FINALLY, ANOTHER LETTER. IT DESCRIBED ANTOSHA’S trip down the Kama River and how, though the ice had broken up, the countryside was still in the thrall of winter, trees bare, the ground brown and barren. Too rainy and cold to stay up on deck. I plead for you not to worry about me and not to imagine dangers that do not exist.
Yet he used two dangerous words: cold and wet. He was only a month into a two-month voyage. And when he finally arrived on Sakhalin Island, what crude conditions would he find? What horrors? And still no mention of when he was coming home. In all of his few-and-far-between missives, Masha and Mother had waited for the September-or-December confusion to be cleared up. Now Masha realized there was no confusion. He’d simply lied to them.
All that day and the next, she was furious, as much over Antosha’s risk-taking as his patronizing falsehood. Did he think this would make his absence easier? The heart does not consult the calendar! And come September, what then? They would be hysterical with worry over him and les Messieurs, human and animal.
Georgi invited her rowing. She was still suffering the after-effects of her mood, yet she accepted. His company was her only respite from worry.
They piled shoes and stockings in the bottom of the boat and pushed it through the reedy shallows. The boat nearly tipped as they climbed in; Masha fell forward, causing Georgi to whoop.
Infant, she thought. Tucking up her skirt had been an ineffective precaution, for it was half-drenched now. As soon as she was safely seated, she wrung it and spread it out to dry.
Georgi took up the oars. “You’ve got legs like your brothers.”
It took her a moment to realize what he meant. He had three sisters, yet her legs, far from hairless, weren’t like theirs. Unlike when he commented on her arms, she was insulted. Worse, she had to stew in the offence while she waited for a discreet moment to tuck her legs back under her wet skirt.
She stared down at the water, at the turquoise of a different sky, the one below them with its own clouds and birds. A man with a fishing rod came along in a dugout. They passed the place on the bank where two years before she’d sat at her easel stippling the grey-green of the far bank, the willows leaning down to drink. A view with which she and Georgi were now one.
He tossed back his hair, yawned. “Excuse me. We had a medical emergency at first light. Then that’s all they talked about at breakfast. How they make me suffer.”
She seized this opportunity to yank down her skirt. “Do you ever consider that your sisters suffer living with you?”
Perhaps she’d spoken sharply, for now he took offence, or his eyebrows did, dropping halfway down his face.
“Because you’re an artist,” she added.
The glower melted. He was flattered now. “What do you mean?”
“Antosha the writer hurts me more than Antosha the doctor.”
“How?”
“A doctor keeps hours. A patient rings at the door. We know not to disturb him. But the writer’s hours are a mystery even to him. He’ll be sitting with us, enjoying himself, or so we think, until he stands up and walks out without a word. He wasn’t really there. Psychic blindness, it’s called. Off he goes to jot something down.”
A mosquito came to listen. She grabbed it in her fist.
“Then there are the fawning visitors whose fawning conversations we all have to endure.” Not their parties, which she enjoyed. She meant the drop-ins. “Antosha can’t stand to be fawned over, yet these people call any time and eat and drink at his expense and then won’t leave. Antosha can’t write and is irritable the next day. Irritable with us.”
A smear of blood in her palm. It brought out the deceased’s relatives.
“And he explains nothing. Nothing! He can’t say, ‘Sister, I’m thinking. I’m on the brink of something here.’ No, he just winces, meaning literature will be forever impoverished because I knocked on his door to tell him dinner was served.”
She already regretted her outburst, yet kept rolling downhill with it. But wasn’t this what Georgi had been doing, complaining about his family? It didn’t mean she was disloyal, or didn’t love them.
“Why Sakhalin Island? He gave us such insincere excuses. Why did he leave? The mosquitoes are eating me alive.”
“Isn’t he writing some kind of treatise?”
She slapped the one feasting on her neck. When she faced Georgi again, she saw he was looking at her with a peculiar, disarming intensity. Her temper evaporated. He tucked the oars under his arms and beckoned to her.
Something happened then. Despite the fact that Georgi had stopped rowing, that they were now floating along on the current’s sluggish whim, the boat rocked. She clutched its sides. No, it was her heart, that caged thing his blind sister had peered into, lurching to life inside her, desperate to satisfy its deferred necessities. Georgi leaned in with puckered lips, and she felt herself falling forward to meet him. Falling with closed eyes.
