A Question of Return

by Robert Carr

  Perhaps. “And the people?” I asked a younger man, who had been ogling Yevgenya while holding forth along these lines. “Which people?” “People like you and I. Those in Poland, for example.” He shrugged. “They didn’t want our friendship. They’re always troublemakers, the Poles. Why talk about Poland?”

  There. Poland was no longer of interest.

  There was a buzz about Finland, and someone said the Baltic states would soon agree to Soviet garrisons.

  Pavliuk, who arrived much earlier and was already drunk, whispered to me that Molotov’s wife was in trouble. Likely nonsense, since Yevgenya seemed as relaxed and cheerful as ever. She looked ravishing, glowing—she must have a new lover. Who could it be? Would her eyes ever fall on me? Not likely—a scribbler of silly spy stories.

  After looking around to make sure we couldn’t be overheard, Pavliuk said that we’ll soon attack Finland. Not to be repeated—an army source. Pavliuk was in a very good mood because he’d just heard that Steel Tracks, his endless novel about a tractor and tank factory near the Urals, had been well received and would have a huge print run. Yes, the waiting gamble had paid off. The book’s conflict centered on increasing the production of either tanks or tractors. Cynical Pavliuk had prepared two endings. He had held back, uncertain, during the crisis with Czechoslovakia, but this September he bit the bullet and sent the manuscript in with the faction in favour of increasing tank production winning the argument. Cynical and without illusions. He had a lot to drink last night, and toward the end I heard the story all over again. He was loud, hanging onto my neck, and I had to drag him into a corner. What he wanted, he said, all he wanted, was to survive and to be surrounded by good food and laughter. He’d write anything that would increase his comfort and chances of survival. We lived in times of absolute madness. There were no sides to take, and the only thing we could do is take cover and try to survive. Rabid times like ours came every three hundred years; the one before was the Thirty Years War.

  I ate and drank my fill, mingled and talked, but I couldn’t help following Tsvetayeva with my eyes. I watched her the whole evening. Most of the crowd avoided her, the returned White Russian émigré, at least that was my impression. She looked older than fifty, but couldn’t be. Thin, exhausted, grey, intense. It was the greyness that got to me. She also seemed slightly unhinged. Who wouldn’t be?

  Before I left I took her aside and whispered that her daughter’s fiancé was not to be trusted. She said, “He’s no worse than anybody else. Maybe better.” She looked at me as she said it (looked through me? People who suffer a lot seem to be able to look through matter, as if pain gives them X-ray vision) and shook her head. Then she walked away. Afterward I wondered why I’d told her about her daughter’s lover. It’s not likely that it would save her. I should leave such mercies out of my life right now—with Tyomka, and another one on the way. I had learned about the fiancé being with the NKVD from Pavliuk, of course.

  Young Sasha Cornilov was at the Volkovs as well. Big, tall, charming, dangerous Cornilov. How old is he? Twenty-two? Twenty-three? Varya would know. A star poet already at nineteen, fêted by all, watched by all. He had kept bad company—black marketeers, prostitutes—and disappeared for a while, almost two years. Then he suddenly came back, somber, darker. And with that scar, which started on the left side of his forehead and wound down to the middle of his cheek. He claimed he got it while in the army—that’s where he said he had been. Training with some special forces. He still writes poetry, and his poetry is darker too. Darkness within the limits we are allowed, of course.

  (I must tell Varya to keep away from Cornilov. Easy for me to say it, but how will she keep away from a nephew she likes very much—and whom I used to like too—and is very proud of, and who, furthermore, seems to be very fond of her? He brings her presents, foreign things that women die for—soap, perfume, silk stockings. Where does he get them?)

  Cornilov watched me the whole time I talked to Tsvetayeva. Watched us. Or rather he circled us, like a vulture. I checked the colour of his scar. Still white, maybe a tinge of pink. We had a joke about it—was it Pavliuk who said it first? If Cornilov’s scar turned red, he was drunk enough that you could say anything around him. Otherwise, beware.

