Olga Grushin

by The Dream Life of Sukhanov (v5)

  Our eyes met, and I had a sudden feeling that she disliked me greatly. I was surprised when she agreed to let me walk her home. She lived with her father on Gorky Street, a quarter of an hour away. When we parted, she wrote down her phone number on the back of one of my drawings.

  The next day, I had a talk with Lev I felt guilty about my encounter with Nina, and I did not want him to hear about it from her. I altered the truth ever so slightly: I told him that when I had come to invite him along, his door had been closed, and hearing the sounds of an animated discussion inside, I had decided against interrupting. He gave me an odd look, then shrugged.

  “Stop sounding so damn apologetic,” he said. “I don’t own her or her time.”

  “But I thought you were ... Aren’t you and Nina ...”

  “You thought wrong,” he said curtly. “We are friends. Old friends. We went to school together. The first time we talked, we were fourteen. She brought a sandwich with caviar for lunch, while I had a piece of bread spread with butter and sprinkled with sugar—the only thing my mother could afford. She was so fascinated she asked me for a trade. Good luck with her, Tolya. Now, about this last piece of yours, I’ve been thinking it over, and I’m not sure the composition works. Wouldn’t it be better if—”

  I felt relieved at having Lev’s blessing, and dizzy with possibilities. After that, I saw her often. She had numerous admirers, of course, many of them in the highest ranks of society, where she moved freely because of her father, and I had no hope of impressing her with my mildly successful position in life or my unremarkable material accomplishments. Neither had I that sleek suavity acquired through experience with women, for in spite of being twenty-eight, I could brag of nothing but three or four passing flirtations in the whole of my past. But as I soon discovered, she loved art—loved it with a passion surprising in someone of Malinin’s flesh and blood. Not being blessed with talent (as she herself readily admitted), she had studied art history at the Moscow State University and was now working as a curator at the Tretyakovskaya Gallery. Soon a visit to this or that museum, a walk through this or that exhibition became our habitual way of spending time together, and as I would treat her to a fiery discourse on the nature of Fra Angelico’s colors or van Gogh’s brushstroke, I would feel encouraged by the look of reluctant admiration I imagined at times in her wonderful mermaid eyes.

  One evening in late May, I took her to the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge, to show her the garlands of liquid lights carried away by the river and tell her about a painting I had envisioned, with a mysterious city of golden churches and lacelike towers gleaming mistily under the still, dark waters of a lake, its quivering contours too incandescent to be a reality, too enchanting to be a reflection, too palpable to be a dream. And then I looked up and saw her standing there, in her narrow-waisted white dress, absently picking tiny blossoms off a branch of deep purple lilacs I had brought her and watching their twirling descent into the current below—and I could wait no longer. I told her I loved her, had loved her since the first time I saw her. She was quiet for a moment, then said expressionlessly that it was growing chilly, and could I please walk her home; but something in her face made my heart flutter like a mad butterny—and a few weeks later, she kissed me.

  It was the first real day of summer, bright and green and hot, and we went for a walk in Gorky Park. Lev came too, with Alia, a giggling nineteen-year-old with an upturned nose and eyes blue and empty as glass, whom he claimed to have met a week before in an ice cream line. The four of us rented a boat, but it proved too small to hold everyone at once, and Lev and I took turns rowing the girls around the lake; and when, distracted by the glittering waves and the sun flashing into my eyes and Nina’s summery, lighthearted presence, I crashed the boat into the low branches of a willow tree, Nina began to laugh, and Lev and Alia waved and shouted from the shore, and as I tried to extricate us from the wavering, sparkling, leafy ambush, she suddenly leaned over—and kissed me.

  When we parted later that day, I did not go home. Drunk with happiness, I walked the streets of Moscow, watching the darkness fall, watching windows pop up one after another and then go out, watching the sky grow thinner. When the first gray light touched the rooftops, the city unexpectedly rustled with a warm summer rain, and laughing, I ran to a nearby bus stop and waited in its glass-walled shelter. Half an hour passed, and still the rain gave no sign of abating. Realizing how close I was to the institute, I made a dash through the downpour and minutes later burst into the building.

