The Summer Guest (6 page)

THE DELIGHT OF SOFT
padded envelopes, waiting for her in the crisp February air, in her mailbox. Three biographies, in addition to the volumes of stories (multiple translators) and the major plays, some on DVD with eminent British actors.

For several days of foul weather, Ana stayed in and read about Anton Chekhov. She found the obvious references, which, like Masha in black, had become clichés: the rambling, crumbling estates with their bumbling servants and samovars in the garden; the three sisters. But those familiar elements had to come from somewhere: They were a way of life, his everyday reality. An immense country with an educated, bored middle class; women whose lives were stunted and circumscribed by society and tradition. Zinaida Mikhailovna and her sisters, Elena and Natalya, stood out, anachronisms; they belonged, Ana learned, to the inaugural generation who attended the Bestuzhev Courses in Saint Petersburg, which for the first time in Imperial Russia offered higher education to young ladies of means.

Chekhov, on the other hand, earned his success. He was able to work his way up from relative poverty because he was talented, but also because his childhood had taught him that life was a struggle. As a boy, he and his brothers were thrashed repeatedly by their pious shopkeeper father; later, the whole family fled to Moscow to escape their creditors, leaving the young Antosha alone in Taganrog to finish secondary school. He wrote short, humorous stories, initially to finance his medical studies and help his family. What started as the source of a student's supplemental income evolved into a body of work, turning him,
not even ten years after his summers at Luka, into an author and playwright whose stature was almost mythic. Ana studied the photographs, let her mind wander as they told the stories the words could not. He completely looked the part: tall, handsome, youthful, funny—mediagenic, in today's parlance
.
The props, most of which came long after his summers at Luka, were inimitable: the goatee, the pince-nez, the walking stick, the dachshund—when it wasn't the pet mongoose he brought back from his travels to the Far East. (Apparently, he despised cats.) It would seem that Chekhov hated his celebrity status, the shaking of hands and dealing with gushing admirers on the waterfront at Yalta—even though many of them were women—and going to receptions, being seen in the right places. But for all that, he knew how to enjoy the benefits of his success. He befriended Tolstoy, Gorky, Diaghilev, Rachmaninov; he married late and, on the whole, well—the actress Olga Knipper; he bought villas and dachas and traveled to France and Italy, and he didn't have to go on author tours or give signings or spout witticisms on a social network to keep himself in the public eye.

She learned in an interesting, oddly relevant footnote that Chekhov's paternal grandmother was Ukrainian, and late in life he claimed that as a small child he had been able to speak Ukrainian.

Ana was beginning to feel genuine affection for the blind narrator and her story; that sentiment would show through, surely, in the excellence of her translation. As if it were a book she had written herself. This was her chance. And she felt sure it would lead to other things.

She looked out the window of her attic study. In winter, when the trees were bare, she could see as far as the lake and the mountains beyond. The sky had cleared, and there was a pink wash of sunset on the white peaks. The tree in her neighbor's yard wore a sleeve of ice. She opened the window, let a breath of frost into the room.

For two days Anton Pavlovich has not come. Natasha tells me he is terribly busy with Monsieur Pleshcheyev. She went over to the guesthouse to invite them for this evening—Georges has been practicing and is ready to play for us, and perhaps the gentlemen will share some of their literary work.

Our young cousin Vata is visiting us for a few weeks, so Natasha took her along to meet them, and she tells me Vata was very impressed by the great poet. Naturally, he could be her grandfather, but she is in awe of his stature, his fame . . . Natasha says Vata has grown into a silly, provincial little thing; she hides her hand behind her back to keep from sucking her thumb; we are supposed to be trying to give her some culture, some
finish,
as the English say—now she meets her first poet and goes quite dotty.

And what about Anton Pavlovich? I ask Natasha. He must be more handsome than Pleshcheyev—he's quite young, isn't he?

I think he frightens Vata, said Natasha. She amuses him, so he says teasing, wicked things, practically drives her into Pleshcheyev's arms for refuge. Pleshcheyev pats her on the head and says, There, there.

And with you?

Who, with me?

Anton Pavlovich?

