By Lara VapnyarSimon & Schuster, 2014
In an entry of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s A Writer’s Diary, an unnamed acquaintance of the author, who is only identified as a particularly opinionated man of the old order, while discoursing on the subject of women and romantic relations, makes an intriguing claim: “the greatest happiness consists in knowing why one is unhappy.”By this logic, our potential happiness depends on investigating the past to find the source of our current discontent. Yet recollection is not a scientific, dispassionate activity, nor does it render quantitative results. While they are suddenly evoked by scents and recovered artifacts, memories are not received like revelations; they are probed by the busy mind, discovered, invented.A desire to plot the coordinates of the past and discover its role in the shape of the present motivates the fiction of Lara Vapynar. In Memoirs of a Muse (2006), the heroine strives to avoid resembling her undesirable mother, while in “Katania,” Vapnyar’s most recently published story, a father figure is forever entrenched in the image of a childhood doll. And, as is typical of her work, characters seek forms of individuality which defy the collectivist values of their Soviet home. All in all, the past dictates lives. In Vapnyar’s latest novel, The Scent of Pine, Lena, a Russian émigré, attempts to “piece…together” the narrative of her summer at a Soviet camp twenty years ago – an attempt that offers more insight into her character than into her life’s chronology; and which displays the complexity of realizing the belief expressed by Dostoevsky’s companion.Lena’s memory is triggered by a brief but meaningful encounter with an old friend from the camp while she is traveling to an academic conference to present a paper on sexual education. That summer begins with "an almost unbearable longing to be in love,” a yearning to assume the role of leading lady in someone’s life. She wistfully recalls her excitement upon meeting the soldiers stationed at the campgrounds for the first time:
One of them waved…. Lena was overcome with the strange feeling that she experienced only a couple of times after that. She didn’t know what to call it. Anticipation of happiness? No, it had to be stronger than that. Certainty of happiness. Inevitability of happiness.
Yet, ironically, the experience has incited a chain of events resulting in the current “impossibility of happiness,” and she attempts to trace the trajectory that has affected the rest of her life, hoping that by reconstructing “what happened twenty years ago,” she could “solve the mystery of her present unhappiness.”Her marriage is on autopilot. The word “forever,” which Lena contemplates in regard to marriage during the train ride to the conference, holds a dreadful talismanic power over her because it is linked to a husband whom she does not love and with whom she cannot be herself. Her earliest memories of marriage involve efforts at compromise: she has abandoned her Russian life and immigrated to America, yielding to her husband’s wishes, and she has been unhappy ever since. The high regard in which she has held her husband remains unreturned. When she is invited to lecture at the conference, he only feeds her doubts about the importance of her scholarship, suggesting that she is chosen as a mere replacement: “‘You don’t seriously believe that they’d want you?’ he said. He claimed he was only providing perspective, protecting her from disappointment.” He views her, with strange dispassion, as “a mere adjunct at a community college.” Her disappointment grows increasingly painful when he turns out to be right, as no one attends her lecture. Yet, calling her husband later, Lena reveals her estrangement from him when she conceals the failure and proudly tells him that the reading went well.While at the conference, Lena is “seized by an acute feeling of being a stranger in America”; she feels marginalized from the other scholars, whose papers generate spontaneous discussions, while her own remains unheard. And the same hunger to be noticed, "to be admired…to be seen, to make an impression, to be on the receiving end of some interest, curiosity, attention," to assume the leading role in someone’s life that she has experienced twenty years ago, sets in. Her desire comes to fruition when Ben, a graphic novel scholar, displays an interest in Lena’s work on sexual education in the former Soviet Union, and their banter gradually grows into an education for the participants. They soon escape to Ben’s cabin in Maine where they will spend the next two days, hardly exerting themselves to invent excuses for their respective spouses. The description of the affair that ensues between Lena and Ben is sensitive and incisive, filled with language that evokes a reality beyond the content of the words. As the two runaways abandon their obligations on the road to Maine, “it seemed as if the whole town were a watercolor painting, and everything – the streets, houses, trees – was getting erased, washed off the paper.” Being "outlaws" together is the aphrodisiac