December 7, 2006

December 7, 2006, is a hinge between the narrator’s present with Celia Favreau and the Moscow chapter he is trying not to revisit. The date gives his private withdrawal a public context: recent, highly visible deaths make the past feel close again, even as he refuses to speak about it.

Historical Setting

The day falls two months after Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in her Moscow elevator and two weeks after Aleksandr Litvinenko died in London. Litvinenko’s month-long battle with polonium-210 had kept his bald, hospitalized head in the press, making the news an insistent reminder of Moscow. The narrator distinguishes this association from blame: he does not hold himself responsible for either death, but recognizes how the reminders draw him back into the duplicity that defines that period of his life.

The Date in Private Life

The historical reminders have been affecting the narrator for weeks. He wakes to find Celia looking down at him with a smile, but anxiety prompts him to cover his head with a pillow. She leaves to get coffee; afterward, he reproaches himself for repeatedly pushing her away. Newspapers and Internet sites keep returning him to Moscow, while he avoids telling Celia what is wrong because he does not want to make that past more real.

Narrative Significance

December 7 brings the outside news and the couple’s domestic routine into the same scene. When Celia returns with steaming cups, they discuss their plans for the day; the narrator pretends to care, though he knows that, in his right mind, he does care about her. A blinking light on his phone interrupts this effort at ordinary life. The date thus marks not a resolution of the past but its continuing power to distort the present and strain his closeness with Celia.