“Did you see Aleksander? How are his little boys?”
“I saw them once.” The smile vanished. “Kolia was so sweet when he was drunk. And look at us. Shall we?” He filled their glasses again. “It cheers us up, but the elder brother turns nasty. Thank God for sisters.”
Rare for her to take a man’s drink, rarer two. Already she felt the vodka working on her, lightening her. The gingerbread melted on her tongue.
He remembered something. “Oh, and thank you for your help with the research. Olga said you conscripted your prettiest friends.”
Olga had mentioned Lika to him? Likely something sarcastic. In no way had Lika been “conscripted.” She’d jumped at the chance.
“Just Lika,” Masha told Antosha. “You remember her. She visited about a month ago.”
He pulled a face, comical with exasperation. “I’m sated with women. They all smell like ice cream.”
“The one who teaches with me.”
His mouth twitched—he did remember!—and he ran a hand over his moustache and beard to conceal it.
“With the dimples?” she added.
“Medically speaking, dimples are a deformity. The poor thing.”
“She wrote you, you know.”
Antosha brightened. “She did? When?”
“Oh, ages ago. Before we met. She told me all about it. I thought you didn’t remember her.”
He filled his own glass a third time. “I must look for her letter.”
Yes, even two on a midnight stomach made Masha feel quite untroubled herself. Giddy. How fun it had been playing matchmaker back in her Guerrier days. And now the idea returned. If bureaucratic complications failed to keep him home, mightn’t Lika help?
Masha leaned onto her elbows, the end of the braid in her fist. A different feeling flickered behind the giddiness then, like a tallow candle guttering in her centre. She let it go out.
“She signed it ‘Anonymous,’” she said.
“Hmm. How will I know which Anonymous is her?”
“She’ll be the one who sounds like a besotted young lady.”
“They all do.”
“You’re terrible.” She reached out to pat his cheek, and the braid, released, unravelled. For a moment he took her in. Was this how he looked at his women the moment before they tore out their hearts for him?
“What?” she asked.
“Come.” He swung sideways in his chair, pulled another closer.
She changed seats, sitting as he indicated, her back to him. His fingers combed through her hair.
“How does one do this? You weren’t even looking.”
“Plait? Make three sections.” She showed him, hands in the air. “Like this. Over then over then over. Is this for a story?”
“Tell me more about your spectacular friend. Where did she come from? Heaven?”
“Her mother’s a pianist in Petersburg. She’s been living with her great-aunt. Maybe they moved for Guerrier.”
“Ah. She’s a Guerrier girl? Damnation, are you born knowing this plaiting, or does that Guerrier teach it too?”
“Certainly. Literature, mathematics, and plaiting— Ouch!”
She was teasing. With each section he wove, she silently named her truest feelings for him—love, admiration, gratitude. A single strong rope.
5
A WEEK LATER, ANTOSHA HIMSELF ANSWERED Lika’s knock, just as Masha was descending the stairs.
“Ah! Lika Who Teaches with Me. Come in. Where’s Mariushka? Never mind, I’ll take your coat. There’s Masha. Go on up. I’ll join you later. Wait! Don’t walk past this.”
Lika was wearing her good jacket again. Antosha took her melon shoulders and turned her toward Isaac’s painting at the bottom of the stairs, the one that seemed more like a window than a picture, as though summer were just beyond that wall, and in the distance flowed a river, a sky mirror, its reedy banks giving way to the different greens of grass and shrub, then the fields of yellow flax beyond.
Much taller, he bent dotingly toward her. “Our friend Isaac Levitan painted this. Not a single extraneous detail. Each stroke either called for or beautiful. I’d like to write like that.”
“But you do!” Then, flustered by his attention and his touch, Lika ran up to join Masha.
“Our stairs are singing to you,” Antosha called after her.
She blushed but didn’t turn around to show him.
“Perhaps Isaac will drop by,” Masha told her. “He was my painting teacher.” She offered a belated “Hello.”
