The Dream Life of Sukhanov (21 page)

No,
most
theaters, he corrected himself in desperation—most, but not all—and it was altogether possible that the Malyi had begun its season earlier this year. What had she said she’d gone to see that Wednesday?
Three Sisters,
had it been, or
Uncle Vanya?
He did not remember. Then, before he could stop himself, it occurred to him that a Sunday newspaper would carry the list of weekly performances—and that his answer therefore lay close, only eight floors below, in the mailbox of apartment fifteen....

Disgusted with his doubts, he forced himself to turn his thoughts away, to find some occupation for his restlessness. Again he walked through the rooms, picking up random novels and dropping them after reading a page or two, snacking on frozen carrots from a solitary package he discovered in the fridge, leafing through a family address book in search of he knew not whose number. Chancing upon the letter V, he was surprised to see, among a multitude of Var lamovs and Vostrikovs, most of them his work contacts (now former), a single line in Nina’s delicate handwriting. “Viktor,” it said next to the number. No last name, no way of knowing when the entry had been made... Thoughtfully he looked at it, then stood, and moving as if in a dream, picked up his keys and went out to the elevator.

P
erhaps his hands shook too much, or maybe there was some unknown trick to opening the mailbox—Valya had always brought up their mail; he himself had not bothered with it in years. Whatever the cause, the key became promptly stuck in the lock, and as he tugged at it in frustration, he felt it beginning to bend. Swearing soundlessly, he looked up, and found the ancient concierge watching him with malevolent curiosity from his perch behind the desk.

“A problem, Anatoly Pavlovich?” the old man inquired, his lips rustling dryly against toothless gums.

“The key is stuck,” Sukhanov replied, and shrugged with studied indifference. “No matter, I’ll come back later. I just wanted to scan the newspaper.”

“No point in reading newspapers nowadays,” said the concierge, getting up with a great show of difficulty. “I remember the time when every day you’d wake up to read about a new hero of socialist labor or an overperforming collective farm. A man’s heart was always full of joy and pride in his country.” He shuffled across the hall at a funeral pace. “But the distasteful things they print today ...” He made as if to spit, then thought better of it, and simply waved his hand. “Listen to an old man, Anatoly Pavlovich, don’t read the garbage.”

“I won‘t,” Sukhanov promised. “Now, about this key ... It appears I can’t pull it out.”

“Allow me,” said the concierge, bending over the lock. A faint odor of smoked fish emanated from his cardigan. “Apartment fifteen, let me think.... Aha, just one tiny little push down, like so ... and now a sharp turn to the right, like this... and here you are.”

He performed the operation with astonishing agility, twisting the key in some complicated and seemingly well-practiced ritual, and Sukhanov’s initial surprise turned to distaste. As the mailbox swung open, the concierge peered inside.

“That’s funny—no newspaper,” he said, and quickly, before Sukhanov could even move, scooped inside the box and emerged with three pieces of mail grasped firmly in his yellowing fingers. “Now, what might this be? Aha, a telephone bill, something official-looking addressed to you, and a private letter—to Nina Petrovna, by the looks of it... Well, here you go, Anatoly Pavlovich.”

The letter, in a small white envelope, had a stamp with a golden deer on it; its address was penned in lavender ink, in handwriting Sukhanov did not recognize. As he accepted it, his hands trembled, and the presence of the old man hovering before him, watching him with those nastily glinting eyes, made him feel suddenly dirty, as if the two of them had just violated some sacred trust, irreparably damaged something fragile and beautiful.... Wincing, he slipped the mail into his pocket without a second glance and, with a curt “Thank you,” began to walk away.

“Wait a second, Anatoly Pavlovich, I have something for you,” the concierge called out from his desk. “Found it on the sidewalk this morning.” From a creaking drawer he extracted a filthy rag of checkered wool and proffered it to Sukhanov. “Your scarf, I believe?”

Sukhanov looked at it for a full minute.

“No,” he finally said, and turning away, pressed the elevator button. “It’s not mine.”

