Selected Episodes Relating to the Life of Vladimir Daniilovich Myukis, Deceased

By Daniel Marcus

This is a satirical/historical novel of the life of a fictional Soviet era artist, Vladimir Daniilovich Myukis who was orphaned during the Second World War. By the early 1950s, Myukis now in a street gang of war orphans was arrested by the police for vandalism. The vandalism consisted of drawing large pictures of elephants on the bombed out buildings in hisw native city of Novogrudok in what is now Belarus. The arresting officers realized that Myukis had real art ability so they sent him to art school. From there he was recruited into the KGB where he forged signatures for their agents. He also created art for the Promotional Division of Art Department of GAZ Volga, a huge auto factory that assembled Volga automobiles in the city of Gorkii, now renamed Nizhni Novgorod. Several years later, Myukis was kicked out of Art Department of the Promotional Division and sent to the secret KGB facility located within the factory where he did pretty much the same thing as before but now for the Minister of Propaganda. From there he was let go when that secret KGB facility closed. Myukis, referred to as Volodya in the book, (the nickname for Vladimir), then found employment in the Leningrad GUM department store and remained there until his retirement. Shortly thereafter, the Soviet Union collapsed as did the Russian pension system. The loss of his pension resulted in Myukis immigrating to the United States where he eventually found work as the counter man at a delicatessen on the Coney Island boardwalk.

In this book, Myukis encounters various characters both in the USSR and the USA. His closest confident in the US was a former KGB translator named Arcady S. Nyekrassov (Archie) who also worked in Gorkii. There are other numerous characters who were people he encountered in the USSR and later in the United States.

The format of the narrative is non-linear. The novel opens with Myukis living in Brooklyn, New York and then goes back in time to his early days within the GAZ Volga/KGB. From there the narrative progresses back to the day after the opening chapter.

The satire in the book is of various artists and institutions within the USSR and the US.

The book has about 25 illustrations in it. I did all the art work except for the reproduction of Joshua Reynolds self portrait, a 1920s Soviet era political poster, and an illustration done by my wife, Cathy A. Morris. There is also some Russian in Cyrillic script which I have translated, often in a foot note.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479721542

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Copyright © 2012 by Daniel Marcus.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All the artwork was done by the author except the following; The painting of Joshua Reynolds, the Soviet era poster, and the image, ‘The Electric Bulls-Eye’. The latter image was done by Cathy A. Morris.

Rev. date: 07/12/2013

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Prologue

A note about the dialogue

Chapter 1 A Giraffe at the Window, Part I

Chapter 2 The Association of Disenfranchised Artists of South Brooklyn, New York

Chapter 3 The Baseball Game

Chapter 4 Archie Nyekrassov

Chapter 5 Volodya and Archie

Chapter 6 Paintings Lost and Recovered

Chapter 7 Love

Chapter 8 Revenge

Chapter 9 Aleksandr Pavlovich Polikin

Chapter 10 Volodya the Spy

Chapter 11 Volodya the Painter

Chapter 12 Dissident Artist

Chapter 13 Retirement and Arrival in America

Chapter 14 Volodya Sells Some Paintings

Chapter 15 Giraffe at the Window, Part II

Epilogue

Endnote

Addendum

Acknowledgments

T his biography could not have been written without the help of many individuals and the Internet. A special thank-you is in order for Arcady S. Nyekrassov, his wife, Natalia P. Smolinskaya Nyekrassova, and Iñez Rodriguez, all of whom provided this writer with much invaluable information about the artist. MS%20mock%20up-2%20copy.jpg

Prologue

T his short work is utterly devoid of a plot. Rather, it relates various true episodes in the life of the late Russian-American artist Vladimir Daniilovich Myukis. Between each of the various episodes were often lengthy periods of stasis. Each day within these static periods was indistinguishable from the previous one and was indistinguishable from the succeeding one. In many ways, Myukis’s life (and, in fact, the life of each of us) paralleled the theory of punctuated equilibrium evolution first proposed by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge. That theory posited that each episode of evolutionary change within a species or group of species occurs rapidly during a relatively brief period and is then followed by a long time period where little or no change occurs. Such was the case with Vladimir Myukis. The journey Myukis took from the city of Novogroduk in what is now Belarus to Brooklyn, New York, was the result of several life-altering episodes. These episodes, however, occupied only a small fraction of the 24,642 days of his life.