Lika replied, “I can hardly believe I talked to him. He was in the paper again this morning. How thrilling it must be to see your own name in print. What a wonderful world you live in, Masha.”
With Lika’s arrival, the house opened for the night. This past week, friends and acquaintances had been dropping by every evening. Magazine editors, theatre and university friends, admirers and hangers-on—they all wanted their news straight from the source. Was he really going? When and why? If he was seeking adventure, why not go abroad like everyone else, to Italy or France?
Masha had listened to his answers.
“From the books I’ve been reading it’s evident that we’ve destroyed millions with the most casual barbarity. Driven them in fetters ten thousand miles, their families trailing after them, only to deprave them further.”
“Well, they’re convicts, aren’t they? Guilty as charged.”
“We’re guilty. And what’s more, a convict serves his sentence, yet he can never return home. Is that justice? If exile is permanent, punishment is perpetual. My only regret is that it’s me going and not someone who could rouse more public indignation. Nothing will come of the trip.”
He would smile then and change the subject to the grisly weather, or ask where his guest had found such a novel tiepin.
But Masha knew the longer one talked on a subject, the less interest it held. Antosha’s trip to Sakhalin Island was this season’s gossip, and surely he would tire of it too. So she played the enthusiastic hostess, the way she used to after Guerrier lectures.
Unlike for her, these gatherings were a trial for Antosha; he hated to be the centre of attention. His preferred situation was off to the side, observing, the writer’s situation. To stand alone among others. The night Lika came again, he got a reprieve.
There were always fewer women than men. Hopeful Vermicelli lingered for an hour, at least making herself useful by playing a few songs. Olga was a no-show. The male gaze settled naturally on Lika. She attracted admiration the way amber, when rubbed, attracted airborne threads and motes. When she showed up, Antosha was free to retreat to the icon corner and watch the magnetized circle round her, the little brother among them.
Eventually, they found each other. Masha spotted them later, talking by the samovar, Lika’s hands moving like she was trying to wash the nervousness off them. Masha came over.
“There’s no exaltation. No,” Antosha was telling her. “I enjoy it when I’m at it, that’s true. And I like reading proofs. But as soon as something comes out in print, I can’t stand it. It’s never what I intended.”
“I can’t believe that,” Lika said.
“Enough about me. Let’s get back to your stage fright.” He turned to Masha. “We were discussing Lika’s stage fright.”
“Is it stage fright?” Lika asked him.
“That’s my diagnosis.”
Lika had lamented these fears at school. Sometimes she’d sit down for dinner with Granny and speak the roles she’d memorized. “He took me by the wrist and held me hard . . .” she’d said as Ophelia. Granny had burst into tears. So she knew she had talent. She just lacked nerve.
“When I was little, Mama used to take me to her concerts,” she explained to Antosha now. “She made Granny drag me out on stage after she took her bow. The hot lights on my face. Everyone staring. It was terrifying.”
Antosha nodded. “A theatre must be huge to a child. The blackness so deep. As it is for the playwright.”
Lika looked into his handsome face, reading sympathy where Masha saw a tongue in his smooth cheek. “I have nightmares about it.”
“So do I. One is painfully recurring. All the dark-haired people in the audience are hostile, and all the fair-haired ones are asleep.”
Masha laughed, somewhat disloyally. Everyone had been hostile to The Wood Demon, regardless of hair colour.
“Yet I love the theatre,” Lika said. “If only I could say my lines behind the curtain. What do you advise? Should I give up my dream?”
“Be careful what you tell her, brother,” Masha said. “Her fate’s in your hands.”
It was a tossed-off remark. A joke. Antosha didn’t get the chance to reply, for they were interrupted then by a newly arrived guest, a short man of small importance—apparently a writer too.
“Are you ready to go, good man? My God, I don’t believe you’re doing this. Sakhalin Island!”
He wore his moustache long enough to suck. Despite this ragged brown curtain, Masha saw his lip curl in revulsion when he named the place. Then he noticed Lika, and his mouth fell open.
