The Summer Guest

by Alison Anderson

  And even if I’m not, even if my play is drivel and my boring story sends all my readers to sleep, and as for my novel—well, you know about my novel—I am certain I have amassed memories and experience for a dozen plays and a hundred stories. And perhaps a handful of novels. And that’s as important when one writes as a good table and light and a flowing pen.

  We fell silent. I could sense he was looking around him, trying to print the picture—the pond, the ducks, the reeds, the woods—onto his writerly self for future use, and perhaps even on his deeper heart. And the silence gave me a mad, reckless idea: the sort of thing Natasha would ask boldly without thinking, without fear, as a joke, but which came to me so violently that I felt a flush of heat and a nervous trembling that had nothing to do with my illness and everything to do with my older, original self. I sat up and turned to him and said, Anton Pavlovich, I have a very strange request to make of you, if you’ll forgive me—

  Please, Zinaida Mikhailovna, you must not hesitate. I owe you everything—

  You owe me nothing. I am here, that is all. But if you’ll indulge a blind woman’s fantasy, for a few moments, if you’ll let me see you—

  I did not know how to put it in words, how to phrase my odd request. I shook my hands in confusion.

  He moved on the bench, must have been facing me now.

  If you would—if I might touch your face—to understand better—to keep a memory of who you are, a sort of tactile painting—I am so afraid of losing our words—oh, never mind, Anton Pavlovich, what an unseemly thing to ask!

  Zinaida Mikhailovna, are we not doctors? What secrets are there for us? I assure you, my nose is in the middle of my face, and when last I checked, my beard was where it should be and not hanging from my left ear.

  He seized my hand and placed it on his beard. I was startled by its softness, or by his gesture, I’m not sure which.

  Paint your picture, Dr. Lintvaryova.

  He took his hand away and left me with my fingertips on his beard.

  As if of their own will, while my heart pounded with fear and happiness, my fingers began to move across his face—his chin, cheeks, nose, his wide forehead—where they lingered, paused, feeling warmth and a slight dampness while I wondered at all the thoughts in there, and he stayed unmoving, quietly breathing, until I lifted my fingers away.

  I was burning, spinning like a leaf in a storm.

  You’ve missed something, Zinaida Mikhailovna. You make me look like an eyeless Greek statue, I won’t have that.

  He took my hand again and placed my fingers on his closed eyes, first left, then right, and I touched them ever so gently and felt the faint flutter between his brow and his lashes, felt them with a kind of bewilderment, as if touching the eyes and lashes of a sleeping child.

  Then I held his cheek in my palm, feeling the whole side of his face, and it was then that I could begin to see him, a young man of fine looks, not unlike my own brother, Georges, with a firm chin and jaw, an even nose, eyes slightly turned down at the corners—eyes that missed nothing.

  Don’t forget my hair. I promise you I washed all the eels out this morning.

  His voice was deep and slightly strangled.

  I ran my fingers over and through his hair—long and thick and waving—right across his brow and down the back of his head to his neck, which was warm, and I could feel the muscles and veins, touched them more boldly with a half-forgotten seeking medical touch, and up to his ears—as they say, the ears are like seashells, and he squirmed and laughed, That tickles, so I drew my hand away regretfully, but embarrassed that I had gone on so long and that he had let me.

  Ah, Zinochka, you make a bad sculptor, or even doctor, he scolded, you are still leaving things out.

  Again he took my hand and lifted it to his lips, and he ran my thumb along his even, sharp teeth, then immediately afterward along his lower lip, soft and warm, so soft I thought instinctively of little Ksenia, and a powerful yet tender rush went all through me, from my thumb on through my body. His lips closed briefly around my thumb, then his hands closed around my fingers, and he kissed my hand in his gentlemanly way, then for a few moments he sat holding it, the time it took for my senses to mirror the pond once again.

  As a doctor, I used to touch.

  It was a necessary part of the examination, of diagnosis. Auscultation. To feel for growths, irregularities, fractures. The only way to see what lay below the skin.

