“It’s in her handwriting,” Antosha said. “Only a psychopath would scrawl like that.”
The little brother couldn’t be consoled, which didn’t stop the elder from giving counsel. “Be like me, or our sister. Masha is one of those fine, rare women above matrimony.”
When she heard that, Masha had to go over to the samovar and wash the bitter taste out of her mouth. How had he decided that? For days, she silently seethed over this comment.
No cholera this year. Natalia visited, but only stayed a week. Olga still hadn’t come. Masha made do with Antosha’s visitors, the ones not still offended over “The Grasshopper.” Many held fast to their umbrage, but Antosha hardly lacked for friends. The house was full all the way to August, Mother fretting as usual about feeding and accommodating them.
Then one day, Masha found herself remembering what Antosha had said the first time she’d invited Lika to Melikhovo. “I knew something was missing from our paradise.” Masha couldn’t agree more. Lika had said she wanted to come. Would Antosha mind?
On her way to ask, she stopped herself. Why should she ask him? Lika would be her guest, not his. Masha wanted Lika for herself.
Lika readily accepted by post. Yes, yes! Next weekend? Something to live for . . .
A few days after that, the latest batch of hangers-on departed Melikhovo. Antosha, reading his letters after a quiet lunch, suddenly declared he was sick of company.
“Yet here’s Alexei sending someone to see me.”
He tossed the page down. Masha, clearing the table, checked how he was sitting in his chair. He’d been coughing at night too. Did the writing go badly because he felt unwell, or did he feel unwell when he couldn’t write? After all these years, she still couldn’t tell.
“Who?” she asked.
“Ignati Potapenko. A writer. Plays and novels. He’s an impresario of sorts too. I met him years ago in Odessa, that summer I travelled with the Maly Theatre. The God of Boredom, we called him, though he’s decent on the violin.”
Mention of the Maly reminded Masha of its director, Aleksander Lensky, one of the ones still holding a Grasshopper grudge. Antosha must have thought of him too, for he ground out his cigarette and said he had to take a walk before returning to his desk.
“Otherwise bile may come out of my pen.” He called to the dogs. “Bromine! Quinine!”
Masha followed him to the vestibule, where he put on his cap. “When’s this boring man coming?”
“You watch. He’ll ask for money. Suvorin warns me he will, yet he sends the beggar down.” He broke off coughing and turned his back, answering her between the bouts of hacking. “I’ve no idea when.”
“Because I invited Lika,” Masha said when he’d recovered.
No comment. If he was uncomfortable with this news, he didn’t show it, though Masha searched his face for an emotion. She wanted to say something. What? Be kind. In his present mood, it might backfire, so she held her tongue.
He opened the door, and in a frenzy of adoration, the dachshunds leapt against his trousers, receiving no rebuke for the dusty prints they left. With Antosha they didn’t bark but emitted the strange warbles that to Masha sounded vaguely English. Brom was black; he killed Masha’s fowl. Quinine, the bitch, was red. In both colour and shape, she reminded Masha of Svoloch, which deepened her resentment of them. Together they got into almost as much trouble as the mongoose, tunnelling in the garden, distributing shoes all over the house, grabbing patients by the trousers, defecating on the paths. Their snarls sounded homicidal, yet Antosha not only tolerated their behaviour, he loved them. They slept in his room at night.
“Come, my short friends. Let’s take a walk and forget the annoyances of the world. We’ll admire my sister’s eggplants, so like an aging actress’s breasts.”
He set off down the path past the bell on the post, the dachshunds criss-crossing in front of him, their funny ears flapping.
With the dogs out of the way, Masha headed for the henhouse to feed her charges—twenty-nine hens and forty-seven chicks. Down five birds, thanks to Brom.
AT THE STATION, LIKA SEEMED EBULLIENT AND JOYFUL, as oblivious as ever when the stationmaster muscled aside the porter and carried her bag to the carriage himself. As soon as they started driving, though, Masha noticed that her dimples appeared too often and that she laughed in a higher register. By the smell of her, she might have absent-mindedly applied scent more than once.
Lika was in the middle of a full-blown attack of hand-flapping nerves. It was Masha’s first inkling that she’d erred.
