Solovyov and Larionov

5

After lunch, Solovyov headed to the Chekhov Museum. He climbed up a long, winding lane, crossing from one sidewalk to the other, seeking out the shade. The ascent reminded him of scholarly work, which—as he had already managed to comprehend—never moves in a straight line. Its trajectory is unpredictable and describing the research requires inserting a hundred vignettes. Any research is like the motion of a dog following a scent. The motion is chaotic (outwardly) and sometimes reminiscent of spinning in place, but it is the only possible path to a result. It is essential for research to check its own rhythm against the rhythm of the material under study. If they resonate with one another and if their pulses beat in time, then research is ending and fate is beginning. Thus spoke Prof. Nikolsky.

Finally, Solovyov saw what he was looking for. Before him lay a small square that—amidst all Yalta’s development—reminded him of a crater after an explosion. A group of hideous bronze figures was arranged along its perimeter, depicting, according to the sculptor, Chekhov’s most famous characters. The sculptures, however, did not seem to insist on having any direct relationship with Chekhov. Seemingly too shy to walk right up to the writer’s house, they huddled forlornly by the trees that framed the square.

The museum itself consisted of a concrete administrative building and an elegant cottage from the beginning of the century (this was Chekhov’s house). Inside the concrete structure, Solovyov asked for Zoya Ivanovna. They looked at him with curiosity and made a telephone call. Solovyov stepped outside for some air while he waited for Zoya Ivanovna. A few minutes later, the Chekhov garden’s little gate clanged and a young woman appeared. The honey-colored tone of her skin and dark hair left no doubt: this was Zoya Ivanovna. It was her patronymic that had been called into question at Yalta’s city hall. There was something multi-ethnic about her, of the carnival in Rio—most definitely not Chekhovian. Her face was imperturbable.

She was wearing a gauzy, nearly immaterial dress, flustering the young researcher. Distracted, he began telling her about his study of General Larionov, for some reason alluding, again, to graduate student Kalyuzhny. Angry with himself, he switched abruptly to an analysis of mistakes in Dupont’s book and unexpectedly finished with Prof. Nikolsky’s response to the Latvian veterans.

‘Would you like me to show you the museum?’ Zoya asked sternly.

‘I’d like that,’ said Solovyov.

He followed Zoya (‘just don’t call me Ivanovna!’), mechanically copying her light, feline gait. How could her father have been an ‘Ivan’…

It was cool inside the Chekhov house. Solovyov mentally thanked Russian literature as he went inside, out of the Yalta heat. It occurred to him that the coolness inside the house reflected something invigorating, some sort of wellspring source of the country’s literature. He liked that phrase and so uttered it for Zoya.

‘Unfortunately,’ and here she touched the wall with her palm, ‘it wasn’t only cool here in the summer.’

Zoya told him the house was also impossible to heat properly in winter. It was put up by a Moscow architect who was unfamiliar with Yalta’s climactic peculiarities and so was, consequently, incapable of building anything satisfactory here. Zoya’s slender fingers slid prettily along the wallpaper’s rhombuses. The portrayal of a boundless Russia systematically ruined by Moscow served as the backdrop to her story. She had a grateful listener in the Petersburger Solovyov.

The tour turned out to be very detailed. The museum guest visited all the rooms in the Chekhov house, even the ones not usually intended for visits. He was permitted to lift the telephone receiver in which Lev Tolstoy’s voice was once heard, calling Chekhov from Gaspra. In the bedroom, he touched bed linens embroidered with the laundry’s mark ACh. With the look of an illusionist pulling the final and most beautiful dove out of a hat, Zoya sat him down next to her on the writer’s bed. Solovyov forgot about Chekhov entirely while sitting on the museum exhibit. His tour guide’s dark body, which shone through the whiteness of her dress, commanded his attention.

Then they went out to the garden (out to the garden, Solovyov whispered). Walking past bamboo planted by Chekhov, Zoya led her visitor to two benches that formed a right angle in the very corner of the garden. At Zoya’s suggestion (a restrained presidential gesture), they each sat on a bench, as if they were in negotiations. Solovyov explained again the aim of his stay in Yalta, this time more calmly and lucidly.

