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with a firmness and constancy very uncommon for someone
my age, I devoted myself to contemplating a plan for leaving the realm to which nature and customs assigned the female
sex.”’
For her upbringing, the girl was sent to flank hussar
Astakhov. He taught her to wield a saber (miming). To shoot (miming, with onomatopoeia). To ride horses (miming,
same as bed). Noticing that Baikalova had stood up, the
presenter addressed her with a calming gesture: ‘Are you
interested in how this all ties in with the general?’
‘I am,’ said Baikalova.
Schwartz came out from behind the lectern, approached
Baikalova, and half-embraced her. ‘It’s just the general was a woman. Like Nadezhda Andreevna. Like you and me. You
not know?’
Baikalova preferred to keep silent. She was, after all, still in Schwartz’s embrace.
‘Why Zhloba not shoot him?’
‘Why?’ Grunsky asked, cautious.
‘He knew general’s secret. Loved him.’
Solovyov got up and began making his way to the exit,
not looking at anyone. Only when he was out in the fresh
evening breeze did he sense that his shirt was wet with
sweat. He undid two or three buttons and unstuck his shirt from his chest. Dunya came up behind him and placed her
chin on his shoulder, ‘Shall we go?’
Solovyov moved his shoulder, barely noticeably, ‘I have a
headache.’
‘I have aspirin in my room,’ she rubbed her nose against
his neck.
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Solovyov was looking at the Chaika department store,
staring. ‘My head aches because of you.’
Dunya did not say a word. She turned and vanished
behind the theater’s columns. Solovyov headed slowly
toward his hotel.
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The next morning did not portend scandal. The surface of
the sea looked polished, without ripples. The wind that had been blowing in the evening had been replaced by concil-iatory airy waves. Those waves blended a morning coolness
with a barely discernible smell of fish, and Solovyov liked that mix very much. But scandal did come to pass.
Kvasha and Schwartz led the morning session. More
precisely, Schwartz led it and Kvasha sat next to her. She took the microphone at the very beginning and then did
not let it out of her hands. Kvasha did not protest. Initially, he contemplated the crystal chandeliers in the hall, but then he began quickly writing something on the papers lying in
front of him.
Just before the first presenter came on, a rather short man wearing a tracksuit appeared on the stage. Swaying slightly, he walked to the moderators’ table and leaned his hand on
it. He stood motionless for a while, gazing at the floor.
‘Who are you?’ the good-natured Schwartz asked him in
her choppy, accented Russian.
‘Me?’ The man paused. ‘Well, let’s say I’m the lighting
technician.’
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He crouched and placed his elbows on the table.
‘You look very tired,’ said Schwartz.
The man calling himself the lighting technician nodded.
He reached for the pitcher, poured himself some water, and drank.
‘I’m just a little tired.’
He rose to his feet and slowly walked away. Moscow
researcher Papitsa was already standing below, by the stairs, waiting for the stage to free up. The small Papitsa cast a contemptuous glance at the lighting technician then flew
up the stairs. He was wearing a tuxedo and his bow tie
peered out only occasionally from underneath a long beard
that seemed to be the wrong size. His icicle-like mustache scattered threateningly in various directions. This made him look simultaneously like Don Quixote, Salvador Dali, and
Felix Dzerzhinsky. Taken individually, those figures had
nothing in common with Papitsa. The presenter’s beard,
tuxedo, and abrupt motions reminded Solovyov of the
puppet show that came to his school before each New Year
holiday.
He’d loved those performances for the puppets’ spiffy
costumes, the spangles on the curtains, the aroma of a
holiday tree that had already been placed in the corner of the assembly room but was not yet decorated, and the
thought of an upcoming vacation. He loved those perfor-
mances even in high school, when completely different
things interested him, when he stealthily squeezed Leeza’s hand while they were in the assembly room and thought
about how they were sitting at a children’s show but were
connected by a relationship that was not childlike; that made him unbelievably turned on.
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Solovyov cautiously turned his head and scanned the
room for Dunya. She was sitting two rows away from him.
She was sitting very straight, and not taking her eyes off the stage. That, thought Solovyov, must be how an outcast
woman sits. For the first time, he felt something like
sympathy for her.
The audience awaited Papitsa’s paper with impatience.
This was not related to the researcher having some sort of high standing in historical science. Papitsa did not have high standing. This was not even connected with Papitsa’s beard, which made his oral presentations far more attractive than the written ones. The reason for the interest lay in generaliana’s fundamental question, which was expressed in his
paper’s title: ‘Why Did the General Remain Alive? ’
There was movement in the lighting balcony, just as
Papitsa began his paper. The face of the man who had gone
onstage came into sight behind the balcony’s steel structure; a moment later, spotlights began shining, one after another.
