The Summer Guest Read online

  I know that you will be gone for a long time, traveling across Siberia in a bitter springtime, and your summer will be short and harsh, not like the summers you have had with us at Luka. Perhaps memories of your time here will sustain you, and we will be in your thoughts, as you are in ours. I know, too, that perhaps by the time you return, I will be gone. I cannot leave without hoping that even though we shall not, in all likelihood, meet again, you might at least read this letter someday, through Ksenia’s good offices, and know how you brought light and vision to my darkened days.

  There, I have said what must be said so that you will know, and Ksenia will know, and I entrust you both with my light, fragile legacy. Look after it well.

  May God protect you and give you health and happiness,

  Zinaida Mikhailovna

  THAT WAS IT, THERE was nothing more.

  It was late, it had been raining earlier, and forlorn patches of sunlight were struggling to revive the view toward the mountains. The rest of Zinaida Mikhailovna’s story belonged to history, to a footnote in a biography, a few lines in a letter.

  Ana sat with her hands in her lap, as if she had no more strength. Gradually, it came to her that she had forgotten the obituary Katya had mentioned and which she had skimmed so carelessly that first day.

  She opened the file and read it slowly.

  After she had read it, she saved everything and closed her computer. She went for a long walk and thought about the things people rarely share, or talk about, or admit to themselves.

  She waited three days before translating the obituary. It was simple, yet so concisely, perfectly worded that she feared it like an imposing presence. In it she could read the gentleness of their friendship, and also a physician’s brutal precision. She struggled over one sentence, about Zinaida’s fate: Chekhov’s Russian would not yield to English, as if Ana’s native language were poorly equipped to deal with matters of destiny. Or perhaps it was some failing of her own. In the end she decided to let the sentence keep a strange ring to it, as a nod to other ways of experiencing.

  Z. M. LINTVARYOVA

  DEATH

  On November 24, 1891, in the region of Sumy, Kharkovsky Province, in the presence of her family, Dr. Zinaida Mikhailovna Lintvaryova.

  Upon completing her studies, the deceased worked for a short time at the clinic of Professor Yu. G. Chudnovsky. All those who knew her at that time remember her as a gifted, hardworking doctor and good comrade. Unfortunately, what fate had in store for Zinaida Mikhailovna was the bitterest of experiences. Five years ago she lost her sight. A grave illness (visibly, a brain tumor) gradually and relentlessly paralyzed the poor woman’s extremities, her tongue, the muscles of her face, and her memory.

  For the family, for whom she was a source of pride and brilliant hopes, and for her acquaintances and the persons for whom she worked so ardently, there remains one sad consolation—the rare and remarkable patience with which Zinaida Mikhailovna endured her suffering. At the same time she was surrounded by idle and healthy people who would complain about their own fate, yet this woman—blind, deprived of her freedom of movement, and doomed to die—did not grumble, but consoled and encouraged those very people who were complaining.

  (Submitted by Dr. A. P. Chekhov)

  IT TOOK ANA TWENTY days to revise the translation.

  She would have liked to take longer; would have liked to reread the text in real time, as Zinaida Mikhailovna had written it, over the course of two summers. The slow pace of the first draft had given her something of that illusion—as if she had been present, had overheard their conversations and taken part in them, through the choice of words and tense and the color she could give the scene. Revising was like revisiting memories, and she found herself taking small but warranted liberties with the text to make it come alive in English, to address the reader now, too. She could almost hear Anton Pavlovich saying to her disdainfully, Don’t you know we’ve been speaking English all along? To which Zinaida Mikhailovna might laugh and say, Leave the poor woman alone, Anton Pavlovich, she’s done very well unraveling our endless prattling.

  Two more read-throughs and it was a clean text, without marks or brackets or question marks or comments; she read it quickly, for flow and effectiveness in English. It worked. It was ready.

  She emailed it to Katya Kendall on the day of their deadline.

