The Dream Life of Sukhanov (17 page)

As she spoke, a delicate vein pulsated in her throat, her mouth was pale and pained like a wilting petal, her eyes glistened like melting, rain-washed gems, and, bright like her eyes, two diamond cascades flowed from her ears. He stared at her with a freedom allowed only in dreams. Behind him, as if mesmerized, the dogs too ceased their barking one after another and, watching her, carefully bared their teeth, dripping saliva onto her trailing gauze train. She said nothing more, only stood there, her piano player’s hands poised in an attitude of grieving supplication—and the whole world lay still and silent around them, like a starry sky’s reflection in the dark waters of an abandoned pond, like a particle of time frozen for all eternity in a marvelous painting, and it was frightening and heartbreaking and beautiful, this strange encounter, woven whole as it was from the moonlit, elusive fabric of the night....

It ended, as dreams must, with hasty, unbecoming absurdity. Unwinding a checkered woolen scarf left in the sleeve of his coat from some previous winter’s dream, Sukhanov tossed it at the dogs in a gesture that was of course futile yet perfectly sensible at the moment, and immediately, forgetting all about them, the pack fell onto the scarf, snarling, tearing, fighting over it. Grabbing her by the elbow, he dragged her inside, and through the echoing lobby, and up a few flights of stairs, to deliver her, slightly out of breath but unresisting, to the door of apartment number five, which he found standing wide open.

“He’ll marry you, don’t worry,” he said generously and insin cerely, as he gave her a gentle push across the threshold. “He’d be a fool not to.”

The last thing he remembered before mounting the stairs to his own eighth floor was the sight of her face, white and streaked with two grooves of running mascara, like a tragic Venetian porcelain mask, floating above a sea of silk and lace and sparkling with diamonds, lifted toward him from the dark cave of the gaping doorway.

After that, his duty performed, Sukhanov’s dream self returned to the couch (in passing hanging the ghostly coat on its hook and removing the nonexistent shoes) and fell into an even deeper slumber. Sometime shortly after dawn he had another dream, not full of melancholy wonder this time, but domestic and simple, containing a promise of happiness like a seed inside its warm soil. Nina, coming into his study on tiptoes, dressed in an old pair of slacks and a faded sweater with a thick, unfeminine collar, which made her look every day of her age and so familiar, so dear, bent over him briefly to drop a light kiss onto his cheek.

“I was hoping to talk to you last night,” she whispered, “but you went to sleep so early, and now I have a seven-thirty train to catch.”

“But where are you going?” he asked tenderly, smiling at the kiss in his sleep.

“To the dacha,” she said. “It may not have rained there. I need to check on the roses.”

“Ah yes, the roses, of course, beds and carpets and fields of roses,” said the dream Sukhanov. “But you’ll be back, my love?”

“I’ll be back,” the dream Nina promised softly. “In a few days.”

“The roses,” he said again, and nodding joyfully, began to sail away, only opening his eyes for an instant to see Nina’s hand hovering over his forehead before descending in a final, swift caress—but by then, he had already been washed onto new, unfamiliar shores.

THIRTEEN

B
ut didn’t she tell you?” Dalevich said, peering anxiously into Sukhanov’s face.

The morning was quiet and sunny, and a bird in a nearby tree repeated its bright little song over and over in a hollow imitation of pastoral happiness.

“Anyway, it’s only for a few days,” Dalevich added helpfully. “She just needs to water the flowers. She should be back by Tuesday at the latest.”

Sukhanov persisted in rubbing his glasses with the edge of the tablecloth, thinking of an important party to which he and Nina were invited this evening and to which he would now have to go alone. “Of course,” he finally murmured, starting to stand up.

“Listen, Tolya,” said Dalevich hastily, “we never finished our talk the other day, and there was something in particular I wanted to—”

“Of course,” said Sukhanov again. “Except that right now I have this article I must review. Urgent work, I’m sure you understand.”

“Oh, completely,” said Dalevich. “And as a matter of fact, I was just about to tell you—”

“Let’s talk at dinnertime, shall we, then?” Sukhanov said.

The bird continued to strain its throat with throbbing exuberance. As he trod the long corridor to his study, he felt his cousin’s eyes on his back.

