The Dream Life of Sukhanov

ONE

“Stop here,” said Anatoly Pavlovich Sukhanov from the backseat, addressing the pair of suede gloves on the steering wheel.

The white-and-yellow columns outside his window ceased their tiresome flashing, began to slow down, and in another moment fell obediently into their assigned places. A pale orange tentacle of a nearby streetlamp pierced the plush darkness around him, and Nina, who had been silent the whole way, stirred as if waking.

“Already?” she said absently, glancing outside.

They were there. With a slight sigh, she searched for something in her purse, as she always did upon arrival. Sukhanov waited patiently while she flipped open a compact, balanced its small convex pool of glittering blackness on her palm, slid a peach-colored pillar of lipstick out of the golden coils of its case, and proceeded to bend her face this way and that, trying to chase her reflection out of the shadows. Unexpectedly he caught sight of a delicately painted eye as it flitted along the surface of the mirror, but she moved her hand, and the eye blinked and vanished. Humming tunelessly, he looked away; even after twenty-eight years of marriage, he still felt awkward in such moments, as if caught spying on some private ritual. Finally the elusive reflection became trapped in the ray of the streetlamp, and she traced the contours of her full mouth in two quick flicks of her wrist, pressed her lips together with a tiny pat, and dropped the lipstick back into her purse. He heard the lock shut with a rapacious snap, saw out of the corner of his eye a cold burst of fire as a diamond earring passed through the light—and then, with a sudden fluid rustle, she was gone, as usual without waiting for her door to be opened. Behind her lingered a smell—the elegant perfume of tonight, whatever it was, and underneath, numerous layers of other fading scents, which had accumulated over time in the backseat of their Volga like so many sweet, barely discernible ghosts of past outings.

With a slow heave Sukhanov followed her out.

At this hour of the evening, on a Saturday, Marx Avenue was starting to grow quiet. The lamps glowed like tangerine balloons let loose in the soft haze, and in their light the eighteenth-century façade of the old Moscow university shone brightly, as dramatic and familiar as the stage set of some stately, stale play Although it was early August, the air had already acquired that special, brittle and gentle, autumnal quality that made the world seem a breath deeper and a trifle less certain, as if seen through a sheet of crystal. Infrequent cars passed. A wide sweep of their headlights brought into sudden sharp relief vague shapes of passersby, for a solitary instant imparting volume and color to a youth in a drab suit darting recklessly across the street, an old man shuffling by with a crumpled newspaper under his arm, several ageless, heavy-faced women weighed down by bloated bags, and—strikingly, incongruously—a vision: a figure in a low-cut dress of shimmering green silk, standing tall and slender and long-legged by the curb.

“It’s chilly,” said Nina quietly.

Sukhanov nodded, turned back to the car, and rapped on the window. The tinted glass slid down without a sound, exposing the suede gloves inside, poised at the ready.

“Wait for us over there,” he said curtly. “I expect we’ll be a while.”

As they walked the few paces to the Manège, they tilted their heads up, to get a better view of an imposing banner unfurling above the portico of the grand exhibition hall. “THE FACE OF OUR MOTHERLAND,” read the enormous red letters, and, in the line below, “Pyotr Alekseevich Malinin, 1905—1985.”

“The dates make him sound dead,” observed Sukhanov with displeasure. “They should make it clear it’s his birthday celebration, don’t you think?”

She shrugged and said nothing, only quickened her steps, and the deserted square greedily received each precise click of her silvery high heels. A broad-shouldered man who stood smoking by the entrance saw her approach and instantly, diving forward with his whole body, swung the door wide open; a waft of well-lit stuffiness and a cascading burst of a woman’s artificial laughter escaped into the quiet darkness. As Nina passed inside, Sukhanov noticed the man follow her sheer silken legs with a speculative look. No one could ever guess her age, he thought, feeling pleasantly flattered. He was about to enter himself, when the man released the door and turned toward him, revealing a tentative wisp of a mustache in the middle of an insolent face.

“Just a minute,” the man said in a bored tone. “This is by invitation only.”

Sukhanov measured the fatuous mustache with a contemptuous look and unhurriedly reached into his pocket.

