The Dream Life of Sukhanov (14 page)

A ball of blazing light drew a crimson trajectory across his field of vision, interrupting the flow of his thoughts. Momentarily disoriented—were the victory fireworks still going on?—Anatoly Pavlovich blinked and peered into the obscurity around him. It took him an instant to remember that the year was 1985, that he was fifty-six, that he lay on the uncomfortable couch having yet another heartbreaking vision from the past. A damp chill pervaded the study. Realizing that his blanket had slipped off during the night, he leaned over and felt unhappily for its woolly mass on the floor—and then a fiery ball of orange-red sparks, escaping the confines of his dream, sailed past his balcony again, immediately followed by another, and another, and another after that. A soft rain of fire was falling from the Moscow skies.

He stared for a few disbelieving seconds, then, hurriedly disentangling himself from the sheets, ran across the room, threw open the balcony door, and rushed outside. On the balcony above, the monkey-faced madman was audibly busy tearing newspapers apart, crumpling their pages into loose balls, lighting them, and tossing them down in quick, glowing succession. Sukhanov could hear the crinkling of paper, the agitated striking of matches, and the carefree, toothless whistling. Tilting his head back, he shouted angrily toward the heavens, “Hey! Hey! Stop that right now, you hear?”

The burning balls ceased falling, and the old man’s face emerged over the balcony railing, his cheeks smeared with soot, his eyes drowned in absurd happiness.

“Too late,” he said blithely. “You’ve missed our revolution by five minutes. Didn’t I tell you four o‘clock sharp? Now you’ll have to wait for the next one.”

And before Sukhanov could think of a sensible reply, the old man ducked away with surprising agility, and a moment later an entire unfolded newspaper sheet drifted indolently past, in flames. Sukhanov could see a few words—“change,” “crucial,” “youth”—flare up briefly, black on melting gold, before the page disintegrated into a flock of darkly luminous shreds and landed on a balcony a few floors below. It was only a matter of time, of course, before something, somewhere, caught on fire.

Anatoly Pavlovich swore with quiet fury and went inside to call the fire station.

ELEVEN

A
single night of uninterrupted sleep,” said Vasily. ”Is that so much to ask for, really?”

For once, the entire family was present at the breakfast table, with Fyodor Dalevich, in an already established tradition, officiating at the stove. As Sukhanov stumbled into the kitchen, he could not help noticing that the man seemed especially energetic and amiable today—a striking contrast to the haunted, dark-rimmed look he himself had encountered earlier that morning in a morose, unshaved, altogether unpresentable individual in the mirror (who, to judge by his appearance, had been suffering greatly in some through-the-looking-glass world, quite possibly from tormenting memories, crazy neighbors, inefficient firemen, and a painfully prolonged acquaintance with the wires, bumps, and corners of a most uncomfortable couch). It was nice to know, Sukhanov thought bitterly, sitting down to a cup of cold coffee and trying not to look in his relative’s direction, that at least
someone
was enjoying a good night’s sleep—not to mention a recently acquired, wonderfully soft, imported bed.

And then Nina’s question from a moment before filtered into his lagging mind.

“Do you need any help with your packing?” she had asked matter-of-factly

He understood the meaning of her words—and felt instantly light headed, as if his insides had filled with a swarm of exclamation points.

“Leaving us, are you?” he addressed his cousin’s back in a voice of insincere regret, his tongue stumbling over the word “finally” just in time to avoid it. Strangely, Dalevich did not respond but continued to prod something sizzling in a pan with a cautious fork; and it was Vasily who dropped his cup onto its saucer with a needless clang and spoke in a tone of exasperation, “How many times do I have to tell you, Father? Honestly, do you ever listen to any of us?”

“A rhetorical question if ever I heard one,” said Ksenya.

Slowly, Sukhanov turned and regarded his son with a darkening gaze.

T
wo hours later, he stood on a sidewalk, his briefcase in hand, and squinting against the sun, watched the chauffeur haul a gigantic suitcase into the trunk of the car. Vasily himself was already sprawled in the backseat amid more of his belongings, drawing on a cigarette and looking bored. He was going to spend the last two weeks of August with his grandfather, at an exclusive Party resort in the Crimea, doubtlessly replete with cypress-scented, starlit promenades, sonorous cicadas, and all sorts of people whom it would be most useful to meet—apparently a plan of a monthlong standing, with which everyone was well familiar and which Sukhanov alone, even after passing his memory through a sieve of intense scrutiny, could not recall ever hearing.

Vasily rolled down the window.

“Ah, you’re still here,” he said indifferently. “Want a lift somewhere?”

