Olga Grushin - The Dream Life of Sukhanov

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.

In 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.

The insignificant incident over, he returned to the study; but the couch, far from comfortable at the best of times, now positively bristled with springs and angularities, and the accidental vision of a man sitting in an armchair with a notebook on his knee tormented him with the nagging persistence of a well-known name or connection that inexplicably escapes one’s memory at the precise instant of alighting on one’s lips and then haunts one for long, helpless hours. Restless minutes followed one after another into the predawn hush, and still he lay tossing. Then the same shadowy radio he had heard the night before carried through an open window the echo of the Red Square clock striking four times—and astonishingly, he had it. As the sought piece of the puzzle slid into its place in the past with a satisfying, liberating click, there surfaced before him the gentle face of an old man from the communal Arbat apartment on whom an unhappy little boy had once been persuaded to play a senseless, cruel prank.