by Olga Grushin
“Dinner’s ready,” said Fyodor Mikhailovich, spreading his hands in a rueful gesture. “All I do is interrupt your work.”
A heap of dumplings lay steaming before them, with a dollop of sour cream sliding weightily down the bowl’s rim. Ksenya helped herself to a hearty serving. Despite the early afternoon hour, the lamp was lit, and its garish orange light irritated Sukhanov’s eyes. His gaze kept straying to the empty seat—Nina’s seat—at the end of the table.
“Shall we resume our earlier conversation?” Dalevich suggested readily.
“Ah, yes,” Sukhanov replied without much interest. “Where were we, exactly?”
“Innovation versus tradition. Or to use my example, the universe of Kandinsky versus the universe of Chagall. Which actually brings me to the very subject I was hoping to—”
Sukhanov lowered his fork.
“The universe of Chagall?” he repeated distractedly. “Why, that’s a curious—”
He was about to say “coincidence,” but he never did, for in the next instant his memory, with an almost perverse precision, delivered to him Dalevich’s comment from two days earlier. Chagall’s “childlike universe of flying fiddlers, green-faced lovers, and mysteriously smiling cows,” his cousin had said. And those words—those words mirrored to an uncanny degree the phrase he had read not an hour before—the phrase written by the unknown Fyodorov. Naturally, a literal duplication was impossible, so it must have been a simple trick of the mind: under the fresh impression of the article, he must have somehow distorted Fyodor’s original words…. Unless, that is… unless… could it be…
For one prolonged moment of disbelief, he stared at the man sitting across his kitchen table. He stared at the man’s yellow beard, his sparkling, oddly shaped glasses, his moving thin lips—stared without hearing one word of what the man was saying. Then the possibility of truth overwhelmed him. His eyelids felt heavy and hot as if dusted with sand, and he had to close his eyes.
“… the very subject I was hoping to address,” Dalevich was saying just then. “You see, some years ago I wrote a series of essays analyzing the influence of Russian iconic art on modern artists, and naturally, one of my first studies was on… Tolya, are you all right?”
Slowly Sukhanov opened his eyes. It should not have come as such a shock; there had been warning signs, after all. “A curator from somewhere or other,” Pugovichkin had told him, and he had indeed felt something hauntingly familiar in the unfolding of Fyodorov’s arguments. Then there was the now apparent matter of inverted names, so easy to see through…. Yet it shocked him deeply all the same.
Sukhanov moistened his dry lips before speaking.
“So,” he said, enunciating carefully, “Fyodor Mikhailovich Dalevich—or should I say D. M. Fyodorov? Seems you both had a little joke at my expense.”
Ksenya’s released fork clicked against her plate with an unexpected sound.
“Tolya, as I’ve been trying to explain—” Dalevich began with a placating smile.
“Explain?” Sukhanov interrupted. “Please, what is there to explain? You sleep in my house, you eat my food, and then you stab me in the back—really, it’s very simple! Or did you not realize what the appearance of such an article in my magazine would do to my reputation? And were you even going to admit you were behind it?”
Dalevich started to talk, stammering with emotion, pressing his hands to his chest, assuring “dear Tolya” how much his good opinion meant to him and how the whole affair had simply been an accident, for, even though he had always found the notion of being published in Art of the World very intriguing (“Not least, Tolya, because of you, I admit”), he would never have knowingly gone behind Sukhanov’s back. He had merely shown his Chagall article some time ago to a friend, who, in turn, had passed it along to another friend, who had just chanced to be quite high up in the Ministry of Culture, and then everything had happened so quickly, and almost without his consent…. But even setting all that aside, he had never intended to hide his authorship of the piece: “Fyodorov” had been his pen name for years, and moreover, he had tried to talk about it on numerous occasions, only each time Sukhanov had been too busy to listen….
For some minutes, Sukhanov was incapable of discerning anything beyond the uneven hum of blood in his ears, but the absurdity of the last statement all at once intruded on his senses.
