“I have a Mikhail as well, an Olga, a Xenia . . .”
Georgi had been matching Smagin’s pace, but now he sped up. And Smagin did too, without realizing it.
“Anton is still interested in property, isn’t he? Because an estate has come up for sale. Quite close by. It would be convenient.”
“Convenient?” After more than a week in a musician’s company, she heard the distressed tremolo in her own voice.
“For visiting.” Back and forth, wiping the perspiration off the boot brush, spurts of air quite voluble now. “Miss C.—?”
Masha would probably have screamed when that great body landed beside her on the divan, but just then Georgi brought his fist down on the keyboard. Smagin started. Masha jumped up.
“You scared her,” she heard him tell Georgi as she fled the room.
Half the day passed before she dared creep around the house to see if Aleksander III was still tethered in the waterlogged courtyard developing hoof rot. She found Georgi writing a letter on the terrace in the cooling shadow of the linden tree. The heat, the scented air, the linden’s shimmering yellow starbursts. The hypnotic drone of the bees. No wonder she sounded tipsy calling out, “Thank you for Smagin!”
Georgi looked up. His smile had nothing on that morning’s, when she’d come into the drawing room to find he’d done away with the ridiculous patches of beard she’d not-so-secretly detested. “Surprise!” he’d called out before playing a merry little flourish on the piano.
“I’m almost done,” he said now, waving her over.
She took the chair across from him, watching as he blotted and folded the letter and tucked it inside the envelope. All his movements were rhythmical, even the way he recoiled when he noticed her arms.
“We went nettle picking,” she said.
“It looks awful! Painful, I mean. I can’t bear things that aren’t beautiful.”
“Excuse me for offending your sensitive soul.”
She yanked her sleeves over the blotches. Though a few days ago she might have been offended, she was pretending now. They’d assumed the same teasing rapport she had with Natalia. He’d become his sister’s substitute.
Just like his sister, he asked, “What are we going to do about the King of Persia? He has it bad for you.”
Masha groaned. “How did he know I was here?”
“Mother wrote to him. I told her not to.”
“Oh Lord.” Masha covered her face. “What if he comes back?”
“He will. Did Anton tell you? Last summer he mentioned marriage.”
She stared. “Smagin? When?”
“When we went to see him. He was dropping hints like mad. Anton was so funny about it. Ivan and I nearly split our trousers. Didn’t he tell you?”
Some old bitterness reinsinuated itself. The bad taste of something previously swallowed filling her mouth. Isaac Levitan. Lieutenant Egorov.
“What did he say?”
“That there were a few things Smagin should know before he proposed.”
“Such as?”
“You crack your knuckles at dinner, and you’re addicted to whist.”
She had to laugh. “The whist part is true.”
“All this was discussed over vodka and Smagin’s cucumbers. You’ll want to marry him if you taste those cucumbers. Should I ask Mother to tell him to bring some?”
She slapped his hand. “What did Smagin say?”
“Nothing.” Georgi’s face clouded. “The telegram came. The one saying that Kolia had passed away.”
It was the first time any of the Lintvariovs had spoken Kolia’s name. The angel of silence swooped down. Masha heard the bees again, insistent in their pleasure, filling the void. Tears mustered.
“I’m sorry,” Georgi said. “I shouldn’t have brought him up.”
“No. I’m glad you did. I wish I had my handkerchief.”
He offered his with such a sympathetic expression that she almost heard Tchaikovsky playing out of his eyes. She buried her face. The cloth smelled of scorch from the iron.
“Why didn’t we become friends before, Masha?”
She looked up. He wasn’t teasing. Under the waves of hair, sincerity. “I guess you were either at the piano or running off with my brothers. And I had Natalia.”
“I’m glad they’re not—” A bee flew by. He jerked back. “—here now. I didn’t want to go with him last year. I still feel bad about it. He practically made me.”
Masha was still puzzling over his first statement. That he was glad it was only the two of them. “Who? Go where?”
