track, his mug by the keyboard. Dmitry sat back down in his chair and waited for her to begin.

To occupy his hands, Dmitry pressed save, turned his chair round and fixed his eyes on Ksyusha, ready to listen.

“All this time I have been thinking that first I had to choose by myself,” Ksyusha said. “And only then tell you a ready-made decision.”

“Why?”

“So that it would definitely be mine. So that you would not influence it.”

“And now?”

“Now I understand that the silence had an influence too. On both of us. Only without your consent.”

He ran his palm along the arm of the chair, holding back his first impulse to answer sharply.

“I could see that something was distracting you, taking you away from me and from our project. But I did not know whether I had the right to ask.”

“You did,” she said honestly, but after a second’s pause she added: “I could simply have chosen not to answer.”

“That is easy to understand now.”

“For me too.”

A car went by outside; the light of its headlamps slid across the ceiling and vanished. Ksyusha heard her own breathing, uneven, anxious. She clenched her fists and breathed out. The next sentence she no longer rehearsed.

“If I ever say ‘it is my business’ again, remind me to ask: are the consequences only mine as well?”

“I shall. But I shall not use it to put pressure on you or take advantage.”

“I know.”

Dmitry had given her no reason to expect a prohibition, punishment or humiliation. Ksyusha had been afraid of something else: of losing at one stroke him, their shared world and the independence she had found beside him. In trying to protect herself, she had almost walled herself off from the person closest to her.

“Wait. I need to say one thing first, or I shall start with excuses again.”

He neither came out nor drew her in. He only shrugged.

“Say it however it comes.”

Ksyusha breathed in. For three weeks she had been repeating in her head the sentence “I have been offered a contract”, but instead of flying out like a joyful bird, it had become weighed down with stones and heavy chains dragging it to the ground.

“There is something important I have not told you,” she said.

And for the first time in three weeks she breathed out freely.

Dmitry did not ask at once what she had hidden. He switched off the speakers, closed the working file and pushed his phone aside. A space cleared on the desk.

“Is it about us?” he asked.

“And about me. And about work. And a lot of it I have muddled up myself.”

“Then do not begin with an excuse. Begin at the beginning.”

Ksyusha came in, but sat down not beside him but opposite. Between them there remained the desk, on which the contract could be laid. She took out her phone, but did not yet open the letter.

“I am afraid you will hear three weeks, not an offer.”

“I shall hear both.”

“And you will be right to be angry.”

“Perhaps. But my anger will not cancel your right to want work of your own.”

Dmitry could be angry about the silence and still not condemn her wish to work separately. Ksyusha finally heard the difference.

She opened the letter and laid the phone screen up. Now the document existed in their shared space, but the decision had not yet stopped belonging to her.

Chapter Seven

Confession

Ksyusha sat looking into Dima’s face, not daring to begin on the main thing. Dmitry looked from her to the phone and back, but did not pick it up. He was waiting for her to explain rather than inventing an explanation for her himself.

“I have been lying to you. Not directly, not in words. But I have been lying.”

His face did not change. Only his shoulders tensed slightly — so he had been expecting something like this after all; he had noticed. Ksyusha felt ashamed of the lie again.

“I am listening,” Dmitry said, and leaned forward a little.

“Three weeks ago I got a letter. An offer of a contract. A solo one. An album under my name.”

She saw him blink a little more slowly than usual — the only sign that the news really was news. Confirmation that he had not been going through her things, had not tried to invent an explanation for her behaviour on her behalf, and that Nonna had had no intention of making her task easier.

“And you kept quiet for three weeks.”

It was not said as a question. He had named the exact length of time — three weeks. Her answer “I was going to tell you” would have sounded false. So she simply nodded.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He asked evenly, and that made excuses harder.

Ksyusha looked at the floor; her fingers clenched nervously on her knees. But no one was going to answer for her.

“At first because it was pleasant. It flattered me that they saw me as an artist. Me myself. Not ‘the Nexxe project’, not two inseparable names on a poster, not ‘your girlfriend’, but me. Only me.”

“That is normal.”

Dmitry remained calm and reasonable, letting Ksyusha go on without breaking off for extra reproaches.

“Then I got frightened. That it would hurt you. That I would take something that belongs to both of us and make it my own.”

“And then?”

Ksyusha fell silent. The least attractive part was coming.

“And then I got frightened of something else. That if I told you, you would somehow influence my decision, perhaps without even wanting to. With one look, one insincere smile. And then I would not understand what I wanted myself and what you wanted. And where the line would be between my own wishes and the fear of a woman in love of hurting you.”

