Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

Suvarnin nodded. He even thought of making notes, something he hadn’t done for twenty years, since he was of the firm opinion that accuracy in reporting was the foe of creative criticism. He put his hand into his pocket for a pencil, but discovered he had neglected to bring one along with him. He took his hand out of his pocket and gave up the thought of taking notes.

“Suicide,” Baranov repeated, flushed with joy at having the redoubtable Suvarnin pay such close attention to his confession. “I moaned. I shrieked.” Baranov knew that he had done no such thing, and had, in fact, merely gloomed silently in front of the easel, but he felt that these active expressions of passion would sit well with the critic, as indeed they did. “I cried out. I despaired.” Suvarnin moved restively, glancing instinctively at the vodka bottle on the table, and licking the corner of his mouth, and Baranov hurried on, feeling anxiously that he had perhaps gone a little far with his synonyms. “I slashed out blindly at the canvas. I did not guide my hand. I did not search for colors. I did not look at the potatoes or the eggplant. My terrors painted through me. I was the instrument of my dreams. I hardly looked to see what I was doing. I painted all night long, one night after another. I did not know what I was doing …” By now Baranov had forgotten that he was trying to make an impression. By now he was letting the simple truth pour out. “All I knew was, that as the painting grew, a great weight was being lifted from me. My subconscious was being delivered from its prison. When I slept, I no longer dreamed of being struck dumb or being nosed by dark brown foxes. Now my dreams were of vineyards in the springtime and large-breasted young women I wished to approach on the streets. Finally, when I was finished, and I sat back and looked at the green nude and the ruins, I was as surprised by what I had done as if I had come into my studio and found that another man, a complete stranger, had used my easel while I was away on holiday. And I was grateful to him, whoever he was. And I was grateful to the green lady on the canvas. Between them,” Baranov said simply, “they had delivered me from Hell.”

Suvarnin stood up and silently shook the painter’s hand. “Out of anguish,” he said finally, “comes the great art. Out of the depths of despair only can we reach to the skies. Look at Dostoyevsky.”

Baranov nodded, although a little uneasily, as he had tried to read The Brothers Karamazov three times and had never got past page 165. But Suvarnin did not press the point. “Read my article on Saturday,” he said modestly. “I think you will be pleased.”

“Thank you,” Baranov said humbly, resolving to call Anna immediately Suvarnin left to impart to her the heady news. “I am in your debt.”

“Nonsense,” said Suvarnin, with the concision and gift for a phrase that had made his reputation secure in a dozen cities. “Art is in your debt. And now,” he asked, “what is the next painting going to be?”

Baranov smiled happily. “Cherries,” he said. “Six kilos of red cherries in a wicker basket. They are being delivered here at two o’clock from the market.”

“Good,” said Suvarnin. They shook hands once more and the critic departed, with only one tentative glance at the vodka bottle.

Baranov sat down, waiting dreamily for the arrival of the cherries, thinking, as he sat there, Perhaps it is time that I started a scrapbook for my reviews.

On Saturday, Baranov opened the magazine with trembling fingers. There, on the page with Suvarnin’s photograph, was a streaming black title, “FILTH IN THE GALLERIES.” Baranov blinked. Then he began to read. “Last week,” Suvarnin had written, “the Counter-Revolution struck one of its most audacious blows at Russian Art. From the bestial brushes of one, Sergei Baranov, who has until now concealed his heretical infamies under bushels of rotten fruit, and who now feels that he can come out boldly and shamelessly in his true colors, we have received a nauseating sample of decadent, bourgeois ‘art.’”

Baranov sat down, trying to get air into his aching lungs. Then he forced himself to read on. “In this gangrenous excrescence,” Suvarnin continued, using what Baranov, even in his extremity, recognized as a pet phrase, “the dying world of Capitalism, allied with the Trotskyst bandits, has served notice on the Soviet Union that its minions and agents have wormed their way into the heart of the fatherland’s cultural life. By what treachery and corruption the notorious Baranov managed to get his monstrosity hung on a gallery wall, we shall leave to the public prosecutor to discover. But while waiting for the reports on the investigation that will surely take place, we of the art world must join ranks to defend ourselves. We must not permit the insidious Baranov and others of his ilk, slavishly devoted to the fads and aberrations of their plutocratic masters, to desecrate our walls with these samples of dada-istic despair, reactionary cubism, retrogressive abstractionism, surrealistic archaism, aristocratic individualism, religiostic mysticism, materialistic Fordism.”

Baranov put the magazine down carefully. He did not have to read further. He had read it often enough before so that he could have recited the rest of the piece without glancing once more at the page. He sat on his stool, his world in ruins, staring unhappily at the six kilos of bright red cherries, arranged prettily in their wicker basket.

There was a knock on the door. Before he could say, “Come in,” the door opened and Suvarnin came in. The critic went directly to the table and poured himself five fingers of vodka and drained it. Then he turned to Baranov. “I see,” he said, gesturing toward the still-open magazine, “that you’ve read the piece.”

“Yes,” said Baranov hoarsely.

“Here,” said Suvarnin, taking some manuscript pages out of his pocket. “You might be interested in reading what I wrote originally.”

Baranov numbly took the sheets and stared at them. Suvarnin poured himself another drink while Baranov read through swimming eyes, “… a great new unfolding of talent … a courageous grappling with the problems of doubt and disillusionment which are the beginning of understanding … a blazing display of technical ability … a pioneering plunge into the depths of the modern psyche in paint …”

Baranov pushed the pages aside. “What … what happened?” he asked dimly.

“The Committee,” Suvarnin said. “They saw your painting. Then they saw my review. They asked me to make certain changes,” he said delicately. “That Klopoyev, the president of the committee, the one who has made eighty-four portrait heads of Stalin, he was especially anxious.”

“What’s going to happen to me now?”

Suvarnin shrugged. “Nothing good,” he said. “As a friend, I advise you … leave the country.” He went over and picked up the manuscript sheets of his first review. He tore them into small pieces, made a little pile of them on the floor and put a match to them. He watched until the flame had burnt itself out, then carefully scattered the ashes with his foot. He finished the vodka, drinking this time directly from the bottle, and went out.

Baranov did not dream that night. He was up all night listening to his wife.

She spoke vigorously from eight in the evening until eight the next morning, a full-length address in which every relevant topic was stated and developed with a balance and fullness which Edmund Burke, in another country and a more leisurely century, would have wholeheartedly admired. She had been notified that afternoon that their apartment was being taken over by a cellist with a cousin on the Central Committee and she had been removed from her position as head of the nursery system at five P.M. and relegated to the post of assistant dietician at a ward for backward and criminally inclined children in a penal camp some thirty kilometers outside Moscow. With these facts as a springboard and with her audience of one wanly rooted against the bedpillows, she ran through her eloquent twelve hours of recrimination without noticeably pausing for breath and without repeating herself.