Solovyov and Larionov
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combat zone.
Zhloba remembered the plane. After reaching the sought-
after hanger, he rolled it outside with the help of local
peasants. The women hurriedly wiped down the fuselage.
Someone applied strength to turn the propeller, and, to
everyone’s astonishment, the motor started. The propeller
rotated fitfully at first, as if it were gathering strength for each new movement of its blades. Little by little, the rotation grew uniform and the two propeller blades transformed into a large, translucent circular area. The machine jounced and snorted for several minutes but would not budge.
‘The motor’s warming up,’ the peasant men nodded
knowingly.
They puffed on hand-rolled cigarettes to reconcile what
was happening with their own agitated consciousness. And
to attach an everyday quality to the nearness of flying technology. Using an expert motion, the aviator turned some
sort of lever and the machine jerked sharply, then stopped as if it were rooted to the ground.
‘Get away!’ Zhloba yelled, almost flying out of his seat.
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classmates. All the pain of the insults he had suffered at various times. All the bitterness of the defeat that had come to him. The peasants, who were already on edge, scattered.
The airplane began moving and rolled along the steppe,
shuddering on the potholes. A minute later, it took off.
After circling over the disheartened witnesses to the
takeoff, the plane set a southerly course, to where General Larionov’s units were finishing disarming the Red Armymen
they had taken prisoner. Everything was proceeding peace-
fully, even somehow routinely. The regimental clerk was
compiling a list of the prisoners, also indicating the types of weapon confiscated and the names of the horses. The
former Red Armymen stood in a long, joyless line, waiting
for the clerk to record them. After registration, they were led off in groups for lunch.
Some who were standing there lifted their heads when
they heard the airplane’s motor. They all knew the general had eleven such machines in his equipment, so this must
have been one of them. Nobody was concerned. The clerk
dipped his pen into a spill-proof inkwell and stretched, satisfied, lacing his hands together in front of himself. Indifferently and near-sightedly, he observed the dot growing in the sky.
The mere fact of flying technology no longer attracted
attention in 1920.
There was something unusual in the airplane’s move-
ment. Observed from below, its flight lacked that grand
tranquility that usually accompanies large flying objects
(organisms) in the air—from balloons and dirigibles to eagles and seagulls. More and more heads turned toward it. The
airplane turned somersaults in the air. It resembled a fly, an angered bumblebee, or perhaps even a hummingbird.
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This was not the height of aerobatics: Zhloba was
extraordinarily far from even the thought of executing
Nesterov’s ‘dead loop.’ This was not even a manifestation
of the aviator himself being so extremely wound up, either, though the abruptness of his motions, needless to say, could not have been conducive to fluidity in flight. The reason
for what occurred lay in the cables for the steering rod:
they were not in working order because the machine had
been in the damp hanger for so long. Need it be said that
Zhloba’s affective state had not allowed him to verify their tension?
Whether it was that a wind rose or the energy of desper-
ation that had carried Zhloba toward his flight destination, well, at some point he actually ended up over the Whites’
positions. When he saw below him the scene of his disgrace, he threw his arms on the fuselage and hung down. The
airplane finally stopped jerking after losing its steering and began flying over the steppe at low altitude. Hanging over his adversary’s positions—as if he were leaning on a windowsill and conversing with someone on the street—Zhloba
floated over the field kitchens, lines of prisoners, and the herds of horses they had lost. His fluttering hair and pale, unshaven face were very visible from below. Tears from the head wind glistened in his eyes. He was an ideal target. Each person standing below understood that the aeronaut was
seeking death. And nobody shot at him.
On Prof. Nikolsky’s advice, Solovyov saved one of his
important findings for the conclusion of his paper. During his work on the topic ‘General Larionov’s Rout of Zhloba’s Cavalry Corps,’ the young historian had decided to compile a maximally precise, inasmuch as was possible, hourly
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account of the activity of both commanders during the
month of June 1920.
Many of Solovyov’s colleagues regarded that work as
deliberately unachievable so suggested that for starters he write down his own hourly life in June (during the previous year, for example) and then later set his sights on events seventy-six years in the past. The hidden irony in that advice touched on not only the possibility of searches of this sort but also their practicability. To his colleagues, these searches seemed, to some extent, like scholarly pedantry or (this
sounded more offensive) scholarly poseury. It turned out
that Prof. Nikolsky was the only person who approved of
the graduate student’s plans, without reservations. And that was enough.
