The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight

by Gina Ochsner

  'Ah.' Tanya nodded at each of the women. Grandmother, mother, daughter. A matryoshka in reverse, with the granddaughter being the largest, the empty shell, and the capable mother easily fitting inside her large daughter, and the grandmother a snug fit inside the mother.

  The grandmother looked at her watch and shook her head. 'We're on a schedule. Perhaps you'll take us directly to the museum now?'

  Tanya smiled wide. Then she remembered her teeth and adjusted her face.

  'Of course.' She gestured toward the open door and the women moved through it, leaving Tanya, in a skirt far too short for the task, to manage all five pieces of their luggage.

  Outside the airport a light rain began to fall. The women stood on the walkway, their umbrellas held in such a way as to ensure maximal harm to passersby. Meanwhile, Tanya attempted to flag a ride. Though it was a short distance from the airport to the museum, the rain made for hard competition. The Aeroflot flight crews in their smart uniforms and heels had no problem stopping cars. Tanya jutted her hip out a few extra spine-wrenching millimetres and wiggled her fingers in desperation. When she had all but given up, a maroon Sputnik lunged for the kerb.

  'This doesn't look like a typical taxi,' the grandmother observed as they piled in the backseat, the grandmother and mother flanking either side of Tanya and the girl with her moose legs sitting in the front passenger seat.

  'In Russia every car is a taxi,' Tanya explained, the whole time pulling savagely at her skirt.

  The driver turned to the backseat and grinned. Then he touched his finger to the wooden icon of St George wedged in the open ashtray. 'For good luck,' he said in English to the girl. Then he ground the gear and the car charged over the roadside potholes. Though Tanya had heard that shock absorbers were standard issue on most modern cars, they seemed conspicuously absent on this one. Three times the girl's spikes brushed the roof of the car and each time the girl's mother's face took on a deeper shade of grey-green.

  Only the grandmother seemed to take interest in the city, her wide and roving gaze taking in every broken window, every pile of rubbish floating in slush, each veteran begging on the corner: all the signs of a developed country unable to recover from the shock of a sudden free-market economy.

  After they passed the third tanker—this one full of spoiled milk, judging from the rank odour—the grandmother pinched her nose.

  'Why doesn't someone move that truck?'

  'It's cheaper to let it sit and spoil. Petrol prices are astronomically high,' Tanya explained. 'So, until we get fuel, we go without.'

  'Oh I get it. So that's why there's the war in Chechnya, for oil?' The girl in the front seat turned her head slightly to address Tanya.

  Tanya gulped at the air, swallowing invisible cloud. It felt wrong to contradict her visitors and possible benefactors, and yet she was not in the habit of drawing such connections. At last Tanya settled for diplomacy, and pressed her palm hard against her sternum and shrugged.

  'Commerce stalled for lack of fuel. That's a crying shame,' the grandmother broke in. 'This would never happen in America. In America if people want something, they get it. And at decent prices, too.'

  'You don't mean war?' Tanya couldn't help asking.

  The grandmother looked at Tanya as if she were in sudden breach of good manners, or perhaps incredibly stupid. 'No dear, milk.'

  'Though some of us choose not to drink it,' the girl added.

  At this, the car lurched to a halt in front of the All-Russia Museum.

  The driver hopped out. He followed the women down the steps to the museum ticket entrance, leaving Tanya, again, with the luggage. A suitcase under each arm and in each hand, and a carry-on slung around her neck, she just managed to squeeze through the basement door, past Ludmilla coughing behind the glass ticket office, and to the hat/coat-check counter. And then the awkward moment: what to pay the driver. Tanya dashed to the ticket office and retrieved a roll of tickets—a lifetime of visits to the museum—and from her own purse she withdrew a bottle of apple brandy and a pack of cigarettes.

  The driver pocketed the items without a word, as if he'd expected all along to be shorted. But as he pushed open the door to leave, he stopped, fixed his gaze on Tanya and opened his mouth. A tirade of obscenity spewed forth—curse stacked upon curse. Add to this the fact that the man was a multilingual curser, swearing fluidly in German, Russian and even English. Having exhausted his supply of invectives, the driver at last left for his car.