Dmitry ran his thumb along the arm of his glasses and was silent.

“So you decided to work it out yourself. In secret.”

“Yes. I almost agreed to a version where you were not there at all. Not in the rights, not in the list of participants. Only thanks somewhere at the bottom in small print.”

“Almost — what does that mean?”

A lump rose in Ksyusha’s throat, but she had to keep talking.

“I answered that I was studying the terms. I agreed to discuss a meeting, but I have not confirmed a time. I have signed nothing and have not consented to the use of the songs.”

“It is good that you are saying this precisely.”

“I should have said it sooner.”

“Yes.”

Dmitry did not comfort her or pretend that three weeks of silence meant nothing. He did not take her hand, did not hold her, said nothing; he simply looked and was silent.

Ksyusha lowered her eyes. She was waiting for what came next, but she herself did not know what it would be.

Dmitry was silent longer than she would have liked. But now it was her turn to wait and not hurry him.

“But you did not agree.”

“I did not agree. In the last few days I have understood that I was confusing two things: being myself and being separate from you.”

“And for that three weeks of silence were needed.”

“Yes. I am sorry.”

He held out his hand. First he barely touched her fingers, then he covered her palm with his.

“I am sorry it was so frightening for you to tell me. Three weeks alone with that is hard.”

“I was not afraid of you,” Ksyusha said. “Or rather, not of what you would do. I had decided in advance: if you said ‘choose for yourself’, it meant you did not care. If you offered help, it meant you wanted to control me. Whatever you answered, you came out guilty. A very convenient scheme, if you do not want to admit that you have lost your bearings yourself.”

Dmitry looked down at their hands.

“Thank you for saying that now.”

“It sounds dreadful.”

“But honest.”

He pushed the keyboard aside, clearing space on the desk.

“Then I shall be honest too. A solo album does not frighten me. If you want to record on your own, record; there should be room in your life for that too. But the contract concerns songs that I wrote, and I knew nothing about it and could not protect my rights.”

“I understand.”

“And another thing. I do not want to check your every step or control you. I do not need that. Your life, your voice, your career matter as much as mine. But if you have a question or a matter to think over that touches us both, or our shared work, I have the right to know about it and about your thinking before the decision is all but made.”

Ksyusha nodded. Now it was perfectly clear that she made her own decisions about a solo career. But she could not decide alone about their shared work, the songs Dmitry had written for her.

“You are not angry?”

“A little,” he said honestly. “Not about the contract. About three weeks in which you decided this alone, although I was in the next room.”

Ksyusha nodded, accepting it as fair karma.

“What now?” she asked.

“Now tell me all the terms. The good ones and the ones that are awkward to talk about.”

“I shall tell you first how I understood them myself. Then we shall read them, and you will tell me where I went wrong.”

“Agreed.”

She went through the letter from memory: the album, the team, the schedule, image rights, personal consultations. Several times Dmitry opened his mouth, but he did not interrupt. As Ksyusha said the terms aloud, the fine wording lost its shine. “An independent image” did not explain who would decide what for her. “Full support” could mean almost anything. When she had read it alone, the name on the cover had hidden these gaps.

She took out the phone with the letter that for three weeks had been read by nobody but herself, and moved closer so that he could see the screen too.

“Where do you want to start?”

“With the clause on authorship.”

“That stays yours. I shall insist on it myself, before you even have time to ask.”

“Not only mine, if you contributed to a particular song. We shall not answer a bad contract with another inaccuracy.”

“All right. Then we shall go through each recording separately.”

Dmitry looked at her and gave a slight nod.

“Good. And the rest?”

Ksyusha scrolled the letter to the next clause.

“Rights to archive recordings. Songs recorded with you automatically become solo material when reissued. Your name — only in the acknowledgements.”

“That clause we change completely.”

“I know. And I have already decided what I want instead. In our songs we must both remain. I can work alone, Dima. But I will not erase you to prove it.”

“That sounds like what I want as well.”

He enlarged the document on the screen and handed her the mouse.

“Mark it yourself. I shall be near and tell you what I see, but the letter with the corrections must go from your inbox and in your name.”

“Why does that matter?”

“Because the offer came to you. If I write even the first letter, at the meeting they will look at you condescendingly and talk to me instead of you, even if you are in the room.”

Ksyusha highlighted the first paragraph. Dmitry stayed near but did not take over the initiative — nor, for that matter, the mouse. The tension in her shoulders gradually melted.