“Strange, I could swear I saw you wearing it last winter,” said the concierge, smiling suggestively. “Although you probably wouldn’t want it anyway. Looks like some dogs have mauled it pretty badly. Still, maybe Nina Petrovna could use it as a washrag. I mean, now that Valentina Aleksandrovna doesn’t work for you anymore.”

“It’s not mine,” Sukhanov repeated—and then, mercifully, the elevator arrived.

Back in his study, he impassively skimmed an impersonal message from the publishing staff of
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia
informing him that the planned edition with his biography was being postponed until further notice, then gave the telephone bill a cursory look, noting a call to Vologda he did not remember making, and set them aside, along with the letter to Nina. The absence of the newspaper, though irritating, was not out of the ordinary; it was at times misdelivered by the postman, and occasionally stolen, perhaps by the very concierge who appeared so skillful with locks. In any case, his brief sojourn downstairs had convinced him to abandon his distrustful pursuit, for he had sensed that it belonged in spirit to an underworld of sinister old men and disgruntled domestics who poked through people’s mail and gossiped by trash chutes in search of their betters’ soiled little secrets. Shuddering squeamishly, with one last glance at the tetter—addressed, with a rather peculiar familiarity, to “N.S.”—he left to try the dacha number again. There was still no answer.

He returned to the study later that evening. Darkness was stealing in rapidly; he switched on his Pegasus lamp. A few manuscripts were gathering dust in the corner of his desk, all of them materials to be reviewed for future magazine issues—now never to be subjected to his famously strict scrutiny, he thought, and smiling without mirth, brushed them to the floor with one sweeping gesture. A whirlwind raised by their heavy fall caused a tiny fluttering movement that caught his eye, and he found himself once again looking at the strange letter lying before him.

The deer on the stamp displayed its antlers proudly; there was no return address. The abbreviated “N.S.” now struck him unpleasantly, giving the impression of someone in a feverish rush to send off the epistle—or else someone breathlessly intimate with the addressee.... After a moment’s hesitation, he bent to pick it up, with the intention of placing it on Nina’s nightstand. All at once, jolted by the precipitate movement, his glasses started to slide off his nose, and he raised his hand—the hand holding the letter—in a quick attempt to intercept them. As the envelope accidentally became positioned between his eyes and the lamp, he could not help seeing it at the precise instant when the paper grew suffused with a warm coral glow of pervading light. Two or three pages were folded inside, dense and impenetrable at their heart; but a few words, escaping to the margins, emerged to the surface like lucid watermarks. The whole thing had been completely unplanned, he told himself—it had transpired too swiftly—it could not have been prevented. He saw the loose scraps of sentences, read them involuntarily, then lowered his hand slowly, turned off the lamp, and for a long, silent while looked away into nothingness.

The words he had chanced to see were “unlike me,” “marr...,” “know” (underlined), “just the two of us,” and the last one, “... pture” or “... rture.” Torture? Rapture?

As Anatoly Pavlovich sat in the darkness, sliding his finger back and forth along the edge of the envelope, he mused about choices that sometimes ambush a man so unfairly, without a moment’s warning, and wresting from him an almost instinctive reaction, in the space of a mere minute change the rest of his life. He could let go of the weight in his hand and, still surrounded by blackness, feel his way out of the room, close the door on his base mistrust, and in a day or two, when Nina returned from the dacha, lightly mention that a letter awaited her on his desk—and afterward, and for all their remaining years, try not to torment himself with not knowing the truth every time he beheld her cold, unreadable, beautiful gaze—yet failing, always failing not to wonder.... Or, just as easily, he could flip the light switch, and right here, right now, violently rape the envelope, making it yield all its secrets in pale lavender ink—and immediately, now and for all eternity, feel ashamed, feel deeply, darkly ashamed, feel it like a bad taste in his mouth every time he looked at Nina’s tired, dear face that age was already beginning to erase at the edges, forever remembering that on one late-summer evening when his heart had wavered, he had proven unworthy of her and their past—and all for some meaningless bit of women’s gossip, some gushing confidence of a casual university friend.

