Olga Grushin - The Dream Life of Sukhanov

“He probably did,” he said airily “Ksenya, pass the sugar, please…. But when he saw I wouldn’t make an easy victim, he just took his two kopecks and ran off.”

“Father, you really are something,” said Vasily, smiling.

“Yes, I wouldn’t envy anyone who meets him one-on-one in a dark corner,” said Ksenya.

“Wait a minute, that’s hardly a compliment!” Sukhanov objected with a laugh.

In a short while, Vasily and Ksenya slipped away, and their doors closed in the far reaches of the corridor, his softly, hers with a bang. Nina and Sukhanov were left alone in the kitchen. He was in a wonderful mood.

“To be honest,” he said, “I’m relieved this whole business wasn’t Volodya’s fault.”

She glanced at him and moved her lips, but said nothing.

“He’s a decent fellow, I would have been sad to let him go,” he elaborated.

“I’m just glad everything ended well,” she said, and pushed a plate of chocolate éclairs toward him. “Try these, they are really fresh. Valya bought them this evening.”

For some time they drank their tea without speaking. Occasionally his or her spoon would graze the edge of a cup, and its silver click would fall like a pebble into a translucent pool of stillness, redefining it, making it cozier. The gentle light of the lamp wove a golden cocoon of tranquillity, perhaps even happiness, around them, closing them off protectively from the night, in whose shady courtyards and blind alleys unpleasant things were no doubt continuing to transpire this very moment—somewhere far, infinitely far away from the warm, sparkling, well-stocked kitchen of apartment fifteen, on the eighth floor of the nine-storied building number seven, Belinsky Street, in the heart of old Moscow. Indeed, at this instant, at nearly one o‘clock in the morning on a chilly August night in the year 1985, just after the rain had washed over the roofs of the city, the familiar and delightful world of Anatoly Pavlovich Sukhanov existed quite independently of the world outside. The éclair melted deliciously on his tongue, and his tea was strong, just as he liked it. Row upon row of little jars containing concentrated tastes of the waning summer glittered evenly in cupboards all around him, and the air whispered of apples and cinnamon: Valya, their help who came in daily, had made his favorite apple pie only the day before, and the smells still lingered. A seemingly endless expanse of rooms unfolded behind his back, their comfortable dusk scintillating with the honeyed luster of parquet floors, damask wall upholstering, golden-flecked book bindings, crystal chandeliers opening like flowers in the high ceilings, many-antlered silver candelabra, and countless other precious possessions that the dim light hinted at tantalizingly, splendidly, as it seeped through the heavy velvet drapes. Somewhere in the recesses of his home, his two children were falling asleep, one a future diplomat, the other a future journalist, both equally gifted; and next to him, enclosed in the glowing circle of light, sat Nina, pale, disheveled, and so beautiful, her lips lightly traced with a glistening chocolate line. This was his world, and it was safe. The ebbing night had tried to meddle with him, to suck him into a dark, hidden, dangerous void—yet here he was at the end of the day, in his robe and slippers, eating his third pastry, and feeling content.

“You have some chocolate at the corner of your mouth, my love,” he said. “Oh, and by the way, you’ll never believe what happened just as I was… No, a bit higher… Now you’ve got it…. Yes, only imagine, as I was leaving the party, I ran into Belkin.”

Nina set down her cup, missing the saucer. Some tea splashed out on the table.

“You saw Lev?” she said quietly.

“Lev Borisovich in person, the one and only,” he replied with a wry smile.

The brown stain slowly devoured the tablecloth between them.

“What was he doing at the Manège?” she asked, her radiant green gaze fixed on his face with an unfamiliar, almost hopeful, expression. “Did he come to—”

“Oh, it was just a coincidence, nothing more,” he said quickly. “He happened to be walking by when the rain began, and decided to wait it out under the portico. Practical things like umbrellas never occur to a man of his nature.”

Her face suddenly remote, she looked down, noticed the stain, and started to dab at it assiduously with a dampened napkin. Sukhanov kept talking.

“He’s become quite unpresentable, our Lev Borisovich has. Aged, unshaved, dressed in God knows what—some unimaginable bow-tie affair… I think he drinks. Of course, I would too if my life were such a dismal failure. But naturally, it was bound to come to this. Even his wife—”

“Do you want anything else?” she interrupted. “If you are done, I’ll put everything away.”

“Please,” he said, and set down his last, unfinished, éclair. “Even his wife left him. Remember Alla? Frankly, I’m surprised she lasted as long as she did.”

Nina continued to open and close cupboards in silence. Pleasantly full, he leaned back in his chair, delicately muffled a chocolate burp in his napkin, and hummed the duel aria from Evgeny Onegin. The tablecloth had a fetching pattern of wildflowers on it, he noticed absently. He was already beginning to feel a welcome advent of drowsiness when Nina sharply slammed the strawberry jar in its place. Startled, he glanced up, and found her looking at him. Her gray eyes were cold.

“His name is Vadim,” she said.

“What was that, my love?”

“Our chauffeur. Our chauffeur’s name is Vadim. Not Volodya. Not Vladislav. Not Vyacheslav. It’s Vadim. He’s worked for us for almost three years, and in all this time you haven’t made an effort to remember his name.”

Sukhanov sat up straight.

“So I did it again, didn’t I?” he said amicably. “But my love, he has one of these names I always get wrong. You know how I am with names.”

“Oh, it’s not just names, Tolya, it’s everything,” she said, turning away. “In all my life, I’ve never met anyone with such a capacity to ignore and to forget.”

The renewed kitchen silence ceased being comfortable. Frowning slightly, he rose to go.

“A courier came by while we were away,” she said without looking in his direction, and dropped an avalanche of porcelain into the sink. “I put the envelope on your desk.”

“I’ll go and see,” he said, and hesitated for a moment, then added with a somewhat ingratiating smile, “I simply don’t know how I’m going to work without your portrait hovering over me, my love. I’m so used to its happy presence.”

“I’m relieved it’s gone,” said Nina dryly. “It felt like a constant reproach to me.”

“How do you mean?” he asked after a pause, but she said nothing else. The water was running noisily. With a suppressed sigh, he left the kitchen.

The large brown envelope contained three pages—two sheets of proofs, each in two pale columns of minuscule print, and a letter penned in sprawling handwriting, an intimate sign of particular respect. He skimmed it. Dear Anatoly Pavlovich, would you be so kind as to check the enclosed for any possible additions or corrections….

The text, he already saw, was his own biography, to be included in an updated edition of The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, scheduled to appear early the next year. Feeling inexplicably nervous, he pulled closer his desk lamp, with its yellow shade perched on an elaborate bronze stand in the shape of a rearing Pegasus (a gift from his father-in-law), lifted a silver-handled magnifying glass from its embossed leather case (“To our highly esteemed Anatoly Pavlovich from his loyal colleagues, on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday”), and bent over the busy rows of facts.