  The mother turned to Tanya. 'Does everyone here talk like that?'

  Tanya pulled their luggage behind the counter and piled it on to shelves.

  'The execution of obscenity is, for many Russians, a form of art in itself,' she improvised. 'Some say this is what makes our language so mighty.'

  'Interesting.' The grandmother reproportioned her smile to express a measure of appreciation. The granddaughter adjusted her hair. Clearly, if Tanya was to cultivate in these women an understanding of the mystery of the Russian soul as expressed in art, as evidenced in this very museum, she had to get them upstairs. And fast.

  'Shall we?' Tanya attempted a smile of utter serenity and pointed to the stairs where she spied Head Administrator Chumak looming. Apparently he'd been there all along, soundlessly observing her all these minutes.

  'Ladies!' Head Administrator Chumak bellowed. 'How wonderful, how completely fabulous that you are here at last!'

  The women climbed the stairs and surrounded Head Administrator Chumak. The eldest Barker—Ernestine? Clarine? Tanya would never remember, she knew this already—thrust her hand toward Chumak. A case of unfortunate timing, for Chumak was in mid-execution of a deep-waisted bow. The woman's hand glanced of Chumak's shiny pate and she brought her hand to her chest as if she'd been touched by electricity.

  The mother brought her hands to her face and sneezed. And sneezed. 'Such dust!' she exclaimed between sneezes.

  Head Administrator Chumak, too, was temporarily overcome. Apparently Daniilov had finally run a cloth over the many faux marble statues and now ten years' worth of museum dust cluttered the air. Head Administrator Chumak produced a white handkerchief from his pocket and secured it to his face.

  'I like to think of it as ambiance,' he said between sneezes. 'Some people say that the Russian soul doesn't exist. But when I look around at this spectacular museum, my nose tells me there is spirit in excess.' Here Head Administrator Chumak began another low bow.

  Tanya pointed towards another set of stairs and the women began climbing. 'The top floor is, in my opinion, the best place to begin. All of history east and west hangs on the walls which are,' here Tanya paused on the landing to catch her breath, 'just that much closer to the heavens and thus, God himself.'

  'So you've got religious art here?' The mother paused on the landing.

  'All art is religious, but yes,' Tanya continued the climb and tried hard to focus, 'some art, the subject matter, say, is more so than others.' At the top of the stairs Tanya gestured towards a second-rate reproduction. 'Take, for instance, this diptych of the brothers and saints, Boris and Gleb.'

  'What did they do?' the girl asked, shoving a stick of chewing gum into her mouth.

  Fully prepared and willing to launch with the approved and earnest explanation, Tanya's mouth opened. Closed. Then opened. 'Nothing, really,' Tanya said. 'Sometimes in Russia that is all it takes to become famous, though it helps if you die a miserable death.'

  'They were martyred then?' the mother asked.

  'Oh, yes. But they maintained their blissful countenance through it all.'

  'How exhausting,' the girl said.

  Tanya gestured towards the opposite wall, populated by more martyrs. And that was all it took, that sweeping gesture with her arm, and her mouth went round and open, flowing with the well-oiled speech she'd memorized for just this occasion.

  'Why do we start our discussion of the third-floor exhibit with the east wall?' Tanya asked. And because she never allowed more than a hair width's pause b
efore answering her rhetorical questions, the words kept tumbling: 'We start our discussion of the third-floor exhibit with the east wall because Orthodoxy began in the east, where the sun rises and all things begin.' She pointed to the ninth-century fresco of Saints Cyril and Methodius. 'And who are these saints and why are they important? These saints are the beloved brothers Cyril and Methodius. The genius brothers are important because they brought Byzantine Orthodoxy to the Slavs and bridled the wild Slavonic tongue to a written alphabet. Also, they were formidable chess players and mathematicians.'

  The girl scowled at the genius saints. They were not the best examples of Tanya's finest work: the linseed oil egg binding hadn't quite taken hold, which gave the brothers an oily look to them.