This story in real time takes place during a forty-eight-hour period. During that time, Vladimir Myukis experienced no life-altering event. In those forty-eight hours, he woke up in the morning, went to work, attended a meeting of fellow artists, went to bed, woke up the following morning, went to work, came home, and went to bed. The rest of this biography consists of various episodes from his past. These are presented randomly rather than linearly. This randomness mirrors the randomness of life where chance coincidence often leads to unexpected events.

A Brief Chronological Outline of the Life of Vladimir Daniilovich Myukis

October 6, 1935: Myukis is born in the city of Novogrudok, then in the Minska Goberna region of Poland but now in Belarus.

Fall, 1939: The Soviet Union attacks Novogrudok during its invasion and annexation of eastern Poland. Myukis’s father dies.

Summer, 1941: Germany attacks Novogrudok during its invasion of the Soviet Union. Myukis’s mother dies.

Late fall, 1944: The Soviet Union recaptures Novogrudok. His maternal grandparents, who were his guardians, die. Myukis joins a street gang for survival.

January 1951: Myukis is arrested and charged with vandalism. The arresting authorities recognize that he had artistic abilities and sends him to an art school operated by the NKVD (a predecessor of the KGB).

September 1, 1954: Myukis is sent to the Gorkovskaya Volga automobile factory (GAZ Volga) to work as a commercial artist in the art department of the promotional division of the factory. He also has to forge passports for KGB agents.

May 22, 1972: Myukis is reassigned to the secret KGB facility located in the same factory.

February 22, 1985: The KGB closes its secret facility in Gorki. Myukis retires from the KGB.

May 3, 1985: Myukis moves to Leningrad and finds employment in a Leningrad department store.

February-October 1994: Myukis retires and migrates to Brooklyn, New York.

January 2, 1998: Myukis is hired to work at Goldberg’s Delicatessen in Brooklyn.

April 5, 2000: Myukis becomes an American citizen.

July 18-20, 2002: The real time of this story.

March 24, 2004: Myukis dies in Brooklyn, New York.

Additional Biographical Facts about Vladimir Myukis

Myukis was born in what was then the Belorussian area of Poland and spent his childhood there. Most of his adult life, however, was spent in the Russian republic. He considered himself a Russian national, and when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, Myukis chose to become a Russian citizen. He had absolutely no desire to live in Belarus.

Myukis was obliged to join the Communist Party as a condition of his employment. Although he had his differences with the party, especially with regards to civil liberties, he appreciated that the system provided employment for anyone who wanted work and provided health care and education to its citizens. Indeed, were it not for this system, Myukis probably would not have survived beyond his youth.

Myukis was employed as a commercial illustrator for the art department of the promotional division of the GAZ Volga automobile factory and, later, for the Ministry of Propaganda. In reality, though, he was a KGB employee.

Myukis immigrated to the United States from Russia in 1995. He settled in the Brighton Beach section in Brooklyn, New York. Between June 1995 and January 1998, Myukis took on various landscaping and construction jobs until he finally obtained permanent employment in a delicatessen in early 1998.

During his lifetime, Myukis was a prolific artist and created several hundred oil paintings and many more watercolor works. In 2004, a great work of his entitled Naked Lady Ascending a Silo in Elizabethtown, New York (God’s Country) was donated by the executor of his estate to the Dia: Beacon Museum in Beacon, New York.

A note about the dialogue

T he late Mr. Myukis spoke both Russian and Polish interchangeably. As an adult, his preferred language was Russian. He later become fluent in English but spoke it with a thick Slavic accent. In this book, when Myukis speaks or thinks in Russian, it will be translated and written as colloquial American English, and when he speaks in English, it will written phonetically to approximate a Slavic accent.

