Solovyov and Larionov
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She complied with his requests, without wavering or even
displaying any particular coyness. When the police came,
they were told that Petr Terentyevich had been weak from
illness and grown dizzy. Waving her arms around, Galina
Artemovna showed how unfortunately her spouse had
fallen. They sat the inconsolable widow on the bed (it was already made up with three plumped pillows, one on top
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of the other) and ordered the neighbors to give her enough valerian so she’d feel better. Taras, who was fourteen at the time, stood in the corner of the room, holding the broken-off eagle head in his hands. Big, slow tears dropped from his
eyes.
Petr Terentyevich was not buried as he had dreamed.
Galina Artemovna was extremely indignant to discover her
husband’s unaccounted-for five hundred rubles; she buried
him without music. In addition to Taras and Galina
Artemovna, those walking behind the coffin were Ivan
Mikhailovich, Nina Fedorovna and the little Zoya, and a
representative of a certain organization (he mysteriously
placed a finger to his lips at all questions) with which, it emerged, Petr Terentyevich’s entire conscious life had been linked.
It was this very organization that took care that the event was fittingly solemn. Taking into account that the deceased had been housed in the room of a White Guard general,
Petr Terentyevich’s death from a two-headed eagle was
assessed as almost heroic and, in the highest degree, anti-monarchical. The unknown person installed an aluminum
tripod with a star and a pointed Red Army hat on
Kozachenko’s grave. For some reason, no representatives
from the deceased’s primary place of work were in attend-
ance. Even so, the Magarach Institute allocated fifteen liters of wine for the wake, but, in light of Galina Artemovna’s
cancellation of the wake, Ivan Kolpakov, who was secretly
engaged to her, drank all fifteen liters.
As for Kolpakov, he was in no hurry whatsoever for what
had been secret to become evident. Either he thought the
danger of unmasking had been overcome or the cost of the
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issue itself seemed too high to him, but he simply stopped mentioning the promise he had made to the widow.
Moreover, even the small bed-based joys that had bonded
him with Galina Artemovna ceased shortly thereafter. Their contact was reduced to Kolpakov’s brief visits, for treating morning hangovers with Petr Terentyevich’s leftover medicinal alcohol.
Another abominable scene took place one morning and, in many ways, hastened a denouement. As she waited for Ivan
Mikhailovich to vacate the washbasin (he was washing at
great length, gargling, grunting, and clearing out phlegm), the widow remarked, reproachful, that other people needed
to wash, too. Exclaiming, ‘Then wash!’ Ivan Mikhailovich
Kolpakov splashed her in the face with water from a large
tin mug that was nearby. The water was cold but clean.
Galina Artemovna felt insulted and demanded an expla-
nation. She pointed out to the boor that actions of this sort were inadmissible, reminding him at the same time of his
promise to enter into marriage with her. With his charac-
teristic harshness, Ivan Mikhailovich led the wetted woman to the mirror and suggested she remember how old she
really was. The breaker of the marriage promise recom-
mended she think not about a wedding but about a funeral.
In response to the threat of telling the police the whole
truth, Ivan Kolpakov burst into Homeric laughter.
He underestimated Galina Artemovna. She did not, in fact,
go to the police; after all, what could she have said there after her own eloquent statements? Ivan Mikhailovich’s line about a funeral sent her mind in an unexpected direction, though.
After brief deliberations, she decided to die on the same day as her betrothed. Galina Artemovna waited for yet another
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visit aimed at hangover treatment (there was not much of a wait) and then dissolved her husband’s collection of toxic agents into his alcohol and handed the solution to Ivan
Kolpakov. Several minutes later, Ivan Mikhailovich passed
away in the arms of Yekaterina Ivanovna, his lawful wife,
whom he just managed to reach. Convinced of the prepara-
tion’s efficacy, Galina Artemovna drank all that remained.
‘They were buried in separate graves,’ said Zoya, finishing her sorrowful story. ‘And Taras was left all by himself. He’s still living in our apartment.’
The watermelon rinds stretched into a short but even
wedge on the bench. Solovyov neatly collected them and
carried them to a nearby trash bin (a pack of tissues, so he could wipe his hands, immediately appeared out of Zoya’s
purse). Exactly half the watermelon, that which had been
placed on the plastic bag, remained.
They left the park and headed toward the sea. In the
evening’s duskiness, signals from a lighthouse took on the ever-more distinct form of a broadening beam of light. The rhythm of its blinking attracted attention, forcing one to wait for another flash and involuntarily count out the
seconds until it appeared. In the slight twilight breeze, it was finally obvious how very hot the day had been.
