by Alice Munro
She was learning, quite late, what many people around her appeared to have known since childhood—that life can be perfectly satisfying without major achievements. It could be brimful of occupations which did not weary you to the bone. Acquiring what you needed for a comfortably furnished life, and then to take on a social and public life of entertainment, would keep you from even being bored or idle, and would make you feel at the end of the day that you had done exactly what pleased everybody. There need be no agonizing.
Except in the matter of how to get money.
Vladimir revived his publishing business. They borrowed where they could. Both of Sophia’s parents died before long, and her inheritance was invested in public baths attached to a greenhouse, a bakery, and a steam laundry. They had grand projects. But the weather in Petersburg happened to have turned colder than usual, and people were not tempted even by steam baths. The builders and other people cheated them, the market became unstable, and instead of managing to make a reliable foundation for their lives they went deeper and deeper into debt.
And behaving like other married couples had the usual expensive result. Sophia had a baby girl. The infant was given her mother’s name but they called her Fufu. Fufu had a nurse and a wet nurse and her own suite of rooms. The family employed also a cook and a maid. Vladimir bought fashionable new clothes for Sophia and wonderful presents for his daughter. He had his degree from Jena and he had managed to become a subprofessor in Petersburg, but this was not enough. The publishing business was more or less in ruins.
Then the czar was assassinated and the political climate became disturbing and Vladimir entered a period of such deep melancholy that he could not work or think.
Weierstrass had heard of the death of Sophia’s parents, and to allay her grief a little, as he said, he sent her information on his own new and excellent system of integrals. But instead of being drawn back to mathematics she took to writing theater reviews and popular science pieces for the papers. That was using a talent more marketable and not so disturbing to other people or so exhausting to herself, as mathematics.
The Kovalevsky family moved to Moscow, hoping that their luck would change.
Vladimir recovered, but he did not feel able to go back to teaching. He found a new opportunity for speculation, being offered a job in a company that produced naphtha from a petroleum spring. The company was owned by the brothers Ragozin, who had a refinery and a modern castle on the Volga. The job was contingent on Vladimir’s investing a sum of money, which he managed to borrow.
But this time Sophia sensed trouble ahead. The Ragozins did not like her and she did not like them. Vladimir was now more and more in their power. These are the new men, he said, they have no nonsense in them. He became aloof, he took on rough and superior airs. Name me one truly important woman, he said. One who has made any real difference in the world, except by seducing and murdering men. They are congenitally backwards and self-centered and if they get hold of any idea, any decent idea to devote themselves to, they become hysterical and ruin it with their self-importance.
That is the Ragozins talking, said Sophia.
Now she picked up her correspondence with Weierstrass. She left Fufu with her old friend Julia and set out for Germany. She wrote to Vladimir’s brother Alexander that Vladimir had bitten at the Ragozins’ bait so readily that it was really as if he were tempting fate to send him another blow. Nevertheless she wrote to her husband offering to come back. He did not reply favorably.
They met once more, in Paris. She was living there cheaply while Weierstrass tried to get her a job. She was again submerged in mathematical problems and so were the people she knew. Vladimir had become suspicious of the Ragozins but he had involved himself to the point where he could not pull out. Yet he talked of going to the United States. And did go, but came back.
In the fall of 1882 he wrote to his brother that he realized now that he was a completely worthless person. In November he reported the bankruptcy of the Ragozins. He was afraid that they might try to implicate him in certain criminal procedures. At Christmas he saw Fufu, who was now in Odessa with his brother’s family. He was happy that she remembered him, and that she was healthy and clever. After that he prepared farewell letters for Julia, his brother, certain other friends, but not Sophia. Also a letter for the court explaining some actions of his in the Ragozin matter.
He delayed a while longer. It was not until April that he tied a bag over his head and inhaled chloroform.
Sophia, in Paris, refused food and wouldn’t come out of her room. She concentrated all her thought on the refusal of food, so she would not have to feel what she was feeling.
She was force-fed, at last, and fell asleep. When she woke she was deeply ashamed of this performance. She asked for a pencil and paper, that she might continue working on a problem.
There was no money left. Weierstrass wrote and asked her to live with him as another sister. But he continued to pull strings wherever he could and was successful, finally, with his past student and friend Mittag-Leffler, in Sweden. The new University of Stockholm agreed to be the first university in Europe to take on a female mathematics professor.
At Odessa Sophia collected her daughter, taking her to live for the present with Julia. She was furious with the Ragozins. She wrote to Vladimir’s brother calling them “subtle, poisonous villains.” She persuaded the magistrate hearing the case to proclaim that all the evidence showed Vladimir to have been gullible but honest.
Then she took a train once more from Moscow to Petersburg to travel to her new and much publicized—and no doubt deplored—job in Sweden. She made the trip from Petersburg by sea. The boat rode into an overwhelming sunset. No more foolishness, she thought. I am now going to make a proper life.
She had not then met Maksim. Or won the Bordin Prize.
