The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight

by Gina Ochsner

  'What are those?' Zoya narrowed her eyes at the manila-colored file.

  'Some applications forms.' Tanya rubbed the back of her neck where Zoya had recently burned her with peroxide solution.

  'For?'

  Aeroflot.' Tanya's voice was flat and heavy as a grounded Ilyushin.

  'Oh.' Zoya's gaze settled on Tanya's hips, measuring her girth. 'Really?'

  'Yes,' Tanya slid another piece of gum into her crowded mouth. 'I have to reduce and quite possibly I need to have my teeth looked at before I can begin flight-crew training. But at least I'm on the waiting list. And the recruiter said she'd definitely give me a call. Maybe.'

  With another glance, Zoya inventoried Tanya's hair, her nails. 'Well, if you need professional advice regarding hair and make-up, let me know,' Zoya said in a voice meant to be a whisper, but the acoustics in the museum were so highly unique that Tanya knew everyone, even those closeted in the lavs, could hear it all perfectly well.

  And this?' Yuri pointed to Head Administrator Chumak's file.

  Tanya laid the folder reverently on the table. 'It's an assignment. For us.'

  Zoya opened the folder and began reading. Zoya was smarter than she was, Tanya decided as she watched Zoya. She could read English without moving her lips and she read the entire application form, top to bottom, front to back in less than a minute. It was disgusting.

  'Imagine,' Zoya shook her head, but her hair remained absolutely still. 'People in America with extra money and they want to give it away. Incredible. And all we have to do is answer these questions.'

  'What do they want to know?' Yuri asked.

  Zoya cleared her throat and began reading: '"Describe what 'positive work ethic' means to you. Do you like Americans, and in particular, those of the western variety? Explain what you think team spirit means (please use a separate sheet of paper for your explanation)."'

  'This is the strangest application form I've ever heard,' Yuri said.

  'It's written by people who appreciate art; you wouldn't understand,' Zoya replied, a sour expression on her face.

  'You're right,' Yuri said, his torso listing harder to the right. He turned to Tanya. 'What is "positive work ethic"? Do such words even belong together?'

  Tanya shrugged. 'Inscrutable.'

  Zoya smoked fiercely. 'Americans are mad for work. It's why they have so much extra money. It's why they feel so positively about working.'

  'I would too, if I got paid for it.' Yuri scratched his nose absently. 'But that "team spirit" stuff makes me nervous.'

  'Maybe it's like the old idea of the mir,' Tanya mused. 'You know—the close kinship of community. Like what we're doing here. We're answering hard questions. Together. This is very Russian. This is very team spirit. We could write this down.'

  Zoya licked her lips. 'We could write this down. Team spirit is answering together these three questions: who's to blame, what's to be done about it, and how to divide it all up.' Zoya lit another cigarette. 'This is the very definition of Russian team spirit. And it's easy to answer the first two questions. The blame falls squarely on you, Tanya, if anything goes wrong. After all, it's not for nothing that Chumak gave the assignment to you. What's to be done about it? Again, Tanya, your problem. How to divide the resources? Now that's where the team work gets interesting.'

  Tanya could see in Yuri's eyes that he had his bags packed, was travelling to faraway places, fishing no doubt for the magical pike who would solve their every problem.

  'Just imagine,' Zoya sighed happily, spooning sugar into her coffee, 'what we could do with this money.' Zoya looked under her eyelashes at Yuri. 'We could honeymoon like real Europeans. We could have a baby and bring it up kulturny, a miniature version of a better us.' She smiled obliquely.

  Zoya's desire for a child was so naked and near that Tanya could feel the skin of her face and neck tighten. Always she had considered Zoya to be a little like those cheap bras the Korean woman sold at the end of their street. Fabricated out of whatever materials were on hand, they were transparent and the straps wandered no matter how tightly you cinched them. And this is what bothered her: how very similar she and Zoya really were in substance if not form, in ambition and desire. Tanya glanced at her dreambook. The only difference was that Tanya kept a little quieter about her wishes. That's all.

  Zoya, noticing Tanya's brooding silence, turned a vague smile in her direction. And Tanya! You could get your teeth fixed or something.'