The second came when they got to Melikhovo and stepped into the vestibule together. Lika’s gaze, which had failed to settle anywhere on the drive, now fixed itself on Antosha’s closed door. Impossible not to think of that other reunion, when he’d tilted her face and washed it in colour, when she’d thrown her arms around his neck and squawked. This time the door did not open, and Lika just stood there, limp.
Antosha showed himself at dinner, of course, but his manner with Lika bordered on aloof. He didn’t tease her. No Lika the Beautiful, no Jamais, no Cantaloupe. When necessity forced him to speak to her, he addressed the negative space around her.
“Please excuse me,” he said, before dessert was served. “I have a hideous amount of work.” He offered the rest of them a half-portion of a smile and no particular one for Lika, who nonetheless forced her own smile until the deformity of her dimples showed.
Lika retired early, but probably slept as little as Masha, who tossed in bed in search of an appropriate object for her anger. It was as though Antosha’s devastating neutrality were directed at her. She heard him through the adjoining wall murmuring to Brom and Quin and yearned to march in and strangle all three of them. But then he began coughing, and she wondered what she had expected from him. This was how he always acted post-affair, until he could be sure there would be no outbursts from the lady. Did she want him to start teasing Lika like before? Wasn’t this better? And wasn’t Masha just as cruel for inviting Lika? No. Lika had accepted. She’d wanted to come. She should have stayed away if she was going to sulk.
The next morning, Masha and Lika worked in near silence in the garden before the sun got too hot. Mother asked for peas, and Masha sent Lika to pick them. They sat together in the shade of the veranda, Masha roughly stripping the shells, the peas plinking irritably into the bottom of the bowl. All these feelings! They were always other people’s. Would she never feel something for herself?
“I’m sorry,” Lika finally moaned. “I’m tedious company.”
Masha threw the empty pod into the basket at her feet. “You are. Why did you come, if it was going to hurt so much?”
“I didn’t know it would. Maybe I should leave.”
“Don’t you dare go.” Masha blurted it, surprising them both. The sparrows were quarrelling in the birch copse. She didn’t want to be like them, but every time it was the same. Antosha made them cry. She wiped their tears.
“Don’t be angry at him either, Masha. Everybody warned me he would be like this, but still I went.”
“Who warned you?”
“You,” Lika said. “Isaac and Sophia. That Kleopatra woman.”
Masha frowned. “The actress?”
A queasiness settled on her. She didn’t want to know the nature of the warning. She was his sister. It was unseemly. Yet she hadn’t forgotten Olga’s note to him, imploring him not to treat her roughly. Words like pins left behind in a new dress. Why had Olga never come? What had Antosha written back to her?
The sound of horses. A droshky appeared, its burly, bearded passenger leaning forward on the seat, talking to the driver, deep in some anecdote.
“Halloo!” he cried out when he noticed them. “Does the writer live here?”
Masha remembered then. She whispered to Lika, “That must be the God of Boredom. Antosha was expecting him.”
She set her bowl at her feet and stood, just as Brom and Quin tore around the corner of the house. The visitor h
ad been about to step down, but now he halted, one foot in the air, as the barking dogs advanced, on his face a mixture of understandable alarm and wonderment that such creatures could exist.
He pointed to the ravening dachshunds. To Masha, who was hastening to his rescue, he said, “What are they?”
“Stop it,” she told the dogs. “Hush.”
They wouldn’t heed her, despite the ungentle prodding of her foot. By then Antosha had heard the commotion and come out. As he passed Lika on the veranda, she reached out and touched his sleeve. He glanced back the way he would if his jacket had snagged on a twig. Masha, feeling it as Lika must have, flinched.
Antosha gathered up the dogs, one under each arm, jiggling and scolding. “Where are your manners?”
The visitor, still standing in the droshky, addressed him from his higher vantage, hand pressed to his broad chest. “Ignati Potapenko. Excuse the pedestal. I would prostrate myself if I weren’t afraid of your dogs.”
His tone, so high-flown, could only be self-mocking. He’d found a way to make a fawning speech palatable.
