The Summer Guest

by Alison Anderson

  She ordered a second beer, surrendered to nostalgia.

  How she had struggled with the language but learned all the while something completely unexpected and equally precious: another way of seeing the world. It was as if material things no longer had any value except as markers of memory; all the familiar concepts of wealth, ambition, power, success, had seemed to fade away, irrelevant. She had been dipped into a rough poetry of everyday life and come out not exactly speaking Russian but versed in an idiom of pleasure in simple things, in sudden friendship, in an almost mystical perception of something deeper and inexplicably vital.

  She could still hear the clock ticking in the drawer.

  She got up and wrapped it in a towel, but she no longer had an excuse for sleeplessness other than nerves and excitement about what awaited. She had booked a taxi to take her to the museum after lunch. She could have gone first thing in the morning, but she wanted to get her bearings, to explore the town and prepare herself. Practice what she would say, think of her questions.

  What did she really expect from the lost novel? Why did the thought of it cause a knot in her stomach, a jolt of sleep-depriving adrenaline? Because it would change her life. It would respond to a yearning, fill a void. Perhaps the thought was naive, but she liked to believe that it might bring out the best in her. She could be someone. Accomplished, respected.

  So she lay turning in the bed, daydreaming, projecting. Just let there be Anton Pavlovich’s manuscript or news of it. That was all she asked.

  After breakfast she went out exploring the town between more warm showers. Pavements full of puddles and potholes; people walking everywhere, carrying shopping bags and briefcases. She entered a church; a stern woman in a kerchief selling candles asked whether she could help, as if they were in a shop. May I just have a look? said Ana, pulling her shawl closer around her head.

  This church is not for looking, barked the woman, but for praying.

  Excuse me, I am a foreigner, a tourist.

  I know that.

  Ana walked away but could sense the woman’s gaze upon her, a glare so intense that Ana could not even see the icons.

  No one, she thought, knows I am here except Yves. I am not registered with any embassy or consulate; I am not connected to a news agency or humanitarian organization or anyone who might look for me if I vanish. And back in France, only the woman at the chatterie would fuss and complain and prepare a tirade of abuse if I failed to show up to collect my cat, but I did not tell her where I was going. Poor Doodle, would the woman find her a good home?

  Ah yes, I gave her Yves’s number.

  Ana wandered idly through the market, buying sweets, observing people. They wore their lives on their tired faces so much more openly than the soft people of the West; but in a generation or so—if war spared them, if they joined the West, as they hoped to do—they would catch up, they would learn the artifices of consumerism. For the time being, Ana felt as if she were in a small town in the early 1980s in any European backwater, without fancy boutiques or chain stores (save the inescapable McDonald’s), without chic bistros or upscale restaurants. Without the ubiquity of smartphones. She noticed a few cafés playing loud rock music, the only customers slick young men, their flash cars parked outside. She hesitated but did not go in, even though she was desperate for a coffee.

  She found other churches more welcoming. She stood in the gilded gloom and felt very close to Zinaida Mikhailovna. She recalled how, in the Soviet era, she had visited a few churches that were still operating, and it had always felt subversive: Her Russian acquaintances would wait outside, afraid to go in. Ana had enjoyed an odd privilege back then; now she was the one who was excluded. She did not believe.

  ANA FELT DAZED, AS if she had just survived a moment of near-accident, as if she had been promoted to another level of consciousness. The bright sunlight was buzzing with insects, a gardener was working calmly by the house, Chekhov’s beloved irises were in bloom. The sound of voices reassured her that all was well. She sat in the shade of a small gazebo and took out her notebook to record the moment.

  I’ve just been on a tour of the house with a group of students from the medical institute. I stole glances at the girls: One was pretty, with heavy eye makeup; two of them were plain and earnest, modern-day Lintvaryova sisters. They listened as the guide led us around the five rooms that are open to visitors, waving her pointer at various photographs and objects while she told the story of Chekhov’s summers at Luka. It is all familiar to me, but it resonates oddly in Russian—it is outside my own head, spoken by a short round young woman with wispy auburn hair and a pleasantly bohemian demeanor.