Backlighting was coming only from the right balcony,
causing sinister black shadows to form onstage. Two colored beams—green and dark blue—were directed at the co-chairs.
Papitsa read with an energetic delivery, gesturing and
stamping his feet as he stood. He was reading in the literal sense, without taking his eyes from the text. His gnarled
fingers slid along the edge of the lectern, sometimes coming away from it, sometimes falling still. Papitsa leaned on the microphone from time to time, deafening the audience with
the crackling of his beard. Then he would push himself
sharply away from the lectern so his body would stretch up perfectly straight, inclining and then freezing at that unnatural angle.
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Papitsa painstakingly enumerated the reasons why the
general should have been shot. There were, in the researcher’s assessment, twenty-seven reasons. At the same time, there
were only two alternatives for avoiding execution. The
general did not use either; implied were escape to
Constantinople or going underground. From this, there
followed the existence of a third alternative, hitherto
unkn
own. This alternative for escaping the firing squad
was—and here the presenter straightened up and looked
into the audience—collaboration with the Reds.
The researcher’s argumentation was not new. Papitsa
repeated conjecture about the general meeting with Dmitry
Zhloba, things that had been stated back in the day, both
in the émigré and the Soviet press, in Krivich’s Ten Years Later as well as Drel’s At the Front Line, but he did not draw in any additional evidence. Papitsa did not know the results of Solovyov’s work, showing that on the night of June 13–14, 1920, from 23:55 until 03:35, Zhloba’s and General Larionov’s armored trains stood facing each other at the station in
Gnadenfeld. Going further than his predecessors, Papitsa
also surmised that Dzerzhinsky (at this moment, the
presenter looked, extraordinarily, like Dali) had recruited Larionov back in 1918 and that Larionov fulfilled all the
Cheka’s assignments to the letter from then on. The
researcher explained the general’s resounding victories as tactical considerations. He surmised that they were launched with the goal of deflecting attention from the decisive battle in the autumn of 1920 at Perekop, which the general allegedly lost under an agreement. Papitsa called all the battles waged before that ‘staged’ and appealed for them not to be taken seriously.
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‘General Larionov was a Cheka agent for the entire Civil
War, from beginning to end,’ concluded the presenter. ‘And there’s your answer to the question of why he was not
executed.’
‘He’s lying,’ rang out a female voice in the auditorium.
A lady was moving toward the stage along the center
aisle of the parterre. A click sounded in the lighting balcony and Papitsa found himself in the center of a red beam.
‘If I may,’ said Kvasha, moderating, ‘The general had
better alternatives for helping the Reds, though. Why,
then, one might ask, would he wait around until November
1920 . . .?’
The lady walking through the hall went up on the stage
and approached the presenter. Solovyov recognized her
when she turned toward the audience. She was Nina
Fedorovna Akinfeeva.
‘He’s lying,’ Nina Fedorovna repeated into the micro-
phone.
She was exactly a head taller than the speaker. Papitsa
ran a hand along his red beard, ‘I’m open to counterargu-
ments. Prove to me that I’m wrong.’
Without saying a word, Nina Fedorovna took him by the
beard and led him out from behind the lectern. Papitsa did not resist. As they walked through the parterre, another
spotlight came on and followed them right to the exit. Nina Fedorovna’s face expressed rage. Papitsa’s face (it was turned upward) was devoid of expression. Once the two of them
had disappeared behind the velvet drape at the exit, Alex
Schwartz announced Solovyov’s paper. The emancipation
of Russian women had exceeded all her expectations.
Solovyov felt close to desperation. This was the second
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time he had seen Nina Fedorovna Akinfeeva and the second
time she had eluded him. Even as he began his paper, he
kept glancing at the velvet drape, hoping Nina Fedorovna
would return after all. But she did not come back.
Solovyov handled himself calmly behind the lectern. He
had read this paper for the small Yalta circle so felt no anxiety now. He did not even glance at the text. As he was presenting, he noticed everything taking place in the audience and on
the stage. The cannery director nodded sympathetically
from the first row of the parterre as Solovyov spoke.
Schwartz occasionally said something to Kvasha, who
shrugged in reply. The lighting technician’s face flashed again somewhere among the spotlights and then, drawn by some
outside force, disappeared from the balcony forever. Papitsa, who had returned to the room unnoticed, was sitting in the back row. Only Nina Fedorovna was missing.