  3

  He was like a dull adolescent walking to his first date. To think that he had even shaved off his moustache that morning. It wasn’t much of a moustache, as he had only recently decided to let it grow again, but he felt ridiculous. Could this really be happening to him, closing in on half a century? They talked of trees like this, in terms of centuries. He had seen her once, only once, a month or so ago, but she had stayed in his mind—the memory persistence of beautiful women. And then, on Thursday afternoon, after the seminar, Ben told him he had gone to Gallery Kerguelen-Lezzard to inquire about the letters of literary interest.

  “I saw her, Artyom Pavlovich.”

  “You saw who?”

  “That woman.”

  “Get on with it, Ben. Did you get the letters from Lezzard?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me anything. Would only talk to you. No intermediary, no underlings, he said. But I saw her, I did, the one who, at the Bakers’ soirée, said she was on sabbatical from married life. Audrey something. She works at Lezzard’s gallery.”

  “Audrey Millay?”

  “Yes, I think so. Well, I’m not that sure about the name.” Ben smiled and, slyly, added, “I thought you might be interested. She did seem to make an impression on you that Sunday.”

  “Sit down, Ben. Sit, for God’s sake. Take a deep breath and start over, properly this time. Details, I want details. You went to see if Lezzard had any of the promised letters. Go on.”

  “I got there just before noon. There was an open crate in the middle of a large room, and paintings were lined up against the walls. Two men were moving them around as if trying to fit a puzzle. I asked for Mr. Lezzard and was directed to a smaller room behind folding doors. There was a large, ornate desk in the centre of the room. Lezzard was standing with his back to me by a small, simple desk set at a right angle to the larger one. He was holding some papers in his hand and dictating names and numbers to a woman, typing, whose face I couldn’t see at first. But when he turned around I could—the beautiful woman we’d met at the Bakers. Aphrodite at the typewriter.”

  * * *

  Gallery Kerguelen-Lezzard was in an ugly townhouse on the west side of Hazelton Avenue. Under an arch, brick stairs led to the gallery, half a storey above the street. Laukhin had been there many times in the past. He couldn’t remember how he had met Lezzard, but he had liked the art dealer at first—his stories, his cynicism, his nasty tongue, his fondness for serious drinking, his old-fashioned usage of Russian. Not lately, though, not since Lezzard began pestering him about his father’s journal.

  Audrey Millay was talking with a man in work boots and overalls, and pointing up at some wires protruding from a wall. She didn’t notice him at first. Laukhin took a few steps and glanced into the smaller room. Empty. No sight of Lezzard, just as he had hoped. Lezzard had leisurely daily lunches at a French restaurant on Yorkville Avenue. Laukhin had been his guest there a few times.

  He looked around the large room. The paintings were patches of colours—not to his taste. The man in overalls said he’d return in a couple of hours. Audrey walked over, wondering whether she could be of help. Her eyes were green with specks of brown. He hadn’t noticed this at the Bakers. Beautiful, beguiling Audrey Millay, apprentice to Jean Lezzard in the commerce of art. Laukhin’s heart pounded, but she didn’t seem to recognize him.

  “Art Laukhin. We met at the Bakers last month. A Sunday do in support of Soviet dissidents. I mumbled some of my verses that evening. No? I must have made quite an impression. My turn came after Solzhenitsyn’s letter.”

  Her face lit up with recognition—probably his accent. “Professor Laukhin, the famous poet, of course. Sorry. I see so many new faces every day.”

  “Art, please.”

&
nbsp; They were silent for a while.

  “Jean is not here,” she said eventually.

  “Ah.”

  “He’ll be back in, oh, half an hour or so. You must have come for the letters.”

  “I’ll wait for him.”

  She gestured toward the back of the large room, where a sofa and two armchairs surrounded a low table loaded with flyers and books. They sat down.

  “It’s intriguing, isn’t it?” she said. “I mean, the letters.”

  “We’ll see.” He had anticipated being alone with her, in close proximity, yet now, facing her, he was a tongue-tied poet. Unpoetlike conduct. She was the one more at ease, keeping the conversation going. But then, that was what she did all day long, chat up new visitors.

  “The young man who was here yesterday, your student, seemed very excited.”

