The Summer Guest

by Alison Anderson

  I must have blushed, but I told him proudly I would be going to Petersburg to attend the Bestuzhev courses and study to be a doctor. He took his hand away from mine and looked at me with amused astonishment: A doctor—what sort of idea is that?

  It was my father’s wish, and my mother’s. They see no reason why a woman cannot be educated and useful.

  I could not tell him that I suspected my mother was afraid I might not marry; perhaps I was not yet aware myself of the reasons why. Sitting there with him, watching the fishermen languidly casting their lines into the water, I could believe for a moment that he saw me differently, for who I was and who I wanted to be, since he was holding my hand, and spent these afternoons with me. He was pleasing, and I always felt a certain breathless urgency when Ulyasha or Grigory Petrovich called to me to say that the young man was waiting.

  Now he said, Useful? You don’t need to be educated to be useful.

  He was smiling at me, at the same time playing with a lock of my hair; he had taken it up so gently in his fingers that I hadn’t even noticed until then.

  Useful, how?

  He leaned closer and kissed me chastely on the cheek. I’ve always wanted, he said, leaning back, to know what a girl’s cheek feels like. And now I know.

  Before I could say anything, he put his lips on mine. I started to pull away, but he had his hand against my back and he held me and made his kiss more insistent, though still gentle. His other hand had moved up my hair to rest on my shoulder, and he curled my hair round and round with his fingers against my neck and it was as if all of me were being twirled by those soft fingers and lips.

  I pushed him away.

  He shrugged, raised an eyebrow, and said, You’ll have to learn to be more useful than that the day you have to start cutting people open and chopping off their legs, Dr. Lintvaryova.

  Andryusha, you’re horrid, I said, but my cheeks were burning, and I scrambled to my feet.

  He saw me back to the house, kissed my hand in a gentlemanly fashion, his eyes full of irony, and walked away.

  In the days to come, every time I thought about that moment, his blue eyes staring into mine, his fingers twirling my hair, I felt a dizziness that left me on my feet but filled me with both shame and surrender. I waited for him. I wanted him to do it again, to blur me into the summer landscape.

  He came a few more times but ignored me and went fishing instead with Pasha and Georges, even though they were so much younger. When he saw me, he always called me Doctor and my cheeks went red. Mama looked at me, but I remained stubbornly silent.

  I had pushed him away. That is my regret. I don’t know if it was instinctive, or my good upbringing, or mistrust. Because even though there were other young men later, in Petersburg or Moscow or even Sumy, and even though there were those I loved who did not kiss me, and those who kissed me whom I did not love, it was never the same. I did not love Andryusha; I don’t know what strange luminosity warmed the evening air that summer and stayed with me until I left for Petersburg. Perhaps it was youth, the last days of a certain blissful inexperience, nothing more. The moment above the river reflected it all.

  For Andryusha, it had been meaningless—a moment’s flirtation, engaged through boredom; the lack of anything better to do, futile but vivid.

  Mama told me that he made a wealthy marriage and lives on a huge estate not far from Kharkov.

  I suppose I still regret it, yes. Because it won’t come again, that I know.

  There were other suitors, or should I say real suitors, with nobler intentions; they hardly bear thinking about, but what else do I have to do at this moment? There was the fat one, Konstantin Ignatyevich, with his paunch and his fob watch, like a character out of an English novel; there was Aleksey Sergeyevich, with his spots and his stammer, so servile he made me want to giggle and hit him with my parasol (the rare times when I went about with a parasol—that is Natasha’s manie). Mama wrung her hands, urged me; Elena dissuaded me. And thankfully so. Could I have continued my work as a doctor? Can marriage provide that satisfaction of good work and generosity? Perhaps with children, but . . . When I see the unhappiness of some of my cousins or friends who have married—they do not know they are unhappy, they delude themselves quite successfully and proudly, but their illnesses and complaints tell a different story—I think I made the wise choice. As did Elena. For Natasha, it is too soon to say. She is immensely happy with her work as a teacher, but she is also a flirt who loves company and laughter and children, and noise and chaos . . .

