The Dream Life of Sukhanov (20 page)

“Papa, Papa, are you all right?” the voice was saying. “This wasn’t supposed to happen, they were all going to be gone before you got home.... Oh God, I’m so sorry... Boris had this concert scheduled, but then the auditorium fell through at the last minute, and I thought... Papa, can you even hear me? Shall I call a doctor?”

He opened his eyes again. The contours of the universe had grown sharper. Ksenya, not Nina, was bending over him, and behind her knelt an unfamiliar man, still wearing the tie and, true, bearing some vague resemblance to the young Belkin—but not Belkin.

“Papa, please say something!” Ksenya kept repeating.

Sukhanov blinked and looked closer.

“Is ... that... my ... tie?” he said laboriously.

Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh no, I forgot about those!” she said. The young man hastily started to tear the tie from his neck. “You see, Boris needed some ties ... and by the way, this is Boris, my boyfriend.... He’s written this piece, performance art, you know—”

“‘Song of the Bureaucrats,’ ” pseudo-Belkin explained contritely.

“Shut up,” Ksenya said in a furious whisper, then went on rapidly. “He didn’t mean any harm, he just... just borrowed the ties last Sunday when he stopped by, and I only found out about it tonight. It was supposed to be a joke, see? Of course, he was very upset when I told him about Valya, but don’t worry, we’ll fix it, and the ties are all here, they’re all fine....”

“I spilled some wine on mine,” said someone from the back of the room. “Sorry.”

And suddenly it was all too much, and he was finding it hard to breathe, and pseudo-Belkin was rushing off to throw open a window, and a short-haired adolescent girl—whose name, he somehow knew, was Lina—was pressing a glass of water to his lips, while Ksenya squeezed his hand and repeated helplessly, in a thin voice, “I’m so sorry, it’s all my fault, you’ve fallen sick because of me—”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much about him, it will wear off shortly,” a new voice pronounced jauntily, and the grinning face framed by the salmon-colored scarf materialized in the fog above Sukhanov. Then matters quickly disintegrated into confusion once again. In the hazy distance, he heard Ksenya asking sharp, accusing questions whose essence he could not follow, and the elevator man protesting in an offended patter, then Ksenya shouting, “Grishka, how could you, you bastard!” and a multitude of other voices rising like mist from the edges of the room....

All of this, however, increasingly failed to concern him, for as he continued to look at the elevator man, he saw something wonderful happening—happening slowly but inexorably. An enormous balloon was emerging carefully, gently out of the man’s shaved head. Strangely, no one else seemed to notice, but that did not bother him in the ieast—in truth, it made the moment all the more precious. Once free, the gorgeous yellow balloon hung in the air for one wavering minute, and then with quiet dignity swam through the open window, rose into the skies, and there turned into a most golden, most perfect full moon.

Yes, of course, thought Anatoly Pavlovich with a happy little smile—and floated out the window after it.

FIFTEEN

F
or a while he lay without moving. A wide patch of sunshine crept across his face, and from its brightness he deduced that it was late, at least ten o‘clock, perhaps drawing closer to eleven; yet he felt reluctant to open his eyes, enjoying as he was this leisurely moment—a man half asleep, resting in his bed on a Saturday morning (here a needle of unexplained anxiety pricked his heart, but he pushed on stubbornly), yes, resting in his bed, in his freshly laundered pajamas, on a summer morning, as was his right, with nothing in particular to do, and nowhere to go, and a whole pleasant day ahead of him. He was nearly awake, but a few shadowy creatures from a recent dream still scurried about the hazy edges of his memory—and the most nonsensical dream it had been too, involving a misshapen angel in a zoo cage, a man whose head gave birth to an inflated balloon, and a crowd of hippies and rock musicians holding a disreputable concert in his very own living room. Groggily, he marveled that a mind normally so devoid of surprises could be capable of such nightmarish notions.