  Once in my studio, I immediately succumbed to the temptation of the virgin canvas that was stretched on my easel, for a certain image had haunted me all night—a lake, a boat, and in it, a woman—a demure, radiant nude with breasts, arms, and legs sprouting flowers, hundreds, thousands, myriad blue and white flowers whose fresh, fragrant profusion was gradually transformed into the blue, sun-dappled water on which the boat was floating gently. As I painted, I grew oblivious of the world around me—a hubbub of voices in the corridor, a patter of rain on the windowsill, a brisk knock on the door, a heavy step, a voice saying importantly, “There is a certain issue I need to discuss with you, Anatoly Pavlovich....”

  Then, glancing up sharply, I saw a balding man entering the room, his red face stony, his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his jacket. It took me a heartbeat to recognize Leonid Penkin, the institute director—and instantly I became aware of my unshaved chin, my rain-drenched clothes, the circles under my eyes, a possibly missed morning lecture, and worse yet, a bare breast quite visibly materializing under my brush amidst a torrent of bluebells. With scarcely a nod for a greeting, the director commenced striding back and forth across the floor, staring majestically somewhere over my head and talking—talking about certain rumors that had reached him, certain, so to speak, artistic gatherings in a certain questionable home that I surely knew about, certain actions, moreover, that he would very much regret to have to undertake in certain contingencies.... Praying that he would fail to notice my painting, I hardly listened to his vociferous rhetoric.

  “The way I see it,” he was saying, “socialist art is like a fast train into the future, and I, for one, would be rather sorry to see someone with your potential get off that train, for let me tell you, young man, it’s the only train there is. But I’m afraid you must get off if ... Are you listening to me? You must get off if you don’t produce a ticket this instant!”

  “A ticket?” Sukhanov repeated in confusion. “What ticket?”

  “I thought as much,” said the man, and pushed his red face closer to Sukhanov’s. “A stowaway! Well, time to take a walk. Unless, of course, you want to pay a fine. Pay up, or get off.”

  The people around them murmured excitedly. Through his broken glasses, Sukhanov peered outside and saw another badly lit platform without a name, disconcertingly similar to the one he had left dreams and dreams ago, in Bogoliubovka. Shuddering, he said, “All right, all right, how much?” and hastily reached inside his pocket. He felt some loose change rolling behind the lining, but his wallet was not there. His wallet, he suddenly remembered with a sinking heart, was in a side compartment of his bag, and his bag—his bag had been stolen.

  His voice trembling now, he tried to explain his predicament to the conductor, offering what coins he had, swearing he would send the rest of the money in the mail, even humiliating himself by announcing that he was a very influential man, Anatoly Pavlovich Sukhanov, the editor in chief of the magazine Art of the World. “And I’m the editor of Pravda,” said a snickering voice in the crowd, “but I still buy me a ticket.” The train exploded with ugly, malicious laughter, and the conductor grasped Sukhanov’s shoulders and unceremoniously prodded him toward the door. In the quickly disintegrating mob behind him, he thought he saw the ancient man who had sat beside him earlier, now standing on the bench and frantically shouting something over the sea of heads; but his words were swallowed in the multi-throated roar, and in the next moment Sukhanov was rudely bundled off onto the empty platfo
rm. With a parting whistle, the train pulled away, all of its windows swarming with scowling, triumphant demons.

  For a while after, Sukhanov stumbled up endless flights of stairs and trod along echoing passageways, emerging finally on a wide street, with a row of identical apartment buildings on one side and a park on the other. It looked like a big city. For a long time he waited aimlessly inside a glass-walled shelter by the road. (Hadn’t he done this recently? He could not remember.) Eventually the darkness parted with a squeal of tires, and a rectangle of concentrated yellow light, bobbing with more demonic faces at the windows, rolled up and slid open its doors. He stuck his head inside and inquired weakly, addressing no one in particular, “What city is this, please?”—but in reply received only hooting and someone’s carelessly phrased advice on public drunkenness. He was about to edge away, when a man seated by himself up front took a closer look at him and asked him where he wanted to go.

