The Summer Guest Page 8

  But Zinaida Mikhailovna, you’re quite right, I insist. Perhaps I am feeling somewhat odd myself, with this burden of correspondents and family and friends.

  Tell me—regarding our young lady from Novorossiysk—what is it in so-called ladies’ novels that is so repellent to our male readers? Do you know, Anton Pavlovich? I should like to have your opinion.

  He made a sort of nervous sound, not a laugh, exactly, nor quite clearing his throat, then said, I believe, from what I have observed of my own brothers and of men in general . . . that love and relations with women complicate our lives immensely. And we wish it were not so—but we have . . . no control. So if you ask us to read a novel that is about nothing but love—love desired and exalted, as women feel, and often write about when they are writers—then as men, we sense we are not only unworthy of such exalted feelings but also trapped—do you understand, Zinaida Mikhailovna?

  I nodded. And added very quietly, For a few pages, you might perceive what our lives are made of.

  And a good man will have a guilty conscience—never a pleasant sensation; a bad one will be merely bored. Impatient.

  That may be, indeed.

  But you have been fortunate in your life, as a woman, no? And please don’t think that I judge women as I judge novels by girls from Novorossiysk. I would like to think I’ve known many women with lives not unlike your own—women who are educated and talented, who are interested in the outside world, participating fully—

  My life has been like that, yes. And would have continued in that way.

  There was a long silence; we drank our tea.

  You are very stoic, Zinaida Mikhailovna. You are an example. More than that. If only—

  I raised my head. Anton Pavlovich, what else can I be? Others may weep, but self-pity would only blind me further to the life that remains. Am I stoic? I try to live, to understand this time I have, to share and go on helping others with their lives if I can.

  You can. He cleared his throat, then said, How have you learned to live with your illness?

  (I was tempted to say something glib, like: It has been a very good teacher. But I decided to try to reach inside and understand how, indeed, I had learned this stoicism. If one can really understand and express such a thing.)

  It was very hard at first. Of course it came on so gradually, but once the symptoms were unmistakable, there were some days of tears, and not getting out of bed, and—and almost wishing I could die then, and have done with my suffering, and my family’s. But after three or four days, I suppose it was my reason, my will, a determination, though none of those things would ever have been strong enough if I did not love life. It is loving life, yes. I am fortunate to have my family; I want to be with them for as long as I can. That’s all.

  His hand was suddenly upon mine, very warm, slightly damp with the heat. He left it there for a few seconds, the weight of his palm and fingers. I could not see him, other than through his hand. Then he removed it and laughed gently. It is sticky heat, isn’t it?

  Yes. Perhaps it’s going to rain.

  Tell me, Zinaida Mikhailovna, these letters I’ve received—they’re quite roughed up, actually. You have busy censors in Sumy, do you?

  Yes. Pasha and Georges keep them entertained. Or rather, don’t keep them entertained, they know better than to write anything the tsar’s censors might relish. But the censors do keep on hoping, and reading, and I expect now you’ve caught their fancy as well.

  A letter from my publisher in Piter. I’ve invited him to join us, but it’s more likely, knowing his tastes and his lifestyle, that I will go to join him, perhaps in July. He has a villa in the Crimea.

  Ah.

  A fine man, believe me. Your brothers would not care for his politics, but it is thanks to his generosity as a patron of the arts that I am here at all.

  A discerning man, then.

  May I walk you back?

  The chair creaked; he was on his feet.

  I’ll be fine. Rosa will take me back.

  He took my fingers in his; there was the briefest tickle of his beard and mustache against the back of my hand. I giggled, very untypically for me. It was so hot.

  I am quite tired from all this writing. My head is splitting. The house is cool and quiet. I look forward to some sleep.

  KATYA WOKE WITH A start and turned to look at the clock on the bedside table. Five-forty-five. Instinctively she stretched out her arm, but the place next to her was empty. Peter had not come back by the time she went to bed, and somehow she had slept all night without realizing he was not there. Usually, she would wake with a start much earlier and lie there sleepless until he came home. Now the empty darkness suited her, all this space to think her gloomy thoughts without worrying that he might notice.

