The Ladies' Lending Library

by Janice Kulyk Keefer

  Sonia watches the car drive away from the Metelskys’ cottage, bumping and rattling over the patchy asphalt of Tunnel Road. She hugs herself, as if it were an autumn night and she’d come out to look at the moon without a sweater. There is a moon, three-quarters full, gleaming foggily through rags of cloud that seem to hang in the air instead of drifting by, as if something had happened to the mechanism of the universe, and the earth had stopped turning, the winds forgotten to blow. And then Sonia shakes herself. “Don’t be such a fool,” she says out loud. Words that Sasha had told her to say to Peter, words of warning, pleading, scorn and reproach waiting to pour themselves out, words surging up from the imagination of disaster.

  What is it but the unexpectedness, the mystery of any life, that makes it possible to go on at all? The chances that perch like birds singing on a branch, or that whirl up like dust in your eyes: that a stranger might see your photo in a newspaper ad, and declare to himself that he will marry you; that a child will fall so ill on the eve of a life-changing journey that she will be abandoned by her parents; that a spider-shaped cluster of veins will burst in your brain just as you are about to enjoy some small share of happiness, after so many years away from your wife and children and country? A mystery, yes, but not like the detective novel she’s finally finished reading, with its suddenly simple answers to appallingly complicated puzzles. It’s more like a fog that appears just when you think things are fixed and certain, a fog that shakes and blurs, gently or harshly, all the firm, dark edges.

  She doesn’t know where Peter and Nadia will go, what they will do, how they will live with all they’ll have lost, and what they will make, together. If they fail, she tells herself, it will be worse, far worse than if the car they are driving out of Kalyna Beach should crash on the highway. And then she stops herself, steps back, examines, like a colt upon shaky legs, the field of possibilities in front of them. Would it really be worse, failure? Must it be so? Isn’t there a chance of something emerging from this risky, haphazard escape that will be, if not better than what’s gone before, then different? Different enough for an ending that, even if it isn’t happy, could still be alive, could still be open?

  All Sonia knows is that she’s had enough of living always in the purview of the Evil, or else the Ever-Watchful, Eye. She wants something more, something far better from what’s left of her life: she wants something like her mother’s talent for hopefulness. Her mother, who had led no charmed life, who had made as many mistakes as anyone else, who had been as wary of showing love to her son as she’d been profligate in loving her daughter, and yet had done what she could. Had given her children life and kept them from knowing war and all the horrors that had poisoned Marta’s existence. Who had brought them safely here, to this new place where it was up to them to make good or bad but to make their own ways, to live their lives, and not keep them locked up, like a dress in a closet, a statue on a mantelpiece.

  Sonia is suddenly terribly, terribly tired. She wants nothing more than to go back to the cottage, and, without even changing into her pyjamas, to curl up in her bed and sleep. But she can’t—not yet. She must return to the party and speak to Sasha, face Sasha, without excuses or consolations, or even confessions: just with the fact of what’s happened, under their very eyes.

  Sasha is leaning over the huge, empty balcony: nobody’s there, they are all inside, listening to Ivan playing “Moon River” on the piano. Max is standing beside the piano with Sonia, who came up to her not long ago, walked out with her here to tell her that Peter and Nadia are gone, and the rusty old Chev as well. And then there’d been nothing further to say. Sonia had returned to the warmth of the party, and Sasha had remained on the balcony, away from the lights and the laughter and singing, listening to the sleepy silence of the lake below.

  It must be nearly midnight, Sasha thinks. Mrs. Matski must have finished loading the tables with cabbage rolls and meat-on-a-stick, the leg of candied ham and the roast of beef, more fitting for December than August, but then, that was Jack’s way—royal excess. The tables will be spread, and Jack will start bellowing for Nadia, who is supposed to serve her guests, like a queen putting on an apron at Christmas and filling the servants’ plates with turkey. With any luck he’ll think she’s gone to bed: he won’t be happy, but maybe he’ll think it’s just Nadia, who can’t bear loud noise, or too much of anyone’s company.

  What will become of her? And Peter? Nadia can’t be in love with Peter: that was kids’ stuff, years ago—it wouldn’t be half so bad if she were. Sasha leans out over the railing, the way Nadia had leaned out the last time she’d come to a tea party, leaned out and looked at the waves, till Zirka had called her to account. Zirka and the children—it will be worst for Andriy; Yuri’s a tough one, he’ll survive anything. But it will be very hard for Andriy—Zirka will hang on to him, and hang on. Nadia and Peter: Sasha wants to curse them both. The selfishness, the thoughtlessness—and yet a part of her looks out over the lake, as if they’d fled, not in Peter’s car, but in the speedboat tied up at the dock, as if they had just escaped some catastrophe, an earthquake, a tidal wave, of which no one here has any inkling.

  “The rest of our lives,” she says aloud, not knowing why, or what she means. She winces, thinking of the ugly explosion on the cliff edge that afternoon, the rage of a woman wild with pain and lost power. Then she hears something her mother used to say, one of the few things she remembers spoken in her mother’s voice.

  “You’ve made your bed, now you’ll have to lie in it.” But not Peter and Nadia; they’ve broken the bed apart, they are cruel and selfish and for this one night, free, like characters escaping from the cover of a book.

