Solovyov and Larionov

16

When Solovyov arrived in Petersburg, he realized autumn had set in. Autumn was reflected in the windows at the Tsarskoye Selo train station, it called out here and there in the porters’ voices, and drifted along a platform in the form of a forgotten newspaper. The coming of autumn would not have been so obvious if there had been rain. But a feeble and irrevocably autumnal sun was shining. No doubt remained that summer was already over here.

The joy of return enveloped Solovyov. He inhaled the biting Petersburg air and sensed it was exactly what he had been lacking. He walked along Gorokhovaya Street to the Fontanka River and turned right. Cold air wafted off the dark water. Ripples coated the river. Solovyov noticed he was the only person wearing a short-sleeved shirt.

Solovyov lived on the city’s Petrograd Side. As already stated, he rented a room on Zhdanovskaya Embankment that Prof. Nikolsky had found for him through acquaintances. The professor had explained that the embankment had nothing to do with Soviet politician Andrei Zhdanov. It received its name from the Zhdanovka River, which immortalized clerks by the name of Zhdanov, former owners of these lands. For its part, the surname Zhdanov dates back to the word zhdan, denoting a long-awaited child. With the addition of the negative particle ne, the word nezhdan denoted (correspondingly) an unawaited child. By all indications, a distant ancestor of Filipp Nezhdanov was such a child. Solovyov was thinking about that as he entered the archway of house No. 11 on Zhdanovskaya Embankment.

House No. 11 was special. This was manifested not only in the grandiose Stalin-era Empire style of its architecture: the workshop for engineer Mstislav Sergeyevich Los, a character in Alexei Tolstoy’s (1882–1945) novel Aelita, was located in the building’s courtyard. Los, who planned to fly to Mars, was seeking a travel companion. Tolstoy had lived right here, too, on Zhdanovskaya Embankment, in house No. 3. He had taken up residence near author Fyodor Sologub (1863–1927) and was not planning to fly anywhere, having recently returned from abroad.

House No. 11 was constructed in 1954. It stood on the same spot as the building and courtyard that Tolstoy described. Thus (Solovyov reasoned as he walked up the stairs) the fantasy writer’s work took into consideration the actual particularities of the previous building No. 11. Given Alexei Tolstoy’s death in 1945, the book did not take into consideration the peculiarities of the current No. 11. In that sense, the fictional make-believe in Aelita corresponded to actual life in the 1920s more than to the objective reality of the 1990s. Solovyov’s next conclusion: the border between make-believe and reality disappears when time is taken out of the equation. He wiped his feet on the mat and shut the door behind him.

Solovyov lived in a two-room apartment. This was a happy version of a communal apartment: given its small population, it had not been reduced to a complete wreck. Additional happiness lay in the fact that Solovyov’s flatmate hardly lived here. Once every two or three months he would arrive suddenly from somewhere like Murmansk or Syktyvkar and then leave just as suddenly a few days later. His girlfriends came to see him on those days, though Solovyov saw them only in passing, too, when they ran from the next room to the shower late at night, wrapped in towels.

The apartment had windows on both sides of the building: they looked out over the courtyard (including part of Ofitsersky Lane) and the embankment. The windows in the kitchen and his flatmate’s room looked into the courtyard. Solovyov’s room (and this was its amazing quality) had a view of the Zhdanovka River, a small chunk of Petrovsky Island with the Petrovsky Stadium, and, further, beyond the trees on the island, the Malaya Neva River. In Solovyov’s opinion, the stadium spoiled the picture a lot, but nothing could be done about that.

The stadium did not just ruin the view. It complicated life. Existence near the stadium had its own shadowy and (in many of the courtyard’s secluded corners) damp sides, because fans of the Zenith football team urinated with reckless abandon. They urinated under the archway, in the entryways, and by the fences; they urinated during matches, whether the main team or the reserves were playing; and before and after matches. They urinated as if Zenith were the champion although the team was not even in the top three at the time.

