Seiobo There Below (19 page)

It would have been simpler if he had just immediately run down the steps, and then really had gotten out of here, only that from his point of view, looking at it from here inside, things weren’t like that: on the contrary, it seemed to him simplest not to flee through that door that the angels were guarding, but to go backward, backward once again, across the rooms, and there to look for a real exit, and he even did so, although of course he hadn’t thought it through; he was too frightened for that, it was his reflexes, not his brain, that were making the decisions, his simple sensory reflexes, so that he fled, and truly he ran, across the first room, then he ran across the second, then in the third one he slowed down — they weren’t actually coming after him — nonetheless in the fourth room he already tried to conceal his running, so then he ran further in a hidden running; if anyone standing in the rear rooms was looking at him, then they wouldn’t have encountered anything particularly conspicuous, it’s true he looked like someone who was dragging his feet a little strangely across the floor, but simply hurrying through the rooms, clearly he had some business to attend to, something undone somewhere, any one of the visitors to the exhibit might have thought this if they had cast a glance at him, only, they didn’t cast any glance, no one could have cared less where he was going, and since all were examining the icons such as, perhaps, the familiar couple from the beginning, who were softly whispering before each picture, but really, he engaged the attention of no one here until he reached the last room, where he saw a door that was not opened wide, it had to be opened if someone wanted to go through it, but it seemed obvious that it led outside, so he didn’t reflect too much over where to go, already he had stepped up there, and already he had opened the door, but stepping through it, he saw sitting, facing him, next to a little table, a large-framed, bearded old man, who immediately looked up when he appeared, hurrying through the door; he was already suspicious as to why someone was leaving the last room so hurriedly; oh no, that’s all I need, he thought, suddenly slowing his pace, but to no avail, it was too late, the old man got up from his chair and looked him in the face, at which he quickly looked away, and stood by a wall just as monstrous as the one on the first floor, he leaned back as much as he could against the pockmarked wall and puckered his mouth, looking at the floor before him, like someone who had just come out of the room to rest, or like someone who was just thinking about what he had just seen; he observed that having done so, the old man sat down again, or, more precisely, he slowly lowered himself down to his chair, but he was looking, not removing his gaze from him, because, well, of course he was suspicious, he thought, I would be suspicious too in his place, so that he stayed there; something was jutting horribly into his back, some kind of bauble jutting out from the wall, clearly some kind of wretched ornament, how much longer am I going to have to stand around here, he reflected irritatedly, when the old man somehow motioned to the rooms with his head and spoke to him, saying “Is Vasilka there?” which of course he did not understand, on the one hand because he didn’t speak Catalan — he had only learned a few basic expressions in Spanish, and on the other because the old man was not speaking Catalan and not even Spanish, but in all likelihood Russian, or in any event some kind of Slavic language, so he stood there doubly distanced from this presumed Russian language, and as always, when someone said something to him in this country, he nodded cautiously, so cautiously that it could be understood to mean anything, in any event he said not a single word, and just continued to stand there by the wall; the old man, as if put at his ease by the nod, sat back in his chair; he however looked at the old man now for the first time more closely, and he saw that this person, who had clearly been placed here in some sort of supervisory position, was not simply just old, he was downright ancient, his beard was thick and snow-white, and reached down to his chest, he was continually twisting the end of it, but his eyes, which were of a kind of blue like the cloaks of the angels inside, were fixed unblinkingly upon him, he said nothing for a while, then he began to hem and haw, and like someone who took it completely for granted that the other one understood what he was beginning to say in his own language in this foreign city, spoke again in what, as before, was most likely Russian, saying that he could not stand it anymore, all this slacking off, he’d chewed it over a hundred times already why these pictures were here, and what their purpose was, that the two of them were the Gallery itself, but as for that one, he gestured in vexation, it was a waste of time even to talk about it, he was just a slacker, oh, that Vasilka, the old man sighed, shaking his head at length, to which he responded again with a nod of the head, and with that he finally convinced the old man that he understood what he was saying, moreover that he agreed with him, and that Vasilka really should have been sitting there, obviously in front of something by the entrance where the angels were; yes, he must mean the entrance; the old man, sensing his concurrence, nodded in gratitude, since, he explained, the treasures inside there were of inestimable value, because there were things here, selected items, not only from the Moscow collections but material from Kiev and Novgorod and Pskov and Yaroslavl and from more recent times too, these just could not be left unsupervised, with no protection, there was no way this could be entrusted to the Catalans, they would have their heads off if they found even a single spot on any of them, he had kept explaining this to Vasilka, continuously, but you could explain all you wanted, Vasilka slipped away like a lizard and of course he knew — the old man pointed to himself — that if he went through the rooms, then there wouldn’t be anyone here, so what could he do; every morning he said, look, Vasilka, the devil will seize you if you slip away so much, you’ll never get back home — because they were sent here from home — and so on, he just kept on saying that they were the two room-guards for the Gallery, and that he had pleaded in vain for them not to stick him with Vasilka for this traveling exhibition, anyone but that Vasilka, but the main boss didn’t listen to him, because no one had listened to him for a long time now; he had grown old, in his left ear — and he showed him the spot — he was completely deaf, and he didn’t even see that well, but don’t tell that to anyone, no one had to know that, because they then would kick him out of the Gallery, he would die immediately if that happened, for the gentleman could well believe him, and again he pointed at himself with both hands, he had worked as a guard in the Gallery for more than forty years now, everything, he had lived through everything already that was just possible to live through: this one left, that one came, this one left again, that one was appointed again, it was a pure madhouse, that is why he had always stuck to being a guard, no one was envious of that, yet he was, he noted — a confidential expression on his face — a born Vzdornov, yes, he gave a brief laugh, from
