The Dream Life of Sukhanov (7 page)

Here he hesitated, not knowing where the caretaker lived; but the concierge was already rising from behind the desk with a cloyingly respectful, insincere smile, and, suddenly embarrassed, Sukhanov nodded coldly and hastened down another staircase, markedly narrower and darker, which disappeared into the obscure strata of the building. Before he knew it, he was staggering through the uncharted territory of the basement, crisscrossed with low-ceilinged, cramped, poorly lit corridors. The smells of cabbage stew and detergent clung to walls the color of sickness; an ill-looking striped cat slunk past him, its invisible tail bristling; shapeless objects cringed in the corners, briefly suggesting rags, pails, brooms, a rolled-up poster, a three-legged chair, a doll with a missing arm, then sinking back into the shadows.... After the sparkling expanse of the lobby, the building’s faintly unclean, unsavory underside jarred his senses, and he felt a dull oppression descending on him, as if all nine stories of human existence above were weighing heavily on his spirit.

A metal door stood ajar at the end of the hallway. When his first knock went unanswered, he knocked again, louder this time, and hearing some remote rumble in response, walked in—and stopped, assailed by a sharp, multilayered, terrible smell. A mammoth pile of garbage towered in the murkiness above him. He took an involuntary step back, and as his foot sank into something pulpy—an apple core, perhaps, or a banana peel, he did not want to look closely—the gigantic body quivered, shedding a fish head with oily eyes, a soiled paper bag, a swarm of potato skins, creeping a little closer to his immaculate shoes, an inch, another inch, seemingly on the verge of disintegrating completely, of swallowing him up in its noxious horror....

He stood still for one long, stupefying moment, then, seized with panic, flew outside, threw the door shut behind him, and pressing his hands to his temples, thought confusedly, What is this, how can this be, in my own house... And all at once the idea of confronting Valya began to seem disgusting, indecorous, mean, as if it too belonged to this underground world of rotting, malodorous refuse; and he was overpowered by a squeamish desire to leave, leave immediately, return to the light, to the air, to his familiar reality. Almost running now, he turned the corner and stumbled against the wall, and the wall, strangely yielding to his touch, let out a wail and leapt off into the darkness. He stared after it, instinctively groping for his heart in the folds of his jacket. Then, seeing nothing but the cat he had encountered earlier in this labyrinth of corridors, he swore nervously and resumed walking, more slowly now, when a door he had not noticed opened in front of him, and there was Valya, her hands glistening wet, peering into the gloom with her slightly cross-eyed, amiable look.

“Why, it’s you, Anatoly Pavlovich!” she said in surprise. “I thought I heard Marusya cry out just now. Marusya is my cat.”

“I saw it,” he said, taken aback by her sudden appearance. “I also saw a room full of garbage.”

“Oh, that’s our trash chute dump,” Valya explained. “Kolya keeps it locked, only he forgets sometimes. I’ll tell him.”

“Yes, please see to it. It’s most... most unhygienic, you know.”

A short silence hung between them. Then Valya smiled in her shy, dimpled way.

“I was going to come up in half an hour as usual,” she said, and wiped her hands on her apron, “but I’ll be glad to start earlier if you need me now, Anatoly Pavlovich.”

He looked at her, the big, homely woman in an unbecomingly tight blouse, her hair untidy, her round, kind face anxious with a desire to be useful, and his conviction of her guilt faltered. “Just give me a second to check on a couple of things, and I’ll be ready to go,” she was saying, ushering him into a tiny hallway crowded with bundles of freshly washed laundry. A little girl of about six, so blonde her eyebrows and eyelashes were invisible, emerged from somewhere and regarded him seriously for an instant, then wandered off. A telephone started to ring, and a sharp smell of burning porridge began to spread through the apartment. Valya shouted to someone named Stepasha to switch off the stove and to Annechka to answer the phone, then turned back to Sukhanov with a flustered smile.

“I’ll just be a second,” she repeated. “I have my hands full with these children.”

Mechanically his eyes fell on her hands, large, carrot-colored, almost manly, hanging loosely by her sides like two independent creatures briefly asleep—and suddenly an unexpected vision of these hands greedily handling his ties, his lovely silk specimens collected like rare butterflies on his infrequent European sojourns, made his insides dissolve in irrational fury.