  I touched newborns, children, men and women, old people with history in their cells.

  I had memories of their skin, their muscles, their bones. Touch serves as well as sight, because it tells the greater story.

  There were those who died, and I kept the memory of their still-warm, still-pulsing flesh beneath my probing fingertips.

  There were those who lived, and I would greet their smiles in the village while my hands quivered with a remembered hope.

  I had touched no one in months, only Rosa’s warm yielding fur and Ksenia’s round little cheeks and limbs.

  Now this memory replaces all the others, as if it were the first.

  I waited by the poplars at dawn, by the gate.

  He had said he would come to say goodbye to me there. The others were loading the carriage by the guesthouse and saying their goodbyes; I had told him, without any explanation, that I would be by the gate.

  I took Rosa with me. I felt the night ending around us—a bitter chill, absence of birdsong. We waited for a long time; I didn’t mind. I heard bells far in the distance, a lonely, inexplicable pealing; then peasants calling, and some boys already on their way to the river, shrieking insults and impossible challenges to each other, the way we used to. I’ll build a castle so big the tsar himself and all his army can’t reach the top.

  I heard his steps, a long way off. Regular and brisk, and he was humming to himself, one of the folk airs Natasha had taught him. Then he called my name. We had not talked since the time by the pond two days ago.

  We were silent. I had nothing to say; I had everything to say, but it could not be said. I thought then, ruefully, that if I had my sight, I would be using these moments to memorize his face, to look back and forth over the small territory of his person as if, by knowing it, I might keep it forever; reduced to sound, I could only wait and stare into a familiar void. Until he took my hand in both of his and held it companionably, as he had often done.

  Zinaida Mikhailovna, I shall miss our conversations. I know I said the same thing on parting last year, and I know this has been a difficult summer, and we’ve often been interrupted or distracted—but for that very reason, your presence, our afternoons together, working on the novel—

  He broke off, as if at a loss for words. Or perhaps not; he also knew the meaning of silence.

  We listened, then he said, Ah, Zina, how I shall miss it here! The sky, the tranquillity, the simplicity, the good people. Now we are headed back to the filth and promiscuity of the city, and the constant interruptions, people always wanting something from me. I shall have to go onstage and masquerade as myself.

  Still I did not speak; I nodded and waited for him to go on.

  There’s no moon tonight, Zinaida Mikhailovna, so you can see the stars brighter than ever, all across the horizon.

  I felt a sudden strange distance. I was stretched out on his carpet of stars in the sky, looking down on the tiny points of light that were Luka. I heard the sound of his foot, as if it, too, were far away, moving restlessly in the dirt.

  Finally I said, I too shall miss our conversations, Anton Pavlovich. I will think of them often. Perhaps I’ll ask Mama to read my journal to me; that way at least I can relive some of our thoughts, and your presence.

  I would like that, to know you are continuing our conversations. I’m not sure I’ll have that gift—that privilege—where I’m going.

  I smiled. Come now, Anton Pavlovich, Moscow is your life, too, it cannot be so dreadful. You have so much to do there. Why you ever even thought of burying yourself in Khar
kovsky Province, I cannot imagine—although of course we would be only too happy to have you here—

  Realizing I was speaking to a polite formula of the future I would not know, I hastened to add, because now I could hear voices and the clink of the carriage at the top of the lane: Anton Pavlovich, I do not believe we will meet again, even if you come back to Luka next summer, I—I know what awaits me, and I want to say goodbye to you while I am still able. And wish you happiness—

  His arms folded around me. I wrapped mine around him. We held each other for a long time. He murmured something that I did not catch, and my name; I felt his warmth and strength and did not want to leave. I saw my father holding me like that as a girl. His beard, too, against my cheek. The memory flared and was gone, and then Anton Pavlovich slowly let me go, steadying me—or was it himself—with one hand, and then the others were there, my family and his, arriving on foot or in the carriage, and they all climbed down to say goodbye, one after the other: Evgenia Yakovlevna, Misha, and Masha. Roman and Natasha would go with them to Sumy station.

