“I am busy,’ said Katya, “but I daresay … I daresay, I could do with a stroll. I can afford to be a little late.”
20
Within a few days, a rickety boardwalk town had grown up on the Admiralty Boulevard.
There were huge booths with new streets between them, and the steam went up from the pastry and sweets shops in the lanes; the hucksters yelled in the distance; the small booths drew in customers from the bigger ones. The town was still growing—nails were being hammered in hastily, white wooden boards stood out in the mud, the little stalls were being knocked into shape.
The poor folk, wearing their new knee-high boots, strolled slowly, carefully along the boardwalk streets and lanes. By evening, the bottle-shaped boots had softened and slid down the legs, but still they strolled on, chewing sunflower seeds with grave, expressionless faces.
In the evening, in the boardwalk town’s taverns, they warmed themselves with vodka and, looking at each other, reluctantly, as if obliged, bawled out their songs beneath colorful pictures of bear hunting, with the line of fire shown in red, or of Turkish nights, complete with green moons.
Griboedov and Katya stopped by a big booth. Katya was jostled, and she shoved back, using her little elbows with amazing precision, but it was cold and she had already pleaded a few times:
“Alexandre …”
Yet she too was intrigued.
The thing was that as soon as they approached the booth, a huge red fist popped up from behind the curtains and loomed there for a while. The man it belonged to was not in view.
The crowd said respectfully:
“Rappo …”
The fact that just one fist was visible and was known by its name made Griboedov and Katya stop in their tracks. Then the second fist popped out, while the first one withdrew. It then reappeared, holding an iron rod. The hands tied the rod in a knot, threw the metal lump on the stage, and were gone. The curtains drew apart, and instead of Rappo, an old peasant came on with a flaxen beard and a tall hat.
The old man took off his hat, turned it over, showed the inside of it to the spectators, and asked:
“Is the hat empty?”
The volunteers yelled: “Empty.” Indeed, there was nothing in the hat.
“Just you wait,” the old man said; he put the hat on the railings and went behind the curtains.
Griboedov and Katya stared at the hat. It was a tall hat, made of lambswool.
Five minutes passed.
“You’ll see,” a merchant said, “he’ll pull out a gold fob watch on a chain.”
One smart aleck climbed onto the rails and shook the hat, running the risk of falling off. The hat was empty.
Katya no longer asked Griboedov to leave; instead she stared fixedly at the hat. She had the same expression she’d worn when she waited for her cue to go onstage at the theater.
A quarter of an hour passed. The old man was not to be seen.
Katya was freezing and shivering and asked again:
“Alexandre …”
The curious spectators pushed forward to be closer. The hat stood tall on the railings.
Another five minutes, and the old man came out. There was nothing in his hands. He took the hat, examined the bottom, then the top. There was silence. The merchant wiped the sweat from his forehead.
The old man showed the hat to the crowd:
“Nothing in the hat, correct?”
Everyone responded in concert:
“Nothing.”
The old man looked inside the hat.
“And? …” somebody choked on his impatience.
The old man looked inside the hat and said quite calmly:
“Quite right, not a solitary thing!”
He stuck his tongue out, looked at everybody mischievously, made a bow, and went back behind the curtains.
Thunderous laughter, the likes of which Griboedov had never heard in the theater.
The little old man was shaking his head. A young chap stood gaping and laughing and roaring his head off: “Ha-a-a.”
Katya was laughing. Griboedov too felt the sudden silly laughter caught deep in his throat.
“Ha-a-a.”
“He had us on!” squeaked the little old man, short of breath.
And the crowd immediately swept away from the booth. There was some jostling. Walking away, the merchant was saying quietly:
“Italian magicians, they always pull out a fob watch on a chain. That’s a hard trick.”
The crowd was particularly dense around the swings. The flying skirts and wild female shrieks made them all laugh.
An Italian, Ciarini, had set up his tightrope near the swings. He had brought it over from the Bolshoi Theater. Every half hour, he would walk along the tightrope, and the boys would eagerly await the moment when he’d lose his balance and come tumbling down.
The Nevsky Prospect was also crowded. Griboedov and Katya went whirling on the merry-go-round and then on the swings. Katya looked ruefully at her feet. They were stained all over with yellow clay. Her dress flew up, and somebody laughed down below. She was cross with Griboedov.
“Alexander,” she said sternly, “we are the only ones here. Look, there is nobody else but us.”
Human words sometimes have a strange meaning—one can say about a thousand-strong crowd: nobody’s here. And indeed, nobody was there. Upper-class people were put off by the mud because that’s what it was, while the poor called it dampness. No carriages were to be seen.
Griboedov supported Katya by the elbow like any shopkeeper and was also disgruntled.
They were laughing at Katya, as if she were one of them. The poor folk knew: no matter how well you dance, a woman is still a woman, and an actress’s skirts fly up just like a chambermaid’s.
But Griboedov was just being studied and observed. The indifference of the stares troubled him. So far as they were concerned, he was simply a clown, in his coat and hat, up on the swings.
His clothes spoke volumes.
