She’d calmed enough to see the dripping hedgerows they were passing and feel the crackle of paper through the cloth under her hand. Without any compunction, she took out and unfolded Olga’s note. She would tear it up if she had to.
Two agonized sentences:
I’ll come, but I implore you to treat me, if not gently (that’s not possible with you), then not too roughly. I have become impossibly sensitive.
By the time they reached Melikhovo, the horses were muddied to their flanks, but Olga’s words had washed away Masha’s anger.
AT DINNER EVERYONE GRILLED HER. ANTOSHA WAS amazed that the patients weren’t locked up, that they were treated as free human beings.
“Even entertained,” he said. “And so well.”
“But why’s Olechka taking a cure?” Misha asked.
“A cure for what?” Mother asked.
Father muttered something about her needing an exorcist.
“She’s not like us, Mother,” Antosha said. “She’s a higher being soaring among the stars, free and independent.”
“I assure you, brother,” Masha said, “she has earthly feelings.”
“Remember her at Bogimovo, putting Dr. Wagner in his place? She told him his shirt was an attempt at superior plumage.” Antosha laughed.
“Olechka has a poor opinion of men,” Mother said.
“Rightly so,” he said.
“Ninety-nine out of a hundred have no brains,” Masha added under her breath.
Antosha laughed again. He assumed, of course, that he was in the one percent. He was, but could there be a different organ that he lacked?
After dinner Masha took Olga’s note to Antosha’s study, but did not immediately hand it over. Its intimation of violence brought back the scene she’d witnessed the night Lika had slapped him. Was he really trying not to hurt them?
She spoke from the door. “Olga’s still in love with you after all these years. I felt so terrible for her today.”
His shoulders sank, and he placed the pen in the stand beside the rearing horse.
Masha said, “I introduced you to all my friends. I knew they’d fall in love. It made me feel important, to you and to them.”
He looked up with a weary expression, removed the pince-nez and massaged the red mark that it left. A bizarre thought popped into her head then, that the terrible burden of all this passion weighed on him there—on his nose—where other men felt it in their hearts.
He answered as a doctor, a psychiatrist even. “When we idealize love, we assume those we love possess qualities that often just aren’t there. It’s a source of continual suffering.”
“That’s true,” she said.
His brow pleated. “But is there really such a thing as love?”
“Of course!”
“I mean romantic love. Does it actually exist, or is it just physical attraction? Is it a psychosis? It often presents as such. Could we live without it, or would life be unbearably dull?” He put the pince-nez back on and looked out the window at the garden, that riot of colour, their south of France. “Do flowers feel it?”
It came to her then that she hadn’t made herself more important, but the opposite. Had she thought they wouldn’t like her for herself? Yes, she had. She was always shy at school because she’d had to beg for that free place and believed everybody knew and despised her for being poor. Worse than poor, from the peasantry. Serf stock, like the people in the huts they visited at Bogimovo, living in filth with the flies and their pathetic sweet wrappers pasted on the walls. She’d never shaken off the feeling, not even during her Guerrier courses, though Antosha had paid for them fully. By then she despised herself.
Some crude emotion welled up in Masha. She strode over and slammed the letter on the blotter, startling him. His surprise gave way to consternation, then to something else. His handsome features smoothed.
He was disappointed in her. Her outburst. Her incontinence. His disappointment pitted against her anger, but for once he was the first to turn away.
4
OLGA DIDN’T COME. HAD ANTOSHA EVEN ANSWERED her note? Masha was afraid to ask.
Late that summer, she set up her easel in the garden. She wanted to paint her cabbages, their heads grown to human size, dressed in their pretty green ruffs. After the first wash, she set the paper aside to drink the paint and tried to amuse herself with a cartoon portrait of a woman’s shoulders, neck and hair, but a cabbage for a face. Masha thought of Olga again and the strange things she’d said about the stars. Then her accusations.
What would happen to Olga? What would happen to any of them? Masha’s corset felt so tight. Why did she wear it? She got off the stool and stood, trying to take a full breath.