  “Ben is much taken with Isaac Babel, and gets emotional about it. There’s very little left of Babel’s life or work that has not been churned to exhaustion. The merest scrap of paper that even mentions him nowadays gets students of literature agitated.”

  “But you’re not convinced. You seem to doubt that Jean—”

  “It’s not that. I’m sure some letters exist. Will they have any literary interest, though? I mean, why did Lezzard mention this to me only now? No, he probably remembered, vaguely, that his mother knew some writers, Russians, in Paris during the late twenties and early thirties. He had a few drinks at the Bakers, and blurted it out. I may be wrong, of course. I hope I am, for Ben’s sake.”

  “How long have you known Jean?”

  “Several years. I was—”

  Three people walked into the gallery, two men and a woman. One of the men, short and rotund, waved hello at Audrey, guided the other two toward a large painting and began talking rapidly in front of it. Audrey stood up. “Sorry,” she said. “I might be needed over there.” Laukhin watched her join the newcomers. She shook the hand of the tall, elderly man, who bowed to her. The woman said something that made them all laugh, and then the short man put his arm through Audrey’s in an affectionate way and took over again with a long speech that involved pointing his finger at various parts of the painting.

  Laukhin got up and meandered over to the small room. He might as well wait in what Lezzard called his “Chemakoff Shrine.” He was again startled by the art dealer’s huge desk. Was it Pasternak who told him that Stalin had an immense desk? Small men need large desks, it seemed. He looked around. It was almost a year since he’d last been in the gallery. He remembered mainly Chemakoff prints from his past visits, and one or two oil paintings, but now there were four oils. He wasn’t doing badly, Jean Lezzard, if he could afford four Chemakoff oils, although they may not all be his.

  He moved slowly from painting to painting, lost in the melancholy brought on by scenes of older times and lands he’d likely never see again. Elongated women, with diffident, narrow heads, and heavy thighs. Their lovers, fat, lecherous merchants, doddering generals of the empire, governors of provinces where nothing happened. Foolish youth with wanton looks and unfettered passions. Calculating Nastasia Filipovnas staring at him with mocking eyes, as if inviting him to the cooler and dangerous air of St. Petersburg. He bowed to the men of greed and power, and to the elegant ladies with their long necks and liquid eyes. One of them resembled Audrey.

  The elderly Lezzard had surrounded himself with Russia—the Russia his parents lost. Laukhin felt his eyes tear up. Rather silly. Another sign of age encroaching on him.

  He stopped in front of a small ink and watercolour called Strong Symmetries, No. 2. On the legs of the two figures, half mannequins, half birds, words he could hardly make out were written vertically in minuscule Cyrillic letters. He hadn’t seen it before. The heads, all bright blues and greens, were smoothly round and with short pointed beaks. An arm—he wasn’t sure to which mannequin bird it belonged—seemed to widen towards its tip, suggesting a wing. Yet another arm ended with a hand with clearly drawn fingers. The wing-like arm was a thin plank, and so was one of the legs. The body of the larger mannequin was cleanly saw-sectioned at the back and hollow. In places, the colouring implied a wooden texture, and many of the ink lines were rule-straight. It was all very clever. They were a male and a female, he gathered, the smaller one, obviously the female, leaning backwards on the larger one. They were looking up at something beyond the frame. Maybe the strong symmetries—the secret recipe of happy living and loving, or the mysterious building blocks of the universe—had suddenly appeared in the sky. Beautiful. He should ask Audrey about the price. The year under Chemakoff’s signature was 1957. It was quite small and he might be able to afford it, although an original and prior to the painter’s Paris period.

  An early Chemakoff oil painting had hung in the sitting room in the Lavrushinsky Lane apartment. His father had bought it in the mid fifties, and it was now with Tanya and Vadim. Laukhin had been very fond of it, and so had been Tanya. It depicted a soirée of the empire’s ruling class—or it would were it not for the incongruities scattered by the painter here and there. A woman in a ball gown with a leather jacket thrown over her shoulders. A Soviet militsya man, in full uniform, wearing an officer’s cap and cockade. A privy councillor with a chest-full of imperial medals and a huge hammer and sickle insignia pinned to his trousers. These absurd, whimsical insertions were signs of Chemakoff’s evolution as a painter. They were very subtle at first—a Lenin medal barely noticeable on a chest covered by imperial decorations. However ambiguous and timid, there was a political message there, and it was that that got Chemakoff into trouble—more trouble—with the Soviet authorities. That, and his earlier reluctance to depict the new world being built around him.

