Olda Orestovna was able to teach at all only because her subject was medieval Western Europe. What’s more, the professors themselves filled places on the faculty by co-optation and sometimes took on impostors without the minimum academic qualifications, just as long as they pandered to the taste of the times.
Vorotyntsev listened patiently to her lilting voice, scrutinizing her as though the center of the world had been displaced to sit beside him, rejoicing in his luck and dreading to make some mistake that would blow it all away, as though it had never been.
After tea they felt a common urge to go walking. Outside, they stopped to look at the dark waters of the Nevka, the Little Neva—not at all little from bank to bank—and at sparsely lit Kamenny Island. They walked to the left along the embankment toward Krestovsky Island, which was even darker. The sky was covered by dark clouds, but there was no rain. Apparently there had been heavy snowfalls earlier than usual—on 19 and 20 October—and light frosts. The islands still wore a wintry look. But elsewhere it had all turned to mud.
His fur hat was too hot for his feverish head, but once they got out into the open they were buffeted by a blustering wind from the sea, which stiffened as they went on.
Olda Orestovna was shivering.
“Are you cold?” he asked anxiously.
Taking hold of her other hand, he found that her gloved fingers were indeed cold.
“How warm yours are, though!”
“They always are, for some reason.”
“That must be a good thing at the front.”
“Not only at the front.”
They had left the last houses on the embankment behind, and ahead of them there was nothing but dark, open wasteland, teased and buffeted by the cold, damp wind. They could not see the shoreline, where the tip of Aptekarsky Island merged with the water and Krestovsky Island surfaced beyond it.
She was still shivering.
“You’re cold!”
“No, I’m enjoying myself …”
They were walking now over broken ground. The last streetlamps were behind them, and their light barely reached that far, but Olda Orestovna knew the place so well that she seemed to see in the dark. She pulled her companion by the hand down a little slope and broke into a run.
“There ought to be a swing here somewhere.”
Sure enough, they groped their way to a crude plank suspended by wires, and Vorotyntsev was, by now, not greatly surprised when Olda Orestovna decided she wanted a swing. With just a little help she seated herself on the plank and said, “Push!” He began cautiously, but a merry voice called out, “Harder!” She soared higher and higher, with a mischievous side wind nudging her, threatening to send her spinning or dash her against the upright, and Vorotyntsev rushed to steady the swing. “Why aren’t you pushing?” she demanded, more gaily than ever.
Instead, he seized her, swing and all, and said, “You, Professor, are just a little girl! Little Olda! If I had the right to use your first name at all, that’s what I’d call you—Olzhenka.”
“How extraordinary! I’ve been given all sorts of pet names, but never that one. Did you ever know a girl called that?”
“No. I’ve just thought of it.”
“I really like it.”
“So maybe I can call you that?”
“When there’s nobody around to hear it.”
“Will there be such times?”
“That’s up to you.”
And all he could do then was kiss her, kiss the lips he had been looking at longingly all that evening, bending her farther and farther backward on the swing, till her hat fell off, rolled away, and was carried off by the wind.
Vorotyntsev chased the hat, stumbling after it clumsily, in a complete daze.
[28]
It had never happened to him before, and he had nothing to compare it with. Jettisoned, all tumbling away downhill—his main concern, other matters of some importance, his agenda, his return ticket to Moscow, his promises to his wife, promises to his sister—all lost and forgotten, and forgetting them was pure joy.
I’ve lost nothing! And think what I’ve found! For the very first time.
Next morning he was at the telephone early: it was hours since they had seen each other. Her voice over the phone. Unlike any other. So musical. Not to be compared with the telephone voices of other women. And there was so much meaning in her slow, deliberate speech.
“Come early. It will make the evening longer.”
“How did you sleep?”
“I didn’t sleep at all. But I don’t feel as if I hadn’t slept.”
Just talking over the phone was such a delight, he couldn’t tear himself away from the receiver.
“A bit weak at the knees?”
“Never you mind.”
(A secret smile. He could tell from the tone of her voice. He could see the room, see the telephone, see her standing by it.)
“I can’t feel my body at all. It doesn’t exist. Light as air! And I haven’t a wish in the world.”
Just to hear that voice he would be stretched into telephone wire himself!
“What about your work?”
“It’s fine, everything’s splendid. Come soon!”
And Guchkov? He’s pretty sure to be home today. And all the rest of Petrograd?
Aleksandr Ivanovich? Yes, he’s back. But he’s gone out. Be here this evening. Any message?
Any message? … Might clash … The evening’s taken … and all day long. It’s all right, thank you.
I’ll ring again.
Not yet, though.
Talking over the telephone was tantalizing, but it was an outlet for his burning impatience. However, after another three hours it was such a torment he had to be on the move, to make all possible haste to the far end of the Petersburg side.
Gray, rainy days—but springlike sunshine in his breast! He felt as if he had won a tremendous victory, over vast expanses, one no enemy could wrest from him.
