A Russian Sister

by Caroline Adderson

  The women crowded around making the sign of the cross as they left.

  Out of earshot, Masha asked what was wrong with the child.

  “What’s wrong with all of them? That was a scene out of Ryurik’s time, or Ivan the Terrible’s. Three decades since Emancipation, and they live worse than cattle. A cow tends to a feverish calf. What a country.”

  “Your trousers are soiled.”

  He looked at them in feigned horror. “My trousers are soiled.”

  “Let’s go home. I feel sick.”

  He stopped and pressed his lips to her forehead. “Yes, you’re hot. It’s contagious, you know.”

  She pictured the distended stomach patterned with rash. “But what’s the matter with him?”

  “The child? He has Sixth Disease. You’re suffering from Moral Indignation. Don’t worry. Neither lasts.” And he strode toward the next hut, vowing to find the blasted mongoose.

  After the long day of searching—three estates, including barns and outbuildings, and two score huts, each worse than the last—they returned to Bogimovo, and Masha fell into bed. Svoloch finally appeared, but in the form of a man. Long narrow face, pointed nose, tawny hair. He lifted the covers and, still wearing his fur coat, slid in beside her. As they snuggled, he asked which suited him more—to be human or animal, man or child. She told him that she loved him as an animal, but this was nice too.

  “Choose,” he said.

  How tenderly Svoloch chewed her fingers as a man.

  THE NEXT MORNING, SHE STRUGGLED TO RISE. ANTOSHA came to find out what was keeping her.

  “I think I’m ill.”

  “Ill?” He made her name her symptoms, then fetched his bag and listened to her heart. “And now we have a use for those strawberry leaves.”

  Mariushka brewed the tea according to the doctor’s instructions. Masha drank it and slept again, alone this time, only to wake hours later feeling worse—headachy and dizzy.

  Not until the next day did her delirium fully manifest, but it must have started then. Or had she caught a chill the week before, standing under the eaves in the rainstorm? What else could account for what she did next?

  Antosha had so much work, yet he’d put it aside to fulfill his promise to find Svoloch. And here was Masha, lying lazily abed. With a feverish determination to do her part, she threw off the covers. She made it as far as the door, then had to lean against the jamb and wait for the vertigo to pass. Like blind Zinaida, she kept one hand on the wall.

  She left by the back entrance, but immediately sank down on the steps and folded herself over her drawn-up knees. An oriole screeched, then sang. She heard Mother and Mariushka in the kitchen querulously discussing dinner. “Cover the sour cream. The flies!”

  On her feet again, she set off weak-leggedly, past the kitchen and along the path to the dachas. The Kiseliov children were trying to launch a kite. When they saw her, they shouted for her to help; she pretended not to hear. Past the vegetable garden with its tidy rows of cabbages. The wattle fence, the rows of bee skeps smeared with mud. The bees were making a ferocious sound. Even after she’d passed them, her ears buzzed.

  Then she saw B.-K.’s mistress and stopped. The woman was trudging along the path toward her, a pail in each hand.

  Masha shouted, “Empty or full?”

  “Full!” The black spaces in her mouth showed when she laughed, crenellations on a parapet.

  As she neared, Masha saw that the pails brimmed with milk.

  “Going for a walk?” the woman asked, innocently enough, though her mocking expression belied it.

  For the first time, Masha noticed her eyes—greenish with yellow streaks. Why the mockery? She looked down at herself. She’d forgotten to dress, was barefoot too. She could guess the state of her hair, but still she lifted her chin and answered as though nothing was amiss.

  “I’m looking for the mongoose. Could he be in the barn?”

  “I looked yesterday. I’ll check again, if it will put you at ease. But if you don’t mind me saying, you’re going to an awful lot of trouble over that creature, when there are so many people in need.”

  “I don’t like people as much as that creature.”

  How hard-hearted she sounded. She thought of the sick baby, and a fresh wave of vertigo hit. And now the do-gooding mistress would launch into the tedious sort of lecture they kept hearing from B.-K. No one was more of a humanitarian than Antosha, who never speechified.

