After she and Isaac had left Bogimovo, she decided to give Antosha up. Give up everything to do with him. She’d cried on the train and stupidly mentioned that she would be going to stay for the summer with her aunt in Tver province. Her plan had been to get completely away from the Moscow crowd. But to her horror, Isaac and Sophia showed up a few days after she arrived at her aunt’s. Isaac had convinced Sophia that they’d painted out the Volga, and it was time for some fresher landscapes.
So there had been no running off together.
“My aunt helped them find a place nearby to rent. It was awful, Masha. They came over every night. Isaac charmed Auntie, of course, but she couldn’t disguise how she felt about Sophia once she learned she was married to someone else. So I thought it would be better if I went to them in the evenings. Mistake! One day Sophia would be at my throat for turning Isaac’s head, next she’d be sobbing on my shoulder, confiding everything. She feels wretched about her husband, but her soul has attached itself to Isaac’s.”
“I suspected she had claws,” Masha said.
Lika paused before the window, ignoring Masha’s comment, looking out, shoulders child-sized.
“One day they had an awful row. She demanded that he swear his love to her in front of me. He stormed out. Sophia chased after him. After that I refused to go and watch them torture each other. So what happens?”
“What?” Masha asked.
“Sophia went back to Moscow. We had to take Isaac in.”
“Why?”
She faced Masha then. “You know why. The yardman found him lying in the garden, drunk, with his gun across his chest. What were we to do?”
Masha didn’t have to imagine this scene. She had her memories. Antosha and Kolia had found out where Isaac was staying from the gossip in town. He’d been shacking up with a potter, who was now scared of him and wanted him gone. As they entered the cottage, Isaac had sat up in bed waving the gun. It was a miracle her brothers had managed to wrest it away without bloodshed.
“And now?” Masha asked Lika.
“I’ve extricated myself, I hope. At any rate, Sophia’s taken him back.” Something out the window caught her eye and she smiled, breaking the tension. “Here they come.”
Masha rose and came to the window too. Below, the bovine parade. They clattered into the yard, heads low, their mapped sides bulgingly pregnant. Another weary convict line.
Lika laid her head on Masha’s shoulder. “Don’t tell any of this to Antosha. Don’t mention me at all. I just want to forget about him and get on with my life.”
SO THAT WAS THAT. LIKA HAD ESCAPED WITH HER heart more or less intact, unlike Masha’s other friends. Masha’s matchmaking had come to nothing.
No. Masha had gained a friend instead of lost one. It was the best possible outcome. Not only that, at school the halls rang again with Lika’s innocent songs. Too bad that outside of school, Masha had no time for friendly pursuits, commuting as she was back and forth to Melikhovo.
Later in the spring, Lika complained in passing about her dull life. “Granny’s making me stitch. The way I keep pricking myself, my cushion will be embroidered in blood.”
Masha loathed womanly make-work just as much and laughed. “You’d be welcome for Easter,” she said.
She expected a refusal, not only because Lika had sworn off Antosha. Lika had her own family, Granny and her mother who would surely come for Easter, not to mention her aunt in Tver. And now her magically reappearing father.
Instead, Lika accepted on the spot without bothering to conceal her happiness. Either her resolution not to see Antosha had weakened, or it had been feeble from the start, like Kolia’s when he swore abstinence in the morning but succumbed by lunch.
Masha always hesitated to ask Lika about her family situation, in particular why she and her mother lived apart. She sensed a story, for every mention of her mother brought out in Lika a grimace or a self-embrace. Masha assumed, or preferred to assume, the usual daughterly complaints, which she herself knew well. Except that Lika had mentioned her mother’s “lovers” and compared these men to the groping clerks at town council. This only made Masha take a mental step back, the way she did from subjects too personal to broach. Menses and the facts of life. Whether or not every woman’s breasts were lopsided the way hers looked in the mirror. Intimate subjects to discuss with female relatives, though Masha didn’t talk about them with Mother, who was too stuffed with superstition and peasant lore to offer any useful advice.
