Along came Lika, hat pulled low and chin tucked in, most of her face obscured by fur. Those curved shoulders and dragging steps hardly seemed to belong to the same woman who in a motion as graceful as a curtsy had set down a package of pince-nez cords in their parlour.
“I’ve been ill.” Lika coughed to prove it. “Granny was worried it might be consumption. Really.”
What a bore they were, these lovelorn friends. The sun was glinting off the ice-coated trees, sparrows carousing in the naked bushes. Their plan had been to skate.
“Let’s have coffee, then.” Masha struck off toward the refreshment pavilion, the supposedly ailing Lika trotting obediently after her.
Inside, they scanned the crowded room in search of a free table. By the window, a harried mother had risen from her seat and was entreating her two daughters to wipe the chocolate off their mouths. As Masha and Lika approached, the mother noticed the mess on the window—they’d painted it with chocolate—and the shouting began.
Lika swept over, placing a hand on each girl’s head, and in a stage-whisper said, “Don’t worry. I’ll lick it off.”
“Wasn’t that lady nice, Mama?” one of them warbled as they left.
No wonder Lika had been so popular at the Dairy School. She was a half-child herself, settling across from Masha and emerging from her coat as from a fur cocoon.
“My throat is sore.” She extended and stroked it, just as the waiter approached. His eyes bulged.
“Honey cake,” Masha told the exophthalmic youth. “And coffee.”
“Two.” Lika turned to Masha. “You look well. You look happy.”
“Mongooseopathy,” Masha said.
“Sugar, Miss?” He set down their cups, lifted the tongs.
Lika nodded for a second lump and a third, and then, head propped up with one hand, stirred as though she had no hope of dissolving them.
“Why does Antosha keep running away?”
Masha shifted on the chair. She could see why Lika was frustrated. Before he left for Sakhalin Island, he’d been putting his tongue in her mouth. Then he came back with a seething soul. His pull–push behaviour during her visits hurt her. Masha knew it did. She’d been on the receiving end of Lika’s bewildered glances.
“It’s not your throat?”
“It is. Look.” Lika opened wide.
Masha saw nothing of note except that even her tonsils were pretty.
The cake arrived like a slice of a book on a plate. When they ate honey cake as children, she and Antosha had made up a story for every layer. This was before their troubles. After Father’s bankruptcy, there was no cake at all.
Masha took a bite and pronounced it stale. Lika agreed, yet consumed it in three gulps. The coffee she sipped while both of them watched the scene outside, Masha waiting for whatever Lika was working up to tell her. The pond was scribbled over by skate blades. Children and novices tentatively pushed chairs or sledges along the ice while the experienced raced laps. Even the elderly were out, clinging to each other for dear life. Bruegel, seen through a chocolatey smear. At the next table a man complained that his corns had hampered his skating.
“Do you still think badly of me because I had fun while Antosha was in Siberia?” Lika finally asked.
“Actually, I forgot all about it until now,” Masha told her.
“Honestly, Masha? I swear Misha and I are just friends. Isaac too.”
“Isaac?”
This was a surprise. Then Masha remembered Sophia’s salon—blindfolded Isaac caressing Lika’s face while everyone ogled them. The forlorn dance of the ruined crane. Her own feeling of revulsion. She felt a twinge of possessiveness. Isaac was their dear friend. He’d spent that summer with them recovering from his depression. He’d proposed to her.
“You said he prefers older women,” Lika said. “And Sophia was always around. Masha?” She took a breath deep enough to swell her chest. “I love Antosha.” Her exhalation carried away the declaration. “I love him.”
Masha believed her. As for Misha and Isaac, she accepted Lika’s excuse. If you’re miserable over someone, replace him. Hadn’t the same thing happened to her on that frigid December cab ride? Svoloch plucked out her comb, and Georgi went poof. After months of her obsessing over him, he had become an embarrassing memory.
It hadn’t worked for Lika. Perplexed, she said, “He left again without even saying goodbye. Why?” Her welling tears looked like mercury.
“Don’t cry here, Lika. Everyone’s staring at us.”