V
She left Berlin in the early afternoon, shortly after having said that last sad but relieved good-bye to Weierstrass. The train was old and slow, but clean and well heated, as you would expect any German train to be.
About halfway in the journey the man across from her opened up his newspaper, offering her any section she might like to read.
She thanked him, and refused.
He nodded towards the window, at the fine driving snow.
“Ah well,” he said. “What can one expect?”
“What indeed,” said Sophia.
“You are going beyond Rostock?”
He might have noted an accent that was not German. She did not mind his speaking to her or coming to such a conclusion about her. He was a good deal younger than she, decently dressed, slightly deferential. She had a feeling that he was someone she had met or seen before. But this did happen when you were travelling.
“To Copenhagen,” she said. “And then to Stockholm. For me the snow will only get thicker.”
“I will be leaving you at Rostock,” he said, perhaps to reassure her that she was not letting herself in for a long conversation. “Are you satisfied with Stockholm?”
“I detest Stockholm at this time of year. I hate it.”
She was surprised at herself. But he smiled delightedly and began to speak in Russian.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I was right. Now it is I who speak like a foreigner to you. But I studied in Russia at one time. In Petersburg.”
“You recognized my accent as Russian?”
“Not surely. Until you said what you did about Stockholm.”
“Do all Russians hate Stockholm?”
“No. No. But they say they hate. They hate. They love.”
“I should not have said it. The Swedes have been very good to me. They teach you things—”
At this point he shook his head, laughing.
“Really,” she said. “They have taught me to skate—”
“Assuredly. You did not learn to skate in Russia?”
“They are not so—so insistent about teaching you things as the Swedes are.”
“Nor on Bornholm
,” he said. “I live now on Bornholm. The Danes are not so—insistent, that is the word. But of course on Bornholm we are not even Danes. We say we are not.”
He was a doctor, on the island of Bornholm. She wondered if it would be entirely out of line to ask him to look at her throat, which was now very sore. She decided that it would be.
He said that he had a long and probably a rough ferry ride ahead of him, after they had crossed the Danish border.
People on Bornholm did not think of themselves as Danes, he said, because they thought of themselves as Vikings taken over by the Hanseatic League in the sixteenth century. They had a fierce history, they took captives. Had she ever heard of the wicked Earl of Bothwell? Some people say he died on Bornholm, though the people of Zealand say he died there.
“He murdered the husband of the queen of Scotland and married her himself. But he died in chains. He died insane.”
“Mary Queen of Scots,” she said. “So I have heard.” And indeed she had, for the Scottish queen had been one of Aniuta’s early heroines.
“Oh, forgive me. I am chattering.”
“Forgive you?” said Sophia. “What have I to forgive you for?”
He flushed. He said, “I know who you are.”
He had not known in the beginning, he said. But when she spoke in Russian, he was sure.
“You are the female professor. I have read about you in a journal. There was a photograph as well, but you looked much older in it than you do. I am sorry to intrude on you but I could not help myself.”
“I looked quite stern in the photograph because I think people will not trust me if I smile,” said Sophia. “Is it not something the same for physicians?”
“It may be. I am not accustomed to being photographed.”
Now there was a slight constraint between them; it was up to her to put him at ease. It had been better before he told her. She returned to the subject of Bornholm. It was bold and rugged, he said, not gentle and rolling like Denmark. People came there for the scenery and the clear air. If she should ever wish to come he would be honored to show her around.
“There is the most rare blue rock there,” he said. “It is called blue marble. It is broken up and polished for ladies to wear around the neck. If you would ever like to have one—”
He was talking foolishly because there was something he wanted to say but couldn’t. She could see that.
They were approaching Rostock. He was becoming more and more agitated. She was afraid he would ask her to sign her name on a piece of paper or a book he had with him. It was very seldom that anybody did that, but it always made her feel sad; there was no telling why.
“Please listen to me,” he said. “Something I must say to you. It is not supposed to be spoken of. Please. On your way to Sweden, please do not go to Copenhagen. Do not look frightened, I am completely in my right mind.”
“I am not frightened,” she said. Though she was, a little.
“You must go the other way, by the Danish Islands. Change your ticket in the station.”
“May I ask why? Is there a spell on Copenhagen?”
She was suddenly sure he was going to tell her about a plot, a bomb.
So he was an anarchist?
“There is smallpox in Copenhagen. There is an epidemic. Many people have left the city, but the authorities are trying to keep it quiet. They are afraid of a panic or that some people will burn down the government buildings. The problem is the Finns. People say the Finns brought it. They don’t want the people to rise up against the Finnish refugees. Or against the government for letting them in.”
The train stopped and Sophia stood up, checking her bags.
“Promise me. Do not leave me here without promising me.”
“Very well,” said Sophia. “I promise.”
“You will be taking the ferry to Gedser. I would go with you to change the ticket but I must go on to Rutgen.”
“I promise.”
Was it Vladimir he reminded her of? Vladimir in the early days. Not his features, but his beseeching care for her. His constant humble and stubborn and beseeching care.