Father, at work on the other side of the garden, came along the path pushing the wheelbarrow. He noticed Masha, who had by then sunk to the ground. With a shout, he began running. Halfway, he lowered the barrow and stumbled on without it.
“Nothing,” Masha told him from where she lay, her head in its predestined place in the row.
He bent over her, a hand on each knee, the white tendrils of his beard reaching down. She hadn’t seen Father from below like this since she was a child. Filling his sadistic little eyes now—love and concern.
“I just felt dizzy,” she told him. “I’m fine.”
To prove it, she pushed herself up and with her dirty hand brushed off her skirt, making it worse. Then she teetered into the house where Mother berated her for the condition of her just-laundered dress.
Antosha still hadn’t budged from Melikhovo, not even to go to Moscow let alone the Caucasus with Lika. He was having an odourless earth closet installed and the windows double-glazed. There were cucumbers to pickle too, and potatoes and tulip bulbs to inter for resurrection in the spring.
So much to do. Work, work, work. They had to go on living.
WHEN SCHOOL RESUMED, MASHA MOVED TO ANOTHER room in Moscow’s Tverskoy district, larger so that Misha could stay when he came to town. (Antosha grumbled about this. He thought they could do without Misha now, that he should go back to the tax office.) Masha’s first guest was Lika.
Forgoing tea, Lika walked around with the jam dish, eating straight from it while studying Masha’s paintings.
“I like this one best.” The pond at Melikhovo with the house behind it. She clattered her teeth against the spoon and smiled. “Remember you drew me, then tore it up?”
“Should we try again?” Masha asked. It would be easier to say what she planned to tell her, if she didn’t have to hold Lika’s gaze.
Lika settled at the table with her chin propped up in one hand.
“How was Tver and your aunt?” Masha asked.
“Boring. I almost died. I would have gone back to Moscow, except she wouldn’t let me. ‘Likusha! It’s time to stop running around with these Bohemians!’”
Masha was outlining, working fast. “So she knew about your Caucasian holiday plans?”
“No! She would have murdered me, or Granny would have.”
That Lika’s plans had come to naught they both knew, so why not just bring it up?
“Couldn’t you find another friend to go with?”
“No. Antosha tortured me all summer with his letters, pretending to be making up his mind.”
Masha chose her tone as carefully as she would choose a colour, adding sympathy to firmness. “He had no intention of going.”
Lika’s eyes dropped momentarily. Under her lids, a barely perceptible undulation. She looked up again with a different expression. Philosophical, even stoic.
“Weren’t there any men in Tver?” Masha asked.
“Ha. You sound like your brother. He wrote that I should find myself a soldier from the barracks near my aunt.”
“Why don’t you listen to him?”
Careful words again, the barbs removed. Masha went over the feathered lines so that she could look at the page instead of at Lika. She wanted to warn Lika, but not sound like she was speaking ill of Antos
ha.
“Because there are other women interested in Antosha. You realize that?”
“Klara, you mean?”
“And others. I wish you had a different nose. Or that you’d stop wiggling the one you have.”
“I deserved what he did when I visited.”
Masha glanced up. “What did he do?”
She was thinking of the scene she’d witnessed in the birch copse, but Lika, still holding herself in her pose, answered more generally.
“Encouraged my competition. Even so, I was disappointed that he liked Klara’s sort. I was stupid not to realize that.”
“From what I’ve observed—and remember that I grew up with five brothers—most men like any sort of woman who comes around. You don’t know men.”
“Actually, I do.” Something caught in Lika’s throat then, and she had to break her pose to cough.
“Tea?” Masha asked.
Lika declined with a wave, but Masha couldn’t bear the sound of coughing. She left her sketch and went to pour a glass of water from the jug on the sideboard. It was a dry cough, shallow-sounding, not deep and moist like Antosha’s. Nothing to be concerned about. It almost sounded false.
Lika wiped the tears off her face with one hand, then accepted the glass. After she drank, she took out her handkerchief and wiped her nose.
“There,” she said with superfluous dabs and a smile. “I suppose I’m not fit to draw now.”
