'What do you mean?'
'You jump at every squawk from a telephone, thinking it could be your husband. Every scratch at a windowpane, rattle at a door, you tell yourself it could be him. What if your story went like this.' Mircha paused and cleared his throat:
'Once there was and was not a woman who fell in love with words. Each day she gathered eggs from her hens and each egg was another word. But the word had no meaning until it was broken and the contents consumed. The shiny egg, brown and mottled, beautiful in the way things found only in nature are beautiful, of course would be destroyed. The woman buried the eggs in the mud and seven years later.'
'Stop!' Olga held her hands up. 'Please tell me this is not why you are hanging around licking light bulbs. Please tell me there's some better reason why you are here.'
Mircha consulted his notes. 'Your problem is that you lack the courage to see and tell the truth. Your husband is dead—you and I both know it. You are hiding behind your imagination and that flimsy thing people call hope.'
Olga took a breath, held it. 'I see now, Mr Aliyev, why you had such trouble getting up the requisite threesome for a round of drinking. You are frank to a fault.'
Mircha smiled. 'You should try it sometime. They say truth sets people free.'
'It also got them shot or sent by rail to the east. If I'm lucky, and the boss is in a good mood, I'll only lose my job.'
Mircha folded his notes and handed them to Olga. 'Consider this friendly advice, a gift, even. From me to you.' Mircha smiled then retreated into the darkness.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tanya
Because on Mondays the museum was officially closed, on Sunday afternoons, before locking up, in anticipation of the coming day, Daniilov the caretaker always hung a sign on the entrance: GO AWAY, YOU MORONS. IT'S MONDAY! But every third Monday of the month was designated as a museum work day. This was a purely volunteer venture, which meant for Tanya that her participation was absolutely mandatory. All because she had once taken an art survey course and another in general chemistry and had once read, though never claimed to understand, a translation of Newton's Opticks. And because on Mondays the museum was closed, Ludmilla had no reason whatsoever to sit behind the glass ticket office and Zoya and Yuri no reason whatsoever to spew their well-worn exhibit scripts to museum goers. Certainly they were not required to work. 'They have no artistic vision. Not like you do, dear,' Head Administrator Chumak said when she asked why she should have to come in. Then he chuckled as if hers was the most ridiculous question and now she should feel as if his compliment was the greatest of rewards. Almost as great as having the upper floors of the museum to herself.
And here's the strange thing: it was. The resentment she might have felt, would have felt if she were any other girl, vanished the moment she unlocked the back door. Sublimated in a blink at the possibility of the entire museum being a blank canvas, waiting to speak in a language of colour only she could unlock.
Tanya stood before the door, basking in Daniilov's warm welcome. She wiggled the key in the ward of the lock, turned, turned, turned until the tumblers rolled once, twice, three times, and the door yielded with a soft click. She withdrew her key and hurried to the hat/coat check, her footsteps on the dark floor heavy slaps, then echoing as duller softer ones. Hat/coat check was where she kept her artistic supplies, and no, she was not just talking about the dream notebook now. Real supplies. Hidden in a box tucked in a rack. Tanya retrieved the box. She stopped briefly at Chumak's office, just long enough to slide the application form under his door, and then up, up, up the steps she climbed.
On the mezzanine Daniilov dragged the mop listlessly behind him. He had a hangover, always on work days he brought with him a hangover, and the only remedy was to nurse it with cheap apple brandy or vodka, bottles of which stood in readiness beneath a poorly constructed bust of Peter the Great.
'Good morning,' Tanya called.
Daniilov stopped, bent his wiry body in half and clutched his forehead. 'Is it? Is it?' he moaned bitterly.
Tanya opened her supply box and slowly withdrew a bottle of Marsh Lilac and a small tin of boot blacking. Consumed together they could give a man a spectacular intoxication. 'I need to borrow your shovel.'
'What for?'
Artistic purposes.'
Daniilov eyed the loud first-floor exhibits. 'Burying it, I hope.' He grabbed the perfume, uncapped it, took a swig, and looked at the liquid with fond appreciation. 'The shovel's in the broom closet. Bring it back clean.'
When Tanya had gained the landing to the third and final floor, she set the box in the middle of the room and waited for her breath to return. This was the first step in the creation of art: contemplation. Tanya took a deep breath and held it. All along the walls hung the icons that spelled the story of orthodoxy through the ages. When she looked at the faces of the saints, sombre beneath their weighty halos fitted like tight hoods over their heads, she could see their commitment to calm. For some reason, knowing that others could be calm, even if they were just pictures painted on wood or beaten out of iron, helped her own unsteady heart to settle.
Tanya studied the icon Mother of God, touched Mary's halo, ran her finger lightly over her throbbing heart rimmed in gold. Exposure to the air, the lightest of water, had rusted Mary's heart, but in terms of colour, gold (or in this case, chocolate foil) was a good choice as it advanced on the eye and suggested warmth. This is what she always said to tour groups. Had said. What she didn't say: If it were true what her grandmother taught her, that God revealed himself through the line and colour of these icons, then it was through Mary's dark eyes and dark heart that Tanya thought she could see something of an invisible God. Mary gazed at her child and her child had his gaze trained on her.
It was as if Mary knew this child would break her heart, but her eyes said, 'Go ahead, break it a million times anyway,' because she couldn't imagine her heart designed for any other purpose. Now that was love—allowing your heart to be bruised and broken for the sake of your child. It was not the tight-fisted love a woman gives when she senses her situation may be far more impermanent than she'd like, in this way sparing her own heart. Not, say, the frugal love that her grandmother favoured.
This was the difference between a woman like Mary and a woman like her grandmother. Mary's heart grew larger through sorrow, while constant heartache had shrivelled her grandmother's heart to the size and consistency of the stone of a cherry. And where her grandmother had once had some love for Tanya—she had to believe this—and from that love had tried to instill belief in an orthodox God, now all Lukeria had was the trappings of faith, the brittle traditions and sayings. And here was the strange thing, Tanya realized with a jolt. This faith had been a hair shirt woven by someone else, the smells of another body of belief running warp and weft. An awkward fit at first. But this shirt, having rubbed against her skin for so long, now fastened itself tight to Tanya. So completely had the shirt become her skin that Tanya could not fathom not being orthodox, not loving an orthodox God in all her little orthodox ways. What may have been given to her as a substitute for love had become familiar. And now Lukeria's faith was Tanya's faith, for herself, a faith unfeigned that worked itself through the fingertips, here in this museum, amongst these icons.
Tanya carefully withdrew her supplies: a wooden bowl, a fork, fizzy water, a packet of flour, three eggs. Squares of cardboard with thin wood glued to them. Swatches of cheap fabric. All necessary items in the making of an icon, which, for Tanya, actually started every third Sunday of the month when she glued balsa to cardboard. OK, not balsa, but ice-cream sticks shaved to transparency. Yes, true, this meant on Sundays she ate, on account of her devotion to art, at least eight and sometimes ten ice creams, but that was suffering at the throne of the muse, and because it was the least she could do, Tanya did it.