Along the same avenues, past the same palaces, great houses, restaurants and cinemas, but less and less resentful of them, oblivious even of the weather, transported as though by magic carpet, hardly aware of the journey.
Her apartment. Together. Alone.
In her study, looking out on the Pesochnaya Embankment, the swollen, gray-brown Little Neva, and Kamenny Island, where you could just make out, or see clearly through opera glasses, a wooden villa with wooden roosters, Russian style, on the roof, a fantastic stone one with black turrets, and the wooden Kamenny Island Theater.
We must go for a stroll there sometime.
But there was simply no time left for strolling. Nor for anything else in Petrograd. Only for those two rooms. Books everywhere—but no time, either, to take them down from their shelves and look at titles, no time to read a single page. Or to inspect all the toys—the carved hussars and ladies of fashion, the troikas, Ilya Muromets and Solovey Razboinik, Jonah and the whale, the bears, pigs and hares, the glazed goblets with animal paws. And that bare-shouldered Pan in the half-darkness, with a bronze sliver of the old moon on the horizon. He wasn’t so old as all that. The way he squatted, his midnight look, what he had in mind—all so much easier to understand now!
Just a few days ago Georgi would not have understood, would not even have noticed.
Olda might put that violin concerto by some Belgian on the phonograph, and grip his hand tight. Listen! Listen! This passage now!
Or just talk.
“On the twenty-fifth anniversary of Dostoevsky’s death, out of the whole Russian reading public, out of all those in our enlightened capital city, from our proud student body—do you know how many people visited his grave? Seven! I was there … Seven people! Russia has followed in the train of his devils. Literally: the Tsar Liberator was assassinated just a few days after Dostoevsky’s death. Russia had turned to rush in the wake of the devils. True, many more gathered this year, for the thirty-fifth anniversary. But don’t imagine he himself was the main attraction. Oh, no
. What attracts them—and the West has already caught a whiff of it—is his description of spiritual corruption, of perversion, seen from within. Dostoevsky is all the rage nowadays. Do you like him?”
He couldn’t pretend, but felt awkward telling her.
“N-no,” he said hesitantly. “He’s not my sort of writer. He has too many epileptics, it’s all out of proportion. All those superfluous confidants burbling away. And then those inordinately long conversations, all that nit-picking … As I see it, life is much simpler.”
“So whom do you like? Tolstoy?”
No good pretending. Might as well hang for a sheep as a lamb.
“To tell the truth, nobody after Pushkin and Lermontov. Since then our literature has lacked energy and action. Its heroes are all weaklings or cranks. Take Pierre and Bolkonsky—you keep reading and wondering what they stand for. You can’t separate them and you can’t understand them. Me—I like strong-minded people.”
Her smile acknowledged his right to say so.
It was delightful, sitting there talking to this clever woman about anything and everything—but suddenly conversation is swept away, and …
And … his hands, unbidden, lifted her—light and little as she was—made to be lifted—lighter still, because at exactly the right moment she flies into his arms!
“Oh, how big you are! My arms won’t go around you!”
His legs move of their own accord, he threads his way, swings around, carries her into the other room, to the inevitable place.
Always to the same place—but nothing was ever the same twice—and that was pure enchantment. With Olda there was no foreseeing what would happen, and how: every time, from hour to hour, there was something unexpected, to captivate him and yet flatter his strength. In every gesture some novelty, an interrupted sequence of them. Sometimes—she’s in no hurry, and you, you clumsy brute, are left to work out with your own fumbling hands which of those delicate coverings comes next. But another time she would do it herself, in a single motion, wildly, unseeingly, like a gambler throwing down his last card—and he was fired by her recklessness. Then—the doubling and trebling and multiplication of these events. The exclamations of surprise—and that cry that raises you to the height of ecstasy. Is it really true? Not just pretense? You—you’re no mere mortal, you’re an Atlas!
Everything blurs, walls, shelves, pictures, the world of thought and the world of irreconcilables. No more contradictions … So that’s what you are! that’s what you are! that’s what you are! and the more shameless, the closer and the more needed.
Eyes half extinguished, narrowed to slits.
A long interval to rest and recover.
Their talk is languid, perfunctory.
“Do you know the difference between ‘loved’ and ‘desired’?”
“No, I’ve never thought about it. Aren’t they synonyms?”
“O-o-h …!”
A woman, even a learned woman, always finds time for nonsensical fishing expeditions of this kind.
“That first evening with me—did you think I might give other men the same sort of welcome?”
“For heaven’s sake!”
He hadn’t thought so then, or since, but now that she’d asked the question he wondered for a moment. Of course she hadn’t treated everybody like this, but there could have been others?
“It … just came over me. I mean, when I was listening to you, at Shingarev’s, I sensed that …”
Yes, yes … happened spontaneously. Who knows how? At their first meeting.
“And when I put my hand on your shoulder … it meant that you are a Russian knight-errant. It was symbolic. It implied no more than that.”
“Symbolic—that’s how I took it.”