She laughs her short, chiming laugh. With me? He knows I'll only return the compliment, so he's terribly circumspect. For the moment he respects me, which is almost a pity. I rather like that teasing side of his.

After a pause I ask, And he's not engaged to be married?

It seems not. It's odd, no? He's got his mother and sister to look after him, so he's obviously in no hurry, but given his looks, you'd think—

What does he look like?

Tall and lanky, thick dark hair and a little beard, and very nice eyes that don't miss a thing. Rather more like an eternal student than a doctor, a bit like our Pasha without the politics. Or at any rate, whenever we try to pin him down on his politics he evades the issue.

And Monsieur Pleshcheyev?

Elderly, white beard, portly . . . With Anton Pavlovich, they share a certain—how to describe it—gentleness. I cannot decide in the case of Anton Pavlovich whether it is because he is a doctor or a writer. There is something about men who work with words—poets, writers—do you suppose it makes them different?

I knew I was about to make a terribly banal suggestion, but I went ahead with it. Natasha can be so abrasive at times, she doesn't always take the time to understand why people are this way or that, so I said, since she had asked, Well, perhaps they spend more time examining what it is that makes us human in an immaterial way—emotions, language?

Oh, well said, Zinochka. I must read more poetry, then. Improve my soul, in other words.

It wouldn't hurt, I said with a smile.

She reached over and stroked my cheek. After a pause, with a touch of mischief in her voice, she said, But did you know that this same Monsieur Pleshcheyev, who could be anybody's cozy grandfather, was a revolutionary in his youth and was sent to Siberia for ten years? He was in the Petrashevsky Circle with Dostoyevsky. Condemned to hang, then pardoned.

How extraordinary!

Pasha and Tonya can't get enough of him and keep pressing
him to tell them about his youth, but he keeps changing the subject. I'm an old man now, he says, and chuckles, my time for revolutions is past. I've come here to write poetry.

She had lowered her voice in a passable imitation of a contented old man. Then I heard her get to her feet. I grabbed her wrist. Don't go just yet. What else? What other news?

Elena is treating a bad case at the moment, or should I say a very sad case. Do you remember the young woman from Velikaya Chernechina with the tumor on her neck? She's much worse, she's terribly pale and thin, wasting before your eyes, says Elena, who is very upset there's nothing she can do for her. She's asked Anton Pavlovich to have a look at her.

The poor man is supposed to be on holiday, is he not?

And he's meant to be writing. He wasn't joking about that. He supports his family, entertains his friends, agrees to help Elena, writes stories, goes fishing—

Has he caught anything?

Pike and chub, he said, and an old shoe.

I laughed. He needs to have something to throw at you when the time comes.

Georges's recital moved me to tears. My eyes still weep, as if seeing my reduced world through hammers and strings and Tchaikovsky's notes.

Natasha would surely laugh at me again for my emotional apprehension of the world. I was not always this way—we have always tried in our family to be realists, pragmatic and rational—but my illness has shown me the resources of the spirit's more inexplicable manifestations. That music and words (even when they are no longer
legible
) are valuable, potent
spectacles
in their own right; that for all the pleasure I once took in color and dance and visual beauty, there were many things I did not see which now are visible to me. Language, too: So
much of it is based on sight that I find it hard to find the words for what I have been
seeing
with this new vision. Perhaps there are no
words;
is Georges's playing, Tchaikovsky's music, not a language of its own?

And Monsieur Pleshcheyev's poetry: I heard him use words in ways that surprise and confuse me. At times I would like for him to repeat what he said, so I could better grasp the sense. I must ask him for a volume of his works so my patient family can read the poems to me again and again.

Anton Pavlovich read from his collection,
In the Twilight,
as promised. A rather bold story about a woman, one Sofya Petrovna, who determines almost on a whim to leave her husband for an admirer. A quite terrible story, really; the woman, according to the narrator, did not really love the man, but she was bored with her husband, with her life; she was made giddy by the admirer's adoration, and above all, she felt an urge stronger than anything, irrepressible and alluring. While admiring his description of her state of mind, I could not help but worry that Mama or even Monsieur Pleshcheyev—or Elena, for that matter—would be shocked by the story. There was a moment of stunned silence at the end when the narrator says,
What drove her on was stronger than shame, reason, or fear,
and we all knew what Monsieur Chekhov was referring to; then Natasha—incorrigible, bold Natasha—began to applaud and laugh somewhat nervously, and we applauded and all began to talk at once.

