After the meal, they needed her again. Lika obviously didn’t feel like playing, but agreed out of politeness. Because it was Holy Week, Father, supposedly abstaining from all pleasures, hid himself in the Pushkin Room and listened from there.
Isaac asked for Chopin. Lika played beautifully, swaying on the stool. Isaac’s dark eyes closed, the music seeming to soak right into his turbulent soul.
After they applauded, Antosha said, “You sang something for us last summer. What was it?”
Masha saw the frustration pass in a wave across Lika’s face.
“‘Angel Serenade,’” Father called from the next room.
Lika riffled through her music. Now Isaac pitched himself forward in his chair like a conservatory examiner, his high brow wrinkling, his gaze shuttling between Lika and Antosha.
When she played, when she lifted up her clear voice, Father stood in the doorway, tears running into his beard, weeping for the dying child in the song. This man who had once lived by the motto that a beaten child is worth two unbeaten ones.
ASSES, MASHA THOUGHT THE NEXT DAY, WATCHING Antosha and Isaac set out from the house at dawn. They were dressed in tunics, trousers stuffed into boots, breath hanging in the air, both carrying their guns. Their stamping and Isaac’s booming voice had woken her, though they’d clearly hoped to waken someone else.
Let them shoot each other, she thought, as they splashed away. Above, the clouds were stained like Easter eggs boiled in beetroot, wisps and streaks pouring out of the horizon, two figures in silhouette sloshing toward it.
It came back then, unexpectedly and unforced—the thing she’d been waiting for for years. She was not particularly moved by the scene, more irritated than anything. But before she knew it, she was creeping to her room for her sketchbook and charcoal, trying not to disturb the sleeping Lika.
Back at the window, she saw that they’d only got as far as the road before stopping to smoke. Then Isaac got the same idea as Masha, as though he’d seen her from the window, which was impossible. As though it were infectious. He pulled his own book from his pouch and dashed off some lines that no doubt perfectly depicted the soul of spring.
Something in their gestures told her they were talking. Isaac removed his hat and scratched down the back of his collar with the pencil. Antosha lifted his fist to cough, threw down his cigarette, sloshed on. Making haste to follow, Isaac stuffed away his book. She kept watching and drawing until they disappeared, and the sun had risen and burnt away the red, leaving only the transparent blue of day.
Easter preparations kept her busy all morning, but she still snuck back to her room to look at her drawing, expecting it to be awful. It wasn’t. Not until she opened her paint box and added colour. The trick was knowing when to stop.
“When are they coming back?” Lika asked from the doorway.
Masha folded the picture and dropped it in the wastebasket. “I thought you wanted to get away from them.”
“I do. But I don’t want Isaac to kill himself. Or Antosha.” She was twisting her hands. So she didn’t hate them very much.
Just before lunch, Masha heard the crash of the door. She hurried to the vestibule and found Isaac struggling to take off one of his dirty boots. The other lay on its side on the floor.
“Where’s Antosha?”
He responded with a groan. Giving up on the boot, he limped to the Pushkin Room, tracking in mud, throwing himself face down on the divan and smearing the upholstery.
Lika appeared then. “Isaac? What happened?”
He began shaking with sobs, and Lika turned her horrified face to Masha, who had until that moment been frozen on the spot. The same way her body had moved to get her sketchbook before she’d been conscious of the urge, she was already exchanging slippers for shoes and throwing open the door—
To Antosha coming along the path toward them.
“Thank God!” Lika cried out behind Masha, speaking for them both.
Antosha lifted the single lifeless snipe he carried by its feet. “One fewer lovelorn creature in the world. Two fools come home for lunch.”
ISAAC WOULDN’T EAT, WOULDN’T EVEN RISE. NEITHER would Antosha explain his enigmatic comment, or tell them what had upset Isaac. Not until he’d finished his meal.
He cut and chewed with his usual unhurried precision, thanking Mariushka for every course she brought.
“Observe how the writer creates suspense,” Ivan said. “Brother?”
“Should I check on Isaac?” Misha asked.
