Chapter 7
THE ARTIST MIHAILOV was, as always, at work when the greeting signal of Count Vronsky and Golenishtchev sounded in his studio. He walked rapidly to the door, and in spite of his annoyance at the interruption, he was struck by the soft light that Android Karenina was shedding on Anna’s figure as she stood in the shade of the entrance listening to Golenishtchev, who was eagerly telling her something, while she evidently wanted to look round at the artist and his work.
They spoke but Mihailov only noticed every fifth word; he was examining in his mind’s eye that subtle nimbus of luminescence the robot imparted to her mistress. So he readily agreed to paint a portrait of Anna, and on the day he fixed, he came and began the work.
In another man’s house, and especially in Vronsky’s module, Mihailov was quite a different man from what he was in his studio. He behaved with hostile courtesy, as though he were afraid of coming closer to people he did not respect. He called Vronsky “Your Excellency,” and notwithstanding Anna’s and Vronsky’s invitations, he would never stay for dinner, nor come except for the sittings. Anna was even more friendly to him than to other people, and was very grateful for her portrait. Vronsky was more than cordial with him, and was obviously interested to know the artist’s opinion of his picture. Mihailov met Vronsky’s talk about his painting with stubborn silence, and he was as stubbornly silent when he was shown Vronsky’s picture. He was unmistakably bored by Golenishtchev’s transparent attempts to goad him into conversation on the Robot Question, and he did not attempt to oppose him.
From the fifth sitting the portrait impressed everyone, especially Vronsky, not only by its resemblance, but by its characteristic beauty. It was strange how Mihailov could have discovered just her characteristic beauty. “One needs to know and love her as I have loved her to discover the very sweetest expression of her soul,” Vronsky murmured to Lupo, who rumbled softly in his lap; though in truth it was only from this portrait that he had himself learned this sweetest expression of her soul. But the expression was so true that he, and others too, fancied they had long known it.
To Anna, what was remarkable was Mihailov’s decision to include Android Karenina in the painting, a decision not in keeping with traditions of portraiture, but one which seemed to her entirely fitting and appropriate.
* * *
On the sixth day of the sitting Golenishtchev entered with his usual bluster. As he pulled off his thick, dust-caked moon boots, he reported on a communiqué he had just received from a friend in Petersburg, who spoke of a rather bizarre new dictate emerging from the Ministry: all Class III robots, it seemed, were being gathered up by the government for some sort of mandatory circuitry adjustment.
Golenishtchev passed easily on to other subjects, nattering next about a funny little Moonie he had lost in the pit earlier today, and the various difficulties attending to Extractor maintenance in low gravity. But Mihailov and Anna Karenina—that is, the painter and the painted—seemed deeply struck by the pitman’s information. Mihailov laid down his brush and looked off through the big bay window of the module.
As for Anna, she instantly knew who was behind this enigmatic new Ministry program. “Might it be,” she murmured to Android Karenina, rising from her model’s stool, stretching, and walking arm and arm with her beloved-companion through the atelier, “that in my absence, whatever strange force lives inside my husband has gathered strength? Has my departure, my immersion in the freedom that the moon has given me, doomed my fellow Russians, and their beloved-companions, to suffer in my stead?”
And her heart was rent by feelings of guilt and frustration.
Vronsky did not share these concerns; he was instead agonized by his dawning understanding of his own failure to master the technique of groznium-pigment painting, and his realization that he never would. “I have been struggling on for ever so long without doing anything,” he said of his own portrait of her, “and he just looked and painted it. That’s where technique comes in.”
“That will come,” was the consoling reassurance given him by Golenishtchev, in whose view Vronsky had both talent and what was most important, culture, giving him a wider outlook on art. Golenishtchev’s faith in Vronsky’s talent was propped up by his need of Vronsky’s sympathy and approval for his own hope of finding groznium on the moon, and he felt that the praise and support must be mutual. “Isn’t that correct, M. Mihailov?”
But Mihailov remained silent. He walked, slowly, still clutching his brush, away from that big bay window and toward the airlock. “Tell me, sir,” he said to Golenishtchev, propping himself up against the reinforced steel of the door. “This Project; they intend to ‘gather up’ all Class Ills for what purpose?”
“It is not said—only that we must put our trust in the Ministry.”
“Ah,” he said. “I suppose we must do that. That I suppose we must do.”
A long stillness then filled the atelier: Golenishtchev looked toward Vronsky and Anna with raised eyebrows and a wry expression, impressing upon them his enjoyment of the idiosyncratic behavior of the great artiste. Vronsky continued his contemplation of the master’s portrait of Anna, while Anna herself stood with her hand in the gentle end-effector of Android Karenina, gazing down thoughtfully toward that big blue-green Class I toy, the Earth.
The airlock had already swung closed behind Mihailov, decisively clanking shut before anyone realized that he had exited—and had not taken with him his oxygen tank, nor even his helmet.
They watched with eyes wide with amazement, as the old painter tromped in his moon boots across the dusty lunar landscape and, showing no sign of the desperate constriction of his lungs that was surely taking place, blew a single, sad kiss in the direction of Earth; and then lay down heavily on the lunar dust, and ran out of breath.
* * *
After the strange death of Mihailov, Anna and Vronsky’s rented module suddenly seemed so obtrusively old and dirty: the periodic small malfunctioning of their Class I door locks, the streaks in the glass, the dried-out putty on the seals became so disagreeably obvious, as did the everlasting sameness of Golenishtchev, forever talking of the great day when he would strike his long-dreamed-of lunar ore. They had to make some change, and they resolved to return to Russia. In Petersburg Vronsky intended to arrange a partition of land with his brother, while Anna intended, somehow, to see her son.
Vronsky and Anna soon were climbing inside the ballistic canister and hurtling back toward the planet from whence they had come.