Olga Grushin

by The Dream Life of Sukhanov (v5)

  He slowed down, looked around him again, with different eyes this time, and thought how strange it was that he came here so rarely, only a few times a year, on these reluctant, vaguely embarrassing tea-drinking visits—and yet it had been just a few crooked, rambling, wonderful streets from this very spot that he had spent so much of his life; and all these courtyards, all these boarded-up churches, the stucco decorations of the façades, the darkening alleys he was now passing with the mild apprehension of a middle-aged man—all of this he must have once known with the most intimate knowledge of scraped knees and cut-up palms, the knowledge of a lively, inquisitive, troublesome boy. Former street names, learned from an old neighbor, rose to his lips like a charming tune from the past—Filippovsky Lane, Malyi Afanasievsky, Bolshoi Afanasievsky ... And when, at the corner, the houses finally fell apart, revealing the wide beginnings of Gogolevsky Boulevard, and Vadim appeared from under the newspaper, yawning as he scrambled to wakefulness, Sukhanov surprised himself.

  “Drive down the boulevard and meet me at its lower end, by the metro, will you?” he said airily. “The evening is so nice, I’d like to take a little walk.”

  Aware of his Volga pulling out into the street immediately behind him, he crossed with an unaccustomed recklessness, at a yellow light, and entered the shade of the trees surrounding a statue of Gogol. The author of Dead Souls was, as usual, stiffly striding forward with a sarcastic half-smile on his lips. Sukhanov hesitated; but the reddening sun dappled the ground so alluringly and the leaves rustled so lightly that he shrugged and sat down on the nearest bench—only for a minute, he told himself as he gazed about him, pleasantly stirred by the proximity of his earliest years. All the other benches were occupied, mostly by embracing couples, with a sprinkle of solitary women here and there; one of them, with the prim face of a provincial schoolteacher, was tossing crumbs at an undulating sea of pigeons. A bit farther down the boulevard, a pack of small children played noisily, climbing over a wooden mushroom, falling off, laughing, climbing again. I might have come here as a toddler, he thought sentimentally.

  The other end of the bench dipped heavily, and he emerged from his sun-drenched reverie to find an individual of indeterminate age and highly disreputable appearance tilting toward him with a loose, unfocused grin.

  “Guess what I have inside my head?” the character whispered with a conspiratorial wink.

  Sukhanov surveyed the man’s gleaming eyes, shaved head, inflamed cheeks, gapped yellow grin, and the stained salmon-colored scarf wrapped around his neck, then turned away in prohibitive silence.

  “What, too proud to talk to me?” the man said accusingly behind his back, louder this time. “Why don’t you answer my question? What do I have inside my head?”

  A nearby couple looked up with curiosity. Wincing, Sukhanov turned back.

  “I have not the slightest idea,” he said in an icy tone.

  The man roared in drunken triumph. “No one ever guesses!” he bellowed right into Sukhanov’s face. Surprisingly, there was no alcohol on his breath. “But I like you, so I’ll tell you anyway. I have an inflated balloon inside my head, that’s what I have, yeah, and it feels great! Of course, you’re probably just as ungrateful as the rest of them, but I sense great affinity between us, so I’m going to tell you how I did it.”

  Sukhanov regarded the man with loathing—and then a solution occurred to him, so simple and mischievous he almost laughed with the malicious pleasure of a boy.

  “Why don’t you go and tell that lady over there instead?” he said quietly, nodding at the stern schoolteacher who was still feeding her pigeons. “I’m sure she’ll be happy to know.”

  The madman swung around and studied the woman, chewing thoughtfully at one end of his scarf. After a long minute he broke into an ecstatic smile, heaved himself up, and murmuring under his breath, headed toward her with the unsteady jerks of a cotton doll. On reaching the gray sea of birds that spilled away from her bench in shifting, cooing waves, he appeared briefly confounded, then raised his arms high over his head, yelled something, and plunged forward stumbling. The woman shrieked, and a hundred pigeons took off at once, tearing the air, erasing the trees and the roofs, obliterating even the confidently smirking, striding Gogol—and forgetting everything else, Sukhanov stared, stared at their flight, stared at their wings....