they have needed, and they not only share tales of their lives, but are also intimate in wordless ways, aided by their growing familiarity and a bottle of tequila.Amid some of the most sexually-charged scenes Vapnyar has written, Lena recalls tales of her camp adventures, which are presented in part as a flashback to the character’s younger self and in part as a narrative she recounts for Ben. She shares amusing anecdotes about her group of kids, each more idiosyncratic than the last, about the strict Soviet management that accuses counselors of engaging in “perverse sexual acts,” and about Inka, her co-counselor, who elicits in Lena intermittent feelings of envy and attraction. She recalls that, complying with the camp’s strict policies against sex, Lena and Inka narrated horror stories to put the kids to sleep before they have a chance to slip their eager hands under the blanket. One such tale that Lena shares with Ben, which provokes more laughter than gasps, features as its villain a “huge black sausage in an officer’s uniform.” Vapnyar illustrates the irony of this method, for the stories meant to frighten the kids against exhibiting carnal desire are in fact rather erotic. Indeed, the young counselors are evidently equally preoccupied with thoughts of sexuality, despite being warned about its dangers.Lena also shares tales of her romantic escapades. Aiding in her recollection, pine – such a familiar scent to the Russian soul – accompanies her through the trip, evoking a clear, unobstructed narrative, like a memorized text. For it is known that scents, those ineffable mementos, are our most effective time machine. As the summer opens, the young Lena’s involvement with the opposite sex is meager; she is unpopular, romantically-challenged, inexperienced. However, when she finally begins dating, “bizarre things start to happen”; she transforms into, as she puts it, “a femme fatale.” The soldiers unfortunate enough to be romantically entangled with Lena mysteriously disappear not long after making her acquaintance, and she finds herself unwittingly responsible. Even her name, derived from Helen, seems well-suited to the destructive role, alluding to that captivating, dangerous beauty who was the cause of the Trojan War. Yet, this romantic vision of herself as a femme fatale – an appealing role for a girl troubled by receiving little interest from potential mates until that summer – inevitably problematizes the objectivity of her version of the past, for real life rarely lives up to our desired script.A similar attempt at modeling life after a romantic ideal can be found in Vapnyar’s first novel, Memoirs of a Muse, wherein Tanya – another Russian immigrant living in the US – is deeply moved by the historical account of Dostoevsky’s affair with Apollinaria Suslova. Tanya dreams of being the muse of a great artist, attempting to saturate her own persona with the qualities of Dostoevsky’s simultaneously compassionate and domineering heroines (Nastasya Filipovna, Grushenka, Nastenka). Like her predecessor, Lena longs to be a mistress and to escape the dreariness of life as a long-term wife, an Anna Grigorievna Dostoevskaya, of sorts. Both characters’ perceptions of their situation are obscured by the confines of their script, yet while the discrepancy between Tanya’s fantasy and the reality of her affair with the artist she hopes to inspire quickly becomes evident, in Lena’s case the delusion lasts for twenty years. Lena’s memory of the past is infused with a highly idealized view of herself, which veils the cause of her present unhappiness—something she comes to realize, however belatedly, in the novel’s climactic reversal.Much like that of her predecessor, Lena’s storytelling takes a literary shape – its form is harmonious, symmetric, and she inevitably assumes the leading role. The first soldier disappears in the midst of their rendezvous when Lena averts her glance momentarily and then never hears from him again. In her sentimentalized description of this event, he does not "ditch" her out of disinterest, but rather he mysteriously "disappear[s]," endowing his loss with a tragic implication of some secret and complicated chain of events that must involve an undeclared but active admirer. Lena’s suspicions are confirmed when the second of her victims "disappeared under similar circumstances." This soldier "seduce[s] her with Hungarian salami" – the delicacy he embezzles for Lena from the camp kitchen. Mollifying Ben’s astonishment about the theft, Lena explains the comparative levity of the act for a Soviet employee to her American lover, clarifying one of the numerous facets of Soviet life in what becomes almost a history lesson for Vapnyar’s American readership:
You don’t understand. Stealing was considered perfectly fine. Everybody stole. It would have seemed strange and even indecent if you didn’t. But of course everybody stole on their own level. Vedenej and Yanina [the camp directors] could steal something really big, like camp funds. Senior counselors stole electronic equipment. Junior counselors mostly stole bedsheets, office supplies, and toys.
