Solovyov and Larionov

18

Solovyov continued searching for Leeza. The unexpected complications he ran into at the university had not stopped him, although they had made him more cautious. The scholar realized that direct contact with women possessing a surname dear to him harbored its own dangers. He had already made paper-based correspondence a top priority in his appeals to other educational institutions because he was able to analyze the responses carefully and keep personal communications with the Larionovas to a minimum.

Since Solovyov did not know which university city Leeza might have gone to, he decided to try his luck in Moscow, too. To some extent, using postal communication methods also disposed him favorably toward Moscow. Considering his challenging experience with the search, the postal method struck the young historian as the safest way to go.

Solovyov wrote a long letter to the rector of Moscow State University, asking that his request be treated sympathetically. He composed the letter with an informal air, even telling of his childhood friendship with a person he had (regretably, largely due to his own fault!) lost. To sound more convincing, Solovyov also referred to the readers’ triangle consisting of himself, Nadezhda Nikiforovna, and Yelizaveta, the person being sought. Not wishing to create the impression he was a simpleminded person, Solovyov did not let slip a single word about his designs on Nadezhda Nikiforovna.

For some reason, Solovyov was counting a great deal on his appeal to MSU so waited impatiently for a response. He did not know exactly how long it took for letters to travel from Petersburg to Moscow but figured they should not take very long. He still remembered, from a university course on Russian literature, that Dostoevsky’s letters from Germany took four or five days. Considering that fact—as well as the technological revolution that had taken place—Solovyov allocated about two days for letters to travel from Petersburg to Moscow. He assumed the same for the return journey. Solovyov allotted about three or four days for the Moscow rector to check into his question.

To his surprise, no answer had arrived ten days later. Nor did one arrive twenty days or even a month later. Solovyov wanted to send another letter to Moscow but feared being pushy. So as not to lose time, he decided to look for Leeza in other Petersburg educational institutions. Solovyov was flabbergasted when he opened a directory for college applicants. The number of educational institutions was beyond the bounds of reason.

Solovyov appealed first to the Herzen State Pedagogical University, which had still been called an institute not long before. This establishment—where opportunities had broadened after the renaming—not only found a Yelizaveta Larionova among its ranks but also allowed Solovyov to take a look at her personal records.

Solovyov heard his heart beating as he entered the dean’s office at the philology department. It reverberated out from under the ceiling, where two workers nailing up a cable seemed to be echoing his heart. Solovyov was asked to wait a little. In case they checked biographical data, he had the years Leeza had started and graduated from high school. They were the same as his years. What else could be in the document? He crossed his arms over his chest to muffle his heartbeats. The sad-faced workers slowed their pace, too, as they drew a green cable along a pink wall. A woman from the dean’s office brought a thin folder and extended it to Solovyov.

‘Is this her?’

There was a photograph glued to a left-hand corner of the form so Solovyov did not need the biographical data. The photo was not very large, but nothing larger was required for full clarity.

‘No.’

Solovyov did not give up. He appealed to all institutions, even the very unlikeliest. Sometimes they gave him information over the telephone, sometimes they required a visit. They hung up rather frequently, suggesting he not pester them. In those cases, Solovyov beseeched. Insisted. Several times he bought candy for female employees in rectors’ offices. One of them jokingly asked Solovyov how much she might be able to replace Leeza for him. It felt as if the list of educational institutions would never end.

Another two weeks later, a student named Yelizaveta Larionova turned up at the Lesgaft Institute of Physical Education. When Solovyov learned of this by telephone, he caught a taxi and went to the institute. He simply had no time to consider Leeza’s association with sports.

An older, broad-shouldered woman, obviously a former athlete, greeted him in the administrative offices. She sized up Solovyov and asked his height.

‘One meter, seventy-nine,’ said Solovyov.

During his time searching for Leeza, he had grown out of the habit of being surprised.

‘Our Yelizaveta is two meters, four,’ said the woman.

After a silence, she added, ‘So you’re not an athlete?’

Solovyov could tell from her face that she was not making fun of him.

‘I’m a historian,’ he said. ‘Peter the Great was two meters, four. Yelizaveta has a promising future.’

‘She’s a nice girl. She’s on the city basketball team.’

She straightened a lamp on the desk. Her face was serious, as before.

