of incentive, he was assigned a room that had freed up in
a communal apartment.
‘And they moved in with us,’ sighed Zoya.
She straightened her sheer dress and Solovyov’s gaze
settled unwittingly on her knees. The first evening breeze touched the crown of the Chekhov cypresses.
The Kozachenkos had packed light for their move. They
sold their furniture in their native Ternopol before heading into the unknown. All they carried into the general’s
spacious room was three folding beds, several basins of
various sizes, and a ficus purchased at a Yalta flea market.
They hung a portrait of Ukrainian poet Taras G. Shevchenko (1814–1861) in the corner furthest from the window, underneath Ukrainian towels embroidered in traditional red and
draped on the wall. A great deal of empty space remained.
The sense of expanse was enhanced because their
neighbor Ivan Mikhailovich Kolpakov had removed all items
from the general’s room the day before the Kozachenko
family moved in. This operation for seizing the deceased’s property was conducted with military rapidity. One night,
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Ivan Mikhailovich unglued from the general’s door the strip of paper bearing an official seal and, with his wife, Yekaterina Ivanovna Kolpakov, aiding and abetting, transferred
everything into their room, right down to the general’s
glasses and Grigory V. Ursulyak’s book The Stone Foot. Back in the day, the general had agreed to browse through the
book, at Nina Fedorovna’s request.
An oak cabinet with carved two-headed eagles presented
particular complications: the couple found themselves unable to lift it. After an hour and a half of fruitless efforts (a blow was inflicted upon Yekaterina Ivanovna’s back, for her lowly lifting capacity), they managed to drag out the fairly mutilated cabinet after placing plastic lids under it. Yekaterina Ivanovna meticulously swept the floor in the general’s room.
Needless to say, the actions undertaken by the couple
ended up being too naïve not to be disclosed. However, they ended up being disclosed, at the very least, because of the cabinet’s magnitude: the door to the Kolpakovs’ small room would not close. The newly visible area contained stacked
beds and bundles of books, which the Kolpakovs never read.
Yekaterina Ivanovna’s concluding attempt to cover their
tracks certainly could not have deluded anyone.
The civil defense worker’s inquisitive mind imagined what
had happened in detail. After accusing the Kolpakovs of
appropriating property that had been transferred to the
state, he announced that he intended to inform the state of the loss inflicted. The undiplomatic Kolpakov immediately
inflicted a blow upon Petr Terentyevich’s face. The boy,
Taras, who was standing in the doorway of the allocated
room, began to cry. Infliction of serious bodily harm was
added to appropriation of government property.
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Ivan Kolpakov felt cornered and drank himself into a
stupor. And, oh, was he amazed when Petr Terentyevich
himself woke him up in the morning, a glass of beer in his hand. Kolpakov might possibly have considered his neighbor an extraterrestrial when he looked at the iridescent bruise around his eye. At first, Ivan Mikhailovich even deflected the hand holding the glass. Only after drinking the beer and coming to grips with his initial agitation did he prove capable of hearing out Kozachenko.
Petr Terentyevich let it be known too that there were
potential options in the matter. The deceased’s items that were crammed into the Kolpakovs’ room—Kozachenko’s
hand soared over the alienated belongings—should be divided evenly among the conflicting parties. As a prominent item, the cabinet should be given to the state, to avoid a scandal.
In addition (and here Kozachenko’s voice took on a prosecu-torial tone), the general’s books were being transferred from the Kolpakovs’ portion to the Kozachenko family, as compensation for the maiming that had been inflicted.
Kolpakov approved Petr Terentyevich’s draft treaty
unconditionally. The items were divided in half, the
Kozachenkos took full possession of the books (with the
exception of The Stone Foot, whose title had intrigued Kolpakov), and the cabinet was offered to the state.
The state initially displayed interest in the cabinet but
was forced to refuse it in the end. The cabinet had been
brought in before the apartment was renovated to accom-
modate more residents and now the cabinet simply was not
fit for removal. It turned out that the entrance to the apartment had diminished during the elapsed decades of the
Soviet regime. Kolpakov refused to keep an item that
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hindered closing the door, and it was reinstalled in its
previous territory after Petr Terentyevich’s lengthy doubts concerning the presence of the two-headed eagles.
The fate of the trophy literature proved more complex.
After determining that there was not one single edition of Taras Shevchenko among the general’s books, Petr
Terentyevich lost interest in them and furtively brought
them to a second-hand bookstore. He kept sulkily silent
afterwards, when Nina Fedorovna returned and persistently
questioned the neighbors about the general’s books. When
the truth came out later, Nina Fedorovna rushed off to the bookstore, to at least buy up what was left. Unfortunately, not very much remained.
