Olga Grushin

by The Dream Life of Sukhanov (v5)

  For some time I studied an object lying on Lev’s open palm. It was round and black and shiny, and had four small holes in it; a frayed bit of thread was sticking out of a lower hole. It looked odd, like some puzzling artifact of an ancient, forgotten civilization. Then, through the resounding silence in my mind, one thought emerged: Nina.

  “Nina is coming to the Manège at two o‘clock,” I said dully. “I was going to show her around. I’d like her to see my painting hanging on the wall at least once. It’s a painting of her, and she would really—”

  Lev looked away.

  “They are taking everything down as we speak,” he said slowly. “Nina knows already, I called her. I’ve been looking for you for over an hour.” After a small pause, he added, “Sorry about your coat”—and pressed the torn-off button into my hand.

  The days that followed were a wretched blur. There were the rooms at the Manège, the walls bare now, with a draft off the street tossing homeless shreds of wrapping paper from corner to corner and a few square-shouldered, square-faced young men in freshly pressed suits shrugging noncommittally when a frantic, disheveled Roshchin begged them to disclose the fate of our works. There were the hours at the institute when Lev and I struggled through our meaningless lectures while the whispers of the Manège affair spread behind our backs, and that splendidly sunny morning when Leonid Penkin pushed his corpulent belly through my door and in a bored drawl relieved me of my position. There was the miserable evening I spent at Lev’s place, with Lev, also fired, sitting stony-faced at the kitchen table, pouring himself glass after glass of vodka, while Alla shrilly lamented her wasted youth. Worse yet, there was the silent disapproval in my own home, with the television loudly reciting victories of socialist labor behind my mother’s closed door and Nina moving about the kitchen like the ghost of a housewife doomed for all eternity to miming a multitude of imaginary chores, too busy to talk, avoiding my eyes, as if she blamed me for what had happened—but mainly, through it all, behind it all, there was an emptiness, a vast, cold, ever-present, all-pervasive emptiness inside me that kept me awake for hours every night, without thoughts, without hopes, trapped in a heavy darkness alone with the barely visible shadows of my paintings, now damned forever.

  As the week neared its end, our worst fears, at least, had not been realized—though a few of us had lost our jobs, and the rest had received official reprimands, no one had been arrested, and even Roshchin, who had vanished mysteriously the day after the fateful opening, prompting his distraught mistress to make incoherent, sobbing calls to all his friends, turned up the next morning, with a black eye and reeking of drink but otherwise unharmed. Yet the sense of impending disaster continued to oppress us, and Lev kept nervously proposing extended trips to the country. “The thing to do right now,” he repeated, “is to lie low until they forget about us.” I would merely shrug in response. As time dragged on, irresolute and despondent, I found myself increasingly indifferent to my ultimate fate, and felt a listless calm when the telephone screamed at four in the morning on two consecutive nights and then hummed with pregnant silence into my ear, or when one evening, just as my mother and I were sitting down to supper (Nina was in bed with a migraine), there sounded a harsh knock on the door and I discovered a strange man on the landing, wearing a glossy beaver hat down to his eyebrows and carrying a bunch of artificial carnations (the kind one places on graves), who, proclaiming with a sinister smile that he must have mistaken the door, persisted in peering over my shoulder into our apartment. Nina did not share my detachment. After the man’s appearance on our doorstep, she grew tense whenever she heard steps on our floor and disliked answering the telephone; and thus it was I who lifted the receiver when, exactly one week after the catastrophe, my father-in-law rang our place.

  He had to name himself: in the past five years we had exchanged only a few static-filled sentences, and I did not recognize his voice.

  “Nina’s asleep,” I said curtly—it was only nine o‘clock, but I could see no light under the door to our room.

  “Actually, Anatoly,” he said, “I wanted to talk to you. Not on the phone, though. Would you be so kind as to come over? Take a pen, I’ll give you my address.”

  “I remember it,” I said, then added pointedly, “I have a very good memory, Pyotr Alekseevich.”

  “Indeed?” he said without expression. “Then I’ll see you in half an hour.”

