The Dream Life of Sukhanov Read Online Free PDF Page B

and everything.”
    He turned up the collar of his burgundy blazer, produced a disheveled umbrella from his pocket (ridiculous, who in the world keeps a wet umbrella in his pocket!), and without another glance stepped into the darkness. Sukhanov noticed that he stooped. Strange, he used to carry himself so straight, he thought involuntarily—and all at once, this stray little thought released in him some echo of the past, a solitary trembling note whose sound rose higher and higher in his chest, awakening inarticulate longings and, inseparable from them, a piercing, unfamiliar sorrow. He watched as Belkin trudged away into the downpour under his lopsided umbrella with one spoke sticking out, and he thought bitterly, Here we are, two aging fools, and our lives almost over. His throat tightened, and for a second he was afraid he would not be able to call out, to say anything at all.... Then the spasm passed.
    “Leva, wait!” he shouted.
    He feared at first that Belkin had not heard, that the rain had snatched away his words. Then Belkin turned. He was struggling with the umbrella, which had grown unruly.
    “Listen, Leva, why did you come here tonight?”
    “Oh, I was just passing by when the rain started, and I thought I’d wait it out!” Belkin yelled back.
    Sukhanov could not see his eyes—he was too far, it was too dark.
    “But ... you have an umbrella!” he shouted again.
    “Not a very useful one, as you can see.”
    “Oh yes, of course, I see! Well, so long now. Say hi to ... I mean, take care of yourself!”
    Belkin did not move. The umbrella flapped over his head like a demented bird. Several moments passed, dreary, endless as a lifetime. Then he muttered something under his breath and strode back, throwing up sprays of water with each heavy step. His face, as he stopped before Sukhanov, streamed with rain.
    “All right, so that wasn’t true,” he said, scowling. “I came because I wanted to see you. You and Nina. I read about the opening, and I thought, What better chance will I have?”
    Violently squashing the umbrella, he dropped it at his feet, then fumbled in his sagging pocket. A golden candy wrapper flew out, twirled in the wind, and drowned. Sukhanov observed his movements with strange anticipation. Finally Belkin extracted what looked like a glossy postcard and held it locked between his palms.
    “I wanted to give you this,” he said. “It’s next Wednesday. Naturally, it’s not going to be a big deal, nothing to write about in the papers.... Anyway, I realize now it was stupid of me, you can’t possibly be interested, so—”
    Wordlessly Sukhanov stretched out a slightly trembling hand. Belkin hesitated, then shrugged, and shoved the postcard at him. A jumble of multicolored letters leapt wildly, confusingly, in all directions, against a shocking neon-green background. Sukhanov took off his glasses, smeared rain all over the lenses, and tried again. The letters started to behave more predictably, and eventually, in a long minute or two, joined to form a few words—“L. B. Belkin (1932—). Moscow Through a Rainbow”—and, underneath, in smaller print, the address, the dates, the times ...
    And as Sukhanov looked in silence, he knew that his wrenching sorrow was giving way to some other, as yet unnamed, feeling, which was slowly unfurling its black, powerful wings inside his heart.
    Belkin began to speak rapidly. “It’s my first, you see. True, I’ve had a few things displayed here and there, but this one, it’s all my own. Just a little gallery in the Arbat, but I’ll have the whole place to myself. The name, of course, is idiotic—it’s so cliché, it wasn’t my idea, but I let them do it, because my work is all about color studies anyway, so I thought ... Oh, hell, what am I talking about?” Abruptly he stopped, pressing his fingertips to his temples. Then, in a different voice, quiet and oddly desperate, he said, “Listen, Tolya, I know we didn’t remain friends, but