  “Moscow,” Sukhanov said. The demons mocked him gleefully, but the man up front did not laugh. His face was not like the others, and his middle-aged eyes were sad.

  “Where in Moscow?” he asked after the demons had quieted behind his back. It appeared that the train had deposited Sukhanov on the western outskirts of the capital; and while the metro was not yet running, the man told him, all he needed to do was take night bus number 403 to Krylatskoe and there switch to the number 13 going directly to the Tretyakovskaya station. “Just wait here,” said the man, glancing at his wrist. “There’ll be a 403 coming any minute.”

  “You are very kind,” Sukhanov said humbly.

  “Hell, I’ve been there myself,” the man replied, shrugging.

  The doors closed, and the rectangle of light moved off into the shadows.

  It must have been close to six in the morning when Sukhanov was finally spat out by the last bus into the reassuringly familiar landscape of the Zamoskvorechie. The city was still dark, the never-ending night still upon him. Almost swooning with sleep, he walked along Bolshoi Tolmachevsky Lane, and the echo of his solitary steps reverberated hollowly off aged walls. Through an open window, the faint sound of a radio reached him—many voices, remote and muffled like the buzz of an insect throng, singing the Soviet anthem, proclaiming the indestructible union of the free republics. He turned the corner, and the sprawling form of the Tretyakovskaya Gallery loomed into sight. Quickening his steps, he walked toward it, passed the main entrance, and approached a metal side door bearing the sign “Keep Out: Staff Only” When he pushed the door, it gave way soundlessly, just as she had promised. Stepping inside, he barely had time to register that singular museum smell of light dust, parquet polish, and old paper, when his elbow was seized by a swift hand, and Nina’s tense face emerged from the dimness.

  “Did anyone see you come in?” she whispered as she locked the door behind him.

  He shook his head and tried to pull her toward him for a kiss.

  “Not now,” she said. “It’s almost six o‘clock, we must hurry. Come, this way.”

  We tiptoed through labyrinths of nondescript corridors, some lined with dank black pipes, others concealing bookcases in unexpected recesses. Once a red-and-white Saint George pointed a lance directly at my chest from a poster that had materialized in the air, hanging on a column that I could not see, that might not have even been there; and in another minute I almost screamed when the darkness hobbled toward us, gradually assuming the guise of a grinning custodian dragging behind a dried-out mop. “My respects, Nina Petrovna,” said the museum’s resident ghost, and after Nina pressed something into his proffered hand, shuffled back into the limbo whence he had come. I followed him with uneasy eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “Anton Ivanych won’t report us, he likes me.”

  “I still think it’s too risky,” I said. “What if they found out and you lost your job? It’s bad enough that I’m about to—”

  “What?” she asked sharply, stopping.

  I had decided not to tell her about my run-in with Penkin a couple of months ago, but she was insistent, and I did not want to stand here arguing, for our presence in the bowels of the Tretyakovka was unlawful, the corridors shifted with invisible shadows, and who knew what lay lurking in wait behind all these boarded-up doors. Hurriedly I explained about the reprimand, the painting of the nude, the director’s bulging eyes, the final warning.... She listened intently, and slowly her face assumed a determined expression.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” she whispered. “Now let’s just do this, replace the keys, and get out.”

  We reached the place a few wary minutes later, having passed through rooms and rooms of shoddy Soviet paintings along the way. Her hands shaking slightly, she struggled with an enormous lock. She walked in first, flipped a light switch; I heard a stifled cry. I rushed in after her, my heart pounding—and stopped, dazzled, astonished, overwhelmed, awed into silence in the presence of absolute genius.

  For here, in a cramped storage space, separated by a thin partition from monstrosities and nonentities, a few dozen outlawed canvases leaned haphazardly against the walls. Canvases by Malevich, Filonov, Kandinsky, Chagall—the legendary Russian artists whose works I had never seen, whose names I had heard pronounced only rarely, and always with a self-righteous lilt of accusation. For one moment, I felt a burst of blinding, searing anger—anger at this country that had dared condemn its greatest masters to oblivion, anger at these people who had refused so ignorantly the gift of such beauty, anger at these times that appeared to change but in reality stayed the same, still forbidding us our most precious inheritance, still forcing us to steal our revelations crumb by crumb, in secret, with nervous, criminal glances.... And then I beheld the bright, magical world swirling about me, beckoning me softly, and discovered that my heart no longer had any place for anger—for my heart was full.

