“You did it! I celebrate you! Now you honorary muzhiks!”
Somehow muzhiks didn’t sound all that great.
Judging by his morbid face, John Smith had suffered as much as Nestor had. But John Smith was immediately all business. Out the corner of his mouth, in a low growl, he told Nestor, “Get busy and start taking pictures.”
Get busy and start taking pictures? Why, you bastard! John Smith wasn’t putting on an act, either. My photographer! The bastard had started believing he was the commander! Nestor felt like throwing the damned digital camera through a window… although… hmmmmm… in tactical terms, he had to admit that John Smith was right. If he was supposed to be a photographer, he should start aiming the camera at something and pushing that dummy button. He felt good and humiliated when he so dutifully started taking pictures… dummy pictures, as instructed.
Meantime, John Smith was shaking his head in wonderment and glancing toward Igor’s paintings on the walls as if he couldn’t help it. “That’s great, Igor… amazing! Is this your own personal collection?” said John Smith.
“No, no, no, no, no,” said Igor, laughing in a way that says, “I forgive you for your lack of knowledge about such things.” “If only that was the truth!” He gestured with a lordly sweep of his hand toward both walls. “Two months from now, half of these will go and I must paint more of them. My agent, she keeps this all the time pressure.”
“Your agent?” said John Smith. “You said she? It’s a woman?”
“Why not?” Igor said with a shrug. “She is the best in all of Russia. Ask any Russian artist. They know her: Mirima Komenensky.”
“Your agent is Russian?”
“Why not?” Igor said with another shrug. “In Russia they still understand the real art. They understand the skill, the technique, the colors, the chiaroscuro, all of that.”
John Smith produced a small tape recorder from his pocket and put it on the table with the sort of arching of the eyebrows that asks if this is all right. Igor answered yes with a magnanimous flip of the hand that dismissed any concerns on that score.
“And what is the reaction to realism here in the US?” said John Smith.
“Here?” said Igor. The very question made him laugh. “Here they like the fads. Here they think art begins with Picasso. Picasso left art school when he was fifteen. He said there was not anything more they could teach him. The very next semester they are teaching anatomy and perspective. If I not draw any better than Picasso, you know what I do?” He waited for an answer.
“Uhhh… no,” said John Smith.
“I will start new movement, call it Cubism!” Waves and gales of laughter came pouring out of Igor’s great lungs, alcoholizing the air still further, and Nestor felt himself swept away, struggling to avoid strangling in a vomitous stupor.
Igor filled the three glasses again. He raised his and—
“Na zdrovia!”
—Igor threw his vodaprika down his gullet. But both Nestor and John Smith brought the glasses to their lips and tilted their heads back and faked it and came up going, Ahhhhhhhhhhh! in mock satisfaction and wrapping their hands around their shot glasses to hide the incriminating amber liquid that remained.
Igor came up much too drunk to notice. He had knocked back five big shots of the stuff since they had been here—and only God knew how many before they arrived. Nestor felt good and drunk now, after three. It was anything but a happy intoxication, however. He felt as if he had impaired his central nervous system and could no longer think straight or use his hands deftly.
“What about abstract art,” said John Smith, “like, say, ohhhh… Malevich, like the Maleviches in the Korolyov Museum of Art recently?”
“Malevich!” Igor sent the name rolling on the crest of his biggest wave yet. “Funny you should say Malevich!” He winked at John Smith, and the wave rolled on. “You know, Malevich said that the realistic art, God already give you the picture, you only have to copy it. But in the abstract art, you have to be God and create it all yourself. Believe me, I know Malevich!” Another wink. “He had to say that! I have seen his work when he started out. He try to be realistic. He haf no skill! Nozzing! If I paint like Malevich, you know what I do? I start a new movement, call it Suprematism! Like Kandinsky.” He gave John Smith a significant smile… “You see Kandinsky when