adolescence was tied to the station in some way or other,
with the only exceptions being Solovyov’s relationship with Nadezhda Nikiforovna and his study at school, both of
which took place an hour and a half ’s walk from his place of residence. Needless to say, the tender experience under discussion could not have been acquired either at school or, 580VV_txt.indd 104
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even more so, at Nadezhda Nikiforovna’s. It was acquired
in Solovyov’s home.
The house was a fairly dilapidated structure. It consisted of an entryway, a kitchen, and two small rooms adjoining
the kitchen. The windows looked out on a railroad embank-
ment that was not high but was overgrown with grass. After his mother’s death, Solovyov, who had previously been
housed in the same room as his grandmother, moved into
his deceased’s mother’s room. He did that from an instinc-
tive striving to fill the emptiness that had arisen after his mother’s departure. When he entered that emptied room,
he creaked the cracked floorboards and slept on his mother’s bed, making her departure seem less irrevocable to him. In the end, the room’s emptiness was partially filled because someone else, in addition to Solovyov and his grandmother, also began spending time there: Leeza Larionova.
Leeza had been at the Solovyovs’ before. She was
Solovyov’s only peer in the whole area around Kilometer 715; in fact, she was the only child there besides him. When she came back from school with Solovyov she would go home
to eat but would show up an hour later at the Solovyov
home, where the two of them would sit down to do their
homework. Leeza listened attentively to Solovyov’s reasoning when solving math problems, hardly ever contradicting him.
And when Solovyov struggled, she would prompt him,
timidly and often in question form, about the correct way
to solve them. Sometimes it seemed to Solovyov that even
in cases when he was incorrect, she wrote the same things
in her notebook so as not to offend him. There was no
doubt that verity was not an end, in and of itself, for Leeza.
Leeza could have been what was defined, in previous
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times, as the head of the class. She had a clear mind but
lacked the key thing for a career as head of the class (or, admittedly, for any career): ambition.
Their shared walks to and from school were a manifes-
tation of nothing more than ordinary neighborly relations.
At least in the beginning. They had walked together since
first grade. This sort of travel seemed safer to their household members. In families that lacked men (Leeza lived with her mother) the word ‘safety’ possessed special weight.
Little Solovyov was embarrassed about walking to school
with Leeza. The most distressing thing about those circum-
stances was that he and Leeza were labeled bride and groom.
This common taunt for cases like theirs was all the more
hurtful for Solovyov because, of course, he secretly considered Nadezhda Nikiforovna to be his bride. The moment
they neared the school, Solovyov demonstrated in every
way possible that an immense distance stretched between
these two people who were apparently arriving together.
The future historian turned away, lagged behind, made faces behind Leeza’s back and, in brief, reached extraordinarily, extraordinarily high levels of detachment that nevertheless still allowed their shared return home.
His treatment of Leeza was especially harsh in the pres-
ence of Nadezhda Nikiforovna. True, there was nothing
there that might have been deemed as not comme il faut: Solovyov knew his chosen one tolerated no brattiness. At
the library, Leeza’s lot was to receive icy gazes and short answers in a scratchy voice. To Solovyov’s annoyance,
Nadezhda Nikiforovna did not understand that he was
making these efforts, under the circumstances, for her sake.
From time to time, she herself addressed Leeza when she
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was waiting for Solovyov. Oddly enough, the little girl was one of Nadezhda Nikiforovna’s frequent visitors, too.
Although the selection of books was not conducted as cere-
moniously for Leeza as for Solovyov, Leeza read a lot.
Perhaps even a little more than Solovyov himself.
By the time she was fourteen, Leeza had evolved into a
nice-looking, slender young woman. She did not go to the
head of the class and she had not become a beauty, either.
The appearance that nature had given her—well-balanced,
subtle facial features, wheat-colored hair, and gray eyes—
presented vast opportunities for choosing a style. If Leeza had decided to become a beauty, a restrained drawing of
her facial features would have imparted her appearance with a light impressionistic shading that striking faces lack. But that did not happen.
It would be incorrect to say that Leeza did not want to
be a beauty. That would imply a certain purposeful will, a conscious position she had taken regarding the issue of
beauty. Leeza conducted herself as if that realm did not
exist for her. Knowing Leeza’s poverty, others offered to let her use their cosmetics, but she politely declined. Unlike other girls, who shimmered with all the colors available in the Russian provinces, Leeza was not the object of her
classmates’ attention at school parties. The boys in her class preferred girls who had a look that was more mysterious
and—considering the violet splotches around their eyes—
slightly extraterrestrial. It was with these girls that they shared exhausting slow dances.