He spent the rest of the morning behind the closed door, in a semidarkness of tightly drawn curtains, stubbornly warding off all thoughts of Nina’s desertion and poring over the Chagall article. It was, he had to admit, exceptionally well written. Instead of delivering a dutiful recital of dull biographical facts, D. M. Fyodorov (whoever the devil he was) had chosen to present the artist’s development through a series of defining encounters: a stuttering meeting of the chaperoned adolescent with a kindly Judel Pan, a pedestrian but endearing Vitebsk painter who would become Chagall’s first teacher and in whose studio the youth would struggle to draw plaster busts but lapse time and time again into unacceptable lilac colors; an accidental introduction to Bella, daughter of a local jewelry merchant, in whose radiant black gaze his soul would find its eternal home; then, already in the capital, a timid, excited audience with the celebrated Leon Bakst, founder of the famous St. Petersburg art school, leader in the influential World of Art movement, and proud proclaimer of art for art’s sake, who to the young Chagall seemed the triumphant incarnation of all European traditions, but who, after a mere few months as his tutor, began to appear too stylized, too refined, and in the end too cold and foreign in Chagall’s eyes—too small for his expanding, deepening universe of pain and joy; and finally, completing his formation as an artist, a momentous meeting in pre—World War I Paris with Anatoly Vasilievich Lunacharsky—Lenin’s future mouthpiece on the subject of art in the service of the Revolution, and Bakst’s ideological negative—to whom Chagall politely showed his works and, noticing the man’s puzzlement, said serenely, “Just don’t ask me why everything on my canvases is blue or green, or why a calf is visible in a cow’s stomach. Let your Marx, if he is so smart, come back from the dead and explain everything to you.”

This position of a genius whose art had grown too universal both for aestheticizing detachment and for political partiality would make it hard for Chagall to be appreciated in Russia before the Revolution and impossible for him to remain there much longer afterward, but in a sensitive omission, D. M. Fyodorov had elected not to dwell on Chagall’s subsequent exile and wanderings. Instead, he had devoted the rest of the article to a poetic tribute to the master’s lifelong themes—his “poignant, eternal world, radiant like a window opening from the darkness of our souls into bright blue skies, filled with flying fiddlers, green-faced lovers, and mysteriously smiling cows,” as he wrote in his conclusion, “a world that seems childlike and simple and yet achieves truly biblical proportions, touching the very core of our being.”

Frowning, Sukhanov tapped his pen against the stack of paper before him. Of course, he would never have allowed this piece anywhere near his magazine under ordinary circumstances, but he supposed Pugovichkin was right—it was always wiser not to cross those more important than oneself. And in any case, it could have been worse: at least it read more like a philosophical discourse on the nature of art than a subversive manifesto. All the same, it was apparent that, inspired though it might be, the text could not remain unaltered. It lacked a proper critical attitude. Even more problematic, it betrayed an openly religious sensibility, what with its constant references to the Bible, its assertion of love as the unifying principle of Chagall’s universe, its comparisons between his manner and traditional iconic art, and ... and ...

For one uncomfortable moment, the by now familiar sensation of fleeting recognition, of his past and present endlessly reflecting off each other in a multiplying infinity of mirrors, visited Sukhanov again, disrupting the flow of his thoughts; but in a quick outburst of determination he shrugged it off and lifted his pen. The Lunacharsky scene had to go—or better yet, he would keep it (naturally, omitting Chagall’s scandalous mention of Marx) in order to use it as a departure point for a stern reevaluation of Chagall’s work. Perhaps something along these lines: “While the painter was able to perceive the insolvency of the bourgeois art of Bakst and his school, he lacked the maturity needed to appreciate the noble truth of Lunacharsky’s position, thus failing to understand the real purpose of art as the people’s weapon in their struggle against oppression.” Yes, indeed, this would serve as the perfect introduction to a subsequent discussion of the artist’s themes: their childish, fairy-tale nature, their total isolation from reality, their slavish reliance on religious motifs ... As Sukhanov’s pen flew across the pages, crossing out every occurrence of “biblical” and “eternal” and putting a fat question mark next to every mention of “love,” he was beginning to think that it was possible, just possible, to keep the wolves full and the sheep whole. Thus occupied, he did not hear the soft knock on the door, and was presently startled by his cousin’s apologetic voice close to his ear.

“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 know 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!”