  Indeed, the mistress set the pails down on the dusty track and straightened the kerchief that hid her red hair. A dark apron of wet showed under the arm of her dress.

  “I hope you’ll forgive my frankness.”

  “That depends.”

  “You should get married.”

  Masha gaped, but the mistress carried on.

  “I see the same thing in my girls. They’re restless and despondent until they calf.”

  Had she just compared Masha to a cow? The buzzing in Masha’s ears grew louder. And here was further proof that she wasn’t thinking straight. She gave the woman such a feeble retort.

  “Why don’t you have children, then?”

  “I do. They’re with their father. Happiness is over for me. I may as well look for the wind in a field.”

  She stared at Masha with her cat eyes. Until then Masha had thought her scrawny and dim. What B.-K. saw in her, she couldn’t fathom. But now the halo of self-sacrifice shone all around her. Her pride in her sacrifice too. She’d been there all Masha’s life, staring out of the icon corner.

  Had she spoken these blasphemous thoughts out loud? The mistress seemed to hear them, for a look of horror crossed her face.

  “What?” Masha asked. “What are you gawking at?”

  She dropped her eyes again. Spattered down the front of her nightdress were bright droplets of strawberry juice. A second later came the gush.

  NOSEBLEED, FEVER AND MALAISE COULD BE TYPHOID, Antosha said, but nervous prostration was more likely. In either case, for the rest of the week he monitored her condition in between all the other things he did.

  From her sickbed, Masha stared out the window at the trees and the swathe of sky above them, its endless parade of clouds. Everything falling under the spell of light. Why couldn’t she paint? How had she lost her passion? If she found it again, she would never have to leave this bed. Viridian treetops, an ultramarine sky.

  Next time she woke, it was to charcoal trees with a thin sap-green line behind them.

  Olga came for a visit. Antosha collected her at the station and bought her lunch in town before bringing her to Bogimovo.

  “I gathered you weren’t going to die, or we would have come directly,” she told Masha. “I’ll make you a cigarette. That will revive you.” She unloaded her requirements onto the windowsill—tobacco pouch, papers, matchbox. “Your brother’s lost his head over that Lika. He’s actually exerting himself. When has he ever had to do that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He saw a photograph in a shop. Rushed in and bought it, then wrote a phony inscription on the back. ‘To Lika from Petya—a thousand kisses.’ Something like that. A postscript about how he’d been reading his own delightful stories and that she should buy them too. We stopped to post it on the way.”

  She lit the cigarette and held it out to Masha, who waved it off.

  “Yes. It will invigorate you.” When Masha refused a second time, Olga said, “You’re boring.”

  She settled on the sill and proceeded to smoke it herself. “What a view! I feel like a tsarevna sitting here. Tsarevna of my own life, unlike you. You’re a serf to your misery.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “Yes, you can. Take yourself in your hands. As for your brother’s infatuation, I’m forever disgusted that a woman’s character and intellect aren’t enough. Like every other man, he wants Lika’s body. But here’s what he fails to see, Masha.” The cigarette jabbed in emphasis. “Miss Mizanova will grow old and ugly, but I’ll never grow stupid
.”

  The reason Olga was so merry instead of her usual misanthropic self was that Antosha had taken her to lunch. She didn’t even care that he’d talked the whole time about someone else. Olga was a pretend tsarevna. And what she’d said about Lika wasn’t true. Lika wasn’t stupid. If all Antosha had wanted was her body, he could have seduced her long ago, as he had so many of her other friends, including Olga.

  What did he want from Lika? Why dash off joking letters and make your sister read them? Why do it in front of Olga, a former lover? If jokes and nonsense really were the means by which he conveyed deeper feelings, he must be head over heels. Why not propose and let Masha know where she stood?

  Smoke leaked out as Olga frowned. “Women should stop living for men. And mongooses.”

  “Is he going to marry her?” Masha asked.

  “Lika?” Olga snorted. “Only if she corners him. Then she’ll be an unhappy woman.”

  There was such bitterness in her words that Masha had to probe. “Why do you say that?”

  “Love isn’t easy for him.” Olga averted her eyes as though she’d betrayed an intimacy.