Regarding the Easter invitation, she was mainly worried about how Antosha would react when she told him Lika was coming. The last time he’d mentioned her was while they were sorting letters at Epiphany. He’d used harsh, uncharitable words then.
But she needn’t have worried. Since buying Melikhovo, Antosha had been in fine spirits. “No rent! We have no rent!” he daily sang. When he learned Lika would be visiting, his glow resembled hers.
“I knew something was missing from our paradise, besides a water closet. I’ll write her too.”
The next week, Lika came to Masha again. She’d changed her mind.
“The things he writes! Wouldn’t I rather spend Easter where my heart is, in the police watchtower? When is he going to let up about Isaac and Sophia? He won’t stop rubbing it in my face. Then he complains that he’s nothing to me, that you’re all last year’s starlings whose song I’ve forgotten. It’s the other way around! ‘Don’t consign us to oblivion as you did before.’” She laid the back of her hand against her forehead. “‘Pretend that you remember us. Deception is better than indifference.’ Honestly? I wanted to tear that letter up.”
Masha herself was bewildered that he’d written these things when he’d expressed such pleasure at her coming.
Her conversation with Lika about Trofimov had happened months ago. Since then, Masha had often thought about Lika’s assertion. Though at the time she’d scoffed, she’d also realized that Lika had sensed something true. Something from when Masha and Antosha were children. That game they used to play with Father’s coat. Or when she would seek him out in his hiding place in the storeroom after a beating. The reek of tallow and mice. Sometimes Father used to put them to work picking weevils out of the flour. Feelings were not so easily separable. Love and shame. Love and anger. Didn’t Father love them? Sometimes it was better not to open the sack.
“Did you tell him what really happened last summer?” Masha asked.
“Yes. It seems he doesn’t believe me.”
Was Antosha just clinging too hard to his wounded pride? Masha wondered. Or did he make these jokes about Isaac and Sophia to show how inconsequential the matter was now? Either way, it proved Lika was still very much on his mind.
Just before Easter, Antosha sent Masha his list of things to bring from Moscow.
Tobacco. Seed. Lika.
Masha tried again.
“Actually, there’s something I need to discuss with your brother.” Lika threw back her shoulders and elongated her neck as though to demonstrate a bounteous pride. “So I will come, though Granny will be furious.”
ON THE TRAIN LIKA ACTED AS THOUGH SHE WAS STILL cross, hinting to Masha that Antosha had done “a bad, bad thing,” but keeping mum as to what it was. Once they arrived at Melikhovo, and she and Masha stepped into the vestibule, everything changed.
Antosha’s study door flew open as though he’d been standing right behind it waiting for them. Lika and Antosha faced each other for the first time since the previous summer.
“Don’t move,” he said.
He came and tilted up her chin, as though he was about to kiss her lips. The light falling through the coloured windowpanes washed her face. Lika in blue, red and gold. He loves her, Masha thought. A simple fact.
Lika let out a funny squawk and threw her arms around his neck. He crooked his arm for her to link. Smiling fully, he led her around the house and twice through the Pushkin Room. When she burst out with “It’s bigger than it looks!” he kissed her forehead.
“Dearest Lika. Hold your arms out like you used to. At your sides, yes. Now fly.”
She flapped.
He roared with laughter. “And what a pretty jacket. All the women I know dress like widows. But you? You dress like a cantaloupe.”
Shortly they sat down for dinner. Antosha warned her then that they’d become country people since Lika saw them last.
“We rise at four, bed down at ten.”
“Her usual routine reversed,” quipped the little brother. “In bed at four. Up by ten.”
“Hardly!” Lika protested with a laugh.
Misha was Melikhovo’s overseer for now. Antosha’s praise of his competence had put an end to the rivalry between the brothers, even in love, for Misha had his own blonde now. Unfortunately, Klara was the type Masha had assumed Lika would be when they first met—stunted by her looks. Or so she’d seemed when Misha brought her around for tea in Moscow.
