The Dream Life of Sukhanov

“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 creme de la creme, 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 decolletages 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.