“Alexander Sergeyevich, a straightforward man like you or me never prepares. You might not believe it, but my soul is wide open before you. They may find faults. They may. You see the times, what they are like—fault-finding is in the blood. But do you think I am afraid? No, I am not afraid. I’d simply drink from the wrong glass in summer, and in winter I’d forget to put on winter clothes in a blizzard. ‘Better dead than captured’—that was what we used to say in our day. My dying thought will be of Russia. And the penultimate one: that you are a man of great soul, a poet, and a … friend—Alexander Sergeyevich.”
The general was pleased with himself.
He ran up to Griboedov and pecked him on his brow. He ran out and returned wearing a frock coat.
He took Griboedov by the arm, carefully, as if he were a precious thing, helped him out of the armchair, took him down the stairs, and opened the door for him.
Carriage … carriage. Tiflis was waking up. The skies were too blue, and the streets were already too hot.
He stood in the middle of his room again, shivering, afraid to sit down.
Sashka came in and announced a visitor:
“His Honor the governor.”
Zavileisky stretched his arms toward him cheerfully.
“Why did you do that?” asked Griboedov, ignoring the open arms, staggering and wincing with pain. “It’s disgusting.”
He behaved as if he were blind drunk. Zavileisky looked at him carefully.
“Sipiagin is in everybody’s way,” he said softly. “There are lots of things you don’t know about him, Alexander Sergeyevich.”
Griboedov was oblivious to him. He was staggering. Zavileisky shrugged his shoulders and left, utterly perplexed.
Griboedov sank to the floor.
So he sat there, staring defiantly at the chairs and shaking.
Sashka came in and found him on the floor.
“Now you see, Alexander Sergeyevich,” he said and burst into tears, “you did not use the oil, and what are we going to do now?” He wiped his nose with his fist. “Now that you’ve been taken ill.”
“Yes, Sashenka,” said Griboedov from the floor—and he too burst into tears—“yes. You did not brush my clothes, you did not polish my boots …”
Bed, cold and white, like light snow.
And he disappeared under the illness, pulled it like a blanket over his head.
20
He was delirious:
The broad, stooped back of his father, Sergei Ivanovich, wanders about the nursery room. He is wearing a dressing gown, the dressing gown is dangling, and he lifts it with one hand. His father’s short little legs can hardly be seen from underneath the long gown. Griboedov scrutinized the broad back, which was his father. Now the father was lounging about the nursery room, or was searching for something.
“Your papa is being silly,” the chambermaid had said on the previous night.
And he suddenly felt such love for the wide back and the short man, felt that he had been missing him for so long, and he was very happy that he was wandering unhurriedly about his room.
With his back toward him, the father approached a cabinet with toys, lifted and looked behind them. A brownish Easter egg fell out but did not crack. He pulled out a little mahogany drawer, stood back, and peeped inside.
At this moment, Mama, Nastasya Fyodorovna, cut into the conversation.
Nastasya Fyodorovna spun, buzzed about the father; she wanted to distract him with her little tricks, to stop him. But the father, paying no attention to her, as if she were not there, paced from one corner to another, stumbled into the desks, pulled out the drawers, and looked inside very deliberately. He bent and peered under the desk.
“This is odd,” he said gravely, “where on earth is Alexander?”
“Alexander?” Nastasya Fyodorovna continued to buzz about: “Alexander is not here.”
A long tassel was attached to the father’s dressing-gown on a long cord, and it trailed along the floor, like a toy.
Then the father, holding his dressing gown, equally slowly turned toward Griboedov lying in bed.
His forehead was deeply furrowed, and his little eyes looked surprised. He made toward the bed, with Griboedov watching him, and Griboedov saw his father’s small, wonderful, pampered hand. The father pulled the blanket away and stared at the sheets.
“This is odd; where on earth is Alexander?” he said and stepped away from the bed.
And Griboedov burst into tears and screamed stridently. He realized that he did not exist.
“A very high fever, but it may well be, it may be … the plague,” said Dr. Adelung quietly and covered him with a blanket.