  But am I being truly honest with this page? In the end, is it not a mirror, too, a distorting mirror? There are words that are like faults in the silver behind the glass . . . Of course I could avoid putting down the words that will follow, of course I could be evasive with myself, with the page, but the matter has tormented me—and perhaps Elena and Natasha, too—all my life, and as a doctor who studies the human body and the human soul, I cannot disregard this simple physical fact: We three sisters, without exception, are plain. We do not have beauty to recommend us. Elena is earnest to the point of being stern; Natasha is much more whimsical, but her laughter is perhaps too boyish, even rowdy. Perhaps that is why, early on, all three of us decided to study, and Mama encouraged us. Our Russian boys, like Andryusha, like Pasha and Georges, when they talk of women—if they talk of women—talk of little else: appearance. We are prizes in some competition they play among themselves. For Andryusha, I was an easy prize and a worthless one. A plain girl, eager and innocent, her affection easily won, just as easily tossed aside.

  If I had placed my hopes in marriage, I might feel bitter. Instead, I chose a path that brought a sense of usefulness and hope: Here was something in nature that I could change, where life’s unfairness could be redressed. Knowing that I eased suffering, even saved lives: those two little girls who had been caught in a fire in the village, or the infant with the terrible fever in Baranovka. Every day I think of them.

  But even if this journal is my only mirror, I don’t wish to indulge in vanity, however plain it might be. I know, and my patients know, what was done. Perhaps it was beauty of a different kind.

  I have gotten out of bed—it is the middle of the night—but I cannot sleep, so I take to scribbling on my writing board. It calms me to form the words, my sightless scratching against mortality. I lay in bed for the longest time, listening to the night through the window, before resolving to get up. The usual peaceful sounds of the river, and the owls and frogs, and some dogs far in the distance (and closer, Rosa snuffling in her sleep), and I thought I could hear someone singing. It’s not impossible, but it was so beautiful, so mysterious, it filled me with a sudden inexplicable hope: not that I might be cured and live a normal life after all, but that this short life remaining to me might be filled with an unexpected happiness of a rare, special kind—perhaps so rare because of what awaits me (and that is what is so odd, because it awaits us all, it is just that I must leave before my time, as they say, and with this suffering that I bear as best I can)—but now it is as if some strange reward might still come to me, utterly unexpectedly, with a kind of grace, like that faraway singing in the night.

  My heart is at rest now; perhaps I can sleep.

  The following night

  Again insomnia; perhaps it is from the excitement, or an excess of wine, which I know I ought not to drink but, at the same time, I realize how little difference it will make; or perhaps it’s the glorious weather, spring rushing up to us with open arms.

  I met our guests yesterday—yes, I like to think that they are guests (although they are paying for their room and board) and we are hosts. There is Evgenia Yakovlevna, who must be Mama’s age, with dry hands and a timorous voice; then the daughter, Maria Pavlovna, very soft-spoken. According to Natasha, she is not beautiful—if she’d been a man, she says, she’d have been handsome, but she has a calmness about her, and a smooth, sweet face that is most appealing. Natasha went on to describe their conversation at length—the schools, the
children, the pedagogy, the problems with the zemstvo. I have not yet had a chance to speak with her on my own, any more than an introduction; she is much in demand by her brother and her mother; she has a laugh like a clear, chiming bell, an infectious laugh that makes me want her brother to continually tease her and tell jokes. Which it would seem he does quite frequently already.

