Upper Maslovka Street has played the same role in the life of Moscow as Montparnasse in Paris. Dina Rubina's story revolves around a well-known building constructed in the Stalin era that houses artists, one of which is a celebrated sculpter and "potent old woman," Ann Borisovna Skordina. In her youth, she studied with Bourdelle and was friendly with Modgliani, Zadkine, and Soutine. After the First World War, she became a professor at the legendary Higher Technical and Artistic Studios (Vkhutemas). Having survived the Stalinist era and witnessed the agony of the Soviet empire, she lives on "like some gnarled old fossil."

Living with her in a tiny box of a room off her studio is Petya, a young man whom, when still a student fifteen years before, Anna Borisovna "took in like a lost pup, fed and supported." Petya, once a rising star in the theater, has become peevish, gloomy and quarrelsome. He has lost his friends and cannot find a job he deems worthy. Anyone who comes to visit the Old Lady for the first time inevitably wonders what ties these two people together.

The studio has many visitors: the talented artistic Matvei, who would rather be poor than serve some semi-official organ of art; his wife Nina, a vivid woman, strong but at the same time sacrificial; the art student Sashka, the picture of health and affability, who is devoted to the Old Lady. Each has an opinion about the young man and Anna Borisovna, but almost everyone pegs Petya a scoundrel, a Rastignac just waiting for the Old Lady to die. Only the closed-mouth Matvei, who has known them for many years, understands the complexity. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Dina Rubina made her debut as a writer at age sixteen and went on to publish her stories regularly in leading Soviet and Russian magazines. Her best-selling 1977 story "When Will It snow?" was made into a film and broadcast on radio and television. Rubina emigrated to Israel in 1990 and was awarded the Arie Dulchik Prize for Literature. In 1993, her novella "In Thy Gates" was nominated for the Russian Booker Prize. Rubina's latest book is "The Messiah Is coming!" (Tel Aviv: Ivrus, 1996).

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Marian Schwartz has been translating Russian fiction, history, philosophy, and criticism for over twenty years. Her publications include many works by Nina Berberova and Edward Radzinsky's "The Last Tsar."

