Now Antosha was ready. He fixed the smile and turned.
Isaac straightened to make room on the bed. Side by side, their backs against the rug on the wall, the two of them sat, long legs stretched out. Isaac’s tie was loose. Masha caught a whiff of turpentine and vodka. Quite drunk. Lika too, drunk and embarrassed.
Isaac circled his long finger at Masha. “How’s the painting?”
“She’s been bad,” Antosha said. “She has talent, but no discipline.”
After her aborted skating outing with Lika, Masha had thought about going back to the pond with her pencils and sketchbook and reclaiming the window table. Sometimes she thought about drawing Svoloch too, but he never stayed still long enough.
Isaac didn’t believe in discipline. “Where’s your passion, Masha?”
“It seems I’ve misplaced it.”
“Then look for it. Get out of this miserable city. Go find yourself a field. Lie down in it. Do not get up.” The long finger came out. “Do not get up.”
“Last time I looked, it was winter.” Yet even delivering this rejoinder, she wondered, where was her passion?
Antosha had yet to acknowledge Lika, just like the first night they’d met. Was he annoyed about what she’d written in her letter? Annoyed she was out with a womanizer like Isaac so soon after writing it? If Masha couldn’t tell, Lika certainly couldn’t.
Finally Antosha addressed her. “Miss Mizanova. You’re quieter in person than in your letters. Have you recovered your health now?”
Lika pulled herself out of her dreamy slump, coughed and nodded. Then she glanced at Masha, who began passing around the glasses and plates of bread and butter. Why should Masha rescue her?
“Should you be out in the cold like this?” Antosha asked her.
His tone, though teasing, was cool. He was speaking from his dark mood. It brought the heat to Lika’s face, which made Isaac steal Antosha’s pince-nez and pretend to inspect Lika through it. He held it out at different lengths, the way he would measure a view with his brush. Svoloch grabbed at the string.
“And where’s Trofimov,” Antosha went on, “that you had to find yourself this low sort of escort?”
Isaac laughed. Lika pulled herself up in the chair.
“Who is this Trofimov you keep talking about?”
Antosha whispered in Isaac’s ear, loud enough for them all to hear. “She denies her other lovers.”
“She must have hundreds. Just look at her.” Isaac handed back the pince-nez.
“Watch out for Trofimov.”
Masha grew uncomfortable then with their tone, which bordered on unkind. She set the bottle of vodka on the floor for Svoloch to uncork. He leapt down from the bed and started on it.
“He’s like a waiter!” Isaac marvelled. “Hire him out at the Hermitage.”
The feeling in the room lightened with the mongoose’s antics. Svoloch succeeded in opening the bottle, then cavorted with the cork while Masha filled the glasses.
“To what shall we drink? Friendship at inconvenient hours?”
Lika had refused her glass, but Isaac and Antosha drank.
“What does this Trofimov look like?” Isaac asked. “Just so I can be on my guard.”
Lika had had enough. She rose, teetered over to the window and drew aside the curtain. Frost feathers covered the pane. She pretended to look out, her back to the rest of them.
Antosha bit into his bread and brushed the crumbs off his beard. “Trofimov’s an Adonis.” Then, “Pretty skimpy with the butter, sister.”
The waiter leapt back onto the bed, forcing Antosha to hold his slice out of reach. He told Isaac, “We don’t stand a chance.”
“The greatest painter and the greatest writer in the country don’t stand a chance? The only ones who understand the landscape?”
“Do tell us more about the landscape,” Masha said, refilling the men’s drinks.
Isaac took the bait. Even if he hadn’t been drunk, he would have begun shouting. Vodka splashed out of his waving glass, and he nearly clobbered Antosha beside him.
“It’s more than a pretty view. More than setting. It’s metaphor!”
“No talk of metaphor,” Antosha said. “There are ladies present.”
“The ladies can go to hell!” Isaac roared. “We’re on the true path. No cheap external effects. Paint and write simply—show that which is there. It’s the hardest thing to do. Are you laughing at me, Masha?”
She curtsied. “No, dear master.”