  Yuri spread his quaking hands over the table. 'Yes, well, we haven't got it yet and even if we get the grant, it's not really ours,' he said quietly.

  'Of course it's ours. If it comes as a result of our efforts, then most certainly it's ours,' Zoya insisted.

  'But Head Administrator Chumak,' Tanya said.

  'So he gets a controlling portion, but we'll just make him see. He'll have to understand, because he hasn't paid any of us for nearly four months.'

  'Maybe he would finally pay us,' Yuri said.

  'Certainly he would pay himself,' Tanya said.

  'And Daniilov,' Yuri tipped his head to the right.

  'Because he's so handy with the toilets,' Tanya said.

  'And because clean toilets are at a premium,' Yuri tipped to the left.

  'Which is not in any way to criticize Azade and the latrine,' Tanya said.

  'Because, God knows, it's not easy in circumstances like hers,' Yuri said.

  'Shut it!' Zoya said, lighting another cigarette. Any playfulness in language, with the exception of verbal abuse, Zoya could not abide. 'First we'll get Chumak to sign a contract for set wages with scheduled raises, say six per cent the first year, twelve per cent the next, and so on and so forth.' Zoya danced her fingernails over the tabletop, figuring on an imaginary calculator.

  'What's twelve per cent of nothing?' Yuri asked.

  'Try to stay relevant,' Zoya snapped.

  'But, really, I don't think it would be wise to let on that we haven't been paid; it makes us sound too desperate,' Tanya said.

  'I agree,' said Yuri. 'We should temper our answers with cautious desperation. For instance, we shouldn't tell them that the biggest attractions for us museum workers are the café and the toilets. And if it should come up, we should tell them that we work for sporadic pay because the art exhibits themselves are our reward.'

  'In that case we probably shouldn't tell them that we made all the exhibits ourselves,' Tanya said.

  'I don't know.' Zoya licked the rim of her coffee cup. 'The inferior quality of the exhibits might work to our advantage. They are proof that we are just that much more deserving of the money.'

  'Because then we'd use the grant to buy better art,' Yuri suggested.

  'No, we wouldn't.' Zoya rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. 'That's not the point.'

  'What's the point?' Yuri asked.

  'Money, stupid. We need and want the money.' Zoya dropped her cigarette in her coffee.

  Tanya retrieved the application form and stuffed it into the manila file.

  'So, as soon as you return the application form we get this grant? Just like that?' asked Zoya.

  Tanya could feel her veins deflating. 'No. This is a competition. We have to fight it out.'

  'So we have a sporting chance?' Yuri said.

  'Well, I don't know,' Tanya said. 'Bratsk is universally agreed upon as the armpit of the world. And they have a museum.'

  'And Blagoveshchensk.' Yuri wagged his head sadly. 'Oh, God. If somebody from Blagoveshchensk enters, we're done for. Except for that mummy of an Altai princess drip-drying in their basement, I hear their exhibits are even worse than ours. They are voluminously worthy.'

  'It gets worse,' Tanya said. 'Part of the selection process involves a visit from the Americans. They want to observe us. In our natural environment.'

  'Oh.' Zoya's eyes glazed.

  'Yes.' Tanya nodded her head balefully.

  'They can't visit the apartments,' Yuri said. 'There's Mircha holding forth from the rooftop. And then there's
that big hole.'

  Zoya laid her palm on Yuri's forehead, as if to check for a fever. 'Well.' She stood and brushed invisible crumbs from her skirt. Yuri stood and helped her into her coat. 'I guess it all depends on you, then, Tanya.' Zoya took Yuri's hand in hers, and together they moved towards the mezzanine staircase.

  Every man in the café, even those engaged in crucial endgame moves, looked up, fingers suspended in mid-air, while their eyes measured Zoya's legs, her backside. Tanya rolled her eyes heavenward. She took another swallow of air, of cloud. Willed herself towards a more buoyant outlook, and withdrew the application form from the envelope. A simple test and this time, she'd pass. Tanya reviewed the instructions on the cover page of the application form.

  Please type all answers to questions on separate sheets of paper (20 lb rag-linen content) in 12 pt. font size, leaving one-inch margins on all sides. No answer should exceed one page in length. Photos and narrative are encouraged.

