by Liam Durcan
“Merci, monsieur.”
GOLDEN SEASON
You don’t sleep. You tell yourself it is because the noise is ceaseless. The humming of some continuous cycle. A machine dream that inspires fear until you realize that it is the dream you have created, your experience. Awaken, and the noise continues. A new Moscow is rising.
The projects arrive, one after another, a proposal for the Kauchuk Factory Club on the very day when you open the Leyland garage. The Burevestnik Club arrives on its heels. A parade of commissions. You are too busy to acknowledge the way it makes you feel. It seems natural that your vision should be embraced, that others feel the same way, because you build for them, for the vision that you all share. You don’t see Anna for days, and when you do, the thing you notice first about her is that she has another letter that has arrived for you, in it a proposal for a building.
In the midst of this season of work, there is word that you have been chosen to redesign the Arbat. Nothing makes you happier than this thought, that the grand market itself would be trusted to you. The truth is that you want to refuse, to tell them that a market can only ever design itself, that you can observe and facilitate, but you can only ever assist the design. But there are always improvements to be made. You imagine the flow of people, less chaotic now, market day graced by this movement, graced by the beauty of simple ideas. But this is only rumor, distant.
Around you, Moscow is being rebuilt. And unlike Petersburg—built on a royal whim, willed into existence on the edge of a bog, with avenues lined by the imitations of other cultures—Moscow has always been here, half European, half Asian, the very core of Russia itself. Moscow listens to no czar, but changes like a huge organism, changes according to the needs and the dreams and the will of its citizens. You feel this. You will be a part of this. The Svoboda Factory Club is next, and the Rusakov Workers’ Club follows, each building the necessary precursor to what follows. When Rusakov is opened, you stand with Anna on Stromynka Street, in the cantilever shadows and are asked what effect you were striving for. You find the question perplexing. There is no effect here, you want to tell them, looking up, and for a moment you understand that you cannot control the effect your work has on others. After a certain point, it is not yours. As sad as this is, it allows you a particular freedom. You are able to look at the building with fresh eyes, the eyes of a peasant wandering in from the countryside, the eyes of a bird in flight. You tell them it is nothing more, nothing less, than a tensed muscle. And with this they are satisfied.
KRIVOARBATSKY LANE/ANNA’S HOME
She walks around the building and smiles, treading carefully and contemplating each step in the muddy ground of the work site. She is concerned about her shoes: red leather, bought in Paris and still prized by her. Polished and tended to, they are still new-looking, two years after their purchase. You told her only that you wanted to meet, that you had a surprise for her, and so she had no idea that she would be tramping around in the mud. The pride that you felt, the need to share what you have built, has dissipated.
It makes you wish that you had delayed this moment at least until the facade had been finished. Never show a building that has not been completed. How could you have forgotten this? The masonry work that had so impressed you, draws only puzzlement from her. Is this what I am supposed to live in? You feel she must think you have lost your mind. The brickwork and curved walls are quite clearly absurd; the future home that you have wished to show must look to her like the base of a huge smokestack. It would be impossible for her to see a home in this. You imagined that she would see it as you did, from the point of its conception, that she would see your life together. She smiles again, and this smile, its condescension, its benevolent regret, causes such pain in you, more acute than any pang at being passed over in a competition.
“Where is the door supposed to be?” she asks. She hates it.
“The other side,” you reply. “The door will face south, of course, toward the street.”
She walks around the base of the building and you follow, your attention trailing from the heels of her shoes to the footprints she leaves in the clay. At some point, you stop and then turn and begin walking in the opposite direction, chastising yourself for allowing an opinion, even Anna’s, to cause you to question yourself. This is the building, the only building it could be. It will be beautiful, you think. You have seen it for years.
She will see it, too. You chide yourself that it is as much a lack of confidence in her, in her trust in your vision, as it is in your own work. You owe her more than this. By this time, she has walked completely around the building and now approaches you. You are face-to-face. This is weakness. Years from this moment, you will try to remember what she is saying now or the way in which she says it, but all is overshadowed by the surprising expression on her face, the very details that bespeak pleasure, the designs of happiness.
ST. NIKOLAI THE CARPENTER
One amendment to the design. As the masons are working, you realize that the dome of St. Nikolai the Carpenter is visible from the entrance of your house. Until this moment, the windows have functioned as portals, admitting light to the house. But the site of the dome causes you to sit down with your plans, calling over Gusev. You explain yourself and he mulls over the possibilities. “But Mikhail Vasilevich,” you say, “there is only one possibility,” and he takes off his cap and that expression appears—wry smile or grimace; you’re never exactly sure which. He will speak to the masons, he says, and walks away.
A west-facing window through which the dome can be seen. The height of the window is such that the church is visible only when the occupant bends or kneels. It is the one aspect of the building that pleases you most, your work a lens through which one small part of the world is understood, through which the occupant must be engaged, must seek an expression of his own character in order to find a moment of particular beauty.