  The first shock on awakening: It was always there. The wall they were facing. Sometimes she imagined herself as a little girl, hopping up and down to get a quick glimpse over the wall. What might lie on the other side. But she had been taller and braver as an imaginary little girl; as she had been as a real young woman, to leave the Soviet Union.

  Peter had come with a group of students from Britain for summer courses in Russian. She was standing in line to buy ice cream on Pushkin Square, and he was just behind her, and you could tell right away that he wasn’t Russian, from his good clothes, then his accent when his turn came to buy his ice cream. She had assumed he was Hungarian or Czech. She was still standing by the ice cream cart, putting her change purse away, and he simply turned and asked her what kind of ice cream she had bought. There were only two kinds, but he wanted to be sure to have one like hers, for some reason. It was vanilla with a chocolate crust; the chocolate always melted too quickly and fell in regrettable flakes onto the pavement. She stood there eating her ice cream and asked him if he liked it. Then, walking a short distance from the ice cream vendor, and seeing that he’d followed, she asked him where he was from. He asked her if she spoke English, and she said, Yes, but let’s not talk here. She led him over to a quiet bench.

  She was nervous and looked around the park from time to time, fearful of seeing a fellow student who might ask her, Who were you with on Pushkin Square? The young Englishman seemed oblivious to her apprehension, and she had to keep asking him to lower his voice.

  They inspected each other with a polite yet avid curiosity. You are the enemy, Brezhnev always said so. You poor girl, they’ve brainwashed you, haven’t they. The Cold War had made them mutually exotic, in a way that Katya suspected no longer existed in the world. The fact that she, as a Soviet citizen, was not supposed to be meeting people from the West gave an adulterous spice to their encounter. The political and social transgressiveness of it.

  At the time she couldn’t imagine that these were the last weeks and months of the nagging, persistent, inbred fear. That only five years later, her country would dissolve into a chaotic openness, for a time, anyway. Nor could she imagine on that warm summer day that she would spend the rest of her life with this pink-cheeked Englishman with his posh accent and slight stutter, who was asking her about her studies and whether it was at all possible for her to travel to England.

  She looked at him and laughed. What do they teach you in Russian class in London? Don’t you know we’re not allowed to travel?

  He stuttered an apology, then said, On some of our excursions here, we’ve been with students who told us they’ve been to Scotland to study English.

  She laughed. Because those are the children of good party members. They’ve been selected to meet you. I’m just an ordinary student, not a good one. We could get in trouble, you see. The others have permission to meet you. It’s called privilege.

  They had finished their ice creams, and he asked her name.

  For a second she hesitated, then felt the first stirrings of a defiance that would get her all the way to Britain. I’m Katya.

  And I’m Peter.

  That’s a good Russian name, she said. I’m very happy to meet you.

  He t
old her he would skip class if she would meet him the next day. She thought for a moment and said, All right, let’s go to the Tretyakov Gallery. Have you been there?

  Later, in the early years, he would tell her that he had fallen in love with her over a painting. On a previous visit to the gallery with his group, the Intourist guide had hurried them through the icons and the avant-garde Soviet artists. Now Katya led him to the paintings of Isaak Levitan, whom he did not know. Bucolic, typically Russian landscapes with birch trees and wide expanses, full of stillness and a faint melancholy. Not bold, but unique in their way. There was one in particular where they stood for a long time, oblivious, as crowds of children in their Young Pioneer uniforms and Western tourists with their stern guides swirled around them. It was a river scene, with two churches on the far side, a cluster of towers and onion domes. A road led down to the river and then away from the other side, almost as if a horse and carriage could drive across the river unimpeded. There was a small jetty with some fishing boats, and a larger boat conveying people to the other shore. There was an evening light with clouds, a gentle summer serenity.

