The Summer Guest

by Alison Anderson

  Are you sure? Have you asked Grigory Petrovich or Anya what art does for them?

  Art is the conscious knowledge of defiance; religion is unconscious. For them, icons represent the story of Christ, and they find consolation and meaning in religion. Don’t you agree?

  I paused before answering; I pause now as I write. Once I would have agreed wholeheartedly, believed in the consolation, the brave assertions of art and even of religion. Now my soul is not so permeable. I am well acquainted with unremitting darkness.

  Consolation, I said, is this—and I made a circle with my finger to point at her and include her in my thoughts—this conversation, this moment, this sharing of life. It’s the only way of knowing for sure, of being absolutely certain of life. For me. The only immortality we have is in this very second. I speak on authority, Natasha; I stare down my own mortality every morning, and I live not for art or icons but for the moments I might spend with you, and Mama, and Elena, and our brothers, and everyone else who is dear to me, and even the dog. I do not believe that when I die, you can go to Akhtyrka and find me alive there, staring at you from the face of an icon. Nor do I believe, like Mama, in an afterlife.

  But there is memory—others are kept alive through memory. Why are you writing your journal if not to leave something of yourself?

  Perhaps. I like to think Ksenia will read it someday. But she will read my words, not me.

  And what are words if not the expression of who you are? The expression of your defiance? Your soul, after all?

  I am glad you see it that way, Natasha; perhaps you are right. I do not like to use the word despair, but there are times I believe my journal is merely an expression of despair. I am like Evgenia Yakovlevna, clinging to the coffin.

  She reached out for my hand. We had come full circle, resolved nothing, understood little. I felt the warmth in her hand, my vibrant sister, and that is what mattered more than all the rest. That mysterious warmth, alone able to calm my heart and mind.

  I remembered what Anton Pavlovich said last summer about living well, every moment. Yes, it was consolation, and each time I could realize that crystalline moment, it was like a burst of pure goodness and serenity. Surely worth living for.

  June 20, 1889

  I have not seen you in so long, Zinaida Mikhailovna—not seen you, I should say, in our way, where you can see me, too. I expect that, to you, I have been no more than a miserable bit actor this summer, reciting lines by rote, with no heart.

  For a moment I wasn’t certain what he meant, and then I understood and smiled. He sat down on the wicker chair next to me. The creaking told me he was stretching into the chair, relaxing. I had a sudden hope that he might stay for a while.

  He sighed, stammered, as if about to say something, then thinking better of it. I encouraged him, told him I was listening. Then he hummed, sighed again, banged the floor with his heels.

  Such boredom, Zinaida Mikhailovna, such restlessness! Do you feel it? Life has—this whole business, Kolya’s illness and death—it’s not even about grieving, that’s normal, you expect it—it’s the rest of the time, it’s as if all the good passion, the good sap, has gone out of life. As if the terrible heat we have had has dried up every moist, tender, fragile feeling or disposition within me. I’m a husk, Zinaida Mikhailovna, a dry husk, cleaned out, dust.

  This will pass, Anton Pavlovich. It is normal, surely, as you say.

  Don’t say that! That is what they all say—Masha, Vanya. You can do better, I know you can, you must tell me, you are wisdom itself, you are a light when all the others are blinded by convention—

  He stopped suddenly, sighed. I’m sorry, he said. I’m not sleeping enough. I shouldn’t speak to you like this.

  I reached out, searching for his hand, did not find it, sat back again.

  Anton Pavlovich. Perhaps what I say will be conventional, too, but it is all I know. Life is mysterious—for now the passion has gone, Nikolay Pavlovich has taken it with him to the grave, and his death has shown you the vulnerability, the pointlessness, dare I say the cynicism of life. How can you laugh and go to the theater and enjoy yourself when your brother is dead? But I say you can and you will; there will come a time when your spirit will cease mourning and slowly fill again with that sap, as you call it.

  I paused; his silence seemed impatient to me, so I hurried on.