“To Smagin’s. Anton made me. Elena and Zinaida said Kolia was about to die. Anton had looked after him all those weeks. He must have known it too. But he took us off to Smagin’s.”
Now she stiffened defensively. She remembered the day. “Our brother Aleksander arrived. They often rub each other the wrong way.”
“I’m not criticizing Anton. He’s above reproach. I’m explaining myself.”
“But you are criticizing him.”
“I wish I hadn’t mentioned it.” Georgi ran a hand through his hair. “Will I make it worse if I tell you what else they said?”
How had the conversation soured so suddenly? They’d been enjoying themselves, and then the suitors Antosha had rejected came up, then Kolia. And now he was insulting her brother, who certainly was above reproach, except, perhaps, in the matter of suitors, if she was to be honest. But that was a bygone and pointless to brood about.
She balled up Georgi’s handkerchief and tossed it on the table. “It’s too late now, isn’t it? Tell me.”
“They said no doctor would want to see his brother die, particularly if they shared a disease.”
Something broke inside her in that moment, a dam holding back their worst fear. Not bears and vagabonds, which lived in fairy tales, but that he would die the way Kolia had here at Luka. Bursting. A scarlet fountain. Blood everywhere. The handkerchief on the table slowly changed shape, unballing itself. She snatched it up as a sob escaped.
After a torrenting minute, she heard Georgi’s chair scrape the stones. Then he was holding her, and she felt his softness through the linen of his shirt.
THAT NIGHT SHE TOSSED IN THE HEAT, UNABLE TO sleep. She kept thinking about her conversation with Georgi, the painful places he’d touched and the comfort he’d given.
Lieutenant Egorov. Georgi hadn’t named him, of course. He didn’t know about him.
That summer, when Masha was twenty, three officers used to visit, men who got on well with her brothers. Egorov was the only one she could still picture. He talked endlessly about resigning from the army and doing something useful instead. He came from the gentry and felt guilty for it. Every time he quaffed a drink, he’d say, “I’m not a good soldier. I’m not even good-looking.”
About his soldiering abilities she was ignorant, but the latter was true. He shone with baldness, though his eyes were striking. He had a habit of looking straight at her, then blinking rapidly, as though he’d seen something astonishing. She was young enough then to find myopia flattering.
Once, in front of everyone, Egorov said, “Anton, your sister’s so stern. Let’s see if I can make her laugh. Come here, Maria. I want to show you something.”
An arm around her shoulder, he brought his finger to her face, closer and closer until her eyes crossed. She thought there must have been some tiny speck on it that he wanted her to see. A freckle?
“What is it?” she asked.
“What is it? It’s a finger!”
She did laugh then, along with everyone else. After that, every time she saw him, he’d hold up his finger and crook it, which quickly grew tiresome.
One day there was a party at one of the estates. They all went. Masha was depressed about something, so when the dancing began, she slipped into the library to read. Egorov came and found her.
“Here you are.”
She refused to lift her face in case he showed her that finger of his and she had
to throw the book at him. He started on again about giving up the army.
“What kind of work do you think would most suit a man like me?”
“I’ve no idea.” She was pretending to be absorbed by the story. A window must have been open. She remembered the scent of lilacs in the room.
“If you do come up with something, would you let me know? And would you by any chance marry me?”
She looked up then. He was blinking fast. Taken aback, she could think of nothing to say but “Father’s in Moscow working at the warehouse. You’ll have to speak to my brother.”
A smile spread over his face, reminding her of a baby playing Magpie. “Kolia?” he asked, Kolia being the eldest present.
“Anton.” Kolia would marry her to a peddler if one happened by.
Egorov thanked her with a bow and hurried off, presumably to find Antosha. Once the surprise wore off, flattery took over. By the time she left the library, her blindsided heart was aflutter.
What happened after that, she never found out. Ever since, a bad feeling attached itself to his name. She should have cleared the matter up with Antosha years ago, but was too embarrassed. Besides, if she did, there would be no feeling whatsoever.