At last Antosha brushed the crumbs off his beard and lit a cigarette. “Isaac shot it.” He didn’t lower his voice. Perhaps he hoped the swarthy painter would overhear and come running to defend himself. “But it turned out he’d only winged it. When we went to retrieve it, it was thrashing about in a puddle. He begged me to bash it.”
“Did you?” Lika asked. “Bash it?”
He squinted across the table at her. “I told him the person who shot should put it out of its misery.”
He’d called the bird “lovelorn.” A writer’s embellishment. Masha could picture the scene, not so different from that morning, when she’d watched them standing together on the road.
“So who did it?” Lika asked.
“Who else? He was trembling all over, suffering as much as the bird. Ah, I see you blame me.”
Lika looked down at the tablecloth, one hand at the base of her white throat.
After lunch, Mother asked Masha to check on Isaac.
“Shouldn’t the doctor see him?” Masha said.
The doctor was napping.
Masha peeked in the door of the Pushkin Room. Isaac was still wearing the boot, though the floor had been swabbed clean. His back to the room, he burbled snores. In this position he remained into the evening.
“What are we going to do?” Lika asked Masha when they were getting ready for church. “We can’t leave him by himself.”
“Go and wake him, then,” Masha said.
Her eyes widened. “Masha? This is what happened last summer. Better you go.”
Masha went and sat at the foot of the divan, causing Isaac to stir and reach blindly for her.
“Likusha,” he moaned, face still pressed into the upholstery.
“It’s me. Your student.”
He took her hand anyway. Dried mud became powder in their clasp. “Masha. Something terrible happened.” He turned his head, eyes glittering, hair thin and disorganized. “We’re nothing in the face of Nature. She wants revenge.”
“What are you saying, Isaac?”
“Your brother killed it, not me. I only wounded it. But then this terrible noise. A chittering and clicking. It rose up and swept across the field toward us.” He let go of her hand to trace an arc with his arm. “Snipe. Thousands of them darkening the sky. Where’s Lika?”
“We’re all ready for church. Lika too.”
He sat up, rubbing his eyes, dirtying one socket. Shook himself. “Where’s my boot?”
“In the vestibule. You wash and change. We’ll wait for you.” She made to stand, but he held her back.
“Nature’s angry. Lika’s angry. So’s your brother. They didn’t want me here, but I’m glad I came. He’s no good for her. He killed it with the butt of his gun.” He acted it out. “Bam, bam, bam. Like that.”
“But, Isaac? You asked him to.”
This left him chastened and confused, a child stumped by logic. When she said, “Hurry. We’re all waiting,” the child obeyed.
They’d hired a priest from the nearby monastery to conduct the service in the little wooden chapel on Melikhovo’s grounds. Isaac stood with the rest of them, but did not sing. It had nothing to do with his Jewishness, but rather his state of mind. He seemed to be processing the scene he’d witnessed that morning. The darkened sky, the thousand grieving snipe bearing witness to mercy’s complications.
The explosion came the following morning, when Isaac had to return to Moscow. He could have gone before breakfast with Ivan, which wou
ld have saved his hosts a trip to the station on a muddy, rutted road. Instead he waited until Lika woke. Then he cornered her in the parlour. Masha was next door, in her room trying to draw again, able to hear everything.
“Aren’t you leaving with me?”
“I’m going back with Masha,” she told him.
“We can all go together.”
“All right,” Lika said.
“But I must leave now. I have an appointment.”
“I guess you’ll be travelling alone, then, Isaac.”
“Likusha. Why are you so cold? I love you. I adore you. What more do you want?”
Discordant notes. One of them had backed into the piano.
“Isaac, stop. Please.” Her firm steps walked out.
Masha poked her head out of her room and saw him on his knees. Without a trace of embarrassment, he rose and staggered toward her.
“Masha? Can’t you help me?”
He followed her right into her bedroom, where she dropped onto the bed. Isaac went down on his knees again and came crawling toward her with beseeching eyes.
“Talk to Anton. Tell him to leave her be. He can’t love her as I do.”