  I have died innumerable times since my first headache, my first dizziness. Each time, with each spell, seizure, degree of blindness, I have lost a part of life. Each time fear comes in, showing death to me. You have seen for yourself, from last summer to this, how life is draining out of me, just as it did with Nikolay, but more slowly, less dramatically. And each time I do not die—although I could choose to let go, see the pointlessness of it all—I do not die because I shake my fist at fear. This is all there is, yet it is still so much. Even I have my moments of hope—not for eternity, not even that I might survive or recover my sight—because I already have survived, and I have learned to see.

  I sat up, tapped my foot on the floor.

  What right, Anton Pavlovich, do you have, when you are fit and healthy, to come to me with your ennui? Boredom will pass—it is the least you owe your brother! It is you who are blind—open your eyes, look around you!

  My head was pounding; a sudden stabbing pain caused me to gasp and threw me back in my chair. I did not care what he thought at that moment.

  He cleared his throat. Bless you, Zinaida Mikhailovna, I knew I could count on you to talk sense to me.

  It’s not sense, I said breathlessly, it’s not sense you want. That’s not why you came here. Sense is convention, sense is—

  I could not go on, the pain was a vice around my head. I think I nearly fainted, the floor of the veranda seemed to be tilting up, and I lay my head back and clung to the armrests to keep from falling, as if I were on a ship in a storm, as if an earth tremor were shaking the house. Anton Pavlovich was speaking from far away, I could hear him but not understand him, I remember thinking he had his own language, it was music, the sound of his voice, full of sadness but also a bitter humor, and there was a major key in there, too, of hope or understanding. And still the words I recognized were like false notes, dissonances: life, death, soul, weariness, hope, God. Then came long interludes when his words flowed quietly and smoothly, like a lullaby, comforting me as the pain receded.

  When I realized he was silent, I lifted my hand from the armrest. Anton Pavlovich, I’m not well, may we talk of this another time?

  He must have come to kneel by my chair, because his voice was very close to my ear, and his hand took mine, yet his words seemed to come from far away.

  I am a fool, Zinaida Mikhailovna, I have tired you, I am sorry. I am a selfish fool, forgive me.

  Something warm against my hand, next to his, it was his cheek, his beard. I do not know how long he stayed like that.

  Then he left, and I dozed dreamlessly until Natasha woke me for supper.

  I have remembered something: The other day, Anton Pavlovich described his trip to and from the Smagins’.

  It was, he said, as if the weather sought to warn him, then to punish him: on the way there, thunderstorms, rain, a gray, lowering sky. He was soaked through, miserable, they all were. During the return trip, he was obliged to wait in Romni for hours for a connecting train. He sat in a garden, and it was dreadfully cold, and in the next building he could hear a troupe of amateur actors rehearsing a melodrama.

  He writes his stories, his plays, sets actors to music beneath a lowering sky. Now life has lifted him helpless into his own sheaf of papers. He is soaked through; the ink has run.

  June 21, 1889

  Last night I slept long, my body immersed in recovery, and I woke again, refreshed, the pain almost gone, just the usual throbbing that responds to the laudanum, and the residual tiredness of an excess of sleep; that would pass. I could hear a gentle rain outside, soothing, washing away the bad thoughts. I resolved to spend the day usefully, not to dw
ell on the difficult conversation with Anton Pavlovich. I begged Mama, who wanted me to rest, to assign me some useful task—a trip to Sumy, a visit to the village—so she led me to the laundry, where Anya was ironing napkins and tablecloths. It would save Anya time if I helped to fold napkins, that much I could do, feeling the warm clean edges come together, the wonderful smell of clean linen—of warmth itself, beneath my fingertips.

  At first Anya was quiet, just the heavy banging of the iron, sizzle of steam. I knew she must find it somewhat awkward for me to be there, though I could hardly supervise her work, it was rather she who would supervise mine. But very soon she began to talk about the Chekhovs, in a surprisingly free, gossipy manner, which confirmed to me that although she did not find it easy to be working for them (indirectly, through Mama), they were a source of endless entertainment. Even their recent tragedy seems to have been enlightening to her—now she said to me: Master Nikolay, in the end, mistress, he was the soul of kindness, where he’d been so difficult before, barking orders at everyone, even Anton Pavlovich used to call him the General, but then he knew it was his time, mistress, and it was as if death had told him, I’ll be coming for you tomorrow during the night, so he’d had to say his farewells in a way the others wouldn’t notice, and he was ever so kind, at least to me.