Such descriptions provide a humorous contrast to the rest of the novel, and while the content is generally serious and weighty, the mood of the text is always animated and bright. The lively tone with which Lena describes this illicit behavior is an illustration of Vapnyar’s characteristic irony. She laughs and we laugh with her at the tragedy of the final epoch of the Soviet Union, where the equal distribution of wealth and power has paradoxically resulted in corruption and inequality. Despite this act of chivalry, Lena waits in vain for the soldier’s arrival and, much like her first suitor, never sees him again. The motivation of the soldiers is hardly considered, as Lena’s grand vision of her role as the femme fatale establishes her as the central figure of the narrative, rendering the other characters (namely, her victims) not as subjects, but as objects – minor characters in what is her story.A diverting game to attempt to determine the identity of the stealthy admirer responsible for these disappearances ensues between Lena and Ben. Perhaps the respected camp director has orchestrated the dispersal of her potential lovers, or maybe Inka, who appears displeased that anyone should have a crush on Lena, is the real mastermind behind Lena's losses. In addition to offering a source of detective work, Lena’s narrative functions to prolong her affair with Ben. Both characters are well aware that “the camp story will be over sooner or later,” as will their little escapade, and they will be obliged to return to the routine of normal life. While longing to unravel the enigma of the secret admirer, they choose to forestall that knowledge, discovering the tale in installments, and in so doing, defering the end of “Lena and Ben.” And like her character, Vapnyar, channeling “some of Scheherazade’s storytelling magic,” defers the resolution of the narrative to intensify the reader’s anticipation of a major climax, which mirrors the erotic tension between the characters that builds during the course of the affair.Lena’s remembrances culminate in the vanishing of her first love, Danya, the soldier she encounters when she fails to construct the children’s concert uniforms. Finding the uniforms mysteriously completed the next morning, she is convinced that "it could only be Danya." Lena is flattered by his high regard for her, and her own feelings grow with the additional virtues her imagination ascribes to him. However, before her vision can be confirmed, Danya disappears as suddenly as the others, and Lena’s agony is intensified when she learns that he has been mysteriously transferred to serve in the harsh conditions of Russia’s northern region. The possibility that she is responsible for her lover’s exile imbues Lena’s role with a tragic charm, for his punishment must have been exacted as a result of his love for her.And yet, even this rather woeful conclusion does not account for Lena’s current unhappiness, the reasons for which her recollection has failed to uncover. Instead, the explanation is provided by the intrusion into her narrative of a personage that not only furnishes the missing details, but even casts into doubt all that has comprised Lena’s version. The discovery is made with the assistance of Ben, who happens to possess in his vast collection of graphic novels a text “about a Soviet summer camp” – “a mildly pornographic horror story” – written by the unsuspected secret admirer, the undesignated hero of the story. Here the novel disparages Lena’s grandiose vision of her younger self, exposes her weaknesses which have been paraded as strengths, and unveils her insignificance. Through the pictorial rendering of the camp, Lena encounters her younger counterpart – she is lovely, compassionate, the beloved of the author while being completely oblivious to him. The novel proceeds to illuminate all that has remained enigmatic in Lena’s account, including the disappearances of the soldiers, as well as the completion of the uniforms. As it turns out, the author of the novel, not Danya, is the “knight in shining armor” who resolves her problem to prove his love, but is never thanked or acknowledged. And thus, the chivalrous act upon which Lena’s love for Danya has been founded is revealed to be the fabrication of her romantic imagination. Her first love – not unlike most – has been born of a fiction:
She felt embarrassed, disappointed, stupid…. He didn’t know that she thought he was the one who made them. He didn’t know that she’d used them as a point of reference for all these years. Every time Lena had doubted Danya’s feelings, she would tell herself to think of [the uniforms].