  I waited by the gate and called goodbye, then listened until I could no longer hear their voices and laughter and the horses’ hooves. Then I turned and called for Rosa, and she led me home.

  NO ONE KNOWS THE exact color of Anton Pavlovich’s eyes.

  Ana searched in vain on the Internet and in all the books she had bought.

  Vladimir Korolenko, who met Chekhov in 1887, would assert that they were blue.

  Aleksandr Kuprin, in his memoir, insisted they were dark, almost brown, but not blue—although he said people remembered them as blue. The few oil paintings (Nikolay’s, Valentin Serov’s, Osip Braz’s) are also misleading, as if the artist were undecided or working from a muddy palette.

  October 1, 1889

  The morning air through the window chills me. I have asked for the winter quilts.

  The hours are long. I walk to the pond with Rosa; I sit on the bench until I am cold or she whimpers to return.

  It is getting difficult. My balance: I fell one day, I caught my toe in a root by the path. Rosa knows: She gave a sad yelp when I fell. I told no one, I was not hurt. Still I try.

  I gather memories along the path. Lift them like flowers to my face while I sit by the pond. Scatter them like dried leaves as I return to the house.

  The page defies me, refuses the past.

  I could imagine conversations with him. We might talk about the inevitability of autumn. Or how good it will be when the first snows come and we can harness the sleigh, and Elena and I will take him on our rounds through the village, the way we used to do. Because I like to imagine he has found his farmstead only twelve versts from here. And he comes frequently to dinner, to hear Georges at the piano, to play vint with Mama and Natasha. And to read to me from his novel.

  Imagination, dry as leaves.

  November 1889

  Natasha is in Moscow.

  Three weeks, staying with the Chekhovs. She writes short, cheerful letters, you can hear her peals of laughter.

  Anton Pavlovich is well and asks after you, says Natasha. He is surrounded by women, I ought to be jealous, but he does not have favorites—it amuses him to have us there. He calls us his harem, and Masha blushes and scolds him.

  There followed a list of names, each one longer and stranger than the previous one—indeed, the name Natasha sounds drearily ordinary—Olga, Lika, Glafira, Kleopatra, and an Aleksandra whom for some reason they call Vermicelli (I picture a woman with long, stringy hair).

  Natasha must have learned—or will learn now—how to live with the burden of her unrequited feelings. She is never disheartened for long.

  Whereas I miss her, miss the summer, our summer guests. Rosa lies at my feet and whimpers. She knows our walks are short and cautious over ice and frozen snow. We go to Pasha’s cottage and sit with Tonya and Ksenia. I play peekaboo with Ksenia, then she crawls onto my lap, raises her tiny fingers to my eyes. She knows, although she is so little, that there is something wrong there. She cannot say more than a few words yet, and has no understanding of death or illness, but she knows I cannot see. She brings me her rag doll to touch, leads my fingers to the doll’s button eyes. Tonya scolds her because she tries to put her fingers on Rosa’s eyes, too, and of course the dog is so patient, but she doesn’t like it.

  Where will you be when you read this, little Ksenia? Here at Luka? In Kiev? In Petersburg? Have a thought for the woman whose eyes you sought, who wanted so much to see your yellow curls and periwinkle eyes.

  December 1

  Natasha has returned.

  Anton Pavlovich had the premiere of the play he was working on while he was here, The Wood Demon. He forbade Natasha or any of the family to attend. It did not go well, and he came home utterly dejected and humiliated. He wanted to see no one. Natasha left Moscow unable to say goodbye to him.

  She was gloomier than I’ve ever known her to be. He had told her once, in a joyful mood, that his play was inspired by Luka and his time here.

  Perhaps what we have here is not something that can be transported to a stage. An actor has to feel it, to know it instinctively, over time. Perhaps even Anton Pavlovich could not capture something as elusive as our happiness here, or could not even believe it exists.

  January 1890

  He has written to Natasha. He is planning a great trip eastward, across Siberia to Sakhalin Island. If his plans go well, he will not be able to come in the summer.