  This brother, then, is called Anton Pavlovich, and he is the writer. His voice is deep and strong, as befits a man of words; he kissed my hand and held it for a moment, a sensitive touch that did not surprise me when I learned he is also a doctor. Mama made much of his writing—he has had a play produced in Moscow, and his stories have been published in Northern Herald and New Times—but he seemed to suggest it was almost accidental, not so much a hobby as a fortuitous source of revenue. With Elena, the three of us talked briefly about the medical work here in the environs of Luka, and he offered to assist in any way he could. Elena was very grateful; she is quite overwhelmed at the moment. But did he not come here to write or relax? asked Mama, almost disappointed, and he laughed and said, Oh no, Madame, to be perfectly honest, I have come here for the fish! My brother, Misha, told me you have pike and perch and chub and crayfish and I don’t know what else in your river Psyol, and I’m looking forward to some good sport and excellent food.

  Then that you shall have, Mama assured him, if you don’t let my medical daughters drag you off on their house calls! Please use our rowboats, and when you bring back your catch, Anya is very good at preparing the fish as you like it, à la polonaise—she is Polish—but also à la russe, à l’ukrainienne . . .

  Natasha interrupted, saying something rather rude in Ukrainian that our guests did not understand, fortunately; and Georges grumbled to scold her and apologize for her at the same time, until Mama suggested he play something for us on the piano.

  I had a moment of sadness, because while Georges was playing—some Chopin nocturnes, and they always fill me with melancholy at the best of times—I could hear Anton Pavlovich murmuring with Elena, and there were words that rose above the music like the notes of a dissonant melody. His tone was concerned, the voice of a doctor, yes, but also dispassionate, one might even say clinical. I may still be a doctor for others, when my opinion can be of use, but to be my own patient is impossible, intolerable. So I recognized that professional tone, and I knew that, for the length of a brief conversation, I was his incurable patient.

  This insomnia is torment. Hours lost churning over one’s existence, changing nothing, fuming particles of sleep and anger and restlessness. Unless one uses the time to write, as I do now: idle thoughts that might otherwise have washed away, harmless, at dawn.

  Although it is said there are writers and poets who find inspiration in sleepless hours, I do not envy them. This dark time belongs to owls and frogs and stray dogs, to foxes and wolves. I do not feel safe until the cock crows. There was a time when candle or lamp could chase away foolish shadows, but now I must do it myself.

  THIS BROTHER, THEN, IS called Anton Pavlovich, and he is the writer.

  Ana shook her head, closed her eyes. Surely some ironic coincidence, someone with the same name and patronymic. Perfectly common Russian names.

  She took the printout of the text onto her lap and skimmed slowly across the Cyrillic characters until, fifteen pages further along, she found:

  Natasha, bold as ever, said to Anton Pavlovich that if we were to have Pleshcheyev and Tchaikovsky, then we must surely also have Chekhov.

  Perhaps they were merely referring to Chekhov, as they had referred to Tolstoy?

  Ana set aside the printout and keyed a few words into Google. And found:

  In the summers of 1888–1889 Anton Chekhov, with his family, stayed with the Lintvaryovs on their estate at Luka, near Sumy, Kharkovsky Province, Ukraine.

  What a gift this was in her quiet little life! To come upon a completely new, never before published vision of the great man—even if the diarist was blind, it was not his looks that mattered, there was an abundance of photographs to attest to his flair and charm—no, it would be how Zinaida Mikhailovna perceived him, what she told of his days, his words, the thoughts he might share . . . The young man, fresh, spontaneous, and himself, before the brand of fame.

  Ana looked around for Doodle, picked her up, squeezed her gently, spoke to her in Russian, daragaya koshka maya, and jigged around the room until the cat determined the nonsense had gone on long enough and began to wriggle.

  Ana drafted a short message to Katya Kendall, ostensibly to ask advice regarding the diarist’s lack of quotation marks, surely a consequence of her blindness—should she insert them?—and confirmed that she would refer to Crimea as the Crimea, as was the usage in the past, but should she use the Ukraine? She also asked why the journal must be kept confidential and whether the emphasis, when marketing the book, would be placed on the famous summer guest, or on the diarist, or on both. After she sent it, she realized it was a ridiculous question; she just wanted to share her enthusiasm with someone other than the cat.