He had barely stepped inside when an ample woman stuffed into a tight dress of crimson velvet flew at him, opening her arms and crying shrilly, “Anatoly Pavlovich, the very man I was dying to see! Ah, do I have just the story for you!”

She was the wife of a famous theater critic; he had dined with them the other week. Tapping his chest with her plump index finger, she plunged into some involved tale, melting into debilitating giggles at every few words. Nodding mechanically, Sukhanov surveyed the place over her swaying shoulders. He had not been here for a while—in fact, not since … well, no need to be exact, he thought hastily, reining in his memory with the chilling sensation of the near-slip. Suffice it to say, it had been a long, a very long time, and everything looked quite different now.

The white-walled hall was welcomingly warm. A narrow red carpet ran across the shining floor in an appropriately solemn touch, unrolled, he was sure, just for the occasion, and the hum of manifold conversations splashed around long tables generously set with hors d‘oeuvres. The crowd looked befittingly festive, and light danced playfully off every gesture, transforming a lifted champagne flute into liquid gold, setting a flock of sparks aflutter over an extended hand, causing tiny explosions with every turn of a woman’s head. He saw countless dignitaries drifting about, and in the middle of the room he noticed Vasily, twirling a glass of wine and smiling his habitually thin smile as he bent toward an exceptionally bejeweled matron, whom Sukhanov recognized with a start as the Minister of Culture’s wife. Ah, indeed, that boy will go far, very far, he thought once again with approval. Ksenya, needless to say, was not here yet; she always made a point of flaunting her thorough disregard for his position. But she was still young, only eighteen, and he was certain that, given her brilliant mind, she would in time—

The critic’s wife leaned into him, oozing confidentiality.

“And so I say to him, ‘It’s all very well, Mark Abramovich, but your ending, my dear, your ending really doesn’t work.’ I mean, if you constantly hint at some terrible mystery, surely you should disclose it in the fifth act! And then, just imagine, he says to me, ‘I don’t think you understand my conception. By leaving things unexplained I’m trying to convey the general absurdity of our existence.’ Can you believe it? The general absurdity of our existence!”

As she collapsed in another outburst of helpless mirth, her breasts bounced up and down like two melons draped in taut crimson, her meaty earlobes flashed with amethysts the size of walnuts, and her second chin gave birth to a third. Muttering a halfhearted excuse, Sukhanov extricated himself from her voluminous grasp and quickly walked toward Vasily, and from halfway across the room her laughing shriek chased him still: “The absurdity of our existence, can you believe it, Anatoly Pavlovich?”

The Minister’s wife bared her small, crowded teeth.

“Maria Nikolaevna, you look glamorous as always,” said Sukhanov, and in a joking gesture of exaggerated politeness carried her hand to his lips.

“Like father, like son,” she said in a languid drawl. “Both such charmers!”

At his side, Vasily smiled silkily. He had certainly grown into a handsome young man.

All around them conversations, wound up earlier in the evening, were slowly unwinding, traveling their preordained course toward the main event of the night. Moscow’s artistic crème de la crème, ostensibly gathered to celebrate the eightieth birthday of one of their brightest stars, tacitly congratulated each other on their own success in life. Suddenly there was a rustle, a stir, glasses being raised first here, then there, as a chorus of “Vashe zdorovie!” spread across the hall, rolling through the crowd like exalted ripples originating somewhere at the heart of things and reaching wider and wider. Of course, the heart in question, the assembly’s nerve center, had been apparent to Sukhanov’s trained eye from the moment he had entered. In one of the more remote corners, casually surrounded by a few somberly clad youths with discreet bulges in their jackets, two men talked, interrupting each other amiably, laughing at each other’s jokes, slapping each other on the back, all the while secretly watched by several hundred eyes. They had just drunk a toast to each other’s health, these two—the guest of honor, the artist Pyotr Alekseevich Malinin, and the Minister of Culture. Anyone’s importance could be measured visibly tonight by the degree of proximity to this innermost of circles, and imperceptibly, excitedly, the guests shifted closer and closer in dark, respectful waves of tailored suits and gowns, their crisp shirtfronts and low décolletages flashing like brilliant white foam on the crests.

