'The tasteless art,' Zoya chimed.
'The wild savages,' Lukeria hooted. 'Jews, and Russians of Asian Aspect.'
'Give us another chance,' Tanya begged.
'Give! Give!' the children shrieked.
'Clearly we've come at a bad time.' The grandmother gripped the suitcase handles. 'And we have so many other museums to see.'
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Americans of Russian Extraction for the Causes of Beautification stood on the kerb, leaning towards the traffic, their shoulders brushing against one another. Beside them, their baggage reflected their tired and threadbare state. A latch had been damaged in transit, the teeth of a zip pulled from its track, and mud spackled the broad sides. A light rain began to fall, pulling down the sky in particles of thick-grained pollution. The rain and grit had overwhelmed the willpower of the girl's high-altitude hair and it hung sullenly in her eyes. This she seemed to take as a personal slight.
Tanya stood a few paces down traffic, wiggling her fingers, as if they were a lure on a line. A last, she flagged a ride, this time a battered blue Lada. Not all of their luggage fit in the trunk and several pieces had to be tied to the roof rack. But some good news: there was just enough room in the backseat for mother and grandmother and, if she didn't breathe too boldly, for Tanya. In the front seats, plenty of room for the girl and her long legs and, of course, for the driver, a young man who beamed munificently at the girl.
The women rode in silence. The driver engaged the windscreen wipers, an outrageous luxury for such a car, and together they watched the wipers smear the sky across the screen. Tanya was grateful for the wipers' rhythmic whine, for the squeaks piercing the steamy silence between herself and these women whose disappointment was as thick and palpable as the grit spread across the windscreen.
They had wanted to see a museum that resembled those on postcards, a museum like the Hermitage with perhaps a miniature golden carriage and maybe even a Faberge egg. They wanted wide rolling rivers and green fields, or maybe yellow ones of mustard or wheat, sunshine and violins. They had wanted, Tanya realized, to see a Russia that existed only in dreams their grandmothers dreamed and perhaps had never existed at any time—ever. Well, in paintings, perhaps. What they had been shown far and away went beyond the neatly contained disrepair that they had hoped to remedy within the four walls of the All-Russia All-Cosmopolitan Museum of Art, Geology and Anthropology.
'You must understand our position. You must grasp how difficult, how very awkward this is,' the grandmother said. 'But we must give where it feels good to give—where and how it feels right to us. That is the privilege of practising micro-managed middle-class benevolence,' she continued. 'And it's always been my contention that money is only as worthwhile and as useful as its recipient.'
'I understand,' Tanya muttered.
'I'm not sure that you do,' the grandmother continued. 'It isn't that the exhibitions, the staging and lighting, the overall presentation and the concept behind them are inferior and unsalvageable, but it is what is exhibited inside your museum that falls so very short of the mark. Exhibits replicating Matisse's work, or Kandinsky or even Chagall—well, that would be acceptable, in your case, laudable. But you must understand, a savage display of humans preserved in glass jars—that's grotesquerie, not art.'
'We are enterprising, absolutely. We put our hearts into our art,' Tanya said dully.
'Your gum and cosmetics, too,' the girl observed.
'It isn't that we don't find the human body palatable.' The mother carefully splayed her fingers over the fabric of her pant suit stretched tight across her knees. 'It's just that some forms are more palatable than others.'
'So, it must be clear, even to you, that when we speak of art and its upkeep, the preservation of the artistic aesthetic, we—that is, you museum people and us—are speaking of something entirely different.'
'And then we must consider what kind of people you are,' the grandmother continued.
'The savage way in which you live and call normal.' The girl aimed her athletic knees in the direction of a gutted trolley that now blocked the road.
Tanya's hands lay limp in her lap. She could say that at least they had TV. They had Turkish tobacco. They had their collective grand and shameful past they shared in every bowl of soup they ate. They had each other. They were living life as well as they knew how. It may not be rich, this way of living, but it was honest, much more so than any exhibition she could show them. At last, Tanya opened her mouth. 'Whether we are savage or civilized, I can't say. But we are authentic, this much I know.'
'We can see how grim the palette of your situation is. It isn't as if we haven't eyes in our heads,' the grandmother said.
'Or hearts in our chests,' the mother chimed. 'We want to help. That's why we've come.'
'So, we still have a chance—is that what you're saying?' Tanya hated the pleading sound her voice had acquired, how very much like Mircha begging in the mud she sounded.
The grandmother's jaw set in a way all too familiar, in a way that transcended linguistic boundaries. 'We'll send a letter announcing our decision.'
The mother patted Tanya's knee. 'We'll write.'
At this, a supreme silence fell inside the car.
***
At the train station Tanya and the driver lugged the baggage up the many steps to the platforms. The eastern-bound train sat ready on the tracks. Beside the carriages the sturdy blue-skirted conductresses inspected tickets and stood by, watching passengers struggle with their bags. When the conductress overseeing the sleeper car saw Tanya, saw the oversized luggage, she frowned. It did not look good for the luggage. It did not look good for Tanya, who would have to explain to the American women why it was necessary to buy extra tickets for the luggage. But Tanya needn't have worried; the women stood together on the platform, blissfully unconcerned what troubles their largesse would cause.
'Here, whatever the fare is for ourselves and our luggage, this should take care of it.' The grandmother pressed several bills into Tanya's hand. Too many bills. 'Whatever is left over, give to those poor kids living in that hole.'
Tanya whirled sharply on her heel, grateful for a quick dismissal. Grateful for quick generosity. Angry that a woman who had so much could not have given more. She purchased the tickets and pocketed the change. As she turned for the women she was again reminded of how very much like wooden dolls they were—outwardly lacquered and brittle, inwardly hollow and unfinished somehow. But whereas before, at the airport, they stood so as to occupy as much space as possible, now they huddled together in such a harmonious closeness that Tanya was jealous. Then she felt ashamed of her jealousy. And then, as quickly as it had come, the envy left, leaving only the sooty taste of pure defeat in her mouth. All of which sent her mind reeling back towards the fibrous grey colour of a cloud overstretched. The colour of a shrug. An echo bouncing from corner to corner inside a very large church. The texture of a shadow in early May. The things people remember and will never forget for as long as they live.
She would have written all this down, but the cloud notebook was nowhere to be found. A good thing, really, or she might have missed seeing the grandmother's slight nod, or maybe it was the mother's exhale, an instinctual cue signalling movement. The women linked arms, a completely Russian thing to do, so Russian, so familiar that Tanya almost missed the inky blue wings on the girl's hips unfurling. Pegasus trembled, lifted, took flight, and carried the women up, up, up the carriage steps and through the narrow aisle to their Class K sleeping berth, which, as luck or fate would have it, faced the platform where Tanya still stood, waiting. They looked at each other through the window. It seemed right to Tanya to say goodbye then, though she couldn't imagine quite how to say it without sounding angry, wearied by their visit, or worse, relieved to see them go.