About the use of names:

Individuals in this narrative are denoted according their relationship with Vladimir Myukis. Those very close to Myukis will be called by their familiar name or, in the case of Russian individuals, sometimes by their first names and their middle names (otyetsva). Myukis himself will be referred by his familiar name, Volodya, and his close friend, Arcady Stepanovich Nyekrassov, will either be Archie, his American familiar name, or Arcady Stepanovich. Those friendly to Myukis but not within the inner circle of his psyche are noted by title and last name. Thus, his employer is identified as Mr. Goldberg. Those individuals whom Myukis disliked are denoted by their last names only, whereas those Russian individuals with whom Myukis had a formal relationship, such as his supervisors are usually identified by their first and middle name. Whether Myukis liked them or not, they will usually be denoted that way. These distinctions are important.

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Map of Soviet Union, Western Half

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Chapter 1

A Giraffe at the Window, Part I

W hat the fuck. This piece of shit dream is telling me it’s time to pee! Damn it! Every time I fall asleep, I have to pee. And every time I have to pee, I have this fucking giraffe dream and I have to go pee. If I ever get a hold of that thing, I’ll wring its overstretched neck.

It was 3:38 a.m. on Thursday, July 18, 2002, and stifling hot and humid. No breeze from the ocean entered the room even though all the windows were opened. No air-conditioning. Only the breeze from the noisy oscillating electric fan provided some relief. From somewhere across the street came the throbbing, pulsating, pounding bass sound of hip-hop music. A car with no muffler roared by, further disturbing the peace, and Vladimir Daniilovich Myukis had to relieve himself for the third time that night.

And so we first meet our protagonist, Vladimir Daniilovich Myukis, age sixty-six. He had a rough-cut but likeable demeanor. He stood five feet ten, weighed in at around two hundred pounds, had a paunch, was bald, and a hirsute face as was the current style. What hair he had on his head was mostly gray. Volodya was of swarthy complexion as a result of his mother being of Romany decent. He was blessed with good eyesight although now in his mid sixties he was in need of reading glasses. He lived in a three-room apartment located in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn, New York.

Every night for the last four years, it was the same routine and at about the same time. Vladimir Daniilovich—Vlad or Vladdie to his American friends, Volodya to his Russian friends, and Drippy to his enemies—had to pee. He could almost tell the time of night without looking at the clock. And for a week now, at pee time, he had this ridiculous giraffe dream. The giraffe would be looking in at the bedroom window. It would wink at Volodya. Suddenly, in his dream, Volodya would have a strong urge to urinate. He would lie there fighting off this urge. Suddenly, in the dream, Volodya would hear a loud pop and a phisssss. The giraffe head then disappeared, and Volodya would wake up. The giraffe was a dream, but the urge to urinate was real.

Several times during the days in the week prior to July 18, 2002, he daydreamed about the giraffe that was torturing him. He thought of several schemes to capture it in his dreams, but they all failed. At times, he wanted to scream and tell the world about this apparition. But he was afraid that if he did, he would be considered delusional. That might lead to his involuntary admission to the psychiatric unit at Coney Island Hospital or, worse, maybe deportation to Russia. He did mention this dream publicly to a few individuals, but only casually. Usually he kept quiet and suffered silently.

Slowly Volodya swung his legs over to the floor and stood up, unsteadily at first, and traipsed over to the commode where he stood with his penis hanging out as an anemic stream of urine splattered into the water (most of the time). Then he traipsed back to bed and lay first on his left side and then on his right side, and all the time trying to figure out what the urologist had told him while trying to ignore the booming bass of the hip-hop music. Did the doctor tell him that he had an enlarged prostrate gland and penal dysfunction, or was it an enlarged prostate gland and penile dysfunction? Then, rolling onto his back, he dozed off until the next giraffe dream.

Who was this giraffe? What did it want with him? Why a giraffe at all? He had nothing against them and really and knew little about them, except that they came from Africa, had orange spots, and exceedingly long necks. There was a story in the newspapers a few weeks ago about a giraffe escaping from its pen in the Central Park Zoo. However, it was captured about an hour later near the entrance of the zoo. The giraffe furiously fought off its capture and was subdued by zoo personnel with three tranquilizing darts. Could this be the genesis of the dream?

Why a giraffe? How absurd! It is true he had seen real giraffes on occasions in the Leningrad Zoo and the Bronx Zoo. He never gave them much attention, though, although once, at the Bronx Zoo, he wondered how giraffes’ hearts were able to pump blood all the way up to their heads. Maybe, he thought, they really had several hearts in their necks that pumped the blood in relay fashion. But that was his only thought on giraffes, and only that one time.