  The cold seeped beneath my upturned collar and damp snow slapped my face as I crossed the night between our homes. Although I tried to assure myself that I owed Nina the courtesy of this visit, my mood worsened by the minute. In the lobby I had an altercation with the concierge, who for a long time refused to let me pass; and once I reached Malinin’s landing, still seething from the argument, I was stopped by a middle-aged blonde in a lacy apron who, emerging from the apartment next door, kept talking about some Crimean resort, smiling and pressing a bunch of keys into my hand. Over her shoulder hovered a pimply youth who stared at me with disconcerting curiosity, then exclaimed nonsensically, “I know you, don’t I? You are that mister with the tie, from the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge, I owe you two kopecks!”—but at that moment Malinin’s lock clicked, and the imposing figure of Nina’s father rose on the doorstep, dressed in a floor-length robe, holding a pear-shaped goblet of cognac in his hand, reflected in the gilded mirrors.

  “Please come in,” he said, majestically sweeping his arm inside.

  The door closed behind me.

  In silence Malinin led me along the corridor. Nothing here had changed in the five years since my first, and last, visit. The Polish officer glared out of his heavy frame at the coat I tossed on the counter and the wet footprints I left on the immaculate floors; the piano, untouched in almost two decades—since Maria Malinina’s premature death—glistened with its dark, useless grandeur in the depths of the drawing room; and through another half-open door I glimpsed, with a sense of oppressive recognition, the crystal chandelier, the mahogany grandfather clock, the crimson velvet curtains—the bourgeois decorations of the scene of my past outburst. No, nothing had changed—and yet, without Nina’s soft domestic presence, the whole place seemed dimmer and dustier and somehow sad; and when, still without speaking, Malinin showed me into the living room, sat me down, poured me a drink, and lowered himself into an armchair across from me, I looked at him closely and suddenly doubted why I was here. I had supposed he had invited me to gloat over my failure; now I was not sure. For a minute we sat uneasily sipping our drinks. Then he cleared his throat.

  “I’ll come straight to the point,” he said. “I’ve spoken with your director Penkin, and he is willing to take you back. Naturally, upon certain guarantees.”

  “Such as?” Caught by surprise, I sounded sharper than I had intended.

  “You understand, of course,” Malinin said coldly, “he can’t afford to damage his reputation by sheltering dubious elements as members of his staff. You must stop dabbling in your underground brand of art, avoid scandalous exhibitions, and stick to painting harvests and whatnot. A few tractors in the wheat ought to make matters right between you. Not unreasonable, under the circumstances, don’t you think? Anatoly?”

  When I swirled the cognac in my glass, it gleamed with a rich honey tint, and I thought how much I would love to find the precise color for its luxurious shade. I had planned the second painting in my series in a predominantly yellow palette—the lush saffron of Oriental carpets, the brightness of sunshine on a child’s face, the translucent amber of tea rose petals, the opulent sheen of gold against the cream of a woman’s throat, and perhaps, I realized now, the intoxicating smoothness of liqueurs.

  “I had to pull quite a few strings on your behalf,” Malinin’s voice sounded in the distance, “so I would be much obliged if you would at least give me an answer.”

  “I’ve quit painting such tripe,” I said indifferently, still studying my glass.

  “Oh, have you, now? Must have been recent,” he said.


  I shrugged.

  “A pity. You weren’t half bad at it, from what I hear.... Excellent, isn’t it? Our ambassador to France dropped it off the other day. A little more, perhaps? . . . Well, no matter, there are other ways of recommending yourself to your director.” The clock in the next room tried to announce a quarter past the hour, but its valiant rumble was caught and promptly silenced in the folds of the velvet draperies. “How do you feel about criticism, for instance?” Malinin asked. “Simple, respected, and pays well, not to mention the possibilities for advancement. As a matter of fact, let me think—yes, I’ve just agreed to do an article for a good friend of mine. He happens to be the editor of our leading art magazine, Art of the World, I’m certain you’ve read it. I could arrange to add you as my coauthor; he owes me a favor. It would make Penkin happy. Of course, you’d be the one to actually write the text, I’ve never had much liking for this kind of—”

  “What’s the article about?” I interrupted.