Masha looked down on him. A fresh scab showed through his thinning hair. He must have hit his head ducking into the outhouse that morning. This made her doubly embarrassed for him.
“Isaac, I can’t tell Antosha what to do.”
“Why not? You’re the only one he listens to.”
Misha appeared in the doorway looking for him. Masha expected him to laugh, but Misha saw her desperate expression. How he’d matured, their little brother. After just a few months caring for livestock and dealing with the peasants, he’d become an adroit tactician, one able to take the manic painter in hand.
“Isaac, what a sky we have for driving.”
Isaac immediately looked toward the windows. He planted one unsteady foot, then the other, and lurched to the window, where he yanked the curtain back.
“If we leave now,” Misha said, “there’ll be time to stop and sketch.”
Nodding, Isaac silently went, Masha trailing worriedly behind them.
Everyone had gathered in the yard to see him off. Isaac shook hands distractedly all around. When he got to Lika, he kissed her hand so profusely that she was forced to tear it away and hide it behind her back. Misha and Antosha steered him to the carriage.
As Misha drove off with their unpredicted and unpredictable guest, the rest of them slackened with exhaustion and relief. Father announced he was going inside to pray. Mother asked, “He won’t shoot himself in Moscow, will he?”
“Shooting oneself is a country pastime.” Antosha kissed the top of her head.
Reassured, Mother went inside to lie down.
And now Antosha turned to Lika with an amused expression, for they were standing in almost the same place as they had been when Isaac surprised them.
“Wasn’t I showing you around?”
“Yes,” Lika said, smiling in return. She gestured to Masha. “Come with us.”
Masha had been about to take Mother’s cue and lie down herself, but she remembered now that Lika had an unrevealed purpose for coming. After all the emotional upheaval over Isaac, she had no desire to witness Lika’s promised telling-off.
“Yes, come, sister. Let’s show her our garden,” Antosha said.
For weeks, they’d been passing the seed catalogue back and forth. His enthusiasm conquered her apprehension. Also, it would be easier to deal with Lika’s accusations later if she heard them for herself.
Antosha took Lika’s arm. “We have grand plans. Eggplants here.” He stooped for a stick to point with. “Next to them. You’ll never guess.”
“Artichokes,” said Masha, who had doubts.
“By mid-summer Melikhovo will look like the south of France.”
They passed the post with the bell that Father rang daily at noon. Antosha commented on the thawing earth, so fragrant and fecund. He’d prefer a woman to daub mud behind her ears than scent.
Masha laughed. Lika didn’t.
“Her brow furrows,” Antosha said to Masha. “Some profound thought, or is it corns?”
He was enjoying himself now that they’d survived the melodrama of Isaac. He had no idea that Lika was angry, possibly doubly angry now. As Masha listened to him, something else occurred to her. He felt free to flirt because he knew what train they were taking, that Lika’s departure was imminent.
“Not corns,” Lika answered calmly. “I was thinking about your story.”
“Which one? Never mind. None are worth a thought once you reach ‘The End.’”
“To the contrary. I’ve been thinking about it ever since I read it.”
Antosha looked as confused as Masha felt.
“Yesterday you said I must have met someone at Sophia’s.” Lika slowed her speech, as though her words might explode if she didn’t pronounce them with the utmost care. Her colour was rising. “I did. A poetess. Quite pretty and smart. A polyglot. She’s only eighteen. Sophia’s completely in raptures over her.”
Antosha let go of Lika’s arm.
“Tatiana Shchepkina-Kupernik. Such a mouthful. Everyone calls her Topsy-Turvy Tania. Have you met her?”
“Never heard of her,” Antosha said.
“You’ll love her. She downed a few too many and ended up sitting on the floor. ‘I simply don’t understand,’ she kept moaning. ‘He’s been here, hasn’t he? He’s enjoyed your hospitality? Isn’t he your friend? I’ve had such a wonderful time tonight. I simply can’t understand why he wrote such things.’”
“What things?” Masha asked.
“She’d brought the journal with her. Of course, Sophia rushed off to read it. Not aloud, thank God.”