She got up and went out to the veranda to cool off, pulling the sheet off the bed as she went. What time was it? The moon told her nothing. Georgi was still awake. She could hear him playing. What had he meant when he said he was glad that the others weren’t there?
She settled in the hammock, shrouded in the linen sheet, listening to Georgi start and stop, rocking herself with one foot. Back and forth. Her skin felt tacky, like the piano’s notes were sticking to it. Back and forth.
Eventually Georgi gave up and came out on the terrace and for a long time stood in the moonlight, just like in one of Antosha’s stories. So many moons to be gazed at. So many lonely, stifled people. Was she seeing him or reading this? The orchard was laden now with fruit. Yesterday Elena had asked Georgi to play a mazurka that might scare off the birds.
Footsteps sounded on the path, or was she imagining it?
Back and forth. Did he know she was here?
She stopped rocking. Yes, he was beside her now. She sensed his heat, smelled the dogs on his hands. Bending over her, close enough that the loose fabric of his shirt brushed her face, he whispered, You’re dreaming, Masha.
BY THEN LUKA SEEMED ITSELF AGAIN, LIKE THE FIRST summer they came. A family of ducks moved into the courtyard puddle, making it a pond. Masha preferred a neglected garden, she realized, and dragged a chair out to sketch it.
The thorn had been extracted, the poison drained. They had not loved Kolia enough. He’d been too hard to love. She put her guilt away and seated herself on the chair, her sketchbook in her lap. With her penknife, she sharpened the pencil. Then left it all—pencil, knife, book and shavings—on the chair and went to find Georgi.
Lately he’d begun confiding in her, telling her about life with the perfect Lintvariovs. How they were all so passionately good. Except him.
Today when he brought this up, Masha turned her book face down on the divan to keep the place. “You’re a good person, Georgi.”
He gestured out the window. “Masha, I can’t go down there.”
To the dacha, he meant. The day Kolia died, after the servants had scrubbed it out, Georgi had met one of them coming up from the river. Bad luck if a woman approaches carrying an empty bucket.
“I almost turned and ran. Then I saw it was full of water. They were washing Kolia away, and I’d never even gone to sit with him. So you see, I’m a terrible selfish person, as well as a superstitious one.”
Just then Mother called from outside, more than annoyed that Masha had left her alone again. Masha said goodbye.
The next day Georgi interrupted his playing to resume the conversation. He seemed to want reassurance, or absolution. He often felt trapped in the house, he told her. If he tried to leave by one door, he’d meet a line of scrofular peasants waiting to see the free doctors, Elena and Zinaida.
“But if I go out the back? I walk right into the Ukrainiac’s schoolroom.”
Natalia’s nickname. She not only spoke Ukrainian, but ran an illegal school teaching local girls to read and write it.
“A dozen little girls with lousy braids staring in bewilderment at their slates. The truth is . . . Do you want the truth, Masha?”
“Yes!”
“All I care about is Art. That’s it. The rest of it? Humanity, I mean. The sick and the illiterate? Even the do-gooders sometimes—they rather turn my stomach.”
She was sitting beside him at the piano so they could whisper, because who knew when Mrs. Lintvariova or his sisters would walk in? Masha would have done what she did next if Antosha or Misha had offered her such a pained confession—consoled them with a peck on the cheek. Except when she did, Georgi turned his head, and the kiss landed on the feathery corner of his mouth.
“Did you just try to kiss me, Masha?”
Masha felt like Mother in the bathhouse, doused not with water, but with a scalding embarrassment. But then he laughed and played his merry little flourish and put things right again.
“What was I saying?” And they drifted on to another subject.
Later that evening, sitting on the veranda steps waiting for Georgi to play, she thought of “The Kiss.” The story of Antosha’s that Lika had gushed over. The twerpish army officer kissed by a strange woman in the dark. How madly and tragically in love with her he falls, despite the fact he never finds out who she is.
Georgi was probably still dining. What were they talking about? Did he ever mention her?