  The birds flew in rustling, sparkling, ever-widening circles above his head, their hundreds of wings lifting and falling in reverberant staccato, glowing with rosy translucence against the sunset—and when, after many pounding heartbeats, they began to descend to the ground, one after another, like so many falling petals, he saw a different statue revealed in the same place. This too is a Gogol, but one sitting heavily slumped forward, an ill, lonely, heartbroken man—the very same Gogol, indeed, whose mournful aspect will be eventually declared to “misrepresent Soviet reality” and who will then, in the year 1952, be removed, replaced, abandoned in some unfrequented nook of the city. And here, barely reaching the sad man’s feet on the pedestal, I stand with my head tipped back—a three-year-old who has just chased a flock of pigeons and is now watching their circling flight in open-mouthed fascination. Yes, I demand to be brought here day after day for this very reason, for I never tire of the excitement of breaking into a sudden run and startling these wonderful creatures with their puffed-up chests and iridescent throats and hoarse calls, setting them aflutter again and again, and then breathlessly staring after them, trying to catch the precise, brilliant moment when the sun bursts goldenly through the chinks in their flapping wings—until one day a face, a man’s face, a giant’s face with laughing eyes the color of pigeons’ wings, materializes out of the birds’ flickering and fluttering. The face moves closer and closer, until it is level with mine, and then I hear a voice—a voice that I somehow know already, a voice I have always known.

  “So you like birds, Tolya, do you? Come then, I want to show you something.”

  My hand timidly finds its way into the giant’s hand, and we walk—walk along the tree-lined Gogolevsky Boulevard, past kiosks selling tepid lemonade, past noisy children climbing a wooden mushroom that I find boring, past yellow-and-white mansions flecked with the sun, then through low gates of cast iron, and up an imposing marble staircase—and finally I stand in a long hall with dimness in the corners, and high above me, almost touching the ceiling, revealed in a majestic sweep of light, trembles an enormous creature with dark metal veins running through its spreading, transparent wings.

  “An inventor made this,” the giant tells me. “These are artificial wings for a man, you see, so he can put them on and fly. Would you like to fly, Tolya?”

  I imagine myself rising, rising with the beautiful, graceful creatures over that unhappy man of stone, spiraling higher into the glowing sky, and, overwhelmed, I nod quickly, repeatedly, and my eyes must be shining, because the man who is with me smiles at me—but already I see that the creature under the ceiling looks clumsy, gigantic, unyielding, not at all like the birds I know, and my certainty wavers.

  “I don’t like it, it’s ugly,” I say disappointedly. The man laughs and ruffles my hair and takes me away; and as we walk outside, into the noise and the sunlight and the smells of hot pastries, he says to me, “This flying machine is an important step toward the dream, Tolya, but it’s not the dream itself. You are right, man hopes to fly without any machines one day, soaring up and up with his will alone, free as a bird—and that day, if it ever comes, will be humanity’s most glorious triumph.”

  “When I grow up, I want to fly without machines,” I tell him, and as I look up, I see the most brilliant smile trembling under the mustache on his joyful, his dear face, seconds before the street, the light, the man himself begin to fade out like the last scene in a silent film....

  His eyes closed, Anatoly Pavlovich sat on the bench, taking shallow breaths, feeling as if a flock of birds had just traveled singing through his mind. In what murky subliminal cavern had it been lying dormant all these ye
ars, this priceless burst of a memory, only to yield itself in all its vivid colors at the lightest touch of fate? True, a factual basis for the discovery had been there for a long while. Once, in his reading, he had chanced across a curious tidbit about Vladimir Tatlin, an avant-garde artist who in middle age had become obsessed with flight and had spent years building models, and whose flying glider had been exhibited in 1932 at the State Museum of Fine Arts, now the Pushkin Museum, not ten minutes away from here. Sukhanov had carried that irrelevant scrap of information with him for many years, probably because the glider’s name, Letatlin, had amused him with its ingenious merger of inventor and invention, of Tatlin and letat‘, “to fly”; yet it had remained only a piece of textbook knowledge—until now, when a lucky convergence of words, shades, and gestures succeeded in tearing one magically prolonged glimpse of the past from the steely grip of oblivion and ensconcing it in his soul, quivering and alive.