You consider it for a long time before deciding to make this window different from the others. Gusev objects, citing unity of design and that a break from hexagons would be tantamount to defacement. But this window is different; it comes from another impulse, and that impulse must be acknowledged. The upper and lower corners of a hexagon are nullified and its shape becomes an irregular octagon, with St. Nikolai appropriately framed.
You bend every day. You receive your reward. You understand the impulse. St. Nikolai is destroyed three years later—some larger plan that you are not a party to, perhaps nothing more than Stalin’s whim—but you still stoop, the action now sanctifying a small and anonymous patch of gray sky over Moscow.
YOU ARE A FORMALIST
You receive a message. There is a warning. And then a meeting.
You are a formalist.
Where does a judgment like this come from? Does it originate in the air, or in the minds of men? Perhaps it is in the buildings themselves, a flaw (not a flaw—a feature) designed to provoke this reaction, which, in turn, challenges the architect to defend.
The judgment has been years in the making. You remember the morning of February 18, 1936, a copy of Komsomolskaia Pravda left at your door, the page folded back that contained the anonymous letter accusing you of ignoring the precepts of socialist realism. A fortnight before, Shostakovich had been publically branded a formalist for his Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, and now it was your turn. What injured you more were the attacks in the Architectural Gazette a week later, one by your old friend Shchusev, already decrying your obstinacy in failing to mend your ways.
Whatever the origin of this judgment, it sets down in a specific place, like any species of carrion bird; in this case, it is the first-ever Congress of the Union of Soviet Architects. You are invited to address the congress. You are informed that you have the opportunity to explain yourself. You are told, parenthetically, that the congress promises to be a gala event. An American, Mr. Frank Lloyd Wright, will be in attendance as an honored guest of the congress. You assume Mr. Wright is not a formalist.
The
first thing a person facing such an accusation would do is find out who was responsible for the charge, but you needn’t ask. You know your accusers. Chief among them is Karo Alabian, who, as president of the Union of Soviet Architects, will deliver the keynote address to the congress. It was Alabian, given strength by your dismissal from the Architectural Institute, who began his attacks on you in the journal of the Union of Soviet Architects the year before. You remembered reading Anna the concluding paragraph at the time, chuckling as if it were a valedictory:
“He wants only to be exceptionally bold and unusual—he seeks to be original for its own sake. In short, Melnikov’s fundamental and sole aim is to produce an architecture that no one else has ever created.”
Wasn’t he your student at the Vkhutemas? Anna asks and you nod. You don’t tell her about the disagreements you’ve had with the man, how, despite the success of the Paris Exposition and the renown you’ve brought to Russian architecture, Alabian removed any mention of your name alone from the student publications he edited at the Vkhutemas. You don’t tell Anna that he has built only one building, the Central Theatre of the Russian Army, which, in an instance of uncanny aesthetic concordance, perfectly reflected its maker’s character through its grandiose vulgarity.
This time, you decide to defend yourself. Let the people of Moscow decide which architect speaks with their voice. If they decide against me, against my work, you think, then let them begin the demolition. I will be the first to swing the hammer. This will be a moment for all of Moscow, all the Soviet Union to hear the principles on which their builders create. You will appear before the congress, you decide. Let us talk architecture, then. You hearten yourself with talk like this, of the nonsense of the charge. What is a formalist? These meaningless words and their libelous intent will be cast back onto those who uttered them; they will be exposed for their jealousies and vanities. Have they forgotten the Paris Exposition and prestige it brought to the entire country? Have they forgotten who founded the Vkhutemas? You have your allies, and you automatically begin reciting their names, an act that causes you to feel an inaugural moment of panic, but the names arrive easily. Names of students, colleagues, names of others whom you’ve helped. You can strike Shchushev’s name from the list. So be it. Better to know your enemies.
This will be a moment when all of Moscow will be forced to acknowledge the work you have done and how this casts into sharp relief the meagerness of your accusers.
But at night, darker thoughts arrive. Anna, who has listened approvingly as you nursed and fed your rebuttal, lies silently beside you, and her reassurances sleep with her. You feel the creeping threat. The condemnation is arbitrary. And while you thought this was a meaningless charge, its meaninglessness is its very strength. In a way, the judgment has already been rendered. In two years of otherwise-intense construction activity in Moscow, you have had no work. Your entries do not advance at competitions.
It is a simple equation. To work, to receive commissions, one must adhere to the tenets of socialist realism. Formalism is incompatible with socialist realism. You are a formalist. This is not a difference of tastes that can be debated. The congress will declare a failure on your part for being obstinate, as well as incriminating your colleagues for failing to “educate” you. You understand them. They will make you disown your work. To rehabilitate, you will have to say everything has been a mistake, that every impulse that guided you was in error.
Explain yourself.
You can hear the room breathe. Across the city, snow falls and your buildings sigh and begin to disappear. You have been explaining yourself all your life, with everything you have built. You have spent twenty years struggling to build a case against yourself.
You are a formalist.
MARCH 5, 1953
It is complicated. Grief always is. Since the announcement of Stalin's death, the radio plays a continuous tribute to him, with occasional breaks for music that he admired. The city is motionless and you cannot tell if it is exhausted or recoiling. Either way, there is silence.