Notification of a registered letter from Moscow arrived at the very end of October. Solovyov discovered it in his mailbox when he returned from the library. He was invited to bring his passport to the post office to receive the letter. As he closed the box, Solovyov thought this kind of solemnity must mean something in and of itself; there would be no point in sending a negative answer by registered mail.

He was at the post office ten minutes before it opened. Addressee Solovyov’s heart was beating as never before. After signing for the letter, he tore open the envelope right there at the window and proceeded to read it. It was signed by the vice rector for general affairs (the surname was feminine) and reported that a Yelizaveta Filippovna Larionova truly was studying at MSU. Following that, however, was the supposition—and here the letter’s tone became less formal—that this was not the same Yelizaveta the Petersburg historian was seeking. This Moscow Yelizaveta was 39 years old and working toward her second degree. At the end of the letter, the vice rector wished Solovyov success in his search and expressed the hope that he would certainly find his Yelizaveta. Judging from the date on the letter, she had expressed that wish exactly a month ago.

Solovyov started to leave but then returned and demanded to see the post office manager. When that person appeared, Solovyov silently showed him the postmark. The manager took his glasses out of his uniform smock and carefully studied the postmark.

‘A month,’ he said. ‘Sometimes it’s longer. Sometimes they don’t arrive at all.’

Solovyov looked over the manager’s head. He felt his hatred boiling. Hatred and despair: the hand on the wall clock was leading them around in a circle.

‘Dostoevsky’s letters from Germany took five days,’ Solovyov informed the man.

‘Dostoevsky was a genius,’ retorted the manager.

A few days later, Solovyov resorted to yet another option.

He published brief appeals to Leeza in Moscow and Petersburg newspapers, with a request to telephone (a number was given). There were quite a few calls in the days following the publication. Four Leezas telephoned, two of them were Larionovas. A Taisia Larionova telephoned, saying she was prepared to answer to Leeza if necessary. A woman who did not give her name telephoned. She offered a discounted portion of Herbalife. The calls ceased roughly a week later.

Solovyov directed all the force of his striving for Leeza and all the resentment that had accumulated during his fruitless searches into his dissertation research about the general. Never before had he worked so much or so passionately. He found document after document but they brought him no closer to Leeza. After catching himself in that thought, Solovyov realized he subconsciously hoped they would help him close in. Why?

One day he ran into Temriukovich in the corridor at the institute.

‘You’re studying General Larionov, if I’m not mistaken?’ said Temriukovich.

‘I am,’ said Solovyov.

He took a few steps toward Temriukovich.

‘I read a folkloric text way back when,’ said Temriukovich, ‘and a strange thought occurred to me: might it be connected with the general?’

Temriukovich fell silent. Solovyov could neither confirm nor even deny the academician’s thought. He could only nod respectfully. Temriukovich approached him, right up close, and Solovyov smelled his rotten breath.

‘How do you regard strange thoughts?’ asked Temriukovich.

‘Well…’ Solovyov backed away slightly. ‘Do you happen to remember where you saw that text?’

‘Where I saw it?’ Temriukovich suddenly burst out laughing. ‘Do I remember? Well, of course I remember: Full Russian Folklore Collection. Entries for 1982. Part two of that year’s volume. Starting on approximately page 95.’

Temriukovich’s face fell. He turned slowly and walked off down the hall.

Solovyov heard him say, ‘Maybe my suggestion will help that young man.’

Despite the academician’s hunch, the young man doubted the utility of the information he had acquired. He remembered it, though, when he happened to be at the public library, so decided to have a look at the Full Russian Folklore Collection. Much to his surprise, he really did discover the text Temriukovich had referred to, in the second of two volumes of entries from 1982. It began, in complete accordance with the citation, on page 95 and ended on page 104. It had been recorded by participants of a folklore expedition, from the words of 89-year-old Timofei Zhzhenka, a resident of the village of Berezovaya Gat in the Chernigov Oblast’s Novgorod-Seversky region.

Timofei Zhzhenka told the folklore expedition’s participants about events of some long-ago war. Commentaries to the text spoke of the impossibility (as commonly happens in folklore) of clarifying what war was actually involved. The publishers were inclined to regard its time of action as the epic period, though they also pointed out, in all honesty, that there was a definite obstacle to that sort of conclusion.

