Olga Grushin - The Dream Life of Sukhanov

The diffused light from outside was not enough for him to see things clearly, but gradually, as he strained his eyes, he managed to distinguish first a few colors, then a few shapes. Here an owl-eyed monk with a disapprovingly pursed mouth clutched a bricklike book, there a poorly proportioned headless beast cavorted among unconvincing fires of hell. Above a collapsed arch, a hand was raised in stiff benediction, its body long dissolved by the rains, and nearby a seraph with the features of a mean child fluttered on sharp little wings of an unlikely tangerine tint. Along a far wall, a better-preserved procession of aged saints walked with tired tread, their gowns still glowing with ghostly green and blue and crimson, their faces mostly washed away, only here and there revealing conventional traces of solemn, empty eyes. He shrugged and looked away regretfully. The frescoes he had wrested from obscurity were nothing but a recital of religious commonplaces, fading odds and ends of an un-memorable and unremembered artistic life—mediocre seventeenth-century imitations of hundreds if not thousands of other imitations currently crumbling into dust in countless former churches across the whole of Russia.

But as he turned to leave, the shadows shifted with his movement, and he glimpsed a strange figure rising in the farthest corner. He stared incredulously into the poorly lit depths of the church, doubting his sobriety, doubting his sight. Unmistakably, it was there. To one side of the obediently treading crowd of soft-hued saints, an astonishingly lifelike apparition of a tall, stooping, bearded man with wildly outstretched arms gazed from the wall. He too was a saint, yet a saint unlike the others—his face consumed by a dark, powerful passion, his eyes stark and troubled, his gaunt body draped in harsh, funereal tones; and it seemed to Sukhanov that under the heavy eyelids, the painted irises glittered with a piercing, unearthly intensity, a hundredfold more brilliant than anything ever created by the immortal hand of Goya or Rembrandt….

For a long, long minute, without moving, Sukhanov blinked and squinted at the wonder before him. And then, slowly, with renewed certainty, he began to feel that his life, with all its questionable choices, all its doubts, all its pangs of guilt, was justified yet again—was it not? For here, in this stale backwater, on the outskirts of an insignificant village, in a church that now served as a warehouse for dim-witted dacha owners, on a wall ravaged by time and sun and frost, flowered a masterpiece created by an artist whom no one needed, whom no one noticed, whom no one even knew—and yet Sukhanov believed, as strongly as he had ever believed in anything, that by some miracle he had just been brought into the presence of the most original, most amazing mind ever to emerge from the dark ages of Russian art. For in the universe of stifling traditions and slavish adorations, only a genius, and one vastly ahead of his time, could have had the courage to paint such a frightening truth—to confront so boldly the beatific, pastel-colored fools of prescribed sainthood with one living, suffering, tragic human being, a man for whom faith was so visibly a struggle, a cross, perhaps even a curse…. An incomparable, precious gift to humanity this fresco was, yet it had been bypassed, overlooked, forgotten, exposed to the elements, diminished to a mere memory of its former, jewel-bright glory; and soon even its last few traces would be lost forever in the monstrous communal grave of all the pure talent in this damned country—this country that Sukhanov and the eternally unknown artist shared, this country that had changed so little throughout the centuries….

His sharp laugh sounded like a bark in the silence of the ruined walls.

“Behold,” he shouted, “the destiny of the true genius in Russia! All this beauty, all these revelations wasted! And is this the fate I too should have hoped for? My God, wasn’t I right in turning away from this lot?”

All at once, the church exploded into panicked echoes as a dozen startled crows flew off into the darkness, cawing hoarsely. Still laughing, he followed their escape past the crashed domes, toward the heavens. And when the avalanche of flapping wings died away among the stars, he thought he heard a different, quieter noise behind him—a rustle of clothes, an intake of breath…. He turned—and was rooted to the spot, his legs filled with lead, his heart leaping through his body like a fish thrown out of water. The disheveled dark saint—the unparalleled masterpiece of the unknown creator—had walked off the wall and was standing a few paces away, looking directly at Sukhanov with that burning, penetrating gaze of his.

For a horrifying eternity of a second, all was suspended. Anatoly Pavlovich was only dimly aware of falling to his knees, of closing his eyes…. He thought of nothing—and at the same time, he probably thought of dying, and that he had been crazy to hurl challenges to the skies in this terrible, decomposing lair of night and art, and that, in spite of everything he had ever witnessed, God existed after all—and that, most likely, God was not pleased with the way he, Sukhanov, had lived, had wasted, his life…

And then the saint spoke.

“Scared me out of my wits, man,” he said reproachfully “Here I am, not bothering anyone, reflecting upon life in peace and quiet, and suddenly there’s all this stomping and shouting and cawing… Didn’t your mama teach you not to enter the house of God when you’re drunk as a pig? Look at yourself, too pickled to even stand up!”

And as the world moved into sharper focus, Sukhanov dully heard a crunch of rubble as the impossibly three-dimensional saint shuffled from foot to foot, and smelled a stale odor of unwashed clothes and sweat sneaking through the air; and finally daring to open his eyes just a little, he found his vision invaded by a pair of torn shoes with the laces missing and, above them, the hem of an extremely muddy gray coat. In stricken silence, he lifted his eyes higher and higher, until he was looking fully into the saint’s face—looking at the untidy beard of some months’ growth bespattered with flecks of dirt and half hidden by a hideously tattered checkered scarf, the rash on the sunken cheeks, the inflamed eyelids, the unhealthy glint in the bleary, bloodshot eyes…

And so it was. The saint did not have the face of a saint after all. The saint had the face of a tramp, of a drunk, of a madman.

The tramp appeared troubled.

“Listen, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” he said anxiously. “Nothing wrong with being pickled. To each his own, I say. In fact, I’m very glad you came by, I was starting to feel a bit lonely. It’s been forever since anyone—”

Sukhanov heavily rose to his feet and brushed the dust off his pants. Of course, he was thinking dismally, it was really not that surprising—what with this treacherous half-light and the wavering shadows and darting birds and assorted tricks of the night—indeed, it was not at all surprising to have mistaken a peculiarly dressed, odd-looking fellow frozen in an attitude of fright in the darkest corner of a dark building for a lifeless fresco on the wall, especially for a man with imperfect eyesight and three, or perhaps even four, glasses of wine coursing through his blood. No, it was not at all surprising, and yet—and yet, there was something strange, something unsettling about the fake saint’s appearance, about this whole encounter, in fact…. Straightening, he peered with renewed wonder into the tormented, bearded face of the stranger, feeling suddenly, unaccountably certain that if he remained with this mysterious man, in this deserted church, for just a while longer, he might in time be able to understand the precise nature of things, to decipher their eternal riddle, to finally read sense into this day, this week, this life—to see clearly, as never before—