“I present my sister, Maria, and Lidia Mizanova, who wants to be an actress,” Antosha told him. To Lika he said, “Last summer I spent ten days in Odessa as physician in residence to the Maly Theatre’s travelling troupe. I could probably get you an audition. I don’t recommend the Abramova Theatre, which staged my last play.”
“I could never audition,” Lika moaned.
“Never? Oh, little hands.” He leaned in to address Lika’s hands directly. On one she wore a ring with a small green stone. “Why do you twist so?”
Lika gave an honest answer. “It’s because I’m talking to you.”
Smiling, Antosha held out both of his. She offered hers. “It’s like cradling a pair of sparrows,” he said.
The unstatured writer barked a laugh. “There’s a line I might have to borrow.”
“I know what to do.” Antosha slid the hand with the ring into his jacket pocket, just as Mariushka blundered past to check the samovar.
“‘Do not let her capture you with her eyelashes,’” the cook muttered.
Everyone burst out laughing then, except Lika, who plucked back her hand. “She probably thinks I’m picking your pocket.”
“Have you ever?” Antosha asked.
“Picked a pocket? Never!”
He smiled again. “Never. That’s all you say.”
“I’ll stop if you don’t like it. I’ll say . . . I don’t know. Jamais?”
Masha turned from their little group, satisfied. Lika and Antosha were getting on well despite the moustachioed hanger-on. The room was crowded by then, filled with smoke and happy noise. It lacked only music.
Then Isaac Levitan came through the door, wild black curls grazing the frame, eyes dark wells of emotion. A string plucked inside Masha—her embarrassment again. By the time Isaac reached their side of the room, she was fine.
“My spiritual brother!” Isaac embraced Antosha. “When I paint a blue road? Or the sadness in a shaft of light? That’s me. My spirit. Only you understand this. Oh, Antonshevu, how can you leave us?”
In a way Isaac was Antosha’s opposite, an egoist who squeezed drama out of every moment. But he truly was an exceptional painter, and a kind and generous friend. He used to lend Kolia money when he had none to give.
“Ladies and gentlemen, look!” This from a raven of a woman dressed in bright gypsy clothes coming up behind Isaac. She pointed with her long amber cigarette holder. “These two in each other’s arms? Double greatness!”
“Friend, you’re wrinkling me,” Antosha said.
Isaac released him. He turned to Masha and greeted her as “my pupil,” giving no sign, as usual, that he remembered proposing. He introduced the gypsy with the masculine handshake as Sophia K., a painter too, and host of a popular artists’ salon. Their affair was common knowledge, last year’s gossip. She looked a decade older than Isaac.
With Sophia still pumping Masha’s arm, Isaac’s eyes fixed on something across the room. Masha followed his gaze to its beautiful end—Lika in her bright jacket. His roaring must have scared her away.
“Who’s that?” Isaac asked.
“A friend of mine. Do we need more vodka, brother?”
“We can never have too much.” He offered to get it, probably for a chance to escape. He gave Isaac’s shoulder a brotherly pat as he stepped away.
Antosha stopped where Isaac’s eyes had, at Lika; the short writer had her trapped next to the piano. He asked to borrow her sparrow hands, or so Masha guessed, because Lika nodded and followed. Everyone watched them weave through the smoky parlour, Isaac too, rumours forming behind their eyes. They were gone a noticeably long time.
At last they returned carrying the bottles by the neck, Lika a few steps behind, both looking like they’d swallowed the pits along with the cherries. Both flustered. As soon as Lika set the bottles on the table, she fled.
Masha went to Antosha and immediately saw what was wrong. Blood trickled down the side of his nose. Her shock must have showed—she couldn’t bear anyone to hurt him—for he plucked out his handkerchief and dabbed the place.
Crimson drops on the cloth. Every spring, when his cough was at its worst, they dreaded this. Last summer, they’d torn old bedsheets into squares for Kolia to bleed through.
Antosha seemed amused by the sight of his own blood. “I deserved it,” he said, smiling. “Why don’t you fetch her back?”
Lika was already downstairs putting on her coat. “Where are you going?” Masha asked from the top of the staircase.