  Katya turned to Peter and said in Russian, We’re in the picture. We are on this side of the river, obviously, and we have to find a way to get to the other side.

  He took a moment, probably searching for his words in Russian, then said ungrammatically but eloquently, You don’t mind if our English churches don’t have onion domes?

  She laughed, not sure whether he was joking or whether he had truly read her thoughts. I don’t mind, she said.

  He took her hand very discreetly, gave it a squeeze, and said, I’ll find a way to get us to the other side.

  Somewhere she had a reproduction of the painting. It was called Evening Bells. Vecherni zvon. Actually, Bells was not a correct translation, the Russian word zvon stood for the sound the bells made. And it was an onomatopoeia. Dong. Not so nice in English. Evening Dong. No, definitely not. Ah, the poverty of English. She sat there and said zvon aloud several times, as if ringing a bell. She liked the idea that Levitan had given his painting a cross-sensory title. She would look for the reproduction, later.

  Now they were standing on another riverbank, without a bridge, and she didn’t know who would get them across this time. How wonderful it had been, to have that kind young man literally step into her life. She was not sure that she was still the same young woman he had found eating her ice cream, or that he was the same ferryman. They’d had many good times together, despite the difficulties, and he had given her the best life. Her mother often told her that, in almost every letter, every phone call.

  She had not told her mother anything about her current troubles. She did not want to disillusion her or give her added cause for concern.

  Later that day, she found the postcard of Evening Bells in a shoebox of small, insignificant treasures she had kept from that other life. Other postcards, badges, tickets to the Moscow Art Theatre, the Conservatory. The painting was not altogether as she remembered it; for a moment she wondered if their conversation about crossing the river could really have taken place. On this side, the road seemed more of a footpath for fishermen to reach their boats; on the other side, it brought villagers to enjoy the river.

  She propped the postcard against the saltshaker on the kitchen table.

  Peter came home in the middle of the afternoon, unshaven and smelling of whisky. He told her he had slept at the office again, which was what she had suspected, although he had not answered her calls.

  What’s this? he asked when he sat down for tea and saw Evening Bells.

  Levitan.

  The painter? Chekhov’s friend?

  Yes.

  How did you get this?

  He flipped it over, saw the inscription in Russian on the back.

  I’ve had it. I kept it. Remember?

  Remember what?

  The Tretyakov Gallery. The day after the day we met.

  We went there the day after the day we met?

  Yes, Peter. You told me you fell in love with me over this painting.

  It’s this one, is it?

  Well, it wasn’t Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan.

  Why don’t I remember it?

  She went over to him, put one hand on his head, the other around his shoulder. Because . . . you have a lot on your mind. Because memory is selective. Because you remember Levitan as Chekhov’s friend and not as the witness to the moment we fell in love.

  You always told me I fell in love first.

  You forget I grew up in the Soviet Union. We’re very good at rewriting history.

  He laughed, shook his head, then looked up at her, his eyes shining. After a moment his smile faded and he said, You won’t leave me, will you, Kate, no matter what happens with the business?

  She kissed him on the forehead. We’ll find a way, she said.

  June 1, 1888

  There seems to be a terrific amount of coming and going at the guesthouse. Noise, shouting: Two of Anton Pavlovich’s brothers have arrived. Nikolay and Ivan. Nikolay is an artist. According to Natasha, who has been talking to Masha, he is very gifted but leads a regrettably dissolute life, squandering his talents and reputation (she said this with a mixture of irony and admiration) on drinking and women and borrowing money he doesn’t pay back. Ivan, on the other hand, is quiet and hardworking and terribly good. He’s a teacher, a solid citizen. And he’s very good-looking, even more handsome than Anton Pavlovich, she suggests.