Solovyov disagreed with his colleagues’ irony and actually did compile his own life story for June of the previous year.
This proved to be completely straightforward. He spent the entire time of his final examination period—that was what
fell in June—sitting in the Public Library. All his remaining actions were associated with exams. Their times were calculated easily, according to the schedule of exams and other tests he had kept. From his course on source study, the
young man had internalized the idea that any piece of paper, even one of little significance, could later become an important historical source. He knew the value of documents and never threw them away.
As far as June 1920 went, that task did turn out to be
more complex, though it was not at all unachievable.
Solovyov first pieced together the texts from all the memoirs regarding that stretch of time. After ascertaining the basic character of General Larionov and Zhloba’s actions, the
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scholar moved on to highly focused archival searches. He
looked through thousands of written orders, telegrams, and telephonograms from that time (frequently they specified
not only the date but also the hour and minute of sending) and compiled—in spite of his colleagues’ doubts—a fairly
detailed listing of what happened during the month of June.
The result turned out to be stupendous.
It emerged that on the night of June 13 into 14, e.g. before the start of active military operations, General Larionov and Zhloba’s armored trains stood facing one another. This
occurred on territory that was neutral at the time, namely near Gnadenfeld, a settlement of German colonists. Aided
by telegram
s sent by both sides, the historian managed to
establish that Zhloba’s armored train arrived at 23:30 on the first track, stood there until 04:45, then headed north. The sources Solovyov used allowed him to calculate the arrival time of the general’s armored train as 23:55. It departed at 03:35, in a southerly direction. And though the number of
the track where the second armored train stood is not indicated in the documents, the process of elimination managed to determine that, too: it was track No. 2. There were only two tracks at the Gnadenfeld station.
Prof. Nikolsky was very satisfied with his former student
(and are any students ‘former’?). More than anything, he
approved of the result from the point of view that Solovyov had been on the right track with his methods. Despite all
his love for brave deductions, the professor considered
empirical research the only possible basis for any scholarly work. On top of that, he emphasized that any work, even
if it looks pointless at first glance, will certainly bear fruit if the work has a source. In this regard, by the way, he did 580VV_txt.indd 186
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not rate the future Crimean conference very highly. He
called the majority of its participants ‘inspired blowhards’
but did not talk Solovyov out of going.
‘You need to see that, too,’ he told the graduate student
in parting. ‘Once, at any rate.’
The second circumstance that evoked the professor’s
interest in Solovyov’s finding was its significance for the history of the war itself. Until now, no documents had
existed that directly or circumstantially confirmed a personal meeting of the two adversaries. Even so, conjecture about
the possibility of such a meeting had been expressed in the émigré press back in 1930. Lacking any factual confirmation for his conjecture, in Ten Years Later, author Yuri Krivich permitted himself to go even further. He posed the question of whether the hypothetical meeting was the general’s
attempt to arrange a secret connection with the Reds. Since the question was posed in an accusatory tone, the essence
of the general’s betrayal remained unclear. How did it come about that he prevailed over the Reds in one of his most
convincing victories as a result of a deal with them? And, consequently, why did the Reds need that sort of deal? The only thing the author could produce to support the theory
was the unchanging question: why did the general remain
alive at the end of the war?
It is interesting that the Red side later also expressed a supposition regarding the general’s meeting with Zhloba.
Moreover, this mention of a deal—this time, naturally, in
favor of the Whites—no longer sounded like a hint. The
deal was announced as if it were a verified, albeit uncon-
firmed, fact. Since Zhloba had already been shot by that
time—under a decision of the ‘troika’ of the People’s
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Commissariat for Internal Affairs—in his article ‘At the Last Boundary’, Sergei Drel expressed restrained satisfaction that justice had triumphed after all with regard to the traitor, albeit slightly in advance of the determination of his guilt.
Solovyov concluded his talk with this sarcastic phrase, which he thought was not lacking for effect.
Princess Meshcherskaya nodded silently but genially. Zoya
watched as Shulgin finished constructing some sort of
complex, albeit two-dimensional, figure out of matches.
Since the table shook constantly, he had thought it pointless to create a figure with volume. Nesterenko was sleeping.
