The Summer Guest (30 page)

He grew thoughtful, frowned, scratched his beard, and said finally, Of course, the first one was born while Anton Pavlovich was staying with them, July 1888, if I'm not mistaken . . . Yes, a girl it was, Ksenia. She became a doctor. And then a few years later, they had a boy.

Seryozha! Larissa Lvovna exploded. Surely you remember it was the other way around! It was a boy first—Vsevolod. It's right there in Sapukhin's book, on your shelf! She turned to Ana. This seems a terrible discrepancy, she said. I don't know what to think.

Well, there must be a mistake.

Larissa Lvovna shrugged fatalistically. Whose mistake?

Can't we ask the author of that book?

Sapukhin? He died in 1970.

Larissa Lvovna gathered up the pages of the printout, tapped them on her lap, and handed them back to Ana. I've read enough for now, she said, I don't like this mistake.

Sergey Ivanovich protested. It's not a—

I don't like it one bit. It's very odd. When you have the diary authenticated, I'll read the rest.

Ana said, When, then, Larissa Lvovna, was Ksenia Lintvar-yova born, according to this Mr. Sapukhin?

Not until 1894. Three years after Zinaida Mikhailovna died.

They sat in puzzled silence. Ana's heart was hammering in her chest, while her mind lapsed into a vague confused trance close to prayer. Sergey Ivanovich asked her, And what do you think of our new government in Kiev?

Seryozha, please, said Larissa Lvovna.

Well, I'm pleased you got rid of the old one, said Ana, trying to sound cheerful, then instantly wondering if she hadn't put her foot in it.

There was an uncomfortable silence. Larissa Lvovna was shaking her head, and it was impossible to tell whether it was in disagreement or exasperation. Sergey Ivanovich opened his mouth as if about to speak, then thought better of it.

I hope the fighting in the south will be over soon, said Ana, looking at them.

They seemed to agree on that, nodding gravely while withholding whom they hoped would win.

Ana went back to the hotel that night determined, somehow, to prove that Sergey Ivanovich was no absent-minded buffoon, that his version of the Lintvaryov family tree was correct: Ksenia was Pavel Mikhailovich and Antonida Fyodorovna's firstborn child.

She ate a hurried supper—more borscht, not as tasty as the day
before—then tried again to call Katya Kendall. She would have no trouble confronting her; all she had to do was ask if Katya had ever been to Sumy, then tell her about the discrepancy and see what she said.

She heard the faraway ringing; there was no answer, not even a voicemail message this time.

The storm-heavy air seemed to reverberate with Ana's apprehension. She went to reception and asked if there was a computer with an Internet connection that she could use, and the young woman led her to a stifling windowless office. If beginning storm, she said in English, please to turn off computer. She pointed meaningfully to the various switches.

Ana wondered why she had not thought of looking on the Internet sooner. Gullibility, a willingness to trust and believe, to give others the benefit of the doubt?

On Amazon she found several books written by Catherine Kendall, all published by Polyana Press: two travel books on Saint Petersburg and a historical novel about Grand Duchess Anastasia,
Anastasia Nikolayevna
. Ana was able to browse a few pages. It was written, as far as she could tell, in diary form. There was no evidence that it was a translation; it appeared to have been written directly in English.

She googled Polyana Press and found a very recent article in
The Bookseller,
published the day before she left for Kiev, reporting that the press had gone into receivership.
This small independent publisher,
confirmed the article,
has been struggling since the financial downturn of 2008. Interest in travel writing has waned dramatically, and lucrative contracts with Russia have also fallen off, due to the economic situation and now the political crisis over Ukraine
,
according to Peter Kendall, the publisher
.

This went a long way toward explaining their silence and the fact that she hadn't been paid, although that no longer seemed to matter.

She recalled Larissa Lvovna referring to Chekhov's letter to Pleshcheyev, a letter in which he described the birth of Pavel and Antonida's child. The letters were available online, so Ana looked there next, while the thunder got louder and the lights began to flicker. Storm beginning, must to turn off computer, she thought, but the receptionist did not come to scold her.

Anton Pavlovich did indeed write a letter to Pleshcheyev on July 7, 1888, in which he described the imminent birth of Pavel and Antonida's child.