“We won’t have time for you,” Antosha told Lika. “Misha and Masha are working all day. Me too, until eleven, at which point I hurry to the dining room and stare meaningfully at the clock, until Mother notices and gets lunch. Afterward I lie on my bed and think.”
“Noisy thoughts,” Masha said, passing around the platter of Lenten perch.
“Then we’re all back to work. Work, work, work. What can we do? We must go on living. Do you see? Our days are difficult, our evenings tedious, but we patiently suffer the trials that fate imposes on us landowners. How will you stand it, dear Cantaloupe?”
Her grey eyes welled up. “I’m so happy to be here.”
“How long are you staying?” Father asked.
Antosha said, “Look how much she’s heaping on her plate. The real question, is how long can we afford her?”
That night, while Masha and Lika bent over the washstand together, Masha asked, “Did you speak to him about this terrible thing he did?”
Lika pressed her face with the towel, then slowly dried her hands. “I don’t think I will after all.” The smile was tugging at the corners of her mouth, but only the dimples showed.
IVAN WAS EXPECTED FOR EASTER TOO, BUT THE NEXT day someone else turned up while Masha was cutting pussy willows and Antosha showing off to Lika their first success as farmers—the dozen yellow chicks Mother Hen had produced, scuttling around the lingering dollops of snow.
“Just think,” Antosha said. “One day you’ll have as many children. And be just as fat.”
How flattering. Masha looked up to see Lika’s reaction and so was the second to notice Isaac, overnight case swinging in one hand, gun strap across his chest, overcoat open, its tails filling with air. A whirl of manic agitation. They hadn’t heard a carriage. He must have asked to be dropped off on the road.
“Why do you look so crushed?” Antosha asked Lika, who had seen Isaac over his shoulder. “Doesn’t every woman long to be a mother?”
A hand came down hard on his back. Antosha swung around. Such sangfroid, Masha thought. He didn’t hesitate to open his arms in welcome.
“Isaac! What a surprise. How did you find us?”
Isaac stared at Lika. “They gave me directions at the station.”
Masha came forward to greet her teacher, glancing at Lika, who had turned away with her hands in fists. Isaac accepted Masha’s embrace as passively as he had Antosha’s, eyes still fixed on Lika’s angry back.
Antosha guided him toward the house, gesturing all around them. “This is it. Melikhovo. What do you think? See any respectable views?”
What Antosha was thinking, Masha had no idea. Perhaps he’d expected Isaac, the way you know a character will step on stage in a play you’ve seen before. This had become, after all, a farce on an extended run.
But Lika hadn’t expected him. She held Masha back. “I didn’t breathe a word that I was coming here. He must have gone to the flat and got it out of Granny. Tell Antosha. He won’t believe me.”
Isaac, looking anxiously back for her, almost tripped on the threshold. Mother and Father came to the door and offered their joyful greeting, surprised to see the painter instead of Ivan.
They kept their coats on, so they could take tea on the veranda. The sun was out, and Antosha said they should encourage it. Masha guessed he was worried about some sort of outburst, for Isaac was twitching all over. Thank God he’d left his gun with his bag in the vestibule.
The two men stepped out first.
Antosha said, “You look well, Isaac. Swarthy. What’s your news?”
“The Petersburg show was a success.”
Isaac craned to see inside, where Lika was still trying to calm herself, taking deep gulps of air. Finally she stepped out onto the veranda and dropped sullenly into a chair. Masha took the one beside her and waited for something horrible to happen.
“What’s that bird, Masha?” Antosha asked. “It sounds like someone blowing across the neck of a bottle.”
“I hear starlings.” She pointed to the birch copse in front. The birds were hopping from branch to branch, setting the trees in motion, so that they seemed to be waving their arms. Help, the egoists are back!
“Go on,” Antosha told Isaac, who was gazing rapturously at Lika’s profile. “You were saying?”
“My Deep Waters sold for three thousand. Do you remember it, Lika? The log bridge.”
“Painted last summer?” Antosha asked mildly.
Lika reddened. Mariushka came out with the tea tray and began to unload it.
“Anyway, Isaac,” Antosha said. “Tell us how Sophia is.”