The thought of those dances flashed through Solovyov’s
mind one time after finishing some homework (perhaps not
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erection and unexpectedly found himself pressing his whole body against Leeza. The unexpectedness had come about
not because Solovyov had never imagined this sort of
possibility. He had, in fact, imagined it: whenever his grandmother’s snoring began resounding in the next room at
night, his fantasy painted this event in full detail. He
distinctly sensed the touch of his own hands as if they were Leeza’s and fell still on the damp sheet after experiencing a blend of delight and shame as ancient as growing up. No,
the unexpectedness was in the fact that his fantasy had never envisioned—as something real—everything he had just
undertaken with Leeza. But now that had happened. Could
Solovyov handle his arousal? Under certain circumstances,
yes. For example, if his grandmother had been at home.
But she was not there at that moment.
Sensing that he was shaking, Solovyov took Leeza’s hand
and pressed it to his bulging sweatpants. He nearly lost
consciousness from the forbiddenness of what was happening and from the union of such contradictory inclinations (it
seemed to him that the highest degree of contradiction also begat the highest degree of the forbidden). In the remnants of his consciousness that had not yet been lost, there
pulsated the thought
of Leeza touching the most secret
thing on earth. Never afterward did the differences between genders excite him so much: this sort of union of contradictions turned out to be an ordinary matter in adult life and it was unavoidable, too, if approached dialectically. What had once seemed so hidden and inaccessible to him turned
out, on closer inspection, to be almost the most sought-after object. In presenting it so insistently to Leeza, the future scholar did not yet know about its role in the history of
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culture or even history as a whole. He was acting without
looking back at his predecessors.
Standing right up against Solovyov, Leeza looked at him
with a calm and slightly surprised gaze. As was the case
with homework, it seemed that only she knew the correct
solution. She truly did know it. Leeza lightly touched her lips to his and lay her head on his shoulder. Emboldened,
he thrust his hand under her blouse. He touched her back,
her belly, and what was below.
He was unable to undo a single one of the hooks hidden
under her blouse. Leeza did this herself. Leeza also took off the rest of her clothes and obediently lay on the bed, where Solovyov had led her by the hand. He did not utter a word
for the rest of that scene. Solovyov quivered for real and from just his convulsive movements (all he had managed to
finish doing completely was undress), Leeza was always able to guess what was expected of her. All in all, not very much guesswork was required here.
Accompanied by the wretched squeaking of springs (that
squeaking communicated the condition of his body rather
precisely), he somehow perched himself on Leeza and froze.
Unable to unite their two bodies from the start, he no longer understood what, exactly, to do next. Here, Leeza took
matters into her own hands again. He felt himself being
directed and, with the indefatigability of an athlete, began making the same motions his classmates had so repulsively
shown him. He experienced an orgasm several moments
later. This was his first time with a woman. And it was far more intense than riding a bicycle.
The absence of blood surprised Solovyov. When he exam-
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to find anything resembling blood. He could not even allow the thought that Leeza had already become a woman before
their relationship. Solovyov knew, down to the minute, how Leeza spent her time. Leeza’s social circle was also well
known to him. Properly speaking, he was that circle.
Everyone at Kilometer 715 knew there should be blood.
Even Nadezhda Nikiforovna—who excised any mentions of
a sex life—would leave, untouched, information about the
blood that resulted on a wedding night. Perhaps her stern
hand was stopped by the thought that the presence of blood could serve as an important restraining factor for anyone
intending to enter into a sexual relationship. Under a worst-case development of events, meaning entering into said
relationship, according to Nadezhda Nikiforovna’s reck-
oning, the possible absence of blood would disillusion the male entering into the relationship and deter him from
repeated attempts.
As comfort for the bloodthirsty Solovyov, the sheet turned crimson during one of their subsequent lovemaking sessions, the third or fourth of their encounters when his grandmother was not at home. The previous times—Solovyov
obviously did not understand this because of his lack of
experience—their contact had been too convulsive and
chaotic. When the unavoidable finally happened, there was
so much blood that the sheet had to be washed immediately.