  And I knew, I did, continued Anya, I felt it, and sure enough . . .

  At times her talking got ahead of her and I had to remind her to pass me a napkin.

  And wasn’t it awful, she continued, the way the others treated that poor woman—the children’s maid—who’d come with Master Aleksandr the day before Master Nikolay died. You would’ve thought Madame Chekhova was the grand duchess herself, and this poor Natalya Aleksandrovna was some scullery maid. And all the brothers arguing, and you could tell it was because she was there, and did she look after those two boys? Not at all, she just sat out in the garden with a sorry face as if she was bored or hurt that no one talked to her. Even Miss Masha ignored her. She had a fan and sat in the gazebo fanning the air, as if it would hurry the long hours. And do you know, mistress, I heard Master Mikhail Chekhov shouting at her, wasn’t she a fine one, because before she’d been with Master Aleksandr, she’d—

  Anya broke off.

  I noticed the scent before I knew he was there—a rich bouquet of flowers, their fragrances familiar yet elusive, mingled together without form or color to identify them. He coughed and asked Anya in a strained voice if he could borrow her mistress, and I wondered if he had overheard what she’d been saying about Aleksandr’s nanny. He took my arm and led me to the veranda, and we sat in our usual chairs, and the air was fresh and fine after the warmth of the laundry room.

  He reached over and placed the bouquet in my arms. They’re from Sumy, he said, from the florist’s; all your flowers have succumbed to the heat. So you have exotic blooms that have traveled all this way by train, on ice, from the Crimea, and Turkey, and Egypt, and the source of the Nile, and distant Zanzibar. I chose them for their scent.

  I smiled and thanked him. I immersed my face in the bouquet, in the soft petals quivering with raindrops. I saw a profusion of imaginary varieties, picked in a garden where flowers were grown only for me.

  If Anton Pavlovich were mumbling some sort of apology for his behavior the day before, I did not hear him.

  But when he began to tell me he would be going away for a few weeks—to meet friends in Odessa, in Yalta—the cloud of scent seemed to move on. I left the bouquet on my lap and listened.

  I thought of joining Suvorin in Vienna, he said, but this will be more entertaining. They’re theater people, it could be further inspiration—stimulation, I should say—for my theatrical endeavors. I need to get away, Zinaida Mikhailovna. I feel like a leaf in a whirlwind here. I can’t get my head straight, even if the family is beginning to live more normally again.

  Of course, Anton Pavlovich, you’ve had to bear the brunt.

  So Vanya and I will head off in a day or two. Masha will stay here. And Misha. It will be altogether quieter. We’ve been turbulent tenants, to say the least. Your mama—

  Mama has been only too happy to have you here. She is genuinely fond of you all, Anton Pavlovich.

  I said it somewhat sternly. I could not face more conversations with apologizing, or sighing, or talk of ennui and death. I picked up the bouquet again, lifted it to my face. Felt the moisture against my skin.

  Be careful, there are thorns.

  Roses, then? That’s lovely. I’m not too worried about thorns, I said with a smile.

  I hope when I get back from my trip, in August, to return to work on the novel. I’ll be fresh, inspired, the quiet will be welcome, not dreary. In the meantime, your dreams can continue to age my manuscript.

  Like a fine oak cask?

  Precisely.

  The chair creaked; he took my hand and said goodbye.

  I sat for a long time with the bouquet, thinking I might identify individual scents in addition to the roses, but I couldn’t. Elena found me there at dusk.

  ONE LAST TIME, ANA thought of flying to New York for the Fleur Mailly awards ceremony—a dinner to be held in the mansion belonging to the foundation that sponsored the prize—but then decided firmly against it. Franck and Isobel would be there. She knew it was cowardly of her, and that she would regret it if she did win, so she tried to convince herself that she couldn’t afford it, which was true up to a point—the point where emotions seem unjustified but are so overbearing that a person will grasp at any excuse rather than admit to them.