“Actually, Valentina Aleksandrovna,” he said shakily, “don’t bother coming up today. Or tomorrow. Or at all. In fact, I came to inform you that you are dismissed.”

The burnt smell and the hurt look in her eyes were the last things he remembered clearly. The ensuing scene was brief and revolting. Trying to keep his voice steady, he told her that the black-market proceeds from her loot would no doubt exceed tenfold what they owed her for the month of August, but of course she was free to keep the difference, they would not prosecute.

She stood still, pulling on her apron, blinking rapidly, her kind face crumpling.

“What... What do you mean?” she said finally, and her words were moist and heavy, almost trailing into sobs. “Do you think I stole something from you?... Dear God, how could you... I would never... And for you to come here and talk to me like that... How could you... You call yourself an educated man...”

The little girl came into the corridor, looked at her crying mother without emotion, and announced that some lady urgently wanted her on the phone. Cringing, Sukhanov escaped into the dimness of the basement, nearly tripped over the mangy cat once again, and rushed up the stairs, taking two steps at a time and bursting into the lobby so abruptly that he startled the concierge out of a nap.

When, hours later, Vadim delivered Sukhanov to his front entrance, the mellow August dusk had already suffused Belinsky Street. The staff meeting had been unpleasant, full of inexplicable lacunae of small silences and awkward glances exchanged on the periphery of his vision, and he was feeling exhausted, tense, and hungry. Tilting his head back in some trepidation, he was relieved to see that the kitchen windows were bright and welcoming as usual, with signs of shadowy activity transpiring behind the cheerfully checkered curtains, and for the whole duration of his slow ascent along the building’s vertebrae in the creaking elevator he indulged in the hope that in his absence his ties had been found, Valya reinstated with due apologies (Nina always knew how to handle such matters), and now another delicious supper awaited him, still smoking, under the merry orange lampshade, on the table scintillating with glasses of wine and surrounded by his understanding, caring family.

As soon as he stepped inside, however, he was met by a charred smell and the resentful banging of cupboards, and instantly his vision of a cozy domestic evening put its tail between its legs and scurried into a corner, to remain there, cowering unhappily, throughout a strained, tasteless meal. Glaring at him over a bowl of burnt rice, Ksenya announced that both she and her mother had spent the afternoon begging Valya to forget the incident, but Valya had only shaken her head and cried, and even a discreetly proffered envelope containing thrice her monthly wages had proved of no avail. He kept prudently quiet for a while, aware, even without looking up, of Nina’s wordless presence at the other end of the table, of her lowered face, which seemed not so much stern or upset as infinitely tired, with deep lines tugging at the edges of her pale mouth; but when Ksenya repeated, for the third time, that she was sure of Valya’s innocence, he could no longer contain himself.

“If you are so sure she didn’t do it,” he said bitingly, “I suppose you can enlighten us as to who did?”

“All I’m saying is, you mustn’t jump to conclusions like that,” she said with less assurance. “You can’t just go around accusing people of stealing without considering every other possibility first!”

“Oh, but I did,” said Sukhanov, allowing himself a dry smile. “I considered the possibility that a little green man was flying past our bedroom window and took a liking to my ties. Frankly, this seemed unlikely.”

Ksenya started to reply, but Vasily interrupted her.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” he said in a bored tone. “I think Father was perfectly in the right, we’ll just hire someone else. Honestly, must we spend our whole evening talking about some janitor’s wife?”

“Vasily!” Nina exclaimed in a shocked voice.

Wishing his son would have found some other way to express his solidarity, Sukhanov hastily looked down at his plate and in feigned concentration probed a beef cutlet whose middle shone with a suspect pink. Of course, Nina had never shown much culinary promise, but this was rather worse than he would have expected, reminding him, in fact, of the miserable fare of his early childhood—the many barely edible meals that his mother had set out before him day after day in a corner of their crowded Arbat kitchen. Actually, the kitchen had been quite spacious once, but now an invisible line divided it in two, and each half was crammed to the full with a herd of mismatched chairs stumbling around a limping table. The Sukhanovs shared their table with Zoya Vladimirovna Vienberg, a dowdy music teacher of indeterminate years with a shadow of a mustache above her upper lip, and an old soft-spoken couple who always dressed rather formally for supper and sat picking at their food like birds, smiling sadly at each other. The wife had a pink and wrinkled face, like an apple left out in the frost, and bluish hair; its color fascinated me to no end, and I would often stare at the tight, shiny curls for a full minute at a time, until my mother would reprimand me for my rudeness in a dramatic whisper.