But what would he look like in a folk costume, with knee-high, bottle-shaped boots? And it wouldn’t have been genuine folk dress anyway, distorted by foreigners and their own Russian masters. The armyaks14 worn by peasants were considerably nobler, reminiscent of the boyars’ clothes. Try putting an armyak on … Nesselrode, for example!
Russian dress was a confounded stumbling block. The Georgian chekmen was so much better.
“Katenka, Katya,” said Griboedov tenderly, and kissed her.
“Dear God! You couldn’t find a better place to kiss, could you?”
Katya was burning with delighted embarrassment, like a shopkeeper’s bride.
The swings were moving faster and faster.
“Alexander! Alexander!” called a desperate voice from above.
Griboedov stretched back his head and stared upward but couldn’t see anyone. The voice belonged to Faddei.
Faddei was about to jump out of the seat and stretched his arms down toward them, straining his body.
“Be careful, Faddei, don’t fall,” Griboedov cried out anxiously.
Faddei was already below them.
“I’m studying the folk mores,” gurgled Faddei somewhere in midair.
It felt good that both Faddei and Katya were here …
“Silly girl, Katya,” he kept saying, stroking her hand.
You couldn’t find a better woman. Young, uncomplicated, and amusing; he even enjoyed her drama-school tricks. And her adulteries were committed out of … the kindness of her heart.
All the same, the thought was unpleasant, and he removed his hand.
Then they went out for a stroll.
Suddenly, somebody cried out “Help!” and the crowd swirled inward in a funnel-like movement; a purse was being forced out of the tightly clenched fist of a short little man and suddenly, as if by command, three or four fists came down on his capped head.
A district constable took the petty thief by the scruff of his neck and prodded him deliberately in the back with his short sword
. Griboedov forgot about Katya and Faddei.
He pushed his way through the crowd, and the gaping faces let him pass in silence.
So he found himself right in the vortex.
Two stallmen, red in the face, were thrashing the petty thief wordlessly about the head, and he, without so much as a cheep, was collapsing as if on purpose, and he would have sunk into the mud if the constable hadn’t held him up by the scruff of the neck. The officer held him with his right hand, and with the left one gave him the occasional blow on the back with the sword.
The lower part of the pickpocket’s face was a wet, red splodge. He sank apathetically into the mud. Griboedov spoke quietly:
“Hands off, you idiots!”
The stallmen continued beating him.
“I said, hands off, you fools!”
Griboedov spoke with a particular composure that he always felt in the street, in a crowd. The stallmen looked at him with contempt.
Their fists kept raining down on the thief’s head.
Then, calmly, Griboedov stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a pistol. He raised the long, thin muzzle.
As one, the whole crowd shivered and shrank back. A woman shrieked, either from the swings or in the crowd.
Griboedov spoke curtly to the constable.
“Put down your sword, you blockhead.”
The constable had already put the sword down and saluted him with his left hand.
“Take him away,” said Griboedov.
The crowd was silent. Now it stared stonily at Griboedov, unawed. It expanded and the ring widened, but it did not allow the policeman and the petty thief to pass through.
As always, it was those who stood safely at the back who decided to speak their piece.
A scraggly little runt cried out in a shrill, womanish voice:
“And who the hell is this bloke?”
A venomous old codger, a pencil-pushers by the look of him, had to have his say:
“Who does his lordship think he is?”
And the ring narrowed again around Griboedov and the constable. The petty thief was reeling.
Griboedov knew what would come next: somebody would shout out from behind—“Let him have it!”
And then it would turn ugly.
He said nothing, simply waited. He had only seconds and was reluctant to act prematurely. Things were being decided not in those offices with the little watercolors, but right out here in the runny mud, here in the street.
To the crowd’s surprise, he slowly pointed the muzzle at one of the stallmen.
“Arrest those two who accosted him,” he said to the constable.
And the stallman slowly retreated. He stood still inside the ring for a second and then suddenly plunged into the thick of the crowd. Everybody was quiet.
The little old man, the clerk, suddenly yelled:
“Hold him! He’s the one who did the beating!”
“Hold him!” everybody yelled. The stallman was grabbed and dragged away; he went quietly, showing little resistance.
Griboedov stuck the pistol into his pocket.
The constable led off the pilferer, holding him tightly by the scruff of his neck, limp though he was. The two stallmen walked glumly ahead of him. The crowd parted before them.
The little gray old man, the pencil-pushers, made his way toward Griboedov and said:
“I can testify, Your Excellency: only one of them attacked him, the other did not. Write it down.”
Griboedov looked at him, uncomprehendingly.
When he went through the crowd, like a sharpened knife through black bread, the pale Faddei was standing on the corner supporting Katya. She saw him and suddenly burst out crying into her handkerchief. Faddei hailed a cab.
Griboedov was drenched in sweat; his lips were trembling.
He looked very carefully at Katya and spoke quietly to Faddei:
“Take her home. Calm her down. I need to change my boots.”
His boots were smeared with the thick yellow clay, right up to his knees.
21
Rodofinikin shook Griboedov’s hand warmly. He had a congenial expression.
“I have read your project, Alexander Sergeyevich, not only with pleasure but also with amazement. Cigar?” He pointed to the cigars. “Tea?” he asked cordially, and suddenly resembled an attentive Küchenmeister.
