The Dream Life of Sukhanov by Olga Grushin

penetrates the dusty room, and simultaneously two major shifts occur in the world. First, I realize that this foot with its splayed toes is mine, that this hand drawing a circle on the floor is also mine, that this playing child is, in fact, me—and second, and somehow more important, the carpet suddenly reveals its true color, and it’s not gray at all, it’s green, the deepest, purest, greenest green, the overwhelming color of my happiness. Yes, that is what I remember best—the colors, the fleeting shifts of shadows, certain ephemeral combinations of light and darkness; and when I lift my face to the window, the sunlight plays on my skin, alive and warm, and when I close my eyes, there are flashing red circles swimming lustrously behind my eyelids, and when I open my eyes again ...
    He opened his eyes, and was shocked to behold blackness instead of brightness behind the window and, reflected in the glass, the momentarily unrecognizable, vaguely unpleasant face of a middle-aged man with wide cheekbones, hair receding from a tall forehead, heavy jowls, small gray eyes swimming in two silver-rimmed holes of emptiness, and a thin mouth to which the lit windows in a building across the street imparted an illusory, horrible, golden-toothed smile.... Anatoly Pavlovich hastily took off his glasses. All at once it occurred to him that it was quite late, that it had been a very eventful day, that he was tired. Sighing, he slid the proofs neatly to the corner of his desk, pulled at a switch cord suspended between the bronze wings of Pegasus, and waded through familiar darkness to the bedroom where Nina was already sleeping, breathing in her soft, infinitely comforting way.
    No sooner had he slipped into the night than he saw Belkin again, but this time there was nothing objectionable in his presence. Dressed in a tight maroon livery, Belkin stood immobile like a toy soldier in a corner of a hall set for a lavish dinner party but amusingly full of ribboned horses. The horses pranced about, having quiet, dignified conversations among themselves. One of them, covered with an embroidered red cloth with little golden bells around the edges, trotted toward Sukhanov and neighed solemnly, “My daughter is a very pretty girl,” and he was just about to laugh in the horse’s face, when Belkin jumped, grabbed hold of the tablecloth on the longest table, and pulled, and all the plates and silverware and goblets cascaded onto the floor with an earsplitting crash. Scandalized by such uncivilized behavior, Sukhanov sat up abruptly—and realized that Nina’s soft breathing had stopped, and that she too was awake, leaning on her elbow in the dark next to him, listening intently. Tinkles of broken glass were still falling somewhere overhead, and now came a woman’s muffled scream followed by a stampede of frantic footsteps. Then all was silent.
    “What’s going on?” he whispered.
    “The woman upstairs has a sick father,” Nina whispered back. “He must be having a bad night.”
    They listened for a while longer, but all seemed quiet, and Nina laid her head back onto her pillow; soon her breathing grew even again. The phosphorescent clock by the bed showed a few minutes past four. Feeling a bit unsettled, Sukhanov closed his eyes as well, wishing he could return to his curious dream about the talking horse—and it was precisely then that the day played one last trick on Anatoly Pavlovich. His memory stirred, reshuffled itself—and he knew without the slightest doubt that at the moment when he had stopped paying attention, the Minister of Culture had been in the process of inviting him to one of his famed dacha gatherings, and that there had even been some hint of an incredible, celestial combination involving the Minister’s daughter and his own Vasily. Sukhanov moaned. Then, as if to console him, his memory obediently served up the image he had vainly sought to capture at the party—a fat, pompous hamster from a popular