by Olga Grushin
I had not known, and the idea of two people once owning the whole vast unfolding of space where so many lives, including my own, were now concentrated shocked me deeply. I thought of a twisted stump in our ceiling that must have once held a crystal chandelier of the kind I had seen in one of the Professor’s books, and of a large pale patch that I had noticed on the wallpaper in the Morozovs’ room and which, I now recalled the Professor telling me, marked the place where a piano used to stand. I imagined the blue-haired, quiet little woman and the soft-spoken, kindly old man, whom I had thought I knew so well, waltzing through all that magnificent expanse sparkling with the glass and silver and lacquer of a thousand marvelous, elegant, foreign things—and I felt bitter, I felt betrayed.
Beauty did, after all, belong to the bourgeois.
That night, when the front door opened and closed and the unrecognizable steps of an ancient man scuffled across my hearing, I followed him into his study and told him I would visit him no longer.
The Professor’s face was erased by grief; his room lay in ruins about him.
“Yes, it’s best, I think,” he said flatly, avoiding my eyes. “I myself was about to suggest…” Taking off his glasses, he began to rub the lenses with the underside of his jacket, meticulously, needlessly, endlessly. When he spoke again, his voice had aged many years. “Well, Tolya, I have enjoyed our friendship. You know, I was going to make you a present on your birthday—that Botticelli album, actually. You can take it now if you like. I meant to write an inscription, but I’m not sure whether…”
It was strange to see him like this, and I hesitated for a long moment.
“I’ll take it,” I finally said, “but I don’t need the inscription.”
He nodded without surprise, and finding the volume in the chaos of books on the floor, dusted it lightly and handed it to me.
“She’s done nothing wrong, you know,” he said, attempting a smile. “It’s all just a temporary mistake, I’m sure…. Maybe, once she comes back, you and I could resume our delightful art evenings? I would like to think so, Tolya. Well, so long now. Be happy.”
Suddenly uncomfortable, I mumbled, “Thanks,” and left, pretending not to notice his outstretched, embarrassingly trembling hand. As I was closing the door behind me, a rising clump in my throat made me turn and cast a glance back. The Professor was still standing uncertainly amid his mistreated books, his face expressionless in the green glare of the lamp, his unseeing eyes gazing at the empty surface of the desk, where, only the day before, his nearly completed manuscript, the work of his life, had been stacked in neat piles, chapter by chapter.
They took him away two nights later. I was lying awake, and heard the pounding and Morozov’s voice muttering a hurried explanation in the hallway and more voices and heavy steps. Seized with some madness, I crawled through the darkness and, cracking open our door, looked out—for one instant only, because immediately my mother, who must have been lying awake as well, screamed at me in a furious, panicking whisper, and obeying, I drew away.
For a long time we waited, huddling together, she and I, listening to the faraway, barely discernible sounds of papers torn and spirits broken, until more steps, some sharply heeled, others soft and scuffling, traveled from end to end of our apartment, and the front door slammed once again, leaving behind a wary hush.
“It’s over,” my mother whispered in a collapsing voice, but I felt no relief, neither then, nor the next day, nor the day after that—for that momentary glimpse I had had of the broad leather backs and polished black shoes receding into the dimness of our corridor had been enough to inspire me with a numbing, lonely terror that would last for weeks. Night after night I would lie awake, touching the edge of the Botticelli album under my pillow and imagining with a halting heart that soon, soon, any day now, they would learn that I too was different, that I too deserved their righteous anger, that I too had been tainted by enemies of the people—and they would return once more, this time for me. Finally, one evening in February, unable to sustain this wordless, guilty fear any longer, I stole outside with the damning book hidden under my coat, ran down our street, ducked into a courtyard a few houses away, and there, in a murky, quiet corner, cringing under the accusing glare of a few lit windows behind which other boys were surely doing their homework or building nice toy planes with their fathers, I buried my dangerous treasure in a giant drift of snow and darted away.
With the advent of spring, a semblance of normality returned to my life. A new resident, a jocular construction worker who knew amazing card tricks, moved into the Professor’s study, my mother began to talk again about my father’s return and smile her wan, anxious smile, and the Morozov boys grew bored with tormenting me.