  It’s strange, Sasha thinks, that she should be the one to really mind about what’s going to happen, that she should care so much for this fragile group of women and children and absentee husbands. She’s always been the one to make fun of it; she’s laughed behind her hands at all the Zirkas and Annies and Lesias who think it’s the only place on the planet, this obliging little world of Kalyna Beach. But she knows it better than anyone else, and she loves it best. It’s the kind of love that comes with understanding that life’s a matter of meat and drink, a feast you sit down to together, making room for everyone at the same table—even a Zirka, and, God help her, even a Nettie Shkurka with her battered daughter. For what would become of them if they were to be cast out? And what might have happened differently, had they been drawn in, those two, to the world of the Lending Library? Standing there, looking out over the lake, pressing her palms against the balustrade, she can feel it weighing her down: the loss of community, so carefully built and contained, nursed along, laughed at, yes, but never scorned.

  Ivan is calling to her from the doorway: Al Vesiuk is playing a waltz on the piano, she must come and dance. The schmaltzy old-time favourite, “The Anniversary Waltz.” But when Sasha goes to Ivan’s side, taking his hand in hers, she doesn’t move with him onto the floor. Instead, she watches, as everyone else in the room is watching, the couple dancing together as if they were the only people here.

  Max and Sonia. Max in a white shirt and worn khaki trousers; Sonia in her gingham dress, more suitable for Little Women than Cleopatra. Yet they could be wearing a tux and a gown of gold lamé, the way they sweep across the floor, eyes locked, hands placed so lightly on each other’s bodies. Sasha hasn’t seen Max smile like this in years. And Sonia—the beauty of her face, not pale with grief or fear, but clear with the joy of the moment. She is looking straight into her husband’s eyes; she is looking at him without reproach or apprehension; she is fierce, almost reckless in her happiness. Knowing that for once, even if only for the space of a waltz, the short space between anticipation and experience, she has been swept up, body, soul and riddled heart, into a melody sweeter, stronger than the tune Al Vesiuk is coaxing from the out-of-tune piano.

  Now Max and Sonia are beckoning to the others in the room to join them, for all the world as if they were bride and groom claiming
the first dance of the evening and finally acknowledging their wedding guests. Ivan steers Sasha by her elbow onto the dance floor: a little drunk, a little too satisfied with himself and the hit he’s made tonight with his improvisations and his jokes, but still her own, dear Ivan. Sasha shuts her eyes and surrenders to the dance, wishing the waltz to go on forever, for Max and Sonia to keep them all together in this rare romance of the present moment. And yet what she sees is the two who are gone: no longer Peter and Nadia, but simply two lovers, driving together in the dark somewhere, on the way to Thunder Bay or Fort Garry or Montreal—wherever they’re headed to make this outrageous, impossible break with the way things are and have to be.

  She wants to lash out at them, as Nettie’s done with Nastia. And she wants to shower them with rose petals, to rush down to the dock to wave them off on their reckless, needy journey into possibility.

  Acknowledgements

  Kalyna Beach is an imaginary place, although its geography is that of Georgian Bay, where my Aunt Vera and Uncle Gus had a cottage that was the paradise of my childhood. The characters in this novel are as imaginary as the setting, and bear no resemblance to the cottagers of that stretch of Georgian Bay where I was lucky enough to spend so many of my early summers.

  Readers of Katherine Mansfield will recognize the debt that I owe to the author of “At the Bay.”

  I am grateful for the acumen, patience and kindness of my agent, Dean Cooke, and to Iris Tupholme—editor extraordinaire—in reading and helping to shape so many versions of this book. My thanks to Irene Guilford and Donna McFarlane for their writerly responses to this work and to Taras Koznarsky for his help with my Ukrainian.

  About the Author

  JANICE KULYK KEEFER is the critically acclaimed author of Thieves, Honey and Ashes, The Green Library (nominated for a Governor General’s Award) and Under Eastern Eyes (also nominated for a Governor General’s Award). She is a recipient of the Marian Engel Award, the Kobzar Award, and several National Magazine Awards. Janice Kulyk Keefer lives in Toronto.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Other Books by Janice Kulyk Keefer

  The Paris–Napoli Express

  White of the Lesser Angels

  Transfigurations

  Under Eastern Eyes:

  A Critical Reading of Canadian Maritime Fiction

  Constellations

  Reading Mavis Gallant

  Travelling Ladies

  Rest Harrow

  The Green Library

  Marrying the Sea

  Honey and Ashes

  Anna’s Goat

  Thieves

  Dark Ghost in the Corner

  Midnight Stroll

  Copyright

  The Ladies’ Lending Library

  Copyright © 2007 by Janice Kulyk Keefer.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPUB Edition June 2014 ISBN 9781443440417

  Published by Harper Weekend, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

  First published in hardcover by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd: 2007

  First HarperCollins Publishers Ltd trade paperback edition: 2007

  This Harper Weekend trade paperback edition: 2010

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

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  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Keefer, Janice Kulyk, 1952–

  The ladies’ lending library / Janice Kulyk Keefer.

  ISBN 978-1-55468-899-9

  I. Title.

  PS8571E435L33 2010 C813’.54 C2010-903449-X

  RRD 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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