Fans left behind heaps of rubbish: beer cans, chip bags, dried fish heads, corn cobs, and newspaper cones, flattened on the asphalt. All this was thickly strewn with sunflower seed hulls. The hulls swirled in light little tornados that blew off the river and rose over the roofs of building No. 11, Zhdanovskaya Embankment, Ofitsersky Lane, and the entire Petrograd side.

Solovyov had arrived on a match day. He was not a fan and he regarded football matches with irritation. At the same time, there was something about how they took place that appealed to him. The roar of many thousands of fans at the stadium excited him: that roar was sometimes indistinct, like a distant waterfall, and sometimes explosive (after a goal). But it was always powerful.

Solovyov sat on the windowsill and watched spectators disperse after the match. They flowed across the wide bridge over the Zhdanovka River like a viscous mass that could not come apart: that bridge was directly under Solovyov’s window. To Solovyov, the slow procession that was devoid of anything personal and the continuous, indistinct rumble seemed to be the embodiment of history’s gait. Majestic and pointless, like any concerted movement.

Looking out the window at the motley crowd, he remembered the black-and-white crowds in revolutionary newsreels. The spasmodic motions of people walking. The comical rocking of those standing; in modern filming, you did not notice that those standing are also moving. Little clouds of steam. They came up suddenly, as if they had been added in. Disappeared suddenly. The same with cigarette smoke. People were now walking that same way past the Second Cadet Corps (now the Military Space Academy), where the general once studied.

Football fans wearing Zenith caps were walking past the Second Cadet Corps. Thousands of dark blue caps. Thousands of dark blue scarves. They irritated Solovyov tremendously. And they did not know that a general had studied here. Solovyov began to feel lonely because of the abundance of people.

This feeling was new for him. He had never yet felt lonely in Petersburg. Even in the absence of friends, this city—with its strange aura and a people unlike in the rest of Russia—had sated him. He had not felt abandoned before when he was all by himself. He felt that now, though. It crossed his mind that Leeza had abandoned him, though in actuality it was the opposite. Solovyov picked up Tolstoy’s Aelita and peered out the window.

Beyond the gate, a wasteland reached to the embankment of the Zhdanovka River. Beyond the river there stood the vague contours of trees on Petrovsky Island. Beyond them, there faded a doleful sunset that could not fade away. Its light touched at the edges of long clouds that seemed like islands reaching into the sky’s green waters. Above them was green sky where a few stars had begun shining. It was quiet on the old Earth. That was the only spot in the book that Solovyov genuinely liked even though it twice referred to the sky’s green color, for no reason. Sometimes it even seemed to him that there was no need to continue.

Solovyov went outside after the sunset had faded. Interesting, where had the wasteland been, anyway? Or was it a fantasy of Tolstoy’s, who wrote his novel while still in Germany? Solovyov’s foot grazed a beer can and it rolled off the sidewalk with a clink. Had Nikolai Chernyshevsky seen that wasteland? If he had seen it, that would affirm that cadet Larionov must have seen it, too.

Solovyov went to the institute the next day. Even as he was approaching the famous building with its columns, he caught a glimpse of academician Temriukovich. Temriukovich was walking along, dressed in a Mackintosh raincoat with a fifties cut: it had roomy sleeves (one of them was smudged with whitewash) and its shoulders, which had once been angular, were now sagging and rumpled. The end of its untied belt dragged along the ground. Solovyov did not want to catch up to Temriukovich. Elementary courtesy would have demanded pointing out the smudged sleeve and dragging belt to the academician, but something hinted to the graduate student that there was no point in doing so. Solovyov slowed his pace and followed the academician.

Solovyov regarded Temriukovich with respect and there was a special reason for that. It was through Temriukovich’s efforts that the complete collected works of Sergei M. Solovyov were published during the Soviet era. Despite not being a relative of Sergei Solovyov, graduate student Solovyov believed in their spiritual kinship and felt favorable toward everyone who was somehow connected to the great man with whom he shared a surname.

As a scholar, Temriukovich was not one to reach for the stars, but there was no need in his case anyway. The necessities for the edition he had conceived were painstakingness and diligence in the task, and, to some extent, fortitude. An edition of Sergei Solovyov was not something that was taken for granted in the Soviet Union. As a reward for successful completion of the work, Temriukovich was nominated to become an academician. Nobody counted on his being elected. Above all, candidate Temriukovich.