  “Did you know him?” Audrey asked, walking into the smaller room.

  “Chemakoff? I met him a few times, but I didn’t know him. Different generation, different art, different city. He lived in Leningrad. I didn’t find him very articulate, or particularly warm. A quiet man. Perhaps a cautious man, in some way, although quite stubborn artistically. In 1961 he was allowed to exhibit in Paris after the French made a big fuss about his work. The Soviet authorities half-expected him not to return.”

  “Is that why they approved his trip?”

  “Probably. I don’t think Chemakoff had planned to stay in the West. The police raided his apartment in Leningrad when they heard he was coming back. They confiscated his paintings, papers, letters, everything. They did it to ensure he’d never return. The French loved him. They discovered him, and they loved him. But he was not happy in Paris. Made a lot of money, of course. Printed indecently large series of lithographs. When he died, he was a bitter man.”

  “I think Jean is back.”

  * * *

  He’d loiter in sight of the gallery, watch and wait, and soon after Lezzard left for lunch he’d park himself in a chair near Audrey’s desk. She didn’t seem to mind his company. When Lezzard returned, Laukhin would mutter he had dropped by to remind him of the promised letters and he’d be off. Lezzard would shout after him, “Hey, what’s the hurry? When do I get my advance copy?”

  On his fourth visit he lost his head. On his way to the gallery he thought of asking Audrey out on a proper date. Dinner somewhere, possibly with the Emslies if she seemed hesitant. But at the gallery, while sitting near Audrey because he had inched his chair closer to hers while she talked to a customer, her perfume reached him and he experienced a precipitous and laughable yearning. He felt ridiculous, but he was a poet, and a foreigner to boot, and he shouldn’t be expected to show common sense. He likely reddened, touched his chest and said, “This heart is all yours, Audrey. It’s here, on your desk, and you can do whatever you want with it.” Appalling for a poet, outright silly in fact.

  She opened her eyes wide. “Who says things like this nowadays?”

  “I can’t help it. I’m in love, and I need to shout it.”

  “Don’t. I hear Lezzard’s voice in the other room.”

  “Any second I am no
t thinking of you is wasted.”

  “Here we go again. Original?”

  “Probably not.”

  “You have your father’s journal to think about. You don’t need love games right now—you can’t possibly delay the journal any longer.”

  “I feel capable of anything. Your mere presence in my life has this effect.”

  “I’m not in your life, Art.”

  Audrey’s “sabbatical from matrimony” bewildered Laukhin. He tried to learn more, somewhat fearful of what he might find out. But all he gathered from her figurative and brief account was that she was at a personal impasse in her married life, a stretch of muddy waters, and that she needed time to navigate it. She completed the metaphor by saying that Toronto was only a brief stopover for her to unload and clear the deck. She intended to return to London in the near future. “Unload and clear the deck” sounded hopeful, but when Laukhin asked her whether that meant divorce, Audrey shook her head and said, “We have problems. We’re living apart for a while. It was my decision more than his. I don’t want to talk about it, Art.”

  If Laukhin persisted, Audrey would switch subjects. She’d talk about Lezzard, odd customers, or Caniche, a dog beauty salon a few doors away where she’d sometimes take refuge from Lezzard’s caustic tongue. She talked about her mother, Martha, who lived all over the world, but mainly in Montreal, and with whom she was constantly at war. She talked about London, the city where she had lived her entire life, and how much she missed it. And she talked about her half-sister, Mary, three years older than she. A very young Martha was briefly married before meeting Audrey’s father, and Mary had been the result. Mary was brought up by Martha’s parents. “The truth is I’m not certain Martha was ever married to Mary’s father,” Audrey said. “I mean, really married. I’ll probably never know for sure. Mary thinks it was a fib spread by our grandparents.”