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"A lie, told often enough, becomes the truth."
-Lenin
-Lenin
1939
"You're my wife," he murmurs in her ear, gently and momentarily placing a hand on the small of her back as he bends over her at the piano bench where she sits, pretending to be reaching for something beyond her. "That's who you really are."
As he pulls away, this time, she does not feel comforted.
Perhaps it is because she knows that will never be true. They have never been married, and they never will be able to. She doesn't know if she would want to, after what he has put her through. She does not know much of anything anymore.
Perhaps it is because she keeps convincing herself that this is a temporary state of things. That she will only be playing the role of the servant for another year, and then, somehow, everyone will understand, and she can just be herself.
Perhaps it is because, as she sits there, playing the piano and listening to the other guests complimenting Carson and Conrad on their 'very attractive Shadow woman", she can hear the way they make her into an object. A thing. A possession owned by these men, with no thoughts of her own. Perhaps it is because she is afraid that this will never end, and that she will turn into the very thing that she, by necessity, must pretend to be.
Actually, there is no 'perhaps' about that.
It's fear, stark fear, that whitens her knuckles as she plays, and refuses to let Carson's words reach her heart. Conrad leers at her over her drink and she fights off tears, because even he, even Carson's own brother doesn't know how he loves her. How she's a real person. How she does not belong to them.
If Conrad believes I'm his family's property, and I have to allow him to treat me as such, then how can I claim that he's not right in believing it? The thought sends horrific shudders down her spine. Carson is still smiling, still free, drifting around the room to make conversation.
She's allowed to drift when she finishes her song, so that she may touch up people's drinks, and ignore lewd suggestions from some of Conrad's friends.
She's pretending to hate herself, to hate her life in servitude, to have no self respect.
It feels less like pretending now. It feels disturbingly like truth.
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