‘Neither Bakhtin nor Lotman were academicians,’ he had consoled himself, ‘they weren’t even corresponding members.’

But Temriukovich’s situation turned out differently from Mikhail Bakhtin’s and Yuri Lotman’s. Destiny was favorable to Temriukovich, unlike Bakhtin and Lotman. This manifested itself on one occasion, when the members of the Academy of Sciences had not come to any agreement about a candidacy. The generally foolproof mechanism—which had made academicians out of institute directors, members of the government, oligarchs, and people who were simply respected—went haywire. By not agreeing amongst themselves, the academicians intuitively voted for someone who, to their thinking, had no chance whatsoever of making it. They voted almost unanimously for Temriukovich.

There was widespread surprise at the moderate joy displayed by the newly elected academician. A much more enthusiastic reaction was shown by those who had worked toward this goal, spending years cultivating Academy members and trotting from floor to floor of the Academy’s tall Presidium building with its strange-looking golden top stories that inspired the popular nickname The Cologne Bottle. Yes, Temriukovich accepted congratulations politely and expressed satisfaction with the academicians’ vote but—as noted by corresponding member Pogosyan, who was in attendance when the results were announced—Temriukovich’s thoughts were far away.

And that was the simple truth. The new academician’s colleagues suddenly recalled the overt aloofness that had accompanied Temriukovich for the last few years. If his condition might initially have been described as deep pensiveness, nothing but overt aloofness could describe the current state of affairs. That, however, was still not the worst of it. Temriukovich’s coworkers began noticing that he was talking to himself. The first to take notice was Igor Murat, a candidate of historical sciences.

‘Let’s have a look, see what kind of book this is,’ Temriukovich said one day, as he approached a bookcase, ‘probably rubbish.’

The publication that interested the academician was Igor Murat’s book, The Revolutionary-Democratic Movement in Left-Bank Ukraine During 1861–1891. The author was standing on the other side of the bookcase, unnoticed by Temriukovich. Murat had just plunged an immersion heater into a glass of water and was preparing to have tea. Murat froze when he peered through the shelves and watched the academician pick up The Revolutionary-Democratic Movement in Left-Bank Ukraine During 1861–1891. Murat turned his gaze to the heater. It was now impossible to turn it off soundlessly. Murat listened, speechless, as the academician moistened his index finger and paged through the book.

‘Shit,’ said Temriukovich with a sigh as he put the book back. ‘Premium quality shit.’

The water had begun boiling noisily in the glass and Temriukovich peered around the bookcase. He saw the pale Murat there.

‘I heard what you were saying about my book,’ whispered Murat.

‘I didn’t say anything,’ said the unruffled Temriukovich, ‘all I did was think about it.’

That calmed Murat slightly.

The academician’s oddities continued, though. At first, he still showed consideration for his coworkers and only ventured to make sharp remarks when he believed he was alone. Later, he did not exactly stop noticing those around him but, as Pavel Grebeshkov, the institute’s deputy director of scholarly affairs expressed it, he had crossed the line between internal and external speech. When addressing listeners, Temriukovich spoke expressively and intelligibly. He addressed himself in soft, rapid speech, just as theater actors utter texts with the stage direction ‘aside.’

That was the format in which he accused administrative manager Vladlen Maslo of dishonesty in carrying out multi-year renovations on the institute’s building. When he tripped over some scaffolding one day, the academician assumed, in an undertone, that Maslo was a thief, which was allegedly why the renovations were so grueling and unsuccessful. This occurred in the presence of witnesses. Unlike Murat, Maslo appealed to the director immediately, demanding that Temriukovich be fired from the institute due to his, Temriukovich’s, mental incompetence. The thought that Maslo could appropriate government funds seemed insane to the director, too. To the latter’s credit, he did not fire Temriukovich.

‘Temriukovich is a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences,’ said the director, ‘and under formal reasoning, I have no grounds for doubting his mental competence.’

And so membership in the Academy of Sciences helped Temriukovich avoid being fired. He continued coming to the institute only on required days, as he had been doing for the last forty years.