He rang a little silver bell. A lanky, poker-faced lackey came in.
“Bring the tea,” he ordered imperiously.
The lackey served tea with biscuits in paper lace and some candied fruit. Rodofinikin chewed on the fruit and kept glancing at Griboedov.
“I can only say, er, that your plans are quite ingenious. Help yourself to the dates, please. I’m fond of them, probably on account of my last name.15 What can I say? My grandfather was a Greek.”
No smile from Griboedov. Rodofinikin eyed him with suspicion, a pucker on his forehead.
“Hee-hee.”
A platitudinous piece of wordplay worthy of a clerk: Rodofinikin as “Rhodes-Phoenix-kin.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Rodofinikin, as if rounding up, “your proposals, my dear Alexander Sergeyevich, have astounded me. Frankly: you have opened up a new world for me.”
He opened the file. The sheets in it were underlined here and there with blurry, blue-ink lines and crosses, and red checkmarks appeared in the margins.
Rodofinikin skimmed it with his eyes and hands and finally jabbed a finger.
“ ‘Until now, a Russian visiting official has dreamed only about promotion and has cared nothing about what came before him or what will happen afterward in the region, as if it were not conquered for his own benefit.’”
He rubbed his smooth, yellowish hands and shook his head:
“You have made a good point: not many people have any real interest in their work; their only aim is preferment. A very judicious remark.”
Griboedov looked intently at his superior. He said slowly:
“But over there, all small fry are Russian-born, the ‘Caucasus majors.’ There’s an entire cemetery of them, full up already, not far from Tiflis. They implant immorality, take bribes, and do pretty well, by the way. They are called the ‘civil bloodsuckers.’ If things continue like this in future, expect not minor mutinies but gazavat.”
Take that, you pickled date, thought Griboedov.
“Gazavat?”
“Indeed. A holy war.”
Rodofinikin swallowed a date.
“Gazavat?”
“An indigenous uprising.”
Then Rodofinikin asked, as a trader asks suspiciously about promissory notes offered in lieu of payment:
“And you are saying that the Company …”
“… will involve all the natives, including the traders who at the moment do not benefit the treasury and even the farmers who have been left landless.”
“Landless?”
“As you know, Konstantin Konstantinovich, they intend to transfer ten thousand of these petty traders from Persia—Armenians from Georgia, mostly—and settle them on the Tatars’ lands. Which means banishing the Tatars.”
Take that too …
Rodofinikin was seriously puzzled. He was counting on his fingers and seemed oblivious of Griboedov. Then he licked his lips and gave a sigh.
“The more I enter into the details of your project, Alexander Sergeyevich, the more I become convinced of the importance of the idea. It is true that we cannot act by arms alone. It might end up in … gazavat.”
He poked the air twice with his flat finger, as if with a blunt broadsword, and began to enumerate:
“Agriculture, seafaring, manufacturing … And tell me,” he added, “erm, are there any … mmm … profitable … manufacturing enterprises … even without any companies?”
“Of course,” drawled Griboedov, “the silk plantations. As Your Excellency may know, Castellas has built an entire silk town near Tiflis.”
“So, you see, Castellas has succeeded even without any comp
anies, on his own,” said the Greek, and squinted craftily.
“Castellas is the only one,” Griboedov said flatly, “but he is on the verge of ruin and about to sell his assets for a song. And this town of his exists mostly on paper.”
Rodofinikin’s eyes narrowed, became as thin as slits, black as coal. He was breathing fast.
“You’re saying … for a song? I haven’t been informed yet.”
“Yes,” said Griboedov, “but …”
“But …?”
“But every private owner faces the same challenges. The main reason is that they lack the skill to unwind silk.”
The Greek drummed his fingers.
“And with your Company?” he asked, both with curiosity and with some trepidation, his mouth opening wider.
“The Company would attract skilled workers and experienced craftsmen from foreign parts; silk-winders, spinners …”
Rodofinikin paid no attention to him.
“But what kind of management shall we choose … will you choose, my dear Alexander Sergeyevich, for the Company?”
“First of all, His Majesty will issue an edict, in accordance with the law, concerning privileges for commercial enterprises, for colonizing the farmers, for the setting up of the factories, for …”
Rodofinikin nodded respectfully:
“That goes without saying.”
“Then the investments are pulled together.”
Rodofinikin put the palms of his hands together.
“The workers and craftsmen are recruited from foreign parts …”
Rodofinikin spread his palms wide and repeated:
“Craftsmen.”
“There will be continuous turnover of capital …”
Rodofinikin clapped his hands:
“Continuous turnover.”
“And when the privileges end, long-term privileges …” said Griboedov, speaking emphatically.
“Oh yes,” asked Rodofinikin eagerly, “long term, but what will happen when they end?”
“Each member of the Company will acquire his right independently.”
“But this is … this is, this is like the American States,” smiled Rodofinikin. “But if, as you say, the capital …”
He gulped. Griboedov answered casually:
“More like the East India Company.”
“Mmm,” hummed Rodofinikin absentmindedly and looked at Griboedov in agreement.
The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar Page 14