by Olga Grushin
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 platform. 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.
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 the 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.
“I’m fine,” he said morosely. “I was just sleeping. A ridiculous situation, this. My keys were stolen, and no one’s home. I’ve been sitting by the door for hours. I… I had to return to the city on an urgent matter.”
The man—Volodya, perhaps, or Vyacheslav—glanced at his watch.
“How unfortunate,” he said. “And where is Nina Petrovna? Here, let me help you off the floor.”
Ignoring the outstretched hand, Sukhanov heaved himself up.
“My wife has decided to stay in the country for a few more days,” he said stiffly. “Gardening or something.”
A look of relief passed across the man’s face.
“A few more days, really?” he said. “Well, that’s lucky. Because as it turns out, it wouldn’t be easy for me to… That is, I wouldn’t be able to pick her up this afternoon. I was actually coming by to leave a note on your door—I was in the neighborhood anyway, and I couldn’t reach you on the phone, so…” He crumpled a piece of paper in his hand and looked away uncomfortably. “The thing is, Anatoly Pavlovich… It seems I won’t be driving you any longer. They’ve reassigned the car. A matter of departmental reorganization at the Ministry, they told me.”
“Ah,” said Sukhanov without surprise. It could be Vladislav, he supposed. Something with a V, in any case.
“I hope I’m not leaving you in the lurch,” said the man, with another anxious glance at his watch. “Of course, you’ll get a new driver in a matter of days, just in time for Nina Petrovna’s return from the dacha, but if you need a lift in the meantime and I happen to be available, we could always work something out—privately, so to speak.”
Sukhanov leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. The darkness under his lids was soothing, but he longed to find himself once more amid the vivid colors of a recent dream that lingered faintly in his memory—something about an empty museum in a hushed predawn hour, a violin player flying over the roofs of a turn-of-the-century town, a foretaste of greatness rising within him… But a stray image of rats abandoning a sinking ship in a dreary procession kept fighting its way to the foreground of his mind, and the man’s increasingly impatient voice lapped at the edges of his hearing, distracting him, reminding him of a host of irrelevant, disagreeable matters that probably needed to be addressed; and he could do nothing but wordlessly wait for it all to end. Finally, as if from afar, the man said, “Well, that’s settled, then,” and Sukhanov heard a rustle of leather followed by steps thumping across the landing and down the stairs, raising a brief flurry of agitated barks in their wake, growing more hollow as they descended, then dissolving in the hazy mid-morning silence. Alone at last, he again sank to the floor and drifted to sleep.
And he was close to catching the tail of his delightful dream when the quieted dogs renewed their barking and the steps sounded in the stairwell again, closer and closer, until the rustle of leather was all about him. Sleepily he wondered whether time had perhaps decided to play yet another little joke on him by rewinding the past few minutes—and whether he would just keep slipping deeper and deeper into the past in this terribly amusing reverse order, until he found himself once more an alert child playing with his toes on a bright green carpet, gazing down the length of his two years into the dark vortex of the unknown, so akin to death and yet so much less frightening…. But already he was being pulled up, and shaken awake, and the square-jawed man with the uncertain name was propping him up, saying almost belligerently, “No, Anatoly Pavlovich, I can’t just leave you here like this, you seem unwell. Come, the car’s downstairs, just tell me where you want to go. Does Nadezhda Sergeevna have a spare key to your place? No? How about your father-in-law?… All right, Gorky Street it is.”
Sukhanov drowsily allowed himself to be propelled into the elevator, and across the lobby, and into the street. The familiar black Volga—once his—was parked at the opposite curb, but two people were already sitting inside, one in the passenger seat and the other in the back; he could not see them clearly for the shadowy reflections of boughs swaying ceaselessly in the windows. The man asked him to wait, then ran across the road and tapped on the glass. As the window slid down, Sukhanov glimpsed a young woman with the petulant face of a broken porcelain doll—the man’s wife, most likely. For a while they appeared to argue, in fierce, inaudible voices, the man seemingly pleading. Then the woman said hysterically, “Well, if you must!” and rolled up the window.
The man turned and waved, and Sukhanov trudged toward him.
“Don’t mind Prince, he’s quite tame,” said the man enigmatically, opening the back door. Sukhanov peered in and was startled to discover that the person in the back was not a person at all but an enormous dog with brown, matted fur and a sour expression around its unmuzzled nose; but before he could object, he was bundled inside and the car moved away, precipitating a miniature snowstorm within the plastic sphere hanging from the rearview mirror and causing a yellow suitcase on the seat next to him to bump painfully against his knee. The next few minutes were profoundly unpleasant, for the man had made no introductions, and no one said anything, and the air in the car was unbearably sweet with perfume, and the dog kept looking askance at Sukhanov, salivating mutely; and after a while, he noticed that the woman in front was making a hushed, sniffling sort o
f sound, and realized she was crying. He had no time to wonder about it, however, for just then they came to a skidding stop, and the man announced, “Here we are.”
Hastily murmuring “Thanks” and “So long,” Sukhanov clambered out of the car.
After a few steps, he glanced back. The man without the name and the woman with the face of a porcelain doll were kissing, kissing with the embarrassing, awkward hunger of adolescents—and as he quickly averted his eyes, he knew that he had seen the woman before, and that she was not the man’s wife at all, and that the explanation for the whole thing was very simple and somewhat sordid and possibly a bit happy but mainly terribly, terribly sad…. And then the magnificent courtyard enclosed him darkly, and the necessity of facing Pyotr Alekseevich Malinin in just a few moments forced everything else from his mind.
At the mention of Sukhanov’s name, the concierge waved him through: he was expected. Too impatient to wait for the elevator, he ran up the stairs to the fifth floor, stopping only once to right his tie and gather his courage. An instant later, before he had even lifted his hand to ring the bell, the imposing door opened, and Nina stood on the doorstep. She was smiling, but he could see that she too was nervous.
“Did you remember the wine?” she whispered, ushering him into the hall. “Good. We’ll eat right now, it’ll be easier that way, and you’ll tell him later in the evening, before dessert. Don’t worry, you’ll like each other, he’s nothing like his public persona…. Only please, Tolya, you promised, no art discussions.”
I nodded, barely listening, suddenly disoriented by the world revealed just past the door—the brilliant expanse of polished floors, the gleaming void of enormous mirrors, a table rising importantly on leonine paws, an officer with a proud mustache gazing pensively out of a gilded frame (“Mama’s father,” said Nina in passing), and beyond, an infinite perspective of unfolding rooms. Even though she had charted the floor plan for me only the other day, explaining where our bedroom would be and which space I could convert into my studio, I had had no warning that the schematic drawing on the napkin would translate into a vision of all this foreign splendor, and no idea that in the year 1957 anyone in Moscow still lived in such old-fashioned luxury. Overwhelmed, I followed Nina through the vastness of the place, catching glimpses of a cupboard full of rose-tinted porcelain (“Mama used to collect china,” explained Nina) and the elegant curve of a lustrously black piano (“Mama was the only one who played”); and when we finally arrived at a high-ceilinged hall with an elaborately set table, and a handsome middle-aged man in a velvet blazer rose from an armchair, his hand extended, his smile dry, I felt almost incapable of speaking—for in those few minutes I had understood, fully and for the first time, how different my life was from hers, how great a gap lay between us, and how truly uneven our union would be.