  These are the rooms where they lived, conversed, played music, recited poetry. Small, elegant fin de siècle furnishings, plants, items of Ukrainian folklore, embroidered or hand-painted. Before the tour began, I studied the exhibits in the entry hall. A panel of photographs marked “The Lintvaryov Family,” but no captions under the portraits. An older woman: That would be Aleksandra Vassilyevna; a young man with fair hair and beard whom I guessed to be Pavel, for the darker one was bound to be Georges—how can I be so sure of this? Then three women: one stern, dark, rather ugly, alas; another with finer features and an almost wistful gaze; finally, a quite lovely, fair young woman with haunted eyes. Could this be Zinaida? Is she not too lovely to fit Zinaida’s description of herself?

  The guide’s stick lingered on the photographs as she told us their names, first Aleksandra Vassilyevna and Pasha, then Georges: I had guessed correctly. The stern, stout sister is Elena, unsmiling, her expression full of glum determination. Natasha is the wistful one—she looks almost too sweet for her raucous laughter. And the lovely one, of course, is Antonida Fyodorovna—Tonya, Pavel’s wife, Ksenia’s mother.

  There was another daughter, said the guide in passing, hurriedly, but we have no photographs of her.

  Chekhov’s room: modest and simple. A bed hardly bigger than a daybed; a tiny table with his medical instruments; a desk by the window facing the garden, looking out onto roses and irises. To reach any of the other rooms, Anton Pavlovich had to go through Nikolay’s room.

  On the wall in Anton Pavlovich’s room is a tiny photograph of two young people in their teens, probably a sister and brother. Clear, light faces, not yet marked by life. The guide pointed with her stick and told us they were Pavel Mikhailovich Lintvaryov’s children, Ksenia and Vsevolod. Of course they would have had more children later. A younger brother.

  As the others were leaving the room, I went back for a closer look at Ksenia. An open, sweet face, trusting, with none of the sternness of her aunts. Yes, she takes after her mother. And I can see her as the executor of Zinaida’s testament. It all fits.

  There is a small kitten in the garden. He has just scampered over to the guide, and she snatches him up with affectionate roughness. He is gray and white and his eyes are infected. He rubs them but otherwise seems healthy and well fed. He makes me think of Nikolay’s kitten. This one is purring, biting the guide’s arm playfully; she told me his name, Murzik.

  Ana was putting away her pen when a woman sat next to her in the gazebo. Sighing and fanning herself with a folded sheet of paper, she glanced at Ana, both shy and curious, then eventually, she said, Where are you visiting from?

  France, said Ana, looking more closely at the woman; large brown eyes peered over rimless glasses, as if she didn’t really need them but had forgotten to remove them.

  Oh, welcome, bienvenue, said the woman, suddenly effusive; she held out her hand and said, I’m Larissa Lvovna Petrova, the director of the museum.

  Ana’s hand lingered in hers almost too long as she took in this information. Had the woman sought her out, or was this merely a lucky coincidence?

  How happy I am to meet you, said Ana, happy to be here, really. It’s—what’s the word—thrilling to see where Chekhov stayed.

  (A warm rush of happiness, as if confirming that she was really there.)

  Then let me tell you m
ore about it, a few things the guide might have overlooked, said the museum director. You know, after the Revolution, the house was a school library, then was converted in 1960 into a museum for the centenary of Chekhov’s birth. You must know we have a local Chekhov circle, and we organize regular concerts and dramatic performances here.

  She made a circle with her hands, encompassing the museum and the garden. There’s quite a large local intelligentsia, she said proudly, and began to list the titles of performances and names of notables, which all sounded to Ana like so much evocative background noise, until Larissa Lvovna broke off and said, Why have you come all this way—are you doing research, writing a book?

  And now they were at the crux of the matter, yet Ana hesitated to divulge her reasons; it was too soon to mention the diary. In the actual presence of someone who might know, she found herself at a loss for words. Perhaps it would be better to get to know the director, to find out more about the museum, before she said anything.

  I just— I’ve been reading Chekhov’s letters, and I wanted to see this place, where he seemed—where he was happy.

  Ah, yes. I agree, I think it was a happy time for him. Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?