  How odd. I have not met Anton Pavlovich’s brothers, yet I feel a pinch of jealousy. Natasha says they go everywhere with him. Although I’ve known him scarcely a month, I have grown altogether too dependent on my ability to catch his attention and share some of his precious time—as if I had my own appointed moments in his life. Perhaps I fear, too, the flamboyance of our handsome Russian youth. I hear them shouting, singing, someone is drunk already. It is too tiresome to worry about, but something is pinching at me inside, somewhere between regret and fear.

  No doubt because of our shared profession and his, I would say, extraordinary ability to treat me as myself, I do not want to lose the special understanding I have with Anton Pavlovich. It is as if he feels more comfortable with me because I cannot see him with my eyes, so he in turn opens a door that the others keep shut: He allows me to go on being normal. That is a great gift. Even my sisters and Mama tend to fuss over me—and I let them, at times I have no choice—but to spend even fifteen minutes talking about this or that with Anton Pavlovich sets me into the present tense I once took for granted, without the terrible weight of the future.

  June 4, 1888

  Perhaps my fears are justified after all—it has been three days now since I’ve seen Anton Pavlovich. (I write seen, but that is a convention, language does not accommodate blindness any better than the rest of nature or society does.)

  They have been swimming and fishing, says Natasha.

  It is too hot to be outdoors during the day. I spend time on the veranda, but without company, my inspiration, I am finding it hard to write. This notebook has been open on my lap for an inestimable amount of time, my hand closed stiffly around the pen. The ink dries. Mama, Elena, Pasha, Georges—all are elsewhere; Natasha is in her social world (she is learning to fish, but Anton Pavlovich tells her women don’t have the patience, although they have patience for other things, like children. And men). Only Tonya comes now and again with her heavy body to sit with me. She is more and more frightened of childbirth as the day approaches. I reassure her, point to the noisy brood of Chekhovs to show her how people come into the world to unshakable sturdiness.

  If only I could read. I used to read so much when I was alone, especially as a girl. Gogol and Dostoyevsky and Turgenev, of course, but also the foreign authors, Dickens and Balzac and Madame Sand. And lesser-known authors who wrote of adventure and travel and discovery. I read of all those foreign places, all those people whose lives could not be more different from our own, and I would look around Luka and
know how fortunate I was. Mama’s life has been hard, but she has done her best to create a kingdom for us here. I once had the opportunity to travel to Vienna with Lyudmila Nikolayevna and her mother, but I declined, because it would have meant being away at harvesttime, and I couldn’t miss it for anything. The colors, the singing, the festivities—the same renewed each year, but always different. I went briefly to the harvest feast last year and prayed I would find the joy and renewal that had always sustained me, but the colors had faded inexorably—my vision had faded, I should say, was almost gone, and Elena led me here and there, and there were the smells and sounds, the fragrances I had grown up with, more intense than ever, but I missed the kaleidoscope of images.

  Now that I live this circumscribed existence, I tend to look back and try to determine what I miss the most, what I deemed necessary for my sustenance—even though now it is no longer necessary at all, reduced as I am to idle memories and the tedium of the waiting room.

  But let me not think of that.

  And how are you doing with the young lady from Novorossiysk? Is she legible?

  He gave a hesitant laugh. Edible, is more like it. She’s an absolute pudding.

  It was my turn to laugh. What do you mean?

  She writes well, she has promise, but she doesn’t know when to stop. She goes on and on in her descriptions—landscapes, feelings, even the family servants—until the words become as thick as jam.

  Then it doesn’t seem that she writes well after all.

  But she does! All she needs to do is to go back and eliminate the second and third sentence of every paragraph, and she’ll have a fine novel!

  I believe he expected me to laugh, but when I didn’t, he knew that I was not satisfied with his ironic dismissal. And indeed he said, No, of course it’s not that simple. She overwrites. Instead of saying Timofey Kazimirovich opened the door with the key, or opened the locked door, she says, Timofey Kazimirovich put the key in the lock, turned it, pressed the handle, and pulled the door open. But I believe she can easily eliminate all the chaff, and she’ll have a charming story of unrequited love that will appeal to sensitive young women and their mamas. And perhaps the odd prince.