He blew into her face. One sharp puff. His breath stank of tea.
Her eyes flew open as though he’d slapped her.
“You had an eyelash on your cheek. And don’t dare ask me what I wished for. It won’t come true then.”
Apparently he took up the oars again and resumed rowing, for soon they reached the romantic old mill. Masha just sat there, an arm’s length away, heart unstilled, actually raging now, her idiotic lips still parted, unnoticed by Georgi, who was looking over his shoulder, leaning forward and back as he rowed.
Was he mocking her? Forward and back. Were you trying to kiss me, Masha?
“Take me home,” she told him.
“Why? We just set out.”
“Take me now.” She gripped the sides of the boat and made to stand.
“Don’t!” he shrieked. “We’ll tip. I have my watch.”
Georgi turned the boat around. After three strokes, Masha saw she wouldn’t drown if she took a chance. She lifted one leg over, then the other, and plunged in nearly to her waist while Georgi screeched and scrambled to stabilize the boat.
What a mistake. The mucky bottom suctioned her in place, her skirt blooming on the surface like a grotesque water lily. Georgi watched her struggle.
“Masha, what’s this about? Oh Lord!” He heaved a sigh. “So Elena was right?”
She grabbed handfuls of reeds, trying to haul herself up the bank. Half of them uprooted, and she stumbled backwards. Mosquitoes needled into her. She had no idea what he meant about Elena.
“I do love you, Masha. Like a sister.”
Finally she got enough purchase to stagger up the bank, flushing a pair of jeering blackbirds. She swung around to face Georgi, who was working the oars to keep the boat stationary.
“What are you talking about?”
“The look on your face when I made that wish. Even Zinaida noticed how you hang around. And Mama’s been encouraging you. She’s such a matchmaker. It’s that damn Schopenhauer perfect-complement-of-the-other nonsense. Natalia was reading Marx before she went to Moscow. I begged her to leave Marx and get Schopenhauer out of the house. What, Masha? I enjoy your company. I told you that I do. I just don’t want a misunderstanding. I wish Natalia was here.”
“I’m hanging around because I’m bored! I have nothing to do! My mother is irritating, and I’m worried about Antosha! I don’t love you!”
“That’s wonderful, Masha!” Georgi said. “We don’t love each other!”
She started walking away, hobbled by her wet skirt pasted to her hairy legs. Georgi followed in the rowboat, moving against the current now, slower than before.
“Let’s not spoil anything with broken hearts,” he said, falling behind.
She did not turn back.
The last thing he called out was “Do you want your shoes?”
Masha made it back to Luka before him. She knew he wouldn’t come down to see her in the dacha. He was afraid to.
Her crying jags resumed.
IT REALLY WAS ODD WHAT ANTOSHA DID IN “THE KISS.” He inserted, in parenthese
s, a doctor’s aside: (physicians call this condition, when someone sees without understanding,‘psychic blindness.’)
Mrs. Lintvariova popping her head in the door. Dark brows lifting, her encouraging smile. I’ll leave you two alone.
Stop going up there all the time, Mother had said. You’re making a fool of yourself.
8
WHAT A DISASTER—HOW SHE’D HUMILIATED herself in the rowboat, then her awful mood when she and Natalia went to Yalta. Antosha had given her the money for the holiday, so added to everything else, Masha felt guilty for misspending it.
Yet if she’d gone alone instead of with Natalia, Masha probably would have recovered. Instead, no amount of bathing and promenading could cure her when every morning she saw Georgi’s likeness across the breakfast table. Georgi, Georgi, Georgi. The magic lantern show of tormenting images began again: Georgi waiting to surprise her with his beardless face, Georgi parading in his poetical shirt, Georgi in the rowboat.
“Masha?” Natalia had said. “How nice it would be to see a smile one of these mornings instead of this.” And she put on her cross-eyed Smagin face, but with an ugly down-twisted mouth.
The entire trip Natalia kept waxing on about her new baby niece. Such a good sleeper! She could already hold up her head! Hardly traits to brag about, thought Masha, who daily expected a fond description of the contents of the infant’s nappy.