“Ah, so that’s the problem,” he said bitingly. “I’ve been too busy to listen! Actually, it seems I’ve been too busy to do a lot of things lately—to run my own magazine, to take my wife out to museums, even to sleep in my own bed! Luckily for me, you came along, saw my sad predicament, and given all the free time on your hands, decided to help me out, yes?”
Looking dismayed, Dalevich tried to interject, but Ksenya spoke first.
“How can you talk like that to Fyodor Mikhailovich?” she said with indignation.
“Oh, so he has befriended you too, has he, Ksenya? Of course, such a nice, interesting uncle who is not afraid to voice his most unorthodox opinions on art and cooks such tasty breakfasts and—” Abruptly he stopped, then said hoarsely, “My God, it’s been your plan all along, hasn’t it? You’ve been turning my family against me!”
“Tolya, please,” mumbled Dalevich, “you are angry, you don’t know what you are saying, you can’t possibly—”
“On the contrary, I know perfectly well what I’m saying. A long-lost provincial cousin in need of a place to stay for a day or two—heavens, I must have been blind! Not that I was ever happy about your presence, but I thought it was just a temporary, harmless imposition…. But now I see, I see it all too clearly. First, you oust me from my room, then you get my mother, my daughter, and my wife on your side—my son alone doesn’t take to you, but he is soon conveniently out of the way—and now you are trying to cost me my job!”
“Tolya, come to your senses,” said Dalevich quietly. “Why would I do such a thing?”
“Yes, indeed, why would you, I’d very much like to know. Are you a disgruntled failure who envies the accomplishments of better men? Do you have a pathological hatred of art critics? Would you like my job for yourself?” He had been throwing the words out furiously, without thinking, but now he froze, staring at Dalevich, then slapped an invisible fly against his forehead. “I don’t believe it! That’s it, isn’t it? It’s all part of your design. You mean to get my job! Your article is published under a pseudonym, I’m fired in the midst of a scandal, and once the dust settles, your influential patron appoints you to my position—and no one ever finds out that you were the author in the first place. Simple and brilliant, I have to give it to you, cousin.”
“Tolya, I assure you, you couldn’t be more—”
“And by the way,” Sukhanov went on, his voice rising precipitously, “are you even my real cousin? I mean, isn’t it rather peculiar that I don’t remember meeting you or even hearing about you ever before? Why, now that I think about it, I suspect I have closer blood ties to Salvador Dalí!” He was shouting, and his face had taken on a dark brick hue. “I’m guessing that you just sat one day all alone in some roach-infested hole of a place in a godforsaken town light-years away from Moscow, saw me on a television program about an art retrospective or a university lecture series, and salivated over my existence—and that was when you cooked up your nice little plan to show up here as an imaginary relative, worm yourself into my family, and take over my life!”
Dalevich no longer attempted to say anything. Both he and Ksenya simply looked at Sukhanov, and their faces were all wrong somehow—wooden, tight-lipped, wide-eyed. A terrible silence descended on the brightly lit kitchen. The only audible sound was Sukhanov’s labored breathing.
“Do you know, it might have worked too, had it not been for one tiny slip you made,” he finally said in a voice thick with distaste. “ ‘Mysteriously smiling cows,’ was it, now? Well, that little phrase cost you dearly, didn’t it, cousin? See, I was going to approve the article, give or take a few changes, but now I k
now the author’s true identity and intentions, and you’ll see it published only in your dreams. It appears that you’ve lost, dear Fedya. Imagine, all your machinations for nothing!”
Steadying himself with one hand, Sukhanov stood up and pushed away his chair; it balanced precariously on two legs, then crashed to the floor. In the doorway he stopped.
“I should turn you over to the authorities,” he said, not looking directly at Dalevich, “but it’s not worth the bother. You have half an hour to clear out of my place. I’m sure your important friend will happily welcome you into his home. Perhaps you might even try your tricks on him next, now that you’ve had some practice. After all, his job and apartment are probably nicer than mine.”
