Kolia Page 7

They were standing in front of his building, and it was clear that man wanted to go inside. “Do you want to know anything else?”

  “Yes . . . I mean, no.” Kolia hesitated to say anything further, and instead pulled two tickets to the circus from inside his jacket and offered them to Orlov.

  “I stopped going to Moscow years ago. But that’s very kind of you. I will offer them to someone else.”

  Orlov turned around slowly and began to climb the stairs to the entrance, grasping the railing firmly. He caught his foot on one of the steps and stumbled slightly, almost tearing the sole off his shoe. When he finally disappeared inside, Kolia was still holding the tickets in his hand.

  BRANDY

  BY THE 1970S, THE BOUNINES were on a roll. They were playing to packed houses every night, and wowing the crowds just like the original duo had done. Together, the three of them had established a tight-knit relationship in the ring — a relationship which Pavel’s bad habits began to test. As long as he kept his drunkenness within the confines of a tavern or his own apartment, while Masha was at school, Bounine could put up with his vices, but Pavel had begun to consider the ring as just another barroom. During rehearsals, he would sneak swigs of brandy, and in performance his breath was heavy with the smell of the alcohol he had consumed that day. The technical crew were all aware of Pavel’s drinking and, although they initially felt sorry for him, soon they began to complain openly about it.

  Kolia’s absence from the act during the tours outside the country had weighed on him heavily, so much so that on some nights he had staggered into the ring and performed blind drunk. Bounine had just been named the People’s Artist of the Soviet Union and he continued to draw big crowds. But he was seventy years old. Increasingly, Pavel found himself having to carry the act alone, while standing in front of an audience that had paid to see at least two members of the Bounines, and not just him. And, back in Moscow, things got worse. Pavel’s darkening mood and faltering judgement cost him an appointment to the directorship of the school. He began to drink with the determination of someone who was trying to drink himself to death.

  One morning, at the beginning of their collaboration as a trio in 1965, Bounine showed up at Kolia’s dressing room, sporting his trademark wry smile.

  “There’s someone here to see you. He’s waiting over by the women’s dressing room.”

  “Who?”

  “A director. The one who gave Yuri a part in his film.”

  Bounine had nothing but contempt for movies. As far as he was concerned, the camera only debased an artist’s performance, and wound up attracting the lazy and the narcissistic. Kolia was stunned by Bounine’s announcement.

  “He’s got a part for me? That’s a laugh! I’ve never said a single word in the ring.”

  On the set, Kolia was told that he didn’t have any lines, in other words, he wouldn’t be acting. He was to strip off his clothes and run through the forest with a torch in his hand, and then walk into the river at the end of a collective pagan ritual, danced in absolute abandon. The camera would film them from a distance, and the music that had been chosen to support this scene of pagan free love — transpiring under the watchful eye of Andrei Rublev, a monk and painter of icons — would be unbearably bizarre. The director, a young man with a head full of stiff black hair and a brow that tensed into a deep crevice whenever he leaned in to his camera, had given his instructions. Stark naked and standing on his mark, Kolia began to wonder if Bounine wasn’t behind the whole thing.

  Andrei Rublev premiered in Cannes, but was banned in the Soviet Union. The ban lasted for five years before it was lifted and the film officially rehabilitated. When it finally made its debut in Moscow in 1971, there was no mention of Kolia in the credits. A bureaucrat in the directorate responsible for censorship, who had followed Kolia’s career with great interest, had taken care of that. It was this man who sent Kolia an official invitation to perform at a Party function. Kolia politely turned him down; he would be on tour with the troupe in Kiev at that time. The official verified Kolia’s statement and found it to be true. “Until next time,” he said.

  Six months later, Kolia received another invitation from the same man, but this time it had the tone of a summons to appear. He racked his brain for a way to get out of this one, too, and came up with the not-so-bright idea (according to Pavel) of being fitted with a cast and faking a broken leg. It would lend the necessary credence to his most sincere apologies. I’m terribly sorry. The doctor has ordered me to rest. And with the help of Berine, the doctor who had treated the various ailments of the troupe for many years, that’s exactly what he did. After downing a stiff drink, Berine got to work, openly and heartily expressing his disdain for pencil-pushing apparatchiks. He was just the right man for Kolia’s little ruse.

