Solovyov and Larionov

by Eugene Vodolazkin

  surprised.

  In the folder was a photocopy of the notebook Filipp had

  taken at one time and which had suddenly surfaced in the

  form of a new acquisition for the library. It remained unclear if it had been acquired from Filipp, where Filipp himself was, and whether he was still on the face of the Earth at all. There were no library markings on the manuscript at all other than the call number.

  It was a thick notebook with graph paper. It was too

  large to copy with facing pages, so each page was copied

  individually, making for many sheets. Strictly speaking, the notebook could have fit the copier with the pages facing,

  albeit without the margins: from time to time, the general had made markings in the margins (which he had neatly

  ruled in pencil). Judging from the various shades of ink, the markings were made at different times. The general had

  obviously reread his writings more than once and left

  remarks and additions. ‘Dead.’ Or: ‘Still alive.’ Or (facing the words ‘It was cold’): ‘It was not so much cold as damp.’

  It was not so much cold as damp when the remnants of

  the White Army rolled off toward Chongar. The bulk of

  the troops had already left Perekop a few days before and

  were now being loaded onto transports in the ports. The

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  their retreat. The cavalry then held on there until the general received a report one night that his troops were already in the ports. The cavalry soundlessly left Perekop that same

  night.

  The heavy weapons had been disabled. They had removed

  the locks and left them in position. They had not extinguished their campfires, which Captain Kologrivov’s detachment was to watch over until morning. These 150 volunteers had offered to remain until morning. They covered the retreat of

  Perekop’s last defenders.

  They led the horses by their bridles for the first several hundred meters. They saddled them before reaching

  Armyansk and the cavalry moved off at a trot. In the vicinity of Dzhelishay, a small number of the troops turned toward

  Yevpatoria and the rest continued on toward Yalta and

  Sevastopol. As he ascended Chongarsky Pass, the general

  was thinking of those who remained on Perekop. In his

  mind he asked their forgiveness.

  A snowstorm came up on the pass. The huge, wet snow-

  flakes did not drop to the ground. They got caught in the

  wind and drifted, on a low-altitude flight. Where the pass began to dip, the snowflakes soared upward, as if the

  hanging, murky clouds were already waiting for them to

  come back. It slowly grew light.

  Sitting motionless in the saddle, the general observed as

  the remnants of his army laboriously descended from the

  pass. The horses began slipping on the icy road, scrabbling to keep their balance, sometimes sitting on their haunches.

  Some fell, trapping their riders beneath them and pinning

  them to the frozen mud. Shouts and foul language hung

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  down, holding them by the reins. ‘Motion along an inclined plane,’ was the general’s notation in the margin.

  When they arrived in Yalta, the general gave everyone

  several hours to rest. He headed for evacuation headquar-

  ters, stationed in the Oreanda Hotel. The general carefully familiarized himself with the list of evacuated personnel

  and inventory of vessels. He assigned the transportable

  wounded to the steamship Tsesarevich Georgy. (Bela Kun would shoot the untransportable wounded two days later.)

  The steamship Kronshtadt, on which the Sevastopol Navy Hospital and the Mine and Artillery School were evacuating, took numerous wounded. The rest were loaded on ships

  with their own troop units.

  There were not enough vessels. At the last minute, the

  transports Siam, Sedzhet, Rion, Yakut, and Almaz were added to the available tonnage. Under the general’s order,

  everything in the Crimean ports that was capable of staying afloat, including old barges, was made available for the needs of the evacuation. It worked out to 126 large and small

  vessels. The majority of them were already prepared to sail and stood at outer anchorage.

  After noon, a launch was sent directly to the Oreanda

  and the general, accompanied by his deputy, Admiral

  Kutepov, headed to the anchorage. The launch went past

  steamships packed with people. Past barges so laden that

  their sides nearly dipped into the water. It was frightening to let them set sail. But it was even more frightening to

  keep them here.

  The general climbed up a rope ladder to the cruiser

  General Kornilov. The crowd on deck was so dense that it was almost unable to part when the general made his

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  appearance. As he crossed the deck, he could barely elbow

  his way behind the Cossacks clearing a path for him. The

  exact same sort of crowd languished in the hold. At least it was warmer there than on deck, but there was already a

  palpable stench: there was only one toilet for the entire

  hold. The hold’s largest compartment turned out to be

  under lock and key.

  ‘What’s in there?’ asked the general.

  ‘The chief quartermaster’s cabin,’ said Admiral Kutepov.

  ‘Open it.’

