The Russians Collection

by Michael Phillips

  “Art is art, and ballet is as much an art as painting. You are trying to achieve the same thing on a stage that I want to do on canvas.”

  “I wonder what Yuri would have said about my performance,” Talia said suddenly.

  Andrei felt as if his balloon had been pricked. The excitement he had been feeling all evening vanished.

  “I mean as a scientist,” Talia added quickly.

  “He would have thought you were beautiful,” replied Andrei, trying to resume his earlier mood. “He would have praised the fine musculature of your legs and the glow of health on your face.”

  Talia giggled. “He’s not that artistically stifled.”

  Andrei shrugged. “Well, he was stifled enough to miss the best performance of the year.”

  The arrival of their food and beverages interrupted them. Andrei was glad. He didn’t want to spend the evening talking about Yuri. But, much to his dismay, that seemed exactly what Talia wanted to discuss. After they tasted their food, Talia lifted her eyes, fixing Andrei with a haunting gaze.

  “Andrushka, tell me why Yuri really didn’t come tonight.”

  “He had to see our grandf—”

  “The real reason, Andrei. Don’t try to protect me.”

  “What makes you think there is a real reason?”

  “Yuri is a terrible liar.”

  “Drat him!” Andrei took an angry gulp of his tea.

  “Tell me,” she prompted again with that quiet insistence that was hard to refuse.

  “Let it go, Talia. Why do you have to know, anyway? It’s not important.”

  “Tell me, Andrei.”

  “No! I won’t.”

  “Who are you trying to protect, him or me?”

  “Not him, that’s for sure. He can go to blazes, for all I care!”

  “Don’t talk that way about your brother.”

  “After what he did to you, how can you defend him? He’s a self-centered boor, putting some floozy society girl before his dearest friend—” He stopped, suddenly realizing his slip. He cursed his troublesome tongue.

  “I . . . I thought it was something like that.” She bit her lip, her eyes filled with moisture. But she didn’t cry. “He must really care for this girl.”

  “Bah! He met her less than a week ago. He thinks he’s in love but he doesn’t know the meaning—”

  “You were right, Andrei,” she broke in abruptly. “I wish I hadn’t found out. But I guess it had to happen sometime, didn’t it? I was lucky his studies had kept him too busy for women in the past.”

  “You should tell him how you feel.” Andrei felt somewhat safe now in making this suggestion—safe at least that Yuri wouldn’t return the sentiment.

  “What good would it do now? All it would mean is sure rejection. And I know Yuri. He would feel so bad about it that in the end it would still ruin our friendship.”

  Andrei shook his head. “You should tell him anyway.”

  “Give me one good reason why.”

  “Because you are his friend, Talia, and friends are honest with each other.” Andrei regretted the words the moment he spoke them, but he hadn’t realized until they were spoken how hypocritical they were.

  “You’re right again,” she said.

  He couldn’t meet her eyes. “So, you’re going to tell him?”

  “I still can’t, Andrei, in spite of the fact that you are right. I hate having the huge, horrible lie between us. But I couldn’t bear him looking at me with pity, telling me how he loves me as a sister only. Why did I have to fall in love with him? It’s spoiled everything!” A tear finally escaped the corner of her eye. She brushed it away.

  Then something occurred to Andrei. Perhaps this would be the perfect time to reveal his secret to her. It might make her feel better to know how he felt. It might make her forget Yuri. He opened his mouth to speak—he wasn’t going to further weigh the issue with more thought.

  But he never got a chance to speak. The cafe door burst open and a young fellow rushed in.

  “The first reviews are here!”

  The whole place erupted into excited clamoring. Andrei never found another opportunity that evening to take up again the dangling thread of their conversation. Perhaps it was for the best. Talia wasn’t the type to flit quickly from one love to another. It would take a long time for her to get over Yuri, if she ever did. It was possible she’d hang on to her futile hopes until he was standing at the altar with another woman.

  Still, Andrei felt the lie between him and Talia as acutely as if it were a wall of burning fire.