The other table, situated advantageously next to the stove, belonged to the Morozov family, consisting of a husband, a wife, the husband’s unmarried sister, and two sons, indifferent brutes three and five years my senior. The sister, Pelageya Morozova, an indolent, slightly overweight young woman with sleepy eyes, a bright red mouth, and an alluring mole above her upper lip (in another few years she would start passing, smiling coyly, heavy breasts swinging, through many of my adolescent fantasies), prepared all their meals, and was so much better at it than my mother that tasteless clumps of porridge or sticky macaroni would often wedge themselves in my throat as I listened to the appetizing hiss of chicken from Pelageya’s pan and, tortured by the loud, satisfied guffaws of the Morozov boys, agonizingly imagined the succulent taste of the meat in their mouths.

The only thing that made these measly repasts in any way bearable was an ever-present hope that tonight, against all expectations, my father would return home early. Hearing the jingle of a doorbell in the hallway, the obnoxious Morozovs would instantly lower their voices, for he inspired even them with respect. Shouting, “Papa, Papa!” I would leap from my seat and fly to let him in. In a minute, my hand in his, he would enter the kitchen, smiling broadly, sit down at the table with us, ask me how I liked school, gently tease the poor unattractive music teacher, who never failed to blush dark red in his presence, say something kind to the old man and his wife, and then take my mother’s face in his hands in that casually warm, special way he had—and his strong, confident, handsome presence would lend a sense of completion to my fragmented, boisterous, inconsequential day.

Of course, all through that year of 1936—my first uninterrupted year of consciousness—my father almost always remained at his mysterious job until late into the night, and for days at a time my only glimpse of him would be that of a tall, square-shouldered figure silhouetted in the doorway of our room against the sickly yellow gleam of a corridor lightbulb, only to step inside and dissolve in dense shadow in the next moment, whereupon I would lie, half submerged in disjointed dreams full of the most brilliant, glowing colors, and hear through the blanket’s thick woolen layer the rustling of clothes being shed, the solitary complaint of a mattress, and the muffled, indecipherable whispers of my parents quickly fading in the darkness beyond. Yet every evening at supper I would be full of hope once more. Deep in my heart I believed that if I wanted it hard enough, if I concentrated on it with my whole being, I could make it happen, I could summon my father to appear, I could will the wonderful sound of his arrival out of nothingness—and closing my eyes, forgetting the plate of burnt rice and undercooked cutlets before me, I would make the doorbell jingle in my mind over and over until finally something would yield in the fabric of the universe, and the long-awaited ring would truly fill the kitchen, and I would rush off shouting—

“Papa! Papa, shall I get it?”

He opened his eyes. The doorbell sounded again.

“Shall I get it?” Ksenya repeated impatiently.

“No, I... I’ll see who it is myself,” replied Anatoly Pavlovich in a slightly unsteady voice, and slowly rose from the table.

SEVEN

O
n the landing before their door stood a stranger. His pleasant middle-aged face sported a neat little beard, and his blue eyes shone with a mild, harmless, nearsighted friendliness behind his glasses. The glasses, with their delicate metal-rimmed frames and round lenses, resembled a turn-of-the-century pince-nez; combined with the soft brown hat on his head and the small bulging suitcase at his feet, they made him look altogether as if he had just walked out of a Chekhov tale about some kindly small-town pharmacist on a nice family visit.

At the sight of Sukhanov, the man swiftly took off his hat.

“Dobryi
vecher!”
he said in a voice brimming with emotion, twisting the hat in his hands.

“Good evening,” Sukhanov replied coldly. “How can I—”

“Oh dear, I’ve caught you in the middle of supper, haven’t I?” the man exclaimed, and pressed the hat to his heart. “How awkward, I so hate to be in the way. Oh, but please don’t worry about me, I’ve already eaten, honestly I have. Heavens, just to think that finally, after all these years... No, no, no help necessary, allow me... ”

And cramming his hat back onto his head, he picked up his suitcase with a grunt and began to maneuver it past Sukhanov, bumping him painfully on the leg in the process. What does he have in there, bricks? Sukhanov thought with irritation, and stepping to the side, blocked the stranger’s way.