He turned back to Antosha. “I’ve told you this before.”
“Now and then,” Antosha said. But with these words, he bumped his shoulder against his spiritual brother. The vodka taking effect. “Hang it, Svoloch. Take the crust.”
Svoloch snatched it, leapt down and disappeared under the bed. Antosha brushed the crumbs off his lap.
“What are you working on?” Isaac asked him. “What are we rudely interrupting? We are, I know. I saw that pinched look you get.”
“Nothing at all.” His eyes strayed to Lika at the window, her back still to them.
Masha had assumed she was sulking. She went over now. “Where’s your chaperone?”
Lika was scratching something on the feathered window with her fingernail. “Sophia, you mean? Ill. Or so he said.” She glanced at Masha, then away. “Coming here wasn’t my idea. I tried to stop him. But, as I’m sure you know, that’s impossible once he gets an idea in his head.”
“Why were you with him in the first place?”
“He dropped by with the ticket. I just wanted to go out. Is that wrong?”
Her eyes fully met Masha’s then. The expression in them took Masha aback—she was more hurt by Masha than the men. You could expect this sort of ganging up from men. It was what you endured to keep company with them. But Masha was acting like a civet cat.
“What are you two whispering about?” Isaac called.
Masha turned and said, “The boorishness of men.”
Then, as though the two of them had orchestrated this revenge, Lika held aside the curtain for them to see the words she’d scratched into the frost.
Trofimov! Help! I’m trapped here with two egoists!
Both men burst out laughing. When was the last time Masha had heard Antosha laugh like that? Probably the night he chased Mariushka around the dining table. Already sorry for her harshness, Masha was suddenly glad they’d dropped in. More so because of what happened next.
“I’ll get her out of here before the cad shows up.” Isaac struggled to stand. “But first . . .” He poured out another round, telling Antosha, “You’d better come, friend. Two against one makes better odds.”
Masha saw the three of them to the door, clutching the squirming mongoose to her chest. Isaac wanted to take Svoloch with them, and Svoloch wanted to go. Her brother accepted her peck on his cheek. One of his hands was pressed to his chest, feeling for a beat.
“Lika!” Masha called after them. “Thank you!”
With one over-the-shoulder smile, Masha was absolved.
Off they went, laughing again, Lika a wisp between them, no longer embarrassed but giddy now that Antosha had been convinced to come along. Lika was in love with him, and it made her reckless. She didn’t know that in little more than a week he would be gone again and not back for months.
Perhaps it was then, more than at that first meeting Masha had contrived for them, that everything was set in motion. With her cold hand waving in the midnight air, giving away her blessing.
3
THAT SUMMER, NO ONE WANTED TO GO BACK TO Luka. Instead they were on their way by train to the dacha Misha had rented through an advertisement, six hours from Moscow on the Oka River. Antosha had only been home from Europe for three days when they left, just long enough to unpack and pack again.
Train travel with a mongoose might have been the subject of one of Antosha’s early tales, the silly ones he used to write to support them while he was in medical school. The mongoose’s vocal resentment at
being contained drives the ineffectual patriarch out of the compartment to pace. The aged cook takes a seat in third class. Passersby, seeing the shrieking basket move on its own (its hidden means of locomotion the mongoose’s violent self-hurling), assume the Devil is riding the train and disembark en masse.
Antosha kept them all in stitches with this narration. Svoloch had grown so wild during those months Antosha spent in Europe that if they didn’t laugh about him, their only recourse would be tears.
Yet with the grateful burden of Mother’s head resting on his shoulder and the half-smile on his face, Antosha seemed truly himself again for the first time since Kolia died—no longer the grieving brother, the humiliated playwright, the exhausted post-Sakhalin traveller clutching his inconsistent heart. Masha couldn’t stop smiling at him.
“Look at this countryside.” He waved at the window just as the train slowed. “Isaac is right. Russia is our soul. Italy and France had nothing to say to me.”
“Russia is saying it’s going to rain,” Masha replied. The clouds were darkest in the direction they were heading.
