Boris Akunin has published a memoir for his wife, Erika. It ends with the plan they made to die together.

Erika Chkhartishvili — who edited the books of Boris Akunin (real name: Grigory Chkhartishvili) and was his wife of more than 40 years — died in mid-August. In recent years, she had been fighting cancer. On September 2, Chkhartishvili published Erika’s Book, a 105-page memoir dedicated to his wife. The book is available in full, free of charge, on the website of the Babook Book Club. With the writer’s permission, Meduza is publishing the book’s two final chapters — about the Plan the couple had in case one of them went first.

Caution: This text may be difficult to read for anyone who has faced a serious illness or the death of someone close.

The yellow lift

Erika was sick for 15 months. We knew it was incurable. It was very hard and very bad — but not frightening. Because we had a Plan.

Here is how it came about.

In December 2022, I fell seriously ill. I assumed it was a lingering flu. But a scan showed lungs that looked like Gorgonzola, and I was told: terminal cancer. “I don’t know how much time he has left,” the doctor whispered to Erika.

She cared for me with a rigid smile, terror frozen in her eyes, but she held up well. She later told me that on several nights she had walked out onto an empty beach — we were in Spain, in the off-season — and screamed.

I, meanwhile, kept busy. I was writing two books at once: an adventure novel that, unsurprisingly, turned out mediocre, and Moy kalendar. The idea was that once she was left alone, Erika would have something entertaining and life-affirming to read every morning. (Later, as writers do, I folded all of this into the novel Na sanyakh (On a Sleigh), in which a terminally ill writer plans out the future life of his widow-to-be.)

I was terribly afraid. Not of dying, but of what would happen to Erika when the portfolio she had invested her whole self in went bust.

A month and a half later, by then in England, I was told after two biopsies and a review by a medical panel that there had been a misdiagnosis: I had a rare lung disease whose symptoms closely mimicked advanced cancer. They cured me in six months. Our life became happy again.

But I was tormented by a problem that needed solving.

I wrote a letter and handed it to Erika in person. We had never done anything like that before, and it frightened her terribly. She took it out to the terrace to read while I stayed in the room, anxious. I took a photo to remember the moment.

Here is that letter:

After she finished reading it, Erika said: “Whew, you scared me. I thought it was something bad. But it’s a great idea. I won’t be afraid of that anymore.” That was the whole discussion.

Fear left our life. I later worked this conversation into the novella Prosnis! (Wake Up!). And out of superstition — so that nothing like it would ever happen to us — I wrote the one scenario that must never come true: in the novella, the husband does precisely that, “drifts off into unconsciousness,” and nothing comes of their wonderful plan. The wife is left “alone on the shore.”

As for death itself, we had long since stopped fearing it, and we talked about it often between ourselves. That fear fades with age — one of the upsides of getting older.

My attitude toward suicide took shape long ago, back when I was writing the book Pisatel i samoubiystvo. What interested me was not the writers themselves but the question of whether suicide — not in general, but specifically for me — could be an acceptable way out of a catastrophic situation.

The answer I arrived at was this: if suicide expresses strength of spirit, then yes. If it expresses weakness — a miserable life, fear of the future — then no.

When the woman you love must go alone into “the dark valley, wrapped in night, wrapped in darkness,” sharing that journey with her is a strong and right thing to do.

A few days after Erika died, an artist I had never met, Yulia Bunnell, read my post about what had happened. “It shook me so much that I sat down to draw right away,” she wrote to me. And she sent a drawing that captured exactly what I was feeling most strongly at the time.

I had no intention of letting Erika go into that space alone.

On August 13, the hospital told us, with characteristic British directness, that treatment options had been exhausted and only palliative care remained. With the same British practicality, they said there was no reason to spend that kind of money keeping her in the hospital — painkillers could be given just as well at home, and she would be better off there.

I said to Erika: “So, is it time? Why should you suffer while I watch? Tomorrow they’ll discharge you, I’ll take you home, and we’ll fly away. Should I order the lift?”

“Let’s do it,” Erika agreed easily.

We had already discussed the Plan in detail. We had made all the arrangements and left the necessary instructions.

We decided we would fly from our balcony. The 33rd floor, with a roof below. We wouldn’t land on anyone’s head, and no one but the emergency services would be traumatized by the sight. Shortly before that, we had read in the newspaper that parents had jumped from a high floor together with their incurably and agonizingly ill child, and we both agreed it was an act of profound love.

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. In the U.S., call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. In the U.K. and Ireland, call Samaritans free on 116-123. Elsewhere, findahelpline.com lists free, confidential crisis lines by country.

