Solovyov and Larionov

by Eugene Vodolazkin

  Russian standards. This was not so much a triumph of

  reconciliation as a matter of something being convenient

  and perhaps even mutually beneficial for both of them.

  Yekaterina Ivanovna bought inexpensive begonias for the

  three graves and Taras brought a cart with a twenty-liter

  canister of water, something that was in catastrophically

  short supply at the cemetery. While visiting their relatives ( landsmen, as Yekaterina Ivanovna sometimes jokingly called them), they divided the begonias and the water evenly

  amongst the graves.

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  Zoya and Solovyov stayed in the kitchen after greeting

  the neighbors. To Solovyov’s surprise, his companion not

  only entered into conversation with the others but also asked him to tell them about the Hermitage—you know, what

  you were telling me today—after which she went to her

  room anyway, leaving Solovyov in the middle of the kitchen with his strange story. Taras and Yekaterina Ivanovna stood in the corner, leaning against the general’s cabinet, and were, ludicrously enough, truly prepared to take in Solovyov’s

  narrative. After stating that the Hermitage, along with the Louvre, is one of the leading museums in the world,

  Solovyov noted, unseen by his listeners, that Zoya had left her room with a finger to her lips. As Solovyov told of the number of exhibits at the Hermitage (to Yekaterina

  Ivanovna’s restrained moan), Zoya flattened herself against the wall and sidestepped her way to Taras’s door. Solovyov faltered from the unexpectedness. Zoya made a scary face

  and—making her hand into a sort of bird’s beak—gestured

  to the storyteller that he should not stop speaking.

  If one were to stand next to each exhibit for thirty seconds (Zoya disappeared into Taras’s room) and be at the

  Hermitage every day from morning until evening, one

  would need eight years to see all the exhibits.

  ‘Eight?’ Yekaterina Ivanovna asked for clarification.

  Zoya appeared in Taras’s doorway, noiselessly tossed up

  her hands, and disappeared into the depths of the room

  once again.

  ‘No fewer than eight,’ Solovyov reiterated.

  Taras took a bottle of kefir from the refrigerator, shook

  it, and poured some into a tea bowl with chipped edges. He chose an unscathed section and pressed his puffy lips to it.

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  Taras asked nothing about the Hermitage. He listened silently to Solovyov, licking away his broad white mustache from time to time. And Solovyov, who would never have agreed of his

  own free will to infiltrate Taras’s room, felt like a genuine plotter, if only because he had to conspire a story with a plot for those standing before him. His descriptions grew more

  emotional, evoking in his listeners interest mixed with light surprise. The surprise increased when the story suddenly cut off (Zoya had silently closed the door behind her and slipped into her room) and Solovyov vanished to Zoya’s room, saying goodbye along the way. Those who remained, standing, had

  the sense of something left unsaid.

  ‘I didn’t find the manuscript,’ said Zoya after Solovyov

  closed the door behind him. ‘But this turned up in a drawer.’

  She twirled a ring of keys on her finger.

  ‘I’m sure he has the manuscript. We’ll have time to look

  at everything carefully on Monday, when he goes to work.’

  ‘Zoya . . .’

  This turned out to be the only objection Solovyov was

  allowed to utter. Zoya placed her finger with the keys to

  his lips and peered into the hallway. Once she was certain nobody was left in the kitchen, she stole toward the front door on tiptoe and beckoned to Solovyov. Involuntarily

  copying Zoya’s motions, he took several steps toward the

  exit. He stopped between Zoya and the door. Her hand

  touched the massive hook hanging on an eye, attached to

  the side of the door that did not open. The hook readily

  began swinging as it slid along an indentation that had

  formed over the years.

  ‘Foucault’s pendulum,’ she whispered right into his ear.

  ‘I’ll take Monday off.’

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  Solovyov spent Sunday morning in church. This was the

  Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, which was elegant, its five

  cupolas towering over Kirov Street (formerly Autskaya Street).

  As Solovyov ascended the stone staircase, he imagined the

  general entering the church.

  The general came here often during his trips to Yalta. In

  the winter of 1920, he flew up this staircase like a large bird of prey; the flaps of his military overcoat extended over the steps, his entourage dispersed at his sides. He walked a little more slowly in the summer, as if he were watching a military formation on the platz, but he saw messy columns of

  paupers who had flowed there from all of boundless Russia, as they did in those days. A military orderly walking a half-step behind him tossed coins to them.