The large animals he often thought about were elephants. Volodya thought about elephants his whole life, and he even knew why. The very earliest memory he had was about an elephant. Shortly before his fourth birthday, his parents took him and his older sister to the zoo in Minsk, the regional capital and a short distance away from his native city of Novogrudok. The memory of that trip was chiseled into his memory, and it was one of the few memories he had of his father. Anyway, in the zoo, were several elephants in an enclosure consisting of a brick wall about two and a half meters high. One of the elephants, one wearing some sort of a headdress, approached the wall and hung its trunk over it as if imploring the visitors to feed it. Volodya held some bread and a few dried kidney beans in his hand and, with some prompting from his father, held the food out to the beast. The elephant gently took the offerings from little Volodya and, while lifting its trunk to its mouth, very gently brushed Volodya’s head as if to say thank you. This so impressed the little boy that he kept pestering his parents to bring him back to the elephant enclosure. In fact, Volodya made quite a scene until his parents acquiesced. Upon approaching the enclosure again, the same elephant came to the wall, hung its trunk over it, and gently blew air through Volodya’s hair. Volodya began to giggle, and the elephant did it again and again. After returning to the elephant enclosure for the third time, Volodya’s parents made the little boy say good-bye to the elephant since the zoo was about to close for the day. Over the next week, all Volodya talked about was that elephant. His parents had promised to take him back to the zoo. But one day, shortly after this visit, his father went away, and Volodya never saw him again.

Very shortly after his father left, Soviet troops attacked Novogrudok. There were terrible crashes and loud sounds. Buildings blew apart. For the first time Volodya saw people die. He saw dead bodies lying in the street, often with parts of their bodies missing. He saw bodies lying in pools of blood. He smelled terrible smells. He heard the terrible screams of injured people in great pain. His older sister disappeared in an explosion. All that was found of her were a few bits of cloth from her dress, some pieces of burnt flesh and bone, and one of her lower arms with blood still oozing from the open end. It was the arm with the bracelet on it, the bracelet she had gotten for her birthday. Volodya’s poor mother began wailing uncontrollably and stopped caring for him. His maternal grandmother took over those nurturing chores. The formally chubby and chatty little boy became so frightened by the bombardment of the city that he became silent and almost comatose. He barely ate his food and spent long periods hiding under his little bed. There he daydreamed about the elephant he had seen at the zoo. It was the only pleasure he could derive from life. In his daydreams the elephant talked to him. Sometimes the elephant gently picked him up and placed him on its back. In other dreams, little Volodya and the elephant paraded through the back alleys of the neighborhood, places where his mother had forbidden him to wander. Sometimes in his dreams, he and his elephant friend confronted the local bully (really a little boy not much older than Volodya). At those times, Volodya punched the little boy in the nose, and the bully ran home crying to his mother. Then, toward the end of the first Russian invasion of that region, he heard his grandmother talking to a neighbor about the bombardment on the Minsk Zoo. The neighbor related that the Red Army killed all the elephants and ate them. Volodya remembered feeling strangely dizzy. His distant memories were less distinct after that. He did not remember the death of his mother in the summer of 1941 or of his grandparents in 1944. His next clear memories were of huddling in a cold building next to a fire started by some older boys in order to keep warm. They invited him in and gave him some food they had stolen from the Red Army. That is when he became a member of the street gang.

4:07 a.m.

That fucking pigshit giraffe dream again. Maybe if I think of something sexy, I can get that thing to go away. Maybe if I lie here for another fifteen minutes…

4:11 a.m.

What? Only four minutes have passed. All right, giraffe, you win.