‘I have the day off tomorrow,’ said Zoya. ‘Want to go to
the beach?’
‘I don’t know how to swim.’
Solovyov uttered that almost as if he were doomed. Just
as men announce their lack of experience when in bed with
a lady who has seen everything.
‘I’ll teach you,’ Zoya promised after a pause. ‘It’s not
complicated at all.’
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It was completely dark when they approached Zoya’s
building on Botkinskaya Street: it was a two-story building with high gothic windows. So, it occurred to Solovyov, this is where the general lived. A figure that had initially gone unnoticed moved away from the building’s walls, which
were overgrown with grapevines.
‘Good evening, Zoya Ivanovna. I was walking by and saw
there wasn’t any light in the windows so decided to wait.’
Solovyov examined the unknown man in the light of the
streetlamp. Before him stood a man of more than sixty,
wearing a light-colored shirt in a quasi-military style. His appearance—from the carefully ironed trousers to the
combed-back hair—was an example of a special old-fash-
ioned luster as it appeared in the polished Studebakers and Hispano-Suizas that surfaced now and again in Yalta’s flow of automobiles.
‘Everything’s fine,’ said Zoya, unsurprised.
She took a few steps toward the front door and added,
without looking at anyone, ‘Good night.’
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The beach was already packed with people when Solovyov
and Zoya arrived at around ten in the morning. They stepped carefully over extended arms, glued-on paper nose protec-tors, and jelly-like rear ends glistening with lotion. It
was body parts that drew the eye in this crowded festival of
flesh. Forcing himself to regain his focus, Solovyov noticed an empty spot by a stand with a life ring. There was just
enough space for two towels. Solovyov considered it an
undeniable stroke of luck that this spot was located by a
ring. The means of rescue was right at hand if he found
himself in a critical situation.
The life ring turned out to be unnecessary. Solovyov was
surprised to discover that Zoya was a born swimming
instructor. As she walked into the water with him, she
ordered him to lie, stomach-down, on the sea’s surface.
When Solovyov’s body—which was unaccustomed to
water—slowly began sinking, Zoya lightly but confidently
supported him with both arms. He felt a bit shy about being in such a strange, baby-like position in a young woman’s
arms, though he could not help but admit that the training turned out to be a pleasant business.
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They carefully made their way to their towels after
coming out of the water. Zoya lay on her back, extending
one arm along her body, and using the other to shade her
eyes from the sun. Solovyov sat with his chin resting on his knees. This embryonic pose seemed ideal for an observer.
The morning beach was something unprecedented for
Solovyov and it evoked his curiosity.
Solovyov was very taken with the Tatar women peddling
baklava and strings of nut candies on trays. They crouched next to buyers, pulling a plastic bag out from under a sash and putting a hand inside as if it were a glove, then taking their Eastern goods from a tray. Large beads of sweat glistened on their faces. The Tatar women settled up with
baklava lovers, stood easily with no signs of tiredness, and continued their journey over the scorching pebbles. Their
shouts, slightly muted by the tide, sounded along the entire expanse of the beach, mingling with the shouts of sellers
of kvass, cola, beer, dried bream, and kebabs made of
smoked whelks.
Solovyov examined the human bodies. Liberated from
their clothing, almost nothing bound them and they felt no boundaries with anyone. He saw muscular types whose skin
had been tanned by the sun, a result of a constant presence at the beach. Even tattoos that had been applied long, long ago, before they began to frequent the beach, were lost.
These men moved toward the water with a special gait.
This was the gait of the kings of the beach: torso swaying, holding their arms slightly away from their sides. When
they came back onto dry land, their swimsuits clung to their bodies, clearly outlining their genitalia. Aware of this effect, the kings of the beach pulled at the waistbands of their
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swimsuits with two fingers, releasing them with a businesslike snap. The swim trunks immediately lost their excessive anatomism. With their merits obvious to everyone, the kings of the beach needed no additional advertising.
Alongside them—and herein lay the great equality of the
beach—there hovered the possessors of flabby breasts that
had been bravely liberated from swimsuits, one-size-fits-all bellies, and old women’s shapeless, ropy legs stitched with the violet threads of veins. Everything that would have given rise to protest in any other situation turned out to be permissible at the beach and, for the most part, evoked no
indignation.
Solovyov leaned back and rested on his elbows. He began
watching Zoya when he was certain her arm was firmly
covering her eyes. His gaze slid from Zoya’s shaved armpits to her thighs, above which ran the thin line of her bikini.
Solovyov lost himself admiring the barely perceptible and
somehow placid movement of her belly. When he raised
his eyes, he met Zoya’s gaze and smiled from the unexpect-
edness.