It occurred to Sukhanov that the whole scene was oddly like a parody of Malinin’s early work—one of those easily recognizable “Great Leader” paintings, with Lenin (or someone else, heavily mustachioed and currently unnameable) thundering from a far-off podium, on the unreachable horizon, and tides of workers and peasants spreading outward from it, initially shrunk by the perspective into mere symbols of class and righteous anger but presently growing larger, larger, until here they were, bigger than life, almost bursting out of the frame with their enraptured stares, half-opened mouths, clenched fists, ripped clothes. Understandably, such grim militant works had been tactfully omitted from the Soviet master’s retrospective. Other, milder creations hung under the spotlights, presenting to the audience so-called Socialism with a Human Face—a slogan that was perhaps more familiar to Sukhanov than to anyone else here. Allowing himself a knowing smile, he took his most regretful leave of his most captivating company (in any case, it was useful to let the boy work on the woman a bit more) and leisurely made his way along the walls.

Birch trees bathed in the sunlight, bright and fresh as if grown to order, and broad blue rivers streamed merrily along emerald shores dotted with cows and smoking with factories. Sturdy girls beamed as they strode through the fields, proudly carrying sacks of potatoes; miners bent in grimy enthusiastic groups over newspapers announcing new railroad openings; and parades of gold-trimmed banners passed before the shining eyes of toddlers who were still too young to march but who already, wordlessly, gratefully, understood the future happiness of their existence. There were portraits here too, mostly of seamstresses, sailors, and peasants—in a word, the People—as well as several colorful illustrations of folktales, produced in Malinin’s more whimsical moments and including the celebrated Firebird, displayed across the entrance, in the place of honor.

Sukhanov walked almost without pausing. The main quality uniting all these works, he felt privately, was the inherent ease with which they slid into oblivion the moment one’s back was turned, so nondescript were they, so similar to a thousand other paintings. Malinin’s genre scenes read like a page from a textbook, and Malinin’s faces were drawn so precisely, so airlessly, that they seemed to lack one of the two requisite dimensions. Still, the old man was not altogether without talent, and there were three or four pieces, perhaps, that stood out from the rest. This one, for instance.

A pale-haired young woman in light blue emerged dreamily from the darker blue of the sky or possibly a lake, its colors melting gently into the colors of her dress. Her soft gaze was directed not at the viewer, but through him, beyond him, at something truly happy that only she could see, something that brought a tender shadow of a smile to her face. A different work this was, without a doubt—an intimate work. Sukhanov bent to read the label underneath: “A Future Mother, 1965. On loan from a private collection.” Once again, he could not help wincing, even though he understood the inevitability of such a name—after all, he himself had played a role in establishing the tradition whereby portraits of family members were mildly frowned upon, tainted as they were with the sin of being “slightly bourgeois.” Since the straightforward title The Artist’s Daughter was thus out of the question, Pyotr Alekseevich had given them a choice.

“Either A Future Mother or A Russian Beauty,” he had said. “Take your pick.”

Like most Soviet art, the painting shied away from needless physiological detail (Sukhanov’s mind automatically dealt out the term “sordid naturalism”), giving no obvious indications of its delicate subject: the woman’s body, neither thin nor full, discreetly faded into the background. All the same, Sukhanov had found the title inexcusably crude. Surprisingly, it was Nina who had insisted on this choice. “Apart from the fact that calling my own portrait ‘beauty’ is in bad taste, beauty is really not what it’s about,” she had said as the two of them stood arguing in Sukhanov’s study.