He slammed the door on the way out. As he walked away, he heard the same ringing silence behind his back.
Some hours later, reclining in the backseat of his Volga, Sukhanov watched lit rectangles of lower-floor windows emerge from the evening shadows and then slowly glide backward and out of sight in a long, uninterrupted procession of cozy domesticity. He had left his own uncomfortably quiet apartment shortly before seven. Ksenya had followed him into the entrance hall to lock up behind him; her face, heavy in the gathering darkness, had seemed void of expression.
“The Burykins never serve their main course until well after ten,” he had said, “so I don’t expect to be back before midnight,” and already from across the threshold, he had added with a tentative smile, “Sure you don’t want to come with me? Since your mother isn’t coming, it might be nice…. And the food’s always good.” She had said nothing in response, only shaken her head, and shut the door. The sound of the turning lock resonated on the landing with brisk finality.
The Burykins—Mikhail a top official at the Ministry of Culture, Liudmila his charmingly hospitable third wife—lived across the street from the massive American embassy and were famous for their dinner parties, invariably well stocked with imported liqueurs and important people. On the way, Sukhanov bade Vadim stop the car and darted out to buy a bouquet for the hostess from a portly Azerbaijani woman near a metro station. The air smelled strongly of gasoline and early autumn, and faintly of decaying stems. He could see fading red petals, slimy leaves, and shards of a rising moon floating on the surface of the dirty water in the woman’s flower-filled buckets.
“Roses for the lady of your heart?” she said greedily, baring a golden tooth.
“How about that bunch of carnations over there?” he said quickly.
The lobby of the Burykins’ building was even more imposing than his own, its veined marble floors slippery, its walls smooth with mirrors, the guard behind the desk bearing a disconcerting resemblance to a bulldog. He inquired after Sukhanov’s name with an indifferent lift of an eyebrow and then, instead of allowing him through right away, proceeded to trace a fat finger along the list of residents, dial a number, and conduct a long conversation in a hushed voice, while Sukhanov foolishly stood before him, trying in vain to avoid looking at the hundredfold reflections of an aging man dressed in a borrowed tie and a suit that was wrinkled rather more than usual, holding a bunch of unpleasantly pink, rapidly wilting flowers in his hands.
Finally the guard issued a curt nod, and Sukhanov slid along the marble floor, soundlessly rehearsing an involved story of some ambiguous emergency that would explain Nina’s embarrassing lapse of memory or manners. As alternating patches of light and darkness flitted in the crack between the elevator doors, he found himself, to his own surprise, anticipating the evening with some eagerness. In truth, his oppressive mood had started to lift shortly after his perfectly justified afternoon outburst—as soon, to be precise, as his front door had closed on one Fyodor Mikhailovich Dalevich, pseudo-cousin and first-rate scoundrel. The man had left wordlessly and without a fuss, and as Sukhanov had leaned out the window to watch the solitary figure in the ridiculously outmoded hat lug the bulging suitcase toward the metro, he had understood Dalevich’s defeated departure to be the beginning of a long-needed restoration of balance in his household. Without a doubt, now that the poisonous viper had been banished from his hearth, the vexing malfunctions in his family mechanism were bound to smooth out, and soon they would all return to their pleasant daily routines. Naturally, there remained some loose ends that still filled him with ill-defined unease. When he had subsequently attempted to reach his office with instructions to withdraw the cursed Chagall article, he had found no one there, and when he had tried Pugovichkin’s home, the assistant editor’s wife had announced in a phlegmatic voice that her husband had gone fishing, as if this were normal behavior on a work-day. Yet infuriating as this delay was, Sukhanov had until the next afternoon to set matters straight; and already, with each passing hour, his sense of life inching back into its customary, comforting confines grew more and more tangible. As he rang the Burykins’ bell, he looked forward to a night of excellent food and banter in the presence of much success, sure to strengthen his quiet sense of victory.