“Just a minute,” he said peremptorily. “I’m afraid there’s been a mistake.”

The man let go of his suitcase and looked up in dismay.

“Oh no, did I confuse the days again?” he moaned. “I’m sure I did, it must not yet be Monday, and of course you were expecting me on Monday, and here I am, inconveniencing you most terribly, and I can’t tell you how sorry—”

“Comrade, it’s not the
day,
it’s the
apartment
you got wrong,” interrupted Sukhanov. “This here is number fifteen. Who is it you’re trying to find?”

The man’s face worked its way from dismay to relief to deep confusion.

“Number fifteen, yes, that’s right, but... I don’t understand.... You were expecting me, weren’t you?” he mumbled, peering anxiously into Sukhanov’s eyes. “You did get my letter, of course, so you knew... unless... No, no, that’s impossible, I remember sealing it and putting it in my pocket.... Oh heavens, but did I actually ...”

Beginning to tire of this nonsense, Sukhanov placed his hand firmly on the intruder’s elbow and was just about to prompt him back onto the landing, when the man let out a sigh.

“I shouldn’t have hoped you’d recognize me,” he said dejectedly.

Momentarily uneasy, Sukhanov regarded the fellow’s worried, gentle face, the outmoded glasses, the blond beard.... Then, relieved, he shook his head.

“Naturally, it was many years ago, and under such painful circumstances,” the man whispered as if to himself, and then added hurriedly, with a most heartfelt smile, “Really, I understand, I’m not in the least offended. I’m Fyodor. Fyodor Dalevich.”

Some vague recollection poked its muzzle onto the surface of Sukhanov’s mind, but he was too slow to catch it and it quickly dove back into the murky past.

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’m not quite...” he murmured, attempting to smile back.

The man looked at him closely across the ensuing silence, and all of a sudden his beard started to quiver and his spectacles commenced to slide off his nose. Gasping with laughter, he threw himself at Sukhanov and crushed his sides in a vigorous embrace.

“Ah, Tolya, Tolya, you really had me going there for a minute!” he cried into Sukhanov’s shoulder.

What the hell, thought Sukhanov, struggling to extricate his chin from the hollow of the stranger’s back—and at that precise moment Nina walked into the hallway, a cup of tea forgotten in her hand.

“Was that anyone—” she began, and stopped abruptly.

At the sound of her voice, the man released Sukhanov and dashed toward her, tearing off his hat once again and exclaiming warmly, “And this must be the lovely Nina Petrovna! Such a pleasure to meet you. Nadezhda Sergeevna has told me so many things about you.”

“Nadezhda Sergeevna,” Sukhanov repeated dully.

As the man enthusiastically reached for Nina’s hands, he dropped his hat. Smiling a puzzled smile, she tried to help him catch it and, with the predictability of a slapstick routine, accidentally let the cup slip out of her grasp. The porcelain hit the parquet and shattered into a hundred white and golden shards, splashing tea onto Sukhanov’s pants.

“Would you... would you excuse me...” he then said faintly. “I’ll only be a minute, I ... Nina, why don’t you offer our guest some tea or something, I just have to...”

And leaving Nina and the profusely apologetic visitor to collect the remains of the cup, Sukhanov ran down a corridor, which seemed strangely unfamiliar, with lurid red roses leaping into his face off ugly wallpaper, and darted into his study as if being chased. Slamming the door behind him, he pressed a shaking hand to his forehead, then took a few steadying breaths and dialed his mother’s number.

She answered on the seventh ring; he was counting.

“Mother, listen, something completely absurd has just—”

The connection was bad, full of fuzziness and booming echoes, with occasional snippets of shadowy conversations crossing over from some parallel dimension.

“Tolya, is that you? Tolya, speak louder!” Nadezhda Sergeevna was saying from an immeasurable distance. “You what?... Who?... Ah, Fyodor! Well, I’m so glad he’s finally with you. I’m sure you’ll like him, he is such a nice young man. So thoughtful of him to give me my Malvina.”

“Malvina? That silly canary?” Sukhanov shouted against the noise. “You got your canary from that man? Just who the devil is he?”

