So let’s get this discussion going. One of the things that I have been debating is whether Vera really was waiting for Kpotek to come back. I know she was at first, but thirty years later? She thinks about what would happen if he did come back, even admits that she hopes he never returns. So is she really waiting for him or has her waiting turned into something else? The public reason for staying in Mirnoe instead of her real private reason?

Oh, that’s a tough question.  I honestly don’t know what I think.  I suppose I find it highly unlikely she is still waiting for his return, but as for what she’s really doing instead ... can we even know?  She may have found herself waiting for so long she can’t change even though she knows he won’t return, or she may have decided she has good reasons to stay.  I’m not sure there’s evidence in the text either way.

You’re right, there is no evidence and it makes me a little crazy to know the answer. Which I realize sort of puts me in the position of the narrator trying to figure her out.

Oh, good point; I hadn’t thought of that, that the reader is in the same position as the narrator.  I feel smugly superior to him in some ways—he seems so foolish at times, especially at the end, and yet I shouldn’t.  I’m just as curious as he is.

What do you all make of the narrator?  I’m wondering if you found him sympathetic at all, or annoying, or foolish, or what.  I wrote about feeling “smugly superior” above, but that’s surely not a good way to feel!

The narrator was sort of frustrating. He came with all these assumptions and an atitude that he was so much better than everyone else. No one in Mirnoe seemed to really care though, they accepted him. I found it curious that he never once asked Vera directly about her life and about why she was waiting. It is so much easier to make things up than it is to engage with another person--as Danielle mentioned in her post the narrator preferred verbal contructs over the reality. I hoped that by the end he would have learned something and I think he did. Unfortunately, I think he got scared and gave up what he learned to go back to Leningrad. I found Vera to be a very Emersonian kind of character--self-reliant, genuine, true to herself--she was open and vulnerable yet not. It made me sad that the narrator was not willing to reciprocate.

I had a hard time being sympathetic to the narrator--at least initially.  To be honest, at first he really did irritate me.  He just saw Vera as this beautiful woman--he had her sized up figured out from those first moments.  He even wrote it all down in his notebook.  I think he did seem somewhat superior--at least he thought he was.  He was the intellectual from Leningrad, and here were these old women waiting for nothing, and Vera was the worst of all--still so young and beautiful and wasting her life there.  Even as the story progressed and he saw how off his assumptions were it was like he wanted to change Vera--to throw her off and make her see some sense or something.  He came into her home and would sit in her place so she wouldn’t be able to look out the door and he moved her table when she wasn’t there, so it would no longer look out towards the road.  I guess it was the cockiness of youth.  I think looking back he probably saw his errors, but he doesn’t really talk about them (this is where I’d need to reread and see--as I am sure he must interject comments).

I thought your earlier questions about what Vera really thought were interesting.  When I was rereading my post I realized that I didn’t really writemuch about her, but I never felt like I had much of a handle on what she was feeling or thinking.  I think she was far more sophisticated than anyone thought.  She did also go to school in Leningrad--do you think she would have found out something about her fiance when she was there?  She was a complicated character to figure out.  I wish we could have gotten inside her head as well. 

Danielle

Stefanie--I wonder if later in life the narrator regretted his actions and not being able to reciprocate?  Probably as he left and turned to wave to her he felt relief at getting away, but I bet there was also a tinge of knowing he had lost something.  It’s always in retrospect, it seems, that we figure these things out!

Susan’s comment in her post or in the comments to her post was interesting—she was saying that that narrator must have “evolved” enough to writethe novel; now I wish I had time and energy to re-read it because it would be interesting to note where the narrator splits in two—I mean, where he’s the young, foolish self and where he’s the older, more mature, novel-writing self.  Perhaps it’s the case that the older narrator is no wiser than the younger one and that we as readers judge them both, but I really think that’s not the case, and that the older, wiser narrator is presenting us with a foolish younger narrator that we judge.  The opening of the novel where he’s talking about having thought he’d figured Vera out and then learning he hadn’t seems to indicate he’s grown and changed.