Zoya listened to him, almost leaning against the back of the bench but not quite resting against it. Solovyov recalled that in the cadet corps this was customarily done to improve one’s posture. He reported on his trip to Yalta’s City Hall, too, though he kept quiet about the details relating to Zoya personally. At the story about Nina Fedorovna’s return from the maternity hospital, Zoya interrupted him, ‘His room was completely ransacked when my mother and I came home. The new resident greeted us wearing the general’s slippers.’

Zoya turned out to be very observant for a person who was wearing a newborn’s pink ribbon when she arrived.

The Kozachenko family had moved into the general’s room. They were not Yaltans. The Kozachenkos had landed themselves in the Russian Riviera from some remote place or other; they were from around either Ternopol or Lvov. On its own, life in the middle of nowhere was probably incapable of prying them from that spot: that life did not burden them. As it happened, Petr Terentyevich Kozachenko, a civil defense specialist, had taken ill with tuberculosis, an uncharacteristic illness for specialists like him; it was even a bit bohemian.

While undergoing treatment in Alupka, Petr Terentyevich managed to determine that the Magarach Wine Institute in Yalta had an urgent need for a specialist of his type. He was accepted quickly after offering his services and returned to his historical motherland as an employee of the wine institute. Petr Terentyevich’s new employment turned out to be completely unexpected for his family. His wife, Galina Artemovna, was astounded at her husband’s abuse of power and flat-out refused to move. In the family scene that followed, she inserted their son, Taras, between herself and Petr Terentyevich. Pointing at Taras, she accused Petr Terentyevich of irresponsibility. Ten-year-old Taras looked off to the side, plentiful soundless tears rolling down his cheeks.

It is possible that Petr Terentyevich might have backed down (meaning he very likely would have backed down) under different circumstances, but the struggle over the move seemed like an unexpected struggle for his very life. He exhibited an inflexibility that did not really typify his relationship with his wife. He had his name removed from government registries (for which his wife cursed him, daily), resigned from his previous job, and anxiously groped at the lymph nodes around his armpits.

Galina Artemovna, who had already mourned her husband mentally, even before his Crimean trip (she regarded his illness in all seriousness), was perplexed by Petr Terentyevich’s obstinacy. The hope of maintaining the housing that was provided to him as a civil defense representative (and, according to rumors, an employee of certain other government agencies), reconciled her to her husband’s possible death. Frightened by his feverishness to move, she stealthily clarified her right to their aforementioned living space and bitterly established that in the event of her husband’s death or departure, the real estate would automatically return to the government. Galina Artemovna’s stance softened as a result. She preferred departure to death.

The Kozachenko family initially received only a room in a dormitory through the Magarach Wine Institute. Vexed, Petr Terentyevich began seeking out support from other government agencies and even offered to compile reports regarding intellectual ferment within the establishment that had hired him. Those government agencies reacted fairly listlessly. According to information from senior employees who had contact with Petr Terentyevich, all that was fermenting at the Magarach Institute was young Massandra wine. The intellects at the institute resided in a state of complete serenity. In and of itself, however, Petr Terentyevich’s vigilance was acknowledged as laudable and so, as a form of incentive, he was assigned a room that had freed up in a communal apartment.

‘And they moved in with us,’ sighed Zoya.

She straightened her sheer dress and Solovyov’s gaze settled unwittingly on her knees. The first evening breeze touched the crown of the Chekhov cypresses.

The Kozachenkos had packed light for their move. They sold their furniture in their native Ternopol before heading into the unknown. All they carried into the general’s spacious room was three folding beds, several basins of various sizes, and a ficus purchased at a Yalta flea market. They hung a portrait of Ukrainian poet Taras G. Shevchenko (1814–1861) in the corner furthest from the window, underneath Ukrainian towels embroidered in traditional red and draped on the wall. A great deal of empty space remained.

The sense of expanse was enhanced because their neighbor Ivan Mikhailovich Kolpakov had removed all items from the general’s room the day before the Kozachenko family moved in. This operation for seizing the deceased’s property was conducted with military rapidity. One night, Ivan Mikhailovich unglued from the general’s door the strip of paper bearing an official seal and, with his wife, Yekaterina Ivanovna Kolpakov, aiding and abetting, transferred everything into their room, right down to the general’s glasses and Grigory V. Ursulyak’s book The Stone Foot. Back in the day, the general had agreed to browse through the book, at Nina Fedorovna’s request.