His mother’s voice dipped into a static-filled chasm, replaced by a rich baritone that said, very close to his ear, “And don’t forget to make sure your boots have no leaks.” Then Nadezhda Sergeevna hazily surfaced again.

“... and no need to swear,” she said disapprovingly. “I should think that after all these years you’d be glad to see your cousin again.”

“What on earth do you mean, cousin?” he cried. “I don’t have any cousins!”

Dipping in and out of the fog, Nadezhda Sergeevna talked rapidly.

“Don’t you remember... Irochka, I called her... grandmother’s cousin’s only daughter... used to live in Moscow, and once we even... Surely you remember how... But then they moved to ... She died a few... her husband also, and Fyodor is their only... an educated man... at a museum there, and now he is writing... Very interesting, he’s told me all about... I’m sure you’ll be glad to get to know him during his stay, he’s such a nice...”

“What was that last thing?” Sukhanov gasped. “Did you just say that this Dalevich fellow will be
staying with us?”

There was another unnatural, creaking stillness, and then the same baritone announced heatedly, “No, listen, it’s better to dig for fresh worms once we get there.”

“... shouldn’t mind too much, since it’s only for a week or two,” his mother’s voice returned from afar. “Well, give my regards to Fyodor.
Spokoinoi nochi,
Tolya.”

“A
week or two?”
he shouted in disbelief. “Mother, wait, what do you expect me to—”

The line went dead. Seething, he dialed her number again, and got a busy signal.

When Sukhanov returned to the kitchen, he found his dubious new cousin presiding at the table in his place, heartily devouring the inedible cutlets and between bites drawing sinuous shapes on a napkin. Nina and Ksenya were following the quick movements of his hand with interest; Vasily sat frowning, tapping his spoon against a saucer. “Most people think that the window carvings are purely ornamental,” Dalevich was saying, “but in fact, many of them are symbolic designs going back to pagan times. This one, for instance, is believed to bring good luck and prosperity, and this one, to ward off—”

Noticing Sukhanov on the threshold, he hastily put down the pen.

“Your family has been most kind in indulging me,” he said with a flustered smile. “Northern architecture is one of my favorite subjects and I could bore you all for hours, but I really should be going now. Tolya, I can’t tell you how sorry I am for barging in on you like this. It appears that you never did receive my letter. I simply can’t imagine how... But no matter, I won’t burden you any longer, you’ve been too patient with me as it is. Nina Petrovna, thank you for the most delicious supper. Now, where did I put my hat?”

Sukhanov had to restrain himself from laughing with relief.

“Oh, no bother at all, Fyodor!” he said expansively. “It’s always nice to see family. In fact, if you are staying in Moscow for the next few days, why don’t you drop by again sometime—”

“But Fyodor Mikhailovich,” said Ksenya, “where exactly are you going?”

Dalevich had already stood and was fussing with a lock on his suitcase.

“Please don’t worry about me,” he said earnestly. “I have an acquaintance or two in Moscow, they’ll find a corner to spare. Here, Tolya, before I go, I brought you a little something—just a souvenir from the Russian North, nothing special.”

And he pulled an elaborate lace tablecloth out of his suitcase.

“But it’s lovely!” Nina exclaimed.

“Yes, very pretty,” Sukhanov said uncomfortably. “You really shouldn’t have. If you need my help getting in touch with your friends, I could—”

“Surely you see that we can’t let him leave,” Nina interrupted with a withering look at her husband. “Fyodor Mikhailovich, it’s already past nine o‘clock, so why don’t you just stay with us tonight, and we’ll figure out what to do tomorrow.”

“Oh, that’s so terribly nice of you,” Dalevich mumbled in visible confusion. “I wouldn’t like to presume, and I do feel awful about that letter.... But perhaps, if you had a couch somewhere ...”

“You can have my room,” Ksenya said impulsively.

Dalevich’s words stumbled once or twice and sank under the weight of his gratitude. A brief silence fell. Then Vasily emphatically put down his cup and rose, scraping his chair against the floor with a long, nasty sound.

“How touching,” he said with a disdainful smile. “Long-lost relatives reunited and all that. I suppose this is the moment when I offer my room as well, and then we all sit arguing about it for another hour, wallowing in the pleasant glow of familial kindness.”

“Vasily!” Nina said sharply.