  Twenty-pound rag weight? Tanya pinched the bridge of her nose between her forefinger and thumb. There was a paper shortage in all of Russia. Certain newspaper agencies were offering vouchers and even cash for used paper of any sort. People were even pulping their precious war-time letters and hardbound classics for mere kopeks. The Americans of Russian Extraction for the Causes of Beautification could not possibly know this, and Tanya decided it was prudent not to waste what little paper she did have explaining the shortage. Also, pencils were in short supply. But a Russian can produce a monkey out of a pipe cleaner. That is to say, if anything, she was resourceful. Tanya retrieved an eyebrow pencil from her purse, whittled it between her teeth to a point and considered the question: What is your favourite colour?

  Random phrases from past exams, compositions she'd written for university classes she'd never completed immediately trotted to the surface of her memory and Tanya's eyebrow pencil scuttled over her notebook.

  When one discusses colour and particularly when one assigns value to Colour one must first exer—cise great care in the naming and distinguishing of one colour from the other. Consider, for example, the vast difference between Ukrainian blue and Prussian blue. Ukrainian blue leans toward the hues of Siberian iris in early May, at skies cooling above the vast steppe, as say in the work of Isaak Levitan (see, for example, the Vladimirka, which is, unfortunately, not at the present moment on exhibit at the All-Russia All-Cosmopolitan). Prussian blue, on the other hand, suggests a darker full-bodied blue that painters in France used to call Berlin blue and painters in Germany used to call Paris blue because it is an unpredictable and risky mixture of hues that tended to crack as it dried.

  On the opposite side of the colour wheel, yellow holds an indispensable position in modern art. Levitan found he could not paint the wide open spaces of the steppe without it and had to cut his yellows with iodine. Some painters, like Cezanne, preferred brighter, thicker yellows such as the Indian Yellow made from the urine of dogs force-fed mango leaves. Without a doubt the most important colour to consider when discussing Russian landscape painting is white fake. Get it into a cut on your finger and you might as well start digging your own grave. However, any Russian painter will tell you it is the queen of colours on the palette if you want to give density and texture to clouds in a Russian sky.

  Utter nonsense, what she was writing. But it sounded arty. And that was what mattered. If there was one thing she had learned while garnering mediocre marks in university, it was how to answer exam questions without really answering them. With the greatest of ease she answered the other questions: Americans of all varieties they absolutely adored. If stranded on an island she would take anything of Chagall's. Always somebody floated free of their cluttered foreground, as if gravity were a force designed for everyone else the artist knew, but not these people he loved in his paintings. Never them.

  Ridiculous. Tanya shook her head and stuffed the application form back into its folder.

  Outside the museum Tanya walked past the city park, a popular place for newlyweds to stroll with their wedding party, the groom with a blue sash around his chest, the bride carrying a bouquet of silver balloons or carnations. Today a limousine sidled up to the kerb, a wedding doll tied to the grill. As Tanya approached, the limo shot from the kerb, spraying her with muddy ice water while the doll whistled through her painted plastic smile.

  'Oh, up yours,' Tanya mumbled, her mood having turned on a tight hairpin. She was jealous and could admit it. Jealous and angry. Angry that anybody could experience marital bliss or any form of happiness when she couldn't. Angry with herself for being the child that she was, is. Angry that she had so completely fallen for Yuri and allowed herself to imagine that her loving Yuri was all it would take to provoke a similar response from him.

  God had given him the artist's eye, but not a steady hand. That's why she was convinced they belonged together, he with his imagination, and she with her vocabulary of colour and cloud. Together they would paint the fish of the world. Which is what she told Yuri in the stairwell one evening. Sentimental, sure, but hers was a clumsy heart that too quickly betrayed her longings. He'd just come back from hospital and was shaky as ever. For one glorious week he allowed her to steady him. And Tanya didn't ask questions, so glad was she that he'd returned, safe and sound in body, if not in spirit. He had not yet met Zoya, and it was a glorious week of possibility, a world without other women or the knowledge of other women, a simple world where two people, friends in life, would become friends in love.