  “A subject that you are well familiar with, as I hear from Nina—surrealism. My working title is ‘Surrealism and Other Western “Isms” as Manifestations of Capitalist Insolvency.’ What do you think?”

  “I think surrealism is the most brilliant movement of the twentieth century,” I said. “In fact, I myself painted in the surrealist manner for almost two years, and even now, much of my inspiration comes from—”

  “Good, good,” said Malinin, standing up and walking to a bookcase. “Then it should be easy for you. Meaningless subjects, amoral disregard of communal values, decadent neglect of reality, nightmares depriving man of joy, that kind of thing.... Here, you can borrow this volume of reproductions, it should help you find all the indignant epithets you need. Would a month be long enough? The issue goes to print in January.”

  I flipped through the book he had handed me. It was in English; the pages were bright and glossy, and smelled of new print. I saw a nude with roses blossoming in her belly, a jungle metamorphosing into the ruins of a many-columned city, a bleeding classical bust ...

  “What you are suggesting,” I said, pushing the volume aside, “is nothing but betrayal—of myself, of my friends, of everything I hold true.”

  He smiled unpleasantly.

  “Such lofty words,” he said. “How old are you now, Anatoly—thirty-one? Thirty-two?”

  “Thirty-three,” I said. “The age of Christ.”

  He paused in the process of pouring himself another splash, looked back at me with a raised eyebrow, and I instantly regretted my words. The drink was stronger than I had thought. Wondering hazily whether I had eaten that day—I could not remember—I watched him push the cork back into the ornate bottle.

  “Is that really how you see yourself?” he said, seating himself, sweeping the folds of his robe off the floor in the grand gesture of an old Russian aristocrat. “A martyr about to make a great sacrifice? Except that Christ sacrificed himself for the people. For what would you sacrifice yourself—and not just yourself, may I remind you, but your mother and your wife as well? For some vague notion of Art with a capital A? Because let me tell you, Anatoly, the Russian people do not need you and your art. No matter how hard you beat your head against the wall—you and that woebegone friend of yours, what’s his name, Rifkin, Semkin, Bulkin?—along with all the rest of those fellows, no matter how much any of you suffers, no one will ever want to exhibit a single work of yours in this country. My kind of art is what our people love. It may not be as amusing as some fantasy by Chagall, but when millions of tired, unhappy men and women want to find a bit of light, hope, or encouragement at the end of their hard day, they would rather look at paintings of the heroic past and the harmonious future than puzzle over some portrait of a man with an upside-down green face. Why, I can’t tell you how many times—”

  And as I finished my cognac, he talked of all the letters he had received from soldiers who had gone through the war carrying in their pockets a torn-out magazine page with some landscape of his that had reminded them of their home village, and all the teary-eyed women who had thanked him for immortalizing their fallen fathers and sons, and how at his age, fifty-six years, a man ought to know whether his life had had a purpose; and somehow Andrei Rublev came up as an artist easily accessible to the masses and mindful of the demands of his time.... The grandfather clock in the next room muttered an inaudible hour. The trapped light swung wildly in my glass as I set it down, and the room, with its gently colored lampshades, gold-lettered spines of books lining the walls, heavy leather chairs, and at its center, the man with Nina’s face pontificating in an arrogant voice, yet with an odd note of uncertainty creeping into his words now and again, swayed briefly, then righted itself, when I stood up.

  “I’ve heard enough,” I said brusquely. “I’m going home now.”

  Malinin stopped talking, glanced at me with something like alarm. I was walking to the door. “I suppose all this must seem quite sudden,” he said, rising quickly, “especially since you and I haven’t exactly ... But all I want now is to help Nina, and after this Manège fiasco ... Wait, just take this, will you, leaf through it, sleep on it, discuss it with Nina, and we shall resume our conversation at a more convenient hour, all right?”