Snorting at this false modesty, Masha resumed her place and Lika her pose. But something was different now. Partly it was Lika’s expression. She was subdued. Sad. Her grey eyes looked straight ahead as though seeing nothing. Better just to get it over with. Masha set the pencil and book aside.
“Lika, Antosha loves you as my friend.” She nearly cringed to hear herself speaking words so similar to ones Georgi had used on her. But hadn’t they done her good? What if she was still mooning over Georgi? “He never stays long with any woman. Misha would. Don’t you like Misha?”
Lika smiled, which was good. “Misha’s a darling.”
“Fall in love with him instead.”
“How about I fall in love with . . .” She looked around. “This spoon.” With two hands, she snatched it off the table and began kissing it all over. “Spoon! I can’t live without you!”
Masha, stern schoolmistress, crossed her arms. Lika tossed the spoon back onto the table. The clink of it hitting the saucer sounded like ouch.
“Have you really never been in love, Masha?”
HADN’T SHE BEEN? SHE THOUGHT SHE’D LOVED GEORGI. What she’d felt for Lieutenant Egorov had been retroactive—idealized, as Antosha had put it. The actual blinking, bald, finger-crooking person who’d proposed—he’d vanished the moment he left the room. The fiasco with Isaac barely counted. Svoloch she’d loved. She loved Antosha.
Now another question begged to be asked. If those were her purest, most enduring feelings, had she ever been in love?
Mariushka’s oft-muttered expression came to mind. “Better to marry than to burn.” Was it love if there was no fire?
IN OCTOBER LIKA WROTE ANTOSHA A LETTER SO PROVOCATIVE that it would have burst into flames in any other man’s hand.
I am burning my life. Come as soon as possible and help me burn it out. I am becoming the sort of woman you would not have to feel an obligation toward . . .
Masha read it when she came to Melikhovo on the weekend. Had her warning had a contrary effect, then? Had Masha unwittingly blown on the embers of Lika’s passion? And was she, Masha, incombustible?
Antosha wasn’t there. He’d gone to visit Alexei Suvorin in St. Petersburg. For his friend and patron, he travelled that between-season road, its frozen ruts agonizing for a hemorrhoidal personage despite the carriage springs.
She dropped the letter on his desk where the bronze horse stamped his hoof in disapproval. The fact that Antosha had left it out proved he had no intention of participating in Lika’s cremation. He probably wanted Masha to speak to Lika, which she already had. Should she try again?
She was not alarmed until the following weekend when she returned to Melikhovo and discovered that Antosha still wasn’t back as planned.
“He stopped over in Moscow,” Mother told her.
“In Moscow? Why?”
“It’s snowing now. He wants to wait until he can travel by sledge. That road really makes poor Antonshevu suffer.”
Mother shook her head—sympathetically, Masha thought. But then her bottom lip trembled, and she tearfully added, “He was in a terrible temper before he left. Every morning he said such spiteful things to me. Then instead of apologizing, he said, ‘I’m the one who should cry, Mamasha. I have a bunch of grapes growing out my backside.’”
The snow would fall over the woods and fields. It would fall over the road and gradually, layer by layer, fill those painful ruts. And what would Antosha do in Moscow while he waited? Help Lika light those matches and build a pyre of her life? Maybe he’d left the letter for Masha to read so that she would know exactly what he was doing. To implicate her even further.
Masha didn’t want to be implicated. Olga’s suffering had changed her. Too late for Olga and the others, but not Lika.
She went out to the henhouse. The flock was hers, though she stopped short of naming hens that she would eventually meet on her plate, stripped of their feathery skirts in cinnamon and black. They seemed to know her, jerking and bobbing all around her as they pecked the grain out of her hand.
Afterward, Masha sat on a bale of hay and, hugging herself, listened to their clucking gossip. Misha came in wearing his ridiculous farmer’s cap. His ears made the crown sit too high. He was surprised to find her there.
“Who are you hiding from? Mother?”
“No. I’m just thinking.”
“Did you feed them?”
“Yes.”
He turned to go, then stopped. “Thinking about what?”
“Lika. What does Antosha say about her?”