  She spent the rest of the morning on the Internet, reading websites, searching, skimming.

  Chekhov, she learned, at the time he stayed with the Lintvaryovs, was on the eve of an extraordinary career. His stories had been selling well to various publications in Saint Petersburg; he had made a valuable ally of a publishing magnate, Aleksey Suvorin. He’d had a play produced in Moscow, Ivanov, which, although initially not well received, did give him a certain notoriety, and would go on to great success when it opened in Saint Petersburg in January 1889. These were his last weeks of relative anonymity, of normality, before the outside world began to claim him, to celebrate him, in both senses of the term, good and bad. He was twenty-eight years old.

  KATYA WAS PEELING POTATOES by the sink, waiting for Peter to come home.

  His homecoming, later and later these days. There were excuses—delays on the Underground, the pub with his old friend Jacob, who’d recently been made redundant—but Katya suspected he often just stayed at the office, brooding, drinking.

  She was surprised by her strength. She did not confront him; there did not seem to be any point. Some women would worry he had a mistress; if he did, she might be grateful at this point.

  She looked through the kitchen window, the familiar landscape of trees, sky, windows with their reassuring glow of a London evening. This had been home for so long. Would they lose it? There were mortgages. Peter had grown up here. They had moved to this house from their tiny flat in North London when his mother died. Katya’s mother, back in her dreary flat in the outskirts of Moscow. Tilting in a concrete box against the seismic forces of shoddy construction and dilapidation. They had been shocked the last time they visited. The obscene graffiti, the litter, the mud. The gangs of teenage boys lurking like feral dogs. Katya had wanted to bring her mother to London; the old woman refused. Once you closed the door on the stinking stairway (cabbage, urine, cat piss, stale rain), you entered her world: Everything was there. The small things Katya’s grandmother had rescued from before the Revolution: books, photographs, embroidered linens. A clock, still working. Her mother explained that these things could not be moved to an English house; they would be meaningless there, like language.

  Katya nicked her finger with the knife. Raised it to her lips: the taste of blood, salty skin, potato starch.

  She left the potatoes to soak in water and went to check the computer while waiting for Peter. He could call, at least. But he wouldn’t use a mobile. Even Katya’s mother had a mobile.

  She looked briefly at the news. These demonstrations in Kiev. She worried for them, those young people with a future. But she supposed they thought they had no future; she could see that, too. Their desperation had once been hers.

  A message from the translator. Why must the journal be kept confidential? That had been Peter’s idea; she did not agree. The world already knew Chekhov had been to Luka in 1888 and 1889. She did not care if word got out; in fact, the more people knew
about it, as far as she was concerned, the better. Peter had a plan, he said. A marketing plan. The translator had asked about that, too. Katya was not sure what Peter intended to do; they had never been good at marketing, that was part of the problem. He had been so evasive over these last weeks, and not just about the Sumy diary. But then she was being evasive as well.

  Let Peter answer the translator. It was out of her hands. From now on she would peel potatoes and look out her kitchen window at the London sky, such as it was. She was not sorry; she had been as active in the press as Peter until only recently; a perverse side of her was grateful to the bankers, to the crisis, for providing her with this excuse to cut down. Peter did not want her at the office, she could tell. He was finding it difficult to speak to her of the practical problems—the falling sales figures, the rising costs, the loans. Letters from the bank, impersonal, mildly condescending. Form letters, but still. He brooded. Clutched at straws, calling tour operators, Russian literature departments, émigré journals in the United States. Anyone who might be interested in their list. Pleaded with Bertrams, with Gardners, with Amazon and Waterstones for better terms. There were no better terms, he was told; everyone was taking a hit. This was business, after all.

  He’d had to let their assistant go, after fifteen loyal years. She moved back to Poland, where the economy was booming. Relatively.