EXCERPT

     He went up to his own tiny room without stopping to look in on the old lady, threw his raincoat down on the armchair-a very rare event with him, even in these damnable last few months-and collapsed on his narrow bed.
     Voices reached him from the studio below. The old lady was droning on in her basso-telling some story or other. She loved to expatiate on the topic "In My Day"- although actually she looked on every day as her day. A woman's young and powerful laugh burst out now and again. A handsome laugh, low and free. Flirts and ninnies don't laugh like that. You have to be attractive enough to allow yourself that kind of luxury.
     Ah, yes. That morning she had told him twenty times that Matvei was finally going to start painting her portrait. She was as mad about that promised portrait as she was about Matvei. Let's not split hairs-the old lady was mad, period. You couldn't say she'd lost her mind, though, because she was born into the world that way. It had nothing to do with her legendary ninety-five years. Fifteen years ago, when one of her friends had brought him, a shy provincial lad, to see her at the studio on Upper Maslovka, the powerful old lady's habits and character had been more or less the same. Especially her character. But at the time, everything about her had thrilled him: those powerful, unfeminine paws in clay, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, that aggressive independence and instantaneous reflex in any conversation with anyone. You had to rub up against that character for fifteen years and become a neurasthenic in order to realize, at last, where it was all coming from.
     So, that meant Matvei had started her portrait. He must have come with his new wife, not alone. His first hadn't been able to stand her inspired cohabitation with the genius and had slipped off with someone normal-a driver or a machinist, he had heard. True, her plumage was not going to be immortalized in "portraits of the artist's wife," but then you had to assume her house was now clean and calm and didn't stink of turpentine. The second one-if she wasn't a fool-would do likewise.
     Go downstairs, then, and take a gander at Matvei's new wife? Judging from the laugh she must be something.
     He stood up, pulled on his old around-the-house jersey, and feeling a chilly damp, touched the radiator.
     That bastard Kostya! Only the day before yesterday he had extracted practically their last three rubles from them and look-today the radiator was hardly working. He decided he would finally have it out with that scoundrel Kostya, their own private metalworker, as the old lady put it. A chronic loafer, Kostya was married to Roza, who, to give her her due, sometimes cooked Petya something very tasty but much too expensive. Roza was certainly robbing them and, goddamn it, she was doing the right thing. You had to be a saint or a hare-brained idiot not to sense how easy it was to rob the old lady and not take advantage of the fact. What use-for all their other difficulties-what use in their life was the brazen Roza?! This was a good example of the old lady's total and unswerving disinclination to comprehend reality and adapt to it even a little. But how could she-she had never adapted to anything! What do you mean-a house maid was essential if she was going to give herself wholly to her art.
     She did receive a large pension. Let's put it this way: the biggest pension you could get here. But it was absolutely impossible to keep track of where and when the money evaporated. The greater part of it went in dribs and drabs to the talented alcoholics in the neighboring studios, for the righteous cause of inebriation.          Sometimes major sums would also come in, when a museum bought some old work, but all this slipped through her fingers, too, scattered on the wind, dispersed: in the end, it simply vanished. Literally: a fiver was lying in the candy box, Roza looked in for a minute, and when she left there was nothing but a caramel in the candy box. These days things were very tight. The old lady tried to maintain her former sweep, but there wasn't any money. For two months they hadn't had Petya's modest salary, which was frequently what fed them when the old lady's pension disappeared suddenly in the space of two days.
     He went down the wooden steps into the cold, cement-floor entryway and quickly scanned the briquettes of sculpting plasticine on the shelves and the sacks of clay and plaster in the corners. Thank God, Roza hadn't taken a hankering after those at least.
     The old lady's deep voice from behind the dilapidated studio door:
     "You know what, Matvei, darling, spread that newspaper out under your easel and drop the used rags on that. Otherwise that crazy Petka is going to turn up now and you and I are going to be in"
     Right, crazy Petka, scarecrow Petka, worthless Petka. Why don't you add "parasite Petka," "shameless Petka," living off an old lady!
     Rather than go into the studio, he continued down the hall to the bathroom, where the radiator wasn't heating at all. His specific hatred for the scoundrel Kostya now eclipsed even his constant vague irritation.
     The other reason he didn't want to go into the studio was that he remembered the old lady was planning to borrow money from Matvei today. He chuckled inwardly: I wonder how the great Matvei feels with a hefty wallet. Disinterested Matvei, impoverished Matvei. It would never have occurred to the old lady to borrow from him before. Everyone knew the artist was living on kopeks. Apparently he let out his studio somewhere for eighty rubles or so. But what's eighty rubles with today's prices for canvas, paints, and brushes? Bearing in mind that Matvei worked like an ox, you can imagine what was left of those eighty for him to live on. Until recently on occasion the old lady herself had been fattening him up-literally, fattening him up-with sandwiches and kasha of one kind or another-because Matvei never borrowed money.
     But now times had changed. Matvei was married. People said his wife was a translator, either from Spanish or Portuguese, and was bringing in respectable fees. In any case, last time Matvei had turned up wearing a sheepskin coat that he didn't look very comfortable in. Hmm I wonder what the disposition of relations is in families like that.
     In front of the studio door, in the dimness, her arm broken off in the languor of a morning awakening, stood a nude plaster leaning over: Nora. When lots of people showed up to see the old lady, they hung their scarves and hats on Nora. Then she ceased to be the picture-of-health kolkhoz farmer and called to mind a floozy from an adult revue. Alas, the real Nora-the unfailing model for all the sculptors on Upper Maslovka-had died ten years before. But that was a different and achingly sad story
He found himself still standing in front of the studio door, listening to the voices-the old lady's querulous bass and the woman's rather sharp, magnetically young voice:
     "Really, why don't you write your memoirs?"
     "Because I hate that genre, all the gossip about great people, the mandatory details. You know-who he was sleeping with when and what diseases he had. As if all that was even slightly relevant to art. When they asked me to write my reminiscences of Modigliani, I told them all to go to hell. What could I write: that at the start of the war our rooms all opened onto the same courtyard on Montparnasse and we went to eat at a little restaurant nearby from time to time? That he didn't talk much and injected himself with cocaine? That he once told me: 'You have an independent walk,' to which I replied: 'How can it be independent when they send me two hundred francs every month?'"
     The woman burst into laughter again, ringing, merry laughter. He pushed on the door and walked in.
     "Stand clear!" said the old lady. "Petka's here. Now he's going to start swearing."