Life Stories

by Ludmila Ulitskaya

  "Shall I give you a tour?"

  "For free?" I blurted out.

  "Are you Russian?"

  "Why do you think that?"

  "You look like Pushkin."

  "In what way?"

  "You have expressive eyes."

  "I never noticed."

  "All Russians look like Pushkin."

  "I think I'll just walk around on my own."

  There were two portraits of Georges d'Anthès. One was a flattering silhouette portrait of him as a young man, the deep black of his profile reflecting his role in Russian culture. The second image of d'Anthès was a nearly photographic likeness. Good God, in his old age d'Anthès looked exactly like Turgenev.

  The dark-haired woman spoke again. "Isn't it true that he looks like Turgenev, while his name reminds one of Dante?"

  "Everyone looks like someone else here," I grumbled.

  She took my words as an invitation to talk.

  "Here is a copy of the anonymous letter that named Pushkin as a full member and historiographer of the Order of Cuckolds."

  In the same display case was, for some reason, the 1924 French edition of The Gabrieliad,2 the only book by Pushkin in the entire museum. I recalled words from that poem which undermined the foundations of the church: There is no Zeus. We have been made wiser....

  "Is that supposed to be a dig?"

  "The Baron was very pious. Pushkin was the only man he killed. It's quite possible that the Baron was the Instrument of Fate. I have proof that Pushkin was grateful to him for that."

  I couldn't take it anymore. "What are you talking about? I came here for a specific reason. My cultured mother asked me to spit on the grave of d'Anthès."

  The guide picked up on my phrase. "I shall spit on your graves!" she said, laughing.

  That was the name of a novel by Boris Vian, which didn't have anything to do with either Pushkin or d'Anthès.

  "The cemetery closes soon. We should hurry."

  I looked at the two well-known color lithographs of Pushkin hanging by the portrait of Yekaterina Goncharova. I surreptitiously winked at them and went towards the exit. She stopped me on the stairs.

  "Write something in the guest book."

  I declined, but after a moment's thought, I took my time writing "Bitch!" in big letters on an empty page.

  "Bitch!" the woman read aloud with a funny accent. "Thanks to Russian tourists, we've started to learn Russian here. You ought to read what they've written."

  I wasn't original. The guest album was filled with Russian indignation. Students from Arkhangel University penned, "We are disgusted to the bottom of our hearts by your criminal gunshot!" "Shame on the murderer of our Everything'!" was the comment of a conceptualist poet from Smolensk. "Why?" asked the Russo-French Society. In addition to multiple "bitches," there was also "whore!", "faggot!", "jerk!", and even "fascist!"

  Refreshed, we left the museum and walked to my car.

  "Every year there are more Russian tourists. It's like the floodgates have opened. They come by the busload. They go to restaurants and recite Pushkin by heart. This is improving the economy of Soultz, and we are considering becoming sister cities with Pskov or the Pushkin estate museum at Mikhailovskoye."

  "That will never happen," I said.

  "Oh, yes it will," she said, nodding optimistically.

  "What's your name? Agnes? Fine, Agnes," I said. "The Russian nation, as you see, hates d'Anthès."

  "Thanks to that, he is probably the most famous Frenchman in Russia, next to Alexandre Dumas. Imagine if you had killed Louis Aragon in a duel of honor. You'd have been famous in France."

  "Ridiculous! Why would I have wanted his Elsa Triolet?" I said with disgust.

  "Why do Russians have such good cars these days?" Agnes asked as she slipped into my Audi.

  "We work a lot."

  Agnes pointed to the sign on the corner. "d'Anthès Street," she announced proudly.

  "Once people know the truth, they'll change it," I replied.

  On the way to the cemetery, we stopped at the d'Anthès family estate. We pulled up next to a gloomy gray building that looked empty and long abandoned. Enormous trees grew in the park. The only light came from a window in one of the wings of the palace in a new restaurant called Pushkin.

  "That's a kick," I said with satisfaction. "Where's the d'Anthès Restaurant?"

  "It went out of business. Remember this palace well," Agnes said. "It was here that Pushkin met with d'Anthès."

  I looked at her as if she was crazy, and her resemblance to Yekaterina suddenly began to gnaw at me. At one point I even wondered it was wise to go to the cemetery with her, but I didn't know the way and was afraid I'd get lost.