As for The Stone Foot, Ivan Kolpakov attempted to begin reading it but was quickly disenchanted. Being unfamiliar
with the basics of versification, he could not comprehend
why the texts inside were arranged in columns. Ursulyak’s
imagery turned out to be equally unfamiliar to him: it was, as a matter of fact, pretty unadorned. Finally, he could not ascertain why the publication that had found its way to him had been given its name. Without making any arrangements
with Petr Terentyevich, he brought the book to the second-
hand bookstore where, it would seem, its story came to an
end, but habent sua fata libelli.*
One fine day, Ursulyak stopped by the second-hand book-
store, saw The Stone Foot on the shelf, and read the personalized inscription written in his own hand. Poet and director Ursulyak purchased his own book and gave it to Nina Fedorovna once
again, pronouncing that every person should have something
* Books have their own destinies (Latin).
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that cannot be sold. This was not, in fact, the first incident of the sort in his poetic practice: at second-hand bookstores, he sometimes bought up books he had once inscribed, returning them to their remiss owners with the notation Reissued. He developed a knack for determining the presence of The Stone Foot as soon as he stepped inside. Sales clerks knew that and readily took The Stone Foot on consignment.
‘Zoya, we’re closing,’ came a shout from somewhere
beyond the garden.
‘We’re closing,’ Zoya corroborated sadly.
After opening the gate, she waited for her Petersburg
guest to exit, then closed it with a clang al
ready familiar to Solovyov. She entered the administrative building without
saying a word. Solovyov huddled sheepishly by the gate. He had not been invited to enter the building, but nobody had said goodbye.
He did not want to be pushy. He did not want to ask if
he could see Zoya home, though of course he wanted to
see her home. On the other hand, it would have been strange and even disagreeable if Zoya herself had asked for that.
‘You’re still here?’ Zoya asked, though she did not look
at all surprised.
Solovyov nodded and they made their way out. Zoya was
not headed toward the stairs, down which Solovyov had
walked from the square to the museum. After going around
the corner of the administrative building, they walked out toward another gate. From that gate, a path looped between the buildings of a sanatorium and led them out.
‘And what happened to the memoirs the general dictated
to Nina Fedorovna?’ Solovyov asked. ‘Were they in the
general’s room, too?’
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The young woman shrugged absent-mindedly. ‘Probably
. . . it was such a mess then.’
They went down to the Uchan-su River, walked along it
for about fifty meters, and ended up on a stone bridge.
Leaning her elbows on the railing, Zoya observed the
Uchan-su tirelessly fighting its way toward the sea, through cobblestones and chunks of wood. She looked calmly at
Solovyov.
‘Are those memoirs very important to you?’
‘Yes.’
There was a small bazaar on the other shore. At Zoya’s
suggestion, they bought a watermelon and took it to a
nearby park. After settling on a bench, Zoya took a Swiss
pocket knife from her purse. This woman always carried
the essential items.
After cutting the watermelon in half, Solovyov placed
one half aside, on a plastic bag. From the second half, he cut thin, neat semicircles, divided them into smaller
segments, and spread them out on the same bag. There was
something primordially masculine in his handling of the
knife, something that was undeniably expressed in Zoya’s
gaze, which was following his hands. Solovyov himself could see that he had been very deft; it surprised him a little. The watermelon was truly sweet.
‘Your mother didn’t lay claim to the general’s property?’
‘She didn’t have any official rights.’
‘But how did she keep living with the people who . . .’
‘. . . Who robbed her? It was fine. That’s life.’
Life dealt worse things, too. Nina Fedorovna found it
challenging not only to lay claim to the property but even to express the offense she had felt. One could do that if
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seeing the offenders in court or perhaps only meeting them every now and then on the street. But having them alongside oneself every day, using a communal toilet with them, and
leaving a pot of soup in a shared kitchen—that was utterly impossible. Most likely, the hurt that Nina Fedorovna felt did not so much pass as dull. The sight of the general’s
various small items (many of which she had given to him)
popping up with one of the couples, reignited that feeling, though, overall, it was deemed to have faded.
Moreover, oddly enough, Petr Terentyevich began striking
up conversations with her in his time away from his medical procedures. After half-sitting on a kitchen table that had been handed down to him, he told Nina Fedorovna about
constructing a respirator under home conditions and
applying splints to bone fractures, about antibacterial injec-tions and the effect of chlorine vapors on the upper airways.