“I’m trying not to.” She used her cuff to blot her eyes. “I just feel muddled.”
Antosha did too, it seemed. There had been such need in his voice when he called out, “Jamais!” Then he’d send her on some errand, when it was obvious that he was desperate for her to stay. Or he’d tease her to the point of exasperation.
Everyone noticed. Mother had whispered one night, “Do you think he’ll marry her?”
“Not likely,” Masha had retorted.
“Maybe you don’t want me to talk about him,” Lika said. “It puts you in an awkward position.”
“It’s nice of you to recognize that. No one else does.”
“Who?”
“Vermicelli, for one. Antosha is her sole topic of conversation.”
Lika winced. “Poor her. Poor me. I don’t want to jeopardize our friendship.”
Masha softened. “Go ahead. Tell me what’s the matter.”
“I asked Misha for his address. The letter he wrote back? I don’t know what to think.” Lika’s coat was hanging over the back of her chair. Out of the pocket she drew an envelope addressed in that familiar, elegant hand, and slid it across the table to Masha. “I told him I’d been coughing blood, and what Granny thought.”
“What?” Masha exclaimed.
“We really thought it was consumption. But then I remembered we’d had beetroot at dinner. Anyway, I invited him to view my remains on his return. So perhaps I’m guilty of starting the teasing off.”
Masha unfolded the letter. There was some silliness about Granny. As for your coughing, stop smoking and gossiping in the streets. If you die, Trofimov will shoot himself. I’ll rejoice. Farewell, villainess of my heart.
“Who is Trofimov?” Masha asked.
“I’ve never heard of him. I think I deserve more than irony, Masha.”
Lika didn’t know she’d written a jokey letter about consumption to a man who had it, whose brother had died of it. In Masha’s opinion, Antosha had shown restraint. It was generous of him to reply at all considering his despairing mood.
“Masha? People are still asking if Antosha and I are engaged.”
Masha folded the letter and slid it back. Now was the time to spell things out. That would be a true kindness. These affairs, if that was where Antosha and Lika were headed—it certainly seemed so—always ended the same way.
“Lika, I know a dog Antosha was supposedly engaged to. ‘Artists are married to their art.’ Those are his words.”
Lika sniffed, then turned toward the window. A burst of sparrows passed, but from Lika’s pensive expression, Masha surmised an inward gaze.
“When’s he coming back?” she asked.
SOON, MASHA HOPED. IT DISTRESSED HER TO THINK OF him lying with his face to the wall in Alexei Suvorin’s mansion, being cared for by a footman.
Another reason presented itself shortly. Masha had noticed a growing sluggishness in Svoloch’s movements. The manic leaping lessened. Then, for the first time, she saw him walk instead of bound. If she’d thought to question Mariushka, the person who ran around the house with the brush and dustpan, she would have learned that his normally voluminous output had ceased. She didn’t; whenever the cook saw Svoloch, she spat three times over her left shoulder.
By the time Masha sent her telegram, Svoloch had retreated to the bottom drawer of her dresser, a listless ball. Food didn’t tempt him, not even an egg delivered on a china saucer.
Svoloch dying. Return.
A
ntosha took the next train and arrived looking as pale and drawn as when he’d left for St. Petersburg.
“He can’t die. He really can’t,” Masha said, hovering behind the doctor, who had swaddled the struggling patient in a towel. “He’s the only thing I’ve ever had that’s mine alone.”
How strange to hear herself say this. She’d been unconscious of this impulse, had thought she loved Svoloch for his charms, not her needs.
Antosha managed to dose the mongoose with Hunyadi Janos Water and Stool Softener. Released, Svoloch humped back to his hiding place while Antosha tended to the bites on his hands.
“I’ve done my best, sister.”
As he always had. He’d rescued them, fed, housed and educated them, lifted them above their station.
Masha crouched beside the drawer where Svoloch panted, waiting to see what would happen. Before long, he was tearing the wood with his teeth, splintering it.
“It’s like he’s giving birth,” Antosha marvelled.
