by Olga Grushin
“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 w
ho 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…
Then they were gone, and their chauffeured car slunk away into the night behind my back, leaving the street empty again; but I remained still, abruptly snatched out of my mindless drifting of the past week. My mouth tingled with the burning aftertaste of my father-in-law’s cognac; the snow prickled the back of my neck, my bare hands; in the skies above me floated a few lit windows, behind which families were probably gathered around pastel-tinted lampshades, engaged in some domestic, tranquil pastimes I could not imagine, and countless dark windows, their texture indistinguishable from that of the clouds, behind which other families were no doubt sleeping the dreamless sleep of well-being. And as I stood there, looking up, I understood, for the first time since the Manège disaster, just what my life was bound to become.
There was no hope of my finding stable employment now; I would be forced into driving a night bus at best, sweeping streets more likely. My earnings would be laughable, not enough to cover even a portion of the overpriced canvases and oils I would have to obtain on the black market (for, along with my position, I had lost my access to subsidized art stores); the three of us would go on living until our dying day in this intimate, humiliating closeness, our undergarments drying communally on bathroom pipes; and in a couple of years, when my mother retired, it would be Nina, Nina alone, who would have to bear the weight of supporting us all, of paying for my secret, dangerous calling—paying with long days and longer nights, paying by parting with every small pleasure in which she still indulged on occasion—a ballet seen from the top gallery, a chocolate-covered cherry savored with an evening tea—and paying with something else besides, something she might have wanted more than my art, something we never discussed….
I remembered the emptiness in Nina’s eyes on her thirtieth birthday, and all the words she was always on the brink of saying yet never said, and her growing reluctance to meet her old girlfriends, and her lying in bed night after night, her face to the wall, whether counting flowers on the wallpaper blotchily illuminated by a streetlamp in an attempt to trick her insomnia or thinking bleak thoughts, I did not know. And then the words I had tried to forget, Malinin’s words, sounded clearly in my mind—“For what would you sacrifice yourself—and not just yourself, may I remind you, but your mother and your wife as well?”—and I was chilled with a sudden fear that I had gotten it all wrong, hopelessly wrong, and that my heroic intent to carry on with my outlawed art was not the sacrifice I believed it to be, but merely an easy, selfish succumbing to my own desires, and that the true sacrifice lay in a seemingly craven decision to give it all up. I was still certain of the road I myself would take if offered the choice between comfort and immortality, even happiness and immortality—but did I have the right to choose it for others, for those I loved?
Then, too, exactly how confident was I of my posthumous fame, a small, cold voice inquired in my ear. Daydreaming, I used to envision a sunlit stretch of a museum corridor, precise little plaques with titles and dates, a generous chapter in art history volumes, printed on delightfully crisp, gleaming paper; but in the course of one week my vision had undergone a painful transformation and now found itself crammed into a windowless closet stacked with canvases that only janitors saw from time to time. For painting, unlike literature, was a tragic art: it could not be multiplied in a predawn hour on a rickety typewriter, or cross borders sewn into a coat lining, or live forever, weightless and unstoppable, in a dark, safe corner of someone’s memory. It was eternally bound to the earthly, the material—a canvas, an easel, oils, brushes, a wall—and ultimately to time and place; and to its time and place it owed its eventual survival or destruction. Russia had not been kind to artists. I thought of all the treasures burned in wars and revolutions, of priceless frescoes washed off cathedral walls by rains and snows, of Chagall’s masterpieces imprisoned in an anonymous storage room of the Tretyakovka, mildewing away brushstroke by brushstroke, inspiration by inspiration. I thought too of the persistent sadness weighing down my soul during my nightly vigils in the dusty graveyard of my own unwanted paintings, my stillborn children, and the dismal scent of failure mixing stealthily with the smell of turpentine; and then, for no apparent reason, my early memories flitted through my mind—the black shoes striding across the hushed Moscow night, the Professor holding out a trembling hand, my mother on the telephone covering her mouth as if to stifle a scream, the lonely, broken flight my father had taken from one darkness into another…
And already, in some deep, obscure corner of my soul, an even more terrible doubt was stirring. Was I really so sure of my talent to risk everything for it—to turn my back defiantly on this chance, this last chance, of giving Nina the happiness she deserved, all in the vague hope that one day I would create, amidst the misery and disappointment, something so unique, so beautiful, so great that it would fully justify our wasted lives?
The door of the building opened, and an adolescent came out, leading a disdainful greyhound on a leash. Beyond the dog’s arched back I caught another brilliant flash of the marble, the bronze, the light dancing in the mirrors… And then I knew that in the few minutes I had passed standing on this sidewalk before a trash can in the whirling snow I had traveled a dizzying
distance.
I looked down at the book in my hands; its cover was running with water. I wiped it on my sleeve, slipped it inside my coat, and walked home.
By the time I climbed the stairs to our apartment, I was chilled to the bone. I let myself in without a noise. Silence and wretchedness seeped from under the closed door to our room, where Nina was probably lying awake in the dark, just as I had left her, but in my mother’s room the nightly news hummed faintly, and a thin streak of light leaked into the corridor. For a minute I stood hesitating; then, softly, I knocked. The noise of the television faded, and my mother’s voice asked, “Yes, what is it?”
The ceiling lamp was burning, but she was in bed, dressed in a thick, salmon-colored nightgown, her head wound tightly in curlers. An aging smell of Krasnyi Oktyabr, the perfume I remembered since childhood, hung in the air.
“Tolya, what happened?” she said anxiously, leaning on her elbow. “Your hair is all wet!” The sound was off now, but black-and-white figures continued to jerk across the screen, casting sickly shadows on her face.
“Nothing happened,” I said. “I was out, and it’s snowing out there.” Gingerly I sat down on the edge of her bed. “Mama, can I ask you something?” She was looking at me with frightened eyes. “I’m wondering,” I said awkwardly, “do you like my paintings?”
Her mouth grew tight.
“It’s not nice to treat your mother like this,” she said in a petulant voice and, reaching over to the television, turned the volume knob. “It’s late, my nerves are troubling me, you come in looking all wild, and here I’m already thinking God knows what—and you ask a silly question like that! Tolya, it’s not nice.”
“Mama, please,” I said. “This is important. I really need to know what you think.”
She looked at me uncertainly, as if trying to gauge whether I was joking.
“And now,” said the bright voice of the announcer in the background, “for those who are still with us at this hour, the folk ensemble Samotsvety will perform a song from Vologda.” A row of women in peasant dresses, holding the tips of their fingers under their chins, commenced wailing about some youth who refused to accept a chest of gold in place of his beloved. My mother switched the television off.