  18

  For a while Andrei attempted to overcome his frustration through his work. Talia’s performance had inspired an idea, and it took him several days to make a preliminary sketch of the exact scene he wanted. Talia would be the focal point, surrounded by prisms of light. Availing himself of the cubist style, he intended to capture the ballet more as the mind might perceive it than the eye—from many angles at once.

  He would have liked to make a couple minor adjustments to his final sketch, but he was running short on paper and his trash was now full of crumpled sheets. He had heard that privation and hardship were good for the artistic soul. In that case he ought to be a Rembrandt by now. But on principle, he refused any help. His brother-in-law Daniel had even offered himself as a patron.

  “Many artists have them,” Daniel had argued.

  “If I ever acquire a patron,” Andrei told him, “I want to know it is because of my talent, not the blood that flows in my veins.”

  But there were times, such as this, when Daniel’s offers were tempting. Andrei was at the point of having to choose between supplies or food. He had six months to get together a respectable representation of his work for the gallery showing. He could not take an outside job right now and expect to meet that goal. He was even going to have to curtail his submissions to the newspapers.

  But how could he?

  Glancing through his supply of oils, he realized he was expecting the impossible. He barely had enough paints to finish one project, much less two dozen.

  Sighing, he went to the crate where he kept copies of his old newspaper sketches. Maybe a newspaper would reprint something from the past, and he could thus generate some income without the intensive labor. Perhaps if he just changed a bit here and there, put a new slogan with something, giving it a slightly new slant . . .

  He riffled through the sheets. They were in terrible order, many were creased and wrinkled, and there were other miscellaneous handbills, pamphlets, even trash mixed in. At last he came to one section near the bottom that was in better order. He remembered when Talia had come to visit him sometime ago and had tried to organize things. She had labeled three or four large folders and filed the drawings in them by subject. Unfortunately, he hadn’t kept it up.

  As he picked up one of Talia’s folders, it slipped from his hand and the contents scattered over the floor. Then the apartment door opened and one of his roommates walked in.

  “Oleg? What time is it?” Andrei asked.

  “Three o’clock, same time I always get home.”

  “Oh no! I didn’t realize it was so late.” Andrei hurriedly gathered up the sketches and tossed them carelessly into the box. “I should have left half an hour ago.”

  “Where are you off to?”

  “An S.D. meeting.”

  “Well, I’m too tired to go. Give them my regards.”

  Andrei jumped up, then paused and took a couple of sketches at random from the box. He wouldn’t have been so anxious to drop his work and attend the meeting except that there would doubtless be some representatives from one or two of the underground newspapers there. He might be able to sell something to them and get a bit of quick cash. He grabbed his sketchbook and pen, too. There was a lengthy tram ride to reach the meeting.

  By the time Andrei traveled from his flat, downtown to the meeting place a few blocks from the university on Vassily Island, he had redone one of the political cartoons. He had
also come up with an entirely new one based on an altercation he had observed between the tram driver and a gendarme, which he had titled, “Who are the real criminals?” He might only make five rubles per sketch because the papers ran on bare-bones budgets, but if he humbled himself and ate a few meals at his mother’s, it would be enough to buy a few supplies.

  Much to Andrei’s surprise, the flat was crowded. The membership of the Social Democrats had diminished in the last few years because of the break between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. Lenin had become far more demanding and exacting in his membership requirements. Andrei doubted he would qualify as a Bolshevik by Lenin’s stringent standards, but, after many long discussions with his uncle Paul, he had decided to continue supporting the Party, even though he had not become a member yet. Paul had not tried to influence his nephew one way or another, though he himself had long ago withdrawn from the Party completely. Andrei respected his uncle, but he was still drawn to the Party because of its aggressiveness.

  Andrei was no intellectual. He did not prize scholarship and debate for their own sakes, as was the case with many revolutionaries. He understood politics and political theory well enough. But he simply didn’t have the patience for the hours and hours of discussion, nit-picking, and hairsplitting that went on at political meetings. It was torture to attend Party meetings, and he did so only to support the things he believed in and the mission of revolution. He enjoyed demonstrations, strikes, and handing out pamphlets far more. It wasn’t so much the thrill of possible danger that enticed him to these particular activities—it was merely the fact that he was doing something.

