Memoirs of a Muse by Lara Vapnyar

Author:Lara Vapnyar [Vapnyar, Lara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-42685-7
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2006-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Polina and Dostoevsky left Paris together.

They talked a lot during that crazy week. She told him all about her affair with Salvador. He said that he understood her. He said that he didn’t blame her. He said that it had only dawned on him now, how painful, how unbearable their Petersburg relationship must have been for her. He said that he was sorry. He said he was unworthy of her. He said he was privileged to know a person as noble and pure as she. He said that there was nothing in his life he valued more than their friendship. He said that he would be her tender and devoted friend from now on. He proposed that they continue their journey to Italy as they had planned a long time ago, promising to remain like a brother to her.

“He understands me,” Polina wrote in her diary.

They boarded a train in the first days of September, after a week of unceasing showers. The rain had stopped pouring by the time they got to the station, but everything—the benches, the handrails, the pavement—was wet and slimy, and the humidity seemed to hang in the air. Polina slipped on a wet boulder as they were getting off the coach and Dostoevsky hurried to place his hand at her waist to support her. Did she notice how his hand lingered there, pressing against the stiff fabric of her travel dress? Was she alarmed? Flattered? Indifferent? Whatever her reaction was, Polina didn’t show it. She pulled up the damp and dirty hem of her dress and hurried toward the station, her scuffed shoes picking their way between the puddles. She looked down, wishing that the pavement, the puddles, the boots, would register in her mind as the last impression of the hated city, erasing the streets, the buildings, and all Parisians from her memory. Dostoevsky hobbled along, trying to keep pace with her, trying to slow her down, trying to tell her that there was still plenty of time before the train, trying to reason with her.

There were three other passengers in their compartment. I once saw a copy of a Victorian engraving in one of my history books, entitled First-Class Railway Passengers. I imagine that the people sitting next to Polina and Dostoevsky in their compartment looked exactly like those in the engraving. A fussy lady covered in frills, a fat older man buried behind a newspaper, a mustached younger man with his hands folded on his chest, throwing quick assessing looks at the frilled lady. They were all drawn in a caricatured style, and I imagine that they looked just like that to Polina and Dostoevsky: hideous caricatures rather than real people. She had to bear their presence and the knowledge that they were witnesses to her pain.

But by the time the train had passed the outskirts of Paris, the mustached man and the frilled lady had dozed off, the streets of the hated city were no longer in sight, and Polina had gradually calmed down.

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