An oak cabinet with carved two-headed eagles presented particular complications: the couple found themselves unable to lift it. After an hour and a half of fruitless efforts (a blow was inflicted upon Yekaterina Ivanovna’s back, for her lowly lifting capacity), they managed to drag out the fairly mutilated cabinet after placing plastic lids under it. Yekaterina Ivanovna meticulously swept the floor in the general’s room.

Needless to say, the actions undertaken by the couple ended up being too naïve not to be disclosed. However, they ended up being disclosed, at the very least, because of the cabinet’s magnitude: the door to the Kolpakovs’ small room would not close. The newly visible area contained stacked beds and bundles of books, which the Kolpakovs never read. Yekaterina Ivanovna’s concluding attempt to cover their tracks certainly could not have deluded anyone.

The civil defense worker’s inquisitive mind imagined what had happened in detail. After accusing the Kolpakovs of appropriating property that had been transferred to the state, he announced that he intended to inform the state of the loss inflicted. The undiplomatic Kolpakov immediately inflicted a blow upon Petr Terentyevich’s face. The boy, Taras, who was standing in the doorway of the allocated room, began to cry. Infliction of serious bodily harm was added to appropriation of government property.

Ivan Kolpakov felt cornered and drank himself into a stupor. And, oh, was he amazed when Petr Terentyevich himself woke him up in the morning, a glass of beer in his hand. Kolpakov might possibly have considered his neighbor an extraterrestrial when he looked at the iridescent bruise around his eye. At first, Ivan Mikhailovich even deflected the hand holding the glass. Only after drinking the beer and coming to grips with his initial agitation did he prove capable of hearing out Kozachenko.

Petr Terentyevich let it be known too that there were potential options in the matter. The deceased’s items that were crammed into the Kolpakovs’ room—Kozachenko’s hand soared over the alienated belongings—should be divided evenly among the conflicting parties. As a prominent item, the cabinet should be given to the state, to avoid a scandal. In addition (and here Kozachenko’s voice took on a prosecutorial tone), the general’s books were being transferred from the Kolpakovs’ portion to the Kozachenko family, as compensation for the maiming that had been inflicted.

Kolpakov approved Petr Terentyevich’s draft treaty unconditionally. The items were divided in half, the Kozachenkos took full possession of the books (with the exception of The Stone Foot, whose title had intrigued Kolpakov), and the cabinet was offered to the state.

The state initially displayed interest in the cabinet but was forced to refuse it in the end. The cabinet had been brought in before the apartment was renovated to accommodate more residents and now the cabinet simply was not fit for removal. It turned out that the entrance to the apartment had diminished during the elapsed decades of the Soviet regime. Kolpakov refused to keep an item that hindered closing the door, and it was reinstalled in its previous territory after Petr Terentyevich’s lengthy doubts concerning the presence of the two-headed eagles.

The fate of the trophy literature proved more complex. After determining that there was not one single edition of Taras Shevchenko among the general’s books, Petr Terentyevich lost interest in them and furtively brought them to a second-hand bookstore. He kept sulkily silent afterwards, when Nina Fedorovna returned and persistently questioned the neighbors about the general’s books. When the truth came out later, Nina Fedorovna rushed off to the bookstore, to at least buy up what was left. Unfortunately, not very much remained.

As for The Stone Foot, Ivan Kolpakov attempted to begin reading it but was quickly disenchanted. Being unfamiliar with the basics of versification, he could not comprehend why the texts inside were arranged in columns. Ursulyak’s imagery turned out to be equally unfamiliar to him: it was, as a matter of fact, pretty unadorned. Finally, he could not ascertain why the publication that had found its way to him had been given its name. Without making any arrangements with Petr Terentyevich, he brought the book to the secondhand bookstore where, it would seem, its story came to an end, but habent sua fata libelli.[1]

One fine day, Ursulyak stopped by the second-hand bookstore, saw The Stone Foot on the shelf, and read the personalized inscription written in his own hand. Poet and director Ursulyak purchased his own book and gave it to Nina Fedorovna once again, pronouncing that every person should have something that cannot be sold. This was not, in fact, the first incident of the sort in his poetic practice: at second-hand bookstores, he sometimes bought up books he had once inscribed, returning them to their remiss owners with the notation Reissued. He developed a knack for determining the presence of The Stone Foot as soon as he stepped inside. Sales clerks knew that and readily took The Stone Foot on consignment.

‘Zoya, we’re closing,’ came a shout from somewhere beyond the garden.

‘We’re closing,’ Zoya corroborated sadly.