  All the chairs in the apartment were taken, as was most of the floor space. Andrei leaned against a wall. The group was buzzing with conversation; the meeting had begun half an hour ago but there was now a short lull between speakers. Andrei spoke to a couple of acquaintances nearby, one of whom was an editor of a radical paper. They talked about the previous speaker, and Andrei managed to show the editor his drawings, which received a favorable reception.

  The next speaker was announced as an emissary from Lenin—Stephan Kaminsky. Of course, Andrei knew the name, though he hadn’t seen Stephan since he was a boy in Katyk. Kaminsky proved to be a dull speaker, completely lacking any polish or charisma. But what he lacked in these areas he quite made up for in sheer length. For an hour he droned out the Party line, precept upon tiny precept. Andrei would have fallen asleep if he hadn’t been standing up; but he did hear a snore or two from others in the group.

  After the meeting Andrei decided to rekindle the old ties. He and Kaminsky were, after all, from the same village, which made them almost brothers. He strode up and introduced himself.

  “Andrei Sergeiovich Christinin,” he said. “From Katyk.”

  “Ah, yes.” Stephan nodded. “You were the youngest, weren’t you?”

  “I still am.”

  “And a rambunctious, headstrong lad, if I recall.”

  “I still am,” Andrei repeated, this time with a grin. “The rebel of the family.”

  “Not the only rebel. Isn’t Paul Yevnovich your uncle?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you are a Party member?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’m surprised Pavlokov hasn’t soured you against the Party.”

  “He still admires Lenin immensely, despite the differences that caused him to break with the Party.”

  “Is betrayal the way your family shows its admiration?” Kaminsky’s previously pleasant tone turned caustic. Andrei gaped at the sudden turnabout.

  “I would hardly call doctrinal differences betrayal,” Andrei replied.

  “The only way to achieve the goal of revolution is through wholehearted commitment to the cause. A double-minded man weakens the cause—thus, betrayal.”

  “I still think that’s a bit strong.”

  “And now he has given over completely to the Establishment as a member of their Duma.”

  “There are Bolsheviks in the Duma.”

  Kaminsky chose to ignore Andrei’s logic. “One day the Duma will crumble along with everything else, when a new order arises in Russia. Betrayers will not be tolerated.”

  “My uncle has devoted his whole life to the cause. He spent years in exile, ruining his health in the process. He continues to live constantly under the threat of arrest each time he speaks out for the cause in the Duma, which he does frequently. He has never betrayed a soul, least of all Lenin. In fact, because Lenin couldn’t give just a little, he lost one of the most faithful men he could have had.”

  “If you think so highly of your uncle, why do you support the Party he . . . spurned?”

  “Because I believe in Lenin.”

  “What about Bolshevism?”

  “Lenin is Bolshevism, isn’t he?”

  Kaminsky cocked a bushy eyebrow. He appeared momentarily taken aback by this logic. A full minute passed before he spoke.

  “So, what have you done for the Party?” Kaminsky spoke as if relieved that he’d thought of a way to handily change the subject.

  Without hesitation, Andrei opened up his sketchbook. “Perhaps you’ll recognize my style.”

  “Malenkiy Soldat . . . I’ve seen his work. You are he?”

  “I am.”

  Kaminsky turned several pages of the sketchbook, giving each drawing a seemingly critical appraisal. If he were an art critic, Andrei would have been worried by the stern expression on Kaminsky’s roughhewn, rather intimidating visage. He hadn’t even considered, when he had shown his sketchbook, that Stephan might represent some new opportunities.

  Finally, Stephan said, “We have a new Party organ, Pravda. We could use material like this.”

  “Really?” Andrei was genuinely surprised. Thus far he had only worked on small publications. Pravda, like its predecessor Isrka, was a major Party voice, Lenin’s personal vehicle.

  “Could you come up with a sketch a week? Something along this line—” Stephan poked a finger at the drawing Andrei had done on the tram. “But meatier, if you know what I mean.”