And indeed, she was right. Of course, the woman on the canvas was beautiful, for the likeness was considerable—and yet Sukhanov had always felt that the depiction failed to capture some vital quality of Nina‘s, some precious, elusive essence, uniquely hers, that imbued her with that cold, mysterious radiance he so admired. It was this quality that even in her awkward adolescence had earned her the nickname Mermaid, and made her eyes appear to change so unpredictably from gray to green to blue and her half-smile so hard to describe—the very same quality, perhaps, that, even now, made him look at her at times and wonder what her thoughts were. The thoughts of the painted Nina, on the other hand, were transparent. She had no obliqueness in her, no vagueness, no mystery as she sat there, young, healthy, content, listening to a new life, Vasily’s life, stirring inside her. And ironically, it was precisely this simplicity, this clarity, this lack of depth, so typical of Malinin, that had endeared the portrait to Sukhanov. He had hung it in the study across from his desk and frequently glanced at it as he worked, especially—especially in the first few years. The vision of the unequivocally happy, unquestionably blue-eyed Nina never failed to reassure him, affirming over and over that everything had been justified, that his life was proceeding according to plan, that his choice had not been one irreparable, terribie—

Sukhanov briskly shook his head as if to rid himself of a persistent fly. In any case, he would certainly miss her for the next three months, he said to himself, and casting one last glance at the young woman floating in her blue cloud of joy, walked off in search of the original. He saw Nina from afar, standing with her father, smiling lightly at something the Minister had said. For an instant her eyes met his across the room, then slipped away. He headed toward her, but his progress was constantly halted by bothersome acquaintances entangling him in sticky cobwebs of anecdotes, compliments, and invitations. Then all at once there was a movement among the guests, a general reorganization, a snapping to order, a spreading hush; and a moment later the Minister himself appeared on a low podium in the back of the hall, a prudent glass of water in his hand.

Going to be a long one, Sukhanov thought without interest as he applauded.

“Dear comrades, I don’t need to tell you why we have gathered here today,” the Minister began when the place had fallen quiet. “Neither do I need to introduce to you our beloved Pyotr Alekseevich Malinin, one of the greatest artists of our century, two-time laureate of the Lenin Prize, member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR since 1947, the year of its creation, three-time winner of—”

As he spoke, he dipped his gaze repeatedly into a stack of paper. Feigning rapt attention, Sukhanov let himself drift away, basking in a wonderfully warm, mindless feeling of overall well-being. Everything in his life was well arranged, yes, everything was perfect, and most deservedly so—and thus he took it almost as his due when, after the important people had said all the necessary words and while the unimportant people were still holding forth, hopelessly trying to regain the attention of the merrily disintegrating room, the Minister emerged from the swiftly parting crowd and placed his hand on Sukhanov’s shoulder.

“So, Tolya, how are things? Going well, I trust,” he said jovially. “Lucky bastard, married to the most gorgeous woman in Moscow!”

Sukhanov brushed off the sudden distracting thought that the man reminded him of someone, and said something very pleasant and instantly forgettable about the Minister’s wife. The Minister laughed, looked at him slyly, and asked, “You smoke?”

Sukhanov did not smoke.

“Naturally,” he replied without a heartbeat of hesitation.

Leaving a trail of square-jawed youths behind them, the two walked outside, and immediately a cigarette materialized in Sukhanov’s fingers, he knew not how. It was hastily followed by a lit match that originated somewhere in the darkness of the portico and dutifully flew up to his face, illuminating the proffering hand and the infinitely respectful smile of the doorman with the ridiculous mustache. The cringing recognition in the man’s eyes pleased Sukhanov immensely. Cringe, my friend, cringe, he thought as he stood trying not to inhale the smoke, the Minister’s hand still resting on his shoulder. Perhaps next time you will think twice before you bar the entrance to a man on the very best terms with the very best people—a man who is, in fact, the only son-in-law of the hero of the evening—and moreover, a voice inside him added with false modesty, a man who is himself something of a weight in the art world, pun most certainly intended.

For the past twelve years Anatoly Pavlovich Sukhanov had occupied the most influential, most enviable post of editor in chief at the country’s leading art magazine, Art of the World.

The Minister had a funny manner of puffing out his cheeks as he exhaled his smoke.

“Masha was rather taken with your son,” he said after a short, congenial silence. “A very nice young man. What is he doing, I forget?”

“He is at the Foreign Affairs Institute, graduating next spring,” replied Sukhanov proudly. “Their number-one student. Takes to languages like a duck to water.”

“Ah, is that so?” said the Minister, visibly impressed.

