Veronica was left alone with the mirror and the diamonds, which were worth more than her annual salary in that former life. Although no, in her former life, she earned one and a half, and on good days even two thousand dollars per shift, so the necklace would have been about a month and a half of good work, no more.
When her husband’s footsteps had completely faded, she opened the closet and, pushing aside a stack of woolen sweaters that he had also chosen himself, took out a wooden box with a carved lid. A gift from her mother for her university graduation.
Inside lay her true face, her authentic biography, hidden from her husband so carefully that he never even suspected its existence. A red diploma from the translation faculty of the State University with honors in all special disciplines. A DAAD certificate with a Gothic font title and the Heidelberg University crest. Simultaneous interpreter accreditations with the logos of international economic forums and energy giants. A photograph in a thin frame of a young woman in a strict suit next to the German ambassador at a reception for the opening of a trade mission. And separately, in a transparent sleeve, a worn badge with the blue UN emblem and her name, typed in the official font of international documents.
Eight languages at a professional level: German, French, English, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, and sign language, which she had studied as an elective because the instructor said that a true translator must be able to work with any audience. Three of them—with Hanoverian, Kansai, and Tuscan accents, because the professors believed that a good simultaneous interpreter must adapt to regional speech patterns, catch dialectal nuances, and feel the difference between Berlin and Munich pronunciation.
Veronica ran her finger over the glossy surface of the diploma and remembered the sanatorium in the mountains, the pine-scented air, the crunch of snow under her feet, and her own reflection in the ward window—pale, exhausted, empty.
She had come there more than ten years ago, broken, gutted, having lost her child in the fourth month after three consecutive conferences, after a series of night flights across time zones, after weeks of sleeping 4 hours a night and living on coffee from vending machines. The doctors said her body couldn’t handle the load. She told herself: “You killed him with your work, your ambitions, your desire to be the best.”
Arthur appeared then like a savior—attentive, generous, showering her with flowers and promises, vowing to protect her from all the world’s anxieties and take care of her as she deserved. She didn’t notice the moment when “protect” turned into “lock up,” when “take care of” became “decide for her,” when his love turned into total control over her every step, every word, every breath.
He had met her already broken, depressed, having given up her career for her health, and decided that she had always been like this: quiet, obedient, grateful for every handout. It was more convenient for him to think that his wife was a former secretary who knew a little bit of languages, who had accidentally drawn a lucky ticket in the lottery of life. He wasn’t interested in what she did before meeting him. What was her job, what had she achieved? All that remained outside the bounds of his curiosity. It was more convenient for him not to know, more convenient to consider her a nobody.
Veronica closed the box and put it back, behind the stack of sweaters, where Arthur would never look because he never put things there himself. Then she went to the mirror, took out a dark red lipstick from her makeup bag—a gift to herself on her last birthday, a secret, unapproved purchase made stealthily at the mall—and carefully applied it to her lips, watching how her face changed, how something of the old Veronica appeared in it. It was her small rebellion, a tiny act of defiance that Arthur might not even notice, but which she herself would feel all evening.
She looked at her reflection: a beige dress, a diamond necklace, dark red lips. And the sound of the door closing behind her husband seemed to her a harbinger of something inevitable, a tectonic shift that had already begun and could not be stopped.
The interior of the Bentley smelled of leather and her husband’s cologne—heavy, amber, as self-assured as its owner, filling the entire space and leaving no room for anything else. Arthur stared out the window at the passing lights of the central avenue, at the snow swirls in the lamplight, at the dark silhouettes, and dictated the rules without turning his head. Why look at his wife when he could look at the city he considered almost his own?
“You stay to my left. Not in front, not behind, to the left, half a step away. When I’m talking to someone important, you don’t interrupt, don’t comment, don’t put on an intelligent face. If someone addresses you directly—you smile, you nod, you say ‘yes, yes, of course.’ Nothing more. Understood?”
“Alright.”
“Karina will be translating. By the way, she graduated from a prestigious academy, knows two languages, not like country bumpkins like you. With her, I don’t have to blush in front of foreigners.”
Veronica silently watched the snow swirls outside the window, the city lights flickering like sad meteors, her blurred reflection in the glass. A month ago, she had checked his card statement. Not on purpose: the envelope was lying on his office desk, she went in to get a cup, and her gaze accidentally fell on the lines with the sums. A downtown department store, a jewelry boutique, a Cartier bracelet for ten thousand dollars. The date of purchase coincided with his last business trip. She had never seen this bracelet, which meant it wasn’t for her.
“Are you even listening to me?”
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