He watched like a curious author while Masha knelt in helplessness. Eventually the mongoose’s labour issued forth the blockage. A half-dozen pince-nez cords in an agonizing gnarl inside him. They both had to laugh over this foul offspring. That was the moment—while Masha was stroking the exhausted creature in her arms, overjoyed he’d survived—that Antosha chose to tell her Alexei Suvorin had proposed a tour of Europe.
“Soon?”
“In a few weeks.”
“Are you going back to Petersburg now?”
“No. I may as well stay till then.” An odd expression settled on his face, and his hand pressed his waistcoat.
“What is it?” Masha asked.
“My heart’s been doing the strangest thing.” He looked at her, puzzled as much as worried. “Just now it stopped.”
“Stopped?” Masha asked in alarm.
“Yes. For a second or two, it simply doesn’t beat.”
NO WONDER, WITH THE BURDEN THAT HEART CARRIED. He’d gone to St. Petersburg not to recuperate, but to petition the authorities on behalf of the child beggars and prostitutes of Sakhalin Island.
“Child prostitutes?” Masha said.
“They exist.”
These horrors came out over the next few nights, after Mother and Father had gone to bed and Masha sat quietly reading, waiting for him to speak. Antosha stretched out on the divan, smoking a cigarette.
“I’ve brought back with me a horrid feeling. While I was there, I worked so hard I didn’t have a moment to myself to think. But now it seems like I’ve been to hell.”
As she waited, noises usually unremarked came to the fore—the pages she turned without reading, the watchman banging his stick in the courtyard, sibilance inside the stove. The scratching in the pantry was the civet cat trying to open the sealed crock in which Mariushka had stored the coffee beans. Svoloch heard and went after her. Animal scrambling.
Silence.
In one of the northern settlements, the worst part of the island, Antosha had met a girl who’d worked the trade since age nine. In the same place, a man sold his own daughters, even haggled over the price.
Her brother was holding back, Masha could tell. But as he talked, she pictured it as clearly as if he wrote it and she were copying it out. A road in a desolate place. Was “road” the right word for furrows of mud? He was driving with the warden at dusk when it was hard to see, particularly with the rain constantly borne off the sea. His eyes had been giving him trouble too, even before he got there. A fecal odour from an open latrine. A few shivering trees here and there, leafless, like skeletal hands.
Out of the gloom, a collection of squat wooden huts appeared. As their carriage neared, a figure detached from the bleak background, recognizably human, wrapped in a shapeless grey cloak. Driving past, they saw inside the hood. A young face, not an old one, not more than twelve, he guessed.
“Two kopeks, sirs?” She hugged herself to stay warm.
Starvation. Blind children, filthy and covered in eruptions. A toddler holding onto her father’s fetters. The children weren’t the only ones who suffered—far from it—but what happened to the children was the hardest to comprehend.
He’d conducted a census, interviewed every soul on the island—settlers, prisoners and exiles. Put his head inside rooms where cockroaches coated the walls and ceiling like living black crepe. Wardens put him up. Until two in the morning, he would copy his data to the despairing groans from the prison barracks.
He blew out smoke. Svoloch came back and leapt onto his chest. Antosha stroked him.
“They serve two years in the prison, unless they try to escape. If they do try, they’re caught. There’s nowhere to run. Then they’re flogged. They’re flogged for misdemeanours too. For vulgarity. Ragged men soaked with rain, covered with mud, beaten, starved.
“I watched a flogging. I forced myself. Four nights passed before I could sleep again.”
Masha listened, saying nothing.
“After two years, they become convicts in exile, living in the settlements, serving the rest of their sentence either in hard labour, as before, or as servants to the warden. Convicts were everywhere. You never knew if the man setting down your knife and fork at dinner wasn’t there for slitting someone’s throat.
“But then a strange thing happened. Once I got over my fear and interacted without prejudice, the difference between prisoner and non-prisoner blurred. The whole island was a prison, after all. Our whole country is. We’re just trying to survive it.”
“Brother?” she finally said.