  And it had almost happened! Yuri bent his head toward her and with deliberation backed her against the wall. And she thought, at last—it took fifteen years and another war—but at last he was looking beyond that cracked visor and finally seeing her as she was: the upstairs girl who had loved him all her life. And why had she loved him all her life? Because he was like her, missing a parent and feeling the lack. And she had thought that he without his father and she without her mother, leveled equally by their losses, would be perfectly matched. But then of course—of course—Lukeria, whose troubling bladder had always squeezed and pinched at the most inopportune times, chose that precise moment to use the latrine. The door flew open and Lukeria caught them in the near act of kissing. Tanya jumped as if she'd been stung with a jolt of electricity.

  'Disgraceful!' Lukeria pronounced with all her former authority of a railway passport controller, accustomed to denying people on sight. Lukeria slammed the door closed. Then she flung open the door again. 'Casting your pearls before swine! You know he's not a real Russian.' Which was her grandmother's way of reminding them all that Jewish blood raced undiluted through his veins and rendered him, to her way of thinking, only slightly more valuable than an ox or a cow, an ox or a cow being more useful and possibly more intelligent.

  'Well, he just completed a tour! Certainly he's patriotic for not being a real Russian,' Tanya said.

  Lukeria's face flushed beetroot red with rage. 'Just shows how expendable some people really are,' she returned, pulling the door shut.

  Tanya and Yuri stood there stunned by Lukeria's words, which were so open, so frank, and so anti-cosmopolitan—that is to say, so anti-Semitic. Never in her life had Tanya doubted that the hand of the Creator shaped the heavens. But having lived every day of her life with Lukeria, Tanya had her doubts about this earth, and specifically about certain people on it.

  'She's an old woman, you have to forgive her,' Tanya said finally.

  'But not crazy.' Yuri kept his gaze trained on the darkness of the stairwell.

  'No, not yet.'

  'What, then?'

  Tanya shrugged. 'You know how it is. She's just repeating the things she hears. She's traditional.' Another way of saying that Lukeria was conventional, which was to say not even if Tanya and Yuri were the last two humans on the planet would Lukeria approve of such a union.

  Yuri squared his shoulders, planted a single kiss on Tanya's forehead. Goodbye, he was saying with that kiss, and then he retreated down the stairway for his mother's apartm
ent.

  'Don't let your face get narrow about it,' Lukeria said later, after Vespers prayers and three cigarettes. 'Pearls and swine—it's just something people say.' She thrust her chin forward, pulling her back so straight as to suggest not in all her days as a railway worker, as Tanya's surrogate mother, as a tenant in this crumbling apartment building, had Lukeria ever once adjusted to the idea that she might be wrong.

  'Besides, it's bad luck to fall in love with a man who dreams with his shoes on,' she added, another reference to Yuri's Jewish blood, and a warning: he would wander, just wait and see, wandering being the Jewish blessing and curse.

  'Enough,' Tanya had said, suddenly wearied of orthodoxy, of nationalism, of being raised so thoroughly Russian, and that had been the end of that. Not long after that Yuri had met Zoya at the museum. And whatever hopes Tanya had for a life with Yuri she kept contained within her cloud notebook.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Olga

  Olga's boots punched through the hard crusts of snow as she crossed the square in front of the stout news bureau building. It looked precisely like every other building in a twenty-block radius: glum paperweights holding the pavements and old drifts of snow down.

  For three decades only two building designs in all of the Soviet Union had been approved and could be manufactured: tall and ugly or squat and ugly. This lent, according to Zvi, whose work in the military had afforded some opportunity to travel, a mind-numbing sameness to the larger cities. But the buildings had to be made this way to achieve maximum symbolic potential—that is to say, according to old Soviet logic, the bigger the concrete building, the better. Mercifully, the Red Star building was of the latter design and so filled up less of the skyline.

  An old man sat on a bench in the square and smoked with relish an invisible cigarette. Scraps of newspaper swirled like tufts of hair around his ankles. Though the sun was most definitely not shining, Olga shielded her eyes with a hand and squinted. This man looked uncannily similar to a war hero about whom she'd once written a composition when she was a schoolgirl. She felt very sorry for him now, his head bowed under the weight of his service cap cluttered with its many war medals. A new rule had been passed that no one was to throw scraps of bread or give money to the army pensioners any longer because so many of them had been gathering near the steps of the Red Star. Some had even been observed crapping behind the building and now the sanitation crews refused to pick up the turds.