After entering the building, Temriukovich headed for the coat check. The man at the coat check bent across the counter to take the academician’s raincoat.

‘Where’d you lean against something, Mikhail Sergeevich?’ the attendant asked.

Temriukovich looked at the smudged sleeve and did not answer. Addressing himself on the stairs, he said, ‘Can’t a person ever hear anything nice?’

After Temriukovich had disappeared around a corner, Solovyov went up to the second floor. He went to the director to inform him that he was back from his trip. Strictly speaking, there was no real necessity to do so; a written report would have sufficed. But the fact that the trip had taken place in August and in Yalta gave Solovyov no peace. He remembered the director’s look in parting and he thought the gaze was ironic. Solovyov wanted to tell the director personally about his findings, and, first and foremost, the text he had found. The plastic folder with the general’s memoirs was melting in his hands and growing slippery; it had nearly fallen on the floor twice. Solovyov wanted rehabilitation. Maybe even encouragement.

The director’s office door was ajar. The director himself was not visible but his voice was audible. He was telling someone off: ‘Of all possible feelings, the only thing you have is a grasping reflex.’

After thinking, the director repeated it, syllable by syllable, ‘A gras-ping re-flex.’

A listless objection was heard in response. The words were indiscernible (what could they be in a case like this?) and all that remained was intonation. Simultaneously ingratiating and tedious. A woman was speaking. She calmed the director a little.

‘You can’t live on reflexes alone,’ he said conciliatorily. ‘Forgive me, but you can’t be such a reptile.’

This turned out to be an inopportune moment to visit. Solovyov had wearied instantaneously. He realized he was not even interested in finding out who, exactly, the director was addressing. Solovyov walked slowly toward the Twentieth-Century History Department, his department. Who could be called a reptile? At the end of the corridor, he turned to look back anyway. Tina Zhuk, a graduate student, was coming out of the director’s office. She had a very loud voice and Solovyov was surprised she had just been speaking so softly. It turned out that Tina could do so when she tried. Temriukovich was her research advisor. The academician did not like his graduate student and everyone at the institute knew it. Nobody liked her.

In the Twentieth-Century History Department, Solovyov donated one hundred rubles for a gift for a coworker, Baksheeva. Baksheeva, a candidate of historical sciences, had just had a baby and they were giving her an electric teakettle. The trade union committee chair decided to show Solovyov the electric teakettle after she’d accepted his money. She placed a finger to her lips, opened the cardboard box, and took out the gift. She, Novoseltseva, had invested her own personal money, at least temporarily, until she had recovered the sum for the teakettle. She showed Solovyov the list of donors: it was always a big risk to collect money for an item that had already been purchased. Solovyov flicked the teakettle with his fingernail. The sound turned out to be unexpectedly low and muted. The department office was empty. Lots of people were still on vacation.

Solovyov saw Temriukovich again on the second floor: he was headed toward the administrative offices. Tina Zhuk was walking slightly behind him. When she saw Solovyov, she pointed at Temriukovich and touched her temple with her finger.

‘He called me a snake in the grass,’ she whispered to Solovyov. ‘Can you imagine? He’s already completely lost it.’

Solovyov observed as Zhuk’s nose began moving in time with her lips. He had not noticed this before. It was possible this could be explained by her anxiety. Administrative manager Maslo popped out of the closest door.

‘Solovyov,’ he said, without a hello. ‘We’re going to start taking down the scaffolding in an hour. We’ll need your help.’

Solovyov nodded to Tina. Temriukovich turned around as if he had remembered something and began walking in the opposite direction. Maslo disappeared behind the door as soon as he saw that.

‘Stole a pile and now hides,’ Temriukovich mumbled, looking at the floor. ‘Vacations on Majorca. And I, a full member of the Academy of Sciences, vacation in the city of Zelenogorsk. One might ask why!’

‘Because he’s greedy,’ Tina Zhuk answered after the academician had moved further away. ‘He’s just a glutton. And senile.’