A telephone began to ring, loud and insistent. After each ring there was a pause just long enough to make him hope it would stop, but invariably the next ring would come, torturously protracted, filling his head with reverberations of the headache he now realized he had. Grumbling, he groped for the nightstand on which the telephone rested, then, not able to feel it, opened his eyes with an effort—and found himself confronted with several truths. He was not in his bedroom but in the living room, crammed painfully between the armrests of a decoratively small couch. He wore a pitiful-looking suit. The air smelled of stale incense, and his mouth tasted as if a small animal had died somewhere inside his entrails. It was no longer morning—the clock on the opposite wall showed half past one; and it was possibly not Saturday either. On the coffee table, next to the screaming telephone, lay a pile of sad remains that on closer observation proved to be his once proud collection of ties.

And of course, he had known it, known it since the very first moment of semiwakefulness, felt it in his nauseated, aching body, guessed it with his sickened heart—and still had tried to move as far away from it as possible, to hide like a frightened child in the soft oblivion of lingering sleep—for sleep at least was peaceful, sleep at least did not assault him with the terrifying dreams that were becoming his life, his daily life. And now his life was right here, pressing down on him, breathing into his face, demanding that he get up and answer the ringing telephone, and go apologize to Valya, whom he had offended so badly, and face his daughter, whose friends were all madmen and drug addicts and who was probably a drug addict herself ...

Stumbling off the couch, he yanked at the receiver.

“Well, finally!” Pugovichkin spoke cheerfully. “I was beginning to wonder. Listen, I’m so glad you decided to keep the Chagall piece unchanged. I promise you’ll be pleased with the issue, it was all finished yesterday, a real beauty—we put his
Self-Portrait with Muse
on the cover, and inside—”

“Ah,” said Sukhanov, “then yesterday was Saturday after all.”

A small silence fell. He buried his hands in the mass of his stained, wrinkled, mistreated ties and twirled their silk corpses about his fingers. Somehow, the Chagall controversy had lost all its urgency in his mind, overshadowed by other, infinitely more vital matters. He felt his whole being expanding with grief for things misplaced, and forfeited, and possibly missed forever—and where such grief reigned, petty anger could find no place.

“Anatoly Pavlovich, is everything all right?” Pugovichkin said uncertainly. “You sound... odd.”

“Oh, I just woke up,” Sukhanov explained. “I was drugged last night.”

His recollection of the previous night’s events dissolved at some nebulous juncture into a shimmering, emotional haze filled with visions of himself worshipping some deceased divinity in the solemn sonorousness of a cathedral, and his past and present ran together confusingly; but he remembered the subsequent burn of the carpet on his neck, the feeling of heavy, helpless humiliation, and Ksenya’s face close to his, begging him, begging him to forgive her.... He wondered how he would find her today—meekly apologetic still, or stubborn and remote, as unapproachable as ever.

“By whom? Drugged by whom?” Pugovichkin’s increasingly shrill voice repeated in the distance. “Drugged
where?”

“Here, at my place,” said Sukhanov. “There was an underground concert, and then this fellow with a balloon inside his head—”

His eyes fell on a folded piece of paper lying on the table, with the words “To papa” scrawled across its whiteness. As the rest of the world faded away, he reached for it, held it in both hands for an instant, then opened it and, swallowing, began to read.

Dear papa, what happened yesterday was ugly and unnecessary, and I’m very sorry about it. But maybe it’s better to know than to stay ignorant, and now you’ve bad a glimpse of who I really am, of the things that are important to me, of the man in my life. I should tell you that he is married, but it doesn’t matter to us....

Sharply he drew in his breath, and all at once became aware of a crackling void on the other end of the line.

“Listen, Sergei Nikolaevich,” he said weakly, “this isn’t a very good time. Unless there was something in particular you wanted to tell me—”

“As a matter of fact, there is, Anatoly Pavlovich,” said Pugovichkin’s hesitant voice. “Now, please don’t take this the wrong way, we value your work immensely, but we’ve all been a little worried about you, and, well ... we think it might be good for you to get some rest.”