The boy acted as if he had all but forgotten their painful conversation of two nights before—and quite possibly, he truly had, the details buried in the haze of his intoxication; or else he simply had not considered the matter particularly worthy of amends. Sukhanov, on the other hand, had found neither oblivion nor forgiveness an easy proposition. After an initial, vaguely hurt reaction, the news of his son’s impending absence had filled him with a feeling surprisingly like relief, and it had been in the hope of dispersing uneasy prompt ings of guilt that he had conceded to Vasily the use of his Volga.

“I need to go by the office to drop off a manuscript,” he pointed out somewhat dryly. “The train station is nowhere near it.”

“We are picking up Grandpa first,” said Vasily, and having flung away his still-glowing cigarette, started to roll up the window. “But I don’t care, it’s up to you.”

Sukhanov’s father-in-law lived in a palatial apartment overlooking Gorky Street, only a few short, crooked, linden-shaded blocks from the building occupied by
Art of the World.
Sukhanov hesitated, but Vadim had already shut the trunk and was now swinging the front door open, saying briskly, “Get in here, Anatoly Pavlovich, there’s no space in the back—just watch out for the dog hair.” A dog, what dog? thought Sukhanov gloomily, squeezing his substantial body into the seat next to the chauffeur’s.

He was accustomed to riding luxuriously spread out in the back, and the cramped quarters, permeated by the faint smell of some hirsute animal and a recent cloud of perfume, too sweet and dramatic to have been Nina‘s, as well as the sudden proximity of the driver, fiddling with the keys only inches away, soon began to vex him. Vasily appeared to have gone to sleep the moment the motor started. Sukhanov sighed, coughed, toyed with his wedding band, picked a few brown hairs off his trouser leg, then stared before him. From the rearview mirror, he noticed for the first time, dangled a small plastic sphere, with a tiny blue-roofed cottage inside surrounded by nail-sized fir trees. No sooner had they reached the end of their street than the car dove into its first pothole, and at the jolt a miniature storm of brightly tinted snowflakes soared inside the sphere, hung in the air for one chaotic, densely sparkling instant, then descended on the gingerbread house. Sukhanov watched with idle interest. The thing seemed embarrassingly sentimental and out of place—most drivers, after all, favored decorations of a different sort, like key-chain figurines of half-naked women—and he found himself wondering absently whether Vadim had chosen the tasteless trinket himself or it had been a gift from someone.

And all at once it occurred to him that, in truth, he knew oddly little about this man whom he saw almost daily. Vadim was a competent driver, perhaps a bit aggressive but on the whole reliable; he had the appearance of a man who liked regular exercise; he lived somewhere on the dim, desolate outskirts of Moscow with a wife named Svetlana or Galina or Tatyana, Sukhanov could not remember exactly, as well as a daughter, whose age had slipped off into the void yet again, and possibly a big hairy dog—but beyond that stretched a fog of uncertainties and conjectures. Nina’s recent reproach rose unbidden in his mind.
He’s worked for us for almost three years, and in all this time you haven’t made an effort... Wincing, he cast a quick look to his
side. Vadim’s profile was impassive, but as he drove he drummed his gloved fingers against the wheel as if following some nervous internal rhythm; he might have been upset about something. Resolved to be friendly, Sukhanov cleared his throat.

“I always mean to ask you, what is this?” he said casually, pointing at the sphere, in which another cheap snowstorm was subsiding. “A children’s toy?”

The man shrugged. “Just a souvenir,” he said.

“It’s nice,” Sukhanov said pleasantly. “Fun to watch.”

Vadim nodded without taking his eyes off the road. A silence fell between them, as awkward as an endless elevator ride with a vaguely familiar stranger to whom one has nothing to say. They were very close now. Vasily woke up and lit a fresh cigarette.

“So,” Sukhanov said in a bright tone, “did you have a good time last night?”

Vadim glanced at him sharply.

“On your evening off, that is. Do anything fun?”

“My evening off,” Vadim repeated with the beginning of a frown—but just then a blue Zhiguli with a smashed door swerved wildly into their lane, and Vadim honked and swerved in turn, so abruptly that Vasily was pitched forward, bespattering his shoes with ash, and Sukhanov’s glasses took a scintillating leap into the sunny, suddenly hazy space. An instant later the last traffic light turned green before them, and, grumbling about the crazy Gorky Street drivers, Vadim pulled into the cavernous courtyard of Malinin’s building.

“I’ll probably be a while,” said Vasily, yawning, “so if you want, he can take you directly to your office and then come back here, there’s plenty of—”

“No, no, that’s not necessary,” Sukhanov interrupted, groping for his glasses in the crevices behind his seat. “In fact, why don’t I come up myself for a minute? Might as well say hello to ... Ah, yes, here they are.... Well, so long, Vadim, thanks for the ride.... Might as well say hello to Pyotr Alekseevich, don’t you think?”

And restoring his glasses to the bridge of his nose, he stepped out of the car.