“I didn’t think I even liked babies,” Natalia said one afternoon while they waded in their bathing costumes. “Do you want babies, Masha?”
Mother had annoyed her on the same subject in the bathhouse at Luka. Masha pictured Mother’s pendant breasts, like a pair of Easter cheeses draining into a basin. Something else to look forward to.
“Babies with whom?” she snapped at Natalia. Then she stomped off, or tried to. Stomping is impossible in water. She flung herself under the waves and prayed she’d drown.
Had she wanted to marry Georgi and have his babies? She burst back up for air, humiliated, hair like seaweed.
By the end of the vacation, Natalia was showing up at breakfast with The Communist Manifesto. Instead of greeting Masha, she’d slap down the book, flip it open and begin furiously to read.
ON MASHA’S RETURN TO MOSCOW, SHE DISCOVERED that Mother and Father, in their ineptitude, had rented a horrible, buggy flat. Every night, they spread themselves out in their beds, fare for the feast. It fell to Masha to find somewhere more habitable to live. Antosha should have reached Sakhalin Island by then, but how could they know? Until his homeward journey, there would be no more letters.
Now she missed him more than ever. So desperate was she that even old news would console her.
She thought of Olga first. Antosha had written in an early letter that after the rest of the farewell party had disembarked, Olga had stayed on the train like those wretched women who follow their husbands into exile. Easy to picture the two of them—stubborn, unkempt Olga puffing away, filling the compartment with smoke, arguing with Antosha, who would enjoy her company for three stations, then begin coughing out of desperation. She could go see Olga and find out how he’d seemed. Except that Olga would question her about her summer and, sniffing out her humiliation, mock her. Why wouldn’t she? Masha had spared her no sympathy over Antosha.
Was Georgi mocking Masha to his sisters now? Natalia must have complained about her. She imagined Georgi countering, But did you have to fend off her repulsive kisses the way I did?
In the end Masha didn’t seek out Olga, not out of fear that she would dig, but because she realized she couldn’t trust herself not to bring up Georgi. Natalia’s brother? Fancies himself Tchaikovsky’s ultimate interpreter . . .
“Georgi, Georgi, Georgi,” Mariushka had grumbled one night as she cleared away the plates.
The other friend Antosha had mentioned was Lika. I must be in love with Jamais since I dreamt of her again last night. Perhaps he’d been writing to her. But Masha had been rude to Lika and couldn’t face her, not while she felt so miserable. She’d wait until school started. She longed for school—the distraction of work and the relief of seeing those rows of girls like sunflowers open to the world.
Sunflowers before they go to seed, heads dried up and bowed in submission.
The house Masha eventually rented was on Little Dmitrovka Street. Little street, little yellow house. If they’d previously inhabited a chest of drawers, this one was a jewellery box, a half hour’s walk along the Garden Ring Road. No separate parlour, but if they called the room a “dining parlour,” they might get used to it. When they first moved to Moscow all those years ago, they’d squeezed five unhappy bodies into two damp-walled basement rooms. Until Antosha returned, if he ever did, they were only three. Misha had found his own accommodation and a job as a tax inspector.
They let go the piano, stored some furniture, crammed in the rest. Soon after the move, the big-eared, big-mouthed little brother dropped by to inspect the new nest and regale Masha with all the gossip.
“Guess who’s been escorting Lika the Beautiful all summer?”
He had!
“Well, not just me. She’s in thick with Sophia’s crowd now.”
Sophia K., Isaac Levitan’s lover? Masha pictured Sophia in the chest of drawers before Antosha went away, a raven in gypsy costume gushing over the men. The long cigarette holder she used as a pointer.
“Lika goes to all the salons,” Misha said.
ON THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL, LIKA WASN’T AT ASSEMBLY. Masha went to the office to find out what had happened to her. The headmistress must have thought that Masha had come to demand the previous term’s unpaid wages, for she backed away like a cornered mouse. She was happy to give out Lika’s address.
Masha went around after school. The flat was on the third floor of a building that smelled of cat. Granny answered her knock, bewhiskered and pale with powder, peering suspiciously at Masha until she identified herself. Then she blossomed with friendliness.