  Naturally, he did not doubt that the vision was faulty in places and that his later knowledge superimposed itself now and again over the lacunae of memory. For one thing, the man of his recollection sported a mustache, looking, in fact, exactly like the dashing suitor offering a bouquet of roses in a black-and-white photograph over Nadezhda Sergeevna’s bed; and even though his mother had told him that Pavel Sukhanov had shaved his mustache once and for all on the day of their wedding, the face bending over him stubbornly refused to shed it. And of course, he did not really believe he had succeeded in reproducing his father’s actual words, for the phrasing was suspiciously sophisticated and would not have been understood, much less remembered, by a three-year-old. All the same, he knew the essence of the encounter had been captured. Tatlin’s glider rose in his mind’s eye with perfect clarity, the general meaning of the conversation was intact—and most important, he was sure, absolutely sure, of the wonderful smile that had lit up the man’s face when the little boy had said, “I want to fly.”

  Sukhanov had been too young to salvage much of value from the few years he had shared with his father. In a meager collection of his childhood mementos, no more than snapshots really, the man faded in and out of sight, crossing a hallway, gulping scalding tea over a counter, bending to tie his shoelaces, saying a rushed good-bye—always stepping into a frame only to step out of it an instant later. The gift he had received this summer evening was thus made all the more precious, for not only was it his earliest memory of Pavel Sukhanov—it was also one of the brightest, possessing as it did genuine life and warmth.

  Sukhanov stood up, dusted his pants, and smiling a secret little smile, absently floated down the boulevard, through the city that was being washed away by darkness. Only a few paces later, he encountered Vadim, who was almost running toward him. He shrugged, brushing away the chauffeur’s questions—of course he was all right, it had been only a minute or two, had it not? Just as absently he climbed into the backseat of the suddenly manifested car, and a moment later, when they came to an abrupt stop, was surprised to see his own building looming above him.

  He had already taken a few steps toward the door when something occurred to him, and returning, he rapped on the front window.

  “Listen, how old is your daughter?” he asked. “Eight, isn’t she?”

  “She turned eleven last week,” Vadim replied with a startled glance.

  “Simply incredible how time flies,” murmured Sukhanov. “But never mind, she’ll still have a sweet tooth. Here, why don’t you take these for her, she’ll like them....”

  And thrusting the crumpled package of crumbling sweets at the perplexed chauffeur, he smiled the same secret, dreamy smile, and was off.

  FIVE

  On the landing Sukhanov met Valya, who was just leaving for the day. Married to the caretaker of their apartment house, she lived somewhere in the building’s nether regions.

  “They’re waiting for you with supper, Anatoly Pavlovich,” she said, and smiled shyly, revealing a gap between her front teeth. “I’ve made my vareniki with cherries you like so much, this being Sunday and all.”

  Indeed, the whole apartment was seasoned with sweet, rich smells; the woman could certainly cook. Sukhanov ate in silence. He considered telling his family about the small mnemonic miracle that had befallen him earlier that evening, but Nina wore a pained look on her face and from time to time massaged her temples, Ksenya distractedly rolled a ball of bread around the rim of her plate, and Vasily was in the middle of a story about some diplomat he knew. Not for the first time, Sukhanov noticed that his son did not look as young as a twenty-year-old should and that his light blue eyes were flat and unfathomable like those oval pools of cold paint one saw in place of eyes on Modigliani’s faces. And unexpectedly, disjointedly, he wondered how well his children actually knew him, and how they would remember him when he was gone—whether in their minds he would amount to more than a dry encyclopedia article and a handful of snapshots to illustrate it: Anatoly Pavlovich at a lectern holding forth on the demise of Western art, Anatoly Pavlovich working at his desk, with the clickety-clack of his typewriter ricocheting off the study walls and the invisible sign “Do Not Disturb” on his closed door, Anatoly Pavlovich at this or that party, sporting this or that tasteful tie, conversing with this or that famous personage ...