While the outcome of the disclosure is satisfactory and plausible, the grand, elaborate manner in which the novel bursts Lena’s delusions is not. This climax, tying details together neatly – a very uncommon occurrence in life, which tends to be far more formless and haphazard – appears contrived. The coincidence of Lena’s discovering the novel with the assistance of a lover she has just met at an academic conference rings false. Most notably, the perpetrator behind the disappearances has been the one least expected, much like a murderer in a mystery novel who has been hiding in plain sight.The sweeping revelation featured here is atypical of Vapnyar’s fiction, wherein events lead only to minor moments of illumination, and from which no grand truth is to be gleamed. Vapnyar’s specialty is what in Russian is called byt—everyday, mundane life—particularly the details, intimate, small, and seemingly inconspicuous, of the way Russian immigrants live and love in the US. The truths they learn about themselves are minor, their conflicts remain mostly unresolved by the work’s end, and yet the reader, finding this a plausible reflection of everyday life, feels not dissatisfied. A case in point is the climactic epiphany of Memoirs of a Muse: Tanya, who has longed to be a muse for an important artist and failed miserably to inspire the insipid New York writer she has chosen as her subject, realizes that she has been a source of inspiration – still not a major one – for another artist whom she hardly knows. This truth is small, and it offers little consolation, but therein lies its beauty.Lena’s glorified view of herself is further disparaged in the next pages of the graphic novel, when she uncovers the significance of another woman, the real femme fatale, the true cause of Danya’s transfer to the north. The role Lena coveted – the "romantic heroine" – has been awarded to someone else, and she has been but a supporting actress. In light of this discovery, various secrets are uncovered, both about her past and her present, only the story is stripped of its charm; even the first kiss with Danya – which she cannot remember without a passionate thrill – may have been an act of dissimulation on his part to conceal the identity of his mistress:
Lena shut the book. So that was how it was… She didn’t know if the newfound knowledge changed anything for her, but it hurt. It hurt a lot. She started to cry.
In an irony that echoes that in Memoirs of a Muse, Lena discovers that she has played the muse in unexpected ways. She has become the subject of a novel, has starred in the role of the femme fatale, “but only in her own dreams and in the fantasies” of the author of the graphic novel, someone who has played a rather minor role in the history she considers the most significant of her life. Like her predecessor, Lena discovers that the desired role cannot easily be translated into life, because life cannot be scripted, there are too many variables, too many people striving to assume their own ideal roles and plot their own narratives. Indeed, “If he [Danya] were to tell his own story about the camp, Lena would have been just a minor character.”So, although the plot turn is hard to believe, we welcome the exposure of Lena’s self-delusion, for this is the point at which the novel offers a universal truth about our past, about the complexity of recapturing the narrative of our lives. Vapnyar confirms here what Marcel Proust has depicted in his own fiction, that to recollect the past is to reimagine it: to evoke a memory is to impose a narrative onto the past, one that features the subject as the leading character. Indeed, the act of remembering is akin to fiction writing, and the allure of repeatedly reconstructing the past is irresistible. Like her characters, Vapnyar attempts to bridge the divide between the past and the present, the old country and the new, the expectations of childhood and the dislocation of adulthood. Her narratives take place largely in the United States, but they are formed on other stories set in a country that no longer exists, and which inform the way her characters think, behave, love. Vapnyar too constructs a narrative of the past in order to grasp its mesmerizing sway over the present, and she continually dramatizes its various iterations to recollect what has been lost or forgotten.Despite the reader’s expectation that the disclosure provided by the graphic novel will effect significant changes in Lena’s life, the outcome is far less dramatic. In the sober light of the next morning, Lena and Ben get dressed, breakfast, and leave the cabin to return to their respective spouses. The insight, the truth, they have broached the night before gets covered and forgotten by the fog of mundane reality, “as if somebody kept closing curtains over the road." And this outcome is also typical of Vapnyar’s work: her epiphanies reveal the rather unglamorous truth that while lives are not uneventful, they generally remain unchanged, unremarkable to the end. This is the theme and structure in which Vapnyar shines.At the end of her novel, one mystery still remains, for Vapnyar provides no conclusive information which which to envision the future of Lena and Ben. Lena confesses to herself that “it was unbearable to imagine that they wouldn’t see each other again,” and that that their assignation was unique, yet Vapnyar never allows us to forget that even this notion is tinged in illusions about the self and the other, and that the narrative of this affair is subject to the same enigmatic laws of perception and memory. Ben’s final gesture is full of affection and care, but it does not in itself provide a clear prediction of their future lives. The great ambiguity of this Chekhovian ending consists in not knowing how the characters will remember and reconstruct the narrative of this affair at a later point in their lives. For as Lena’s story teaches us, a single past does not exist; it is only narratives, often contradictory, that comprise it.____Jane Shmidt is a Ph.D. candidate of Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center. She teaches English and Russian literature at Hunter College and City College. She is working on a dissertation that examines the subject of lovesickness in medicine and literature.
