Chapter 4: Suicide
It is St. Nicholas Day, and Marina and Viktor are dining at—surprise!—the Harried Horntail. He has offered to take her to other restaurants, but Zagreb is depressing, Belgrade is dangerous, and Sofia is full of teenage witches who want Viktor Krum's autograph. They went to Ljubljana once, but it wasn't as much fun as the Harried Horntail. They have a regular table now, on Friday nights, at the Harried Horntail. Antonja knows who the fellow is now, and Katie knows, but the boys are still in the dark.
Viktor is in the dark in his own way. He has just announced that he wants to take her to see the swans on Lake Bled.
What a brick to drop in a conversation. But then, he wouldn't know.
Marina has been to Lake Bled, as it happens, and she has seen the swans. She has seen the place where a family with too little backbone and too much gold raised a daughter linguistically able but psychologically frail. She has bathed in the shimmering waters and felt them peck at her heels.
Swans are pretty, but they aren't very nice.
They don't do much for Marina.
They don't solve anything, swans.
To Viktor, she simply says no, and he takes it like a man. He doesn't try to talk her round. He doesn't say she'll like it when she goes. He lets it drop, and she is grateful, so grateful. Romanian wizards are not good at listening to the word no.
Which is not to imply that Viktor is not persistent. Because five minutes later, he is saying, "Marina, was it hard when your mother died?"
"It was a terrible shock," says Marina. "More shock than grief. I thought that if anything was going to happen, it would have happened sooner. I—" She realizes suddenly that Viktor is following this line of conversation much too well. She reads the truth in his grave dark eyes. "You know, don't you?" she says quietly. She wonders if Slovadan told him, or Charlie.
He inclines his head. He reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out a folded sheet of paper. He hands it to her without a word.
She unfurls it. It is the front page of the Drum Liber, dated July, five and a half years ago. The right-hand column lists all the Romanian boys and girls who took their NEWTs that spring, together with the grades they achieved. Romania is a small-townish place, and this was common practice in Marina's adolescence. She looks down at the short and not very distinguished list of NEWTs, and a lump rises in her throat.
She merely glances at the headline, which she knows of yore and will never forget.
HALF-BLOOD WITCH OUTDOES DURMSTRANG BOYS IN NEWTS SWEEP
Marina Vasik, 18, a half-blood witch from Transylvania, surprised a nation this month by besting several pureblood Romanian boys in the annual NEWT exams. Miss Vasik, who was educated privately following her mother's suicide two years ago, achieved higher NEWT grades in a broader range of subjects than any of the Romanian final-year students at the renowned Durmstrang Institute. This news comes on the heels of allegations that the Durmstrang Institute discriminates against Romanian witches and wizards and is certain to fuel the controversy.
"We do endeavor to educate Romanian wizards and witches to our usual excellent standard," remarked Bogdan Harusy, acting headmaster of the Durmstrang Institute in the wake of former headmaster Igor Karkaroff's mysterious flight this spring. "But we're not often successful. The fact is, most Romanian wizards are doltish and dumb. Moreover, this was an unusual year. All of our best final-year students spent the year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, observing and participating in the Triwizard Tournament, and this of course accounts for our failure to achieve the desired level of NEWT results this spring. I anticipate a stunning rebound next June."
Harusy's comments may or may not console Romanian parents who believe their children's magical talents have been slighted at Durmstrang. They certainly fail to address the deeper structural problem of witches' outdoing wizards, which has caused dissension even within the Ministry.
"It's quite mysterious," said Minister of Education, Blood Status, and Family Values Glad Ursu. "This is the third time in a decade that a witch has appeared at the top of the Romanian NEWTs list. It's very embarrassing for the boys, and it makes me wonder if the NEWT examiners have compromised their standards to make things easy for the girls."
"I resent these allegations that girls are not as smart as boys," retorted Ministry spokeswitch Lizuca Blaga of the Department of Interior Affairs and Shameless Patriotic Promotion. "Look at me. I'm very smart and very successful. No, what troubles me is that Miss Vasik isn't genuinely Romanian at all. Oh, her father's family is authentic, everyone knows who the Vasiks are, but her mother's family is a curious and unsavory mélange of Slovenian and several other ethnicities. Even Magyar, I'm told, and we all know how disgustingly the Magyars behaved to the Transylvanians during the Hungarian occupation. Miss Vasik is obviously a bright young witch, but it makes no sense to cast her as a Romanian heroine."
Miss Vasik's tragic family background adds another perplexing dimension to this intriguing triumph. Her father, Sandu Vasik, an eccentric scion of the Transylvanian dragon-keeping clan, met his death in the jaws of a Peruvian Vipertooth on La Sola Vipertooth Reservation in the Andes seven years ago. Miss Vasik's mother, Julijana, killed herself by overdosing on Felix Felicis five years later. Some former neighbors speculated that Julijana Vasik was distraught over her husband's gory end, while other alleged that she was overcome by shame at the failure of her ill-advised marriage into a well-known, though declining, pureblood family. "She just couldn't handle the Transylvanian lifestyle," explained former neighbor Afina Sareci. "Half-bloods are different from us, less healthy, less intelligent, less stable. And Slovenians! Don't get me started."