  While waiting for Katya’s reply, Ana went back to her ordinary life. She had a sudden and unexpected but welcome workload—a new brochure for one of her regular vineyard clients in Burgundy, and a popular French best seller from a new publisher who had read Go Through the Door, Turn Left. The novel infuriated her with what seemed to be a lack of essential truth and simplicity. Ana knew it would take all her skill to give it the fair treatment it deserved.

  She missed Zinaida. In spare moments she reread Chekhov’s short stories, looking for her. She found Elena’s earnestness, and Natasha’s laughter, but Zinaida was not there.

  Perhaps she was in his novel. Perhaps Ana would find her there.

  Ana lost herself on the Internet in search of Luka, the Lintvar-yovs, and their summer guests. There were many articles and references to the two summers (the fishing, Nikolay’s death), but apart from what Chekhov wrote in his letters, the Lintvaryov family remained shadowy, far less substantial than in Zinaida Mikhailovna’s words.

  She discovered there was a small museum-house devoted to Chekhov in Sumy, located in the very guesthouse where he had spent those two summers. She found it on the satellite view of Google maps: ulitsa Chekhova 79, Sumy, Ukraine. Such technology was frightening: She was looking down on the past as if she were a bird perched on a sputnik. A road ran in front of the museum and on to the river. There was a large roof on the other side of the road that might be the big house where Zinaida Mikhailovna had lived; above it, a dark patch that must be the pond. It all looked terribly small.

  Ana felt as if she were trespassing.

  Two weeks had gone by, and there had been no answer from Polyana Press. She called them half a dozen times.

  With a sort of dread fascination, Ana came to realize that she needed to know more.

  She opened the bottle of champagne she had bought to celebrate finishing the translation, drank a toast to Zinaida Mikhailovna and Anton Pavlovich, then sat down at her computer.

  Elections had been held in Ukraine, and a new president with a name like a child’s poem was determined to reunite the country and rid the east of the pro-Russian separatists fighting in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. Sumy was much farther north, and Ana prayed that geographical distance from the fighting meant proportionately increased safety. In addition, she had heard reports on the news that Sumy continued to stand behind the Maidan revolution, demonstrating their support amid a sea of blue and gold flags; Sumy wanted to remain part of Ukraine.

  But it was only forty kilometers from the border with Russia.

  The travel advisories from the American and British governments were not good, warning against travel to the east of the country. It’s in the north, she whispered to herself, construing her own geography; Sumy is in the north, it’s nowhere near Donetsk. There was also a warning against all but essential travel to the neighboring Kharkiv oblast. Essential, essential, thought Ana, Sumy is essential. Kharkovsky Province, it may have been in Chekhov’s time, but the map has been redrawn. It’s Sumy oblast now. And it’s essential.

  The French embassy in Kiev had gone even further, posting a map on its website that clearly indicated the dangerous areas of the country. Most of Ukraine was pale yellow for vigilance renforcée. Kharkiv, like Crimea, like the whole region around Donetsk and Luhansk, was an ugly orange: déconseillé sauf raison impérative. Sumy was pale yellow, like Kiev or Lviv, safely in the west.

  Ana gulped down a cold draft of Moët; it burned, made her eyes water.

  She remembered how she had spoken to Yves of her fear, and she felt she must overcome it once and for all. Perhaps her invisibility would protect her. A
long with her essential, imperative reasons for going there.

  She almost hoped travel to Ukraine would be impossible for practical reasons, but she quickly learned that, on the contrary, it was completely feasible, despite the alarming news reports. There were regular, reasonably priced direct flights from Geneva to Kiev, then direct trains from Kiev to Sumy.

  It was the logical place to start: The museum must know where Zinaida Mikhailovna’s journal had been kept all those years and whether the novel had been found with it. They would know how to locate the Lintvaryovs’ descendants. They might know who, in Russia or Ukraine, would be publishing the journal or even the novel. In her online efforts to find out more about Chekhov’s novel and those summers with the Lintvaryovs, Ana had seen dozens of confusing entries, all wild-goose chases into increasingly obscure websites, multitudes of Ukrainian or Russian brides hovering in the margins with their own, rather more desperate seeking.