He plucked a handkerchief from his pocket to swab his red face. “Do you remember me? We met in Odessa. I begged Alexei to make the introduction. Forgive me if I was too bold, but I lurked around Moscow for a week, until I learned you never came anymore.”
“I remember. Welcome. This is my sister, Maria. Her friend Lika’s there on the veranda. She’s wearing a long face now, but wait until you see her smile. Bromine. Quinine.” He lifted each dog as he named them. They licked their lips. “If you let them sniff you, they’ll leave you be.”
Ignati hesitated to extend his hand. “Will I get it back?”
Antosha laughed. The dogs did as he promised, sniffed the meaty, bearded stranger, then wriggled to be put down. Ignati picked a violin case off the droshky’s seat, leapt to the ground and whirled around.
“What an Eden you live in!” As he walked off with Antosha, the driver cleared his throat.
“Ah, my good man. Apologies.”
Ignati set the violin on the ground, so he could ransack his pockets. This was the sort of moment Antosha found excruciating, so he paid.
“No matter,” he told Ignati as they continued toward the house. “You’ll repay me, I’m sure.” He shot a look at Masha. I told you so. But it pleased him when a guest took an interest in the garden. He said to Ignati, “I’ll get my cap and show you around.”
Ignati left his instrument on the veranda and, after bowing deeply to Lika, followed his host inside.
“Now Antosha won’t be able to work,” Masha said, sitting beside Lika again. “We’ll all suffer for it.”
She glanced at Lika, already suffering, and sighed.
Antosha and Ignati came back out by the side door, the one that led from the vestibule to the garden. Though Masha and Lika couldn’t see them from where they sat shelling, they heard Ignati’s booming voice. He exclaimed over the roses, then entreated Brom to release his trouser leg. Antosha told the dog to desist.
Then Ignati asked, “Who’s that beautiful girl? What’s her story?”
DURING LUNCH IGNATI MENTIONED THE POND, WHICH he’d noticed driving up. Could he have a swim before going back to Moscow?
“It’s more of a fishing pond than a swimming one,” Antosha told him.
“Do you fish?” Ignati asked as he helped himself to sour cabbage, the last uneaten dish on the table. He’d put away two servings of kasha with mushrooms, cold soup, beef pie and a third of the Olivier salad. In three bites he’d devoured a peach. Now Mother, sucking her lip into the toothless space, realized there was no stopping him.
“Blini,” she said, and hurried out.
“I do fish,” Antosha told Ignati. “You?”
“There are few things I like better.”
Antosha pushed his chair out to cross his legs, folded his hands on his knees and regarded their guest, who didn’t know him well enough to read his pose as mock-serious.
Ignati hadn’t spoiled Antosha’s mood. He’d improved it. For one, Ignati’s presence made it less obvious that he was ignoring Lika. He could enjoy his lunch now. Except Ignati was more than a convenience. In his exuberance and indefatigability, he reminded Masha of Isaac—without the irritating egoism. Sudden friendships were rare with Antosha, who was not only reserved but guarded against sycophants. But he’d lost his spiritual brother just as he’d lost his actual one. There was an unfilled role in his life and, until now, no understudy.
“Here’s a question for you, then, writer to writer,” Antosha said. “Be honest. Which do you prefer, fishing or writing?”
“Fishing,” Ignati replied. “I wouldn’t write at all, except I need money. Only a confirmed masochist would.”
All this time, Lika had been silently pecking at her food as she listened to their conversation. Now she said, “I can’t believe that. It must be wonderful to be a famous writer and read all about yourself in the papers.”
“Who? Me?” Ignati laughed loudly, showing teeth decorated with cabbage remnants. “I’m a slave. I can’t ever stop. I was writing on the train. Third class, all that hubbub. Out the window I see a cloud shaped like . . . a piano. I can’t just look at it. I have to write it down.”
He turned back to Antosha. “If you’d allow me a dip in your pond, I would be made new, and my toil easier on the return trip.”
Masha spelled it out. “It’s a mud hole.”
Mariushka limped in with a platter of blini. Ignati’s narrow eyes widened. Father came after, with glasses and three small bottles of liqueur, a rare honour bestowed now because Ignati had mentioned that his father was a priest.
