Olga Grushin - The Dream Life of Sukhanov

After that, more than thrice removed from his own eighth-floor domain, the inhabitants grew anonymous. As he reached the fourth floor, he heard children’s cries seeping out from under a door, and on the third, after a particularly long flight of stairs, punctuated by the comma of an orange peel spilling out of the trash chute, he leaned against the railing to steady his trembling legs and thought he detected the sweet fragrance of lilies and the light tinkling of a piano in the depths of apartment number five. The fleeting combination of sounds and smells reminded him that once, in a predawn hour, coming home from a New Year’s Eve party, he had encountered a tantalizingly reticent, elegantly perfumed woman with features of Nefertiti, pearls swaying fluidly in her ears, stepping out of the lobby and disappearing into a chauffeured automobile as gray as the sky—but before he had time to glance curiously at the door, the wintry recollection turned and escaped him, and his thoughts, in chasing after it, inadvertently stumbled upon a vision of another chauffeured car, another perfumed woman.

He found himself thinking of the past Saturday evening, of his father-in-law’s retrospective at the Manège. And then, as if merely waiting for their chance to intrude, a multitude of unnecessary, uncivilized associations crowded his mind—the offended Minister, the unbearable encounter with Belkin, the indignity of the near-mugging, the loss of the blue-eyed Nina presiding tranquilly over his work, the subsequent invasion of his sanctuary by the shameless swan-loving nude at the head of a flock of disturbing dreams and irrelevant suspicions… No matter, the nude was gone, he reminded himself quickly—and in any case, these were all minor occurrences, to be forgotten in another day or two—and certainly no reason for him to be standing here, on an unfamiliar landing, feeling as unsettled as he did, no reason at all. And murmuring angrily (What nerve the woman has, can you believe it, stealing like that!), he purposefully walked down the remaining flights—was that a plate breaking in apartment three?—and arrived in the lobby, with the sun, now fully out, splashing brilliantly on the marble floors.

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…”