Solovyov and Larionov

by Eugene Vodolazkin

  Despite the bloodless finish to Zhzhenka’s narration, the

  commentary’s authors took notice of its high degree of resemblance to the biblical narration in the Book of Judges. As examples, they offered the high status of the characters, intru-sion into their apartments, and the complete nonparticipation of their guards. It would have been naïve to suppose, pointed out the commentary’s authors, that such an ancient text

  would not undergo any changes when reproduced.

  A line of reasoning like that was legitimate. It could,

  seemingly, satisfy the most demanding researchers, not to

  mention numerous specialists in the field of textual deconstruction. It did not satisfy Solovyov. The historian knew something the folklorists who wrote the commentaries did

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  not know: Timofei Zhzhenka was General Larionov’s valet

  in 1920.

  Solovyov decided to walk home. He was deliberating over

  whether a folkloric text could be considered a historical

  document. And, strictly speaking, was that text folkloric?

  Posing the question that way automatically ranked folklore in the realm of make-believe. After stopping on Palace

  Square, Solovyov asked himself to what degree history itself was make-believe. That question seemed completely natural

  on the main square of an empire.

  It was a warm evening for the beginning of November.

  Warm and damp, in Petersburg’s way. An angel’s lowered

  head was looking at the gleaming cobblestones. Solovyov

  looked at the angel. A silvery haze shimmered in the beams of spotlights directed at the column. That Timofei Zhzhenka did not, prudently, give his characters names still did not render his story make-believe. Maybe he was not so simple, this Timofei. Who in Soviet Russia would have published

  the general’s valet’s memoirs? (Did the valet write his

  memoirs? Did he write at all?) Timofei Zhzhenka had seem-

  ingly found a witty way to tell future generations about

  what he had seen. Having no doubt that the general’s life

  would be studied one day. Solovyov smiled at his thoughts

  as he opened his umbrella. Sapienti sat.* That was about what Timofei might have thought.

  The rain intensified as Solovyov approached his building.

  It was draining from somewhere above in long, cold streams, drumming on the tin of the ledges and bursting with a roar from rainspouts plastered in adverts. His umbrella saved

  * Enough for the wise (Lat.).

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  him only partially. It did not shelter him from the water-sat-urated wind. The wind swooped down out of nowhere and

  the gusts stung Solovyov as if he had been hit by a wet rag.

  The wind twisted the arm holding the umbrella, bending

  its spokes and exposing the fabric’s inner and defiantly dry side. Solovyov had to close the umbrella when it nearly flew away at the corner of Zhdanovskaya Embankment and

  Bolshoy Avenue. He felt cold rivulets under his shirt and

  could hear a repulsive squishing in his shoes, even through the sound of the downpour. The only thing left for him to

  do was run.

  At home, Solovyov undressed and got into the shower.

  Water manifested itself completely differently now: its flows were hot and friendly here, its embraces ticklish and tender.

  There was something of Leeza’s touch in that, which made

  him feel her absence even more acutely. Leeza did not know of the discovery he had made today. And it was so important to him to tell someone about it.

  When Solovyov came out of the bathroom, he threw on

  his robe and dialed Prof. Nikolsky’s number. Nobody came

  to the phone at the other end of the line. Solovyov dialed the number again and waited a little longer. He almost heard the crackling old apparatus in the professor’s hallway. The professor would hurry for the second call after being too

  late for the first. That happened with old people. Old people asked that callers wait as long as possible before hanging up. The professor was making his way through a cluttered

  hallway. Losing his slippers as he went. Holding glasses that were slipping from his nose. (Solovyov felt uncomfortable

  but did not put the phone down.) The professor’s sleeve

  caught on a door knob. On a nail sticking out of a bookshelf.

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  His foot grazed a pile of journals on the floor. The pile

  scattered into a fan that would refresh nobody.

  In the end, the professor did not answer. Solovyov wanted

  to call someone else but there was nobody else to call. He realized that when the tones inside the phone changed, as

  if they had tired. He kept listening to them, not wanting to put the receiver down; they sounded like signals from Mars might sound. That sort of connection was, essentially,

  organic at house No. 11 on Zhdanovskaya Embankment.

  Contact with Planet Earth was ruled out for that evening.

  Prof. Nikolsky’s absence troubled Solovyov. He headed

  to the university in the morning and learned there that the professor was in the hospital. The dean’s office employee

  was reluctant to answer his question about what had

  happened to the professor. It was not customary to give out this sort of information.

  ‘Something about his lungs . . . They’re doing tests.’