  The chief quartermaster held the key but it was already

  impossible to find him in the crowd. The general nodded to the Cossacks and they peppered the door, hitting it with their rifles’ butt ends. A minute later, the lock and the lower hinge had been broken off. The door swung on its upper hinge

  with a pitiful screech and dropped. The quartermaster’s

  compartment was completely stuffed with expensive furni-

  ture. Mahogany cabinets stood pressed against one another.

  The sides of the cabinets faced those entering, but they were astoundingly beautiful even from the side, gleaming in the porthole’s scant light. This light was reflected in several Venetian mirrors arranged along the walls. There were large crates neatly stacked in the corner of the cabin; baled tablecloths lay on them, right under the ceiling.

  ‘Overboard,’ said the general.

  He came back on deck after finishing his inspection of

  the cabin. The first of the cabinets had already been delivered there. The sailors rocked the item and tossed it on the count of ‘three.’ It fell into the water with a fountain of spray and stayed afloat for a time. Then it began heavily

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  the cabinet released bubbles as if it were a live being. As the general was making his way down to the launch, two

  sailors dragged the quartermaster out of the hold.

  ‘Does this one go overboard, too?’

  ‘Let him live,’ said the general.

  He went ashore after visiting several more ships. He asked about those who had remained on Perekop, but nobody had

  seen them here yet. Dusk was falling. The general dismissed the Cossacks by the entrance to the Oreanda Hotel. He

  went up to his room and looked out the windo
w at the sea.

  He sat at the table, poured himself some cognac from a

  decanter, and drank it. There was a knock at the door. He

  had no strength to answer.

  ‘May I?’

  Admiral Kutepov entered the room. He laid a hand on

  the general’s shoulder.

  ‘You need to get some rest. We’re sailing in the morning.’

  ‘The ones coming from Perekop . . . They still haven’t

  arrived,’ said the general.

  ‘The Red artillery will smash us to smithereens if we

  don’t cast off tomorrow . . . May I?’ The admiral took the decanter and poured himself some cognac. ‘Besides, the

  ones you’re speaking of . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think nothing threatens them any longer.’

  The admiral emptied his glass in one gulp and was now

  thoroughly savoring the drink. Pursing his lips. Closing his eyes. The general drank, too. And also closed his eyes.

  When he opened them, Captain Kologrivov was standing

  before him. The general knew he was dreaming of Kologrivov; he saw in that nothing good for Kologrivov’s fate.

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  ‘Well, how are you doing out there?’ the general asked,

  looking away.

  ‘Nothing threatens us any longer,’ said Kologrivov. He

  poured himself some cognac without asking permission.

  ‘It’s a pity you weren’t there. This was the only chance for you to get a genuine feel for Thermopylae after all.’

  ‘But there were only 150 of you.’

  ‘And you aren’t Leonidas, either, isn’t that right? And so here, you know, it’s one thing after another.’

  The general woke up shortly before dawn. What he had

  thought was a firm pillow turned out to be the cuff of his sleeve. He could feel the table’s velvet covering under his hand. Lights were flashing to one another in the black

  motionless sea outside the window; the ships at anchor were ready to sail. The general looked at his watch. A farewell prayer service was to begin on the embankment in an hour.

  The commanders of the forces sailing from Yalta came

  for the prayer. The embankment was packed with people.

  At the first sounds of the service, the general sank to his knees and all the officers followed suit. The entire huge

  crowd also knelt. A damp sea wind whipped at the priests’

  stoles and snapped the tricolored banner against the flagpole.

  The general attempted to understand each word of the

  service but was distracted, without realizing it himself. He was thinking that the evacuation could certainly have taken place even without him.

  The prayer service was ending. Bestowing his blessing,

  the bishop sprinkled the general with holy water and several drops fell behind his collar. There was no doubt this had

  already happened in his life. He had happened to experience so very many unforgettable things. Raindrops running under 580VV_txt.indd 380

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  his tunic. Standing drowsily on the bank of the Zhdanovka

  River. Semi-darkness. A wind just as wet. Could that water, then, be considered holy? It had fallen straight from the sky.

  The general fingered a pencil in his overcoat pocket. It would have been better for him to have stayed on Perekop after

  all. Maybe he had stayed there, though.

  The general slowly rose from his knees. From the faces

  of those standing, he understood they had been waiting

  only for him.

  ‘Do deign to say a parting word,’ Kutepov appealed to

  the general.

  The general watched as the bishop’s gray hair whipped

  in the wind. His hair lashed at his eyes and got into lips opened from shortness of breath, but he made no attempt

  to remove it. This had happened in the general’s life, too.

  The same elderly bishop and the same gray hair whipping.