“Let it,” Antosha said. “I’ll love it just as much.”
They eased into a station. The squealing basket jerked forward another inch. “Bravo, Svoloch!” Antosha said. Then, giving Mother’s knee a tender pat, he informed them he was getting off to rest his ears. Misha went with him.
Once they were gone, Mother shot a look of loathing at the wobbling carrier. “That animal is making the journey unbearable, Masha.”
“He’ll be fine once he’s free, Mamasha. I thank you for your patience.” She turned away, closing the subject.
Out the window, Antosha was charming a tea-seller. How easily he laughed now. Why had he even gone to Sakhalin Island? Everyone had told him to go to Europe instead, and they’d been right. Since his return, she hadn’t dared ask about his work on behalf of Sakhalin’s children. The young girl standing in the rain, the one he’d told her about, insinuated herself in Masha’s thoughts. Two kopeks, sirs.
Masha shuddered.
The basket convulsed.
Mother grimaced and crossed herself.
THUNDER IS ONLY AN OMEN AS IT PERTAINS TO WEATHER. But charged air can change the mood. The rain Antosha had welcomed soon joined forces with the wind. To set foot outside the dacha was to invite a dousing.
It was an incommodious place, snugger even than their jewellery box in town. Nearby, an arthritic railway bridge groaned in anticipation of its own collapse every time a train crossed. No outhouse—just a gully for their convenience, in full view of the trains, reached through a terrifying nettle thicket.
Antosha, fresh from the splendours of Paris and desperate to work, was the most put out. The first morning, he told the little brother off.
“Apologies, Your Excellency,” Misha replied. “The advertisement for the dacha mentioned no bridge, so how could I know about the trains keeping us awake? And am I responsible for the weather?”
Masha was preoccupied with Svoloch. He seemed to consider these smaller quarters as confining as the basket. Or maybe it was his new widower status. Several weeks before, Mrs. Svoloch had met her end when the floor polishers came. She bit one, and he struck back. Masha came home to gleaming floors and the civet cat’s corpse in the pantry, lying on a sheet of newspaper.
She kept the wild widower in her room. Every time she entered, a fresh atrocity awaited. Ignoring his newspaper latrine, Svoloch shat on her bed. Shat in the drawer she’d left open for him. Ate her corset string. Once, when she carelessly opened the door, he escaped and made straight for the kitchen, where he broke the crockery with celebratory glee.
Mother and Mariushka screamed. Father raged. “How much longer are we to suffer this demon?”
“Call the floor polisher,” Misha quipped.
Masha turned on him. “That is a vile thing to say! Vile!”
This happened at the close of their miserable first week in the cramped dacha. Misha went off to the nearby town in a huff. While there, he took it upon himself to improve their general discontent by, of all things, inviting a guest. But since that guest was shapely and ebullient, not to mention musical, everyone did cheer up at the thought of Lika coming, even Masha.
The previous month while Antosha was still travelling in Europe, Masha had met Lika at Filipov’s Restaurant. Lika had entertained her with leering imitations of the council clerks she copied for, her face a landed perch’s gasping for life. Masha had laughed.
“Actually, it’s horrible, fending them off. They remind me of mother’s beaux. I miss my Dairy girls.”
Lika had invited Masha, so Masha kept expecting Antosha’s name to come up. Finally, she mentioned him herself. “Has my brother been sending his impressions of Europe?”
Lika’s stilted answer surprised her. “I haven’t heard from him.”
“He hasn’t written to you?”
“That’s not why I asked you, Masha. You and I haven’t seen each other in months. Not since that night Isaac dragged me over.” The night she’d scratched her message to Trofimov in the frost on his window, and the three of them had gone off to the restaurant at the Hermitage Hotel.
“Are there poppy seeds in my teeth?” Lika bared them.
Still puzzled, Masha said, “Antosha mentioned you to us.”
It was Lika’s turn to be surprised. “Really? What did he say?”
I took a moonlit ride on horseback. There was a glorious fragrance in the air. I breathed it in and gazed at the moon and thought of her—that is, of Lika M.