As she served, Mariushka watched Ignati’s face. He kept nodding—one, two, three, four, five.
Antosha said, “Speaking as a doctor, I advise against swimming. For the sake of your digestive processes.”
“Am I eating too much?” he asked Mariushka.
“‘And the hungry soul—’”
Ignati finished for her. “‘—he filleth with good.’”
Mariushka stepped back in awe; everyone else burst out laughing.
“Stay, why don’t you?” Antosha said. “We’ll fish tonight.”
Masha glanced at Lika, who was playing with the corner of her napkin. Did the attention Antosha gave Ignati hurt her? Masha couldn’t tell.
“Let’s leave the writers to their gudgeon talk, Lika,” she told her.
They both rose. Ignati’s eyes followed Lika. Still hungry!
He called after them, “Are we losing both ladies at once? What agony!”
In her room, Masha gathered her stool and painting box, and they set out from the house toward a little view she had in mind. She made Lika carry the stool.
Was he handsome, this God of Boredom? The long narrow nose and narrow eyes softened his blockiness. His abundant beard was neatly trimmed. If his appearance was only satisfactory, the vigour he exuded and his obvious good humour made him attractive.
“What do you think of him?” Masha asked.
Lika shrugged.
“He keeps whipping out his little book and jotting notes. I wonder what he’s saying about us.”
They reached the place. A hedgerow with the rye fields beyond bleaching gold. Above, clouds wisped the blue. Masha opened the box in her lap and tilted the easel up.
Lika sank into the grass beside her. She was so quiet, Masha assumed that she’d fallen asleep, but next time she looked, she saw another paintable sight—Lika on her back, the green blades touching her cheek. Close by, a bee pivoted in a clover flower. Arms extended above her, tips of her forefingers and thumbs touching, she was looking at the sky through the shape she’d made.
Later, on their way back, as they neared the house, they heard splashing and incensed barking. Despite the quantity he’d eaten and the medical advice he’d received, there was no keeping Ignati out of the pond. As Ignati frolicked, Antosha stood by, hands in his pockets, shaking his head. The physical contrast between t
he men became obvious then; the spirited personage in their pond was healthy.
“I was wrong,” Antosha told Masha as she and Lika came up beside him. “He’s the God of Amusement.”
They watched Ignati’s hairy back rise from the murk. He burst into the air, whipped his head around. Water sprayed in a vortex that caught all three of them. Antosha and Masha stepped away. The dogs went wild.
Was it then or earlier, lying in the grass and gazing at that blue triangle her fingers made, that Lika decided to be amusing right back? She went over to the pond’s edge, dipped her hand and splashed water back into Ignati’s face. He returned fire. The dogs took Lika’s side.
Smiling, Antosha cleaned the droplets off his pince-nez. “I don’t care to get wet. I’ll see you at the house.” He turned and headed off, Brom and Quin racing to catch up.
“Ladies!” Ignati cried out. “Avert your eyes!” Ladies, he kept saying, but it was Lika to whom this playful god spoke. “I beg you. The merman wishes to climb onto dry land.”
Ignati’s clothes were hanging in a tree. Lika hooked the trousers on one finger and slung them over her shoulder. He roared out for her to leave them. Instead she marched over and threw them at him. Ignati managed to keep all but one leg out of the water.
She was acting like a headless chicken. While this was an improvement on the morose creature she’d been up until then, Masha didn’t fully believe the transformation. Though the actors may be different, the lines don’t change the second time you see a play. Neither does the ending.
Back at the house, Antosha had retired for his nap. Ignati, who had been directed to the rain barrel for a rinse, dried himself and settled in for a doze on the veranda, still muttering about his wet trouser leg. Inside, Masha laid out a hand of Patience while Lika softly played the piano. After twenty minutes, Ignati appeared in the doorway, filling the whole frame, chagrin on his face.
“Forgive me if this is rude, but I need to work.”
“The dining table is free,” Masha told him.
“This is embarrassing. Look.” He drew a thick sheaf of folded pages from his pocket, word-darkened from margin to margin. “Would you have any paper?”
A Russian Sister Page 25
