Olga Grushin - The Dream Life of Sukhanov

He had nearly reached the corner when Sukhanov took a step forward and, his heart sliding sideways into a warm, indistinct fog, quietly said, “Leva.” The echoes caught the name, tossed it back and forth with an increasingly empty, meaningless sound. Belkin froze, then walked back slowly, peering into the dusk.

“Tolya?” he said uncertainly. “Is that you?”

Sukhanov took another step and was trapped like a bug in amber in the watery light of the only streetlamp on the block. An incongruous thought flickered through his mind: at this instant, after the phantasmagoria of the last few days, with one lens of his glasses cracked, his shoes muddy, his clothes reeking with sour, displaced smells of stations, trains, staircases, and courtyards, he must look infinitely more pathetic than Belkin, whose worn-out blazer and maroon bow tie had seemed so amusing to him only a short while ago, on the steps of the Manège, under the aegis of the proud banner proclaiming his father-in-law’s grand retrospective….

He cleared his throat.

“Hello, Leva. I was in the neighborhood, visiting my mother,” he said. “Thought I’d drop by. I know it’s after hours, but the light was on.” Belkin had halted a few paces away and was looking at him strangely. Was it possible there were still traces of tears on his face, Sukhanov wondered. He swallowed, went on loudly, “So, how is the gallery business treating you?”

“Oh, fine, thanks for asking,” Belkin replied with a quick, forced laugh. “Not that I’ve sold anything yet, but all in good time, I say. Actually, I’m usually not here, there is a girl who runs things, but she’s having a bit of a domestic crisis, her husband—one of these new underground hippie singers or something—has just left her. So I thought, why not, might as well sit here for a few days. A dose of reality is always good for the artist, and you can’t imagine how humbling it is to hear what people say about your paintings when they don’t know you are standing behind their back.”

“No,” said Sukhanov in a slightly pinched voice. “No, I can’t imagine that at all.”

“Yes, well, one gets used to it,” said Belkin awkwardly. There was a small, awful silence. “Oh, but I did meet an extraordinary man just now. An artist of the old school, over eighty years old, and still painting as hard as ever. Lives in a small town, the devil knows where, makes all his own pigments out of spices, earth, and whatnot, can you believe it? Last month, he said, he finally began the best work of his life. ‘Remember, young man,’ he told me, ‘it takes a lifetime to learn one’s craft.’ Amazing, the spirit some men have.”

“What is he doing in Moscow?” Sukhanov asked, not caring about the answer, only desperate to avoid another dangerous, sob-swelling lull.

“He was a little vague about it. Said he had come to find some former pupil of his. He had a phone number, address, and everything, but I gathered no one expected him, so he spent the day going to art shows instead, ‘keeping in touch with the youth,’ as he put it. He claimed he had learned to paint from Chagall, but frankly, I didn’t believe him—so many people nowadays… Tolya, are you all right? You look—”

“It’s nothing, I’m just tired,” said Sukhanov weakly. For an instant he struggled with a desire to sink onto the pavement and hide his face in his hands. “I… I’ve been having quite a day. Tripped and fell, broke my glasses, you see…. Don’t let me hold you up though, you were going somewhere.”

“Home, I was only going home. Nothing to rush to there,” said Belkin, shrugging. “Listen, I’ve got an idea. If you’re free right now, why not visit the gallery? We can sit and talk, I have some tea and cakes stashed in the office.”

Sukhanov was silent for a moment.

“Oh, why not,” he said then.

The door gave in with a pained moan. The hallway beyond was dim and small, crowded with a jumble of hats, shoes, lopsided umbrellas, greeting him with fading smells of Alla’s mawkishly sweet perfume and a recently dismembered dried fish.

“Well, don’t just stand there, come on in,” Lev said gruffly.

“Are you alone?”

Lev nodded. He looked as if he had not shaved in a week.

“Good.” Tightly clutching a sheaf of pages I had typed the night before on Malinin’s typewriter, I followed the fish odors through the familiar clutter of the cramped corridor into the kitchen, Lev at my heels. In the depressingly bright light of the naked bulb dangling over the table glistened a half-empty glass of clear liquid; the bony remains of an unappetizing meal lay scattered on a greasy newspaper.

“I’m working on a still-life composition called Repast of a Failed Artist Whose Wife Is Out with Her Girlfriends, or So She Says,” said Lev blandly. “Sit down. Anything the matter? I’d offer you a glass, but it’s really disgusting, and of course you never—”

“I’ll take it,” I said, and pushed the manuscript across the table. “Here, I want you to have a look at this.”

Lev scanned the title.

“‘Surrealism and Other Western “Isms” as Manifestations of Capitalist Insolvency’?” he said disgustedly. “Surely you don’t expect me to waste my time on such—”

“Just read it, will you?”

He shrugged, took an unhurried sip, and flipped the page. I studied the patterns of melted snow forming at my feet on the yellow-and-black-checkered linoleum, watched a befuddled out-of-season fly stumble drowsily on the windowsill, drank the unpalatable vodka. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lev glance at me once or twice in the beginning; then he lifted his head no longer and sat silently rustling the papers and frowning. A half-hour passed, then another ten minutes. He slammed the last page against the table.

“What is this shit?” he said. “Who wrote it?”

I finished my drink at a gulp. My insides were burning.

“I did,” I said. “I wrote it.”

His eyes narrowed. “Tolya,” he said slowly. “Is this a sick joke of some sort?”

“It’s not a joke, it’s going to be published. I wanted you to read it first, so I could explain… No, hold on, just listen for a minute, will you?” My face was burning too now. “I’ve been thinking more about Khrushchev closing our show. And you know what I realized? When he shut us down he wasn’t acting as a representative of the state cracking down on a handful of outspoken artists. He was acting as a representative of the people, our people, who do not understand—cannot understand—the alien things we stand for. The Russian people do not want our art, Leva. Never did, never will. They dislike seeing Filonov’s tormented faces, Chagall’s flying beasts, and Malevich’s black squares—they have enough tragedy, surrealism, and emptiness in their daily lives. In the past they wanted soothing icons; now they want the pseudo-art of someone like my father-in-law—a pat on the head reassuring them that their future is bright, a slap on the back letting them know that they are part of an important whole, that their toils have a purpose—”

The fly buzzed sleepily against the windowpane; in the bluish haze beyond, oblique snow was falling. Lev was looking at me, and there was a new expression in his heavy gaze. I talked for a long time—talked about the dim, oppressive centuries of Russian art struggling against Russian history, about the walls of silence destined to surround each and every one of us forever, about casting our pearls before swine, about our fates condemning us to this dark, ungrateful soil, leaving us no other choice but to step away into anonymity, into comfort, into the minute preoccupations of an uninspired, private existence…

And then Lev spoke.

“You’ve said so many clever things here,” he said quietly, “but do you know the only thing I’ve heard? Fear—nothing but fear. Well, I understand fear, I’m afraid too….” He was silent for a few heartbeats. “Tell you what, Tolya. Everyone has unworthy moments, and you are my best friend. Let’s go out onto the landing, throw this abomination page by page into the trash chute, come back to finish the bottle, and I’ll promise you never to mention any of it again. Agreed?”