that
branch, from the famous and renowned family of Vzdornov, not even as far removed from the most famous of all, batyushka Gerold Ivanovich, who for that matter was now living in Ferapontov, completely withdrawn from the world, so that every single day he could look at the world-famous frescoes of Dionisiy, which — they say — also had made him go a bit mad but that doesn’t really matter because, getting back to himself, they — Gerold Ivanovich here, Gerold Ivanovich there — they could talk all they wanted, he would never leave his position as a museum guard for any amount of money, this had always suited him and in the most perfect way imaginable, because here at least a person was left in peace and, spreading his hands wide, he waited for the accord of his audience, the audience of course nodded once very seriously, but by then had already decided okay, this was fine, he would act as if he were paying attention for one more minute but then no more, he would go down from here to the ground floor, from there out onto the street, and out of here, because it was, all the same, ridiculous how a person couldn’t get out of here because he had been attacked by a vision — because what else could have happened to him earlier than a vision, he didn’t dare to move from here lest they grab him because of the ticket, well he hadn’t done anything wrong, he hadn’t taken anything, he hadn’t even touched anything at all, the only problem was that he had no entrance ticket, so what, that’s nothing, he would talk his way out of it somehow, later, but when he had already decided, and had launched himself off a mere hair’s breath away from the wall, the old man started in again, at which he simply leaned back once more, for he thought it better if, for the time being, he was leaning against the wall, at least he could find a smoother spot for his back on the wall, and not that same bauble jutting out, yet still: he stayed there, and he could have heard that “I know you too, just came for that, I know, because everyone comes for that, everyone comes across that door, and I can see right away that they’re disappointed, well of course I would be too, because the Rublev, the real one, that’s something else, but that never, you understand, my dear sir, never will be moved from the walls of the Tretyakov Museum,” and there it would stay, he continued to explain, it had turned up there from the State Institution of Restoration during the time of Comrade Stalin; the monks from Radonezh, from whom it had been taken to be sent to the State Institute of Restoration, received a copy in its place, so that the original could only be seen by someone who traveled specially to Moscow and looked at it there, the one here, however, inside, was not the one from Radonezh but a third variation, and from among the hundreds upon hundreds of copies prepared at that time, before Ivan the Terrible, the most beautiful of its kind, indeed a perfectly magnificent copy, he gestured toward the inner rooms, no one could even say that it’s not, maybe Miss Iovleva or Yekaterina Zheleznyeva found it somewhere in the depositories, in a word it was beautiful and superb and everything, well, but the original, the Rublev, that was something else altogether, it was too difficult even to say where this very difference lay, because as even he could see, the figures, the contours, the composition, the measurements, the placement all corresponded near perfectly to the original Rublev, and, well, as a matter of fact, there was a divergence only in the table, because in the Rublev, there is a chalice on the table, and that’s it, we don’t even know what kind, because the paint peeled off, it didn’t happen in the State Institute of Restoration, my brother-in-law’s wife’s younger daughter, Ninochka, worked there, it wasn’t there but in an older time, still under the Czars, for as you know, these icons . . . the old man dug sadly into his beard — although it isn’t clear that you do know, because, he pointed at him standing by the wall, he immediately saw, as he came through the door, that he was Russian and that he wasn’t really an expert, but one of those art-loving types, the kind that speak very little as they view the exhibition, while the experts, they never stop blabbing on and on, that is how you can tell who they are, they haven’t even come through the door yet and you can hear them blabbing away already, just like birds chirping back and forth, that suchlike and suchlike and Byzantine this and Theophanic Greek that, and Rublev this and Dionisy that, well, to put it briefly, it would be better if they kept quiet, and he pointed to himself, he during those forty years had come to know everything about these icons, there was no question anyone could put to him that he could not answer, because he had read everything, and so many things had stuck in his mind that even Miss Iovleva or Yekaterina Zheleznyeva herself sometimes asked him about a name, or a date, if they just couldn’t happen to recall it right then, and he always answered too when he was asked a question, because he never forgot anything, because everything stayed in his head; he had grown up with these amazing icons at home, so that he could be trusted when he said these icons here inside, you understand, don’t you, and the other ones too, all the ones back home, were very frequently repainted, restored, or simply painted over, yes — and that one too, the Troika — you understand already, and the one back home, the Rublev, it was painted over many times, they even say — the old man gestured for his audience to come close, who in turn, however, did not budge from the wall — that there is no point