Olga Grushin - The Dream Life of Sukhanov

The transparent tips of her awkwardly protruding, boyish ears brightened.

“My age is completely irrelevant here,” she said. “I have an assignment from the magazine. Now, please, what do you think of Malinin’s work?”

She was so earnest, so flushed with her own importance that he took pity on her.

“Oh, all right,” he said, and cleared his throat. “I have only a minute, but in a nutshell, these canvases show the best of the Russian land, with all its grandeur, lyricism, and courage. Pyotr Alekseevich has an incredible gift for representing the true Russian people at their best moments, in such an open, thoughtful, direct way, which demonstrates most purely—”

She watched him with a brown-eyed, steady gaze; he found it mildly disconcerting that she took no notes. When he stopped talking, she shook her head.

“No, I don’t believe you really think that,” she said. “His paintings are so fake that everyone must see it, they are just afraid to say it. That trite portrait over there, for instance—obviously, there is not a grain of truth in it. Don’t you agree?”

Taken aback by the certainty in her voice, he looked in the direction in which she was pointing. Then his eyes grew cold. The joke had all at once ceased to entertain him, and he remembered again his tippling chauffeur, the vague but unfortunate incident with the Minister, the tedious necessity to address the situation as soon as possible…

“I think the real question to ask, young lady, is how you came to be here,” he said brusquely. “Only accredited journalists are permitted at this opening. A school assignment doesn’t give you the right to accost people.”

His tone clearly startled her. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth turned mean, making her look every bit the scrawny little adolescent that she was. She hesitated before answering, then said reluctantly, “Your daughter gave me an invitation. I’m in her class.”

“Ah, my daughter! Of course, I should have known. I gave her an extra one and told her to bring along someone nice from her department.” He regarded her angular face with distaste. “Well, charming to meet you, Lida.”

“Lina,” the girl corrected sullenly. Her pad, he noticed, was now closed.

“A piece of friendly advice,” he said dryly. “Those artistic ideas of yours, I wouldn’t advertise them so openly if I were you—you never know who might hear you. Oh, before we part, you haven’t by any chance seen Ksenya?”

She jerked her chin toward the exit. He turned to go.

“I don’t care who hears me,” she threw at his back. “The times are changing.”

He glanced at her over his shoulder, and his heart wavered. There she stood, so young, so defiant, so sad-looking in her ugly yellow dress two sizes too big, so infuriating in her self-righteousness, so pathetic in her desire to have the last word.

“The times are always changing, my dear Lida,” he said, not unkindly. “But it would serve you well to remember that certain things always stay the same.”

She might have said something in response, but he could no longer hear. Purposefully he strode across the room, to where he now saw Ksenya, dressed inappropriately in a pair of slacks, slouching by herself against the wall with that typical look of a casual observer on her face. His mood was turning more sour by the minute.

“I see you found a perfect use for your spare invitation,” he said, sounding somewhat out of breath, as he stopped before her. “I’ve met your friend, and she is adorable. Has the highest opinion of your grandfather’s work too.”

Ksenya shrugged. “You don’t have to like my friends,” she said indifferently. “Most of them don’t like you either.”

Her heavy-lidded gray eyes seemed full of sleep. For some reason her answer made him feel neither angry nor offended but uncomfortable, as if he had missed the familiar door and walked into a strange room full of edgy objects and disturbing shadows.

“We can talk about your friends’ feelings later,” he said in what he hoped was a sufficiently stern voice. “Right now I’m looking for your mother. Have you seen her?”

“She’s gone.”

“Gone,” he repeated. “Gone where?”

“She got one of her headaches and went home, about half an hour ago. She said it was nearly over anyway. Oh, I almost forgot, she took the car. She asked me to tell you.”

He looked at his daughter without understanding.

“Why didn’t she tell me herself?” he managed finally.

Ksenya shrugged again. “I guess she saw you talking to Mr. Big Shot and didn’t want to disturb you. So, you boys had a good chat?”

Sukhanov had a sudden desire to clutch his head. Instead he nodded dully and stood thinking for a moment. The Minister and his wife had already departed.

Feeling a tiny throb in his left temple, the advent of a headache of his own, he slowly walked outside, leaving all the noise, light, and warmth behind him.

It was raining in earnest now. Streetlamps swam through the liquid mist, their pale reflections drowning in an inverted world of running asphalt. The empty space before the Manège quivered in the wet darkness, and the gray monstrosity of the Hotel Moskva had melted away into a barely visible shimmer of lights. For a minute Sukhanov lingered in the shelter of the pseudo-Doric columns. He felt relieved that the mustachioed doorman was no longer there, having been replaced, he noticed, by another one, and a strange one at that—an older, slovenly man wearing a burgundy velveteen blazer. The new doorman was looking at him from the shadows. Probably amused to see me standing here, in my most formal attire, and without a chauffeur, Sukhanov thought with displeasure, and turning away, peered dejectedly through the wall of water.

Finding a taxi at this hour and in this weather would be almost impossible, and with a sigh he resigned himself to the inevitable; the metro station was, after all, very close, just beyond his field of vision. He had not the slightest idea how much it cost. Pulling out his wallet, he ruffled through a stack of bills, gloomily groped for some coins, and fishing out a couple, dropped them into his coat pocket. The night breathed damply, heavily in his face, and the doorman, he saw, was still staring in his direction. Irritated, he squared his shoulders and descended into the rain.

“Anatoly, is that you?” asked a halting voice behind his back.

He froze. The voice—the voice was unmistakably familiar. Water ran down his collar, sending one particularly persistent little rivulet all the way down his spine. Slowly he turned and walked up the steps.

The doorman in the velveteen blazer moved into a shaft of light.

“Lev,” said Sukhanov expressionlessly.

For the briefest of moments they regarded each other. Then, simultaneously, it must have occurred to both of them that, after so many years, something had to be done—an embrace, a kiss, some gesture of human warmth…. Stepping forward at the same time, they collided clumsily and, embarrassed, abbreviated their hug and shook hands instead, groping at each other’s cuffs. Another drop of water, originating somewhere at Sukhanov’s wrist, snaked icily down his arm.

“You’ve changed a lot,” the fake doorman said. “Gained weight, become all solid. This tuxedo… And the glasses too… You never used to wear glasses.”

“Yes, well, my eyes,” Sukhanov said vaguely, and added after a pause, “None of us is getting any younger.”

“No, it’s not just the age, it‘s—”

The thought remained incomplete. A car splashed by, stirring red zigzags in its wake; they followed it with their eyes. When it passed, Marx Avenue reverted to shiny blackness. Sukhanov felt his initial shock subsiding into dull discomfort.