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11
Zoya spent the night at Solovyov’s again. This time there
was none of the uncertainty that had tormented them both,
and so they made love without hesitation after a light dinner with wine. There was no tension at all. Unhurried and even with a certain flirtatiousness, Solovyov undressed and waited for Zoya under the sheet. She took off her clothes, standing half-facing him. Solovyov delighted in how she moved: Zoya knew how to undress.
She removed her attire calmly and elegantly, with a subtle portion of the resignation any Russian woman simply felt
obliged to display for her possessor. After taking off her jeans, she glanced at them in her hand and tossed them
onto a chair, with a quick jingle of the belt buckle. She
extracted a pair of panties out from under a long shirt with a man’s cut and carefully, using her index finger and thumb, placed them on her jeans. She touched her shirt collar with both hands, slowing down. She undid the long row of
buttons as if she were in doubt. The shirt slid from her
shoulders but its edge remained in Zoya’s small fist. Set
against the background of her dark skin, the bright linen
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flower scented with deodorant. A bikini tan line flashed on Zoya’s supple bottom.
She was different that night. After revealing her spiritedness the night before, today Zoya demonstrated technique
that was no less outstanding. To Solovyov’s surprise, the
museum employee’s knowledge of this non-Chekhovian
realm was boundless. The image of a boat amongst waves
that had entered the researcher’s thoughts yesterday had
faded. There was now something else that did not lend itself to instantaneous definition. Solovyov had no time at all for deliberation, though.
The morning was fabulous. Relaxed, quiet, and contented.
There was complete calm, like after a visit to the bathhouse.
The body’s absolute lack of inhibition, delight emanating
from each of its cells. Or even the feeling a day after playing football. A pleasant ache in the leg and pelvic muscles, an unwillingness to get up. Combined with a feeling of deep
satisfaction: Solovyov thought he was genuinely experien-
cing this phrase for the first time.
Zoya sat on top of him and began giving him a massage.
She started with his hair. She gathered it in waves, clasping her hands together on top of his head. She kneaded his neck and back. At first she touched him, just barely, with the very tips of her fingers, as if she were injecting through them a mysterious electricity that made goosebumps cover Solovyov.
Then her palms made powerful grasping movements. They
turned Solovyov’s back to gelatin, to clay, removing the
crystalline current it had received and instead pouring in a muscle-stretching energy. From time to time, when Zoya’s
movements were particularly vigorous, Solovyov felt the
touch of her intimate hair in the small of his back. Then—
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after Zoya resettled on his legs—she massaged the lower
back itself, then his behind (what an apt name that is,
anyway). That turned out to be especially pleasant; its soft-ness was made for massages. Zoya sank her palms into the
stillness of his strongest muscles. The pulsing of her palms repeated the rhythm of those very same muscles, imitating
their ancient movement. She moved on to his legs. She
achieved their full relaxation by rubbing them on both sides.
This was how footballers going in as substitutes were
>
handled, too. Soles of the feet. Heels, with a rubbing, circular motion. Each toe thoroughly. The apotheosis of the corpo-real. A fresh morning breeze with a juniper aroma rushed
through the open window and blended with the smell of
their bodies.
After breakfast, they headed for the embankment.
Solovyov took the opportunity to check his height and
weight along the way. He thought medical scales were some-
thing one would no longer run into on Petersburg’s streets: splotchy white after having been repainted, the quiet
clanging of the hanging weights. Where had they disap-
peared to? Where had the machines selling carbonated water gone? What about the barrels of kvass and beer? It occurred to Solovyov that not one history book had noted their
departure, just as not one history book had said anything
about their arrival. But they truly had existed. They had
defined a way of life, making it more bearable, if only,
needless to say, to the limited degree they could.
An elderly man wearing glasses weighed Solovyov. The
lenses of his glasses were large and bulging. His eyes
seemed to be, too, as he monitored the markings on the
scale. Strictly speaking, he was not monitoring the mark-
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ings. He could determine anyone’s weight from a distance.
There was a rubber band instead of a right temple on his
glasses.
‘Sixty-eight and a half kilos. Would you like your height, too?’
‘I would,’ said Solovyov.
He stood at the height measurer and the moving part of
the apparatus lowered onto his head with an unexpected
knock.
‘One meter seventy-nine. You need another half kilo for
full harmony.’
Solovyov tossed up his hands and paid. He felt Zoya’s
cool palm under his T-shirt.
‘I’ll feed you,’ Zoya promised in a whisper. Her lips