And then Sukhanov felt that the day was running circles around him, and that all of this—Vasily’s derisive remark, Nina’s chastising reply, the hollow sensation in his stomach after the unsatisfactory meal, the strange yellow-bearded man apologizing effusively, the burnt smell lingering in the air—all of this had happened before, had, in fact, happened repeatedly, and he was forever trapped in a nightmarish cycle of domestic disasters. Bleakly, without interfering, he watched his son leave the kitchen, as if hoping that with his departure the vicious circle would somehow break and normal life would return. When a door slammed a corridor away, Sukhanov sighed, shook off his immobility, and excusing himself, walked out as well. Growing fainter behind him, Dalevich’s voice was imploring Nina not to be angry, the young man’s feelings were understandable, it was all really his, Dalevich‘s, fault, he should never have imposed like this, he could not tell her how sorry ... Sukhanov had a sudden urge to spit.

Before Vasily’s room, he hesitated, then thought better of it, and proceeded into the dining room to pour himself a brandy. Its prickling warmth comforted him a little, and when Nina’s steps sounded in the hallway, he hastened to intercept her. She went into the bedroom, and he followed her meekly. The darkness, aromatic with the memories of her creams, briefly caressed his skin like a cool, soothing hand. A moment later she switched on the light; in the pink glow of the lamp, her face was chilly.

“Look, I honestly had no idea he was coming,” he said, trying to catch her gaze. “In fact, I’m not even sure who he is, exactly, some thrice removed cousin or something, I don’t think I’ve ever met him.”

“He remembers meeting
you,”
she remarked as she busied herself with extracting stacks of fresh linens from a closet. “He says you made a big impression on him when he was a child.”

“I’m sure he does,” he said, shrugging. “Anyone would if it got them room and board. Anyway, I know it’s very inconvenient, but it’s only for one night, and first thing tomorrow morning ... My love, what are you ... Why are you doing this?”

Nina was tearing the sheets off their bed.

“We are giving Fyodor the bedroom,” she said matter-of-factly “It’s the least we can do after Vasily’s inexcusable behavior, don’t you think?”

He watched her methodically tuck the starched edges of a new sheet under the mattress corners. “So where are we to sleep?” he asked.

“I thought I’d take the living room couch, and you can have the one in your study, it’s comfortable enough,” she replied evenly. “I’ll bring you your linens. You may want to grab a blanket too, the nights are getting cold.”

“I’ve noticed,” he said with bitterness, and turned to go. In the doorway he paused to cast a furtive glance back at her. Today she wore no sparkling earrings, no clinking bracelets, and her features, bereft of the glossy glamour that makeup lent them, seemed soft and hazy, as if glimpsed imprecisely through a light curtain of rain. Suddenly, prompted by an oddly urgent impulse, he swore to himself that if she looked up, if only for an instant, he would reenter the pink stuffiness of the room—and talk to her, really talk to her, for the first time in who knew how long. He would confess what he had felt when he had seen Belkin walk away in the downpour; he would share with her the happy childhood memory of his father and the upsetting dream about her flying away; he would take her in his arms and tell her that she still looked beautiful, in spite of those resentful lines tugging at her mouth.... For a long moment he waited, but she did not look up.

He nodded curtly and left.

I
n the middle of the night, having grown at once aware of a rapidly solidifying cramp in his lower back, Sukhanov rose and headed for the bathroom. Barely awake, he moved through the darkness, automatically went through the motions of emptying his bladder, sleep-walked his way back through his familiar kingdom, and unthinkingly pushed open the bedroom door. Here he stopped, first blinded by unexpected light and then befuddled by the sight of his conjugal bed empty and the figure of a man in a robe hunched over in the armchair in the corner, scribbling busily on his knee. And then, for just one instant, before the man lifted his head, Sukhanov was seized by a powerful, disorienting feeling, not unlike vertigo, as if he had been snatched out of his state of semiwakefulness only to be hurled, his mind dizzy, into a darker, deeper vortex of dreaming. But the moment passed, and the world righted itself. His tottering step back was checked by the solidity of a half-unpacked suitcase; the seated man looked up, revealing the old-fashioned glasses, blond beard, and amiably questioning smile of Fyodor Dalevich; and already, feeling perfectly clearheaded, Sukhanov heard himself apologizing gruffly for walking through the wrong door, misled as he had been by the force of habit.