A persevering nightingale kept insinuating itself into her thoughts, the homeless one perhaps, putting voice to its justified grievance. Mother was inside squinting under the lamp, sewing Masha a new summer dress. The feathery feel of his moustache against her lips . . .
Such a call that bird made! Patternless trills and cheeps and whistles. It seemed utterly confused.
MASHA KEPT EXPECTING SMAGIN TO RETURN. MRS. LINTVARIOVA had probably written him an encouraging letter with a luring, enigmatic closing. As you know, Aleksander, the two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom. Come and visit!
But he didn’t. Instead Mrs. Lintvariova began to greet Masha with a new warmth and a lift of her significant brows. Good to see you’re cheering up now, Masha, she seemed to be saying. You didn’t need that old Smagin after all! Once she popped her head in the door of the drawing room and declared, “Oh! I’ll leave you two alone.” Meaning, Masha assumed, Georgi’s taking care of you. She even invited Mother to tea.
“Have you heard of Schopenhauer?” Masha asked Mother before she went.
“That German who worked with Father at the warehouse?”
She was gone an hour. Afterward, Masha asked what they’d talked about.
“Georgi.”
“What about Georgi?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I was hardly listening.” She hardly seemed to be now as she peered at her sewing.
“I suppose he’s not contributing enough to society, in her opinion. But you know, Mother, he’s a brilliant pianist. Everything he has, he gives to his music. Not every artist—few, in fact—are like Antosha.”
“What do you mean?” Mother asked.
“Antosha’s a doctor as well as an artist. Medicine is socially useful. And now with this trip—well, he’s practically the saviour of humanity, isn’t he?”
“I’m so worried about Antonshevu,” Mother said, dropping her work in her lap.
“I am too. But Mrs. Lintvariova should let Georgi be himself. They all should.”
ELENA NEVER STOPPED WORKING, BUT ZINAIDA HAD TO because of her headaches. She would dose herself with morphine and lie down with Mrs. Lintvariova. Afterward, too groggy to see patients, she would come and listen to Georgi.
They all doted on their blind sister. If there was something amiss in her appearance, a crumb on her face or a button missed, one of them wou
ld hurry to fix it, signalling to another to distract Zinaida, so she wouldn’t realize a correction was being made. Whenever she appeared in the drawing room, Georgi immediately softened his playing. He’d instructed Masha not to help her, but to say her name or make a sound so that she could orient herself and cross the room independently. This Zinaida did like a sleepwalker, tentatively, with arms outstretched. Settling beside Masha, she would turn her head and smile. It was easy to forget she was blind because the problem was in her brain, not her eyes. But her gaze didn’t quite line up with Masha’s; she always seemed to be looking into instead of at her, looking all the way into Masha’s jumbled heart.
One day, discussing the motives for Antosha’s trip, Zinaida said, “When I hear his stories, I sense such compassion. That kind of compassion comes only with a deep knowledge of human suffering. I don’t know how he possesses this knowledge, but it seems to be drawing him now to the place where suffering is the greatest.”
“Yes,” Masha said. Olga had said something similar.
Because of the morphine, Zinaida often leapfrogged in conversations. Next she said, “We heard he got engaged.”
“Antosha engaged? No.”
Georgi looked over. “We got a letter from Natalia yesterday. It’s the rumour all over Moscow.”
Masha snorted. “I think I know the source of those rumours.”
Lika. Masha pictured her on the platform, Antosha reading out the joke inscription on the back of his photograph. P.S. This gift obliges me to nothing. He couldn’t have made it plainer, yet Lika still hadn’t understood his meaning, the way Ekaterina hadn’t when she received her beetle by post. Or Dunia.
How angry Masha had been that day at the station. Why? Lika was just another young woman infatuated with her brother. She should pity, not resent her. Masha had introduced the two of them. She’d have to make up to Lika when they met again in September. Make up for Lika’s disappointment and Masha’s bad mood that day.
Zinaida rubbed her temple. Again apropos of nothing, she remarked, “Masha, you seem so pretty and gay these days.”
Pretty? An odd thing for a blind woman to say.
A Russian Sister Page 7