  "You Russians," said the city museum guide, "love to hate everyone. How you hated the tsar, Jesus Christ, Trotsky, Tito, De Gaulle, millions of enemies of the people, and finally Stalin! But now? With that Slavic generosity of soul, you've rehabilitated all of them, and now you venerate them. The time has come to rehabilitate the good Baron Georges d'Anthès. He is our town benefactor. He was the best mayor—there was no one better and there never will be. He restored old buildings and put in a sewer system."

  "He bore the mark of a scoundrel!" I cried. "Why did he come to Russia if a sewer system awaited him here?"

  "Why? He was a young dissident who didn't accept the outcome of the 1830 revolution. With his aunt's help he came under the protection of the Russian imperial court. Pushkin wrote well of him in a letter to his father. He was handsome and intelligent, and he wielded the pen as well as he did the sword—"

  "Stop it," I said.

  "We're here," Agnes said.

  A sign read: "NO DOGS IN THE CEMETERY ON OR OFF LEASH."

  Alsace is truly lovely, and I understand why Germans still come here to weep over their lost territory: All the cities still have their German names, and the population speaks German as well as they speak French. The Rhine valley, covered with vineyards, was beautiful; the noisy creeks wending down the soft green mountains to the Rhine were beautiful; the country roads, pastures and farms were beautiful; the dusky sky over our heads was beautiful. And the cemetery where we found ourselves was also beautiful in the Alsatian way. It was modestly elegant without fuss, with stone crosses cracked by moss and covered with crawling spiders. The exception was one French artilleryman who wished to be buried under a monument depicting a large, old cannon with trunnions—a structure more appropriate to the New Maiden Monastery cemetery.3 But everything else had succumbed to quiet, faded mourning. I began to imagine the honorable grave of Russia's enemy built on the money of a grateful town. I was getting vexed at his posthumous well-being when Agnes led me to a strange graveyard ghetto.

  Yes, that's what I'd call it—a ghetto, although nothing in this corner of the cemetery looked stereotypically Jewish. But neither did it look like anything around it. All the graves in the Christian cemetery were properly aligned from West to East, toward salvation, but the dozen identical graves of the d'Anthès family, like one single grave of the damned, lay with their heads to the North. The new marble gravestones and small marble crosses placed over the d'Anthès family—who had obviously been moved here and reburied after the descendants of the family went bankrupt in the 1960s—seemed to have been knocked askew, as if someone had been tossing and turning under them for a long time. They reminded me of children's paper boats sailing this way and that in the spring. Amidst this funereal uniformity I had no trouble finding the resting place of the murderer Georges and the nearby grave of Yekaterina, who died giving birth to her fourth child on October 15, 1843. There was also the grave of the "shameless pimp," the Dutch envoy, whom Pushkin literally skewered in his scandalous letter. On Yekaterina's grave lay a small, painted metal rose that, to be honest, did little to adorn it.

  "Why aren't you spitting?" Agnes teased.

  "They're already damned," I said.

  "Can you sense that?" she asked, this time quite fearfully.

  For some reason
I felt ill at ease again, so I walked towards the cemetery gates without answering. The sun was setting. It was May in Alsace.

  Agnes got into the car. "Now do you see why d'Anthès must be rehabilitated?"

  "I'm sure he'll be awarded the gold star of a Hero of Russia soon. Do you want to have dinner at the Pushkin Restaurant?"

  Agnes didn't reply. I didn't insist. It was time for me to leave this backwoods and go to Paris. It was a long ride. A Frenchman told me that d'Anthès had never once taken Yekaterina to Paris.

  "There's a better restaurant about 15 kilometers up the mountain."

  We drove up into the mountains. It was beautiful again. We drove in silence. We pulled into the parking lot and went into the restaurant. Everyone looked at us, as they do in a village. For dinner we ordered escargots à la Bourguignon and frog's legs in an herb sauce. We drank a local Riesling from a tall bottle.

  "Are you offended by something?" Agnes suddenly asked.

  I shrugged.

  "I have the text of the conversation between Pushkin and d'Anthès."

