Paul Vidich - The Mercenary

“It’s not finished,” Golukov said, pointing with his walking stick. “She won’t sit for the one hour I need. The eyes don’t work. Look at her.” He pointed at Natalya, who tolerated his attention. “The way she looks at me now. I need to paint that. Her tolerant irritation.”

“Enough,” she said.

“Don’t make her angry. She is a snake if provoked.”

They had just arrived, but already Garin had the impression that Natalya wanted to leave. She kept looking at her watch and glanced out the window at the darkening sky. Garin thought she would have already grabbed him and departed if Golukov hadn’t been an insistent host. He prattled on with the determined garrulousness of a lonely man happy to have company, and he ignored Natalya’s impatience.

“I am a painter,” Golukov said. “You would think that was obvious, but I had an East German here once, an educated man, who looked at the portraits on the wall and asked how I had come to collect so many. He didn’t believe there were painters in the Soviet Union who weren’t in prison.”

Golukov pointed at the walls of the studio, where there were portraits of grim Soviet Party bosses in dark suits and haughty, overweight, middle-aged women in military uniforms.

“These clients didn’t like what they saw and refused to pay. They are my gallery of unhappy vanities. You know,” Golukov said mischievously, “everyone thinks they are more handsome than they are. Everyone wants to look younger or thinner, or more important, or to be shown without the mole on the chin. That is my challenge—not to change the painting, which I would never do, but to convince the client that the painting is an improvement. Sometimes they agree, and sometimes they cry or rage. It’s a trick to get them to look honestly. Who looks in the mirror and says, ‘How lovely my mole is’?” He nodded at Natalya. “She is an exception. She is perfect, don’t you think?”

“Stop it,” she scoffed. “You’ll embarrass me. Now, it’s time for us to go.”

“You just got here. Here’s the food. Sit. Eat.”

The housekeeper, who’d entered the room, put down a tray of sausage, black bread, cheese, pickled beets, and strong tea.

“Why didn’t Posner come?” Golukov asked, his lazy eye judging Garin.

Before Garin could answer, a child no more than seven years old ran into the room, but she stopped suddenly when she saw the guests.

“Come here, child,” Golukov said. “Meet an American; touch him, if you like. They have skin like us, eyes like us, they bleed like us, and they eat the food we eat. Yes, they are like us.”

Garin took his granddaughter in his lap and kissed her cheek, making her squirm. When he released the startled child, she fled the room.

“In school,” he said, “they are taught scandalous things. Americans have fangs. They eat children. Everyone is on heroin. Milka has never seen an American. I am sure she is in her bedroom exclaiming to her brother that she’s seen you and, ‘My God, he has no fangs.’ ”

Golukov chuckled, then looked at Garin. “Did they tell you I’m a dissident?” The old man led them to another room off the studio. The light overhead illuminated a windowless, cramped space, with many oil paintings hanging on the walls. Each canvas was a washed field of white dotted with dense, black squares that differed in size, number, and position from canvas to canvas but were otherwise identical. “My decadent art,” Golukov said proudly. “I am like artists everywhere. I paint for myself, I paint for friends, and I paint for money.”

He looked at Natalya, who had become nervous at his long-windedness. He pumped his hands for her to calm herself. “The drive is two hours. It’s the same time if you leave now or in ten minutes.”

“The storm is coming.”

He shook his head and looked at Garin. “I got in trouble when a French critic saw these. His review said that I had drawn an impassable line between old and new, between God and his devil, between life and death. The word ‘God’ got the KGB’s attention. Three of them showed up. Smart men, but obviously literal and dull, and uneducated in art. I had to explain that the French critic was making things up. I pointed at the paintings. I said, ‘What do you see? God? Life and death?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘Look. Black squares on a white canvas. That’s all.’ After sharing a glass of vodka, they became convinced.”

Natalya tapped her temple. “It makes for a good story. If only it were true. It’s time to go.”

“I hope you got what you came for,” he said. “Stay for dinner. The road to the E109 is dangerous in a storm.”

LATER, FALLING SNOW laid a false peace on the two-lane road. Garin had seen a black Volga follow them from Moscow, but it was gone when they started back. They were twenty minutes into their journey, and Natalya was driving slowly on a back road that she claimed was a shortcut. He’d seen her glance ahead nervously when she turned off the main highway.

“That is Golukov,” she said. “He spent ten years in a psychiatric clinic diagnosed with schizophrenia before he became a sought-after portrait artist. Now he is cantankerously prosperous.”

They drove in silence. The snow was falling heavily, but Garin saw the fresh tracks of a car that had preceded them. Garin heard the hypnotic rhythm of the wipers, and from time to time he glanced at her, judging her driving and the worry on her face. She clutched the steering wheel tightly. Garin glanced behind to see if they were being followed.

“We will be fine,” she said bravely. “Did you get what you wanted?”

“What I wanted? No. I wanted to talk with Posner.”

“He’s a busy man.”

“What does he do?”

She frowned, her eyes ahead, and didn’t answer.

“Who does he work for?” Garin asked.

“His boss.”

He saw that her abrupt manner and vague answers were the limit of her pleasantness. “I don’t trust Posner.”

She glanced at him again. “We have something in common. He knew this would be a long drive. If he’d come, Golukov would have pressed him for money.”

The car hit a pothole, and Garin was thrown against her. The physical contact startled them both. Garin sat back in his seat, and there was a moment of quiet as they composed themselves. Their shoulders had touched, and they’d been close enough to smell each other’s breath. Her face was blanched with embarrassment.

It was an unpaved section of road, and the car bounced again. When it came down, his thigh brushed hers. And then it happened a third time. He scooted over and held the door handle, but the road didn’t improve, and he kept falling against her. He did his best to ignore the contact, and then the road improved. He closed his eyes to shut out the tedium.

They traveled that way for some time. Garin was lulled by the wipers moving across the windshield and the mechanical hum of the car’s engine. He found a spot for his head against the cold window, and his eyes closed while looking at dense darkness of the passing forest. It was then, in the twilight of sleep, that he felt her fingers on his hand. Her gentle touch was warm, and when he turned to look, she had withdrawn her hand to the steering wheel.

Garin turned away and looked out the window, speechless. The silence between them became intolerable, and his mind fretted what she had been thinking, until he could stand the quiet no longer. “What was it like?” he asked, making conversation. “The life of a ballerina.”

She glanced at him nervously and then peered out the windshield, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. “My injury was a gift. I left with my dream intact. I wasn’t the best, but I was good enough.” She grew more contemplative. “I don’t regret leaving ballet. The daily regimen, the scrutiny, the vicious jealousies. I enjoyed the stage, and it was fun to perform in London and Paris and to be prima ballerina, even if only briefly. That was special. But I have that memory. Now, I have a new life.” She looked at him kindly. “Why do you ask? You have no interest in ballet.”