The Summer Guest

by Alison Anderson

  Under communism, Peter’s publishing house would not have existed. He never would have known this gnawing fear and loss of pride. Other fears, yes. He would have been a mild-mannered professor of literature somewhere, struggling to convey ideas not through a market but through a screen of ideology. A screen set up to keep an elite in power. Were the banks any different?

  She went to the bathroom to put a plaster on her finger. Glanced in the mirror. Still noble, Katya. That aristocratic tilt of her head. Fellow students, their voices lilting with doubtful irony when, even in jest, they called her Comrade. No, she had not been a good comrade, with her personal poems. She had left on Peter’s arm in 1986 for the right to say as much. Though soon after, when the Wall came down, it no longer mattered to anyone; thankfully, in her case, love had prevailed. She was grateful for that. It helped now, knowing what they would go through in the months ahead, even if she felt some estrangement at the moment. Her childhood experience of pride, stoicism, and the blurred image of Soviet womanhood she had carried with her would help. Her own mother’s example. Who else had kept the country together, fed the children when the men were off fighting wars or nursing at the vodka bottle? She smiled at the cliché—Peter would scold her—but there must be some truth in it.

  She heard the key in the lock, sighed, took a deep breath.

  May 9, 1888

  Today it rained, briefly, a gentle spring rain that left a damp fragrance upon the air. Anton Pavlovich and Evgenia Yakovlevna sat with Mama and me for tea, as did Georges when he wasn’t interrupting or disappearing again. There was some practical talk between Evgenia Yakovlevna and Mama regarding Anya and the meals (a gentle complaint that she has made them the same polonaise sauce for three days now) and between Anton Pavlovich and Georges regarding the fishing—the pike is best by the old willow, or the roach downstream with the boat, opposite the church in the distance, and just after dawn is best for perch, often between the islands. Or something like that. Then Mama asked Anton Pavlovich what he was working on, and he gave a gruff little laugh and replied, A Treatise on the Best Hours for Fishing on the Noble Psyol, and Mama laughed, we all did, but I could tell she was a little bit put out, she insisted she was interested in his creative energy, as she calls it, for she has been reading about electricity and magnetism and so on and wonders if there are any parallel phenomena to be observed in the minds and souls of creators. I listened for Anton Pavlovich’s expression in his voice—did he think she was foolish and naive or merely curious—but he is very polite: He replied, too self-deprecatingly, I am sure, that inspiration and electricity had nothing to do with it, that it was merely the size of the pile of bills to be paid that drove him to his pen and paper. I see, said Mama, then she laughed and said, At least he is honest and doesn’t put on airs! Did Georges and I remember that dreadful impostor from Petersburg who claimed to be a poet? He would sniff the air and wiggle his head as if depositing inspiration for poetry from the scent of our Ukrainian cows. Divine! he would exult. Your countryside is divine! What absolute rubbish, said Georges. He was an insolent bore, I added, half in jest. We all laughed, and Anton Pavlovich concluded, Unfortunately, you do sometimes encounter such individuals in this profession, which is why I avoid Petersburg, where they tend to want to be seen.

  There was a moment of silence, then he continued, But your impostor poet was right, it is divine here. Even with the rain; your nature is blessed, unspoiled, abundant—you have found paradise.

  He paused until I heard him say in a quiet, intense voice, as if speaking to me alone—he was sitting next to me—This is a place not only for poetry or stories or plays. It is a place for writing novels—on that scale. I should like to write a novel, of course, if only I had the time.

  But you will have the time, surely, I ventured.

  I’m afraid I’m always in demand, Zinaida Mikhailovna. Today it’s the pike and perch, tomorrow my dear friend, and your relation, Ivanenko, will be arriving, and soon after that another dear friend, Aleksey Nikolayevich Pleshcheyev, and in a week or two the rest of my family will descend upon me like a cackling flock of birds, demanding I provide them with entertainment, conversation, vodka, and the company of women—and why not a few short stories, posthaste, while I’m at it, to fill the coffers. Where is the time for novels?