“Want to see something funny?” Sashka said to me one day. “In a courtyard down the street, the snow is turning all sorts of crazy colors!”
And so I went and stood in a crowd of children and with them laughed at the golden green and the pearly pink and the brightest copper rivulets of the melting snowdrift. And as I laughed, the last remnants of my secret dread lifted from me, for at that moment I saw that I was finally safe, that I was one of them now, that I could simply forget all about those brilliantly tinted revelations in the darkly glowing room of the treacherous old man who had possessed so many dusty wonders. And yet, somewhere deep, deep inside me, the memory of the rainbow-colored marvels must have survived—and so did the fear, because for the next three years, until the beginning of the war, I would awaken every so often gasping from a nightmare in which I flew down bullet-riddled corridors pursued by a mob of Anton Morozov doubles in shining black shoes; and every time it happened, I would get out of bed, tiptoe to the front door, and stand there for a long while in a grip of clinging, cold fear, listening to the soundless void on the other side and imagining a volley of ruthless knocks that could shatter the drafty darkness at any moment….
The knocking shook the door again, more impatient this time. With dizzying speed Sukhanov traversed forty-eight years of his life in the opposite direction and emerged onto the surface of reality.
“Who is it?” he asked, his voice shaken.
The answer came promptly.
“Militia, open up!”
Though far removed from the inarticulate, sinister, almost surreal menace of his nightmares, the words were nonetheless extremely disturbing, and he found himself clammy with apprehension as he fiddled with the locks. The landing was dim, full of wavering shadow; the bulb over the elevator gate had begun to flicker some days earlier. In the uncertain light he saw three figures looming before him—two uniformed militiamen and, behind them, a large woman of fifty-odd years in an unbecomingly flimsy tangerine kimono, her head blooming with a profusion of pink curlers. With a start Sukhanov recognized Tamara Bubuladze, the celebrated Amneris from the floor below.
For a moment an uneasy silence hung between them, disturbed only by rare, drowsy barks of Bubuladze’s basset hounds reaching them mutedly from the stairwell. Then the older of the militiamen, with a potato-like nose, turned to the singer.
“Seems quiet enough to me, Madame Bubuladze,” he said doubtfully, “and this man here doesn’t quite… Are you sure this is the apartment?”
“Of course I’m sure!” the woman cried, glaring at Sukhanov. “Sounds carry from their place to mine perfectly well. Shameless, positively shameless, and at his age!… Ah, and this must be one of the hussies!”
Turning, Sukhanov saw Ksenya’s nightgown gleaming faintly in the hallway behind him.
“This hussy,” he said, “is my daughter. What exactly—”
“Anyone else with you?” interrupted the younger militiaman, his cheeks red as tomatoes.
“My wife, my son, and my cousin,” said Sukhanov dryly. “Now, can someone please tell me why I was dragged out of bed at… What time is it, anyway?”
Signs of confused stirring were spreading through the apartment: bedsprings creaking, an irritated yawn, the clicking of Nina’s slippers crossin
g invisible space, a lamp switched on somewhere.
“Just past four,” said the potato nose in a deflated voice. “It appears there’s been a mistake. This lady called us about… er… a noisy party…”
“An orgy,” said the opera singer vehemently. “I called you about an orgy, and no need to mince words. An orgy is precisely what I heard.”
“Yes, well,” said the tomato cheeks cautiously, “but it obviously wasn’t these people here, was it now, Madame Bubuladze? Seems they were all asleep. Maybe you just had a… a bad dream? Why don’t we take you back to your—”
“That,” said the woman, “was no dream. I’m not crazy, I can still tell a dream from reality, thank you very much.”
“If it’s all the same to you, Tamara Eduardovna,” Sukhanov interjected pointedly, “I’d like to get back to bed sometime tonight. If you comrades want to come in and make sure—”
The vegetables exchanged quick looks.
“No, no, that’s not necessary,” said the potato wearily. “Sorry for the disturbance.”