I am writing to you, dear Aleksey Nikolayevich, and at this very moment all of Luka is in a complete uproar, a whirlwind of shouts, cries, and groans: Antonida Fyodorovna is giving birth. Every now and then I have to run over to the cottage vis-à-vis, where the newly minted parents live. The birth is not a difficult one, but it is taking a while . . .

Chekhov sent his letter before he knew whether the baby was a boy or a girl.

Ana skimmed subsequent letters but found nothing. She switched off the computer and went back up to her room, stopping at the bar to buy a few miniatures of vodka. It had begun to rain. She opened the window and breathed in the fresh ozone. She didn't know what to think; the Internet had brought no answer to her query. It was an old-fashioned query, for rural registry offices, dusty ledgers, pen and ink. So much could have disappeared during the Revolution, too—and who was this Comrade Sapukhin to impose his administrative wisdom upon generations of Chekhov scholars?

She sat down with the vodka, then took out the book she had bought at the museum and began to leaf through it in the dim light.

A. P. Chekhov in the Sumy Region,
by one P. A. Sapukhin, the same. She looked more closely, although the quality of the print was so bad that she began to develop a headache and see spots.

There it was, on page thirty-two, as Larissa Lvovna had said:
1888, born on July 7 and baptized on July 11, VSEVOLOD
. With the names of the parents clearly set out below,
Pavel Lintvaryov son of Mikhail and Antonida daughter of Fyodor.

Ana did not sleep much that night for brooding. Putting together the possible pieces: Sergey Ivanovich had shown Katya around the museum; she could have gotten her misinformation from him (and had apparently neglected to buy a copy of Sapukhin). But even supposing (as Larissa might) that Katya Kendall had written the diary herself and incorporated Sergey Ivanovich's mistake, why add Chekhov's novel? A straight story about Zinaida Mikhailovna would be believable, even written in the first person, but why add Anton Pavlovich's novel when there was no proof it had ever existed? Wouldn't that raise suspicion?

On the other hand, it would help the sales of Zinaida Mikhailovna's diary if readers thought that every attic and archive from Saint Petersburg to Sevastopol was being turned upside down by literary sleuths—academics, students, publishers, editors, literary agents, theater directors, translators—eager to find Anton Chekhov's lost novel.

But as a prop within a forged diary . . . even supposing Katya had started out writing the journal not as a forgery but as pure fiction: Chekhov himself famously said you don't plant a pistol in Act I if you don't intend to use it.

Ana awoke with a start to distant noises of traffic and two men arguing in the street, swearing drunkenly. They must have been at it all night, she thought; sunlight was streaming through the window. And then she realized with dread that she must look one more time on the Internet. Sapukhin—and Larissa Lvovna—must be disproved.

Authentication, at least as far as Larissa Lvovna was concerned,
would start with showing that Ksenia was Pavel and Antonida's firstborn. Without knowing where Katya had obtained the diary, this would be difficult; the émigré attic? Perhaps the next place to look. Ana had an irrational vista of London rooftops stretching for miles, and herself flying over them like some literary Peter Pan.

Why hadn't she pressed Katya, nagged her at lunch, instead of allowing herself to be beguiled by wine and poetry?

Then there were Georges Lintvaryov's descendants: What had Sergey Ivanovich said? Spread all over the world, on three continents. Ana felt a wave of discouragement.

After breakfast—a generous pile of delicious blini but meager consolation—she asked to use the computer again. She mumbled an excuse about having been interrupted by the storm; the receptionist merely smiled graciously. Slowly, Ana keyed in the siblings' names in Cyrillic.

This time she found a document, mostly in Ukrainian, twenty-nine pages long: Родословие Линтварёвых, or Родовід Линтварьових, a sort of genealogical history of the entire Lintvaryov family beginning in 1700, including quotations from Chekhov. She scrolled slowly through it, past names she could reasonably recognize as the family she knew, and finally, on page twenty-four, she came to the brother-and-sister pair she was looking for.

Vsevolod Pavlovich, born July 9, 1888. Baptized July 11, 1888, at St. John the Baptist Church. Godparents: Dr. Basil P. Vorontsov from the city of Saint Petersburg and Elena Mikhailovna Lintvaryova.

