Olga Grushin - The Dream Life of Sukhanov

On 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—”