And so our intrepid nightly wanderer made his last traipse to the commode. This time he decided to stay up and watch the early morning news on his thirteen-inch television over a cup of strong tea and a pastry or two. Bored with the TV, he found yesterday’s Novoye Russkoye Slovo (a Russian language newspaper) and went directly to the sports section, hoping to get information on what horses would be running at Saratoga in a couple of weeks. Bored with that, and already suffering from the stifling heat and humidity, he put on shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals and began to revise some sketches he had made for his next proposed painting. This was a painting of a silo he had seen when on a trip to upstate New York the previous year. He soon became bored with that. Instead, he decided to look over some pencil sketches he had done over the last few days. These were of people he had recently encountered. One was of a dour-looking woman wearing a nun’s habit. She was trying to eat a slice of pizza without getting any of the sauce on her large white biblike collar. Another was of an overfed young man trying to stuff a large piece of strawberry shortcake into his mouth. A third showed the backs of an elderly couple sitting on a bench overlooking the ocean. They were holding hands and wearing clothes too warm for the season. There were four or five other drawings of families on the boardwalk. Volodya drew these drawing on napkins taken from the delicatessen where he worked. He found all of the drawings boring. Next, he went to his recently purchased laptop computer to check his e-mail. There were about twenty pieces of junk mail in his in box: new hot stocks, how to become more virile, cheap drugs, and so forth. Then, at about 7:30, he called his friend Archie to find out if Archie had made reservations at a bed-and-breakfast in Saratoga Springs. The thoroughbred races would begin in two weeks, and Volodya wanted to be there.

Volodya and Archie attended the races at Saratoga Springs for a few days during the thoroughbred racing season the previous summer. They had a great time and even won some money. Archie made the arrangements. He was one of those types who seemed to have connections with everyone everywhere.

Natasha (Natalia Petrovna), his wife, answered the phone and informed Volodya that her husband was taking a shower but the arrangements had been made. They would go there on July 30 and stay for three nights.

After the phone call, Volodya finished the little tea left in the pot, took a quick shower, brushed his teeth, put on clean underwear, loose-fitting blue trousers, a white T-shirt, and made sure all the lights were off. Before leaving for work, Volodya took a quick peek out of his bedroom window to make sure there was no giraffe lurking in the shadows of the courtyard below his second-story window. Then he walked to his work at Goldberg’s Delicatessen.

Harry Goldberg, the deli’s owner, loudly greeted Volodya at the door of his deli as he did every day with Well, if it isn’t Vlad the Impaler himself. Why Vlad the Impaler, who knew? The only thing Volodya ever impaled was the crotch of a few lady acquaintances, and that was not often enough to his liking.

"Khy-ya, boss. Kak dela? [как дела] [How’s business? or How is it going?] Khow’s bisness? Khot day, today, no? AC vorking good? Veel need it." And so forth.

The first customer of the day, Jack Slobin, came in for his usual lox, cream cheese, bagel, and coffee. Jack always came in within five minutes after the deli opened in the morning.

"Hey, Vlad… kak dela."

Nofing special. You vant the usual?

Yup. Hey, Vladdie, what’s this I hear about you seeing a giraffe every night? As he spoke, Mr. Slobin gave Volodya a knowing wink as if to say, You know what I mean?

Oh, dat’s just people talking. You know, gossip. Vy vould I see giraffe? Vonce, ven giraffe escaped from zoo few veeks ago, I dream about it one night running on boardwalk, dat’s all.

Boy, wasn’t that something. Can you imagine something as big as a giraffe escaping from its pen and being lost for over an hour? Ha, ha! It took a bunch of guys with tranquilizing guns to bring it down. I never thought of a giraffe as a fighting animal. That must have been something!

Khey, Slobin, vat about you? You see any giraffes, lately? Then, attending to another customer, Can I khelp you, madam?

And so his days usually went this way. Volodya was always pleasant to the customers, obliging to his boss, and efficient in his work. A leetle small talk khelps sell salami was his mantra.

His customers appreciated the small talk, the goods, and the service. Only occasionally was a customer obnoxious. One particular obnoxious customer was a short lady, probably in her seventies, who came into the establishment on May 8, 2002, at 4:24 p.m. She was dressed in a loose-fitting ankle-length black full dress, black cross-training shoes, and a black kerchief on her head. Approaching the counter, she addressed Volodya, thus, "Young man, could you give me half a pound of pastrami… no, make that six slices, a quarter pound of roast beef sliced very thin… no, make that a half pound, and slice it medium. When you get to the roast beef, cut me a slice first. I want to make sure it’s fresh… a full