He frowned. “That she’s the most incomparably beautiful creature you ever brought home.”
Masha thought she might vomit and hugged herself harder. “What’s he going to do about it?”
“Nothing. He’s running around with some actress. Anyway, you needn’t worry about her. Once he told me, ‘Brother, you must be careful with girls like Lika.’”
“What did he mean?”
“I’m not sure. That she was so young, I think.” He stamped his farmer’s boots and went out.
By Sunday the snow was thick enough that Misha drove Masha to the station in the sledge. At school on Monday, after some subtle questioning, Masha determined that Lika had no knowledge that Antosha had even been in town.
Her relief made her link arms with her friend and say, “After school I’m taking you to Filipov’s!”
THE FOLLOWING WEEKEND MASHA STAYED IN MOSCOW. Antosha would be home, and she preferred to avoid the grim situation that Mother had tearfully described. The writer and his bunch of grapes. Also, she was still concerned about Lika’s incendiary letter, her private determination to turn herself into the sort of woman Antosha would not have to feel an obligation toward. Masha wanted to stay close to Lika, to chaperone her, as she should have been doing all along.
They went shopping for dress material, which was infinitely more amusing than being snapped at by a hemorrhoidal personage. Lika bought a bag of gumdrops, screwed one into each eye socket, and squinted to lock them in place. With one red protruding eyeball and one green, she pretended to inspect the goods. A clerk rushed over—the look on his face! They fell into each other, laughing.
Later, as they were leaving Muir and Mirrielees, a voice rang out. “Masha! And is that Lika?”
Here was someone to protect Lika from: Klara, crossing the street, smiling froggily.
“I just had my hair curled. Let’s have tea before my hat flattens it again.”
Masha answered for them. “We already have.”
“At least show me what
you bought.”
They stepped back inside the store, out of the cold. Klara cut in front of Lika, causing Lika to tread accidentally on Klara’s foot. Klara retaliated with the toe of her boot, according to custom.
“There,” Klara said, smirking. “Now we won’t fight. We’ll be friends.”
Masha showed Klara the fabric, a dark green wool, and was rewarded with an indifferent nod. Lika offered her gumdrops. Klara stuffed her whole hand in the bag, tearing it, and popped one in her mouth.
“Sweet. Just like being carried away by two brothers at once. I’ve been wondering about you, Lika. I haven’t seen you since the summer. I asked after you when I saw Antosha, but he had no news.”
Lika glanced at Masha but directed her question to Klara. “Were you at Melikhovo?”
“No. I saw him here in Moscow a few weeks back. He was with Tania Shchepkina-Kupernik and her consort.”
“Tania?” Lika asked. “Who was she with?”
“Lidia Iavorskaya. You know, the actress. Tongues are wagging about those two.”
“What do you mean, ‘consort’?” Masha asked.
Klara turned to her and, with her tongue, moved the gumdrop to the other side of her mouth. “You’re a teacher. I think you know the meaning of the word.”
Offended by Klara’s tone, Masha said, “Well, goodbye,” and pushed open Muir and Mirrielees’ ornate door.
She and Lika headed for the tram in silence, Lika’s troubled inward gaze causing her to walk an uneven line. Masha guessed that she was turning over in her mind what Klara had said. Antosha had come to Moscow and not told her. Heartlessly, he’d left her to burn.
Good, Masha thought.
A consort is a husband, wife or special companion. Or a habitual disapproved-of associate.
Why hadn’t she just said “friend”?
BY CHRISTMAS BOTH ANTOSHA’S HEMORRHOIDS AND his irritability had shrunk by half. The whole family cheered up with him. Masha enjoyed the break from school and her self-assigned chaperoning.
Their relationship—Masha and Lika’s—was a colt, delicately awkward. Lika had no idea that Masha had read her reckless letter, or that she, Masha, had vowed to thwart this recklessness. That Masha had singled Lika out to be her means of atonement on behalf of all her friends. But for now, Lika was safe in Moscow under Granny’s watchful eye for the holiday. Reprieved, Masha finished a painting of Melikhovo in the snow, which everyone admired.
A Russian Sister Page 23