As he shut the door, Sukhanov caught one last glimpse of the heaving, boulderlike breasts and heard the once famous mezzo-soprano shriek, “And I say, such behavior must not be—” The door’s heavy padding sliced the edge off the sound just as it rose to its highest note of indignation.
He appeared disgruntled as he explained the incident to a perplexed Nina before retiring to his couch—but in truth, he found it rather amusing (especially as its comic absurdity had rescued him from a further onslaught of dark recollections), and it was with unfeigned laughter that he emerged for breakfast the next day. The whole family, it seemed, had already dispersed on their morning errands; Dalevich alone sat in the kitchen, cutting an apple into thin, precise slices and feeding them delicately to his beard.
“What a night!” he said, smiling. “Is it always so exciting around here? I see what they mean about life in the big city.”
“I’d say the past few days have been somewhat more eventful than usual,” Sukhanov replied with a chuckle. “That woman clearly has a loose screw. I hope you were able to fall asleep again.”
“To be honest, I didn’t try,” said Dalevich. “I spent the rest of the night working on my book. I prefer writing at night anyway. My ideas flow better when it’s dark and quiet.”
“Excellent pancakes,” observed Sukhanov. “Did Nina make them?… Ah, I suspected as much…. Speaking of your book, Fedya, I’ve been thinking about, how did you put it, this ‘harmonious balance between form and content’ that you say characterizes all true art, and I’m curious about something. In terms of form, the old Russian icons are, you must agree, quite primitive—all those stilted processions of Byzantine saints with unnaturally small faces, short arms, trite golden locks, and eyes the size of saucers, tacked onto flat backgrounds. With their form so imperfect, how can you regard your icons as great art?”
“My dear Tolya,” Dalevich replied, “I can’t believe that an experienced critic like yourself would stumble into the common pitfall of confusing ‘perfect form’ with a form that is merely flawless in its execution. Of course, in its technical aspects, the manner of icon painting is medieval and therefore by necessity flawed. And yet, I insist, it is perfect—insofar as by ‘erfect’ I mean simply the form most suitable to its subject. What better way is there to portray man’s unearthly aspirations, I ask you, than by ignoring irrelevant flesh with its trappings of chiaroscuro and perspective, and presenting instead these floating, pure colors, these insubstantial bodies, these luminous faces, these enormous, mournful eyes? These works create an impression of a door in our dim, mundane lives, opening for a moment to reveal an ethereal glimpse of heaven, a golden flash of God’s paradise. The effect becomes far less wondrous if one dilutes such stark, glowing purity with even the smallest dose of your accurately rendered reality. Compare, for instance, Rublev’s Trinity with that of Simon Ushakov, painted some two hundred fifty years later, on the threshold of a new, material age. Instead of Rublev’s single chalice, Ushakov places eleven objects on the table before the angels, thereby inadvertently reducing them from Holy Trinity to some sort of picnicking trio! Realistic form is hardly suited for works of spiritual content, wouldn’t you say?”
“Spiritual content?” Sukhanov repeated with derision. “Is that what you call spirit, then—a dark tangle of superstitious clichés robed in centuries of random symbols and served up on an elaborately jeweled platter for peasants’ consumption?”
“And what do you call spirit, if I may ask—now that you’ve so neatly disposed of every world religion, and all in a dozen words?” said Dalevich, smiling.
“The eternal human striving to attain new heights,” said Sukhanov without hesitation.