I don’t have the book any more, and I read it at least six weeks ago, so my memory may not be accurate. From some comments it sounds as if the narrator is writing this many years after the events took place. I think the narrator probably didn’t understand then, but he does now, which is the reason for his writing. I don’t recall if it was made explicit, but the satire he was writing, or the history of the town, probably never was completed. What they became was what we read. And the lush descriptions of luminous moments and time could not have been written as they happened, they are the result of his final understanding. The narrator had to wait to understand and write. There is a profound meaning in waiting.

I think that the narrator has grown and changed as well and is looking back on this episode from much more life experience.  I think he realizes how foolish he was--which is why I was less despairing of him towards the end.  Quillhill--I really like the idea of waiting as a theme in this novel--that it wasn’t just Vera who was waiting, that in a sense the narrator did as well. 

I checked this out from the library and have already returned it, but I wouldn’t mind buying it when it comes out in paperback!

Danielle

Oooh, really good questions about the main protagonists. I love Stefanie’s description of Vera as Emersonian - how accurate! I think her waiting has crystallised into part of her being - she is ‘the woman who waited’, and so if her lover returned she would have to redefine herself. Waiting is part of her identity, rather than a task she must accomplish, and she has found such a peace and serenity within it, such a stable purpose that nothing - and certainly not the attentions of our delightfully callow narrator - can divert her.

As for the narrator, he redeemed himself for me precisely in the way he was ready to present his poor behaviour as something youthful and shameful. I don’t think it’s an unaccurate or atypical representation of a very young man. I felt this came across most readily in the section just after he and Vera have slept together and he confesses to the voices in his head (of triumph and panic) in such a way as to indicate (to my mind) that he knew he was being both honest with us and unethical with Vera. He fancies himself as a novelist, and so he’s built this great fantasy up around Vera. When it becomes clear he’s way off the mark he can only run away; it’s all too much for him. I loved this bit, as he struggles to deal with the actuality of what he’s been pushing hard to achieve. He had such a lovely time making her up in his imagination, and now her reality undermines his images at every turn.

I’d like to know what people think about the memory/history dimension of this. I feel the fact that the narrator is trying to archive lost customs and the general, underlying interest with the Russia of the 70s also fits in with what gets played out between the protagonists, but I haven’t got it clear in my mind yet. Any thoughts?

Hmm, haven’t thought much about the memory/history dimension. It seemed to me the narrator went to archive lost customs not because he was interested in it but because he just wanted to get away from Leningrad for awhile. But it does seem he was actually doing the work he went to Mirnoe to do. It seems like the failings of recent history held more meaning and sway over the lives of everyone than the past that was being lost. And the narrator coming from the city didn’t appear to have a sense of the meaning of history and how it plays out in real life until he got to Mirnoe and met Vera.

Just thinking out loud…

Interesting question, Litlove.  I don’t know, really, but it seems the narrator expects to find deadness—he’s looking for the customs that are dying out, but he presumes they are already pretty much dead.  He sees history as completely separate from himself.  But what he finds is Vera and the other women, who are living “lost customs,” and he sees the life that lurks behind historical events.  I agree with Stefanie that the narrator doesn’t really get the meaning of history until he gets to Mirnoe.

Stefanie - Dorothy, you are SO insightful. Those comments are very helpful. Yes, I guess I’m thinking of our narrator as a young man who, in Leningrad at least, has only been interested in the future. But Mirnoe is a village immured in the past, with Vera as a kind of glorified icon of memory. But maybe there’s also a sense of History as being the great force beyond everyone’s power, that dictates the course of iives, but in which we all share. That portion of History that becomes our individual lot, or the fate of a small community must be commemmorated somehow....  I’m thinking out loud here, too!

That makes sense, Litlove, and that turns the book itself into the narrator’s commemoration of his part in Mirnoe’s history.  Vera stayed true to her village, to her waiting, and to the women she took care of, and the narrator does his part by writing up her story, and his.  All you can do, I suppose, is to remember.