  Already in the doorway, about to stride out, I looked back at him across the congealing night, and saw, for the first time, the unmistakable traces of aging in his face, the bitter lines pulling at his mouth, the slight trembling in his hands holding out the art book, the restless, almost pleading, look in his eyes.... Unexpectedly I caught the faint echo of something, someone from my distant past, and hesitated, my fingers tightening around the doorknob; then, only dimly aware of my reasons, I came back, ripped the tome out of his grasp, and left without another word. On the threshold of the apartment, it occurred to me that I was forgetting something important. I paused. The entrance hall was crowded with reflections of unkempt, distraught-looking middle-aged men who did not resemble Malinin in the slightest and whom I avoided studying too closely; timid shadows were waiting in the corners, reluctant to enter their nightly dance; trapped between the mirrors, the Polish officer stared into space with stern, and somehow disappointed, eyes; the bowl on the lion-footed table overflowed with an assortment of homeless objects—a cuff link, a black button, a bunch of keys ...

  And for a second I almost had it, but the memory of the button—just like this one—that Belkin had torn off my coat interfered, dislodging some realization that in another breath would have merited a slap on the forehead and a relieved “Of course!” Shrugging, I pocketed my button’s double so my mother could sew it back on, walked onto the landing, closed the door behind me, and shaking off a strange woman of forty-odd years who was tugging at my sleeve and asking with irksome insistence after some keys (and ignoring a pimpled youth who gawked at me from behind her, saying in an insolent whisper, “Looks like someone’s been dipping into Pyotr Alekseevich’s Courvoisier!”), descended the stairs.

  Outside, the city was filled with midnight ghosts, and the December snow was still falling, damp, unrelenting, coming deviously from all directions at once. I walked with rapid steps, peering at every street corner and shuttered storefront through the white whirling. The visit had unsettled me. Without ever considering Malinin’s preposterous proposal, I had been tricked into making a gesture of apparent complicity—tricked by the warm, unsteady haze of inebriation and the pity that had seized me at an inopportune moment, or else by the elusive whiff I had caught of another, long-past encounter—and now I felt soiled, as if I had shared someone’s dirty secret, and anxious, increasingly anxious, to be rid of my compromising burden. The block ended; I crossed a deserted side street at a red light. There were still no trash cans in sight, and the possibility of tossing the book into a snowdrift flashed through my mind, but I hastily buried the thought and continued walking, trying to keep at bay something else that bothered me, something my father-in-law had said, something that almost had a ring of truth to it.... And then, mercifully, there it
was, on the other side of Gorky Street, by a building even more grandiose than Malinin‘s—a welcome squat shape, a depository of cigarette butts, ice cream wrappers, and uneasy conscience.

  As I ran toward it, I nearly collided with a woman in a full-length fur coat getting out of a magnificent black car parked by the curb. Sidestepping, I automatically raised my eyes, and saw a girl a few years younger than Nina, and rather plain; but what struck me was the expression on her face as she passed me on her way into the building, the folds of her glossy coat flying behind her—a wandering smile, directed at nothing and everything, on her lips, in her eyes. Immediately I despised her—despised her splendid clothes, the Volga at her back, her obvious and oblivious contentment—and hearing the car door slam again, turned with malice, eager to see what crimes of greed, baseness, or indifference branded her husband’s face; for a life like theirs was certain to carry a price. Then, just as quickly, my contempt vanished, supplanted by another, darker feeling. A slightly stooping man of my age, with kindly eyes behind thick glasses, walked by, leading a child by the hand. I glimpsed a tiny heart-shaped face tilted upward and eyelashes instantly furry in the descending snow, and overheard the man say softly, “And so the princess and the mouse went to the tea party at the castle, and there ...” The girl was standing in the doorway, waiting for them, smiling. The door swung open, revealing, in one moment before it slammed closed, the marble floor of a columned lobby, bronze lamps, mirrors, the fleeting reflections of silvery high heels, polished leather shoes, a three-year-old creature in a bearlike coat and red mittens, dragging a toy horse by its tail ...