After opening the gate, she waited for her Petersburg guest to exit, then closed it with a clang already familiar to Solovyov. She entered the administrative building without saying a word. Solovyov huddled sheepishly by the gate. He had not been invited to enter the building, but nobody had said goodbye.

He did not want to be pushy. He did not want to ask if he could see Zoya home, though of course he wanted to see her home. On the other hand, it would have been strange and even disagreeable if Zoya herself had asked for that.

‘You’re still here?’ Zoya asked, though she did not look at all surprised.

Solovyov nodded and they made their way out. Zoya was not headed toward the stairs, down which Solovyov had walked from the square to the museum. After going around the corner of the administrative building, they walked out toward another gate. From that gate, a path looped between the buildings of a sanatorium and led them out.

‘And what happened to the memoirs the general dictated to Nina Fedorovna?’ Solovyov asked. ‘Were they in the general’s room, too?’

The young woman shrugged absent-mindedly. ‘Probably… it was such a mess then.’

They went down to the Uchan-su River, walked along it for about fifty meters, and ended up on a stone bridge. Leaning her elbows on the railing, Zoya observed the Uchan-su tirelessly fighting its way toward the sea, through cobblestones and chunks of wood. She looked calmly at Solovyov.

‘Are those memoirs very important to you?’

‘Yes.’

There was a small bazaar on the other shore. At Zoya’s suggestion, they bought a watermelon and took it to a nearby park. After settling on a bench, Zoya took a Swiss pocket knife from her purse. This woman always carried the essential items.

After cutting the watermelon in half, Solovyov placed one half aside, on a plastic bag. From the second half, he cut thin, neat semicircles, divided them into smaller segments, and spread them out on the same bag. There was something primordially masculine in his handling of the knife, something that was undeniably expressed in Zoya’s gaze, which was following his hands. Solovyov himself could see that he had been very deft; it surprised him a little. The watermelon was truly sweet.

‘Your mother didn’t lay claim to the general’s property?’

‘She didn’t have any official rights.’

‘But how did she keep living with the people who…’

‘…Who robbed her? It was fine. That’s life.’

Life dealt worse things, too. Nina Fedorovna found it challenging not only to lay claim to the property but even to express the offense she had felt. One could do that if seeing the offenders in court or perhaps only meeting them every now and then on the street. But having them alongside oneself every day, using a communal toilet with them, and leaving a pot of soup in a shared kitchen—that was utterly impossible. Most likely, the hurt that Nina Fedorovna felt did not so much pass as dull. The sight of the general’s various small items (many of which she had given to him) popping up with one of the couples, reignited that feeling, though, overall, it was deemed to have faded.

Moreover, oddly enough, Petr Terentyevich began striking up conversations with her in his time away from his medical procedures. After half-sitting on a kitchen table that had been handed down to him, he told Nina Fedorovna about constructing a respirator under home conditions and applying splints to bone fractures, about antibacterial injections and the effect of chlorine vapors on the upper airways. Despite having never given a gift to anyone in his life, he suddenly gave her the evacuation map for a factory that manufactured reinforced concrete as well as a model of the ventilating opening of an emergency exit that he made himself. He even wanted to give his collection of toxic agents to Nina Fedorovna for her birthday, but Galina Artemovna opposed that adamantly when, by chance, she learned of her husband’s intention. She quickly made a mental note of her husband’s contact with their female neighbor. Galina Artemovna looked upon that ironically but did not speak up at all. Sometimes she even gave the impression that this state of things suited her.

In actuality, the work-related topics that so agitated Petr Terentyevich had always left Galina Artemovna indifferent. Neither highly detailed classifications of nerve agents, which he had mastered to perfection, nor his ability to determine the type and size of a gas mask with his eyes closed made any sort of impression on her. It is possible that he turned to Nina Fedorovna—who heard him out politely—to see out what the specialist lacked in his own family. Most likely, Petr Terentyevich’s sympathy for Nina Fedorovna’s late motherhood played a role, reminding him that he and Galina Artemovna, too, had been able to have a child when they were nearly forty.

There were some pronounced changes with respect to the Kozachenko pair. This might have been characterized as estrangement, if, of course, they had been close before. But they had not been close. Definitively caught up in his illness (which was not, by all indications, as scary as the couple initially thought), Petr Terentyevich made the rounds of Yalta’s pharmacies after work. He compared medicine costs, attempting each time to ascertain their wholesale prices.