She shrank as Masha descended. “Home.”
“What happened?”
Masha sounded sharp even to herself. Why? Because of the grim image of Kolia.
Lika lifted her hand with the ring. “He asked me to take down some glasses. The room was dark. He— I’m so embarrassed.”
“He what?” Masha asked, softening her voice.
“Bowed.” Lika reddened even more. “He was trying to kiss my hand. My ring . . .” She resumed her struggle with her buttons.
She really was a child! “Antosha kissed your hand in the dark and got scratched for it? Why do you have to leave? He’s upstairs grinning about it.”
Lika stopped buttoning. “Really?”
“Yes. Why don’t you stay?”
“Granny will be waiting up. It’s late.” Then she said, “You frightened me coming down the stairs like that, Masha. Now I know why my pupils listen to you.”
Masha drew back. Was she that bad? As though taking a challenge, she put her hand on Lika’s shoulder, which, even under the fur of the coat, felt small. “He won’t hold your ring against you. You play the piano, don’t you?”
“Yes. But I haven’t for ages.”
Lika’s coat went back on the stand. Obediently she followed Masha up their musical stairs to the parlour, where she sat down at the piano.
At first she seemed reluctant to settle her fingers on the keys. Stage fright? But it was more than nervousness. Her nose crinkled, lips pinched into a bud. Once she began to sing, though, she seemed to master her feelings, or at least play through them. “Un petit verre de Clicquot.”
Afterward, the room fell silent. Why had she never said she played so well? Masha supposed she should have guessed. After all, Lika’s mother was a pianist.
When the applause broke out, Lika smoothed her dress and gazed into her lap, as though instead of basking in this appreciation, she were alone in the room with some privately unhappy memory.
6
AND SO IT BEGAN AGAIN. MASHA NO LONGER HAD to read between the lines in the gossip pages. She got her news directly from Lika, the way she’d learned everything from her Guerrier friends when they used to gather for tea and whist after lectures, gossiping about their professors while they waited for her brothers to turn up. Waited for Antosha. Aleksander and Kolia served only to up the stakes, to fill their glasses and the room with their smoke
and competitive flirting. Olga, Dunia, Ekaterina, Vermicelli.
Dunia, hot-tempered and olive-skinned. A Jewess. She confided all, even swore that she and Antosha were secretly engaged. Bespectacled Ekaterina was studying, of all things, entomology. Antosha sent her a beetle through the post. Olga was tight-lipped with the details. Vermicelli wished for a chance.
And now Masha had lured Lika back up their serenading stairs to the piano and her brother.
As for Dunia’s claim all those years ago, it had been nonsense. Antosha declared himself to be “constitutionally unfit for matrimony.” He revelled in his “bachelor habits”—grinding his own coffee, folding the newspaper with Japanese intricacy. He was “married to his work.”
Why had Masha invited her friends? Because she’d enjoyed their gatherings and the status they brought her; all the Guerrier girls had hoped for an invitation.
With Lika there was another reason for Masha to be encouraging—her ardent wish that Antosha’s interest in her friend would surpass his humanitarian yearnings. So that he would stay.
But the talk around the Sakhalin Island trip had changed. No longer were they saying “if,” but “when.” The end of April. And “how.” First by train, then steamer. Maps went up in his study and in the parlour too, over Kolia’s rectangles, the emptiness he’d left behind. And would her other brother, the one most precious to her, be taken from them too?
Now Lika came most nights. She was a great success, especially at the piano, and increasingly less shy for it, though still unaware of the sensation she created just by being herself.
Who is that girl in the corner, Masha? Where did you find her?
Congratulatory nods for Masha.
When Antosha finished his work and joined their guests, Lika would fly to him. His delight, what he showed of it, was obvious. He bowed and whispered something to tease the deformity of her dimples out. While playing host, his eyes would continually stray to Lika, until at some point the two of them contrived to disappear. By then their guests seemed more interested in what was happening between the writer and the Young Woman Who Taught with His Sister than in his heroic journey.
A Russian Sister Page 4