  I wanted to say that if he were a member of my family, we would work together, make an effort to ensure he had all the time and space he needed, but naturally, I could not say this, it would reflect badly on Evgenia Yakovlevna, who seems, from the little she has said, or that I have gleaned from Elena’s impressions, to be a hardworking and long-suffering woman who lives solely for her family. (Though one might argue that my family is exceptional in enabling women to have lives of their own.) I thought, too, that I idealize my family overmuch, that to others we might seem far too radical, or merely eccentric, or even self-centered in our way.

  So I said nothing, and not long after that, they took their leave, as it seemed the sun had come out, but I kept my thought for the next time we would meet and I could ask him what else novel-writing might require.

  I have had one of my bad headaches. I don’t know how long I have been asleep. Perhaps days, drifting from daylight to darkness, unaware. My body seems to have lost its timepiece; I am not hungry. From time to time I sensed a presence in the room, soft steps, an odor; a hand on my shoulder, or a voice asking something.

  In the bed I inhabited a warm, safe place. The sound of my breathing lulled me into memory: childhood. Papa, before. With us still. Outings to the islands on the river. Games in the field. Snowdrifts against the house where we hid. Sleigh rides. The thaw, Easter. The kulich and paskha and brightly colored eggs; the days of feasting and dancing. The priest blessing the house. The visitors, telling us how we’d grown.

  There was no difference between sisters and brothers; we were all free, and Luka was our shared kingdom. We invented stories with three wishes, and wise travelers and handsome princes, and the dreaded Baba Yaga if we did not do our schoolwork or preferred some mischief to obedience. We drifted with the islands on the Psyol, gave them different names from year to year. Bali, Java, Borneo; Saint-Pierre and Miquelon and the Île-aux-Chiens. We looked at maps and argued, learned the geography of the real world. Of which Luka was the center, with its willows and poplars and oaks; and the upper field, the lower field, the hayricks like fragile fortresses for endless summer evenings; the slow procession of the women’s kerchiefs through the wheat and their voices in song or laughter; the snuffle and rattle of the horses passing, laden with the harvest. That was my childhood, the generosity of it, the sureness of it.

  I hear music now. Georges is playing; there is a flute, too. Yes, our cousin Sasha Ivanenko has arrived. The notes are sweet and fresh, they soothe my tired brain and try to make it whole again. It must be evening. I am tired, I’ll stay in my bed and listen to the music. There are other doors that open, that restore me. To the present moment. That much I can do; there I can live. A house full of doors, with music in each room.

  I’ve been feeling better. Georges and Sasha took me for a drive into Sumy. To buy writing paper for our eminent summer guest the writer; he must be working on a novel, they whispered conspiratorially.

  I waited with Roman in the trap while they went into the stationer’s. It was terribly warm, and they seemed to be taking forever. All around me was a dark confusion of crowds and traffic—clatter of harness and carriage, sound of hooves, vendors shouting their wares. Someone singing with an accordion.

  I heard my name, a woman’s voice calling. I did not recognize her voice, perhaps a former patient or a fellow student or classmate. I realized she was calling insistently because I had not recognized her; she must have been on the other side of the street. I poked Roman urgently and discreetly: Did he know the woman calling to me? He did not. Could he describe her? Normal, a round face and blond hair. What was I to do? Why didn’t she come to me? Is she alone? I asked Roman. No, mistress, she’s with a small bo
y . . . and a servant, a dusty sort of fellow. She seems to want for you to join her, mistress, she’s outside the tearoom, he muttered, she’s waving for you to go over there, mistress.

  I felt a horrid, shaming moment of panic. I could not shout, in the middle of Sumy marketplace, to a woman I did not recognize, and say that I was blind and could she oblige me by crossing the street? Should I send Roman? Ignore her? Clearly she did not know of my affliction; perhaps she had moved away from Sumy and now had come back on a visit. Oh, who was it? If I knew her voice, I could call her name and urge her to cross the street!

  At that moment Georges and Sasha returned from the stationer’s. I asked them if they saw a woman calling to me from across the street and would they be so good as to go and explain my situation, perhaps accompany her back to the trap so I might talk to her?