  But immediately he scoffed at the notion. While it was true, perhaps, that he did not often talk to Ksenya and Vasily about his or their lives and that their family map shone with uncharted white spots of terra incognita, entire regions where he had never thought it wise or necessary to venture, hadn’t they shared so many pleasant times over the past two decades—so many leisurely vacations by the sea, Black and Baltic, so many lovely theater evenings, so many content suppers at home like the one tonight—all of them moments of warmth and wordless understanding? Yes, after all these years they were simply bound to know one another with a knowledge of love, truer, deeper, more perfect than any other kind of knowledge.... Sukhanov swallowed a small sigh and, remembering he had an important article to finish by Thursday, abandoned the last bite on his plate and left for the study.

  As soon as he crossed the threshold, he felt that something had changed in the room in his absence, as if the very air had become suffused with a different meaning; but it was not until he turned on the lamp that he realized what had happened. The empty space on the wall across from his desk, the space awaiting the return of Nina’s portrait, was no longer empty—a large oil painting now hung in its place. He looked at it, and his heart beat unsteadily.

  A raven-haired girl sat by dark moonlit waters. The luminous curve of her nude body was misty as a dream, even slightly transparent, so that, if one looked very closely, one could just make out pale shapes of water lilies visible through her honey-colored, unearthly flesh. An indistinct silhouette of a youth, perhaps an admiring shepherd, was crouching in the rushes behind her, but she took no notice of him. She was gazing away, over the waters, to a horizon where a magnificent white swan was floating, slowly, majestically, triumphantly, moving closer and closer. Zeus and Leda, the seducer and the seduced ... The whole thing was beautiful but at the same time oppressive, and one was tormented by the inability to see the expression on Leda’s face, for it was turned away, affording only the gentlest hint of a profile, the tender angularity of a cheekbone, the barest outline of full tips—not nearly enough to see whether she felt exultant at the god’s imminent approach, or whether she was afraid. In the lower left corner was a date, 1957, and next to it sprawled a familiar, proud signature.

  Sukhanov took off his glasses, extracted a handkerchief from his pocket, rubbed the lenses, folded the handkerchief away, put the glasses back on, cleared his throat, and called for Nina. She came unhurriedly and stopped in the doorway, her bare arms crossed, turquoise bracelets clicking faintly on her wrists.

  “What is this?” he asked, frowning ever so slightly, tapping his fountain pen against the proofs of his biography.

  “Oh, don’t you remember?” she said, shrugging. “Lev gave it to us
on our wedding day. I thought you’d remember.”

  “I do remember,” he replied dryly. “What I mean is, why is it here?”

  “I just thought the wall looked too bare as it was,” she said. “And then our last night’s conversation about Lev, and your going to see Swan Lake, reminded me that we had this somewhere. It goes well with the overall color scheme, don’t you think?”

  “We didn’t see Swan Lake,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. “We saw Coppelia.”

  “Did you really? I was sure it was Swan Lake. In any case, you can take it down if it bothers you,” she said with the same air of indifference, and gliding out into the shadows of the hallway, softly closed the door, her bracelets jingling.

  Unwilling to admit that the painting’s presence did unnerve him, Sukhanov resolutely turned to the article he was writing. But the specter of his reflection in the window again distracted him, the spectacles sparkling blindly in a skull-like face; the swan kept glancing at him with its malevolent golden eye; and his thoughts refused to follow their prescribed direction, swooping instead like a flock of pigeons over old Moscow, with all its abandoned houses, all its crushed church domes, all its forgotten faces from the past.... When he heard a ghostly radio somewhere outside transmitting the chiming of the clock in Red Square, he counted and, at the eleventh stroke, stood up heavily.

  Passing along winding corridors whose parquet floors were slippery with many layers of polish, he imagined a barely perceptible musical rhythm pulsating like a prolonged moan behind the door to Ksenya’s room, and a moment later caught a snippet of a telephone conversation, Vasily’s indignant voice saying to an invisible someone, “I don’t understand how he could...” and then fading away, muffled by darkened distances. When he entered the bedroom, he found Nina already in bed, propped up against a pillow with a thick book, her pale face gleaming with the silvery pollen of some precious night cream.