  Larissa Lvovna led Ana behind a curtain into a sixth room, filled with books, pictures, cupboards, computers, and the wherewithal to make tea. There was something cozily entrenched about the room, as if the daily business of tending the legacy of a great writer had deposited a shambolic warmth, a welcoming layer of clutter that contrasted meaningfully with the museum’s order and respectfulness. The guide joined them and was introduced as Galya. The two women seemed disproportionately enthusiastic about the presence of a foreigner in their museum. We don’t get many foreigners, particularly now, said Larissa with a meaningful look, before she continued, We used to get the occasional researcher or professor from the West. Now it’s mostly schoolchildren, as you saw. We try to interest them in their heritage, but sometimes it’s tricky. A Russian writer in Ukraine . . .

  They exchanged rueful smiles.

  What about—what about the big house where the Lintvaryovs lived, asked Ana, is it still standing? And Nikolay Pavlovich’s grave? Is it still there, can we visit either of those places?

  We’ll be closing soon, said Larissa Lvovna. If you don’t mind waiting, I can take you to the house and the cemetery, and then we can walk back into town.

  Before leaving the museum, Ana bought a few shiny brochures with photographs, and a small, poorly printed book in Russian, ominously entitled A. P. Chekhov in the Sumy Region.

  Larissa Lvovna spoke affectionately of the Lintvaryovs’ summer guest, Anton Pavlovich. Not Chekhov; that was the distant, professional way to refer to him. It seemed to Ana that there was a mixture of reverence and affection in the polite use of his first name and patronymic, as if he were still among them, had merely gone down to the river for some fishing and would soon come back for a cup of tea.

  This little house is not so much a museum as a living stage set, thought Ana, a place to sit and talk and socialize. The river, too, was waiting. She planned to return the next day and go down to the Psyol, perhaps take a picnic.

  Larissa Lvovna led her across the street, opened a padlock, and pushed the gate.

  This was the big house, she said, where the Lintvaryovs lived. In 1919 it was nationalized and made into a school. It survived until the fall of communism, when it was abandoned.

  Ana was surprised to see how close the main house was to the Chekhovs’ guesthouse. She had imagined a vast, sprawling estate. Of the house, only crumbling brick walls and part of the roof remained. Empty windows stared onto a yard overgrown with weeds and flowers. On one wall was a faded sign, Danger, Keep Out. Collapsed stairways led to gloomy cellars; sunlight filtered through a broken patch of roof into the mezzanine. It was much, much smaller than she had imagined. She thought of all the ghosts: the Lintvaryovs, the Chekhovs, the intelligentsia of Sumy and eastern Ukraine, the visitors from Moscow and Petersburg and Kharkov and Kiev; the Red Army, schoolchildren, Nazis, more schoolchildren. But she saw only what was before her: red brick stippled with remnants of white paint; a profusion of green foliage, sunlight. The ghosts were absent, the walls were silent.

  Larissa Lvovna led her to the pond. It used to stretch a kilometer, she said, but now it is so overgrown that it has shrunk in size.

  It was no longer a pond for walking around. A thick green scum covered the surface. A plastic bottle floated, a message from the twenty-first century. Are there still fish? Ana asked. Larissa affirmed that there were, but Ana could see only suffocation in the opaque surface. They turned back.

  They left the museum behind and headed along the road away from the river, then up the hill to the cemetery. There were many graves, surrounded by iron fences. A majority of headstones; some crosses. Ana said, I never would have found Nikolay Pavlovich’s grave on my own, and thanked Larissa, who nodded and pointed out a few eminent citizens on the way. Finally, she stopped by a well-tended grave with a dark stone cross.

  It was vandalized a few years ago, she said. It’s been restored, but there’s still a chip in the cross.

  Ana could not see the chip. She read the inscription, Nikolay Pavlovich Chekhov, 1858–1889.

  Larissa Lvovna pointed to another grave nearby. There was a young peasant woman, she said, Tatyana Ivchenko, and every day she brought a glass of fresh milk to Nikolay while he lay dying. He would have no one else, only Tatyana could bring him his milk. Shortly before her death in 1953, she asked to be brought from Kharkov, where she was living, back to Luka, so she could be buried near Nikolay Pavlovich. She was a hundred and one years old when she died.