Despite having never given a gift to anyone in his life, he suddenly gave her the evacuation map for a factory that
manufactured reinforced concrete as well as a model of the ventilating opening of an emergency exit that he made
himself. He even wanted to give his collection of toxic agents to Nina Fedorovna for her birthday, but Galina Artemovna
opposed that adamantly when, by chance, she learned of
her husband’s intention. She quickly made a mental note
of her husband’s contact with their female neighbor. Galina Artemovna looked upon that ironically but did not speak
up at all. Sometimes she even gave the impression that this state of things suited her.
In actuality, the work-related topics that so agitated Petr Terentyevich had always left Galina Artemovna indifferent.
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he had mastered to perfection, nor his ability to determine the type and size of a gas mask with his eyes closed made
any sort of impression on her. It is possible that he turned to Nina Fedorovna—who heard him out politely—to see
out what the specialist lacked in his own family. Most likely, Petr Terentyevich’s sympathy for Nina Fedorovna’s late
motherhood played a role, reminding him that he and Galina Artemovna, too, had been able to have a child when they
were nearly forty.
There were some pronounced changes with respect to
the Kozachenko pair. This might have been characterized
as estrangement, if, of course, they had been close before.
But they had not been close. Definitively caught up in his illness (which was not, by all indications, as scary as the couple initially thought), Petr Terentyevich made the rounds of Yalta’s pharmacies after work. He compared medicine
costs, attempting each time to ascertain their wholesale
prices.
On one of those evenings, Ivan Kolpakov subjected Petr
Terentyevich’s wife to an unexpected sexual advance: in his state of drunkenness, he had thought she was his own wife.
Galina Artemovna’s lack of resistance confirmed his delu-
sion and he did with his neighbor all that his modest
fantasies directed. Kolpakov’s mistakes began repeating
regularly after that, with the only difference being that now it was Galina Artemovna herself who prompted him with
regard to little novelties she had never seen from her civil defense specialist.
Petr Terentyevich, who suspected nothing, continued his
platonic relations with Nina Fedorovna. At Petr Terentyevich’s request, he was retold the play The Cherry Orchard, which 580VV_txt.indd 92
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vividly reminded him of his favorite Taras Shevchenko
poem, ‘The Cherry Orchard by the House.’ Once he even
asked Nina Fedorovna to show him the Chekhov Museum
because he’d heard so much about him (Chekhov). His wife
was copulating with Uncle Vanya (Kolpakov) as Petr
Terentyevich stood in Chekhov’s study with a group of
museum visitors. Tears in his eyes, he hearkened to the
story of Chekhov’s deadly skirmish with the very same
disease he had, feeling himself to be a bit like Chekhov at that moment. It is possible that in the depths of his soul, Petr Terentyevich also wanted to tell a German doctor,
‘ Doktor, ich sterbe,’* but there were no German doctors in his life and could not have been.
After thinking about death at the Chekhov Museum, he
permit himself. In the will he had prepared, five hundred
Soviet rubles from an unshared bank book was allocated
specifically for that purpose. That sum seemed to him like more than enough for a performance of Chopin in the open
air. And though he was not really planning to die, the instructions he had made brought a certain tragedy and loftiness
into his life.
His life did not end in a Chekhovian manner. When he
returned home one day at an inopportune hour, he found
an abominable love scene in his very own bed. That was the description that escaped from Petr Terentyevich. Beside
himself with rage, he rushed at Ivan Kolpakov and proceeded to pepper him with punches. Being under the influence of
* ‘Doctor, I am dying.’ (German)
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alcohol, Kolpakov initially took the blows fairly meekly. In the end, he lost his temper and, cursing, flung Kozachenko away from him. As Petr Terentyevich fell, he hit the back
of his head on one of the heads of the double-headed eagle carved on the cabinet and lost consciousness.
The ambulance doctor who arrived roughly an hour and
a half after the call ascertained that the trauma to Petr
Terentyevich was not consistent with enabling survival.
Unable to figure out that wording, Ivan Kolpakov grabbed
the doctor by the collar and demanded an answer to a simple question: is Kozachenko dead or alive?
‘Dead,’ the doctor answered curtly and left without saying goodbye.
Endeavoring to anticipate police questioning, Ivan
Mikhailovich decisively enticed Galina Artemovna to his
room. He persuaded her not to mention the true cause of
her husband’s death. Strictly speaking, there was no real
need to persuade her anyway. She had already long been
experiencing doubts about Petr Terentyevich’s longevity so it was now only the mode of his death, rather than its fact, that could make much of an impression on her. The
sobered-up Kolpakov displayed unexpected oratorical abili-
ties. The first words he uttered ending up hitting the bull’s eye: he promised to marry the widow.
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