His first ring was followed by a protracted wait. He pressed the button again, more firmly this time, and heard hurried steps inside the apartment. The door swung open, and Liudmila Burykina stood on the threshold.
“Anatoly Pavlovich! How nice, you shouldn’t have,” she said with a peculiar, unfocused smile as she accepted his flowers, and added unnecessarily, “The concierge just called to say you were on your way up. Please do come in.”
The darkened rooms unfolded in perfect silence—no sounds of clinking glasses, no music, no voices rising toward one another in greeting. Sukhanov glanced at his watch.
“So,” he said loudly, “first one to arrive, it seems. Not too early, am I?”
Ordinarily elegant, today she wore a surprisingly plain frock that made her look rather like a merchant’s wife from some Ostrovsky play—the motherly kind who spends all summer making preserves and all winter sewing and who is allowed to emerge from her well-stocked pantry only two or three times for the sake of comic relief.
Her black eyes flickered uncertainly up to his face.
“Anatoly Pavlovich, I’m afraid I—”
“Lovely painting you’ve got there,” he interrupted, pointing to an indifferent seascape. “Not Aivazovsky, is it?” And immediately, without awaiting an answer—for the silence of the place was starting to unnerve him—he asked, “Is Misha not back from the office yet?”
Her hair, he noticed, was flattened on one side, the remnant of a long nap.
“Misha’s at the sauna, Anatoly Pavlovich. He won’t be back until ten,” she said.
“Sauna?” he repeated incredulously. “Tonight?”
She began to walk away from him, and, baffled, he followed, stepping on a trail of falling petals and feeling increasingly awkward. In the dusk of the dining room, an enormous table, bereft of a tablecloth, was stacked high with faintly gleaming, seemingly dirty china. He stole another anxious look at his watch.
“Do you mind, I must find a vase,” she was saying lightly. “Please, in here, Anatoly Pavlovich. Sorry for the mess, my help has the day off, and I myself haven’t yet gotten around… Oh, by the way, would you like something to eat? Though I’m afraid I can’t offer you anything but leftovers from yesterday.” Absolutely still now, he watched her adroit plump hands amputate the moist ends of the stems with a pair of scissors. “Too bad you and Nina couldn’t… that is… Tell me, do you think they’d look better in a crystal one?”
She had slid the disheveled carnations into a ceramic vase and was glancing back at him with a questioning half-smile-and suddenly he understood that she was chattering so rapidly because she too found the silence embarrassing. They had obviously moved the party to an earlier date and forgotten to tell him, and now here she was, the perfect hostess who for once had failed to be perfect, with nothing to give her guest but crumbs from a past feast, no doubt suffering pangs of guilt and yet not willing to acknowledge the situation out of some stubborn housewifely pride, letting them both pretend that he had simply dropped by
for a little unscheduled visit.
Though displeased with the turn of events, he chose to be gracious.
“My goodness, Liudmila Ivanovna,” he said in a jocular tone, slapping his forehead, “you are too polite not to set me straight—but I fear I missed your party, didn’t I? I could swear it was supposed to be on Friday. How terribly absentminded of me to get the date wrong!”
He did not like the way she was searching his eyes with hers; it felt intrusive. Then, looking away, she started to pull the flowers out of the ceramic vase.
“Actually, the party was on Friday, Anatoly Pavlovich,” she said uncomfortably. “And Nina sent your regrets. She said… I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, since there seems to be some miscommunication here… but she said you were under a lot of stress and needed rest.”
He barely heard anything past the first sentence.
“But it couldn’t have been on Friday,” he said, still smiling mechanically, yet already feeling a strange hollow sensation in the pit of his stomach. “Today is Friday.”
“No, Anatoly Pavlovich, Friday was yesterday,” said Liudmila Burykina, again studying his face. “Today is Saturday. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, you are here now, so let’s just forget all this, and I’ll fix you a nice drink, all right?… Yes, the crystal vase is definitely an improvement, don’t you agree?… Do you prefer whiskey or cognac?”