He held out his hand and she gave him hers to shake, but that was not his only intention. He placed in her palm a small tablet, saying, “This will give you a little rest if you find the journey tedious.”
I will have to talk to some responsible person about this epidemic of smallpox, she decided.
But that she did not do. The man who changed her ticket was annoyed at having to do anything so complicated and would be even angrier if she changed her mind. He seemed at first to answer to no language except Danish, as spoken by her fellow passengers, but when he finished the transaction with her he said in German that the trip would take a good deal longer now, did she understand that? Then she realized that they were still in Germany and he might know nothing about Copenhagen—what had she been thinking of?
He added gloomily that it was snowing on the islands.
The small German ferry to Gedser was well heated, though you had to sit on wooden slat seats. She was about to swallow the tablet, thinking that seats like these might be what he meant when he spoke of the journey being tedious. Then she decided to save it, in case of seasickness.
The local train she got into had regular though threadbare second-class seats. It was chilly, however, with a smoky almost useless stove at one end of the car.
This conductor was friendlier than the ticket master, and not in so much of a hurry. Understanding that they really were in Danish territory, she asked him in Swedish—which she thought might be closer than German to Danish—whether it was true that there was sickness in Copenhagen. He replied that no, the train she was on did not go to Copenhagen.
The words “train” and “Copenhagen” seemed to be all he knew of Swedish.
In this train there were of course no compartments, only the two coaches with their wooden benches. Some of the passengers had brought their own cushions and their blankets and cloaks to wrap around themselves. They did not look at Sophia, much less try to speak to her. What use would it be if they did? She would not be able to understand or reply.
No tea wagon either. Packages wrapped in oiled paper were being opened, cold sandwiches taken out. Thick slices of bread, sharp-smelling cheese, slabs of cold cooked bacon, somewhere a herring. One woman took a fork out from a pocket in the folds of her clothing and ate pickled cabbage from a jar. That made Sophia think of home, of Russia.
But these are not Russian peasants. None of them are drunk, or garrulous, or laughing. They are stiff as boards. Even the fat that blankets the bones of some of them is stiff fat, self-respecting, Lutheran fat. She knows nothing about them.
But what does she really know about Russian peasants, the peasants at Palibino, when it comes to that? They were always putting on a show for their betters.
Except perhaps the one time, the Sunday when all the serfs and their owners had to go to church to hear the Proclamation read. Afterwards Sophia’s mother was completely broken in spirit and moaned and cried, “Now what will become of us? What will become of my poor children?” The General took her into his study to comfort her. Aniuta sat down to read one of her books, and their little brother Feodor played with his blocks. Sophia wandered about, making her way to the kitchen where house serfs and even many field serfs were eating pancakes and celebrating—but in a rather dignified way, as if it was a saint’s day. An old man whose only job was to sweep the yard laughed and called her Little Missus. “Here’s the Little Missus come to wish us well.” Then some cheered for her. How nice they were, she thought, though she understood that the cheering was some kind of joke.
Soon the governess appeared with a face like a black cloud and took her away.
Afterwards things went on pretty much as usual.
Jaclard had told Aniuta she could never be a true revolutionary, she was only good for getting money out of her criminal parents. As for Sophia and Vladimir (Vladimir who had snatched him away from the polic
e), they were preening parasites, soaking up their worthless studies.
The smell of the cabbage and the herring is making her slightly sick.
At some farther point the train stops and they are all told to get out. At least that is what she assumes, from the conductor’s bark and the heaving up of reluctant but obedient bodies. They find themselves in knee-deep snow, with no town or platform in sight and smooth white hills around them, looming up through what is now lightly falling snow. Ahead of the train men are shovelling away the snow that has collected in a railway cut. Sophia moves around to keep her feet from freezing in their light boots, sufficient for city streets but not here. The other passengers stand still, and pass no comment on the state of affairs.
After half an hour, or perhaps only fifteen minutes, the track is clear and the passengers clamber back onto the train. It must be a mystery to all of them, as to Sophia, why they had to get out in the first place, instead of waiting in their seats, but of course nobody complains. On and on they go, through the dark, and there is something other than snow driving against the windows. A scratching malevolent sound. Sleet.
Then the dim lamps of a village, and some passengers are getting up, methodically bundling themselves and collecting their bags and packages and clambering down from the train, disappearing. The journey resumes, but in a short time everybody is ordered off again. Not because of snowdrifts this time. They are herded onto a boat, another small ferry, which takes them out onto black water. Sophia’s throat is so sore now that she is sure she could not speak if she had to.
She has no idea how long this crossing is. When they dock everybody has to enter a three-sided shed, where there is little shelter and no benches. A train arrives after a wait she cannot measure. And when this train comes, what gratitude Sophia feels, though it is no warmer and has the same wooden benches as the first train. One’s appreciation of meager comforts, it seems, depends on what misery one has gone through before getting them. And is not that, she wants to say to somebody, a dreary homily?