  "I'm not a Pushkin scholar. I'm not part of all that. My mother asked me to come and spit on his grave. When did they meet?"

  "Just before d'Anthès died."

  "But Pushkin didn't kill him—he missed! Stop it, Agnes. You have beautiful, large breasts. Why are we talking about Pushkin?"

  "It's a secret story. I've never told anyone." She was trembling. Could she be a witch? I drank some Riesling and prepared to listen—probably to my regret.

  "Like all distinguished men, d'Anthès had a hard time dying. All the medals, honors, titles and ranks—none of that meant anything anymore."

  "Except for the sewers," I chortled.

  "Pushkin said that to him, too."

  I ate my frog's legs, drank some wine and didn't say anything.

  "D'Anthès rang his bell. An old valet with puffy eyes walked into his bedroom. D'Anthès lay on his bed and said, Gustav, do me a favor. Bring me a pear liqueur and ask KoKo to come in.'

  " What did you say?'

  " I mean the Baroness,' d'Anthès said.

  "Without any sign of surprise, Gustav said, Ill bring you the pear liqueur, but I can't summon the Baroness. She's gone into town to shop.'

  " What is she buying?'

  " A little of everything,' the servant said evasively, realizing that the Baron was delirious: the only wife in the family named KoKo had died fifty two years ago. Gustav soon reappeared with the pear liqueur, but his expression was, to say the least, extremely disturbed. Monsieur Baron,' he said as he handed him a tall glass, the mistress has indeed stepped out, but a monsieur insists on speaking with you, despite your indisposition.'

  " The mayor?' d'Anthès said, rhetorically raising his eyebrows, expecting, as any vain man would, that he'd see some sign of concern from the authorities on his death bed.

  " No,' Gustav said hesitantly and stared at him wide-eyed. It's Monsieur Pushkin.'

  " Well, let him in,' d'Anthès said calmly.

  "Pushkin walked in. D'Anthès looked him over. They were still in different age groups, only they had traded places. D'Anthès had been thirteen years younger than Pushkin, but now he was forty seven years older. Therefore he, a senator of France, allowed himself to be somewhat familiar in addressing Pushkin.

  " Why, it's my brother-in-law. Hello there. I've been expecting you for a long time,' d'Anthès said, gesturing at the armchair by the bed. Too bad you've come when I'm not feeling quite well.'

  "Pushkin sat down in the armchair and casually crossed his legs. You're dying.'

  " I know. I'm no fool,' d'Anthès said with a sad laugh.

  " That's exactly what fools say,' Pushkin said with a wave of his hand.

  " Alexandre, don't speak for posterity. I should hope that our talk won't be taken down in minutes. Everything about our relationship is examined through a distorted magnifying glass. Have you come to hear me repent?'

  " I've come—'

  "D'Anthès interrupted him. I'm glad that you've come,' he said and sailed along the river of French eloquence, Because of you, all my life I shuddered whenever I heard someone speaking Russian. I truly wished Russia would go to Hades. I forbade my daughter from learning Russian. She made a scene and it was all terribly unpleasant. My misfortune was seeking the protection of my illustrious aunt in Russia instead of in Prussia. The Marquis de Custine wrote a very accurate book about you Russians. But that was after you. After you, a great many things happened. In 37 there weren't even photographs, and this year cinema was invented. Do you know what a telephone is? An automobile? You don't even know what electricity is, or the Paris Commune! And soon we'll have aviation to replace God. Nietzsche writes that He is dead. You could have lived on and on...'

  " Poetry needs neither aviation nor electricity,' Pushkin said.

  " Well, yes, that's for sure,' d'Anthès said and continued, Poetry needs female droppings that can be shaped into verse. You had more than enough of them, and you slipped on them. My dear man, you don't have to show off your genius, not to me. My ancestors were the best friends of the local peasants. The world needs d'Anthèses as much as it needs Pushkin. Otherwise the duel would have come out differently.'

  " I came to forgive you.'

  " Forgive me? How about I forgive myself for a start,' d'Anthès said with an officer's coarseness.

  " It was all Natasha's fault.'

  " No, my friend, you're mistaken. You didn't love her. You loved a pretty window-dressing. You thought Natasha was a little fool and told her how to live, while I accepted her as she was. We were born the same year, we had the same scent, we understood each other almost without words—we were horses from the same stable.'