  She could take the safer route and query the museum by email or over the telephone. But she wanted to go, in defiance of logic or common sense. She could not afford her dream trip to Russia, to all the places Chekhov had lived, and Crimea was out of the question, an orange zone on a French map. But she could afford a few days in Kiev and Sumy. Above all, she wanted to see where Zinaida Mikhailovna had lived, where they had met and sat and strolled.

  Ana booked a flight, the train to Sumy and back, hotels, transfers. She took out cancellation insurance, just in case. But it was the right time to go: The weather was balmy. She prepared a list of questions for the museum. She also had Katya Kendall’s phone number in her cell phone.

  KATYA LAY IN BED. The birds in the garden, obliviously, predictably, calling for the world to wake up. Another day and all that. Yes, all that. Whatever it had come to mean. It was all right for birds, the instinctive simplicity of their lives, a few seeds—that Katya graciously provided—a few twigs, a nest. There were predators, to be sure, plenty of cats in the neighborhood; constant vigilance was required. We have our predators, too, thought Katya. We were not vigilant.

  The letter from the bank had come a few days ago. Registered. Peter merely left it out on his desk for her to see. Then he was gone. Not disappeared, exactly; he called to tell her not to worry. He would be at the office, trying to sort things; he might sleep there or at Jacob’s. He needed some time on his own, he said, to think things through. He must have sensed her absence; she had tried to show her solidarity, but more and more she, too, needed solitude. She had asked him to read her poems; he had shrugged and told her he could not concentrate.

  Oh well.

  Her fatalism was serving her well, she thought. She could lie in bed now and it did not matter; let the house burn down for all she cared, although she would not like to be burned alive. She longed for an earthquake, a hurricane, a flood. Ridiculous, of course, London was largely safe from natural disasters, and besides, they had the Thames barrier.

  Terrorists, then, yes. There was that worry, remote but ever present. But Katya rarely went out of the neighborhood now that she no longer went to the office. Still, there were other forms of terrorism. Form letters that explode beneath you, taking away a vital limb: a house, a partner.

  Let’s not exaggerate, Katya, she thought. It has not come to that. A warning; an absent partner who has told you not to worry.

  It left her less room to maneuver. She was sticking to her plan, yes, but for the time being, there was little else she could do.

  Ana had sent her Zinaida Mikhailovna’s diary. It was finished. Katya had read the beginning; it sounded strange, rang a bit hollow at first, but then she let herself go into the English, blocked the Russian from her mind, and it read well. Perhaps it was a bit like all those film adaptations of Russian novels and plays that the British were rather good at. There was a British Russia, and there was a real Russia. She supposed the British Russia was rather like the European version of the American Far West. A sort of mythical place where people were larger than life and violent, passionate, unexpected things happened. Was that something a translator could infuse into a text? They weren’t supposed to, but then perhaps it was the language. Just the tortured poetry of Russian names seemed to bleed onto the page for the English reader.

  She supposed she should get out of bed, make phone calls—the designer, the printer. The publicist. They should go ahead with it as if nothing had happened. Stick to the plan, yes.

  But how would they pay them—the designer, the printer, the publicist? They would want money up front. Especially the publicist; such a rapacious profession. And they still had a bill with the printer. And the translator, of course. Especially if there were a second book. She thought of their lunch together, how nervous Ana had seemed, almost girlish, blushing, laughing, growing wistful as she listened to Katya recite Pasternak.

  Again Katya wished she could have confided in Ana. Even now. Ana knew Zinaida Mikhailovna, and they could have talked about her stoicism, her courage. How she did not want people’s pity, did not want them to feel sorry and shake their heads. Pity creates a barrier, makes you different, when all you want is to be seen and treated normally. The way Anton Pavlovich treated Zinaida. Would Ana understand that? Katya would have liked such a friend, a confidant. The very person Peter could not be, could no longer be; this thing had come between them, and she did not know if they would be able to repair the estrangement in time.