Eliza backed toward the door.
21
Faddei took a cab and looked around both sides of Nevsky Prospect.
Finally, he spotted a man he knew. Pyotr Karatygin was strolling along Nevsky Prospect. He stopped the cabman and waved to him. Pyotr did not seem to want to approach him. He had started to sense his importance. His vaudeville was being staged at the Bolshoi Theater.
“Just think,” Faddei said to himself, “what hubris and hauteur, dear Lord.”
He got out of the cab and told the cabman to wait.
“Pyotr Andreyevich, have you heard? Alexander Sergeyevich is getting married! To a princess, Chavchavadze’s daughter, a famed beauty. I’ve just heard the news.”
He returned to his cab and went on.
Pyotr Karatygin looked in surprise after him, and Faddei waved his little hand at him again. Pyotr strolled along Nevsky Prospect, not knowing what he was supposed to do with the news.
Finally, by the Moika, he ran into his old friend, Grigoryev the Second, a rascal and a drunk who used to patronize him.
“Do you know the news?” he said. “Griboedov is getting married to Princess Tsitsadzova. He’s no fool; swear to God, I’ve just got a letter about it.”
Grigoryev the Second entered Loredo’s coffee shop, ordered two little pies, saw a familiar Guard, and said to him:
“It’s been a long time, dear chap. Still marching?”
“Not really,” said the Guard, or something along those lines.
“Have you heard: Griboedov is getting married? From the horse’s mouth. To Princess Tsitsianova.”
The Guard left with clanking spurs and hailed a young officer:
“Where are you going?”
“To the Summer Gardens.”
“I’m coming with you. You are related to the Tsitsianovs, aren’t you?”
The officer’s auntie was a cousin-in-law of the old Princess Tsitsianova, who lived in Moscow.
“Why?”
“Griboedov is marrying Tsitsianova.”
“You don’t say!”
Young Rodofinikin stopped to greet the officers and also learned about Tsitsianova. In the evening, Faddei approached Katenka Teleshova at the theater, kissed her hand, and told her the news.
“I already know,” said Katya harshly, “I have heard. So what if he is getting married? I wish him all the happiness in the world.”
She pouted and turned to Faddei shoulders of such beauty that at once he wanted to kiss them.
In the evening, old Rodofinikin informed Nesselrode that His Majestys order for Griboedov to go to Persia should be issued without delay. Nesselrode agreed, and they sat down to play boston.
At night, when Faddei returned home and was eager to tell Lenochka, she lay with her nose toward the wall and seemed to be asleep. He gave a little cough, sighed a bit, and when she turned over, he told her.
She was actually not asleep and said almost indignantly:
“You know nothing. Alexander Sergeyevich is not cut out for the family life. Das ist doch unmöglich. This will tie him up, and he will no longer be able to write.”
“Well, yes, he will,” said Faddei, somewhat confused. “He’s a better man that you give him credit for. He will write such a play that …”
Faddei looked at his wife with frightened eyes. Le
nochka gestured rudely:
“This is what he’ll write instead of a play!”
Then, pulling his boots off, he said, trying for reconciliation:
“They say Pushkin is requesting permission to go to the Caucasus. In search of inspiration. Or to play cards. He is up to there in debt. But our Griboedov will give him a run for his money. Pushkin won’t get away with writing another poem about a fountain. We’ve had enough of that.”
But when he got under the blanket and stretched out his arms toward Lenochka, it turned out that she was already fast asleep and as cold as a statue in the Summer Gardens.
22
The hangover headache is so painful, his legs refuse to hold him.
I am falling ill, thinks Griboedov.
They are standing in snow, in the middle of a field, he and another officer he doesn’t know.
“What the hell is Yakubovich doing here? Isn’t he now doing hard labor?”
Two other men stand at a distance, in the snow, without winter coats, just frock coats on, and they are cold. The fair-haired one is Vasya, a comic character.
Why have I brought them here if I am not well?