Solovyov went outside and headed off toward the University, the famous Twelve Colleges, a long red building that stood perpendicular to the Neva River. Solovyov hoped to find out something about Leeza in that building. Based on what Yegorovna had said, Leeza had left more than a year ago. If Leeza left to go to college, she should be in her second year now. Solovyov realized he did not know what department Leeza might have entered. Furthermore, there was no evidence she had entered a university in Petersburg. Strictly speaking, there was not even any certainty that Leeza had entered a university anywhere at all.

He was greeted with surprise at the administrative office. They had no obligation to provide student information to him.

‘This is very important to me,’ said Solovyov.

When all was said and done, Solovyov was a recent student himself, so they accommodated him. There turned out to be three Larionovas at the university. Not one of them was Yelizaveta. One was studying in the geography department, the second was in Solovyov’s very own history department, and the third was in journalism. Solovyov decided to meet all three just in case there was an error in the rolls.

He did not have to leave the Twelve Colleges building to go to the geography department. By checking the schedule, he learned where the second-year students had classes and went into the classroom during the break. A map of mineral resources in Siberia, speckled with red spots, hung on the wall. There were many resources. A great many.

Solovyov approached the first table and asked where he might find Larionova. They showed him. Even from afar, he knew it was not Leeza and thought about leaving without going up to her. He began taking a step but for some reason looked again at Larionova; her face was dotted with acne. It recalled the map of Siberia. This was probably what prevented him from making a fast exit. If he acted that way, reasoned the young historian, Larionova’s classmates would decide her appearance had driven him away. He did not want to cause Larionova—even if she was not Leeza—additional distress.

He walked over to her and wanted to explain what, exactly, had happened but Larionova did not let him say a word. She took him by the elbow and walked out of the classroom with him. Larionova continued holding Solovyov by the elbow in the hallway but did not look up. She had a sweet face, despite the acne.

‘I’m looking for a young woman whose surname is Larionova,’ said Solovyov, ‘but it turns out it’s not you.’

Larionova nodded. That was how things always worked out in her life.

Solovyov searched out the second Larionova the next day. She was writing a term paper on ancient battle tactics but knew nothing about the prominent general who shared her surname. That surprised Solovyov. In the first instant, the thought even flashed through his mind to tell her about the general and his Thermopylae passions. The history department’s Larionova was tall and broad-shouldered. Of all the Larionovas Solovyov had seen, basically, she deserved to be the general’s granddaughter more than the rest. Despite that circumstance (or perhaps precisely because of it), Larionova the second did not inspire Solovyov. He did not even consider telling her about anything and kept the conversation to a bare minimum.

There turned out to be the most hassle with Larionova number three. They told Solovyov at the journalism department that Larionova was sick, so he went to see her at the dormitory. There was no immediate answer when he knocked at Larionova’s room. Judging from the noise beyond the door, they were celebrating something in the room. Solovyov had lived in a dormitory for several years so he knew dorm sounds and smells so well that, based on the specifics of how they were combined, he could determine to a high degree of accuracy the reason behind the festivities. Most frequently, people celebrated birthdays, weddings, and passing exams in dorms. Sometimes they just drank vodka but there were no good smells for that. In those cases, they made do with bread, sausage, and marinated cucumbers.

It was not exam time. They were not celebrating a wedding (Solovyov cracked the door open). Birthday was left.

‘Come in,’ several guests shouted at once.

Solovyov went in. About ten people were sitting at two desks that had been pushed together. Two of them were on chairs, one was on a nightstand, and the rest were on two beds. One of the beds had needed to be pulled a little toward the table. A portrait of Fidel Castro hung on the entire wall over the bed that had not been moved.

Solovyov had not expected to recognize the television news host Makhalov as one of those sitting (as it happened) on the bed under Fidel. Makhalov, who was slightly drunk, rocked pensively and placed his head on a dark-haired young woman’s shoulder. When Solovyov stated the reason he had put in an appearance, it emerged that she was Larionova. Her name was Yekaterina.

Yekaterina was celebrating her birthday. There was a glass bowl of Olivier salad in the middle of the table. A dish of olives right next to the salad. For beverages there was predominantly vodka, which they were drinking out of little plastic cups. Solovyov wanted to leave but they convinced him to stay and drink to Yekaterina. They convinced him loudly and spiritedly. Then they forgot about him.

