There’s a heavy bottle hidden beyond a pile of junk in the corner. Open it? No, not now. It would be too bad to miss this moment.
Someone cautiously scratches at the door; it’s the Sumlinskys. Ikonnikov lights the kerosene lamp and goes to greet his guests. Konstantin Arnoldovich is wearing a new jacket (the clothing problem in Semruk has been resolved in a simple way because the dying leave their wardrobes to the living as an inheritance) and Izabella, whose hair is carefully styled, is leaning on her husband’s arm.
“Bonsoir,” she says sedately.
Then she cries out because Gare Saint-Lazare is looking at her from a rough, poorly planed pine wall. Next to it is Sacré-Cœur. The Tuileries. La Conciergerie. Izabella walks slowly along the wall, her long shadow floating beside her.
“Bella.” Konstantin Arnoldovich is standing by the opposite wall, arms down at his sides, and not moving. “Look, it’s Vasilevsky Island, the Sixth Line.”
Izabella slowly turns her face and walks right up to the small, rectangular canvas.
“That’s the Eighth Line,” Ikonnikov says, bringing the lamp closer.
“The Sixth, Ilya Petrovich, my dear fellow, the Sixth.” Izabella stretches her hand toward yellow and gray buildings with intricate little balconies, but she’s not touching them, she’s stroking the air. “We lived here, a little further, right in this building.” Her finger goes outside the border of the canvas, creeps along the log and pokes at the wiry oakum.
Leningrad takes up two walls of the clubhouse; Paris, Provence, and seascapes have two others; and the rest of the world takes shelter in the corners, meagerly represented by a couple of small panoramas and everyday sketches. The Sumlinskys move from Vasilevsky Island to Île de la Cité, from Quai Branly to Petersburg’s English Embankment, from Alexander the Third Bridge to Troitsky Bridge, from Bank Bridge to Pont au Change, along Canal Saint-Martin to the Lebyazhy Canal and then, further, past the Mikhailovsky Theater to the Neva…
“I’m never leaving here,” Izabella finally says. “Ilya Petrovich, I’ll live here as an apprentice, I’ll mix paints for you or wash the floors.”
“We haven’t been mixing paints for a long time. They’re sold prepared, in tubes. And this is my last day here. I’ll turn in the agitational art tomorrow and it will be finita la commedia.”
The Sumlinskys suddenly remember the mural – they still haven’t taken a look at it! “Where is it, maestro? Show us.”
Ikonnikov turns the wick in the kerosene lamp as far as possible – the flame flies up under the glass bell in a long, bright strip, flooding the space with yellow light – and he lifts it toward the ceiling.
There’s a firmament of transparent dark blue where clouds float as lightly as feathers. Four people are growing out of the ceiling’s four corners, stretching their arms upward, as if they’re trying to reach something in the center. Under their feet, somewhere far below, there are fields undulating with dark golden rye and strewn with tractors like little black boxes, forests that look like grass and have kernel-like dirigibles soaring over them, cities bristling with factory smokestacks like matchsticks, and crowded demonstrations with banners like little red snakes. That entire tempestuous and densely populated world spreads in a narrow ribbon around the edges of the ceiling, like an intricate, florid frame inside which the four main characters soar after having pushed themselves away.
A golden-haired doctor in a starched white lab coat, an athletic warrior with a rifle on his back, an agronomist with a bundle of wheat and a surveying instrument on his shoulder, and a mother with a baby in her arms – they’re young and strong, and their faces are open, brave, and extraordinarily tense, showing one single aspiration: to reach a goal. But what goal? The center of the ceiling is empty.
“They’re reaching for what doesn’t exist, right?”
“No, Bella.” Konstantin Arnoldovich places a thin hand at his lower lip and tugs at his sparse little beard. “They’re reaching for one another.”
“But, Ilya Petrovich,” Izabella suddenly remembers, “where’s the actual agitational part?”
“It will come,” he grins. “I still have one detail left to paint. As it happens, I’ll have time to do that during the night.”
After the Sumlinskys leave, he pulls the scaffolding ladder out to the center of the room, sits on the lower step, and squeezes a thick squiggle of blood-red cadmium on the palette with a pensive smile.
Creeaaak! The door swings wide open, letting Gorelov’s stocky figure over the threshold. He was spying, the dog.
“Breaking rules, are we?” he hisses. “Leading a nocturnal life? Hosting guests?”
He’s in no rush as he swaggers into the clubhouse. Sniffling loudly, his eyes roam the ceiling, the ladder, and Ikonnikov’s motionless figure sitting on it. Gorelov stops in front of him, pressing his hands to his hips and pensively moving his heavy lower jaw.
“Come on, report to the minder, son-of-a-bitch citizen Ikonnikov. Tell me what you and the Sumlinskys were whispering about.”
“We were discussing the agitational art,” says Ikonnikov, raising his eyes to the ceiling. “The sum total of ideas placed in it, its sufficiency for concrete agitational and educational goals, and the potential subjective particularities of how certain individuals at our inhabited locality will perceive it.”
“You’re lying…” Gorelov brings his face closer; his eyes are like wide-open slots. “Fine, you puffed-up dauber, just wait till you end up at the logging site with me, then we’ll have a chat. Or are you thinking you might talk your way into staying here? Go on paintering away instead of doing honest labor?”
By all indications, Gorelov has somehow found out that Ikonnikov recently wrote a petition to the commandant, proposing to organize an artel of art producers in Semruk. That dispatch contained a detailed description of the type of production this artel could create (“high quality oil paintings with patriotic and agitational content, all possible topics, including historical”), who could be the consumers of their production (“cultural and community centers, village reading rooms, libraries, cinemas, and other places for the cultural entertainment and enlightenment of the working masses”), as well as an approximate calculation of income from the activity. The sum turned out to be impressive. Ignatov has chosen to resolve the matter after receipt of the agitational art at the clubhouse.
Ikonnikov keeps silent, rustling at his palette. Gorelov abruptly grabs the brush from him and pokes it under his ribs with a stealthy motion, as if it were a knife. For a moment it seems as if the sharp handle has speared his skin. Ikonnikov rasps hoarsely, seizes the brush, and attempts to deflect it from himself, but Gorelov has a firm grasp, as if he’s caught the edge of a rib with a steel hook.
“Well, you might get to loaf around in an artel for a while.” Gorelov’s hot, sour breath is in Ikonnikov’s ear. “But it’s proven artists, not rebels like you, who paint pictures for the Soviet people in this country.”
“Stalin… Twenty-four busts…” Ikonnikov is wriggling on the ladder like a pinned moth.
“You want to be an artist, then you need to prove you’re worthy! Choose, you bastard. You’re either with us or you’re at the logging site tomorrow.”
“What… do you want?” The brush has been driven into either his lung or his diaphragm and is ready to pierce; it’s impossible to breathe.
“I repeat: what were you whispering about with the Sumlinskys?”
“About Leningrad!”
Gorelov takes a step back. Ikonnikov collapses to the floor, wheezing as he draws in air, and coughing incessantly.