Anton Pavlovich came over to me later, and I asked him if he believed most women were like Sofya Petrovna, and if he found her behavior commendable or reprehensible.

He laughed and placed his fingers on my forearm. My dear Zinaida Mikhailovna, if all women were like Sofya Petrovna, we would not be here tonight. The world would be an utter shambles.

Then why write about her? What can possibly be edifying or—

But dear lady, I'm not trying to edify or instruct or above all pass judgment. I'm merely describing a frequent human dilemma. Not all women act as . . . irresponsibly, or freely, depending on your point of view, as Sofya Petrovna, but I defy you to find me a married woman who has not had thoughts of behaving like that.

And do you really believe we are all so . . . base in our emotions?

Here he paused and answered with a question of his own: You find her desire base?

It is self-centered, irrational, ungoverned—

And that is base? Are you applying your own opinion or that of society? Imagine if your own dear sister, Natalya Mikhailovna, for example, were in such a situation, bored and unhappy with her husband, and the opportunity presented itself—in the form of a handsome, devoted man of the law—to create a new life, full of mystery and discovery. Would you condemn her, find her base?

I felt my cheeks redden, lifted my fingertips to my face.

He laughed again and said, Forgive me, Zinaida Mikhailovna, I have spoken quite out of turn. These are delicate matters. I have witnessed in my own family—my eldest brother, to give just one example—such instances of desire and the havoc they bring. Such struggles with nature, as my lawyer in the story calls them. They are almost always tragic and yet terribly comical at the same time. When we know what bitter disappointment comes after so much passion. Such banality. Such emptiness.

He paused, then asked, I assume you've read
Anna Karenina?

Yes. But there is so much that is tragic and terrible in that book.

My heroines do not go that far. As in life; again, if we all had Anna's desperate soul, the world would descend into a chaos of tragedy. That was Tolstoy's vision for the novel, based on a true incident—so such things do happen. But most often . . . banality.
Which is why I prefer to err on the side of comedy. Otherwise life would be altogether too hard to bear, don't you think? If love always led to train platforms? All this passion tearing people apart, sending decent women out into the night without so much as a bonnet on their head?

He must know that such matters no longer concern me, that, if anything, my life is hardly a comedy and should be too hard to bear, and yet he drew me into his argument, into his vision for the sake of that argument. I smiled. You are quite the magician, Anton Pavlovich, I said.

Ah, yes. I have a special fondness for white rabbits and ladies sawn in half.

He lowered his voice and said very earnestly, I've started, Zinaida Mikhailovna.

Started what?

The novel.

I grasped his wrist; he placed two fingers there in warning.

Don't say a thing or I'll never hear the end of it. Agreed?

Of course! I'm very pleased for you. Do you have a title? No, I'm silly, of course it's too soon—

Too soon for anything: no plot, not a clue where the vehicle is taking me, just a few sketches with a few idle characters standing about waiting for cues. But it intends to be a novel.

And how many pages?

Don't ask, Zinaida Mikhailovna, don't ask! There is only: I'm progressing. Or I'm not progressing. Today I have been progressing.

Good, good. I'm very glad to hear this.

At that moment Monsieur Pleshcheyev called to him, and our conversation ended.

But now, before turning in, I reexamine my long-ago feelings for the shiftless Andryusha. How I would have liked to respect
those feelings and honor them, had he been at all honorable. What part my own urging, then, what part nature, and what part society pulling me—or even him—the opposite direction, toward convention and propriety? Andryusha did not pursue me, because I was neither wealthy nor beautiful enough for his image of the way his life should be; but my own nature had left me utterly open and vulnerable for a brief moment. I could picture the girl I once was, setting off into the night without her bonnet on her head.

So these are the things Anton Pavlovich likes to discuss in his stories—or should I say, rather, describe. He does take an interesting point of view, standing back with his arms crossed (I suppose) and throwing the characters together so that he can watch what happens.