They keep aiming at each other, and he feels a terrible ennui.
Come on, shoot!
Neither a shot, nor any smoke, but Vasya falls down.
Good!
Good because he can go home now, have a cup of hot tea, go to bed—and sleep.
At this point, Yakubovich jabs Griboedov’s elbow.
And Alexander Sergeyevich jerks suddenly, as if struck by a bullet.
The blond one lies still, and Griboedov dances over him, singing him the “sweet mother turnip” song. The song is as old as Moscow, an old Russian tavern song of bacchanals.
“Is the turnip sweet enough for you, Vasya boy?”
He dances, wreaking havoc, and at the same time stares closely at the jelly of Vasya’s eye and wonders where to hide the body.
“Down the ice hole,” he says quietly and purposefully.
“To the woods, Vasya?” he asks the blond corpse.
He is dragging him by the sleeve, out of which dangles a hand. And the blond one is staring at him.
“Oi,” says the blond, suddenly, shamelessly, “you are tickling me. Where are you dragging me to, idiot?”
He is clowning about.
Griboedov hides him awkwardly, in full view.
“Here we go then! Here we go!”
“Gambled away! Squandered away!”
“What an oversight!”
“Word and deed! I surrender! I am begging your forgiveness! Just put me down to bed and give me some tea. And bury that accursed blond Vasya!”
“I will get away with it!” says Griboedov suddenly and loudly.
He wants to make the sign of the cross, but his hand cannot move.
A duel between Vasya Sheremetev and Count Zavadovsky took place in November 1817. Another duel was to be fought by Yakubovich and Griboedov. Sheremetev was killed. The duel was over the ballet dancer Istomina. Rumor in Petersburg had it that Griboedov allegedly procured Istomina for Zavadovsky and drove the matter to a duel. Following the duel, he left for Georgia.
Yakubovich and Griboedov fought their duel in the Caucasus, and Yakubovich shot him in the hand.
23
One has to pay a price for combining two occupations. Dr. Adelung suspected the plague.
Eliza barricaded her door and ordered them to find Dr. McNeill, who was still in Tiflis. McNeill prescribed leeches and responded to Adelung’s attacks indifferently, mumbling something indistinct. Next morning, he left for Tabriz to see the envoy, Macdonald.
They told Nino nothing, but two days later, she ran into his room carelessly dressed, her hair undone, and looking younger and prettier than ever. And she stayed at Griboedov’s bedside.
24
He came to.
It was night. All over Russia and the entire Caucasus stretched the wandering, web-footed, wild primordial night.
Nesselrode was asleep in his bed, having stuck his angry beak into the blanket like a bare-necked rooster.
Gaunt Macdonald was breathing evenly, dressed in a pair of fine English pajamas, with his arms around his spouse who was as taut as a string.
Katya was sleeping in Petersburg, spread out and exhausted by her leaps, without a single thought in her head.
Pushkin bobbed about his study with quick little steps, like a monkey in a desert, and studied the books on the shelves.
General Sipiagin was snoring in Tiflis, no far away, and whistled like a child through his nose.
The plague-stricken people with bulging eyes were gasping for breath in the poisoned hovels near Gyumri.
All of them were homeless.
There was no power on earth.
The Duke of Wellington and the entire St. James’s cabinet were breathing into their pillows.
Emperor Nicholas’s flat chest was rising and falling.
They were all pretending to be the powers that be.
And above the stars, in the heavy frames of the icons, slept a distant, extraordinarily sly emperor of emperors, archbishop of archbishops—God. He sent illnesses, victories, and defeats, and in them, there was neither justice nor sense, just as in the actions of General Paskevich.
There were no superior forces on earth; there were no arbiters; no one watched over them.
There was no one to tell them:
“Sleep tight. I am wakeful for all of you.”
The plague-stricken children groaned in thin voices near Gyumri, and the homeless Italian, Martinengo, had been drinking his tenth shot of vodka in quarantine.