  A polite email had informed her that should she decide not to attend, her publisher would be given advance notice of the results in the course of the day, and naturally, would she keep the information to herself. So, with any luck, taking the time difference into account, she would hear before bedtime.

  She spent the morning of the ceremony cleaning and tidying, coaxing out a bohemian chic that she hadn’t known her cluttered book-strewn dwelling possessed. She threw the windows open on the spring air, the warmth tentative but the sunshine bright. She dusted, allowed herself to daydream like some urban Cinderella, not of a prince and a ball but of a crowning achievement, a confirmation in her quest for recognition, a nod to her talent. And a cash prize of four and a half months’ rent with its interlude of freedom, a real vacation of the kind she had not taken since she lost her flat in Paris. Perhaps she could go on a tour to Russia and then Ukraine, provided things quieted down, and visit the places where Chekhov had lived—Moscow, Melikhovo, Taganrog, Sumy—with the regrettable exception of Crimea. She had not been back to either country since her student years, when both were part of the Soviet Union; this would be her chance. If she won.

  She had a bottle of champagne in the fridge. If I don’t get the prize, she thought, it’ll be the usual Calva.

  In the afternoon she went back to work. Anton Pavlovich was about to leave for the Crimea with his brother. She checked the news. The email. Her phone line. All equally quiet.

  She looked up Fleur Mailly on the Internet: a French heiress who had married an American banker and used her money to promote French literature in translation. She was no longer alive. What would Madame Mailly think, wondered Ana, of the perceived decline in the status of the French on the world literary scene? But then it seemed the whole world literary scene was in decline.

  Ana baked a piece of salmon. The champagne would be nice with it, but it might be bad luck to open the bottle before there was something to celebrate. Besides, she had already decided to keep it for when she finished Zinaida Mikhailovna’s diary, if she didn’t win the prize.

  She had run out of wine; tap water would have to do.

  After dinner, Ana eyed the bottle of Calvados. She didn’t want to be pessimistic, either. It was nine o’clock—three P.M. in New York—and it was getting dark, but she put on her coat and walked to the end of the village and back. There were stars; Ana decided against superstition and stared at them defiantly.

  Still nothing.
Not a good sign.

  Doodle, wisely, had gone into hiding. Ana picked up one book after another but could not concentrate. She decided to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail for the umpteenth time but couldn’t lose herself in the absurdity and switched it off after the knights who said Ni. She resisted running to her laptop every five minutes and trusted her hearing to pick up the chime of incoming mail.

  She attacked a pile of ironing. At half past eleven the laptop pinged.

  Yves, inquiring if she’d had any news.

  Diddly squat, she wrote. They were supposed to notify me come what may, so what does this mean?

  That you’re special and they’ll send a singing telegram, replied Yves. Bearded Ukrainian poet—are you ready with the vodochka?

  She smiled but relented, filled a shot glass, and went to bed. She slept reasonably well, and when she saw in the morning that there were still no messages from the foundation or the publisher, she swore once, then sat down to work.

  At three o’clock that afternoon there was a message from the publisher of her translation of Lydia Guilloux’s novel. We’re so sorry, they wrote, our intern did not realize this should be forwarded to you.

  The prize, she read in the enclosed press release, had been awarded to Isobel Brookes for her translation of The Lemon-Rind Still Life. There is not a word out of place, said the judges. With such agile craftsmen as Isobel Brookes at work we can look forward to discovering a wealth of new literature from France.

  I’ve been walking around all these days as if I were in love, wrote Anton Pavlovich to Suvorin after he won the Pushkin Prize.

  Ana knew love was a gift, not something you could command, but she wondered how much depended on the recipient. There was no answer for such speculation other than to move on to the next moment as if the previous one never existed, and to put herself elsewhere, in a place where, next time, love might find purchase.

  July 3, 1889

  Anton and Ivan have left for the south, for their theater troupe, their people from Moscow and Petersburg. Luka is provincial; Luka is a country graveyard where gentlemen bury their brothers and their ennui.