  But he could not remember where. Life had begun repeating

  itself. The bishop did not look at anyone individually and the pause did not weigh upon him. His face expressed no

  impatience. The general remembered: it was the violinist

  from his childhood. He had played right here, by the fence at the Tsar’s Garden.

  ‘I have nothing to say.’

  Admiral Kutepov smoothed his hair and took several steps

  toward the crowd. He cleared his throat. A horse began

  neighing behind those standing.

  ‘We did all that we could . . .’

  Kutepov glanced at the general, as if searching for new

  words. But the general was silent. Kutepov thought a bit,

  then asked everyone’s forgiveness. The general nodded; he

  found that appropriate. Kutepov cast a look around the

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  crowd, breathed some air into his lungs, and shouted,

  ‘Farewell!’

  ‘Farewell,’ the general said to Kutepov. ‘My mission has

  ended.’

  ‘The launch is waiting for us,’ said Kutepov, nodding in

  the direction of the sea.

  ‘I commanded ground operations and now the naval

  operation is beginning. You’re the admiral, not I.’

  The admiral looked at his watch.

  ‘We can’t linger any longer.’ Still acting as if he did not understand, Kutepov took a folder with a two-headed eagle

  from the general’s hands.

  ‘You’ll need that in Constantinople,’ said the general.

  ‘There’s no sense in waiting for them.’

  ‘Including a final statement of the treasury and corre-

  spondence about providing asylum.’

  ‘They perished on Perekop and you know it.’

  ‘This is not, really, about them.’

  ‘General, the Reds will not simply kill you, they’ll slice you to pieces.’

  ‘It’s not worth spending time bickering. There are 145,000

  people waiting for you. And that’s just according to the lists.

  I think there are many more of them in reality.’

  Admiral Kutepov shifted the folder from his right hand to

  his left, then put his hand to his peaked cap. He did that so slowly that he had time to inadvertently twist his finger at his temple. Or perhaps it only seemed that way to the general.

  The embankment emptied out fairly quickly. There were

  only horses that had been abandoned during evacuation.

  Not all their saddles had even been removed. Horses nobody needed dispersed along the neighboring streets. They

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  neighed from hunger. They were returning to the embank-

  ment again in expectation of their masters; they rubbed

  against icy streetlamps. The horses interpreted their abandonment as a misunderstanding.

  The wind was flattening flyers against the fence at the

  Tsar’s Garden; they had been scattered around several days ago. The general picked one up. In the flyer, comrade Frunze called upon Yaltans not to put up resistance. He guaranteed universal amnesty for the city’s residents. The general

  unclenched his fingers and the scrap of paper flew off into the empty expanse of the embankment. The city’s residents

  had no intention of putting up resistance.

  Yalta was preparing for the Reds’ entry in a different way
, though. Shop windows were being boarded up. Provisions

  and table silver were being hidden in houses. The measures were warranted but, as it later turned out, insufficient. When the city froze from horror a day later, both the stores and the table silver seemed like mere details. Yaltans did not even remember those amidst the terror that broke out, just as nobody among the Reds remembered comrade Frunze’s

  flyers.

  Captain Kologrivov’s detachment entered the city after

  the smoke of the last steamship had disappeared beyond

  the horizon. Retreating under the Reds’ fire, Kologrivov had managed to save most of his detachment. They were saved

  that day at dawn by a very strong snowstorm that suddenly

  came down over Perekop. The blizzard allowed the detach-

  ment to leave and disoriented their pursuers. It accompanied the detachment for half the day, hiding it in a solid snowy shroud. Kologrivov’s detachment had not perished. They

  had lost their way.

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  In the thick snow, the detachment took a mistaken course

  from the start—to the peninsula’s eastern extremity—rather than the Yalta direction that General Larionov had instructed.

  They did not figure out their mistake until the dead of night, at the Vladislavovka junction railway station. Instead of

  moving toward the nearest port, Feodosia, and getting on

  a ship there, the detachment stayed true to the order and

  turned back, to the west. In order to get to Yalta, they

  headed along the road they had already traveled, toward

  the center of the peninsula, not turning south until then.

  Only toward the evening of the next day did Captain

  Kologrivov’s detachment turn up in Yalta.

  When he welcomed the detachment, the general did not

  consider accommodating them in barracks. He housed them

  in homes that (according to his information) had been

  vacated during the evacuation. Rest was a vital necessity for the soldiers after their grueling passage. Burning their military uniforms was just as necessary for them. The general

  ordered that they begin with that.

  He himself went to the city theater. After a brief meeting in the wardrobe room, they brought him all their Tatar

  costumes (around two dozen) and craftsman costumes

  (eight). Everything was fine with the Tatar clothing but