Assuredly, assuredly he resembled someone, especially when he blew out his cheeks in that fashion…. Suddenly worried that he was staring, Sukhanov glanced away, across the street—and it was then that he became aware of something distressing. He averted his eyes for an instant, then looked again. There was no mistake, none whatsoever.

“Listen, Tolya,” the Minister was saying in the meantime, “I’m having a bit of a get-together at my dacha this Tuesday, nothing big, just me, Masha, and a few close friends. My daughter will be stopping by as well—a very pretty girl, by the way. So I thought maybe you and Vasily… Is something the matter?”

Sukhanov was craning his neck, staring up and down the quiet street.

“I don’t know,” he said in bewilderment. “My car… it’s not where it’s supposed to be. I told the fellow to wait for us over there.”

“Yes, well, all chauffeurs drink,” the Minister pronounced philosophically. “He’ll turn up before the evening is over, I’m sure. Now, about Tuesday—”

But Sukhanov continued to blink and peer into the dimness.

“There must be some mistake,” he kept muttering. “Volodya’s been with us for a couple of years, and in all this time he’s never… simply can’t think of a reason…”

Taking off his glasses, he rubbed the lenses with the underside of his jacket. Uncovered, his eyes looked indecently naked and lost. The Minister frowned slightly and tossed away his cigarette.

“Well, seeing as you are so preoccupied right now,” he said somewhat coldly, “we’ll continue this conversation another time. So long, Tolya.”

For a few minutes Sukhanov waited by the entrance, still staring, as if trying by sheer act of will to conjure the missing car from the dense shadows of the trees underneath which it rightfully should have been, by all the laws of his universe. Things like this never, almost never, happened to him, and when they did, they tended to upset him tremendously. As he stood there, a light drizzle began to fall, and soon the street was glistening unpleasantly. He turned to go inside, and the doorman leapt to throw the door open before him, but this time Sukhanov thought he saw the hint of a mocking smile on the man’s mustachioed lips. Immediately he told himself it was only his imagination, but it nonetheless triggered a surge of sudden fear in him, as if some irreparable damage had been done—as if, in the very moment of his disturbing discovery, the Minister had begun to say something important, something absolutely vital, perhaps, and he, engrossed as he had been in his confusion, had missed it, missed it unforgivably, missed it forever…

But try as he might, the substance of the Minister’s words escaped him, and the nagging little idea of the man’s resemblance to someone kept getting mixed up with his thoughts and leading him astray, until, gradually, his panic abated. Even if there had been some unwanted rudeness on his part—and he was positive, almost positive there had been none—he would smooth it over later; right now he had a problem to resolve. If that fellow had really left to have a drink, they would fire him on the spot, he decided indignantly, and dodging conversations, set out to find Nina.

She had quit her father’s side when the speeches had started, but Pyotr Alekseevich, to whom Sukhanov now paid hurried respects, said he had seen her only recently talking to Ksenya. Growing restless, Sukhanov dove into the crowd once again. A few paces away, a young girl with a boy’s haircut blocked his way.

“Good evening, Anatoly Pavlovich,” she said solemnly. Her voice was high and thin, almost childlike. “My name is Lina Gordon, I’m a journalist. I’m writing an article on the Malinin retrospective. Could you answer a couple of questions for me, please? As the editor of Art of the World, I’m sure you’ll provide invaluable insight to my readers.”

He looked at her incredulously. Her skinny neck stuck out of an absurdly cheap yellow dress, and her lips were pale and chapped. She was clutching an open pad.

“What… er… what newspaper did you say you were with?” he asked with an involuntary smile.

“I’m working for a Moscow State University magazine,” she replied evenly, uncapping her pen. “So, do you like Malinin’s paintings, Anatoly Pavlovich? Do you think they are good art?”

As he continued to study her, his amusement increased. Her raspberry-colored nail polish was peeling. She probably bit her nails, she was just the type.

“Ah, a university magazine,” he said. “Naturally, you must mean a student publication. If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you? Eighteen? Seventeen?”

The transparent tips of her awkwardly protruding, boyish ears brightened.