The crime that Griboedov had committed ten years ago and had been atoning for during ten years of labors and adversities was as fresh in his mind as if it had taken place yesterday. He had not got away with it.
Because there was no power in the world, and time was waiting for no one.
And that was the point when Griboedov howled plaintively like a dog.
The minister plenipotentiary, vested with power, clasped the girl’s pale downy arm as if she were the only salvation, as if only this downed hand could restore, resolve, and point the way.
As if it were the one and only power.
25
From that night onward, he made a speedy recovery.
From that night onward, Griboedov calmed down.
Three days later, he received His Majesty’s order to leave Tiflis. He was back on his feet, though still unwell. He was neither cheerful nor gloomy; he was calm. The impression that he produced on other people surrounding him was that of a man who had suddenly grown older and more thoughtful.
Akhaltsikhe was taken on August 15.
Nino and he were married at the Zion Cathedral on the evening of August 22. But during the church ceremony, he suddenly felt wretched, sick at heart, and accidentally dropped the wedding ring.
The ring was quickly picked up, and the old women’s superstitious babbling was stopped in its tracks. Those present claimed that this circumstance made a bad impression on Griboedov.
Next morning, Griboedov was at his desk working at his papers and writing dispatches.
And on the same day, Sunday, August 22, General Sipiagin gave a ball in Griboedov’s honor.
The general opened the ball with a polonaise, his head proudly held back, with Nino as his partner.
Griboedov gave him a smile.
On September 9, Griboedov came out onto the porch, upright, wearing a gold-embroidered uniform and a cocked hat. Nino was waiting for him. Princess Salome was bustling about.
The wagons and carriages were ready.
He was surrounded by the guard of honor.
Abu’l-Qasim-Khan, wearing a gold-embroidered gown, approached Griboedov and bowed to him deeply:
“Bon voyage, votre Excellence, notre cher et estimé Vazir-Mouchtar.”29
Griboedov got into the carriage.
This is how he had become Vazir-Mukhtar.
&nb
sp; 06
They say about Persia
That she is rich.
No, she is not rich,
she is cursed.
▶ Soldiers’ song
1
She is not rich, and she is not cursed.
White roads, blue fields of tired old stubble, red mountains, and streams that gurgle by night: hr-hr-hr.
An Asian land, as bare as the palm of an old man’s hand, with mountains like waves, like callouses, like traces of long hard labor—the work of a zel-zele, an earthquake.
Snakes in Mugan, bugs in Mian, which bite only foreigners. The ferocity of those bugs was grossly exaggerated by the travelers of the 1820s and debunked by those of the 1840s.
Asian idleness, comfort, is to be closer to the floor, to gaze through the multicolored glass of the windows, shattered here and there. Persian luxury is pomp, tashahhus, and a childlike love of kaleidoscopes. In Persia, windows face the courtyard and windowless walls face the streets, like a man who turns his back against a dusty wind.
Rugs, hard-won on the looms—the Persian equivalent of furniture, but our Western chairs and benches are also hard-won by the carpenter’s plane.
Persia is an ancient country that does not feel its age because its people are mainly young.
In 1829, it looked like the Russia of the time of Ivan III or of Alexei Mikhailovich, as if there had been no Peter the Great, or it had failed to notice him. The rivalry between the two cities, the older one and the younger one, Tabriz and Tehran, was just like the rivalry between Moscow and Petersburg, even though Tabriz had existed as early as the eighth century and Tehran since the time of Tamerlane.
Eunuch Agha Mohammad, the first Qajar, the founder of the Qajar dynasty, made Tehran his capital.
The Qajars were not Persians. They used to live in Mazandaran, among the deciduous forests. They were Turks. They were few, and the Persians used the word Qajar as a curse, but in the eighteenth century, they succeeded the tired Safavid dynasty, admirers of elegance.
The Qajars became a Persian dynasty in the same way that the Germans were a Russian dynasty, the French a Swedish dynasty, the Swedes a Polish dynasty, and the Hanoverians an English dynasty.
The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar Page 34