“Rest?” repeated Sukhanov. He kept tracing the next few lines of the note with his finger, desperately trying to uncover some other possible meaning—any other meaning apart from the one that had just slapped him in the face.
I don’t expect you to like it, nor do I expect you to understand it. You have your principles, whatever they are, and I have mine. After last night, I believe you will not want to see me for a while, so I’m moving out. I think it’s best for now....

“Yes, take two or three weeks off,” Pugovichkin was saying uncomfortably, “even a month, if you like. Relax, go to the countryside, spend some time rereading the classics—”

“And what if I don’t want to relax?” said Sukhanov flatly.
Don’t worry about me, I’ll be staying with good friends of mine.
“Whose idea is it? Yours? Ovseev’s?”

“Yes, mine, and Ovseev’s too,” said Pugovichkin quickly. “Well, actually... Listen, I don’t think I’m supposed to say anything, but what the hell, I owe it to you, Tolya. Mikhail Burykin called me confidentially this morning—you know, that big shot from the Ministry of Culture—and ... I can’t guess who’s spreading this rumor, and of course, I tried to do my best to dissuade him, but... he was quite convinced you were somewhat... er ... unwell. A bit too... wound up, you know? He said
Art of the World
was better off without you for the time being, and... and I hate to tell you this, but it seems the Minister agrees with him. But it will be for a short time only, you understand, and your absence will of course be voluntary, just while they review your case—”

“They are letting me go,” said Sukhanov slowly. “Looks like he did it after all.”

“Burykin? You’ve had run-ins with him before?”

“Not Burykin, Burykin is just a pawn. My fake cousin is the one behind it....” Sukhanov exhaled, then said after a pause, in a different, suddenly quivering voice, “Not that it matters any longer. I hate doing it anyway. Always hated it. Going through other people’s texts as through dirty laundry, deleting every avoidable reference to God and lowercasing all the unavoidable ones, ferreting out the names of all the blacklisted artists, always sticking these Lenin quotes everywhere—how disgusting! Not the kind of thing that makes your children respect you, you know? Or do your children still respect you, Serezha?”

The note trembled in his hand.
I hope you feel better today. Grishka is such a
—The phrase was crossed out.
I’m sorry if I hurt you, but I think it was bound to happen, one way or another. These are my friends, and this is my life, and I’m not ashamed of it even if you are. You and I are very different people, papa. I suppose you know I love you—but as I’ve recently discovered, love solves nothing, nothing at all. If anything, it only causes more problems. Ksenya. P.S. Mama will know how to reach me.

After a long, embarrassed silence, Pugovichkin was talking again, mumbling that this whole thing was temporary, he had no doubt they would let him come back to the magazine soon, of course they would, how could they not, after everything he, Sukhanov, had done for them....

“Never mind all that,” Sukhanov said, and folded the note. He waited for his voice to lose its sobbing edge, then asked, “How was the fishing? Catch anything good?”

F
or the remaining afternoon hours he wandered through his deserted kingdom like a ghost of his former self. Lost my position, lost my son, lost my daughter, he kept repeating, his voice running up and down the scale of despair, from a nearly silent whisper to a fist-smashing-into-the-wall shout. His job did not concern him any longer, but his children—his misjudged, his misguided children, his responsibility, his punishment... He could not bear to think how blind he had been all these years—so proud of Vasily, the smooth-talking boy with wintry eyes, so disapproving of Ksenya, with her bristling remarks and unnervingly dark adolescent poems—and all along, Vasily had been the reflection of what was worst in him, and Ksenya of what was best, and he had not stopped the one, and had not helped the other, and now it was simply too late, for they had moved forever beyond his reach. He had failed—he had failed both of them.

And then he felt tired, so very tired, of every past and present burden of guilt that all he wanted to do was collect his many failures—failure as a critic, as a father, and a few others besides—yes, collect them all and bring them to Nina, and dropping them at her feet, beg her for forgiveness, beg her for absolution.... He wanted, he needed her near him, as never before. His hands unsteady, his fingers repeatedly missing the digits, he dialed their dacha number, heard a hateful busy signal, waited a few minutes, and dialed again. This time he listened, with bated breath, to the faint sounds of distant ringing. There was no answer.