For in the most private recess of his mind, he had no doubt that was all it was—a little note from Liusya, perhaps, dashed off self-indulgently right after the play they had gone to see and redolent with girlish affectations. Darling Ninusya, he would read as his hands shook and his damned soul fell,
it was so unlike me to ask you to come on such short notice—but that’s what I get for marrying a reporter with a predilection for leaving on an assignment just when we have two tickets to my favorite play. But I just know I can always count on you! And didn’t it feel so much like the old days-rushing into the theater as the curtain was rising, just the two of us, drinking in Chekhov’s divine cadences, and at the intermission watching overdressed provincials and laughing and snacking on those tiny caviar sandwiches they always serve! The glass of champagne at the end was pure rapture, and I certainly hope-

Oh, he was sure, he was sure that was all it would be—and never mind that Sunday afternoon, or Vadim’s evening off, or the theater season, or the unknown Viktor in their address book...

Sukhanov switched on the light and ruthlessly tore at the envelope.

My beloved,
the two closely written pages began,
letters are dangerous, but you don’t let me call you, and in any case, I would never dare to say what I’m about to write. Seeing you so quiet and sad on our last evening together made me realize that things simply can’t go on like this for much longer. You made me swear never to bring up our “fake lives,” and it is unlike me to renege on a promise-but you must see that it is a much lesser crime to break a promise than to lose something as perfect as what we share. For a long time now, I’ve tried to do as you asked: to be satisfied with furtive meetings, whispered phone calls, poor, random snatches of your presence. But my nerves are wearing thin, my love, and the unmentionable shadow of your marriage grows darker every time I have to let go of your voice because you think you hear a noise in your entrance hall, every time you emerge from your house and pretend not to notice me waiting just down the street for fear of someone watching at the window, every time we kiss surreptitiously in some doorway.

My heart has been broken so many times that even our dearest memories cause me nothing but pain now. Do you remember that December night when, a glamorous presence in your short fur-trimmed coat, you knocked on my car window and haughtily asked for a ride across town, and as I slowly drove through the storm, you suddenly broke down crying? The snow was falling and falling, and when I stopped the car in some alley, it soon turned into one big, white, sparkling cave... And every time I recall that snowfall, without you by my side, my eyes go black, and helplessness overwhelms me.

And this Wednesday, as I watched you reapply your lipstick and then walk away dejectedly—as I saw you disappear around the corner, not knowing when you would be able to get away again—I finally realized the truth. Dearest, I can no longer bear these constant farewells. I can no longer be content with having you in my present and my past only: I must have you in my future as well. Although I’ve never told you, you know, you must know, that I have wanted to leave Svetlana ever since that first snowbound kiss—I have just been waiting for you to ask me. I have waited for almost a year now. What are you afraid of, my beloved? Believe me, no comfortable routine of shared space and time could replace the love you and I have stumbled upon, so unexpectedly, so magically—a love that tightens one’s throat, tingles in one’s veins, makes every moment spent together unquestionably justified and infinitely precious. And it is in the name of that love that I must beg you now: let us be free and selfish like gods, let us leave all our habits and lies behind and start anew, just the two of us, rid of the endless torture of our double lives—and let us do so soon, before the constant humiliation of secrecy, the guilt I feel every time I look at my daughter, the pity you have for your husband slowly drain all joy from our hearts. We both know that what we have is worth any sacrifice we can offer. A long time ago, you told me your husband was kind to you. The truth is, he has never known how to love. You and I do. Please never forget what a rare gift it is.

I must hear from you soon, unless you want me showing up on your doorstep. Your V

And so it was.

And there were no friends or lovers to whom he could pour out his heart—and no memories that he could uncork and inhale like some miraculously soothing elixir—and no forces of heaven or hell that he could invoke or curse, or to which he could pray—no benevolent divinities, no merciful guardian angels, no dark spirits of the abyss.... There was nothing in the whole world but the two pages crumpled in his hand, and the empty black skies of August over his head, and a trembling hole where his soul used to be. For when it finally happened, he saw he was completely alone—alone to stumble, lost, through the ruins of his past life, collecting the remaining pieces—alone to walk through the future dreariness with that gaping void in his insides—and alone to die when the time arrived.