had been closed, and hearing the sounds of an animated discussion inside, I had decided against interrupting. He gave me an odd look, then shrugged.
“Stop sounding so damn apologetic,” he said. “I don’t own her or her time.”
“But I thought you were… Aren’t you and Nina…”
“You thought wrong,” he said curtly. “We are friends. Old friends. We went to school together. The first time we talked, we were fourteen. She brought a sandwich with caviar for lunch, while I had a piece of bread spread with butter and sprinkled with sugar—the only thing my mother could afford. She was so fascinated she asked me for a trade. Good luck with her, Tolya. Now, about this last piece of yours, I’ve been thinking it over, and I’m not sure the composition works. Wouldn’t it be better if—”
I felt relieved at having Lev’s blessing, and dizzy with possibilities. After that, I saw her often. She had numerous admirers, of course, many of them in the highest ranks of society, where she moved freely because of her father, and I had no hope of impressing her with my mildly successful position in life or my unremarkable material accomplishments. Neither had I that sleek suavity acquired through experience with women, for in spite of being twenty-eight, I could brag of nothing but three or four passing flirtations in the whole of my past. But as I soon discovered, she loved art—loved it with a passion surprising in someone of Malinin’s flesh and blood. Not being blessed with talent (as she herself readily admitted), she had studied art history at the Moscow State University and was now working as a curator at the Tretyakovskaya Gallery. Soon a visit to this or that museum, a walk through this or that exhibition became our habitual way of spending time together, and as I would treat her to a fiery discourse on the nature of Fra Angelico’s colors or van Gogh’s brushstroke, I would feel encouraged by the look of reluctant admiration I imagined at times in her wonderful mermaid eyes.
One evening in late May, I took her to the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge, to show her the garlands of liquid lights carried away by the river and tell her about a painting I had envisioned, with a mysterious city of golden churches and lacelike towers gleaming mistily under the still, dark waters of a lake, its quivering contours too incandescent to be a reality, too enchanting to be a reflection, too palpable to be a dream. And then I looked up and saw her standing there, in her narrow-waisted white dress, absently picking tiny blossoms off a branch of deep purple lilacs I had brought her and watching their twirling descent into the current below—and I could wait no longer. I told her I loved her, had loved her since the first time I saw her. She was quiet for a moment, then said expressionlessly that it was growing chilly, and could I please walk her home; but something in her face made my heart flutter like a mad butterny—and a few weeks later, she kissed me.
It was the first real day of summer, bright and green and hot, and we went for a walk in Gorky Park. Lev came too, with Alia, a giggling nineteen-year-old with an upturned nose and eyes blue and empty as glass, whom he claimed to have met a week before in an ice cream line. The four of us rented a boat, but it proved too small to hold everyone at once, and Lev and I took turns rowing the girls around the lake; and when, distracted by the glittering waves and the sun flashing into my eyes and Nina’s summery, lighthearted presence, I crashed the boat into the low branches of a willow tree, Nina began to laugh, and Lev and Alia waved and shouted from the shore, and as I tried to extricate us from the wavering, sparkling, leafy ambush, she suddenly leaned over—and kissed me.
When we parted later that day, I did not go home. Drunk with happiness, I walked the streets of Moscow, watching the darkness fall, watching windows pop up one after another and then go out, watching the sky grow thinner. When the first gray light touched the rooftops, the city unexpectedly rustled with a warm summer rain, and laughing, I ran to a nearby bus stop and waited in its glass-walled shelter. Half an hour passed, and still the rain gave no sign of abating. Realizing how close I was to the institute, I made a dash through the downpour and minutes later burst into the building.
Once in my studio, I immediately succumbed to the temptation of the virgin canvas that was stretched on my easel, for a certain image had haunted me all night—a lake, a boat, and in it, a woman—a demure, radiant nude with breasts, arms, and legs sprouting flowers, hundreds, thousands, myriad blue and white flowers whose fresh, fragrant profusion was gradually transformed into the blue, sun-dappled water on which the boat was floating gently. As I painted, I grew oblivious of the world around me—a hubbub of voices in the corridor, a patter of rain on the windowsill, a brisk knock on the door, a heavy step, a voice saying importantly, “There is a certain issue I need to discuss with you, Anatoly Pavlovich….”
Then, glancing up sharply, I saw a balding man entering the room, his red face stony, his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his jacket. It took me a heartbeat to recognize Leonid Penkin, the institute director—and instantly I became aware of my unshaved chin, my rain-drenched clothes, the circles under my eyes, a possibly missed morning lecture, and worse yet, a bare breast quite visibly materializing under my brush amidst a torrent of bluebells. With scarcely a nod for a greeting, the director commenced striding back and forth across the floor, staring majestically somewhere over my head and talking—talking about certain rumors that had reached him, certain, so to speak, artistic gatherings in a certain questionable home that I surely knew about, certain actions, moreover, that he would very much regret to have to undertake in certain contingencies…. Praying that he would fail to notice my painting, I hardly listened to his vociferous rhetoric.
“The way I see it,” he was saying, “socialist art is like a fast train into the future, and I, for one, would be rather sorry to see someone with your potential get off that train, for let me tell you, young man, it’s the only train there is. But I’m afraid you must get off if… Are you listening to me? You must get off if you don’t produce a ticket this instant!”
“A ticket?” Sukhanov repeated in confusion. “What ticket?”
“I thought as much,” said the man, and pushed his red face closer to Sukhanov’s. “A stowaway! Well, time to take a walk. Unless, of course, you want to pay a fine. Pay up, or get off.”
The people around them murmured excitedly. Through his broken glasses, Sukhanov peered outside and saw another badly lit platform without a name, disconcertingly similar to the one he had left dreams and dreams ago, in Bogoliubovka. Shuddering, he said, “All right, all right, how much?” and hastily reached inside his pocket. He felt some loose change rolling behind the lining, but his wallet was not there. His wallet, he suddenly remembered with a sinking heart, was in a side compartment of his bag, and his bag—his bag had been stolen.
His voice trembling now, he tried to explain his predicament to the conductor, offering what coins he had, swearing he would send the rest of the money in the mail, even humiliating himself by announcing that he was a very influential man, Anatoly Pavlovich Sukhanov, the editor in chief of the magazine
For a while after, Sukhanov stumbled up endless flights of stairs and trod along echoing passageways, emerging finally on a wide street, with a row of identical apartment buildings on one side and a park on the other. It looked like a big city. For a long time he waited aimlessly inside a glass-walled shelter by the road. (Hadn’t he done this recently? He could not remember.) Eventually the darkness parted with a squeal of tires, and a rectangle of concentrated yellow light, bobbing with more demonic faces at the windows, rolled up and slid open its doors. He stuck his head inside and inquired weakly, addressing no one in particular, “What city is this, please?”—but in reply received only hooting and someone’s carelessly phrased advice on public drunkenness. He was about to edge away, when a man seated by himself up front took a closer look at him and asked him where he wanted to go.
“Moscow,” Sukhanov said. The demons mocked him gleefully, but the man up front did not laugh. His face was not like the others, and his middle-aged eyes were sad.
“Where in Moscow?” he asked after the demons had quieted behind his back. It appeared that the train had deposited Sukhanov on the western outskirts of the capital; and while the metro was not yet running, the man told him, all he needed to do was take night bus number 403 to Krylatskoe and there switch to the number 13 going directly to the Tretyakovskaya station. “Just wait here,” said the man, glancing at his wrist. “There’ll be a 403 coming any minute.”
“You are very kind,” Sukhanov said humbly.
