He never did find the surprise his father had prepared for them. There was no trace of any important discovery among the man’s scanty possessions. His desk contained a neat stack of engineering manuals, a framed photograph of Nadezhda Sukhanova as a very young, touchingly awkward girl, and a volume of Pushkin’s works bookmarked in a few places, with two impatient exclamation points in red pencil in the margins next to the sentence “A scientist without talent is akin to that poor mullah who cut up the Koran and ate it, thinking thus to be filled with the spirit of Mohammed.” There was also a picture, torn out of some children’s magazine and thumbtacked to the wall, of a brightly colored—crimson, white, and golden—hot-air balloon, one of the early models, across which Pavel Sukhanov had written in his slanting, confident handwriting: “Don’t let anyone clip your wings.”
In the following months Anatoly often puzzled over that phrase, wondering whether it had been a random scribble or something more meaningful, his father’s personal motto perhaps, a promise of courage which in the end he had not been able to keep—for was not a self-willed departure from life, especially in the midst of so much death, the ultimate act of cowardice? Choosing to stage the exit before their very eyes seemed an additional cruelty to Anatoly, unworthy of the man he thought his father had been, and in a hidden, most childlike cranny of his mind he kept alive the possibility that none of this had been intended, that it had all been a tragic, absurdly needless accident—that his father had simply slipped on the wet windowsill in the act of some clownish, extravagant greeting. (Indeed, there would always remain this maddening touch of uncertainty, even in later years, when he well understood that Pavel Sukhanov had never been in any hospital—that, like the poor music teacher, like Gradsky and his wife, like hundreds of thousands of others, he had been arrested as an “enemy of the people” and, having survived who knew what private hell, had been subsequently freed during the war, when the country had felt an acute need for skilled officers and military specialists, experienced aviation engineers among them, and a wave of hasty releases had swept through the labor camps—and that sometime in the preceding years of horror, his spirit must have been broken, never to mend again.)
His mother, who might have had a better understanding of what had happened, grew tearfully reproachful every time Anatoly alluded to the matter, and he soon learned to ask her no questions. Already in the first post- victory year, he watched her slightly edgy reply “My husband died during the war” change into the dignified statement “My husband died in the war,” thus making their own, very private and uncertain, pain gradually seem part of a different pain, clear and bright and noble, shared by millions of people and imbued with a sense of great purpose. He let it be—it was easier that way.
Then, in May of 1947, only a few weeks before his school graduation, there came a night when, in the darkness of their room, with his mother sighing in uneasy sleep behind a partition, he lay on his back watching the fireworks of the second victory anniversary light up the ceiling in uneven flares—and suddenly, just as a particularly dazzling red burst ricocheted off the chandelier stump, he understood the true meaning of the words he had come to regard as his father’s farewell message to himself. “Don’t let anyone clip your wings,” Pavel Sukhanov had written, and it was not, as Anatoly had previously believed, a bequest of bravery, a proud expression of defiance. It was a warning instead, a cautioning reminder that the only life worth living was a life without humiliation, a free life, a
And that night, as the brilliant traces of celebration trailed down the sky, Anatoly saw his own choices clearly for the first time: his need to live without the fear of someone coming to pound on his door in the hushed hours before dawn; his desire to protect his mother, who could not survive another loss; his hope to watch his own child grow up one day; his anticipation of the modest achievements of some respected, quietly useful profession—a yearning, in short, for the existence of an average man who chooses not to dream, who chooses not to fly, who prefers instead the wisdom of simple, everyday living. He made a vow to himself, cemented in the grief of his previous years, to carve from the world around him a small, secure happiness, all his own. By the time morning drew near, he had compiled a mental catalogue of his abilities and, concluding that drawing was the only real skill he possessed, decided to try for the Surikov Art Institute—an education as good as any.
A ball of blazing light drew a crimson trajectory across his field of vision, interrupting the flow of his thoughts. Momentarily disoriented—were the victory fireworks still going on?—Anatoly Pavlovich blinked and peered into the obscurity around him. It took him an instant to remember that the year was 1985, that he was fifty-six, that he lay on the uncomfortable couch having yet another heartbreaking vision from the past. A damp chill pervaded the study. Realizing that his blanket had slipped off during the night, he leaned over and felt unhappily for its woolly mass on the floor—and then a fiery ball of orange-red sparks, escaping the confines of his dream, sailed past his balcony again, immediately followed by another, and another, and another after that. A soft rain of fire was falling from the Moscow skies.
He stared for a few disbelieving seconds, then, hurriedly disentangling himself from the sheets, ran across the room, threw open the balcony door, and rushed outside. On the balcony above, the monkey-faced madman was audibly busy tearing newspapers apart, crumpling their pages into loose balls, lighting them, and tossing them down in quick, glowing succession. Sukhanov could hear the crinkling of paper, the agitated striking of matches, and the carefree, toothless whistling. Tilting his head back, he shouted angrily toward the heavens, “Hey! Hey! Stop that right now, you hear?”
The burning balls ceased falling, and the old man’s face emerged over the balcony railing, his cheeks smeared with soot, his eyes drowned in absurd happiness.
“Too late,” he said blithely. “You’ve missed our revolution by five minutes. Didn’t I tell you four o‘clock sharp? Now you’ll have to wait for the next one.”
And before Sukhanov could think of a sensible reply, the old man ducked away with surprising agility, and a moment later an entire unfolded newspaper sheet drifted indolently past, in flames. Sukhanov could see a few words—“change,” “crucial,” “youth”—flare up briefly, black on melting gold, before the page disintegrated into a flock of darkly luminous shreds and landed on a balcony a few floors below. It was only a matter of time, of course, before something, somewhere, caught on fire.
Anatoly Pavlovich swore with quiet fury and went inside to call the fire station.
ELEVEN
A single night of uninterrupted sleep,” said Vasily. ”Is that so much to ask for, really?”
For once, the entire family was present at the breakfast table, with Fyodor Dalevich, in an already established tradition, officiating at the stove. As Sukhanov stumbled into the kitchen, he could not help noticing that the man seemed especially energetic and amiable today—a striking contrast to the haunted, dark-rimmed look he himself had encountered earlier that morning in a morose, unshaved, altogether unpresentable individual in the mirror (who, to judge by his appearance, had been suffering greatly in some through-the-looking-glass world, quite possibly from tormenting memories, crazy neighbors, inefficient firemen, and a painfully prolonged acquaintance with the wires, bumps, and corners of a most uncomfortable couch). It was nice to know, Sukhanov thought bitterly, sitting down to a cup of cold coffee and trying not to look in his relative’s direction, that at least
And then Nina’s question from a moment before filtered into his lagging mind.
“Do you need any help with your packing?” she had asked matter-of-factly
He understood the meaning of her words—and felt instantly light headed, as if his insides had filled with a swarm of exclamation points.
“Leaving us, are you?” he addressed his cousin’s back in a voice of insincere regret, his tongue stumbling over the word “finally” just in time to avoid it. Strangely, Dalevich did not respond but continued to prod something sizzling in a pan with a cautious fork; and it was Vasily who dropped his cup onto its saucer with a needless clang and spoke in a tone of exasperation, “How many times do I have to tell you, Father? Honestly, do you ever listen to any of us?”
“A rhetorical question if ever I heard one,” said Ksenya.
Slowly, Sukhanov turned and regarded his son with a darkening gaze.
