SO

“sometimes I think he’s an alien. I remember how, when he was three or four, he furiously stomped a beetle to death in front of the dacha. But kids do that… Or when on new years eve, stood by the window looking at Father Frost down on the street and asked where he was going. I said “only to NICE children” and then felt guilty because nobody would come to us.”

In school he and some boys were caught chewing gum and having their shirts untucked. As punishment they were banned from Little Octobrists. Another time, when I had a headache and was bedridden, he had to write “Communist” one hundred times in cursive. He had his back towards me, with the notebook on the windowsill and when I came to have a look he had written “Cummunist” the whole way.

His father didn’t want anything to do with him before the age three. Before that children are uninteresting, he said. But later he taught him how to draw and gave him lessons in art history and helped him get admitted to the Soviet Artists Union as their youngest ever member. Even to participate in a group show at Krymsky Val.

“I’d like you to meet someone very interesting” Vlad said as we stood in the endless escalator heading up at Shchyolkovskaya. This person was you. And you had dark hair, brown eyes, wore sandals and a lumberjack shirt. Your voice was almost nasal and you didn’t say much, as you guided us to your studio which was one of many in a corridor. One of your studio neighbours had a pet turtle and the other painted large portraits of Lenin on commission. Both were very friendly.

We sat down surrounded by finished and unfinished portraits. You talked about your work, that you wanted to leave the Soviet Union. You liked horses and temporarily had a job at the Moscow Hippodrome. Early one morning, before it opened, you let me drive laps on the enormous racetrack in a Sulky. Late in the night we went swimming, in a pond that smelt like gasoline in a park that belonged to Brezhnev. Three weeks later we decided to get married.

But where were you? My mom wanted to meet you. She and I came to Moscow at easter, you didn’t pick up. I left the hotel and went to your studio. Lyonya, with the turtle, said you were in a hospital. Why was unclear but you had cut yourself and your mother had left her number in case I got in touch. So I called. We met at metro station and she told me about you. If I’d known I would’ve warned you, she said. “About what?” I thought.

I took a taxi to the hospital. You were dressed in a blue hospital gown and very beautiful. Outside the sun was fire-red and when I told you my mom was waiting at the hotel you got up and sent me to get a bottle of wine to bribe the doctor, so that we could sneak out. I saw a glimpse of the grid pattern you’d carved into your stomach when you got dressed. But, I only asked why later, when the scars had become pale white lines.

Mom felt completely at home in your studio, holding a glass of whiskey. You were at your most lovable and addressed her by her actual first name, Anne-Marie, which made her happy. I only drank soda not to jeopardise the pregnancy. He was on his way, you could already see a roundness on my belly.

At Yalta, where we had gone on our honeymoon, you earned money by drawing portraits of tourists. You were very honest in your expression, which those portrayed weren’t too happy about. “I can only show you what I see…” you said. We rented a rowboat and and headed out on the Black Sea. You kept wanting to go further out. I protested, but kept rowing. Suddenly you bit yourself in the arm. I shouted and pleaded for you to stop, but you wouldn’t.

The next moment you threw yourself overboard. You were a good swimmer, but we were outside the perimeter and soon a guard in a motorboat drove up and demanded you get up. At the police station in Gursuf they shook their heads at “Moscow manners” and wanted a small bribe to let you go.

Back in Moscow we walked along the streets and you took me to the art museum and showed me their byzantine collection, your main interest. You explained angles and perspective, said you have to be bold and as we were walking you’d grab my shoulder and point “look how beautifully she’s reaching out the window…!” We ate at a restaurant and you addressed the old maitre d’ as “father”. “I’m not your father” he said but you just laughed. We listened to Alexandr Vertinsky who sang about the sailors who wouldn’t sing of the island on which a giant blue tulip grows. About the rejected lover’s last meal with their beloved, and the dumb, lonely poor girl who was crucified in cocaine on the snow-slushy streets of Moscow.

“Paris!” you exclaim while pulling the curtains in the hotel room overlooking the Neva river in Leningrad. You dancingly strut a few steps across the room and say you have the body of a ballet dancer.

“He used to only dress in black” Vlad said. “And he gave away all his books and possessions as a cleanse”. He’d been inspired by Dostoyevsky and would start afresh from zero. One day he attacked a police officer who stood directing traffic in a crossing. He wanted to get his gun in order to hijack an airplane and leave the country. Instead he was committed.

Hot summer days Moscow has a specific sweet smell. You walk down the street humming “There in Tahiti a girl dances by Bounty Bay…”

— Janina Orlov

For the exhibition by Sergey Orlov at St. Chads Penton Rise