Read Online Watson, Ian - Novel 11 by Chekhov's Journey (v1.1) - Free Book Online Page B

exhausted.
     

TEN
                 So THEY SPENT their first night at the
Artists’ Retreat. Cloud had closed in hours earlier, hiding the mountains and
the valley. Outside, snowflakes were swirling higgledy-piggledy in the light
from the windows, though no great amount was actually settling. It was rather
like being inside a child’s snow-scene which was being tipped this way and
that, constantly stirring up the same finite amount of white plastic flakes.
                 For
supper, through in the dining room, Osip had dished up some hot beet soup with
ham bones, followed by pickled sturgeon and boiled cabbage.
                 The
dining room of the Retreat had been a minor ballroom once, before it had been
crudely partitioned—leaving a blue plastered ceiling far too high for the space
which remained, one moreover which curved upwards without ever curving down
again. A single electric chandelier hung well off centre. The solitary window
was huge, stretching from floor to ceiling, and draped in faded purple damask
like a stage.
                 Conversation
over supper was desultory; and this was not merely because Osip hung around to
hear as much as he could.
                 Mikhail
could be said to be in disgrace—were it not that Kirilenko was as fascinated as
he was disconcerted by the strange turn that events had taken. While Kirilenko
also would have been in disgrace—were the Doctor’s expertise not the only straw
left to cling to, as the film project foundered further into a chaos of
unhistory . . .
                 Meanwhile
Sonya Suslova was brooding. She was worried about her mentor’s reputation, but
still eagerly certain of his perspicacity. Thus she had begun to search out
psychological motives by which to explain Mikhail’s aberrant response to
hypnosis. But this was not easy, since Mikhail was increasingly able to ‘turn
on’ Anton at will and seemed blithely assured of the validity of his Anton;
which made him a difficult case to analyse—for who was one analysing?
                 What’s
more, Sonya was starting to feel strongly attracted to this handsome
chap—whichever chap he might be!—as so many ladies, years earlier, had felt
drawn to Mr Chekhov. This sentiment was only intensified for her by the feeling
of sensory deprivation in the Retreat, with the world beyond the walls blanked
out.
                 Probably,
Sonya decided, she was experiencing something akin to the imprinting of a
newly-hatched duckling—upon its mother duck, or an old boot, whichever came
first.
                 Yet
she felt sure that she could help Mikhail therapeutically by a more direct form
of involvement with him. In the sheets is truth, after all! Where was the harm
in a bold initiative?
                 She
knew perfectly well where the harm was, professionally. But by now absurdity
seemed to have invaded all their lives, and it was certainly undermining hers.
She felt detached from the realities of the present. It was as though she,
Sonya, had been hypnotised—not Mikhail. Or as if the tobacco
smoke curling upward from Kirilenko’s briar pipe contained narcotics . .
.
                 Anyway,
Mikhail was making eyes at her, wasn’t he? He seemed bent on enjoying every
moment of the limelight—as much as he savoured the pickled sturgeon.
                 She
puzzled. Anton had never been a ladies’ man, had he? Perhaps Mikhail was only
teasing her, in keeping with his other role . . .
                 Perhaps
she ought to have a few words in private with Dr Kirilenko, about this
confusion she was feeling? But he was too obviously preoccupied.
     
                 That
night Sonya managed to control herself. She refrained from tiptoeing along the
corridor at midnight .
                However, when she awoke next
morning, it was with a feeling of angry frustration, a sense of