and the papers weren’t to be trusted, the editors had lost their proper fear. When the marshal’s own daughter told him that she wasn’t welcome in some of the best houses in town because he had arrested the artist Lutov, he arranged for Anna’s father to be let go.
Anna’s father came home in triumph, tenderly embraced his family, and left after an hour for a banquet in his honour held by the leading liberals of the town, where he was praised in speeches as the lion of democracy, and in toasts his name was joined so often to the urgency of a constitution and the establishment of an elected parliament that he came to believe the three were part of a whole, and that one without the others would be meaningless. Over the weeks and months which followed this idea faded from the minds of all the banqueteers except Anna’s father, who continued to believe that of all the heroism shown in the struggle for freedom in 1905, his had been the most extraordinary. His family saw little of him, and dust gathered on his palette and brushes, while he smoked poods of tobacco and drank Turkish coffee with liberals and revolutionaries in dark restaurants and stuffy conspiratorial flats. He met the revolutionary Tsybasov, recovering from the wounds he got fighting Cossacks in Odessa, on the run from the police,likely to be hanged if caught, a scar across his jaw where a sabre had almost sliced his head in half. When Anna’s father greeted him as a right-thinking warrior who had done almost as much for the cause as he had, Tsybasov – who at the age of sixteen had addressed a revolutionary congress in Vienna, without notes, for an hour – was so astonished that he couldn’t think of a reply. Anna’s father began spending time at a house that acted as a night school for young women who wanted to learn about Marxism. He was able to talk about Marx to them with more eloquence and conviction than they could muster because he wasn’t hampered by any knowledge of the great thinker’s writings. Some of the Marxist girls were not much older than Anna.
One sultry evening the following summer Anna’s sister’s head began to hurt. She became feverish and her nose bled. She lay in bed for ten days, coughing blood, raving and twisting in damp coils of linen. The doctor found a rash on her torso and diagnosed typhus. They sent telegram after telegram to Anna’s father, who had taken a cottage in Crimea for July, intending to deepen his study of Marx, but it must have been mislaid, because by the time he returned to Voronezh, his younger daughter was hardly moving. Her hoarse, shallow breaths were the loudest sound in the quiet room where she lay. Anna met her father at the door, they embraced, and they walked upstairs hand in hand to the room. Anna’s mother was sitting in a hard chair next to her youngest, talking to her about a ball she’d been to in St Petersburg, and the silk dress she wore. Her daughter’s eyes were closed and her lips, slightly open, had a thin crust of foam. When her husband came in, Anna’s mother looked up and looked away again, without stopping what she was saying, as if a stranger, a stranger with a reason to be there but still a stranger, had come in. Anna’s father leaned down, put his hand on his daughter’s foreheadand spoke her name several times. She didn’t move. Anna’s father sighed slowly and deeply, furrowed his brow, and said: ‘I must paint her.’
He fetched the easel and a blank square of canvas and began to make a charcoal sketch. Anna watched him. He kept glancing from the sketch to his daughter as if it would be to the life. The figure on the canvas was standing up, though, like all her father’s subjects. Anna saw a child version appearing of all the women her father painted, slim, with long, thin arms and legs that curved this way and that as if they were made of rope, pale lips, waves of liquid hair, a little upturned nose and enormous black eyes, while Anna’s sister was plump,
Anna’s father came home in triumph, tenderly embraced his family, and left after an hour for a banquet in his honour held by the leading liberals of the town, where he was praised in speeches as the lion of democracy, and in toasts his name was joined so often to the urgency of a constitution and the establishment of an elected parliament that he came to believe the three were part of a whole, and that one without the others would be meaningless. Over the weeks and months which followed this idea faded from the minds of all the banqueteers except Anna’s father, who continued to believe that of all the heroism shown in the struggle for freedom in 1905, his had been the most extraordinary. His family saw little of him, and dust gathered on his palette and brushes, while he smoked poods of tobacco and drank Turkish coffee with liberals and revolutionaries in dark restaurants and stuffy conspiratorial flats. He met the revolutionary Tsybasov, recovering from the wounds he got fighting Cossacks in Odessa, on the run from the police,likely to be hanged if caught, a scar across his jaw where a sabre had almost sliced his head in half. When Anna’s father greeted him as a right-thinking warrior who had done almost as much for the cause as he had, Tsybasov – who at the age of sixteen had addressed a revolutionary congress in Vienna, without notes, for an hour – was so astonished that he couldn’t think of a reply. Anna’s father began spending time at a house that acted as a night school for young women who wanted to learn about Marxism. He was able to talk about Marx to them with more eloquence and conviction than they could muster because he wasn’t hampered by any knowledge of the great thinker’s writings. Some of the Marxist girls were not much older than Anna.
One sultry evening the following summer Anna’s sister’s head began to hurt. She became feverish and her nose bled. She lay in bed for ten days, coughing blood, raving and twisting in damp coils of linen. The doctor found a rash on her torso and diagnosed typhus. They sent telegram after telegram to Anna’s father, who had taken a cottage in Crimea for July, intending to deepen his study of Marx, but it must have been mislaid, because by the time he returned to Voronezh, his younger daughter was hardly moving. Her hoarse, shallow breaths were the loudest sound in the quiet room where she lay. Anna met her father at the door, they embraced, and they walked upstairs hand in hand to the room. Anna’s mother was sitting in a hard chair next to her youngest, talking to her about a ball she’d been to in St Petersburg, and the silk dress she wore. Her daughter’s eyes were closed and her lips, slightly open, had a thin crust of foam. When her husband came in, Anna’s mother looked up and looked away again, without stopping what she was saying, as if a stranger, a stranger with a reason to be there but still a stranger, had come in. Anna’s father leaned down, put his hand on his daughter’s foreheadand spoke her name several times. She didn’t move. Anna’s father sighed slowly and deeply, furrowed his brow, and said: ‘I must paint her.’
He fetched the easel and a blank square of canvas and began to make a charcoal sketch. Anna watched him. He kept glancing from the sketch to his daughter as if it would be to the life. The figure on the canvas was standing up, though, like all her father’s subjects. Anna saw a child version appearing of all the women her father painted, slim, with long, thin arms and legs that curved this way and that as if they were made of rope, pale lips, waves of liquid hair, a little upturned nose and enormous black eyes, while Anna’s sister was plump,
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