V
asily opened the door to the apartment with his own set of keys, which rather surprised Sukhanov: he thought of his father-in-law as a highly territorial man not forthcoming with gestures of trust. He followed his son inside. Since his last visit here, some half a year before, the vast entrance hall seemed to have slid even deeper into the two full-sized mirrors that stood on either side of the door, and all the solid antique furnishings—an oak hat stand, a bronze umbrella stand, a carved end table, a splendidly framed portrait of a morose Polish officer with a handlebar mustache, Nina’s maternal grandfather—all these genteel symbols of a well-established life, multiplying into infinity inside a diminishing progression of glass, had an unexpectedly oppressive effect on his spirit. He inhaled sharply, felt the smells of shoe polish, violet-scented hand soap, shortbread cookies, and, more delicately, old age trickle into his lungs, and was seized with an urgent desire to murmur some hasty excuse to Vasily, turn around, and leave—but the steady creaking of the hardwood floors had already announced Pyotr Alekseevich’s imminent approach.

In another moment the old man emerged into the hall from one of its many doorways. Coming toward them with his straight-backed, imposing stride, he embraced Vasily in a show of warmth that struck Sukhanov as excessive and for some reason highly unpleasant. Then, with one hand outstretched, Pyotr Alekseevich turned to his son-in-law

“Ah, Tolya. What a surprise,” he said flatly. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Sullenly Sukhanov looked at Malinin’s handsomely aged features, to which the habit of serving as a constant recipient of awards and a frequent subject of self-portraits had imparted a permanently noble, reserved expression—but then, instead of his usual irritable acquiescence, he felt a light tinge of amusement, uncertain at first, then growing more and more demanding, until a long-suppressed tide of merriment rose inside him and his mind was flooded with startling visions of his father-in-law’s face. The face was already lionized but a few decades younger, and suffering endless distortions and permutations—bristling with ridiculous whiskers, sporting bushy eyebrows and elegantly curved horns, covered in poisonous, hair-spurting warts, or even balanced precariously atop a giraffe’s neck, reaching for a star-shaped leaf with greedy lips.... Naturally, he had long since discarded all his notebooks in whose margins such secret malicious phantoms had sprouted by the dozen during so many tedious lectures, when all that had kept him from falling into a doze had been a game of rendering the lecturer as hideous as possible while keeping within the laws of portraiture. All the same, the mnemonic gift of his more successful efforts seemed revenge enough—almost enough—for all those past hours of unspeakable boredom.

He had felt bored for most of his time as a student, of course, but the class on Soviet art theory—taught in 1952, his last year at the Surikov Institute, by the recent recipient of the coveted Stalin Prize, the prominent painter, theorist, and glorified representative of state art, the forty-six-year-old star Pyotr Alekseevich Malinin—proved to be a particularly taxing exercise in patience. In truth, young Anatoly found patience to be one of the two qualities most required of him in the course of his studies; caution was the other. In his first semester, when presented, in the ranks of other eager youths, with a simple anatomical sketch or some suitably patriotic landscape, he discovered to his unease that something was wrong, that sometime previously, perhaps during the drab wartime evenings spent in the makeshift classroom with Chagall’s former pupil Oleg Romanov leaning over his shoulder, he had acquired a dangerous trait it was best to do without—namely, individual style—and maybe a touch of something else besides; for as was quickly becoming apparent, his works differed from those of the others. Anatoly’s paintings suffered from a fault, a twist, an uncommon streak of whimsy, and as much as he tried to follow the prescribed form, something strange, something alien, would always sneak into his renditions of Soviet reality, be it a cloud, above a perfectly ordinary industrial vista, whose shape resembled the spire of a great, sky-wide cathedral, or an incongruous herring skeleton found at the foot of a worker beaming proudly in the act of receiving a medal, or a wild riot of pearly, unearthly colors exploding in the background of an otherwise respectful harvesting scene. And all these absurdities seemed to drip from his brush so freely, so naturally, so completely apart from his conscious will, that it took him long months of diligent application to eradicate them from his canvases, from his thoughts, from the very texture of his being.

Yet gradually his efforts started to pay off, his name was increasingly mentioned among the more promising members of the new generation of artists—and only in his most private moments would he ever dream of painting enormous transparent bells raining music from the skies, or groves of springtime trees whose blossoms turned into twittering birds and flew away, or faces of women so ideal they melted as soon as you looked at them, or ...

“I don’t mean to be rude,” said Pyotr Alekseevich Malinin to his son-in-law, “but I do have to finish my packing. Was there something you wanted to tell me?”

Sukhanov looked at the pompous old man standing before him, and suddenly wanted to tell him many things, not the least of them being the story of his recent meeting with Lev Belkin and the news of Belkin’s exhibition. Yes, for one rebellious moment he felt a rising desire to erase the tranquil, self-assured expression on the old man’s face with that name from the past that they had tacitly agreed never to mention again.

After a long pause, he spoke.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I’d like to borrow a tie or two. Would you mind?”