When they went back into the water, Zoya ordered
Solovyov to turn on his stomach and try to make the froglike motions that she had demonstrated first. Zoya’s strong hands supported Solovyov in his froglike motion and slid along
the trainee’s neck, chest, and belly, touching—anything is possible deep under water—his body’s most sensitive points from time to time. When Solovyov’s motion seemed insufficiently froglike to Zoya, she swam under him and
synchronized the rhythm of their two bodies to show him
how this actually looked. People standing on shore followed the lesson with undisguised interest.
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Zoya’s nontraditional and perhaps even somewhat eccen-
tric methods could not help but yield fruit. The result of their mutual efforts was that Solovyov swam several meters, experiencing the fabulous sensation of the first time.
He had experienced this sensation only twice in his life.
The first incident occurred at about the age of seven, when he suddenly rode away after an exhausting lesson in riding a two-wheel bicycle: his grandmother let go of the seat by accident when she grew tired of running after him. Solovyov registered, forever, his abrupt acquisition of balance. The smooth motion while coasting, akin to soaring; the crunch
of pine cones under the wheels.
He experienced the second sensation of this type at the
end of the second seven-year period in his life. It concerned a realm unconnected with grandmotherly help, something
of a far more delicate nature and not at all bicycle-related.
Out of necessity, Nadezhda Nikiforovna’s censorship
concerned only printed sources, but prohibited information had verbal distribution channels, too. Classmates supplied Solovyov with certain details about relations between the
sexes, though that was all presented in the crudest, most
mechanistic ways. Solovyov’s education in that regard
progressed so one-dimensionally and chaotically that by the time he had a notion of the essence of the sexual act, he
was somehow still unaware that children appeared as the
result of those same actions.
The connection between those two phenomena ended up
being thoroughly unexpected for him, even unpleasantly so.
Solovyov did not much want to connect a joyous and antic-
ipated event such as the appearance of a child with the
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while laughing. It cannot be ruled out that, deep down in
his soul, the boy platonically in love with Nadezhda
Nikiforovna simply did not want to believe it. A sober look at things hinted to schoolboy Solovyov that he and Nadezhda Nikiforovna were not fated to have children in this fashion.
Solovyov was shaken by that revelation, and during a
school gathering he imagined, in turn, all the parents in
attendance during production of his classmates. Taking that further, he imagined the schoolteachers in the same mode,
up to and including the principal ( Bigfoot was her nickname), a bulky, unsmiling woman with braids folded on her head.
Based on the existence of all their children, Solovyov came to the indisputable conclusion that each of them had done
that at least once in their lives. Including the principal, difficult though it was to believe. Copulation scenes
more or
less emerged for the rest of the teaching staff, but Solovyov’s fantasy turned out to be powerless when applied to the
principal. In the end, the adolescent managed to imagine
her, too, but the spectacle turned out to be ghastly. Peace of mind came only with the thought that the dreadful
phenomenon had taken place one single time and would
never be repeated.
After exhausting all available possibilities, Solovyov moved on to examining other people in his immediate surroundings. Now, the portraits that had been looking at him from the classroom walls for so many years captured his attention.
Solovyov was a child of the late Soviet period, so there was not a broad selection at his disposal. The central, largest portrait in the classroom belonged to Vladimir Ilyich
Ulyanov (Lenin). It was he who attracted the adolescent’s
attention most of all.
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Solovyov had to turn his head constantly to unite Lenin
with his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, who occupied a modest
spot in the classroom pantheon between Anatoly Lunacharsky and Anton Makarenko. The concluding picture turned out
to be far more imaginable than that of the principal: either Solovyov’s fantasy had managed to get some rest or this
was an optical effect from the convergence of distant images.
‘Did Lenin have children?’ Solovyov once asked during a
biology lesson.
‘He did not,’ said the teacher. ‘But is that really a question on the subject of amphibians?’
‘Yes,’ said Solovyov.
Krupskaya’s Graves-disease profile, along with her part-
ner’s small, spiteful motions lent the pair a defiantly
amphibious look. Well, then, needless to say, they did not have children; they just made each other nauseous.
Karl Marx turned out to be the concluding entity in this
portrait-driven period. No matter how Solovyov struggled,
in his imagination, Marx only ever united with Friedrich
Engels. Not yet suspecting the possibilities of this kind of alliance, Solovyov left the founding fathers in peace.
Solovyov acquired his own first experience of this sort in the vicinity of the Kilometer 715 station. Looking back on the circumstances of his life, that hardly seems very unexpected. The majority of what happened during Solovyov’s