  Katya shifted her head on the pillow, let her mind wander. Imagined herself doing all the things she knew she ought to be doing; imagined the satisfaction of having done them. And didn’t move. They could wait.

  Later, if she got out of bed, she could write a poem.

  It was time to confront Peter, she knew that, too.

  She had done so much already. Perhaps today she could just stay in bed. Finish proofing the translation; go back there, to Luka, one last time.

  LUKA

  AT SOME POINT ANA became aware that she had left the twenty-first century behind. It wasn’t in Kiev, where, if anything, she thought she might have landed in the twenty-second century. On the drive from the airport to the train station, she gazed at neighborhoods of massive new apartment blocks, futuristic and frightening in their anonymity, gleaming yet soulless, something Stalin might have built in a place like Dubai. It must have been on the train, then, that the clocks turned back, with every ticking mile of track that led away from the capital. Ana watched dreamily as the train rolled past flat farmland and countless sleepy villages, with rich plots of vegetables growing inexplicably alongside the railway line.

  She had gone straight to the train station; she would spend a day in Kiev on the way back, to see the traditional sights as well as the Maidan, still occupied by protesters defending their barricades, consolidating the revolution.

  Now she was alone in her compartment; for some reason, it was the only way she had been able to obtain a reservation from abroad. This was both a relief and a disappointment. She thought she might have enjoyed the company of some local people, some small talk that would quickly inflate to a heated political discussion; she might have had difficulty following—even if they were speaking Russian and not Ukrainian—but it would give her a sense of being a witness to something so much larger than her Alp-sheltered existence. The train was a sputnik-era relic, oft-repainted and repaired, although Ana looked in vain for any overt references to the Soviet Union (no stars, no hammers or sickles or CCCPs). But from the window, she often saw abandoned factories, their windows smashed, machinery rusting, ironic monuments to some anticipated glory that never came, the ruins of a misguided civilization.

  She recalled an endless day on a train from Leningrad to Kiev when she was a student: the flatness, the horizon ever receding and enlarging, the sensation of a country both frozen in time and wrenched brutally from it. And now she could see both the bucolic Tolstoyan landscapes and the Soviet Union that she had known, with its kolkhozes and factories and endless potholed roads and rattling buses.

  She sat at t
he window with her glass of tea in its metal holder and let the memories blur past with the ramshackle villages. How, in Soviet times, they used to herd them, pestilential Westerners, onto buses and on excursions to keep them out of trouble; how the students evaded surveillance whenever they could and sought out the ordinary citizens who had not sold their souls to the system. Earnest bearded Alyosha, bringing Ana pre-Revolution leather-bound editions of Turgenev that she managed to smuggle past the border control; with his parents sleeping in the next room, they used to sit until two in the morning in candlelight, whispering about all the forbidden writers whom somehow he had read: Pasternak, Nabokov, Solzhenitsyn. Where was he now? Was he even alive? Russian men with their dramatic mortality rate, vodka like a plague. They drank too much then, too, and her memories blurred and shone like this view through the train window, streaked with a spring shower.

  There was not much to see of Sumy from the taxi on the way to the hotel: a bustling market, traffic, wide streets, plenty of trees, a few shops, a McDonald’s. Some gilded onion domes in the distance. At the hotel reception, the young woman was helpful, discreetly curious. They must not get many Western women traveling alone in Sumy, thought Ana, particularly now.

  In the room she found a clock on the wall, ticking loudly. She took it down and put it in a drawer.

  Tables were set in the courtyard for dinner. Ana ordered a bowl of borscht. The air was warm, pleasantly muggy after an afternoon shower. She looked around: a profusion of trees and shabby, aging apartment buildings. Open spaces were crisscrossed by pathways where children rode bicycles.

  The long-forgotten banality of her surroundings stirred more intimations of youth, recklessness, love. Alyosha again; kisses. His father snoring in the next room.