“My age is completely irrelevant here,” she said. “I have an assignment from the magazine. Now, please, what do you think of Malinin’s work?”

She was so earnest, so flushed with her own importance that he took pity on her.

“Oh, all right,” he said, and cleared his throat. “I have only a minute, but in a nutshell, these canvases show the best of the Russian land, with all its grandeur, lyricism, and courage. Pyotr Alekseevich has an incredible gift for representing the true Russian people at their best moments, in such an open, thoughtful, direct way, which demonstrates most purely—”

She watched him with a brown-eyed, steady gaze; he found it mildly disconcerting that she took no notes. When he stopped talking, she shook her head.

“No, I don’t believe you really think that,” she said. “His paintings are so fake that everyone must see it, they are just afraid to say it. That trite portrait over there, for instance—obviously, there is not a grain of truth in it. Don’t you agree?”

Taken aback by the certainty in her voice, he looked in the direction in which she was pointing. Then his eyes grew cold. The joke had all at once ceased to entertain him, and he remembered again his tippling chauffeur, the vague but unfortunate incident with the Minister, the tedious necessity to address the situation as soon as possible…

“I think the real question to ask, young lady, is how you came to be here,” he said brusquely. “Only accredited journalists are permitted at this opening. A school assignment doesn’t give you the right to accost people.”

His tone clearly startled her. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth turned mean, making her look every bit the scrawny little adolescent that she was. She hesitated before answering, then said reluctantly, “Your daughter gave me an invitation. I’m in her class.”

“Ah, my daughter! Of course, I should have known. I gave her an extra one and told her to bring along someone nice from her department.” He regarded her angular face with distaste. “Well, charming to meet you, Lida.”

“Lina,” the girl corrected sullenly. Her pad, he noticed, was now closed.

“A piece of friendly advice,” he said dryly. “Those artistic ideas of yours, I wouldn’t advertise them so openly if I were you—you never know who might hear you. Oh, before we part, you haven’t by any chance seen Ksenya?”

She jerked her chin toward the exit. He turned to go.

“I don’t care who hears me,” she threw at his back. “The times are changing.”

He glanced at her over his shoulder, and his heart wavered. There she stood, so young, so defiant, so sad-looking in her ugly yellow dress two sizes too big, so infuriating in her self-righteousness, so pathetic in her desire to have the last word.

“The times are always changing, my dear Lida,” he said, not unkindly. “But it would serve you well to remember that certain things always stay the same.”

She might have said something in response, but he could no longer hear. Purposefully he strode across the room, to where he now saw Ksenya, dressed inappropriately in a pair of slacks, slouching by herself against the wall with that typical look of a casual observer on her face. His mood was turning more sour by the minute.

“I see you found a perfect use for your spare invitation,” he said, sounding somewhat out of breath, as he stopped before her. “I’ve met your friend, and she is adorable. Has the highest opinion of your grandfather’s work too.”

Ksenya shrugged. “You don’t have to like my friends,” she said indifferently. “Most of them don’t like you either.”

Her heavy-lidded gray eyes seemed full of sleep. For some reason her answer made him feel neither angry nor offended but uncomfortable, as if he had missed the familiar door and walked into a strange room full of edgy objects and disturbing shadows.

“We can talk about your friends’ feelings later,” he said in what he hoped was a sufficiently stern voice. “Right now I’m looking for your mother. Have you seen her?”

“She’s gone.”

“Gone,” he repeated. “Gone where?”

“She got one of her headaches and went home, about half an hour ago. She said it was nearly over anyway. Oh, I almost forgot, she took the car. She asked me to tell you.”

He looked at his daughter without understanding.

“Why didn’t she tell me herself?” he managed finally.

Ksenya shrugged again. “I guess she saw you talking to Mr. Big Shot and didn’t want to disturb you. So, you boys had a good chat?”

Sukhanov had a sudden desire to clutch his head. Instead he nodded dully and stood thinking for a moment. The Minister and his wife had already departed.

Feeling a tiny throb in his left temple, the advent of a headache of his own, he slowly walked outside, leaving all the noise, light, and warmth behind him.