The Summer Guest Read Online Free Page A

her; her reclusion buoyed her.
    And her little house was a sanctuary. Rundown but palatial compared to the Paris flat, a disputed legacy belonging to an old family in Thonon-les-Bains. She knew she wouldn’t be able to stay there forever, but as she hurried through the door into the warmth, eager for a cheering shot of Calvados, she refused to worry about the future. She tried now, after questioning her furry oracle, to take each unpredictable day as it came—but that didn’t exclude the occasional daydream of a perfectible future.

May 7, 1888
    I told myself when I sat down for the first time with this ledger that I would not fill it with regrets. Life has been good to me. I’ve had opportunities, I have had a good and loving family, but there are one or two things I do regret.
    Perhaps to ease my mind, although it will bring a moment’s melancholy, I should let my thoughts return to those memories and see if there is still reason for regret.
    It was the summer before I left for Petersburg. There was a wealthy family from Moscow staying with their uncle on the neighboring estate. We never had much to do with this uncle, the owner of the estate; just before Papa’s death they had argued, and somehow Mama could not bring herself to forgive the man. Still, the family was bored and had children our age, so they sent an invitation. And there was a reconciliation. I began to spend time with Andryusha, the eldest brother, and with hindsight it would be easy to say he was spoiled and arrogant, or that he looked down on us. But I did not feel it at the time, and we went on long walks through the fields, looking for butterflies, and we sat on the hill above the river, and I saw him only as part of that joy of being seventeen, in a landscape of glorious colors. I was with a boy who spoke softly and took my hand and told me about the life he might lead, until he laughed and said, I suppose you are expecting to have suitors and get married?
    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