  It was stuffy in the church during the summer. Neither

  an open side door nor a flung-open window lent any cool-

  ness. Through them poured Yalta’s damp, sweltering heat,

  scented with acacias and the sea, and vaguely trembling

  over the candles’ unmoving flame. Streaks of sunlight

  pierced the duskiness inside the church, illuminating the

  large drops of sweat that flew off the priest's nose and chin with his every movement. Even the general, who usually

  hardly perspired, kept wiping his forehead and neck with a silk handkerchief. In those services, which were anything

  but simple, Larionov saw a special southern charm that

  consisted of the fact that, for one thing, at the end of the liturgy he would take a hundred-meter walk along Morskaya

  Street and find himself on an embankment that glistened

  in the surf and he would breathe, full-chested, after unfastening the top buttons of his service jacket.

  He came here as a very elderly man, too. With a cane,

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  and wearing a canvas jacket with a pocket stretched by a

  massive case for his glasses. People recognized him, as in days past. As in days past, they stepped aside, making way for him, and took deep bows for the coins he gave them.

  He walked with the special firmness of one striving to

  maintain his balance (occasionally he swayed anyway). At

  times he would stop, place both his hands on his cypress

  cane, and inspect the toes of his shoes. Sometimes he would sit on a bench in the yard and observe from the shadows,

  businesslike, as people carried infants into the church,

  straightening lacy bonnets along the way. Observe how, in

  the far corner of the church grounds, water from a hose

  moistened dust and the first drops that fell on the asphalt turned to steam. In those moments, his face lacked all expression and seemed to be falling away. It brought to mind a

  mask that had been removed, and came to life only with

  the old man’s barely noticeable chewing.

  Looking at the general, it was difficult to grasp whether

  he noticed everything happening around him or if, according to the wor
ds of a poet unfamiliar to him, his eyes were

  addressing other days. Those who observed the general in

  those moments (including in the line of duty), confirmed

  afterwards that they did not consider his gaze to have halted, despite the motionlessness of his face. That gaze might be categorized as unlifelike, unlit, or unearthly, but not at all halted.

  Yes, General Larionov’s eyes were addressing other days.

  Even so, nothing escaped their attention. Through the para-military guise of paupers, vintage 1920, wearing uniform

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  from the carts onto the earth along twenty-inch boards),

  the general’s eyes undeniably saw trolleybuses that drove

  noiselessly along the former Autskaya Street behind the

  church fence, carrying 1970s female worshippers, and saw

  women taking neatly folded headscarves from their bags in

  front of the church and hurriedly tying them. They used

  their thumbs to tuck in strands of hair that came out. Why were there hardly any men there?

  When Solovyov showed up at Zoya’s on Monday morning,

  none of the others were in the apartment. After closing the front door behind him, Zoya lowered the huge hook with

  a clang. ‘That’s just in case,’ she said.

  Solovyov remembered the pail he and Leeza used to set

  out as a signal but did not mention this memory. He was

  experiencing excitement of a completely different kind now.

  With a calm motion that was somehow even expert, Zoya

  turned the key in Kozachenko’s door, opened it, and

  gestured to Solovyov, inviting him inside. Solovyov initially wanted to make the same gesture but then he crossed the

  threshold after realizing that gallantry was out of place in this situation.

  The first thing he saw in the room was the oak cabinet

  with the two-headed eagles. The elder Kozachenko had

  knocked his head on one of those heads. The double bed

  was the center of the drama that had played out. And so

  Kozachenko the younger had not thrown away the furniture.

  In the corner, displayed below a decorative Ukrainian towel, was a cross-stitched portrait of poet Taras Shevchenko. To the right of the portrait (and how about that—Solovyov did not even grasp this at first) were two photographs of Zoya.

  Zoya in the kitchen at the general’s table with a vase of

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  chrysanthemums in the background. Zoya at the beach.

  The bottom of her bathing suit slightly slipping off a bone covered with taut skin. Solovyov thought the life of a bachelor in the company of photographs like that could not be

  easy. Even under Shevchenko’s supervision.

  ‘Is he in love with you?’

  Zoya shrugged. Standing at the bureau desk, she pulled

  out drawer after drawer, looking through the contents.

  Zoya’s calm in conducting this quiet search surprised

  Solovyov, who was, at the very least, extraordinarily agitated, even though he was not shaking. Her thumb inspected

  stacks of paper (blank, as a rule), sliding along the edge of the sheets. The sheets generated a light fan-like sound at the motion, reminiscent of the rustling of a deck of cards being shuffled before a deal. Sometimes there was jingling, sometimes there was clicking. Zoya would lay items on the

  desk then put them away after she had finished looking

  through yet another drawer.

  Solovyov confined himself to examining Taras’s scanty

  book selection. The majority of them were devoted to the

  city of Alupka and the Vorontsov Palace. It was emerging

  that Taras had a one-track mind. The only book unrelated

  to the palace was a publication describing various alarm

  systems.