  Pavel flatly berated him for being so bullheaded and for taking such a risk. For a full month, he refused to even speak to Kolia, unless it was absolutely necessary. Bounine, rather than criticizing him, suggested that it would probably be a good idea for him to limp a little more than he usually did, once the cast was removed. Someone would undoubtedly be keeping an eye on him.

  Kolia put in a completely credible performance. The official from the censorship directorate sent him flowers and even offered him a week of recuperation by the sea. As obsequiously as he could, Kolia turned the offer down, citing the Bounines’ daily rehearsals, which he was duty-bound to attend.

  Then he received another letter, advising him that the next official function would be held at the end of June. Kolia was giddy and started thinking up another pretext which would allow him to avoid what was now clearly his duty to the Party. But this time, the old master put his foot down and demanded that Kolia accept the invitation.

  “It won’t kill you,” Bounine admonished, making it very plain that if he kept on acting like a smartass, he’d wind up in a two-bit circus. “I don’t want to lose you. I’m too old to start all over again with a new student.”

  Kolia bowed to his wishes. His broken leg healed right on schedule, and when June arrived, solely out of respect for Bounine, Kolia dutifully clowned around on stage for an auditorium full of the Party faithful. As he moved through the lobby, which was swarming with Party bigwigs, he simply couldn’t pass up the opportunity to acquire a few watches. The clown, camouflaged in a tuxedo, hardly raised an eyebrow.

  As he walked home that night, Kolia concluded that performing in the ring was a lot more satisfying than mounting a frontal attack on an army of inebriated, rosy-faced apparatchiks. Stealing the watches (which he had happily forgotten to return to their owners) had made the whole ordeal much more agreeable. As he crossed over the Moskva, he gaily jettisoned the watches into the river. They weren’t worth a damn thing to him. He already had a watch, and he didn’t need another one.

  When he finally opened the door to the apartment, Masha was playing cards in the salon. He decided to do something useful with himself and teach her how to cheat.

  LA MAISON DIEU

  THE THOUGHT THAT HE might get married one day was completely foreign to Kolia. With marriage came children and everything they entailed — and that was simply out of the question. He had watched Masha grow up, and that was the closest to fatherhood he could see himself coming. Theirs had been the perfect relationship: no real commitment or deep emotional attachment, which also meant no guilt or crushing sense of failure if she wound up as some sort of vile creature because she had taken a wrong turn.

  Masha decided to forsake her father’s circus dynasty to pursue her studies. She had always excelled at school, and was granted admission to the state university. She left her father to his liquor bottles and little balls of used tissue that accumulated into a spongy trail between the sofa and his bedroom. She hated stepping on them. She had no interest in comedy or mime. She wasn’t as slender as her father, having inherited her mother’s stockier build, and had put on weight when she turned thirteen
, a little dough ball. She lacked the body strength and suppleness that were crucial for succeeding as an acrobat. She hated animals (cats being the sole exception) and just couldn’t see herself as a clown. She distinguished herself in mathematics and had placed among the top students in her entrance exams. It wasn’t long before her waistline narrowed, and boys began to be interested in something more than her lecture notes.

  Pavel’s health began to decline in the summer of 1981, and it fell to Kolia to keep an eye on Masha. What surprised him the most was the discovery of his own compassion for her; it proved to be as natural as it was unexpected. Initially, the two of them were not overly alarmed — it was Pavel’s normal routine to spend forty minutes at a time in the toilet. But now he seemed to be literally decomposing as he sat there. He had set up a small table, with pen and paper, to take notes during his bowel movements. One morning, he noticed traces of blood in his stool. One week later, he passed out and collapsed to the floor. Masha found him lying in a cold sweat, and the sight of her father in such a condition shocked her so deeply that she couldn’t go near the toilet for days.