Isaac sniffed. “I haven’t seen her.”
Masha fixed a questioning look on Antosha, who seemed to be trying to provoke an outburst now. Just then a volley of snipe passed overhead, expert embroiderers, stitching the sky with their long needley bills. At the sight of them, Isaac propelled himself right out of his chair and down the steps to see which direction they were heading. They all started, even the starlings, who lifted off the trees en masse.
As soon as he was off the veranda, Lika covered her face and groaned.
“What’s wrong?” Antosha asked with just the trace of a smirk.
“I didn’t invite him, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Lika snapped.
“I’m not thinking anything. But tell me, do you find me pale?”
Masha had overheard his “swarthy” comment. Now here was “pale.” Did he think Lika had read Isaac’s taunting letter of last summer? He appeared so gracious. What he was actually doing, with malicious or comic intent—she often couldn’t tell which—was leading the conversation to that excruciating place, to their competition last summer, the volcanic swarthy painter pitted against the pale cerebral author, when Antosha believed that Isaac, whom he otherwise loved, had defeated him. But he was wrong. He’d routed the painter.
Isaac was still standing on the softening path, shielding his eyes as he watched the sky, no doubt waiting for Antosha’s question to evaporate. All there was to see now were tufts of clouds, like Father’s ear hair. Finally he clumped back, spring mud on his shoes. He scraped them on the steps.
Antosha carried on from where he’d left off. “I thought you were a salon fixture, Isaac.”
“At Sophia’s? I haven’t been for ages. You were there recently, weren’t you, Lika?”
“Look at her,” Antosha said. “She’s turned crimson.”
Lika had. She was burning up.
“She must have met someone there,” Antosha said.
“Trofimov?” Isaac barked a laugh.
And Lika said, “Stop it!”
Never, not even in the classroom, had Masha heard her speak so sharply. And they did stop! This new tone threw them off. Antosha began fussing with his cuffs, pulling one sleeve, then the other, as though his coat were suddenly too small. Isaac cleared his throat. The samovar arrived, and Masha busied herself with the tea.
Antosha finally broke the tension. “So, Isaac. I noticed you brought your gun. Tomorrow we’ll hunt.”
“What about
the ladies?”
“Miss Mizanova, you mean? You’ll have to tear yourself away from her for a few hours.”
Masha fixed on Antosha another look, which he also ignored.
When she handed him his tea, she whispered, “Is hunting wise?”
“I HATE THEM . . .” LIKA SAID LATER, CLARIFYING, “WHEN they’re together like this.”
They were in Masha’s room, Lika lying on the bed, Masha across from her on the settee. Lika glanced at Masha and seemed to intuit an accusation.
“You’re thinking about the Hermitage. It’s different now. Isaac is crazy. I wish I hadn’t come. I only did so I could tell Antosha off. As soon as I get the chance to, I’m leaving.”
“I wasn’t thinking about the Hermitage. I was wondering if you really did tell Antosha what happened last summer.”
“I did! He’s being unspeakably cruel. Those things he wrote, and now this.”
“What things he wrote? His letter, you mean?”
Masha only wanted to understand what was going on. But Lika was so very angry. Everything about her seemed clenched—jaw, hands. Her shoulders lifted to her ears, as though someone were squeezing the back of her neck.
“Lika? What did he write?” Masha asked, but a knock came on her door then. Mariushka. Dinner was ready.
They got through it thanks to Misha and Ivan, who hadn’t stopped ribbing each other and Antosha since Ivan’s arrival. Lika, who had waited for Isaac to take his place so she might seat herself as far away as possible, was left with the corner seat—meaning, according to superstition, that she wouldn’t marry for seven years.
“Don’t sit there!” the men cried out. “Lika, move!”
“Masha, make her!”
“Four hearts are breaking here!”
They played musical chairs and brought in two empty ones. Then, after thoroughly embarrassing Lika, the four men whose hearts had been imperilled proceeded to ignore her, talking amongst themselves while Lika quietly poked at her food.
A Russian Sister Page 19