“Which story is this?” Masha asked, turning to Antosha. Such colour on his face! It was redder than when he coughed.
“She wouldn’t come back to the party, she was so upset. We were all dying of curiosity then. The next day I went out and found a copy. I didn’t show it to Isaac, but someone will. You should know that Sophia considers herself libelled.”
“Libelled?” Antosha’s brief laugh sounded like a stone rattled in a box. “She’s what? Forty-two? Dark as a Chechen. And she sees herself in a twenty-two-year-old blonde? That’s delusion, not libel.”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets. The pince-nez tilted, clung to his nose for a second, then fell. As he squinted into the distance, it swung back and forth across his chest like a man on the gallows.
In the same measured voice, Lika said, “A twenty-two-year-old blonde? Antosha, I’ve long wanted to tell you this. When you say or do hurtful things, I understand it’s not deliberate. You’re not trying to cause pain. It’s just that you don’t give a damn about anyone. And, by the way, I’m twenty.”
She turned and walked back to the house, leaving brother and sister standing there. On Antosha’s face, an expression rarer even than his previous blush. The last time Masha had seen it was at Kolia’s graveside when the priest tipped the censer and the grey snow of ash fell. She’d struggled to name it at the time. Regret?
He replaced the pince-nez and gave her a faint smile.
LIKA HAD BROUGHT THE OFFENDING JOURNAL, SO Masha read “The Grasshopper” on the train. How did he do it? The story was tongue-in-cheek, “Olga’s” salon a lampoon of Sophia’s, Olga herself superficial, stupid and cruel. She marries the doctor who saved her father’s life but, yearning to associate herself with artistic genius, begins an affair with her painting teacher, with whom she goes on summer excursions to the Volga River. Almost everyone in the story was recognizable as an actual person, or a simple composite, from the real-life salon. All of them Antosha mocked except the long-suffering doctor, called Dymov in the story.
But when Dymov dies—commits suicide, really, for he’s intentionally careless and infects himself with diphtheria—Masha actually cried. How did Antosha go from parody to tragedy without her noticing?
She blew
her nose.
Lika said, “You’re crying for me, I hope.”
“Dymov, actually.”
“Yes, the doctor. The only one he spares.” She glared prettily out the window. A porter walked through and stopped to look at her.
“But, Lika, much of it is complimentary. He describes Ryabovsky—”
“You mean Isaac.”
“—as a genius. Isaac will concur. Also, he made him fair-haired and blue-eyed.”
“A brilliant disguise.” Lika snatched the journal back and read out a passage. “‘I’m madly in love with you. Say the word and I’ll stop living, I’ll give up art. Love me, love me . . .’”
Her angry eyes were on Masha, who bit her tongue until she nearly tasted blood. Then she burst out laughing.
“You’re as bad as him, Masha! It’s not funny!”
“But it is, Lika. Isaac sounds just like that. And you should be flattered, you with your flaxen hair and your slender cherry tree of a figure.”
“She’s horrid.” She meant Olga in the story.
“You’re fine about being written about? You just don’t like what he says.”
“I don’t.” She turned to glare out at the countryside.
“He’s mocking Sophia, not you.”
Now she turned back, lowering her voice, though they were alone in the compartment. “And Dr. K.? How do you think he feels seeing their affair laid out for the whole country to read?”
“Are you telling me he doesn’t know?”
“Of course he does, but it’s unseemly, Masha. The man’s a saint.”
“Antosha has portrayed him as a saint.”
Lika threw up her hands. “All you do is defend him. He can do no wrong.”
Masha bristled. “Of course he can do wrong. But to say he doesn’t care about people? Do you really believe that?”
Lika nodded several times, taking this in. “You’re right. He loves humanity, just not people.”
She slumped against the window and closed her eyes, leaving Masha alone with her confused thoughts for most of the trip. Masha’s loyalty to Antosha would never waver, but it did chafe now against her affection for Lika, who rightly took umbrage. Added to this was her female sense of hurt.
A Russian Sister Page 20
