Olga Grushin - The Dream Life of Sukhanov

Sukhanov had been too young to salvage much of value from the few years he had shared with his father. In a meager collection of his childhood mementos, no more than snapshots really, the man faded in and out of sight, crossing a hallway, gulping scalding tea over a counter, bending to tie his shoelaces, saying a rushed good-bye—always stepping into a frame only to step out of it an instant later. The gift he had received this summer evening was thus made all the more precious, for not only was it his earliest memory of Pavel Sukhanov—it was also one of the brightest, possessing as it did genuine life and warmth.

Sukhanov stood up, dusted his pants, and smiling a secret little smile, absently floated down the boulevard, through the city that was being washed away by darkness. Only a few paces later, he encountered Vadim, who was almost running toward him. He shrugged, brushing away the chauffeur’s questions—of course he was all right, it had been only a minute or two, had it not? Just as absently he climbed into the backseat of the suddenly manifested car, and a moment later, when they came to an abrupt stop, was surprised to see his own building looming above him.

He had already taken a few steps toward the door when something occurred to him, and returning, he rapped on the front window.

“Listen, how old is your daughter?” he asked. “Eight, isn’t she?”

“She turned eleven last week,” Vadim replied with a startled glance.

“Simply incredible how time flies,” murmured Sukhanov. “But never mind, she’ll still have a sweet tooth. Here, why don’t you take these for her, she’ll like them….”

And thrusting the crumpled package of crumbling sweets at the perplexed chauffeur, he smiled the same secret, dreamy smile, and was off.

On the landing Sukhanov met Valya, who was just leaving for the day. Married to the caretaker of their apartment house, she lived somewhere in the building’s nether regions.

“They’re waiting for you with supper, Anatoly Pavlovich,” she said, and smiled shyly, revealing a gap between her front teeth. “I’ve made my vareniki with cherries you like so much, this being Sunday and all.”

Indeed, the whole apartment was seasoned with sweet, rich smells; the woman could certainly cook. Sukhanov ate in silence. He considered telling his family about the small mnemonic miracle that had befallen him earlier that evening, but Nina wore a pained look on her face and from time to time massaged her temples, Ksenya distractedly rolled a ball of bread around the rim of her plate, and Vasily was in the middle of a story about some diplomat he knew. Not for the first time, Sukhanov noticed that his son did not look as young as a twenty-year-old should and that his light blue eyes were flat and unfathomable like those oval pools of cold paint one saw in place of eyes on Modigliani’s faces. And unexpectedly, disjointedly, he wondered how well his children actually knew him, and how they would remember him when he was gone—whether in their minds he would amount to more than a dry encyclopedia article and a handful of snapshots to illustrate it: Anatoly Pavlovich at a lectern holding forth on the demise of Western art, Anatoly Pavlovich working at his desk, with the clickety-clack of his typewriter ricocheting off the study walls and the invisible sign “Do Not Disturb” on his closed door, Anatoly Pavlovich at this or that party, sporting this or that tasteful tie, conversing with this or that famous personage…

But immediately he scoffed at the notion. While it was true, perhaps, that he did not often talk to Ksenya and Vasily about his or their lives and that their family map shone with uncharted white spots of terra incognita, entire regions where he had never thought it wise or necessary to venture, hadn’t they shared so many pleasant times over the past two decades—so many leisurely vacations by the sea, Black and Baltic, so many lovely theater evenings, so many content suppers at home like the one tonight—all of them moments of warmth and wordless understanding? Yes, after all these years they were simply bound to know one another with a knowledge of love, truer, deeper, more perfect than any other kind of knowledge…. Sukhanov swallowed a small sigh and, remembering he had an important article to finish by Thursday, abandoned the last bite on his plate and left for the study.

As soon as he crossed the threshold, he felt that something had changed in the room in his absence, as if the very air had become suffused with a different meaning; but it was not until he turned on the lamp that he realized what had happened. The empty space on the wall across from his desk, the space awaiting the return of Nina’s portrait, was no longer empty—a large oil painting now hung in its place. He looked at it, and his heart beat unsteadily.

A raven-haired girl sat by dark moonlit waters. The luminous curve of her nude body was misty as a dream, even slightly transparent, so that, if one looked very closely, one could just make out pale shapes of water lilies visible through her honey-colored, unearthly flesh. An indistinct silhouette of a youth, perhaps an admiring shepherd, was crouching in the rushes behind her, but she took no notice of him. She was gazing away, over the waters, to a horizon where a magnificent white swan was floating, slowly, majestically, triumphantly, moving closer and closer. Zeus and Leda, the seducer and the seduced… The whole thing was beautiful but at the same time oppressive, and one was tormented by the inability to see the expression on Leda’s face, for it was turned away, affording only the gentlest hint of a profile, the tender angularity of a cheekbone, the barest outline of full tips—not nearly enough to see whether she felt exultant at the god’s imminent approach, or whether she was afraid. In the lower left corner was a date, 1957, and next to it sprawled a familiar, proud signature.

Sukhanov took off his glasses, extracted a handkerchief from his pocket, rubbed the lenses, folded the handkerchief away, put the glasses back on, cleared his throat, and called for Nina. She came unhurriedly and stopped in the doorway, her bare arms crossed, turquoise bracelets clicking faintly on her wrists.

“What is this?” he asked, frowning ever so slightly, tapping his fountain pen against the proofs of his biography.

“Oh, don’t you remember?” she said, shrugging. “Lev gave it to us on our wedding day. I thought you’d remember.”

“I do remember,” he replied dryly. “What I mean is, why is it here?”

“I just thought the wall looked too bare as it was,” she said. “And then our last night’s conversation about Lev, and your going to see Swan Lake, reminded me that we had this somewhere. It goes well with the overall color scheme, don’t you think?”

“We didn’t see Swan Lake,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. “We saw Coppelia.”

“Did you really? I was sure it was Swan Lake. In any case, you can take it down if it bothers you,” she said with the same air of indifference, and gliding out into the shadows of the hallway, softly closed the door, her bracelets jingling.

Unwilling to admit that the painting’s presence did unnerve him, Sukhanov resolutely turned to the article he was writing. But the specter of his reflection in the window again distracted him, the spectacles sparkling blindly in a skull-like face; the swan kept glancing at him with its malevolent golden eye; and his thoughts refused to follow their prescribed direction, swooping instead like a flock of pigeons over old Moscow, with all its abandoned houses, all its crushed church domes, all its forgotten faces from the past…. When he heard a ghostly radio somewhere outside transmitting the chiming of the clock in Red Square, he counted and, at the eleventh stroke, stood up heavily.