They had in mind the mention of the railroad, something that, as a rule, was not in epic texts. Futhermore, the narrative opened by referencing a railroad station—Gnadenfeld, where the events described unfold—something uncharacteristic of folklore. Just that name made Solovyov grab hold of the embossed cover of Full Russian Folklore Collection with both hands.

Timofei Zhzhenka used ornate dialectical expressions to describe a summer night when two armored trains stopped, almost simultaneously, at the aforementioned station. Two generals emerged from the two armored trains; this looked fully folkloric. Each of them presumed the station was in his troops’ hands and pensively ( they had things to think about, explained Timofei Zhzhenka) took a walk next to his armored train. Suddenly, one general ( the general that was ours, according to Timofei’s scant definition) recognized the other in the light of a station streetlamp. Without emerging from the darkness, he signaled to his valet, who was with him, and they crossed under the carriage to the second armored train.

Meanwhile, the second general put out his cigarette with the toe of his boot and began going up into his own train carriage. When he was standing on the carriage’s platform, he gave the guards permission to go to bed. They did not need to be told twice; they disappeared into the next carriage. The guarded man went to his quarters. A minute later, there was knocking at the second general’s door.

‘What do you want?’ He opened the door abruptly and was pushed inside.

‘So we meet after all,’ said the one who entered.

He placed the barrel of a Nagan revolver to the forehead of the carriage’s master and commanded the valet take the other’s weapon.

‘I’m not afraid of you,’ uttered the man who had been disarmed.

‘Sit,’ said the one who had entered, nodding at a chair that stood by a small round table. Several sheets of paper lay on it, under a spill-proof inkwell. For some reason, there was no pen. The carriage’s master awkwardly (uncomfortably, Timofei characterized it) slid down the back of the chair to its seat. Perched on the edge, he laid his hands on the sheets.

‘You won’t dare shoot.’

‘Why?’

‘Because my guards will come running if there’s a shot.’

Beads of sweat covered his forehead.

‘I don’t think so,’ said the one who had entered. He took a watch from his breast pocket and opened it with a barely audible clink. ‘A train with our wounded will pass through this station very soon. It’s a very long train…’

‘I don’t give a shit about you.’

‘Nobody will hear a thing.’

The watch returned to the pocket with a click. A light tremor could already be sensed under their feet.

‘You feel that? That’s our wounded coming. Of course many are deceased, too.’

The sound swelled. The eyes of the one at the table froze on the inkwell. The medical train reached the station and the station was drowning in its rumbling. The inkwell began coming into resonance with the train and set off on an unhurried journey across the table. It began trembling hard. It turned on its axis and advanced inexorably toward the edge. The man at the table grabbed the inkwell and hurled it at the wall with all his strength when it was about to fall off.

‘Damn it, why the hell aren’t you shooting?’

Shards scattered in all directions. The inkwell shattered to the floor in thousands of little glass pieces. It had cracked through the unbearable noise. The last carriage of the medical train rumbled past outside. In the absolute silence that followed, the general answered the question that had been posed, ‘Because death is incapable of teaching anything.’

He let his valet go ahead and followed him. He closed the door behind himself without a sound.

When Solovyov went outside, he felt like he was overflowing with new knowledge. He was afraid of spilling it. He thought he seemed too fragile for this knowledge and could easily smash, like the inkwell.

When recording folklore, a text like this truly could be taken as folkloric: everything depended on the force of expectation. The narration was conducted in a good vernacular language. It took on a rhythm through its multiple repetitions. And what could have been recorded in the village of Berezovaya Gat but folklore, anyway?

That was the reasoning of those who published the text. In a commentary to the publication, they called upon the reader not to worry about certain details from modern history that were undoubtedly present in the story. The researchers determined its plot to be ancient to the highest degree. In elaborating on their point, they indicated that in this case they regarded the narration of the judge Ehud’s murder of Moab king Eglon as a precursor.

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, intrusion 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 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 seemingly 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.[3] 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 him only partially. It did not shelter him from the water-saturated 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. 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 department. 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.

‘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 goodwill 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.

‘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.

‘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 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.

‘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 allowed only one single criterion for their assessment: the 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.