  Had she? Masha knew the other side of the story. Olga was “a difficult proposition.” Wasn’t she generalizing outward from herself?

  “Anyway, why would he marry when he has you?” Olga noticed something out the window then, slid off the sill and pitched down the cigarette.

  “Hey!” came Antosha’s cry.

  “Where are you going?” Olga called.

  “Mushroom picking! How’s Masha?”

  “Fine! Wait for me! I’m coming!” She turned to Masha. “Another thing I’m brilliant at.”

  Out she went, sashaying and singing, “Tsarevna, Tsarevna!”—the hem of her skirt, down at the back, dragging along the floor. In the doorway, she passed Mother entering with the post and nodded to her.

  Did Olga mean that Antosha loved Masha more than his other women? Or that Masha running his house freed him from having to marry? A sister, after all, could be fed on scraps.

  “She smells better than the last time,” Mother said, handing Masha a letter. She made her sit up, plumped the pillows, then settled at the foot of the bed.

  The letter was from Natalia. Zinaida was bedridden. Elena cared for her day and night. Her sister-in-law had just visited with the baby, the dote! Georgi was away playing concerts in St. Petersburg. And the nightingales were singing a new song. When’s that Masha coming to visit us, tra-la, tra-la!

  Masha dropped the letter on the floor and waited for Svoloch to dart out from under the bed and pounce on it.

  “What’s wrong?” Mother cooed.

  She would get no sympathy if she spoke of Svoloch. “Do you still think about Evgenia?”

  “Who?” Mother said, her expression blank.

  “Baby Evgenia. My sister.”

  Mother’s features collapsed. It seemed to Masha a mirror held up to what she felt.

  HOW COULD SHE GRIEVE AN ANIMAL AS MUCH AS A human child? Masha wondered this on her way to Ukraine. Because humans are animals too. Even chickens are. What a stupid expression. She missed him so. His bright eyes with their sideways pupils. His scientific ways. Even his wildness and destruction. It gave her something to wonder about when she went out. What chaos would she find when she returned?

  She grieved because she had no one now. Antosha would lure Lika back. They were in love. Masha would be displaced. She had not understood her position to be insecure. She couldn’t live with insecurity on top of grief. To that end, she was taking herself in her hands, as Olga had suggested. Her travelling case on the rack above her bulged with as many clothes as she’d dare bring to Luka without rousing Mother’s suspicions. Pinned inside her bodice, a tightly rolled wad of rubles in a linen pouch, all she had, including some borrowed from Olga, who could hardly afford to lend yet gave without question. When Masha returned to Moscow, she’d go round to the Dairy School and raise hell about her unpaid wages.

  Except she wouldn’t return for a long time. She couldn’t be in the same city as them. She’d stay with Natalia while she made her plan. (Thank God Georgi was away, or there would be nowhere for Masha to go.) Maybe she’d settle in St. Petersburg. Her brother Aleksander would surely keep her until she got on her feet.

  She lifted the hand that pressed her money through her layers of clothing. A lightness flooded in then, and she found she could name it, this feeling that was genuinely strange to her. Freedom. Beyond the window, the paintable countryside flew past, green smears of fields, the blurred houses. This was only what Svoloch wanted—to be free. And now they both were, he leaping through the forest, she riding this train into uncertainty. It suddenly seemed thrilling.

  At Kursk she disembarked again to stretch her legs, still strong in her resolve. Except then it began to rain, which was depressing. A peasant with a bound stump leaned on a crutch. Masha climbed back on board and got stuck in the passage behind a group of black-robed monks. When the bells rang and the train began to move, the holy blockage finally dispersed.

  In Masha’s compartment, a beak-nosed woman in the facing seat was snacking from a basket in her lap. The compartment smelled like a delicatessen. Spatters on the window. Masha denied the beggar a second time by averting her eyes as he slid from view. If she paid every beggar she felt sorry for, she would soon be one herself. Olga’s generosity came to mind, but Masha didn’t want to think of Olga. She was afraid of becoming her—unkempt, overworked, bitter, always on the search for cheaper lodgings. Masha couldn’t afford second thoughts. Yet they came.