On one of those evenings, Ivan Kolpakov subjected Petr Terentyevich’s wife to an unexpected sexual advance: in his state of drunkenness, he had thought she was his own wife. Galina Artemovna’s lack of resistance confirmed his delusion and he did with his neighbor all that his modest fantasies directed. Kolpakov’s mistakes began repeating regularly after that, with the only difference being that now it was Galina Artemovna herself who prompted him with regard to little novelties she had never seen from her civil defense specialist.

Petr Terentyevich, who suspected nothing, continued his platonic relations with Nina Fedorovna. At Petr Terentyevich’s request, he was retold the play The Cherry Orchard, which vividly reminded him of his favorite Taras Shevchenko poem, ‘The Cherry Orchard by the House.’ Once he even asked Nina Fedorovna to show him the Chekhov Museum because he’d heard so much about him (Chekhov). His wife was copulating with Uncle Vanya (Kolpakov) as Petr Terentyevich stood in Chekhov’s study with a group of museum visitors. Tears in his eyes, he hearkened to the story of Chekhov’s deadly skirmish with the very same disease he had, feeling himself to be a bit like Chekhov at that moment. It is possible that in the depths of his soul, Petr Terentyevich also wanted to tell a German doctor, ‘Doktor, ich sterbe,’[2] but there were no German doctors in his life and could not have been.

After thinking about death at the Chekhov Museum, he decided to order himself a funeral with music. This was the only thing from the realm of the beautiful that he could permit himself. In the will he had prepared, five hundred Soviet rubles from an unshared bank book was allocated specifically for that purpose. That sum seemed to him like more than enough for a performance of Chopin in the open air. And though he was not really planning to die, the instructions he had made brought a certain tragedy and loftiness into his life.

His life did not end in a Chekhovian manner. When he returned home one day at an inopportune hour, he found an abominable love scene in his very own bed. That was the description that escaped from Petr Terentyevich. Beside himself with rage, he rushed at Ivan Kolpakov and proceeded to pepper him with punches. Being under the influence of alcohol, Kolpakov initially took the blows fairly meekly. In the end, he lost his temper and, cursing, flung Kozachenko away from him. As Petr Terentyevich fell, he hit the back of his head on one of the heads of the double-headed eagle carved on the cabinet and lost consciousness.

The ambulance doctor who arrived roughly an hour and a half after the call ascertained that the trauma to Petr Terentyevich was not consistent with enabling survival. Unable to figure out that wording, Ivan Kolpakov grabbed the doctor by the collar and demanded an answer to a simple question: is Kozachenko dead or alive?

‘Dead,’ the doctor answered curtly and left without saying goodbye.

Endeavoring to anticipate police questioning, Ivan Mikhailovich decisively enticed Galina Artemovna to his room. He persuaded her not to mention the true cause of her husband’s death. Strictly speaking, there was no real need to persuade her anyway. She had already long been experiencing doubts about Petr Terentyevich’s longevity so it was now only the mode of his death, rather than its fact, that could make much of an impression on her. The sobered-up Kolpakov displayed unexpected oratorical abilities. The first words he uttered ending up hitting the bull’s eye: he promised to marry the widow.

She complied with his requests, without wavering or even displaying any particular coyness. When the police came, they were told that Petr Terentyevich had been weak from illness and grown dizzy. Waving her arms around, Galina Artemovna showed how unfortunately her spouse had fallen. They sat the inconsolable widow on the bed (it was already made up with three plumped pillows, one on top of the other) and ordered the neighbors to give her enough valerian so she’d feel better. Taras, who was fourteen at the time, stood in the corner of the room, holding the broken-off eagle head in his hands. Big, slow tears dropped from his eyes.

Petr Terentyevich was not buried as he had dreamed. Galina Artemovna was extremely indignant to discover her husband’s unaccounted-for five hundred rubles; she buried him without music. In addition to Taras and Galina Artemovna, those walking behind the coffin were Ivan Mikhailovich, Nina Fedorovna and the little Zoya, and a representative of a certain organization (he mysteriously placed a finger to his lips at all questions) with which, it emerged, Petr Terentyevich’s entire conscious life had been linked.