  He spoke to me once, after Nikolay Pavlovich’s death, of wishing to do good in some way beyond his role as a doctor. He thought, as a writer, he could reach thousands of people if he had a cause. He thought of the prisoners on Sakhalin Island, the terrible lives they lead there; he wondered if he might help, make their conditions known, demand improvement from high quarters.

  It was an idea; there were many ideas during the summer. Most of them vanished with the days.

  This one, then, has stayed.

  He will go to Petersburg for the papers, the authorizations.

  February 1890

  I grow tired of silence. Elena and Natasha are busy, only Mama and Tonya sometimes find the time to come and read to me. I am bedridden; if I try to get up— No, it’s too sad, I won’t write about it.

  But one day I did get up, just clinging to the bed, and I felt under the mattress into the niche, and I took out Anton Pavlovich’s manuscript. I held it against me and thought back to those few weeks in August when we read it together, and every day he brought a few new pages to me. How I wish I could reread them! But he has made me swear not to share it—there is too much of your family, he said—and it’s true, I think Mama and Georges and Natasha in particular would recognize themselves and might be hurt by what they see.

  Not that he wrote anything unkind or unflattering. But the picture we have of ourselves so rarely corresponds to the picture we give others.

  I urged Anton Pavlovich to take the manuscript with him, but he said he cannot concentrate in Moscow, and that it needs time to age, like a good wine or cheese. Now that he has decided to go to Sakhalin Island, when will he work on it? Perhaps I should give it to Masha when she comes in the summer.

  Or what if . . . what if I were to take it with me? No one else knows, only Anton Pavlovich. What will happen after I am gone? Will my family read this journal and look for his manuscript? Or will they respect even then his wish for discretion and inform him simply that it is here, waiting?

  Or perhaps everything will be forgotten.

  I placed the manuscript on the bed and turned the pages slowly, one after the other. I counted 178. I don’t think he writes on both sides; he says our paper here in Sumy absorbs the ink too well. But he told me his handwriting is quite fine.

  I believe I was playing with fate, hoping Natasha or Mama might come in and discover me turning the pages—and then what would I do?

  But I do not hold a manuscript, it is not there for me to see. It is his trust I hold and have promised to preserve. I suppos
e at a moment like this, out of a certain weariness, I tempt fate. I think Anton Pavlovich could appreciate that and, I hope, forgive me.

  Sometimes I lie in bed and remember the story and write my own ending, a different one every time. I’m glad he hasn’t finished it yet, that the future can still be written.

  March 1890

  The winter has weakened me. I can hardly hold the pen.

  I asked Mama to read this diary over again to me. We have not read it all, only as far as the end of the first summer. Beyond that, there is a secret to keep. It makes me very happy to hear my words, gives me peace. I cry, Mama stops, I beg her to go on and swear to her I’m happy, not upset. Then she cries, poor Mamochka. And then Anton Pavlovich says something funny, and we’re both laughing and crying at the same time.

  I am glad I found the strength, while he was here. I did not think there would be so much to tell.

  March 8, 1890

  Dear Anton Pavlovich,

  I hear, from my sisters, that you are well.

  You do not write to me; should I be sorry? But we both know that anything you write to me must be read by others, so it is no longer a letter to me.

  Perhaps you received my short missives, wishing you well and good fortune for your trip to Sakhalin Island. But this is not a letter I will send to you. It will stay firmly in the leather-bound pages of my journal. My niece, Ksenia, may read it someday: She will inherit my diaries and be the guardian of my memory.

  She may guard memory, but how can she guard the evanescence of emotion? That is what I would wish to preserve, an ethereal monument, after I am gone. That you might remember me and our walks by the pond and the river, and remember not only the ducks and the crayfish or our words about life and work and the uncertain future of our immense unwieldy country; no, that you might recall a glow in my extinguished eyes—who could believe such a thing!—or, failing that, the warmth in your own voice when you argued or laughed with me. Because that warmth, Anton Pavlovich, is part of me now, and it gives me life and strength and hope even when all around is winter, with the silence the snow has brought.