  Sasha kindly undertook to be my emissary. We waited for a minute or so, and then he returned.

  Well. Her name is Ekaterina Kirillovna Smetanina, she said she once stayed at the neighboring estate with her mother and brother. She was quite flustered that you hadn’t greeted her, but when I explained why, she went beet-red. She sends her humble regards.

  Andryusha’s sister, I thought.

  And is she staying here? Does she want to call?

  She didn’t say. I suppose not.

  Now I would not have news of him. Perhaps it is just as well.

  The market sounds seemed to fade then, and for a moment I feared the onset of a seizure, until I realized it was the violence of a memory obliterating the present moment: I was by the riverbank, with Andryusha, and that irretrievable moment had offered itself to me not as a summoned memory, like the one I have recorded above in these pages, but physically, imperatively. A flush of warmth and pleasure and fear all at the same time. I almost gasped, and my face must have betrayed me, because Sasha turned to me on the seat and said, Are you all right, Zina? I nodded and the sensation faded, leaving only what I assumed was a puzzled smile on my face.

  After stopping to buy a crate of Santurini wine for Anton Pavlovich, we headed back to Luka.

  ANA DOUBLE-CHECKED THE SPELLING of Santurini. It was not a typo in the Russian; in any event, that was how Chekhov himself spelled it. In her research, she found there had been a large Greek community in Russia in the nineteenth century, many of whom had settled along the shores of the Sea of Azov, to the northeast of the Black Sea. These Greeks had settled, too, in Taganrog, the small coastal town where Chekhov was born. Nostalgia for that island in the Aegean, perhaps, had manifested in the name of the wine they produced or imported; somehow the vowel had changed in its emigration from one alphabet to another.

  Ana pulled out an old atlas she had bought at a brocante and looked at the map. Still the Soviet Union in this volume. Taganrog was to the very south of Russia, tucked in the curve of the border with Ukraine, not far from Donetsk. Her finger traced westward along the coast from Taganrog, crossing the border, and down around the crooked thumb of Crimea as it curled into the Black Sea; back again eastward and south from Taganrog to Sochi, just before the border with Georgia, and where the Winter Olympics were due to start in a few days. She tapped her finger on Sochi, then traced the border as it went north, curved around to the west, and came to Sumy, north of Kharkov, halfway to the Byelorussian Republic—now Belarus. On the map, distances were deceptively short, but Ana had read that the journey from Taganrog, or Crimea, to Moscow used to take several days even by train, and it must still be an overnight journey, at least.

  She decided to splurge and put in an order for several biographies, a few DVDs of the plays, and some fine editions of collected stories in English and in Russian. A good project to speed her through the winter. Her memories of Anton Chekhov were mostly vague, with one exception: The Seagull, which had been her first contact with the plays. The old theater in the center of San Francisco. She’d gone with her parents, grudgingly, sullenly, convinced that she was too old to be seen in public with them, convinced that the play would be boring. It was one of their last attempts to do something together as a family; now, of course, she looked back and was grateful that her parents had insisted she go with them. Because not long thereafter, their marriage had indeed collapsed. And then there were the play’s opening lines:

  MEDVEDENKO: Why do you always wear black?

  MASHA: I am in mourning for my life. I am unhappy.

  Ana had instantly been drawn to this young woman in her habit of melancholy, even though she was not the central, more beautiful, heroine. Masha’s words might seem worn and tired to her now, but they still held the warmth and familiarity that had endeared Chekhov to her once and forever. At the time, Ana had already intuited the self-ironic truth to the cliché; nevertheless, she took up Masha’s mantra and began to wear black herself. In the 1970s, she was seen as stylish by the other girls at school and then at university; stylish yet vaguely suspect, mistaken more than once for a French exchange student. With hindsight, she could see how Masha’s mournfulness might have colored—darkened—her own attitudes during the significant years: She felt misunderstood and prone to inexplicable melancholy of her own. Perhaps it was hormones, or her parents’ protracted divorce; perhaps it was all those Leonard Cohen songs she listened to, locked in her room. Until finally, she realized the potentially destructive irony of Masha’s stance and her own: While it might be fashionable to wear black, the display of melancholy—as if you were some early nineteenth-century Romantic—had definitely gone out of style. As Ana grew older, she learned to keep it to herself, for momentary lapses of Rachmaninov’s Isle of the Dead or wistful nostalgia; wine made it worse, as did crowds; long walks in autumn or afternoons skiing through a forest in winter condoned it and told her there was nothing wrong with her, that she was merely in harmony with the seasons.