  'And now we turn our attention to the west wall, which is reserved for fading things, for boundaries of place and time, which are continually rewritten, and for man. Why? Because even men such as those shown in these portraits—kings and princes and warriors—are only temporarily on this earth, a mere illusory shadow of spiritual events.' Tanya's voice took on a round and draughty quality she'd learned to imitate by listening to so many lectures delivered by art history scholars. And like those scholars, if her listeners showed any signs of distress or confusion, she would not stop or slow down, but merely charge ahead, forward at all costs. 'Notice the oil reproduction of Prince Vladimir, whose father, Svyatoslav, kicked down the gates of the mysterious Volga Khazars. Why did he kick down those gates? Because the Khazars were Jews who had acquired more power than was good for them and so Svyatoslav had to defeat them. Afterwards, the Khazars disappeared so thoroughly, they took their graveyards with them. Not a trace of their dead, their strange-shaped currency, or even their language remained.'

  At this point Tanya resurfaced just long enough to gather her air before plunging back into her script.

  'Pardon me,' the mother touched Tanya's elbow, 'but I have a question.'

  Tanya shook off the moist hand. A discussion of Russian Orthodoxy was like the Trans-Sib freight line—you don't stop it on a sneeze.

  'After Svyatoslav died, his successor, Prince Vladimir, considered accepting Judaism as the state religion, but rejected it. Why did he reject Judaism? Because he had observed how scattered throughout the world Jews had become. He contemplated adopting Islam, but rejected that, too. Why did he reject Islam? Because Prince Vladimir knew that no Russian man could ever be happy without alcohol. Then he remembered Cyril and Methodius. He admired them for being men whose intellect sharpened their faith and their ability to drink wine and solve difficult maths problems. He recalled, too, their reverence of icons, which were known to produce miracles on the battlefield. And this was the deciding point for Vladimir. He believed in miracles almost as much as he loved playing chess and drinking vodka. So Orthodoxy it was, and a very good choice, too. Just think,' Tanya leaned forward, her finger outstretched in a gesture she'd borrowed from Lukeria, 'what would have happened a hundred years later to the men of Novgorod under attack by the Suzdalites if the priest had not carried the icon Our Lady of the Sign into battle. The outnumbered and ill-equipped inhabitants of Novgorod would have been slaughtered. When the first arrows flew across the battlefield, one of them struck the icon, lodging into Mary's eye. The priest, leaving the arrow as it was, lifted the icon high overhead. The men of Suzdal took one look at that image of Mary, bleeding from her eye, and were blinded, down to the last man.'

  Tanya noted that the women had a trapped look about them, the daughter's gaze lifting to the illuminated exit sign.

  'The cross is mightier than the sword, is that what you're saying?' the grandmother asked, peering at the icon.

  Tanya, still mindful of her teeth, smiled carefully. 'Exactly. Not only are holy relics potent salves, but when used properly, powerful weapons as well.'

  'Do you believe miracles can happen—even today?' the mother asked, her wet eyes searching Tanya's.

  'Oh, yes. Each of these icons is a miracle,' Tanya breathed, squaring her shoulders to the icons. Because here's the strange thing: she meant exactly what she said. When she stood there among the faux icons she herself had lovingly crafted out of gutter flashing and chewing gum, she did not see the silver halos she'd fashioned from the wrapper of the many chocolate bars she'd eaten. Nor did she see the used toothpicks that radiated in all directions from baby Jesus' head which spoke of his sharp radiance. When she stood here she saw the icons as they were intended to be perceived—masterful copies of the copies shown in her art books and duplicated on her assortment of museum postcards. And looking at these icons and paintings with this hope-infused vision, they were not cheap, amateurish attempts, but the real thing. Like the subjects they depicted, these items were made of humble stock but in all ways suggested the divine.

  The grandmother squinted, touched her finger to the gold frame. 'Is this cardboard?'

  Tanya grimaced. 'Cardboard of the highest quality. The Director knows a man who knows a manufacturer of high-end cardboard picture frames.'

  The mother tapped a fingernail at the glorious cloud of effervescence backing Our Lady of the Sign. 'And this?'

  'Tobacco stains.'

  'And this?' The girl leaned toward a mosaic made entirely of chewing gum.

  'I wouldn't touch that one,' Tanya warned.