  “That was only a rough draft.”

  “Good. How about it? The pay isn’t much, but the exposure is double, or more, of the papers you’ve worked on in the past.”

  “It sounds tempting, but . . .”

  “You hesitate about working almost directly with Lenin himself?”

  Andrei felt foolish for his hesitation. Kaminsky was right. This was a fantastic opportunity. It could well bring him into Lenin’s inner circle. He could at last have an integral part in the coming revolution. It’s what he had wanted all his life. The gallery showing represented a dream from only the last couple of years. Could it possibly mean more to him than his political ideals? Yet giving up that dream, regardless of its newness, was not an easy thing to do.

  He said to Kaminsky, “I didn’t think you’d have someone work on an organ like Pravda who wasn’t a Party member.”

  “That is a situation that would have to be remedied. You’d have no problem with that, would you?”

  “No, of course not.” Andrei couldn’t admit to someone as obviously narrow-minded as Kaminsky that the sacrifices involved might be too demanding for him.

  But perhaps Kaminsky was more intuitive than he appeared. “You have a great talent to give the Party and the cause,” he said. “Don’t waste it away, as I see many artists do, in self-involvement. Too many are more willing to squander their talents on making pretty pictures for the bourgeois to hang in their fancy houses.”

  “I don’t believe that’s out of any sympathy to the bourgeois,” Andrei countered. “Rather it’s an artist’s need for acceptance and recognition of his work.”

  “All aspects of self-fulfillment must be subject to the needs of the Party.”

  “Perhaps the Party would be larger if it showed more sympathy—”

  “Bah! Lenin would rather have a few who are totally committed than a horde of ineffectual half-hearts.”

  “Some men ha
ve families to support.”

  “Do you speak for yourself, Christinin?”

  “No . . .”

  “Are you willing to give your all for the Party? It’s only through total commitment that liberty can be achieved.”

  Andrei felt the heat rush up his neck—not of anger, but of humiliation and a sense of self-reproach. He had been vacillating, holding back for a long time, because he hadn’t been able to give up the work that had grown so near to his heart.

  Desperate to exonerate himself, he said, “My father died for the cause! Don’t tell me about sacrifice.”

  “I don’t know what cause your father died for, but it wasn’t Bolshevism. Regardless of that, how long do you think you can ride on your father’s heroism? Isn’t it time you made your own mark for the cause?”

  Andrei was silent for such a long moment that finally Stephan impatiently thrust the sketchbook back at him and turned his attention elsewhere. But that moment of silent debate was all Andrei devoted to his dilemma.

  “Kaminsky,” he said. Stephan turned around. “I can do those drawings. Where do you want them delivered?”

  A gleam of triumph filled Kaminsky’s eyes. “I, of course, can’t guarantee they will be accepted. But they will go to a man named Stalin—”

  A fellow standing nearby interjected, “I don’t think so, Stephan. Stalin’s been arrested again.”

  “Now there is a faithful Party man, that Stalin,” declared Stephan with a pointed look toward Andrei. “He spends more time in Imperial prisons than out. He’ll go far in the Party.”

  Andrei left as soon as he got the information about how to deliver his contributions to Pravda—a rather intricate process designed to elude police detection. His mind was in a turmoil over all that had transpired. He wasn’t certain if he was angrier at Kaminsky for his reproachfulness or at himself for being the cause of his own humiliation. He should have known Kaminsky was the kind of die-hard Party man who would never accept anything less than total commitment.

  But was Kaminsky expecting too much?

  Andrei wondered about that as he began to walk home. There had been a time in his life when the destruction of the monarchy had been the most important thing to him. After his father died, he thought that consuming passion would burn inside him forever. But what had the years done to it all? It was still there; he believed in the cause. But he had to admit he had for the most part only gravitated toward the Social Democrats because he had several friends involved in the Party. Not being an intellectual, he mainly saw the surface of things, and from that view, Marxism seemed to suit Andrei’s idealism. The precepts of even distribution of wealth and “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” were appealing.