Solovyov looked around again after finishing his paper.
He had always been interested in how actors feel onstage.
Do they hear chairs creaking? A cough? Whispering in the
parterre? Now he knew: they hear it. They see when
someone is leaving the hall, half bent over. That is annoying.
At Kvasha’s nod, Solovyov left the podium. Deliberately and with dignity, as a person not in a hurry.
Solovyov heard the next presenter begin as he walked
past the first half of the rows of the parterre. He thought he should stay in the auditorium a few more minutes, if
only as a courtesy. He thought that but did not stop. He
felt fatigue. Without slowing his pace, Solovyov walked to the end of the parterre and exited the hall. Nina Fedorovna was smoking nervously by one of the columns. She was
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gotten out of this too easily. Deliberating whether or not to repeat her impressive performance with the researcher.
Solovyov felt unrestrained by gravity. It seemed as if he
would be carried away by the very first gust of a sea breeze and his meeting with Nina Fedorovna would, again, not
take place. But he was not carried off. After sensing solid ground under his feet, Solovyov took a step toward the
elderly woman. He touched her arm with the gesture of
someone capturing the Firebird. He knew she would not
escape now.
‘That was great . . . how you got him.’ Solovyov smiled,
lost. He had waited a long time for this conversation but
had not imagined it would begin like this.
‘Uh-huh.’
Surprise replaced indignation. Nina Fedorovna took a
deep drag on the cigarette.
‘I’m writing my dissertation about the general . . . I need your help.’
Solovyov began speaking quickly and muddledly, as if
he were afraid Nina Fedorovna would refuse. He told her
about what he had already accomplished in Petersburg and
even named most of the corrections he had made to
Dupont’s data. Nina Fedorovna listened to him sympathet-
ically, though a bit absently, too. Clearly, she could not keep up with the abundance of figures Solovyov cited.
Nina Fedorovna went to the waste bin (Solovyov went
with her), put out her cigarette butt on its concrete edge, and shot it into the urn’s maw like a catapult, with two
fingers. Nina Fedorovna lit another cigarette when Solovyov began telling her about his Yalta investigations. She livened up noticeably during the story about his searches with
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Zoya. After some hesitation, Solovyov decided to describe
it all.
After hearing him out to the very end, Nina Fedorovna
said, ‘But the general’s memoirs about his childhood
were with us, at home. Why did you have to get into
Kozachenko’s?’
Solovyov looked closely at Nina Fedorovna. She was not
joking.
‘It’s just that Zoya said . . .’
‘Zoya
’s a difficult girl.’ Nina Fedorovna smiled. ‘I was the same. You don’t believe me?’
Solovyov did not answer. After a pause, he said, ‘So that
means none of the general’s memoirs are lost?’
‘What the general dictated to me was kept . . .’ Nina Fedorovna went silent. Her tone assumed further questioning.
‘So then what has been lost?’
‘Not long after the general’s death, his son came to visit.
He asked what of his father’s was left. I gave him a notebook the general himself wrote.’ Nina Fedorovna leaned against
the column and closed her eyes. The corners of her lips
turned up.
‘And where’s his son now?’
‘I don’t know.’
Solovyov leaned against the column opposite her. Atlantis
and a caryatid. His fatigue had returned.
‘I remember. He went to some little settlement. He left
an address.’ As before, Nina Fedorovna kept her eyes closed.
‘Not even a settlement, a railroad station. A platform.’
Solovyov felt the column begin wobbling behind his
back.
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‘And what . . .’ he was already listening to himself from
a distance, ‘what was the station called?’
‘I don’t remember. Some woman there took pity on him
so he stayed.’ Nina Fedorovna opened her eyes and her face grew serious. ‘She simply took pity on him.’
‘Maybe it was Kilometer 715?’
A street-cleaning truck emerged out from behind a bed
of nasturtiums. A rainbow began developing in the droplets that hung over the flowers.
‘Maybe . . . May well be. That’s where he went.’
Solovyov went back into the hall. He listened inattentively to the other papers. The presenters and the conference and Crimea itself had suddenly lost his interest. He was thinking about the only spot on earth where everything that had
been significant to him at varying times in his life had come together: the general’s manuscript, Leeza Larionova (Leeza Larionova!) and, finally, his own home. He was thinking about Kilometer 715.
Solovyov understood that this coincidence was not acci-
dental. It was no longer a coincidence but a coalescence. The more unbelievable the joining seemed, the more non-accidental it became. This non-accident proved the correctness of the direction that had opened up for the searching, but its importance—the sudden realization of Leeza’s importance