Olga Grushin - The Dream Life of Sukhanov

Looking dismayed, Dalevich tried to interject, but Ksenya spoke first.

“How can you talk like that to Fyodor Mikhailovich?” she said with indignation.

“Oh, so he has befriended you too, has he, Ksenya? Of course, such a nice, interesting uncle who is not afraid to voice his most unorthodox opinions on art and cooks such tasty breakfasts and—” Abruptly he stopped, then said hoarsely, “My God, it’s been your plan all along, hasn’t it? You’ve been turning my family against me!”

“Tolya, please,” mumbled Dalevich, “you are angry, you don’t know what you are saying, you can’t possibly—”

“On the contrary, I know perfectly well what I’m saying. A long-lost provincial cousin in need of a place to stay for a day or two—heavens, I must have been blind! Not that I was ever happy about your presence, but I thought it was just a temporary, harmless imposition…. But now I see, I see it all too clearly. First, you oust me from my room, then you get my mother, my daughter, and my wife on your side—my son alone doesn’t take to you, but he is soon conveniently out of the way—and now you are trying to cost me my job!”

“Tolya, come to your senses,” said Dalevich quietly. “Why would I do such a thing?”

“Yes, indeed, why would you, I’d very much like to know. Are you a disgruntled failure who envies the accomplishments of better men? Do you have a pathological hatred of art critics? Would you like my job for yourself?” He had been throwing the words out furiously, without thinking, but now he froze, staring at Dalevich, then slapped an invisible fly against his forehead. “I don’t believe it! That’s it, isn’t it? It’s all part of your design. You mean to get my job! Your article is published under a pseudonym, I’m fired in the midst of a scandal, and once the dust settles, your influential patron appoints you to my position—and no one ever finds out that you were the author in the first place. Simple and brilliant, I have to give it to you, cousin.”

“Tolya, I assure you, you couldn’t be more—”

“And by the way,” Sukhanov went on, his voice rising precipitously, “are you even my real cousin? I mean, isn’t it rather peculiar that I don’t remember meeting you or even hearing about you ever before? Why, now that I think about it, I suspect I have closer blood ties to Salvador Dalí!” He was shouting, and his face had taken on a dark brick hue. “I’m guessing that you just sat one day all alone in some roach-infested hole of a place in a godforsaken town light-years away from Moscow, saw me on a television program about an art retrospective or a university lecture series, and salivated over my existence—and that was when you cooked up your nice little plan to show up here as an imaginary relative, worm yourself into my family, and take over my life!”

Dalevich no longer attempted to say anything. Both he and Ksenya simply looked at Sukhanov, and their faces were all wrong somehow—wooden, tight-lipped, wide-eyed. A terrible silence descended on the brightly lit kitchen. The only audible sound was Sukhanov’s labored breathing.

“Do you know, it might have worked too, had it not been for one tiny slip you made,” he finally said in a voice thick with distaste. “ ‘Mysteriously smiling cows,’ was it, now? Well, that little phrase cost you dearly, didn’t it, cousin? See, I was going to approve the article, give or take a few changes, but now I know the author’s true identity and intentions, and you’ll see it published only in your dreams. It appears that you’ve lost, dear Fedya. Imagine, all your machinations for nothing!”

Steadying himself with one hand, Sukhanov stood up and pushed away his chair; it balanced precariously on two legs, then crashed to the floor. In the doorway he stopped.

“I should turn you over to the authorities,” he said, not looking directly at Dalevich, “but it’s not worth the bother. You have half an hour to clear out of my place. I’m sure your important friend will happily welcome you into his home. Perhaps you might even try your tricks on him next, now that you’ve had some practice. After all, his job and apartment are probably nicer than mine.”

He slammed the door on the way out. As he walked away, he heard the same ringing silence behind his back.

Some hours later, reclining in the backseat of his Volga, Sukhanov watched lit rectangles of lower-floor windows emerge from the evening shadows and then slowly glide backward and out of sight in a long, uninterrupted procession of cozy domesticity. He had left his own uncomfortably quiet apartment shortly before seven. Ksenya had followed him into the entrance hall to lock up behind him; her face, heavy in the gathering darkness, had seemed void of expression.

“The Burykins never serve their main course until well after ten,” he had said, “so I don’t expect to be back before midnight,” and already from across the threshold, he had added with a tentative smile, “Sure you don’t want to come with me? Since your mother isn’t coming, it might be nice…. And the food’s always good.” She had said nothing in response, only shaken her head, and shut the door. The sound of the turning lock resonated on the landing with brisk finality.

The Burykins—Mikhail a top official at the Ministry of Culture, Liudmila his charmingly hospitable third wife—lived across the street from the massive American embassy and were famous for their dinner parties, invariably well stocked with imported liqueurs and important people. On the way, Sukhanov bade Vadim stop the car and darted out to buy a bouquet for the hostess from a portly Azerbaijani woman near a metro station. The air smelled strongly of gasoline and early autumn, and faintly of decaying stems. He could see fading red petals, slimy leaves, and shards of a rising moon floating on the surface of the dirty water in the woman’s flower-filled buckets.

“Roses for the lady of your heart?” she said greedily, baring a golden tooth.

“How about that bunch of carnations over there?” he said quickly.

The lobby of the Burykins’ building was even more imposing than his own, its veined marble floors slippery, its walls smooth with mirrors, the guard behind the desk bearing a disconcerting resemblance to a bulldog. He inquired after Sukhanov’s name with an indifferent lift of an eyebrow and then, instead of allowing him through right away, proceeded to trace a fat finger along the list of residents, dial a number, and conduct a long conversation in a hushed voice, while Sukhanov foolishly stood before him, trying in vain to avoid looking at the hundredfold reflections of an aging man dressed in a borrowed tie and a suit that was wrinkled rather more than usual, holding a bunch of unpleasantly pink, rapidly wilting flowers in his hands.

Finally the guard issued a curt nod, and Sukhanov slid along the marble floor, soundlessly rehearsing an involved story of some ambiguous emergency that would explain Nina’s embarrassing lapse of memory or manners. As alternating patches of light and darkness flitted in the crack between the elevator doors, he found himself, to his own surprise, anticipating the evening with some eagerness. In truth, his oppressive mood had started to lift shortly after his perfectly justified afternoon outburst—as soon, to be precise, as his front door had closed on one Fyodor Mikhailovich Dalevich, pseudo-cousin and first-rate scoundrel. The man had left wordlessly and without a fuss, and as Sukhanov had leaned out the window to watch the solitary figure in the ridiculously outmoded hat lug the bulging suitcase toward the metro, he had understood Dalevich’s defeated departure to be the beginning of a long-needed restoration of balance in his household. Without a doubt, now that the poisonous viper had been banished from his hearth, the vexing malfunctions in his family mechanism were bound to smooth out, and soon they would all return to their pleasant daily routines. Naturally, there remained some loose ends that still filled him with ill-defined unease. When he had subsequently attempted to reach his office with instructions to withdraw the cursed Chagall article, he had found no one there, and when he had tried Pugovichkin’s home, the assistant editor’s wife had announced in a phlegmatic voice that her husband had gone fishing, as if this were normal behavior on a work-day. Yet infuriating as this delay was, Sukhanov had until the next afternoon to set matters straight; and already, with each passing hour, his sense of life inching back into its customary, comforting confines grew more and more tangible. As he rang the Burykins’ bell, he looked forward to a night of excellent food and banter in the presence of much success, sure to strengthen his quiet sense of victory.