  And the Lintvaryovs? Where are their graves?

  After the Revolution the family scattered, so the cemetery plots were not maintained.

  She looked at Ana, her eyes luminous, and gave a faint, resigned shrug.

  It seemed extraordinary to Ana that this crowded cemetery was once their family plot. The Revolution had honored the artist and the milkmaid, but the family of landowners, doctors, teachers, and pianists had been erased even from their eternal resting place.

  Come with me for tea with Sergey Ivanovich. He’s a member of the Chekhov Literary Circle. He’s very knowledgeable, our local Chekhov expert.

  They made their way through quiet, leafy streets of nondescript Soviet-era apartment blocks and the occasional sturdy brick official building. Ana was pleased by how tidy it all seemed, civilized and industrious, people walking purposefully to the shops or home for dinner; children playing on swings, grandmothers pushing baby carriages, people queueing to buy lemonade or kvas. The air gradually cooled as they drew near the center of Sumy. Larissa Lvovna identified every official or important building—post office, printer, school, technical institute—and nodded now and again to a familiar face. Finally, they left the main road and took an uneven footpath into a cluster of dilapidated apartment blocks, covered with graffiti up to the second floor, where plants bloomed on balconies and colorful washing fluttered. After three flights up a dim stairway (The elevator is not safe, said Larissa Lvovna with a sniff), they rang at a heavy door, which was flung open by a middle-aged man with a beard, thick glasses, and a paunch. Ana was introduced to Sergey Ivanovich Diachenko. Cheerfully, he turned to Ana and said, So! What brings you to the wild East? Are you a reporter?

  She offered him the same vague explanation she had given Larissa Lvovna. He nodded vigorously, as if that were a good reason to travel all the way across Europe for anyone who had any sense, particularly when part of the country was at war. Ana was beginning to wonder if she did have any sense, let alone courage: All afternoon she had carried a knot of apprehension in her stomach, hoping Larissa Lvovna might broach the topic of the diary and give Ana an easy way to bring up the question of Chekhov’s novel. But Larissa Lvovna had hardly referred to the Lintvaryov family other than in response to Ana’s questions. Well, her business was the Chekhovs, after all, particularly Anto
n and Nikolay.

  Just thinking about Chekhov’s novel made Ana feel uneasy, as if she might be in possession of something incalculably precious that they could take away from her. She knew she had no right to feel that way; such a novel belonged to the world.

  Perhaps, like Zinaida Mikhailovna, she simply felt that these were the last moments of a privileged intimacy; a summer coming to an end.

  They drank their tea and talked about the activities of the Chekhov Literary Circle. All the while, Ana felt that Larissa and Sergey were carefully avoiding the topic of the Maidan, as if it might be a source of contention. They asked her about the stage performances and films based on Chekhov’s plays and stories produced in the West. They had heard there was a recent film of The Duel. His longest story, more of a novella.

  Ana saw an opportunity, took a breath. What do you think? she said. What might have become of the novel Anton Pavlovich mentioned so frequently in his letters over the two summers he spent here?

  Larissa Lvovna sat blinking in silence, then sighed. Well, this is just my personal theory, but I’ve always thought of the trilogy he wrote as a novel: About Love, Gooseberries, and The Man in a Case. Do you agree, Seryozha?

  He shrugged, clearly reluctant to contradict her.

  Ana said, But those stories were published so much later—what, ten years later? And they still don’t represent a substantial work. In length, I mean.

  Larissa Lvovna seemed annoyed; Ana felt the heat rise to her own face. She must seem terribly naive. But she’d started now, she had to keep going. She took the leap.

  You see, Zinaida Mikhailovna, in her diary, mentions a novel—

  Zinaida Mikhailovna? The Lintvaryova daughter?

  Yes, said Ana, I’ve been reading her diary.

  There was a silence.

  Larissa Lvovna sat back, put her hands in her lap, raised her eyebrows, and looked over her glasses at Sergey Ivanovich. Diary?