  The hospital where Prof. Nikolsky was undergoing tests

  was in the northern part of the city. Solovyov bought some oranges along the way. Upon reflection, he also bought

  some German cookies. His thought was that these foodstuffs were incapable of harming the professor’s lungs.

  Solovyov had no trouble finding the pulmonary depart-

  ment. There was no sense of the usual stench of Russian

  hospitals there. Perhaps lung disease did not assume a smell.

  The nurse on duty was sitting in the corner of the hallway.

  She was noting down something in a journal, slowly tracing out letter after letter. Solovyov asked which room the

  professor was in. The nurse answered without raising her

  head. Her knitting lay next to the journal. Based on her

  reverie, it was clear she had only just set it aside.

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  ‘What happened to Professor Nikolsky?’ Solovyov asked.

  Her pen was moving with the placidity of a knitting

  needle.

  ‘Nothing good.’

  Prof. Nikolsky had a small but private room. Nobody

  answered when Solovyov knocked. He pressed the door

  handle and cautiously opened the door a little. Prof. Nikolsky was half-lying on the bed. This was the same unusual pose

  the professor himself had talked about at one time, during lectures about the Petrine period. At the time, this—half-

  sitting (half-lying?)—was considered healthful for sleeping, so blood would not rush to the head. Prof. Nikolsky was

  half-lying (half-sitting?) like that in his room. His eyes were closed.

  Solovyov’s purposeful gaze proved more efficacious than

  his knock. The professor opened his eyes. It is possible he was not even sleeping. Most likely (Solovyov grasped this

  from the professor’s tranquility) he had heard the knock.

  Solovyov greeted him before crossing the threshold.


  ‘Come in, my friend.’

  The professor gestured, barely noticeably, pointing to a

  chair beside the bed. There was a whiff of his usual good-

  will in that gesture, but there was something more now,

  too. What Solovyov initially took for tranquility was

  undoubtedly something else that customary words did not

  fit.

  ‘So, I brought . . . here.’

  Solovyov took the oranges out of the bag. When he was

  on his way here, he had intended to ask the professor about his health but now he could not do so. He remembered the

  cookies and pulled those out.

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  ‘And these . . .’

  Disheartened by his own eloquence, Solovyov held out

  the packages for the professor.

  ‘Thank you.’

  He put the packages on the blanket. Now the packages

  and the blanket moved, barely noticeably, in time with

  Nikolsky’s breathing. His breathing—so it seemed to

  Solovyov, anyway—was rapid and irregular. The professor’s

  pale, hairless chest was visible behind baggy pajamas; a small aluminum cross shone on his chest. Solovyov thought that

  he had never seen the professor’s body: he did not remember seeing him without a necktie. Nikolsky took Solovyov’s

  hand.

  ‘How’s the dissertation?’

  ‘I’m almost finished.’

  ‘Good work. Bring it to me, all right?’

  Solovyov’s dissertation lay in his bag. He nodded.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Not so great . . . But even so, better than your general.’

  The professor was trying to sit up more and the oranges

  slid down to the edge of the bed. ‘Did you manage to find

  the end of his memoirs?’

  ‘Not yet. But I found something else.’

  And Solovyov told of yesterday’s discovery. Nikolsky

  heard him out without interrupting.

  ‘The truth is more wonderful than make-believe.’

  A nurse came in and held out a plastic lid with several

  pills for the professor. He tossed all the pills into his mouth at once with a familiar motion that even had a devil-may-care feel, then drank them down with water. This made no

  impression whatsoever on the nurse.

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  ‘You know,’ said Solovyov after waiting for the door to

  close behind the nurse, ‘with everything almost done, right now a sort of unusual feeling has come up. Maybe it’s

  dissatisfaction. It’s hard for me to express . . .’

  ‘Dissatisfaction is a usual feeling. Especially when finishing work.’

  Nikolsky said that somewhat sluggishly and Solovyov

  wondered if there had been a sedative among the tablets.

  ‘I had something else in mind. Dissatisfaction . . . with

  the general’s life. Maybe with life overall. Anyway, that’s pretty heavy material . . .’

  ‘No, go on.’

  The professor’s hands were folded on the blanket.

  ‘So, imagine: there’s this general. Clever. Hero. Living

  legend. Then, it’s as if his fate short circuits. Darkness after a bright light. A squalid Soviet pension. A communal toilet.

  Somehow, it’s even silly.’

  ‘Why?’

  Solovyov shrugged.

  ‘It’s a strange thought: maybe for him it would have been

  better to be shot?’

  The nurse came in again, this time with a syringe on a

  tray.

  ‘Turn around.’

  The professor slowly turned on his side and lowered his

  pajama bottoms a little. Solovyov went over to the window.