Following her mother's suicide, Miss Vasik was educated without fee by private tutors, including the renowned transfiguration researcher Stefan Dobrega. Several Transylvanian educators and Ministry officials have speculated that this unusual form of coaching may have given Miss Vasik an unfair advantage in her NEWTs.
"But it won't pay off in the long run," warned Valeriu Antal, the sole Romanian professor at the Durmstrang Institute. "Private coaching is fine for passing exams, but it doesn't instill intellectual flexibility and character the way a proper school education does. I dare say that Miss Vasik will find it takes more to succeed in life than it does to pass a few exams."
What's next for this clever and controversial young witch? Miss Vasik will embark on a dragon keeping internship at the Transylvanian Dragon Research and Breeding Facility in September, and several prominent observers have already expressed doubts about whether she will be able to stay the course of study. Only time will tell.
Marina looks up from the article. It's been five years and five months since it was published, and it ought to be water under the bridge, but it all comes back too quickly, in bold and garish hues.
"I hope you don't mind that I looked you up," says Viktor.
Marina takes a deep breath. She swallows hard and brushes the incipient tears out of the corners of her eyes. She shakes her head. She folds the Drum Liber article and hands it back to Viktor. She says, "No, no, it's easier this way."
Not much in life has been easy for Marina.
The fact of her mother's suicide did not matter so much, once it was over. As she told Viktor, there was more shock than grief. The carefree, girlish mother she remembers faintly from childhood was already dying when her father died. Those last five years were nightmarishly lonely ones, tending a woman prone to erratic bouts of passion and indifference, of silence and goopy sentiment and angry, pouting withdrawal.
The truth is, life was easier, after her mother died. She had more peace, more freedom, more energy, more hope, even, ironically, a bit more money. Life was easier in every way, except for the questions.
Julijana left no note.
Sometimes, when Marina thinks of her mother, she wonders, why did she love Slovadan so much more than she loved me? Why did she wait until Slovadan was twenty-one, out of the house, educated, gainfully employed, and not do the same for me? What kind of a woman kills herself when her sixteen-year-old daughter is eight miles away, visiting her big brother for a weekend at his dragon reservation, and is going to come home and find her dead on the floor on a breezy, sunlit May morning? She thinks, if she had waited four more months, I would have been of age, and Slovadan would not have had to fight that maddeningly ridiculous court battle to get himself declared my guardian. If it had been autumn, and not a warm and lovely Carpathian spring.
And then she thinks, why did she wait so long? If she was going to do it, why not in the beginning, when it would have made sense? Suicide in the first flush of grief over her husband's gruesome death—that, yes, that I can understand. After all, he was my father. Suicide in the first flush of anger when she learned of her husband's betrayal—that, yes, that I can understand. After all, I too was betrayed. But what kind of a woman waits five years? What kind of a woman tortures her children with five years of anger and neglect and illness and withdrawal, and then, finally, finally, finally when they think she's getting better, kills herself?
Sometimes, of a warm sunny Sunday morning, Marina flies out to look at the Longhorns, and she gazes down at the corner of the reservation that was once her father's land, she gazes down at the ruined cottage in which she was raised, and she thinks, what kind of a person kills herself in the spring? Suicide in November, when there's two hours of darkness to every hour of light—that I can understand. Suicide in December, in rain and snow and wind, with the crivetz blowing hard across the steppe. Suicide in January, in the fitful anxious depression that accompanies each hopeless new year. That, yes, that I understand. But what kind of a woman, she thinks, gazing around at the lush green slopes, what kind of a woman kills herself in a warm and wildly lovely Carpathian spring?
The memories have taken away her appetite, as they always do. Marina picks at her food until Viktor says, "Let me take you home." But Marina says no, no, I don't want to go, so they sit there for two more hours, drinking coffee and poking two forks idly at one piece of cake and chatting of indifferent things. Viktor says he doesn't want to play Quidditch anymore, he's tired of games, he needs a real job. He's said this before and Marina tells him, as she did the week before last, that real life is overrated. Viktor smiles gently and half-heartedly, because he's proud of her stoicism, and he shoves the last bite of cake towards her with his fork. Marina smiles half-heartedly and gently, because she's grateful for his patient kindness, and she cuts the thumbnail-sized piece of cake in two with her fork and shoves one piece back to him. At last, Viktor says, "Let me take you home, I don't want you apparating alone tonight," and Marina says, very well, yes, and they go.
He follows her up the stairs of Mrs. Bogasieru's house to her modest flat. She doesn't really want to say good night, but she hasn't quite got the nerve to invite him in. So she says, "Good night, Viktor, thank you." He touches her face and he kisses her, not gently, as he has a couple times before, but for real. It ought to make things better, but it only makes things worse. It isn't her first kiss, but it feels like it is. She's never felt so awkward in her life. She tries to relax; she tries to remind herself that this is Viktor, whom she likes rather a lot. But she has never felt so awkward in her life.
She hasn't had the sort of social life that she assumes a rich brilliant Bulgarian Seeker would have had. She never had the social life that kids like Viktor had at school.
She doesn't quite know what he wants.
She doesn't quite know what she wants either.
So she says, "Good night, Viktor," and she shuts the door.