  The third-floor tour complete, Tanya escorted the women to the second floor, where she extolled the virtues of each shabby exhibit, including the rooms full of pseudo antiquities and indigenous art, comprised chiefly of faded wooden spoons, and then to the mezzanine where a four-metre iron Yermak loomed in chain mail. Yermak was the last in a long line of busts and partial busts, and because this replica was intact—except for his axe, which went missing sometime last year—Tanya felt expansive. If only she could explain why Yermak, though a Cossack and therefore a savage, was so wonderful and terrible and terribly important, hacking hip and thigh through other more savage savages to extend Russia's borders, then she would have accomplished something, however small. And so she talked, as expansively as possible, until the women could take no more.

  The grandmother folded her arms across her small chest. 'Such hard and cruel people,' she said, her voice conveying admiration or nostalgia, Tanya could not say for sure which.

  Tanya stretched her upper lip across her upper teeth, carefully, carefully. 'History is not carried in the smile, but in the teeth.'

  'What does that mean, exactly?' the mother asked.

  'To be frank, I am not completely certain. But it is a statement that frequently appears in the history exams,' Tanya conceded.

  ***

  Inside the museum café Tanya stood at the counter and paid for their lunch order: pelmyeni, pirogi, small bowls of borscht. She felt proud of herself that she had resisted the urge to load the tray with tumblers of vodka and sweets—a typical breakfast for those far too young to quit working and too old to give a serious thought to their figure. Tanya carried the trays to a table where the women waited.

  'Try the pelmyeni,' Tanya said. 'They're quite good, even by museum standards.'

  'What is it?' The mother reached for one and took a bite.

  'They're like dumplings with meat, and the pirogi is like a meat pie, usually with ham and with onions.'

  The girl eyed the plate. 'This world is a cruel one for animals.'

  'She won't eat meat,' the mother said.

  Or anything else, for that matter. For nothing on the trays — not even the borscht, which was primarily a winter root vegetable dish, nor the horseradish-tongue-mayonnaise salad — met with the girl's approval.

  'Vegans don't eat any product that is derived from an animal,' the girl explained wearily

  The mother reached for another pelmyeni. 'Also she's developed an allergic reaction to those things.'

  'Ah,' Tanya nodded.

  The grandmother swallowed a spoonful of borscht. 'But you may have noticed that she wears make-up.'

  The girl rolled her eyes. 'That's different.' She stood and
with one hand slid the waistband of her jeans past a hip. 'My body is my art.'

  Tanya blinked. And what a canvas! A winged horse, not at all unlike the Chestnut Grey, spanned the small of her back, the strong wings unfurling over her hip and the hooves dipping into the dark crevice of her rump. The girl hiked her jeans over her hips, turned and bent at the waist. Her shirt gaped open and between her breasts, for everyone to see, a red rose. All in all the horse and rose looked pretty good now, but Tanya had to wonder how well the wings would hold up, how long that short stem rose would grow over the next twenty years. Skin, by and large, made a poor medium, the tensile capacity being woefully comprised when a woman hits her forties and sometimes, Tanya sighed, much sooner.

  Finally, the girl sat down.

  'She's always making a spectacle of herself,' the grandmother said through a fierce smile.

  'What about you?' The mother sipped at her tea. 'You must be some kind of artist or something - you know so much about the exhibits. And there's that very interesting notebook you carry with you.'

  Tanya's face burned. She gratefully accepted the mother's query as a way to salvage the lunch break.

  She could say she wanted to write pliant phrases that hummed bright and vibrant; to do with words what the masters did with colour and placement, painting a dot of red next to a dot of blue and in this way allowing the viewer's gaze to turn the eyes of the angels violet. There were the clouds, her dreams of flight. And then, of course, she wanted to be everywhere Yuri was. But these were not the things she could say aloud, not what people want to hear about even when they assure you that they do.

  Tanya rubbed her hand over the colour notebook and smiled bashfully. 'Colour is life. It's how we bend light into laughs. And also shades of weeping.' She could feel her own face burning, could not bear to bring her gaze to the woman's and settled instead on turning to the girl's untouched food.