Solovyov fetched icy water from the well and Leeza laun-
dered the sheet, periodically blowing on her numbed fingers; there had been no time to heat the water. There was also
no opportunity to legitimately dry the sheet, so it had to be put on the bed again after laundering. Only at night,
after his grandmother had begun to snore, did Solovyov
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hang the sheet on two chairs and sleep on top of the blanket, covered by a jacket.
Their romps became regular. His grandmother’s trips out
were fairly rare, so every now and then they had to switch to Leeza’s house when, needless to say, it was empty. The
complication here was that Leeza’s mother, a railroad track inspector, could show up at any time. The length of an
inspection was surprisingly varied and depended on her
degree of tiredness, her mood, and some higher industrial
considerations, the essence of which were familiar only to those in the know regarding protocols for railroad track
inspectors. Neither Leeza nor Solovyov, even more so,
belonged to those ranks and so several times their under-
takings nearly failed. More than once they were saved by
the clang of an empty pail they had inconspicuously placed by the garden gate, but it was impossible to count on such an unreliable and, even more importantly, attention-attracting method. And so they returned to Solovyov’s house.
As children of railroad workers, Solovyov and Leeza
decided to make the fullest use of the railroad’s possibilities, something that is, by the way, often underrated in contemporary life. With impeccable mastery of the schedules for
passenger and freight trains, they effortlessly discovered that train traffic through Kilometer 715 was nearly uninterrupted several times a day. In the most fortuitous cases, the
unceasing running of trains in both directions took ten to twelve minutes. That was plenty for brief but torrid love.
The din of the trains drowned out any sounds capable of
arising under this sort of circumstance. First and foremost, the screeching of bedsprings. Solovyov’s grandmother was
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but in crucial situations, the participants briefly used the hook on the door.
Regarding the issue of noises. Solovyov’s awareness of
the female component of sex was not limited to blood. Prior to entering into sexual activity, he also already had a notion of moaning. As performed by his classmates, moaning turned out to be even less attractive than the motions they demonstrated. Be that as it may, under the sexual roles that Solovyov had adopted and delegated, Leeza was not responding to
his masculine movement with feminine moaning. Having
been convinced by his classmates at some point that one
thing was guaranteed to evoke the other, Solovyov’s unease was no joke. After sharing his doubts with Leeza, she faintly began moaning a little. Insecurely listening to her moans, Solovyov did not find them convincing, which distressed
him even more. Sometimes it even seemed to him that
Leeza was moaning out of a sense of duty rather than on
account of a physiological necessity to moan.
Furthermore. At times it occurred to Solovyov that Leeza
was experiencing far less need than he in these forbidden
and, at the very least, premature relations they had entered into. This was not just because it was never she who initiated their little madnesses (that could be written off
to female shyness) but that her attitude toward coitus was passionless in some sense. Leeza never had to be persuaded and she
yielded right away but she yielded: calmly, benevolently, and without Solovyov’s impatience and trembling. It seemed
that in this realm, as in many others, she did not want to distress him. Generally speaking, Leeza’s conformity seemed boundless. At times, when Solovyov was especially impatient and there was no opportunity for seclusion in the offing,
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they made love without preparation or undressing. Leeza
agreed to that, too.
Later, when he remembered these hectic relations, which
were for all intents and purposes childlike, despite their adult content, Solovyov never stopped feeling surprised that Leeza did not become pregnant. All they knew about the
realm of precautions was that there were safe and unsafe
days in terms of conception. Leeza had won math meets
so she calculated the days. As far as birth control devices went, there was no opportunity at all for young people to
buy them in a place where everyone knew them. Solovyov
went several times to the regional capital, where he bought condoms, sweating profusely from embarrassment. The
condoms were quickly gone and a trip to the city required
an entire day. The only birth control device they always had in abundance was the ability to break their embraces at the right moment. This required no small force of will and
malfunctioned several times. Solovyov regarded the absence of consequences as their exceptional luck since it would
have been catastrophic for both of them at Kilometer 715 if Leeza had become pregnant.
There is no doubt that the adolescents’ luck truly was
exceptional. They made love constantly, not just inside but also in the open air. Sometimes Solovyov and Leeza stepped into the woods on their way home from school to indulge
themselves in love, on the mosses and lichens they had just finished studying in biology. The contours of those florae were imprinted on Leeza’s pink bottom when she got up
from the ground and brushed herself off. They did that more than once in the snow, too, spreading out Solovyov’s
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