“The writer’s sister?”
“Yes.”
Whenever Lika had talked about Granny, or acted out their arguments, she put on comical voices. Granny came across as dotty. But Masha saw now that Lika’s impersonations were unfair. The old woman was clear-eyed and well-spoken, her posture as erect as a ballerina’s.
“Lika is out with Sophia,” she told Masha. “Do you know this Sophia person?”
“I’ve met her.”
“Will you come in?”
“I can’t, thank you. I work with Lika at the Dairy School.”
“She quit.” Granny’s lips tightened briefly in her floury face. “Your brother’s still away, yes? When do you expect him back?”
“We’re not sure. December, we hope.”
“He’s a first-class person.”
Masha got a strong whiff of matchmaking and stepped away.
Granny said, “Please. May I ask you something? What do you think of Lika? You’re her friend.”
“She’s very pretty.”
Wrong answer. Granny threw up her hands. “If only she wasn’t. It’s the least of her merits, but the one that gets the most attention. Lika has a kind and generous heart. She wouldn’t refuse anyone. Wouldn’t hurt a soul. May I beg a favour? Since I can’t seem to stop her from flitting off, would you watch out for her? Her type is so easily taken advantage of.”
“Of course,” Masha said. “May I leave a note?”
COME TOMORROW! LIKA WROTE BACK, AND THIS TIME, Sophia answered the door in another florid dress, the long amber holder in her teeth. She recognized Masha and lunged to shake her hand.
“Masha! What news have you of your brave, brave brother, that genius?”
Lika came up behind Sophia. There was something different about her, Masha noticed at once. Something unfluttery, despite her dove-coloured dress. Lika had gained confidence running with the arty set all summer, while Masha had lost heart.
Masha answered Sophia. “We haven’t heard anything. There’s no post.”
“But
he arrived safely?” Sophia took a long drag. “I read that piece of his in New Times.” She flicked her wrist and released a smoky ejaculation. “My God! Levitan says he just can’t see it, Russia’s greatest writer wearing the same trousers day after day. Anyway, I’m leaving. Come to the salon on Wednesday. Levitan praises your painting. Please bring one.”
“She has a pet crane,” Lika said. “Grus-grus.”
Sophia flung her shawl around Lika’s shoulder, taking her under her embroidered wing. “Isn’t Mizanova gorgeous? And she sings like a bird. We’re all mad for her, simply mad. Hopefully Lensky will turn up. You know him? From the Maly Theatre. We must get her on the stage. It’s criminal that she’s not there.”
They kissed goodbye, and Sophia departed, trailing smoke. Lika beckoned Masha to the parlour.
“I’m so happy to see you.”
A grand piano took up most of the room. Scattered around its feet was sheet music, and on the lid, strewn petals from a half-dead bouquet. Ash-and-crumb–covered plates were piled around the samovar. All this sloppiness, yet her person was perfect and neat.
“I’ve begun playing the piano again, thanks to you. Remember you made me play that night?”
The night her ring scratched Antosha’s nose. Masha did remember. Lika had hesitated, yet everyone in the room who wasn’t already in love with her was after “Un petit verre de Clicquot.”
“Sit, please.” Lika went over to the samovar to pour the tea. “I hadn’t touched the keys since Granny and I came to Moscow.”
Masha sat stiffly on the divan. Piano talk reminded her of Georgi. Georgi, Georgi, Georgi. Would he never be ousted from her thoughts?
“Mother used to have parties and get me to play for her friends. I hated it. Sugar?” She used the tongs for Masha, then scooped a handful of nuggets, popping one in her mouth and the rest in her glass. She settled beside Masha, crunching the sugar in her teeth.
“How was your summer? I guess you know I quit the Dairy School. I’m applying for a job at the town council instead.”
“What about your acting?”
Her shoulders sank with the sigh. “I think I’d do better singing. With the stage fright, I mean. For some reason my mind goes blank if I have to speak, but not when I sing. Will you come to Sophia’s? You should see their flat. One room’s draped all over like a harem. The sofas are crates covered in rugs, but you’d swear they were Turkish. She’s so clever.”
A Russian Sister Page 8