To her relief, Antosha held up his hand to stop her speaking. She could not find adequate words to express her revulsion, or her sympathy. No such words existed.
He asked her not to tell anyone he was back. Did he mean Lika? Olga maybe. But you can’t sew buttons on your neighbour’s mouth, or your little brother’s.
THE KNOCK CAME QUITE LATE, MADE BY FORCEFUL FISTS. Masha heard it from her bed.
Father roused himself to answer, muttering all the way to the door on scuffling slippered feet. He’d probably armed himself with a newsprint cudgel in case he met Mrs. Svoloch.
The baritone of a joyful greeting came next, followed by Father’s cry of recognition. Isaac? Masha blushed, as was her habit. Isaac was not exactly welcome, but better than some third-rate scribbler wanting to rub up against Antosha at eleven at night. She threw her legs over the side of the bed.
More than one set of footsteps came stumbling up the stairs. A second voice, a woman’s, pleading. Too feminine for Sophia. Lika?
Instantly Masha was furious. What was she doing running around with Isaac at this time of night? Antosha’s room was next to Masha’s. His door, flung open, struck the other side of her wall.
“Ho!” Isaac roared. “We were just at the Maly. Misha too. So you snuck home from Petersburg. Are you hiding?”
Masha pulled a dress over her head, not bothering with the corset. She straightened herself in the mirror. Antosha was inviting them to sit now, Isaac praising the play they’d just seen. She heard Antosha say, “The theatre doesn’t interest me anymore. Not in its present form.”
Masha went downstairs for refreshments. Where was Svoloch? With their guests, she guessed. She passed through the dining parlour, gritting her teeth on Antosha’s behalf.
Something on the table caught her eye then. She brought the candle close. The gore of half a mouse on its own spreading stain. Cringing, she rolled the cloth with one hand, mouse bits and all. She was still deciding where to stash it when she noticed two greenish orbs fixed on her from the pantry door. An icy shiver worked through her. Now Masha understood Father’s fear. In Mrs. Svoloch’s presence she felt, if not evil, then a focused viciousness. How could Olga claim this wasn’t inherent?
Masha climbed right onto the table. After a minute, it occurred to her that Antosha himself would soon venture down for vodka and snacks and find her in this ridiculous position. She peeked over the edge, then had to laugh. Mrs. Svoloch had retreated
under a plant stand in the corner, obviously as terrified as Masha.
Bravely Masha climbed down and went to prepare a tray. On her way back upstairs, she crouched before Mrs. Svoloch’s hideout to test Olga’s hypothesis. Extending her hand, she made the friendly clicking sound that her spouse answered to.
Mrs. Svoloch lunged. Masha drew back just in time. “Oh! You wicked, wicked thing!”
The tray shook as she carried it up.
When she entered Antosha’s room, Isaac called, “Masha, my pupil!” from his odalisque recline on the bed. He looked so handsome, she was glad she’d got her blushing over with. Svoloch was beside him, conducting an inventory of his pockets. Pencil stub, a ticket torn in half—each examined and tossed aside.
Lika was perched on Antosha’s chair, elbows on knees, wearing a champagney look as she gazed at his back. She gave Masha a timid smile, just a crimp in her prettiness. The one Masha returned was brittle—her shock over what had just happened with Mrs. Svoloch mixed with disapproval. Chastened, Lika dropped her eyes. Silver coins tossed to the floor.
Antosha, with his morbid fear of being seen in just his waistcoat, had hurried into his jacket. He was dealing with the papers on his desk. Until he could overcome his irritation, he would prolong the task, pretending to order his pages but actually creating meaningless stacks. Then, as with countless other unwelcome visitors, he’d turn to face them with a smile.
As Masha came up beside him, he noticed her expression. “What happened?”
“I just met a civet cat.”
He probably would have laughed if he wasn’t annoyed. She set down the tray in the space he’d cleared among his dirt-spattered notebooks. His Sakhalin Island notes, the ink on one page half washed away, like those mud-soaked, degraded men. The work these two had so frivolously interrupted. How awful that they came.
A Russian Sister Page 11