  ‘What does he do for work?’

  ‘He’s a guard at the Vorontsov Palace.’

  Zoya looked through piles of linens, plunging her hand

  deep under each sheet. The linens were shabby. There were

  holes and frayed spots even on the folds. It inopportunely occurred to Solovyov that they could even be the result of Kolpakov’s activeness. Objects frequently outlive those who 580VV_txt.indd 149

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  have used them. Bed linens with Chekhov’s embroidered

  initials had been preserved, too. The bed in the museum

  was still made with them. Although . . . Maybe these holes were the consequence of the love-struck Taras’s insomnia?

  Solovyov cast another glance at the photographs.

  ‘I found it.’

  Zoya said that with the same calm that she had been

  searching, but Solovyov flinched. Was that really possible?

  Contrary to Solovyov’s absolute lack of faith in success (and he himself did not understand why he had gotten mixed

  up in all this) there were yellowed sheets of paper, with fine writing, between two flowery duvet covers.

  ‘It’s my mother’s handwriting.’

  Solovyov lifted the top part of the linen pile and Zoya

  pulled the papers out of the cabinet with a magician’s

  gesture. This was a victory. Despite the dubious method of achieving it, it remained a victory, and what a victory! In the end, Taras had no rights whatsoever to the manuscript.

  In the end, his parents had simply stolen this manuscript

  . . . Researcher Solovyov’s brief history, which had unfolded primarily in libraries and archives, had made an obvious

  salto mortale and transformed into a detective story. Never before had the search for scholarly truth seemed so gripping to him. The dramatism of research, something unknown

  to the world, took on visible forms when it came out into

  the open. Solovyov stood by the window and held the sheets of paper on his outstretched hand. He was not reading

  them. He simply inspected Zoya’s mother’s minute hand-

  writing, sensing Zoya’s breathing at his temple. From time to time, little bird-like figures appeared over the handwriting, introducing additions and edits in another hand, one very

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  familiar to Solovyov. Meaning the general had worked on

  the dictated manuscript later . . . From somewhere in the

  very depths of those lines—and Zoya’s hand was squeezing

  his elbow—Yekaterina Ivanovna’s sad eyes slowly surfaced.

  Yekaterina Ivanovna was standing on a little metal bridge

  that had been built to reach the terrace of the next house (a bed’s headboard served as its railing); she held a grocery bag and was wordlessly watching Solovyov through the

  window glass.

  They left Kozachenko’s room. Zoya locked it with the

  key and hurried to unhook the front door. Pressing her back to the door of her own room, she listened to Yekaterina

  Ivanovna’s heavy steps in the entryway, reminding Solovyov in some sense of Princess Tarakanova in her dungeon. Zoya

  quietly let Solovyov out of the apartment after Yekaterina Ivanovna entered her own room.

  Walking downhill along Botkinskaya, the uneasy Solovyov

  wondered what would happen to Zoya now. His unease

  was momentary, though, and without it, Solovyov, a person

  with scruples, could not have surr
endered himself to the

  joy of possessing the manuscript. The small packet of sheets, which were inscribed with a compact, precise script,

  belonged only to him. It fluttered with each swing of an

  arm that was beginning to tan, and (this was unbelievable) the packet evoked not the slightest interest among pedestrians.

  Solovyov did not feel like going home. It was tough to

  be alone with his happiness, just as it is tough when someone’s relationship is condemned, illegitimate, and, perhaps, even criminal. People put that out in the open. They rush

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  . . . Solovyov went to the embankment. As he stepped down

  from its upper sections, he saw a row of seats like those

  that line stadiums. These grandstands for spectators faced the best show on earth: the sea.

  Solovyov delighted in the motion of the waves and

  himself felt a little like the general. Like the inveterate smoker who lingers before lighting a cigarette (a special

  type of voluptuousness), Solovyov was in no hurry to begin reading. Rejoicing in his spoils by feel, he stroked the slightly limp edge of the sheets and knocked the packet against his knees to give it an ideally correct appearance.

  The general’s memoirs began like this, ‘At the age of ten, my parents sent me to the Second Cadet Corps.’ Ten years

  old. The description of everything that happened before

  that had been published by Dupont, who, as we know,

  assumed that a continuation existed. And so the French

  researcher’s scholarly intuition permitted her to predict this sweet moment Solovyov was experiencing on the embankment in Yalta. He read sheet after sheet, placing what he

  had read at the end of the packet. Distancing himself from the first sheet even as he inexorably neared it. Tearing

  himself away from Akinfeeva’s close lines from time to time, he scanned the horizon and thought about how his reading

  process was akin to a round-the-world journey whose goal

  is to return to the starting point.

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