  "Pushkin didn't respond.

  "D'Anthès continued. I was afraid that you'd kill her when you learned that she loved me. You did know that she loved me.'

  " Did you sleep with her?'

  "D'Anthès burst out laughing. Pushkin! Are you a great man or not? What difference does it make? I won't say.'

  " So you did?'

  " I always knew that poets weren't men. You're slugs. My dear Alexandre, let's be honest. She didn't love you—that's a fact, and you predicted it all in Onegin. You had bad sex that you described with rare candor in verse. Natasha was all that I loved in Russia. Once I was with my son in a theater in Paris and saw her. I didn't go up to her, but I pointed her out to my son and said with great affection: "That's your Aunt Natasha.'"

  "Pushkin couldn't contain himself. What about Katya? Was she also a horse from the same stable? Katya, the woman Karamzin4 railed at for her incredible stupidity on every street corner?'

  " I don't understand who is supposed to experience cosmic love—a poet or an officer? I felt cosmic love for Natasha. Katya was like expensive faux leather. When I slept with her, I imagined Natasha. They both knew it. And, besides, I saved your honor by marrying her. But you were a stupid idiot! You ran all over town screaming at the top of your lungs that a Frenchman was fucking your wife. Even Zhukovsky5 told you to stick it up your ass. You were disgusting: You were delirious, and you insulted everyone. You wanted to kill me. You ruined my life.'

  " You flouted it. You went all over St Petersburg with Natasha and Katya in a sleigh.'

  " I was twenty-five years old. When we were together, you didn't exist. I didn't even know your poetry. At the balls, who were you? A caricature of a man!'

  " But I'm a great Russian poet.'

  " Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev and now that—that one who imitates Maupassant—what's his name? They are great, too. You aren't the only one. Poetry, Pushkin, is one thing, but a woman—a woman is just an ass.'

  " That's the homosexual in you talking.'

  " It doesn't matter. It's no longer the crime it was in Vigel's time.6 Natasha came along and turned my homosexual head. That's how much I loved her.'

  "Pushkin sat up in the armchair. D'Anthès took his time finishing his pear liqueur. Then he admitted brusquely, I didn't res
pect you. You weren't for the Tsar and you weren't against the Tsar. You weren't a Decembrist, but you weren't exactly not a Decembrist. You weren't for Russia and you weren't against Russia, like Chaadayev. You weren't for promiscuity, but neither were you for fidelity.'7

  " But you, on the other hand, always had dirty hands—in love and in politics,' Pushkin said with revulsion. Perhaps you remember the elections in Colmar? You falsified the results. You were caught.'

  " I was the youngest senator in the Second Empire.'

  " Second Empire, Third—who cares? D'Anthès' finest achievement on earth—a sewer system.'

  " We are the bearers of a great civilization. Thanks to us—computers and star wars. But you Russians haven't changed—you're still wallowing in shit.'

  " Shall we duel again?'

  " I'll kill you again,' the host laughed peaceably. All normal people are d'Anthèses. The truth of life is on my side.'

  " You're going to hell,' Pushkin said.

  " Says the author of The Gabrieliad? Oh, stick it—'

  "Pushkin got up and went to the door.

  " Wait.'

  "Pushkin stopped.

  " You said you came to forgive me.'

  "Pushkin didn't respond.

  " Why?'

  "Pushkin didn't say anything. He had nothing to say. By the time Pushkin closed the door behind him, d'Anthès was dead. He died without repenting."

  Agnes burst into tears. I tried to console her. She cried harder and harder. She sobbed. The entire restaurant stared at her. She was hysterical. She began to tear at her face with lilac-colored nails. Night had fallen. Who are these people? Why am I here in these primeval Alsatian mountains? She was entirely transformed. She was sitting before me in a ball gown and holding a lorgnette but without her Orthodox cross, which was in the display case of the city museum. It was Yekaterina Goncharova, the woman whom contemporaries called an ugly broomstick, urging me to rehabilitate her husband, the Baron Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d'Anthès, the woman who had left St. Petersburg after Pushkin's death and the court's banishment of the Frenchman, to join her husband in Europe on April 1, 1837, and stay with him forever.