Romantic nonsense, which Masha now paraphrased. “‘Moon-light. A horse. Et cetera. I thought of her—’”
“Oh, her.” Lika gestured dismissively.
“‘Of Lika M.’ Mother read it out and is now completely convinced he’s a poet.”
“Well, he was joking. As you said, it was nonsense.”
But jokes and nonsense often conveyed deeper feelings. What had Olga said that time? It was Antosha’s default when things got personal. It also made some feelings bearable. Masha didn’t say this. She relayed his message to her.
“He asked me to give you his respects.”
This completely befuddled Lika. Masha realized then why Lika had invited her. Antosha had left for a third time and, again, had probably not told Lika. She’d decided it was pointless to pursue him and was now testing her mettle by meeting his sister. This was not so different from when Masha, lovesick over Georgi, had sat across the table from Natalia in Yalta. Except that Masha had had no choice.
She conveyed the rest of the message. “He also said to tell you not to eat starchy food and to avoid Isaac.”
“He mentioned Isaac?” Lika’s dimples showed.
Masha got the feeling that she’d come with one resolution, but would leave with another.
“Masha? You should have seen Antosha that night at the Hermitage. It was like a doting contest between the two of them.”
“Isaac and Antosha?”
“Yes. Remember the night at your house when he put my hand in his pocket? At the Hermitage, he did the same, and held it too. And played with my ring, as though to remind me of the time I scratched him. All under the table, while Isaac wooed me above it. If only Isaac had left. He has a camel’s bladder.”
Masha laughed. Lika poured out more tea and sat pressing the black seeds on her plate with her finger. She grew pensive, then sad.
“What are you thinking about?” Masha asked.
“That if I’d dropped by that night without Isaac, Antosha would probably never have taken me to the Hermitage. Or held my hand and played with my ring. Why is another man’s regard more stirring than a woman’s sincere feelings?”
IN ANSWERING MISHA’S TELEGRAM, LIKA HAD BEEN vague about which train she’d take. When the knock came a few days later, they all started. Misha hurried to answer it, stopping first to check his reflection in the samovar. He licked his palm, smoothed his hair. Adjusted the pince-nez. Antosha stepped out of the bedroom
he shared with Misha, smiling and tugging on his waistcoat, seemingly as eager as the little brother to see Lika again.
Masha wondered something then. Had Antosha too been testing his resolve when he dropped Lika’s name in his letters, just like Lika that day at Filipov’s? Trying to forget his feelings for Lika, as Lika had been trying to forget hers for him?
Then, in the vestibule, two voices crowed, “Surprise!”
Hearing Isaac, Antosha’s shoulders fell. His hacking started, and Masha watched in alarm as he retreated to his room. It took several minutes before the coughing fit passed and he could rejoin them with his congenial mask in place.
Masha couldn’t believe Lika had brought Isaac. What a farce! The rest of the family gathered around their guests, feigning joy, even Mother, who was surely panicking over where Isaac would sleep. He was too tall to curl up on one of the trunks. Masha could barely look at them; this felt too much like their last unexpected visit. For the first time, Isaac had failed to induce in her a blush.
Lika was nervous, Masha could tell by her twisting hands and her unprompted laugh. When Antosha finally appeared, her metallic eyes slid sideways to him. She smiled and he smiled.
“We came partway by boat,” she told them. “Isaac couldn’t stop swooning.”
Isaac concurred. “You don’t get those slow views from a train.”
Yet he couldn’t tear his soulful gaze off Lika now, so how had he taken in the views? Something had happened between them, or to Isaac, since the last time they’d all met. Also, his hair was receding. Masha noticed it when he ran a hand through his curls. He was the same age as Antosha, thirty-one, yet now he seemed older.
They crowded into the parlour, with Father comically insisting there was plenty of room, though the walls could barely contain Isaac’s oversized gestures, let alone him. Misha sat on the floor. Masha stood. Svoloch’s entreaties were more audible here.
“Antosha, we dropped your name, I confess,” Lika said. “Presto! We made so many friends. You really get to know people on a boat.”
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