The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

relationship would perish like a zoo animal set free in the wild—someone has to take care of the orphaned guy. Fine, let him have Svetochka. Although I don’t think she makes appropriate company for his stepdaughter. (I generally try to avoid thinking about what kind of creature Nina Ustýmivna will raise that child to be—I know all too well what it took Vlada to get out from under her mother’s influence back in the day. If she actually ever had—if it’s even possible.)
    For God’s sake, what, what did this Vadym have that put such a spell on her?
    Aidy, noticing that my glass is empty, wordlessly refills it from the bottle—Aidy knows what to do around the sick, a rare gift for a man. No, he just loves me, my sunshine, my bunny rabbit, and I’m an ungrateful beast. I’m so sorry that tears of contrition suddenly well in my throat, tickle inside my nose: Aidy, my love! What’s this threadbare old weasel still doing here? When’s he gonna go already? Shit, what am I—how’d I get drunk so fast? And the roof of my mouth is already numb, as if cowled with a metallic film; I need to get a bite, I do, a piece of bread with butter would be best—the fat neutralizes the alcohol, which I learned from Sergiy way back when. Or was it someone else?
    The worst is that now I can’t get rid of this wretched, rotten thought—like when you snag your hose, and it runs and runs, and you can’t put it back together—what would Aidy be like if I died suddenly? Would he go feral, look for a replacement, too? Well, at least I don’t have a child, that’s a plus. And I wouldn’t leave paintings behind—it hasn’t occurred to anyone yet to do a televised retrospective, and thank God for that: a TV show diesthe second the credits end and the commercial rolls. It’s the same with a person: as soon as the grave is filled, commercials start rolling, the recently departed becomes an information product, and there’s no way to tell truth from lies anymore. And the more time passes, the less hope there is. Like finding those paintings of Vlada’s, from the Frankfurt flight, something for which Vadym, in his own words, “doesn’t have time right now.” Of course, the elections are around the corner, don’t I understand? No, I don’t. Kill me, I don’t; and I shall not: How could you have lived four years with Vladyslava Matusevych and not have the slightest idea who you’d lived with?
    To be fair, Vadym did sponsor the posthumous show at the National Museum, hired a curator—the best one, he bragged (according to Vadym, he always gets the best of everything!), but, in this case, actually just the most famous. I tried (and failed) to convey to him that the two were not the same. It was at that show where I first caught the whiff, like stale breath from a painted mouth, of this vulgar, mercantile tang that had never clung to Vlada when she was alive: the thunderous rock band at the entrance was out of place, all those musicians in aviator helmets, who later cruised through the galleries with benevolently stoned grins; and so were the Gothic-looking damsels with baskets of roses, which they, for whatever reason, strew all over the floor (a creative touch of the fashionable curator who knew how to blow up a budget); and the video, sliced like salami from the footage of the various European museums where Vlada’s work had appeared, was also somehow distastefully pretentious, like a promo for a travel agency. And that’s exactly how it played: “Where is that? And that?” the ladies inquired of their companions, with lively interest—much livelier than for the canvases displayed on the walls—as they crowded before the screens, lined up as if for a glamorous photo shoot, some with feather boas draped across their shoulders to match their gowns. As is always the case at art shows, there were among them a few truly beautiful women, and everyone singled out a model with her linen-white hair in a pony-sized tail as a real,honest-to-goodness prostitute from Crimea, from a Yalta hotel, or so they claimed.
    The prostitute, or whoever she was, quickly got drunk on the free wine and danced a solo for the helmeted rockers—she was marvelously supple, as though performing a pantomime. I really liked her, actually, and I think Vlada would’ve liked her too: the prostitute was, in fact,
real
. Otherwise, it was a bizarre audience, like a mixed salad of diplomats, politicians, officials, bankers, artists, journalists, who