Ksenia Pavlovna, born January 24, 1894. Baptized April 20, 1894, at Sumy Church of the Resurrection. Godparents: Georgi Mikhailovich Lintvaryov and Elena Mikhailovna Lintvaryova.

Three years after Zinaida Mikhailovna's death.

Ana stared at the screen, wondering if she had not confused the alphabet. She willed the words to move, to shift places.

She tried in vain to find what authority lay behind this website; it was certainly not the Ukrainian government, only an amateur reproducing—albeit very professionally, as far she could tell—the genealogy of the Lintvaryov family.

Was it incontestable proof? An old document retyped on the Internet? And what about Sapukhin—wasn't he just some stuffy Soviet academic who couldn't have been very interested in children?

But deep down, Ana feared that Larissa Lvovna was right. And she feared for her modest pilgrimage.

She suddenly saw them as vividly as if she were there physically. They were standing on the far shore of the Psyol, waving to her and laughing: Anton Pavlovich, and the three Lintvaryova sisters and their two brothers, and Grigory Petrovich, and Marmelad with his mustache, and Nikolay Pavlovich back from the dead, and Masha and Ivan and Misha and their mother, and finally, Tonya, holding a baby bundled in a pale gray blanket, and it was impossible to tell whether it was a boy or a girl, but they were all laughing and crying out, Girl! Boy! until a silence fell and Anton Pavlovich said in a deep, suspenseful voice, Crocodile!

Ana printed the page, then sat for a long time with her head in her hands. The receptionist tapped gently on the door.

Everything is okay?

Fine, said Ana, I'm just tired, thank you.

She took a taxi back to the museum. She hadn't packed a picnic. All those picnics Zinaida Mikhailovna had described . . . inventions. Katya Kendall's, Ana supposed.

She recognized the affable young man who had driven her to Luka the previous day—how long ago it seemed. He had told her then that he had been to the museum as a schoolboy. Now he looked at Ana in the rearview mirror and winked. So, Anton Pavlovich?

If she'd had more time, she would have told him the whole story. Taxi drivers were confessors by nature. He would have sympathized, found a way to cheer her up. It will all pass, he would have said. But it was only a short drive, so Ana mumbled something about the museum being interesting, and what a pity about the old estate falling to ruin.

The estate belongs to the government. Hah, where is the money? Our ex-president used it for his vintage car collection. Seventy cars he had! One old one worth two million dollars alone! There's your money to restore Luka! Between him and all the other thieves, what do you expect?

Perhaps things will begin to change now, said Ana.

Maybe, said the driver skeptically. Europe will help us now, right? EU, NATO?

Flustered, Ana said, Maybe there's a wealthy Ukrainian emigrant somewhere who'd be glad to rebuild the estate—to flatter his ego, but also for Ukrainian history or culture, no? They could build a writers' colony, for example, a
klimaticheskaya stantsia,
as Chekhov called it?

The driver exploded with laughter. Write Frau Merkel a letter! he said with a crooked smile. She'll send us some German writers!

Larissa Lvovna was waiting. I think you were right, said Ana with a sad smile. She showed Larissa the page from the genealogy that she had printed out.

The director nodded, then said, Sergey Ivanovich means well, he's a good person, but he's not a family man, and details like that mean nothing to him, you see. Come, I'll show you, she said, her expression soft, compassionate.

They went back into the room that had been Chekhov's. On the wall, near the bed, the small photograph of the Lintvaryov siblings.

You see? she said. Vsevolod was older by six years. But he was
very ill, he had a wasting disease; he didn't live past twenty. That is what inspired Ksenia Pavlovna to become a doctor.

Ana reflected that there would have been a sad connection there, too, for Katya to have made, between the aunt and the nephew.

Judging from the photograph, the siblings could have been the same age.

Their clear, open faces.

Larissa and Ana walked down to the river. It was a fine day, they could hear splashing sounds, children's cries. Ana felt hungover, though she knew it was from the loss, and a restless night, and had very little to do with a few shots of vodka.

The Psyol, too, had changed. It was not as she had imagined. She recalled the photographs she had seen and Chekhov's own descriptions: The islands seemed to have vanished (how does an island vanish? Soviet engineering?), and Larissa Lvovna told her that the flow had narrowed. As with the pond, the vegetation was thick, encroaching.