“By which you mean, no doubt, various cultural developments ultimately designed to facilitate the advent of bigger factories and happier family units?” asked Dalevich amiably. “That is, after all, what you people preach—useful art in service of a Great Tomorrow? And by the way, have you ever considered that your socialist realism and my religious painting have much in common—indeed, the one may be said to be a logical, if sadly impoverished, continuation of the other. Both have deep communal roots, and both serve a noble purpose—the good of the people or the salvation of all mankind, as the case may be. In both, too, the painter is an anonymous teacher of sorts, a compassionate man with a holy mission to educate, to enlighten, to show the way—a very Russian idea of the artist in general, don’t you find, so unlike the Western type of a solitary dreamer engaged in a private game of self-glorification. And of course, both socialist realism and icon painting are concerned with an ideal, visionary future, except that yours is strictly material, an earthly paradise of your own devising, so to speak, while mine—”
“What in the devil’s name does socialist realism have to do with it?” interrupted Sukhanov. “I’m talking about art! Art is not about some common purpose or noble mission. It’s an expression of an artist’s soul, his individual, titanic struggle to rise above the ordinary, to speak a word unheard before, to extract an unexpected, mysterious, radiant nugget of beauty from the many obscure layers of our existence, to glimpse a bit of the infinite in everyday life—and truly great art comes to us like an ecstatic revelation, it sets our whole being on fire! And your medieval wall-painters were nothing but practitioners of applied arts, obedient illustrators of a few stale, commonplace truths about a small man’s eternity. Crushed by the weight of their own credo ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit,’ they never took risks, never overstepped their boundaries, never tried to set vibrating some new, previously untouched chord in our souls—”
He stopped, short of breath, surprised by the sudden passion that had made his voice ring, caught off guard by an overwhelming desire that, awakening all at once, claimed his whole being—a desire to break the silence of so many years, to release his innermost thoughts on the subject once closest to his heart—and to be understood. His cousin, he noticed, was looking at him with something nearing astonishment, a slice of apple forgotten on its way to his beard. A broadening hush slowly ate into the air like a spreading stain into a piece of cloth. Finally Dalevich blinked, put the slice of apple back on the saucer, and clapped with weighty, theatrical cheer.
“Bravo, Tolya!” he exclaimed. “Spoken like an artist, not a critic—and certainly not a critic from Art of the World! Still, for all your eloquence, I could never share your disdain for, what do you call them, ‘boundaries.’ I agree that art should be about striving, but I believe it is precisely by striving within its boundaries that art can achieve its highest peaks. An artist of true genius is not one who wholly dis misses old traditions and plunges us headfirst into an unknown, disorienting, possibly meaningless paradigm, but rather one who, working from within a predetermined framework, subtly manages to push away our blinders an inch or two, to reflect our faces in a mildly distorted mirror, to find a second bottom in the most familiar things or a second meaning in the most exhausted wor
ds—in short, to wipe the accumulations of dust from our world—and who by doing so allows us to rise with him to a higher plane of existence. That is why Chagall, with his deceptively simple, childlike universe of flying fiddlers, green-faced lovers, and mysteriously smiling cows, will always be greater than Kandinsky, with his icy swirls of color and elegant abstract compositions, for all the brilliant innovations of the latter.”
“A dubious argument,” said Sukhanov thoughtfully. “Isn’t it paradoxical to argue that artists who make tiny steps are greater than those who make giant strides?”
“Personally, I find paradoxes refreshing, especially when… Heavens, is it really ten o‘clock? I’m afraid, Tolya, we’ll have to continue our discussion some other time—I have to pay a visit to an acquaintance, he’s helping me with my research…. Or better yet, why don’t you come with me? Oleg has a splendid collection of icons. Come, you two can talk about medieval art to your hearts’ content. What do you say, eh?”
Sukhanov had planned to spend all day at his desk, as the ill-fated Dalí article was due the next morning and he had written nothing beyond the first sentence.
“Ah, why not,” he said lightly, brushing crumbs off his lap. “I have some time to kill.”
Summer seemed to have tiptoed out of Moscow while no one was looking. In the gray, diffused light of a gloomy autumnal day, the streets of the Zamoskvorechie were drab and unwelcoming. The wind drove along the pavements a procession of yellowing leaves and, mixed in among them, ice cream wrappers and an occasional newspaper page.
Dalevich trotted alongside Sukhanov, talking in his mild, persuasive voice. “One could go even further,” he was saying, “and argue that repression ultimately benefits the arts. By the way, your Dali held precisely that view. Take a man with a mustache, for instance—nothing interesting under ordinary circumstances, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Er… yes,” said Sukhanov, not listening. A stray playbill leapt out of nowhere and flattened itself against his trouser leg. He bent to pick it up, scanned it without curiosity (Dead Souls, at the Malyi Theater—a mangled remnant of someone’s long-past evening from the last theater season), then released it. The bill danced frenziedly across the road.