We needed the platform lift because Erika had grown too weak to climb a ladder.

She would sit on a chair. I would raise the platform to the level of the railing. Then I would climb up myself. We would embrace, jump, scream for about 10 seconds, and that would be that. Our life would remain happy forever, with nothing to regret.

I had picked out the lift in advance, too. Right then, from the hospital room, I ordered it for rush delivery the next morning.

We had a wonderful evening — there was no pain. We reminisced about funny, pleasant things and even belted out songs. Then another attack began; Erika was given a shot and fell asleep. I went to get some wine. I sat in the dark hospital room, drinking, thinking: this is the last night of our life, and that’s just fine.

In the morning, with Erika still sound asleep, I went home to take delivery of the purchase. The lift turned out to be yellow. What does yellow, the color of betrayal, have to do with anything? I thought.

I wheeled the damn heavy contraption out onto the balcony. My mood was peaceful. Everything was good and right.

I went back to the hospital to sign her out.

But Erika was asleep, and I couldn’t wake her.

I called the doctor. They wheeled in medical equipment.

The doctor said: “This isn’t sleep. She’s unconscious and won’t wake up again. Her body is shutting down. She has a few days left, a week at most.”

I went numb. A terrible suspicion came over me: that Erika had agreed so easily the day before because she sensed there would be no flight. Once again she had made the most important decision for me, without me, reasoning that this way would be better for me. She knew my theory about suicide. I wouldn’t kill myself just because I was miserable and afraid of an unhappy life. That would be weak, and shameful.

My guess was confirmed the next day. Erika suddenly opened her eyes partway — no one, including me, had expected it. I leaned over her. She whispered: “How hard it’s going to be for you without me.” And then a few more words that will stay with me alone.

Then she groaned. They gave her a shot, and she closed her eyes. I never saw them again.

The following day I hurriedly arranged hospital-at-home care and had Erika moved and settled in her favorite room. I hoped that in that room she would feel something and maybe wake up again. But that same night she died, as if she had only been waiting to get home. A nurse knocked on my bedroom door: “She’s stopped breathing.”

I sat in the dark for a long time, holding Erika’s hand. Then I must have passed out. I opened my eyes — it was dawn. Erika’s face was golden with sunlight and somehow … beautiful. And what’s more, it was changing expression. I know about facial muscle contractions in the dead — I write crime novels. But Erika’s face was changing, or so it seemed to me, in a particular way. First it looked exalted. Then a calm half-smile appeared on it. Then it became very distant.

This is the thought that struck me.

In our relationship, I had always been the one who knew more. She was constantly asking me about things she didn’t know, and I would tell her, explain them to her. We were Znayka and Neznayka, the know-it-all and the know-nothing from the Soviet children’s books. But now our roles have switched. She already knows the most important thing of all — what’s out there — and I don’t. I’m looking up at her from below, and she keeps rising farther and farther, higher and higher, to a height from which I can no longer be seen.

People in black arrived. They covered Erika with a sheet and took her away.

Now, everywhere I look, I keep finding notes and cheat sheets she left for me: how to turn things on, where to find what. No, she hadn’t planned to take me with her. She just wanted me to torment myself less in the months ahead.

A trip to Paradise

Staying in the empty apartment was unbearable. I got in the car to drive somewhere. I decided I would go to Paradise. Rye — in Russian, Rai, the word for paradise — is a charming little town 100 kilometers [62 miles] from London. Erika must be in paradise, I figured — where else would she be? — so I might as well go there myself. We had been to Rye together about 10 years earlier and joked about the name. What if I got some kind of sign there? Long ago, before the Plan, we had promised each other: if one of us died and there was any way at all to send a signal from wherever we ended up — something like I’m okay — we would definitely do it.

I arrived in Rye and walked along its cozy streets, looking around. And suddenly I stopped in front of a shop window. It was covered in octopuses, one of them enormous. That one was looking at me, smiling. And I decided this was a sign: Erika is okay.

The thing is, Erika adored octopuses for some reason. She called the octopus her totem animal. Every home we had was covered in these cephalopods. At Erika’s insistence, one of my projects was even named Octopus. And Erika’s nickname at home was Octopussy.

The next morning I returned to London. And I saw that an incredible number of strangers had written to me. They sent condolences and remembered Erika with kind words. But they didn’t really know her at all, I thought. And I decided I would tell people what Erika was like.

So I told them.

The book of my life, written by the two of us together, was magically beautiful. It’s a shame it ended before I did.