Sighing, he rose and slowly walked through the still rooms, everywhere seeking and finding cherished echoes of her presence: foreign fashion magazines discarded on ottomans and sofas, a lonely slipper poking its pink silky nose from underneath a chair, a face mask resting by the bathtub, her features still lightly imprinted on it.... But as he followed Nina’s recent trail around the apartment, he felt surprisingly little comfort, and in a while found himself moving faster and breathing heavier in his chase of her shadow—for unexpectedly he had begun to perceive signs of an uncharacteristic absentminded-ness, perhaps even secret restlessness, behind all her abandoned, forgotten things. He stumbled on a pair of ruby earrings tossed onto a bookshelf, a peach pit left to dry on a windowsill—inexplicable, disconcerting lapses; and as his attention sharpened, little details from the past, a whole multitude of oddly demanding trivial details, buzzed in his memory like a swarm of disturbed bees. He thought of the vague expression on her face as she had sat looking out the window, her chin running with fruit juice: when their eyes had met, he had felt he could almost see a mermaid’s glistening body dive with the startled wave of a tail into the green waters of her far-off gaze. He recalled her listless movements at recent meals, and her frequent migraines, and that Sunday she had spent in bed, yet wearing a profusion of bracelets as if for an outing—the very same Sunday, he realized with a jolt, when Ksenya’s boyfriend must have walked into the bedroom unseen by anyone and taken all his ties.... A chill crept stealthily up his spine. Had she been napping perhaps and not woken up at the sound of closet doors shutting and clothes being ripped.off the hooks—she, the lightest sleeper he knew?

Ceasing to roam, he stood very still, seized with a sudden terror of losing her too. The feeling was, of course, irrational, for did not their twenty-eight years of marriage offer him reassurance enough? So she had not been home that Sunday afternoon—could she not have stepped out to buy dessert for her tea or to chat with their neighbors? Yet with so many losses wreaking devastation in his heart, he felt compelled to tread carefully now, lest he offend some envious divinity even further with undue presumptuousness and ungrateful complacency. No, never again would he dare to accept any certainty with that bovine sense of simply receiving his due....

And in truth, spoke a tiny insidious voice inside him, just how certain a certainty was it, really? How confident of their closeness was he—how well did he know the inner workings of one Nina Sukhanova? She had never been easy to understand, and he had long since learned to allow her small pockets of privacy by not dwelling on her manifold silences and not pursuing to its hidden origin her every expression or gesture or even absence, habitually interpreting these mysterious lacunae as evidence of her unique brand of feminine mystique. Now, for the first time, he felt unsure. He saw that little by little, as these omissions had multiplied between them, the very essence of Nina’s life had somehow become obscured, until he could guess at neither the timbre of her thoughts nor a roster of her activities. Oh, naturally, he knew all about her museum visits with his fake relatives and her theater outings with her fashionable girlfriends; yet between these major blocks of time, each day still contained numerous cracks, small enough to pass unnoticed but wide enough for... for...

And again he froze, his thoughts running aground on another disturbing half-memory he had so casually misfiled in the cabinets of his past. On the evening when Nina had gone to see the play at the Malyi, she had told him, her lips gleaming with that unfamiliar shade of lipstick, that their chauffeur had wanted the night off—yet Vadim had acted almost affronted when Sukhanov had mentioned it later. He paced along the corridor, willing himself not to panic. And he had nearly succeeded in burying the incident in a communal grave with the safely vague epitaph “Misunderstanding,” when yet another unbidden recollection rose, and not for the first time, to the foreground of his mind, and he finally perceived the main reason for his feeling of unease—a feeling that had been there all along. The memory of the mangled theater bill from the Malyi’s last season, which the August wind had deposited so deftly at his feet, presented him now with a clear mental snapshot of a soggy May date printed at the top—and in doing so, triggered his belated realization of a plain fact of life in Moscow. All city theaters closed their doors for the summer, reopening again only in the early days of September.