It was early November, and we were in the lecture hall of Mr. Cohen. After a murmurous buzz, which usually precedes the lecture, the whole class fell silent as Mr. Cohen said, leaning against the podium and beaming upon the whole class at once, “So how was Chekhov? Today we’ve Russian weather in Vermont after all.” As silence asserted itself again I looked at H., who was sitting on a chair to my left, whom, it is true, only after countless nights of bitter longing I had managed to win into my life. She was thoughtfully leafing through the Penguin’s anthology of short stories.
Meanwhile, a hand had shot up. Mr. Cohen acknowledged it, “Go ahead, Kate.” The girl, who had the haughty look of an overfed pigeon, threw a self-gratified glance around the class and began, “Umm, yeah. I loved the lady with the dog. Especially the characterization of Gurov is interesting. I mean how he internalizes his relationship with women and how, of course, Chekhov pulls off the whole story so seamlessly. It’s a great piece.” “Nice Kate,” Professor Cohen said and was about to add something when Kate’s slobbery voice interrupted him, “And one last thing. I feel so sorry for Anna.” Professor Cohen took a sip from his Starbucks coffee container and added, “Indeed, we all feel sorry for Anna. And Chekhov must have felt it that way too. How else would he succeed in evoking such intense emotion in us? In fact, I would say he has a clinician’s gaze for detailing different shades of emotions. That’s where the secret of his art lies.” He paused: another hand had gone up, no, there were two. One of them belonged to Nikodemus, my Lithuanian friend. He cleared his throat and spoke, making the snow that was serenely falling outside the windows shudder with his metallic accent, “Thank you, professor. For me it was fun to read Chekhov in English. I read this story again last night. First in Russian and then in English. Of course, there were some subtle differences. For instance, Chekhov is more humorous in Russian. In any case, I do agree with you. Yes, Chekhov’s ability to capture human emotions is phenomenal. I can see it comes across even more clearly in its original Russian language.”
When another person began to speak I noticed that H. was leaning towards me, her thick burst of hair cascading over the back of the chair. As I stretched in her direction, she cupped her hand at her mouth and whispered, “Gonna comment on the watermelon.” Though her voice was calm, I had to stifle an overwhelming urge to laugh because of the way she had enunciated the word watermelon, as if casually letting off a bullet with a final, decisive thud. “Yes,” Mr. Cohen responded to her raised hand. Blushing a little, H. said, “I agree with everyone’s comment so far. However, it seems to me – forgive my word – that Gurov is an asshole.” Suddenly the walls of the hall reverberated with the laughter of the whole class. She had to pause, but once silence took over again she continued, “I mean, who slices a watermelon while his partner is in complete distress? Anna is distraught, and she needs him to soothe her but he is busy with watermelon slices. Isn’t that weird?” She wrung both her arms to express her disdain. “While she suffers what does this middle-aged, pot-bellied, grey-haired clown does – slice off watermelon? I mean, come on! Anyways, I’m glad that he felt the torments of love in the end.” Mr. Cohen, his eyes smiling on either side of his long Roman nose, admired H.’s observation with enthusiasm. He spent almost half of the remaining class discussing that specific watermelon scene, driving home the point that how this moment in the story is the masterstroke of Chekhov’s extraordinary talent.
Collection of snow in snow-fed irrigation pond delights farmers
After the lecture ended, I exchanged few words with Nikodemus. He asked me, in muffled whisper of course, if I was carrying sticks on me, saying cigarrete is good in snow. I transferred the Marlboro pack into his overcoat pocket. He wanted me to join him. I signaled it was not the appropriate moment – H. was standing right behind me – and he understood. After praising H. for her insightful observation on Gurov, he pressed my hand, “See you at dinner,” and left with a friendly pat on my shoulder.
“So, what’s your plan now?” I asked H., as we stepped out into the snow. “We’ve a meeting of the editors,” she replied. “You know we’re bringing some changes in our college newspaper. This year onwards we will publish annual magazine of the campus.” “That sounds awesome.” “I know,” she exclaimed joyously. I asked, “And when is the meeting?” “It’s later. We can hang out together for a bit. Maybe go to McCollough and grab hot chocolate.” “Or…,” I was about to say when she added, “Or we can walk over to the bridge and watch the river,” whisking the words off my tongue and making them hers. “Bridge sounds perfect to me,” I replied. We put on our gloves and began to talk boisterously about the ending of the lady with the dog. However, as we left the cluster of residential buildings behind and approached the river, a sort of bewitching awe held sway over us, and we became silent.
At the bridge everything was so still we could hear the rustle of flakes landing on the whorl of our ears. H. gripped the metal railing and leaned over to peer into the distance, where under the labyrinth of drooping, arthritic trees the river disappeared into the unknown. I followed her gaze and, with uncompromised calmness, watched the snow slant into the river, on the branches of the nearby trees and onto the fields that stretched endlessly beyond the scattered houses far into the horizon where the earth and the sky seemed to come together and become one eternal mass of whiteness. I felt I was recovering from daze when H.’s honeyed voice streamed into my ears, “This is so beautiful here. Snow in New York is different, you know. In Manhattan in particular, there are skyscrapers everywhere. So one can’t see the snow express its magic this freely.”
She turned towards me, her back to the river. Her whole being was watching me with tenderness permitted only on snowy days. The soft features of her face, brought out by even gentler snow, were dissolving into me. “How is snow in Nepal?” I heard her ask. “In the Himalayas it must be beautiful.”
“Yeah, it is,” I found myself replying, unable to tear my eyes off her face. “But this is my first snow.”
“I bet you’re lying,” she said with a smile, drawing towards me so that her hip was only a twitch away from the embrace of my right arm. “Doesn’t it snow all over Nepal?”
“Only in the mountains,” I replied, somehow feeling guilty that being a Nepali I hadn’t experienced snow before. “But sometimes we do see it on the hills in Kathmandu.”
“It must be beautiful there,” she was looking straight at me. Her eyelashes were glittering with the flakes of snow melting on her face. One of the corners of her mouth, along with the center of her upper lip, was quivering. I waited while she took off her gloves and shoved them into the pockets of the leather jacket. Still waiting, I watched her arms as they locked around my neck and then, as her face, smelling of ripe peaches, approached mine, I allowed my lips the ecstasy of feeling her lips in the warm coolness that envelops the world during snowfall. “I think it’s not that cold now,” she said a little later, with one hand stripping off her scarf and with another caressing the skin behind my left ear. I noticed that the street lamps had already been turned on. However, even before I could absorb the beauty of this evening under the yellow glow of the lamps, my vision disappeared into her face as our lips, more feverishly than before, met again. And while we kissed and while the snow continued to fall, somewhere deep in my heart I could hear the words of Chekhov as they appeared to the lady with the dog: “And only now… he has fallen in love properly, thoroughly, for the first time in his life.”