  The street was barely visible in the November dusk. The

  poorly washed glass reflected only the nurse and the

  professor. But the professor did not know that.

  ‘Relax. Don’t squeeze your buttocks.’

  Nikolsky began coughing uncontrollably. Something

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  glassy clinked on the tray and the nurse left the room.

  Nikolsky wiped the tears that had formed in his eyes from

  coughing.

  ‘I could say that I should have died a little earlier, in some more pleasant kind of place. And not be living out my last days here . . .’

  Solovyov wanted to object, but the professor threatened

  him with an index finger.

  ‘But I’m not going to say that. Not because I like what’s

  happening. It’s just that the meaning of life is not in reaching a peak. Life’s meaning is most likely in its entirety.’ He pressed his palms into the mattress and returned to a half-

  sitting position. ‘What does your general write about most?’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably about his childhood.’

  ‘So there you go. That’s very distant from all his victories but it’s the most important thing for him. After all, he

  gauged everything later based on his childhood . . .’ Nikolsky looked up at to Solovyov. ‘Does that seem far-fetched to

  you?’

  Solovyov abruptly walked over to the window and sat on

  the window sill.

  ‘No, damn it . . . Pardon me. I suddenly realized why the

  two descriptions coincide . . . The general’s childhood reminiscences and Zhloba’s report about entering Yalta; imagine, they coincide right down to the details! I heard this during the summer, at the conference . . . I’ll need to check it all, but it seems like I understand . . .’

  Nikolsky was sitting with his head tilted toward his

  shoulder. It seemed to Solovyov that the professor’s attention was dissipating. That impression went away when Nikolsky

  raised his head.

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  ‘I was just thinking about the peak in the general’s life.

  Of course that’s what you found yesterday.’ (The professor had begun muttering.) ‘It works out that he lived more than half a century after that. After or as a result of that? It’s a good question. It’s probably both things . . .’

  Solovyov saw the nurse through the door, which was ajar.

  She was looking sternly at him, even shaking her head.

  Solovyov nodded that he understood everything. He turned

  toward the professor to say goodbye but the professor was

  asleep. He was dreaming of the article, ‘Regarding a

  Christian Understanding of History’, that he had begun

  writing before ending up in the hospital. Despite the fact that the article opened with a minutely detailed examination of the category of progress, the scholar did not perceive

  substantial signs of progress in history. The majority of

  nations had periods of ascent but as a rule achieved those a) at the expense of other peoples and b) for an extremely limited time. The interaction of those rises and falls was the sum of the vectors that absorbed one another and constituted the essence of world history. It had no common vector.

  With this state of things, it remained unclear what historical progress, which is now taken as an axiom, was composed

  of. Was it in the ability—the professor dreamt of a rhetorical question—to destroy ever larger numbers of people

  with each century? He did not consider it necessary to

  answer that question, but even in his
sleep he did not forget to cite studies, such as Nikolai Berdyaev’s The Meaning of History, on similar problematic issues. With this state of affairs, Prof. Nikolsky refused to assess events in world

  history according to their degree of progressiveness. He

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  moral criterion. Declaring the notion of progress a fiction, the sleeping historian noted that the structure of a nation’s life is very much reminiscent of the life of an individual and that it ends in the exact same nonprogressive way: in death.

  This gave him grounds to move on to the problem of the

  correlation of history and the individual. Prof. Nikolsky

  preferred the question of how history allows the individual to play a role over the traditional exploration of the role the individual plays in history. In the scholar’s treatment, history, when compared with the individual, appeared as

  something derivative and, in a certain sense, ancillary. To him, history looked like a frame—sometimes meager, sometimes sumptuous—where the individual placed his portrait.

  The scholar did not propose another intended goal for

  history. His fingers slid, barely noticeably, along the blanket’s creases as if he were attempting to fumble for that frame.

  As he moved on to the next point in his article, the professor dreamt that he would very likely never finish writing it.

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  A quiet whistling began sounding at dawn. Solovyov opened

  his eyes a little, just the tiniest bit, so as not to let his dream slip away. He did not exclude the possibility that the whistling had been in his dream. The dream was pleasant. The dream

  attempted to hold on to Solovyov’s flickering eyelashes even as it receded. Solovyov could not have retold the dream; he could not remember, even roughly, what the dream had been

  about, though he continued to feel its mood. The mood was

  all that remained of the dream and Solovyov realized he had woken up. Despite the early morning hour, it was not dark

  in the room. Solovyov knew this light. It was the light of the first snow. The freshness of the first snow was drifting through a small open window in the kitchen.

  The whistle was sounding in his waking life. It was a

  quiet, cautious whistling, more of an intermittent whistle.