Anna, as usual, shows her emotions honestly. You warn her to temper her glee, but she holds him responsible for your exile. The next may be different, Anna says. There is always the opportunity for rehabilitation. The next man may value your work; perhaps he will be a man of culture who may understand that the architectural reputation of the USSR has suffered and that you are one who can redeem it.
You nod in agreement, wordless in the face of devotion so unwavering. It would be inappropriate to tell her that you think the next man will be the same as the last. A touch less brutal. Perhaps more. The impulse will be the same. It is simply another constraint that an architect must contend with. The realities of a difficult site. She would understand, but it is just as important to you that she doesn’t need to.
She circles the drawing table before leaving, not noticing that you are already drawing preliminary sketches for a memorial, visible from all corners of Moscow.
APRIL 3, 1973, KRIVOARBATSKY LANE, MOSCOW
The two men, a professor of architecture and his student, sit across from you. Between sips of tea, their gaze climbs up the wall and nestles at a spot just under the ceiling. They are the latest pilgrims to present themselves at your house. For a chat. An audience. They wish to see the house. But what these men really want to know, like all the others who came before, is how you managed to survive without building anything for forty years. Do you see the incomprehension in the eyes of the student? These are my eyes, taking in the details of the drawings you show us, the plans you knew would never be realized. These are my eyes, watching you answer that, to the contrary, you have been busy these forty years, reconstructing the Arbat and rebuilding Moscow. Grand avenues and pavilions. An entire city in darkness. I want to ask you how you lived like this. I will need to know what sort of desire can give such sustenance and yet does not devour a man. Tell me.
But there is no answer.
There is no answer because there has been no principled stance, only you, squirming away in your monument. Your crypt. But the boy in front of you does not know this yet, does not know the difference between dissent and condescension. Between courage and mythmaking. But he will learn. Your only explanation is to show us more drawings, four decades spread out on parchment beneath your hands. You have built nothing.
You have been afraid. You have been a fool; you have been a man living on a promise that was never realized, hiding in your work. You smile, you crazy, scared old man. But you have built nothing.
At the bottom of the last page, he sees, in the familiar loops of his own handwriting, dated the day of his accident, a final annotation: “I could never go on like this. I cannot go on. I am so sorry. Martin.”
Chapter 18
It was only after Martin found himself outside—breathing hard and feeling his heart pound its deep, visceral protest up and into his throat—that he understood he had fled his own house. The house was to have been his sanctuary: He had come here thinking he would find comfort, the traces and reassurances of a previous life, from which he could make sense of the world and perhaps even build again. The house would be a source, an answer. The house would tell him the truth. And, in a perverse way, the house had obliged, telling him everything he needed to know about himself, a judgment harsh enough to leave him trembling in exile on the back patio. He stood in its shadow and felt the measure of darkness it cast.
He turned away from the house and walked down the gentle incline toward the water’s edge, understanding fully what he had escaped from, trying to avoid thinking of what he’d just read, not because it perplexed him but because it made perfect sense. He had given up. There had been no heroic fight, no grand plan to wrest the consulate project away from his former firm. There had been only surrender: outlasted by clients and partners, paid off to go away, dealt with. The only plan he’d come up with was an ending, and now that he’d found an artifact of his own hopelessness, the crash was not a mere incident clouded in amnesia, b
ut an event he could construct, richer and sadder and more cinematic than any simple recollection of events. Melnikov had been in his mind when he awoke because he’d been there on that last night: the all-purpose foil, the patron saint of failed architects ushering him into a crypt to await commissions and acclaim that would never come. This would be his memory now, the provenance of him, and the thought of this brought him to the edge of the dock.
The cool grip of lake water on his right hand, the bottom indistinct in silt and moss-coated rocks. The other hand dove in, automatically following, coming alive as it hit the water. His body took shape here; the world that eluded him returned, he thought as he slouched forward, kicking away the last of the reeds that rimmed the lake. The momentary sting of water against his knees and thighs, grazing his chin and causing him to close his mouth. It would be silent underwater. Quiet and full. Twenty strokes would take him to a part of the lake where the bottom under his feet would be lost, where a man in his condition could easily falter.
He imagined both hands trailing, birthing a series of wakes, twin trails of him fanning out, canceling out or doubling him. He turned to his right, uncertain of the impulse itself, uncertain why he should wade in that direction. When he came to the small dock—its shadow and mass rising silently from the water, surprising him—he lifted his right hand and steadied himself as he began to float.
Martin dipped his face into the cold lake water, his whole body trembling for a moment until the water was no longer cold, no longer water, until the surface of his body disappeared in the water. With his right arm tethering him to the dock, he floated, left side down, immersed in space and darkness, listening to the slow cycling of his breathing, imagining there was a heart to him, its rhythms inaudible even in the silence of the lake.
The cold water gave a small scorpion sting to the inside of his left ear, but it was not enough to rouse him to move. He floated and tried to clear his mind.