“As a rule, it’s just the opposite—I keep everyone at a distance. I even try not to let anyone take my arm. Because the slightest contact may make me lose my head.”
“Even if someone just takes your arm?”
“Yes … My skin reacts to the touch of a hair. Haven’t you noticed?”
He didn’t doubt it. His own skin, coarse and insensitive for so many years, felt different, rejuvenated. She had renewed him completely. He had never felt so keenly alive.
He lit a cigarette, still lying in bed, and she asked for one.
They smoked, side by side.
She became serious.
“You know, I’m very rarely as outspoken in company as I was in that outburst at Shingarev’s. But lately I’ve had the feeling that things are coming to a head. And I suddenly had the idea that I’d found an ally in you. Especially when you made your splendid remark about meek acceptance being more useful to society than freedom. But then—you seemed somehow to back down.”
Georgi didn’t quite know how to put it.
“Look—I’m not against monarchy as such. But this Tsar … I feel insulted by him.”
“There you are, you see, you’ve caught the same disease as all the others! When did it happen?”
“I can tell you exactly: when Stolypin was assassinated.”
“But what could the Tsar do about that?”
“Before it happened—a great deal. And at that moment he could have at least gone to see the wounded man and bowed his head over him. He could have visited him in the hospital. When a faithful dog is killed its master shows more respect for it than the Tsar did for Stolypin. If we forgive him for his treatment of Stolypin, and draw no conclusions, there is nothing to be said for us.”
“But everybody, monarchs included, may be momentarily confused by mixed feelings and make a mistake. We can’t judge a man by a single incident …”
“Look wherever you like. Take those grandiose tricentenary celebrations. Is there any real reason for such vainglorious posturings: O glorious dynasty! The glorious dynasty has had its full share of blunders, palace revolutions, royal nonentities, of wills too weak and wills too cruel.”
“No, no … you’re infected, you’re infected!” she wailed, almost despairingly.
“Why couldn’t he make a heartfelt pronouncement: ‘My subjects! This celebration is your own, it is you who bore the brunt of the dreadful Time of Troubles three hundred years ago. It is you who graciously put your faith in our royal line. I want with all the strength I have to justify that solemn trust.’ But he has no such urge to speak frankly to the people at large—and that means that he is not one of us. And what about his pathetic and disgraceful trip to the western provinces? A misconceived attempt to skim the cream of public jubilation, immediately before the enemy began driving us out of Peremyshl and Galicia as a whole. This present Emperor of ours is incapable of coping with this country of ours, and has been so for a quarter of a century. It’s terrible! He does not care how much Russian blood is spilled, he thinks there’s an ocean of it in reserve.”
“But the laws of war being what they are, what can he do?”
“There are more ways than one of waging war. If you have to get involved at all. We should have avoided it.”
“I hope you don’t go along with the Kadets when they accuse the government of deliberately trying to lose the war.”
“Looked at from a purely military point of view, no. In fact, we’re gradually beginning to win. But it’s impossible to see what we can get out of it. And whatever it is, we’re paying too dearly. For the sake of Russia’s future, the nation’s physical and spiritual survival, the best thing we could possibly do is not to go on with the war.”
“But how can we simply give it up?” Olda said in astonishment. “A weightless insect can suddenly change course in mid-flight. But a drowning elephant cannot turn himself around. If we’re to give up now, what was the point of all our previous sacrifices?”
“More likely than not they were pointless.”
She had not expected this from him! Would never have expected it!
“But it would be a crime against all those who have fallen!”
“We should be thinking of those who are still on their feet,” Ge
orgi answered coolly. “As things are, Russia is doomed to destruction—and whatever is blocking her escape must be removed. Once rid of it, Russia will begin to recover.”
Olda, startled, asked, “What is it you wish to see removed? Touch the Emperor—if that’s it—and we may lose the monarchy altogether. May lose absolutely everything! That’s all these people have—their religion and the Tsar.”
“But I didn’t say he should be removed.” Georgi wasn’t sure himself what he thought. Removed—and replaced by whom? One of the Grand Dukes? Was any one of them worth anything at all? If so, which? Wouldn’t it be a worse mistake? “Whatever happens, some major change is necessary.”
To tease her and see how far he could go, he added, “But what if in the last resort Russia can only be saved by becoming a republic?”
Olda raised herself on her pillow, twisted sideways, and spoke sternly, enunciating every word slowly and precisely, not a bit like a woman talking to her lover.
“It seems natural to us that there is one God and one only up above … and it would be a ridiculous muddle if we had two or three hundred celestial rulers, all at odds with each other, engaged in party strife, like the Olympian gods. To the people, and especially to simple people, it seems just as natural to have here on earth only one individual will above them. That’s exactly how the peasant thinks of it—either one single will or no master at all. Monarchy is a reproduction in miniature of the universal order: there is someone above all the rest, equally recognized by all, equally stern or equally merciful to you and your enemy alike.”
November 1916 Page 60