Every now and then Makhalov kissed Yekaterina on the lips and each time there was a sound like quiet chewing. That—as well as the salad on their lips—gave their kisses a piquant gastronomical flavor. Makhalov called her by her full name—Yekaterina—and the others followed suit, calling her that, too, even those who, by all appearances, had long known her well.

Solovyov was sitting on the bed next to Makhalov. Oddly enough, he did not feel like leaving. Not because he liked it here (it is not very likely he could have said that) but because he did not know where he should go now. He felt enervated after determining that not one of these Larionovas had anything to do with Leeza. He realized that his searches could be endless. Why, really, was he looking for Leeza only at the University? And why only in Petersburg?

One of the guests was describing how he and his girlfriend had made love on a beach one night in Gurzuf. After a while, it felt to them as if a whole group of people was watching. They stopped what they were doing and approached the observers. Much to their surprise, they discovered it was rocks. Then they made love on those rocks. The girlfriend turned out to be Yekaterina.

Makhalov said that, as a rule, television news was a lie. Moreover, the problem was not the content itself (he drank, and inhaled through his nostrils, pursing his lips) but how it was presented: how much, the order, vocabulary choices, etcetera.

They poured vodka for Solovyov yet again. His little plastic cup ended up filled to the brim. To his own surprise, Solovyov drank it all in one gulp and chased it with olives. Applause rang out. When Solovyov glanced at his little cup, he saw it was full again. Solovyov was no longer sure he had actually drunk the previous one.

‘Sad though it is, you have to sleep with someone to get on television,’ said Makhalov.

‘I don’t believe it,’ shouted Yekaterina.

‘Imagine,’ Makhalov sighed, and Solovyov felt Malakhov’s hand on his knee.

Then a person arrived with a bottle of Metaxa brandy. Solovyov no longer felt like drinking but they all began persuading him that he definitely had to try the Metaxa. Solovyov tried the Metaxa.

Unexpectedly, Makhalov farted loudly and several people began giggling.

‘We’ll make it through the winter,’ said Makhalov.

Yekaterina nodded with an expression of calm certainty. The guests drank again. Their motions were growing ever more chaotic and at some point they themselves disintegrated into their component parts: eyes, arms, mouths, and little plastic cups. Solovyov unintentionally leaned back and hit his head on the wall. Fidel was the last person he saw before his head struck.

Solovyov came to late at night. He guessed that it was late at night from the darkness in the room and the absence of guests. Once his eyes had grown accustomed to the murkiness, he realized there were at least two people in the room other than him. There was a light disturbance on the next bed.

Solovyov discerned two silhouettes there: one lying, the other sitting. The sitting one was unsuccessfully attempting to revive the lying one by shaking the person’s head and whispering something in the person’s ear, but the lying person only defended himself limply. The lying person spoke in a constricted, unintelligible whisper, but from the general tone of the answers, it followed that the person wanted to sleep. Based on a series of indirect indicators, Solovyov guessed that the attacking side was the birthday girl. This was confirmed when Yekaterina lost her patience and suddenly said loudly, in a bitter voice, ‘If you don’t want to love me, others will.’

Solovyov tensed up, anticipating something unpleasant.

He hoped the lying person would not allow things to develop under that scenario. In answer, though, the voice resounded just as loudly, ‘Good luck.’

It was Makhalov’s voice. There was not a speck of jealousy in it.

The aspiring journalist jumped noisily over to Solovyov’s bed. Solovyov squeezed his eyes shut with all his might.

Yekaterina shook him by the shoulder but he did not wake up. An instant later, he felt her fingers on the zipper of his jeans. Solovyov could pretend not to wake up but he had no prerogative to resist if he was asleep.

‘Objectively speaking,’ said Yekaterina, ‘he’s already prepared to make love to me and that’s despite being sound asleep. Unlike you, who’s awake.’

There were sounds of someone flushing in a bathroom and, flipflops tapping, returning to their room.

‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ Makhalov muttered. ‘That has nothing to do with you. He’s dreaming of another Larionova.’