  Pavel’s name ensured that he was admitted to the best hospital and given a private room. The diagnosis was liver cancer and it was made very clear to him that his drinking had caused it. The decision was made to initiate a rapid withdrawal. Pavel had no say in the matter. During the first few days, he sweated like a pig, shaking constantly and swearing incessantly. His nights were a stream of monstrous hallucinations — spiders, octopuses, cosmonauts and dogs returning from space with a third eye. And when he managed to get some sleep, he would wake up screaming, with no idea whether he was still in hospital or had, in fact, died. He hurled insults at anyone or anything that happened to be in the proximity of his bed, belching up bile that rivalled the stink coming from his scalp. Kolia and Masha simply added the insults to a growing list of injuries that included his diarrhea and the knockout punch of his breath.

  For eleven months, Pavel dug in his heels at death’s door, a door that everyone wished he would just walk through. His liver had turned to stone and the cancer had spread its poison to other organs; everything inside the big man’s carcass was slowly shutting down. The doctor, a plump young redhead who more than filled her uniform, had been saying since June that it would be any day now. But “any day now” was taking its sweet time.

  Once a day, Pavel’s bloated body was given a cursory sponge bath. After years of a strict diet of apple wine and vodka, his face was almost unrecognizable. The flesh of his cheeks had melted away, leaving two hard welts, and his waxy complexion continued to jaundice, as if his catheter had backed up and his urine was trying to escape through his skin. A malignant yellow fluid seemed to seep from every pore of his body. The end-stage cancer drugs and the daily intrusion of toothbrushes wielded by overzealous staff had left his lips cracked and raw, and his gums swollen and bleeding. With his glassy eyes, he looked like he had just been stuffed by a taxidermist.

  The afternoon that Pavel died, Kolia was walking in the park beside the hospital. He stopped to take a piss against a tree. When he returned to the room, he found Masha and Bounine sitting on either side of the bed. The various machines that had kept Pavel alive had all been disconnected, and someone had laid a sheet over the body.

  The medal that Bounine had received in 1970 guaranteed him a comfortable retirement in a dacha in Rostov-on-Don, which meant he now lived at a substantial distance from Moscow. And, in the absence of a father figure, the twenty-four-year-old Masha turned to Kolia for strength. He had no inkling that she was about to fall so far.

  As winter set in, she started staying out all night. Kolia wasn’t overly concerned; it meant she would probably wind up finding somewhere else to live. But each time she returned to the apartment, it was in the company of a different young man. This, in itself, didn’t bother him — she had the right to have some fun — but the men were getting older and older. One day she walked into the apartment with her catch of the day and Kolia was sure he was at least twice her age. He was bald and had the belly of a sea lion.

  That evening, he attempted to raise the subject with her, but Masha was livid.

  “What are you, some kind of monk?”

  “No, I’m just discreet. That’s all.”

  The teacup that Masha launched at Kolia barely missed his ear and shattered against a cupboard.

  “You spent way too much time with men when you were a kid, Kolia.”

  “Not in the way you think.”

  “Are you jealous?”

  Kolia felt like slapping her. He tried to change the subject.

  “You’ve been wearing some pretty nice clothes lately.”

  “So what?”

  “And a lot of mascara.”

  “So what?”

  She started walking towards the door, but Kolia grabbed her by the arm.

  “And what about the jewellery? That’s new.”

  She freed herself from his grip and ran around to the other side of the kitchen table.

  “I paid for everything with my father’s money.”

  “What money?”

  “My daddy’s money.”

  “Which daddy?”

  “What do you mean, ‘which daddy’”?

  “You know what I mean.”

  The teacup was followed by the saucer, the salt shaker, and the cotton tablecloth. The salt shaker whizzed by him, but the saucer found its target, striking the back of his hand as he tried to shield his face. Masha slammed the door behind her, leaving Kolia sucking on his knuckles and spitting blood on the floor.