  How wretched she’d been when Antosha went to Sakhalin Island. Could she really part from him?

  Svoloch was probably dead.

  She covered her eyes with her hands. She wanted to see her life, or its palette at least. At first there was only blackness, but eventually her eyes adjusted, and she saw it—not black, but grey. The grey of dawn before the birds awaken. Before anything happens. The grey of diluted ink.

  The woman seated across asked if she was ill. Masha took her hands away. “No.” She refused the offer of a boiled egg.

  She reached Sumy station in a state of exhaustion. Evening, but it was still hot. As the hired carriage drove the rutted road to Luka, she struggled to fashion her mouth into a smile. She’d been invited as relief from the desperate situation there—Zinaida’s suffering and imminent death. Masha forbade herself from repeating last summer’s debacle at Yalta.

  The door flew open, and there was Natalia, the only woman who made Masha feel delicate. The brows that proved her lineage lifted. She held a finger to her lips.

  “Zinaida’s sleeping. You must be weary too. Come in. Are you hungry? Leave your bag. A telegram came for you.”

  It was lying on her waiting plate. Masha sank onto the chair, struggling not to burst into tears now.

  “Open it,” Natalia said.

  Creature found. Come back.

  MASHA RETURNED THE NEXT DAY TO BOGIMOVO, BRINGING Natalia, who was grateful for a holiday from sickness. On the train, Natalia kept shaking her head over Masha’s miraculous transformation. She’d opened the door on a limp specimen of misery.

  “But now you’re like Zinaida on morphine. Are you going to marry this mongoose, Masha?”

  5

  SUMMER ENDED. FALL CAME, THEN WINTER AGAIN. Five months of Russian weather.

  At Epiphany, Masha and Antosha sat down to file his correspondence, as they usually did, except for the previous January when Antosha had been ill from his voyage.

  Towers of envelopes on the dining table, a castle built of paper and ink. They bowed heads, passed letters back and forth. Their murmured reminiscences of the year usually felt like Masha’s reward for living through it. This year, though, there was less pleasure—even dread. Eventually one particular letter would surface. She did not want to see it.

  She glanced across at Antosha—his kindly downward-tilted eyes, the polished pince-nez balanced on his handsome nose. With the tight bud of an Italian t
ie at his throat, he appeared so proper and contained, in contrast to last summer. Last summer he’d been consumed by Lika fever. Masha had been ill too, bedridden, and Antosha had worried there might be something the matter with her heart. Mother had laid her grey head on her Masha’s chest, the weight of it a surprise, considering the triviality of most of her thoughts.

  “I hear nothing,” she’d finally said.

  Of course not. A cleaved stone had lodged in Masha’s breast. In its cleft, no living thing hid. And now, without the little disturbances of a mongoose—he was gone, really gone!—the jewellery box was unnervingly quiet. No squeaking. No outraged fits from the eavesdropping Mariushka, who kept bringing pirozhki as a ruse.

  But Antosha had been right to do what he’d done. He always had her best interests in mind. A mongoose was a wild creature from a land so far away and strange that it could have been make-believe. What did she really understand about his ways? She’d seen Svoloch abuse his wife and wreak havoc all over the house—behaviours she’d chosen to laugh off. Bloodlust had been more difficult to excuse.

  That gory, needled smile.

  Creature found. Come back. A hunter had located him in a quarry squeezed into a crevice, hiding from the dogs. “Amazing he could get in for how fat he’s grown,” Antosha had remarked.

  Fatter, indeed! Masha had rushed to him upon her return, had cooed and strummed the mesh of his cage. Svoloch had been imprisoned since his capture, so when she opened the door, he set off at once to reacquaint himself with the room. She followed, clicking her tongue. When this failed to bring him to her, she sat on the floor and drummed her fingers.

  “Come, Svoloch.”

  He remembered his name, for he cast her an over-the-shoulder glance. But he did not come. Worse, when Natalia entered, Svoloch ran to her instead. His natural curiosity impelled him to a stranger. His curiosity was stronger than his love.