  May 12, 1888

  I am learning to find my way around the house and the garden on my own. I have been too dependent on the others—their kindness, their availability—and now that the good weather is here, I cannot be bound to my bed or my chair. Mama worried at first and followed me until I finally had to scold her. Grigory Petrovich has found me a solid stick to help me feel my way. Best of all, Rosa guides me out of doors; she walks patiently by my side, and I can hold her by the collar.

  I have learned Luka all over again. No longer a place of colors and shapes; it is measured, surveyed, assessed by my feet, my stride. By space and an odd awareness of bulk or objects in my path. I usually go as far as Pasha’s cottage or the guesthouse, but tomorrow I will try to go to the river. This morning I sat for a short while with Madame Chekhova, Evgenia Yakovlevna. She is soft-spoken and patient; she talks about her sons with a mixture of exasperation and pride. Anton Pavlovich is clearly the good boy, the one who makes sure his parents and sister lack for nothing; the two older brothers, Aleksandr and Nikolay, are as gifted as Anton, she says, but ever so troublesome; the two younger boys, Ivan and Mikhail, are good boys, like her Antosha, but not as brilliant, still finding their way.

  And Maria Pavlovna, her only daughter, is the image of patience and devotion. Evgenia Yakovlevna sighed and said she was fortunate to have such a good girl helping with the upbringing of all those boys. Masha and Antosha are very close, she said.

  Her husband, Pavel Yegorovich, will arrive at the end of June. In time for his name day, she said happily; I told her we should celebrate together, as it is also my brother’s name day. It has been agreed, and we drew up a list of zakuski and dishes for Anya to prepare.

  We have had a mountain of crayfish for dinner, courtesy of our fishermen guests. They did not join us, however, too tired and smelly, they protested. They ate out in the garden like farmhands.

  I went this morning to sit under the willow by the river. I had a restless night, my brain clattering with thoughts about our guests. I was listening to the birds when I heard footsteps. I sat up straight, put on a ready expression, and waited. It was not a step I recognized—in any case, it’s difficult to tell on the p
ath, in the house it’s something else. It wasn’t Pasha or Georges, they would have called to me much sooner. A man’s step, I supposed. Solid, no rustle of skirts.

  He called my name, tentatively. I answered, Anton Pavlovich? He asked to sit beside me.

  Naturally, there were pleasantries, the things you say when you don’t know a person very well. He complimented us on the estate, the beauty of Luka, the kindness of the people; I asked him a few polite questions about Moscow, about his medical studies and practice. And all the time I was actually aching to ask him about his writing. He had seemed so self-deprecating the other night when we touched on the subject with the others, but I hoped today he might be more forthcoming with me. So when I thought we had dwelled long enough on pleasantries and I could sense an impatient fiddling of his fingers with the cloth of his suit, I plucked up my courage and said, So, you would like to write a novel.

  It was a statement, not a question, but he said, As I told you the other night, where can I find the time, the concentration? I have so many pressing obligations.

  Forgive me, this might be rather forward of me, but you must be sure it is what you want and not what others want for you, or what you feel you ought to do, and if you truly want it, then you must be sure you are not using your obligations as an excuse for your fear of beginning. Do you understand my point, Anton Pavlovich?

  He was silent. I was afraid I had offended him. So I blundered on: I’m sorry, that’s just my point of view, or not view, if you’ll forgive the poor humor.

  I paused, and as he had still said nothing and I felt a terrible blush coming over me, I tried to apologize: Anton Pavlovich, please forgive me, it’s none of my business! It’s just that if I had talent—a gift, like yours—I should not want to waste it on trifles—oh dear, that’s not what I meant either, I’m sure your stories are wonderful and I’m eager to hear them—