  She returned three days later. While she was in the shower, Kolia went through the pockets of her coat. Some money, a few German condoms, and a small address book, which was full of phone numbers with no names beside them, just initials. He didn’t know what to do. He was pissed off at Pavel for dying. Kolia called Bounine. He said he was just too old to worry about whatever Masha might have gotten herself mixed up in. She was, after all, the legal age for such shenanigans. He didn’t give a damn. Kolia would have to deal with it by himself.

  The irregular hours of Masha’s new lifestyle apparently had no effect on her studies. Six months after the turnstile of admirers had begun its daily rotation, she received her degree from the university with honours. She was invited to enroll in graduate studies.

  When one of Masha’s companions showed up at the apartment two days in a row, Kolia was understandably surprised. The third time, the man in question introduced himself as Aleksandr. He was forty, blond, medium height and had a straightforwardness about him that Kolia immediately liked. He crossed his fingers.

  And Aleksandr did, in fact, return. Soon he was joining them at the dinner table and bringing Masha gifts, which, although not particularly romantic, were very practical. After they had been seeing each other for only a few months, he asked her to marry him. She said yes. Masha was twenty-five. Kolia told himself that it was time.

  She moved out of the apartment to begin a new life in Rostov, where her fiancé was the headmaster of an elementary school. With her Uncle Bounine close by, Masha was happy. Kolia found himself alone in Pavel’s apartment, which now belonged to him. He had finally found a home, and at the age of forty-six, his life took another turn.

  CIRCUS GIRLS

  KOLIA HAD FREQUENTED THE SAME prostitute since the thaw of the 1960s. She was tall with ash blond hair, which set her apart from her colleagues who tended towards the platinum blond of Marilyn Monroe. He had called her once a week, until she was finally accepted into the theatre, where she changed her look and her name, and disappeared from the ranks of the sex trade. After that, Kolia had to make do with the girls in the circus.

  After Pavel’s death and Masha’s departure from Moscow, Kolia started to see himself differently. He was convinced that he was getting uglier. He could see the clear signs of aging, and his skin seemed
to be sagging in a way that made his skull more prominent. Ever since he had watched Pavel self-destruct and melt away before his eyes, the image that the mirror sent back to Kolia was slowly internalized. Death was imposing its mask upon him. What he saw couldn’t have been further from the truth. But he had no way of knowing that. Even though there was nothing repugnant about his face, he detested his reflection, and this unrecognizable image soon became an obsession.

  At the time, Kolia was trying to put together a duo which would feature a young female auguste as his foil. He was still playing the pickpocketing mime in the ring, but would now regale the crowd with the occasional Hello! Achoo! Watch out! Hearing Kolia speak had become a highly anticipated part of the show. The act was also popular on tours outside the Soviet Union. Kolia had been granted a visa.

  The new auguste was named Yulia. He had seen her perform a short sketch at the end of her training at the circus school, and had hired her on the spot, before she even had her diploma in hand.

  Yulia was half a head taller than Kolia. Thick soles were discretely added to his famous red shoes, whereas she wore flamboyantly large but flat-soled shoes in the ring. They were trimmed with little bells, and the toe of each shoe ballooned out as if it had been struck by a hammer. Her costume was suitably understated and consisted of tight-fitting slacks, a matching oversized jacket, and a navy blue T-shirt. She wore a short blond wig, topped with a tiny black bowler hat, which she attached to the wig with a couple of rusty safety pins. She didn’t paint her face white, but highlighted her lips in a bold red, and put two red circles on her cheeks. Using an old bicycle horn, she crafted a purple nose that honked when she squeezed it. In the ring, she would appear at Kolia’s side, playing a guitar with a broken string, always remaining in his shadow. Kolia hadn’t made any changes to the costume which had brought him to the attention of the public in the beginning, excluding, of course, the minor adjustment to his footwear. Yulia said nothing during their act, and with the neutrality of her outfits, it was difficult for the audience to determine whether she was a man or woman. The posters for the show presented her simply as “Little Bell.” Kolia kept his name.