in restoring it to the original state with all of these modern tools, even then it isn’t the original state, “because it is impossible by now to restore the original state and even sometimes you can hear” — the old man lowered his voice —“that this is particularly true for the Lord Our Father and the Holy Spirit, in a word, you know, I understand that in the Rublev the mouth of the angel on the left and the angel on the right originally curved down a bit more, thus they were sadder in the original, which of course I just happened to hear somewhere, I don’t even know where, it could be that not even the half of it is true,” what did it matter to him anyway, to a Russian who just happened to wander in here, it didn’t matter here anyway, he could just delight in this copy, for it was beautiful, wasn’t it? and as he held a slight pause here, and again just waited for a sign of consent, he leaned forward a little, toward him, again he had to nod once, but now somehow it was going a little more easily, because now he was convinced that the old man was not dealing with him in an unfriendly way, but rather gave the impression of someone who was trying to explain something, so that there was nothing in his voice to suggest that he was about to ask for the ticket, no, this was no longer about the ticket, but what then was it all about, the old man had clearly mistaken him for someone else, but if that were true, then what would happen if it emerged that he was not the person he had been mistaken for; or it wasn’t even a question of mistaken identities but just that he was bored, very bored, and he had to sit down here, and his only hope was that he might latch onto someone coming from the last room, someone with whom he could while away the time; but what was he talking about, how the hell could someone just go on and on like that, and why did he even think that he was interested, because he wasn’t interested at all, and even if he understood he still wouldn’t be interested, and it was just for the sake of appearances, for self-protection, that he had stayed with him in this crazy building, where there were even angels; this was all he needed, well enough of this, he thought, and now he pushed himself away from the wall a little more decisively than before, but the old man right at that point raised his left arm and said to him, what, don’t be in such a hurry, they’d been having such a nice conversation, he had to sit there from morning till evening, he wasn’t saying that by way of complaining but it was just that, well, it was nice to talk a little with someone about these things, with someone who was interested, and it was just as if they were back at home in the Gallery; there too, if someone asked him a question, he always told them everything he knew, just as he was telling him now that all in all, in his opinion, the Troika was the most beautiful painting in the entire world, no one had ever succeeded in depicting Heaven — the imperceptible — with such staggering results, that is to say, like reality itself; never, declared the old man and he raised his index finger as well, at which the visitor of course began to retreat back toward the wall, never, no one, and that was exactly why every single copy is so important, and that is exactly why this one that he had seen at the entrance to the exhibit was so important, because the copy, as he obviously knew — the old man looked at him sternly — was not the same thing as here in the West; at home, if a copy was created from an icon, and then this copy was consecrated by the bishop, it was then accordingly acknowledged as genuine, and from that point on the very same sanctity would emanate from the copy as from the original, and it was like this with the Troika too, and in addition to that, a copy more beautiful than the one they had brought here would never be found anywhere, it had only come to light recently, and everyone had come to see the miracle, they even came from the highest echelons, all the restorer-colleagues were there, all of the historians, when Miss Iovleva or Miss Zheleznyeva — he didn’t recall exactly who it was now — had found it and brought it up from storage, a small crowd stood there, he remembered it well to this very day, and everyone was amazed by this copy, because at first glance it really seemed to be the original, as everything in it tallied, if he could put it that way: the measurements tallied, the composition tallied, the proportions, the outlines, it was only on the table that something was different, but up to this very day no one has known, there is only speculation, what could have originally been painted on this copy, and chiefly as to why it was different than what was on the table in the Rublev, they just stood there and they were all enchanted, and the guards were there too, and they wanted to exhibit it straight away, but then nothing at all came of that, because where should they put it? perhaps next to the original?! a nearly perfect copy?! — no, that was impossible, so then instead they didn’t put it anywhere, yet when this traveling exhibit got started, there was no debate to speak of, they immediately selected it namely as one of the first items, because of course moving the original was out of the question, the original by Rublev, that one — the Director himself, Valentin Rodionov, stated — shall remain forever in its place, for where the Rublev Troika is hung becomes a shrine, even Director Rodionov said that; and he himself would say that it didn’t really matter, where the Troika was, its sacred force was immediately felt, if someone looks at it they surely understand, and that is why no one dared to touch it; he — and again the old man pointed by way of explanation at himself — believed that this was the reason why no one had dared to move it since 1928, well who would take on the task of touching it without praying, without kissing it, it was trouble enough that it had been moved in the old days from the church at Radonezh because, well, it wasn’t painted to be put in a museum, and for people just to stare at it like some ordinary picture . . . but no matter, one thing is certain, that at least no one was going to touch it anymore, in this way it would stay with them, in the Tretyakov, for even if the Tretyakov is not a church, the world — the old man lowered his voice and signaled with a movement of his hand, like a great lord, that he could go now if he wished, he had concluded all that he wished to say — the world should just look at this copy, and then try to figure out which one was real.