  And brilliant fireworks erupted in glowing glory, and radiant skies melted with purple sunrises and green sunsets, and red and golden lovers floated on the wings of music over the roofs of their blue towns, and homeless poets flooded the nights with lyrics and stars, and the generous earth blossomed with rainbow-drenched flowers and fiery horses—and as I saw life itself dissolve into a thousand previously unseen shapes and tints, I was lost forever in the flaming flights of the purest colors, in the holy harmonies of the brush, in the deepest dreams of the soul....

  And when minutes or hours or years later I emerged from this glimmering, singing paradise to feel someone tugging on my sleeve, whispering that we must leave now, I felt stunned by a realization that something had happened—that I was different now—that during that color-mad stretch of eternity, I had felt in myself a mysterious, perfect affinity with the giants surrounding me—that I had glimpsed my own strength, my own voice, my own vision. At that instant, I knew at last what greatness I could demand of myself. Drunk with this knowledge, I turned around—and saw her, the woman I loved, the woman to whom I owed this gift, looking at me with a shining, wide-eyed gaze.

  “You were thinking you could be one of them,” she said. “I could tell.”

  “And what do you think?” I asked, laughing to hide my sudden nervousness.

  “I think,” she said gravely, “I think, yes, you could be. Perhaps you already are.”

  My heart was everywhere all at once, in my throat, in my wrists, in the backs of my knees.

  “Nina,” I said, “let’s get married.”

  And smiling now, she said simply, “It was your turn to read my thoughts.”

  The night was finally lifting when we scrambled outside. Holding hands, we walked along Bolshoi Tolmachevsky Lane, sharing a pale, persimmon-tinted sunrise with a spluttering water truck and a solitary cat strolling home after an all-night revel. The air was brightening slowly, gloriously above our heads.

  “Let’s go to my place and tell Mother,” I said. “She wakes up early.”

  She nodded wordlessly. Laughing, we chased each other down the street, across the lobby, up the stairs, all t
he way to the eighth floor.

  On the landing, I searched for my keys.

  “And tonight, if you like, I’ll invite some friends over and we’ll celebrate in style, with cake and champagne,” I said lightly. The keys were not in my right pocket. I reached for the left. “Nina?”

  But there was no answer—and when I swung around, I saw only the empty landing behind me. “Nina?” I called louder, not yet worried. “Are you hiding on the stairs?”

  The keys were not in my left pocket either. Frowning, I tried to recall where I had put them last. And then I knew. The keys were in the side compartment of my bag, along with my wallet, and the bag—the bag had been stolen.

  Remembering everything now, I slid onto the floor before the locked door to apartment number fifteen, building number seven, Belinsky Street, and wept.

  NINETEEN

  Anatoly Pavlovich! Anatoly Pavlovich!”

  He hesitated to open his eyes. The awakening had brought with it a flock of ugly sensations. His body felt broken, his skin seemed dusted with gritty sand, his head ached, and the right side of his mouth had developed a persistent tic. The floor beneath him was cold, and somewhere above, a worried voice was saying, “Anatoly Pavlovich, what happened? Why are you here? Are you ill?”

  It could not be avoided for much longer. Sukhanov looked up unhappily and saw a landing with an elevator grille, a shaft of bleak light falling through a dusty staircase window, and looming above him, a sturdy man in his thirties, with pronounced cheekbones, a stubborn jaw, and bulging arms, dressed in a brown leather jacket.

  “Oh, it’s you,” said Sukhanov vaguely. He knew the man—knew him rather well, in fact—but for some reason the name escaped him.

  “Are you ill, Anatoly Pavlovich?” the man repeated. “Do you need an ambulance?”

  Sukhanov shook his head, and immediately touched his temples to steady the pain.