It was this very organization that took care that the event was fittingly solemn. Taking into account that the deceased had been housed in the room of a White Guard general, Petr Terentyevich’s death from a two-headed eagle was assessed as almost heroic and, in the highest degree, anti-monarchical. The unknown person installed an aluminum tripod with a star and a pointed Red Army hat on Kozachenko’s grave. For some reason, no representatives from the deceased’s primary place of work were in attendance. Even so, the Magarach Institute allocated fifteen liters of wine for the wake, but, in light of Galina Artemovna’s cancellation of the wake, Ivan Kolpakov, who was secretly engaged to her, drank all fifteen liters.

As for Kolpakov, he was in no hurry whatsoever for what had been secret to become evident. Either he thought the danger of unmasking had been overcome or the cost of the issue itself seemed too high to him, but he simply stopped mentioning the promise he had made to the widow. Moreover, even the small bed-based joys that had bonded him with Galina Artemovna ceased shortly thereafter. Their contact was reduced to Kolpakov’s brief visits, for treating morning hangovers with Petr Terentyevich’s leftover medicinal alcohol.

Another abominable scene took place one morning and, in many ways, hastened a denouement. As she waited for Ivan Mikhailovich to vacate the washbasin (he was washing at great length, gargling, grunting, and clearing out phlegm), the widow remarked, reproachful, that other people needed to wash, too. Exclaiming, ‘Then wash!’ Ivan Mikhailovich Kolpakov splashed her in the face with water from a large tin mug that was nearby. The water was cold but clean.

Galina Artemovna felt insulted and demanded an explanation. She pointed out to the boor that actions of this sort were inadmissible, reminding him at the same time of his promise to enter into marriage with her. With his characteristic harshness, Ivan Mikhailovich led the wetted woman to the mirror and suggested she remember how old she really was. The breaker of the marriage promise recommended she think not about a wedding but about a funeral. In response to the threat of telling the police the whole truth, Ivan Kolpakov burst into Homeric laughter.

He underestimated Galina Artemovna. She did not, in fact, go to the police; after all, what could she have said there after her own eloquent statements? Ivan Mikhailovich’s line about a funeral sent her mind in an unexpected direction, though. After brief deliberations, she decided to die on the same day as her betrothed. Galina Artemovna waited for yet another visit aimed at hangover treatment (there was not much of a wait) and then dissolved her husband’s collection of toxic agents into his alcohol and handed the solution to Ivan Kolpakov. Several minutes later, Ivan Mikhailovich passed away in the arms of Yekaterina Ivanovna, his lawful wife, whom he just managed to reach. Convinced of the preparation’s efficacy, Galina Artemovna drank all that remained.

‘They were buried in separate graves,’ said Zoya, finishing her sorrowful story. ‘And Taras was left all by himself. He’s still living in our apartment.’

The watermelon rinds stretched into a short but even wedge on the bench. Solovyov neatly collected them and carried them to a nearby trash bin (a pack of tissues, so he could wipe his hands, immediately appeared out of Zoya’s purse). Exactly half the watermelon, that which had been placed on the plastic bag, remained.

They left the park and headed toward the sea. In the evening’s duskiness, signals from a lighthouse took on the ever-more distinct form of a broadening beam of light. The rhythm of its blinking attracted attention, forcing one to wait for another flash and involuntarily count out the seconds until it appeared. In the slight twilight breeze, it was finally obvious how very hot the day had been.

‘I have the day off tomorrow,’ said Zoya. ‘Want to go to the beach?’

‘I don’t know how to swim.’

Solovyov uttered that almost as if he were doomed. Just as men announce their lack of experience when in bed with a lady who has seen everything.

‘I’ll teach you,’ Zoya promised after a pause. ‘It’s not complicated at all.’

It was completely dark when they approached Zoya’s building on Botkinskaya Street: it was a two-story building with high gothic windows. So, it occurred to Solovyov, this is where the general lived. A figure that had initially gone unnoticed moved away from the building’s walls, which were overgrown with grapevines.

‘Good evening, Zoya Ivanovna. I was walking by and saw there wasn’t any light in the windows so decided to wait.’

Solovyov examined the unknown man in the light of the streetlamp. Before him stood a man of more than sixty, wearing a light-colored shirt in a quasi-military style. His appearance—from the carefully ironed trousers to the combed-back hair—was an example of a special old-fashioned luster as it appeared in the polished Studebakers and Hispano-Suizas that surfaced now and again in Yalta’s flow of automobiles.

‘Everything’s fine,’ said Zoya, unsurprised.

She took a few steps toward the front door and added, without looking at anyone, ‘Good night.’