Solovyov and Larionov

8

Solovyov’s doorbell rang at eight o’clock the next morning.

It was Zoya.

‘It’s Saturday,’ she said. ‘I’m going to the beach. Want to come with me?’

Solovyov could not wake up at all. It seemed like he kept having a strange, perhaps not completely seemly, dream, in which either Zoya or Leeza Larionova was waking him up early in the morning…

‘Yes, I do.’

Leeza Larionova really had woken him up when he was young, and he had liked that. She would appear soundlessly, like the first snow, which betrayed its own arrival by imparting a certain glow to a room and an improbable whiteness to the ceiling. She would close the door behind her and look at him silently. He would wake up from that gaze.

‘Of course I do.’

He was planning to invite Zoya to have some breakfast and was about to put on the teakettle but Zoya said they could have breakfast at the beach. She even refused to sit down and half-smiled as she observed Solovyov hastily tucking his shirt into his shorts.

At the beach they bought a few hot savory pastries—chebureki—and two bottles of cola. They settled on their towels and began their breakfast. The chebureki turned out to be so hot—and greasy, too—that Solovyov froze in a position of bewildered expectation, his back straightened, and making a helpless gesture. The fatty liquid oozed through his fingers and disappeared into the pebbles, steaming. Zoya took some tissues out of her bag and wiped Solovyov’s hands, one finger at a time, unhurried, then showed him how to hold a cheburek properly. She was never at a loss, this Chekhov Museum employee, even in the most complex of situations.

But the cola was cold, very cold. And not fatty. Solovyov placed the neck of the bottle to his mouth and observed the cola’s vortex-like motion inside the bottle. What seethed right in front of Solovyov’s own eyes blended with the surf, even seeming larger and more significant than the surf, and it entered his parched throat as if it were the Black Sea’s most festive wave. He drank the whole bottle without stopping.

After breakfast, there was swimming. As they approached the water (Zoya took Solovyov by the hand), they took several steps in the foam of a departing wave and walked into the approaching wave. The feeling of the first time did not leave Solovyov. Surprised at his own recklessness, he followed Zoya into the deep water. His froggish flailing was no match for the rhythmic smoothness of Zoya’s motions, but he was swimming even so, and he was swimming without anyone’s help.

Zoya’s obvious superiority did not dishearten Solovyov; on the contrary, it probably attracted him. It might even have aroused him a little. In the end, superiority in the watery element really indicates nothing; everything could take a completely different turn on solid ground anyway. But every bar set higher than his own gave rise to Solovyov’s competitive interest, and that interest (as he pondered the matter in hindsight) had been lacking in his relationship with Leeza. Why had Leeza been embarrassed about her merits?

The sun was no longer a morning sun and it stood, unmoving, somewhere over the central part of the beach, burning full blast. Zoya took out some thin lotion that squeezed out on Solovyov’s scorching back with a snorting sound. An instant later, he sensed it spreading concentrically along his neck, shoulder blades, and lower back. The lotion’s cool freshness was becoming a quality of Zoya’s fingers.

‘You know, I keep thinking about what the general dictated to my mother. You must want to find that?’

She had switched to the informal you. And so naturally.

‘Yes, I do.’

Zoya’s fingers were massaging Solovyov’s thighs. He felt his legs shuddering, involuntarily, in time with Zoya’s motions. It felt to him as if the whole beach was enviously following along with his pleasure, not allowing him to receive that pleasure to its full extent.

‘Those sheets of paper couldn’t have just vanished without a trace. This doesn’t hurt?’ He sensed the rhythm of Zoya’s hands somewhere a little below his knee. ‘I think I even know where they could be.’

Zoya held her pause. Solovyov turned, grasping that a continuation would not follow in the same breath.

‘Where?’

‘At Kozachenko’s. Those dung beetles were digging up everything they could while my mother was busy having me at the maternity hospital.’

The Kozachenko couple rolling a ball of manure popped up in Solovyov’s consciousness: sheets of the general’s memoirs, stuck to the sides of the ball, flashed through his mind. Zoya thought the younger Kozachenko would not give up those sheets very easily. Not because he needed them (what, after all, could he have done with them?) but because of the unshakable inherited rule not to let out of one’s hands anything that had ever fallen into them.

Now Zoya—they had left the beach and were walking slowly along Botkinskaya Street—had a plan. Solovyov looked from time to time at the museum employee’s jet-black hair, which was tangled after swimming; he was discovering her for himself all over again. Absolutely nothing Chekhovian remained in what she was proposing. Zoya thought the only chance of obtaining the manuscript from Taras Kozachenko was to conduct a secret search of his, Taras’s, room. Zoya leaned on Solovyov’s shoulder as she shook beach pebbles out of her sandal.

‘But maybe,’ Solovyov was awkwardly supporting Zoya by the waist, ‘…maybe we should start by actually asking Taras?’

‘No way. Then he’ll bury that manuscript once and for all and we’ll never see it again. Our strength is in him not knowing what, exactly, we’re going to look for.’

Solovyov looked at Zoya with doubt; his gaze did not escape her.

‘This was dreamt up for your sake, after all…’

Solovyov felt that in full. Lagging a half-step behind Zoya, his shoulders grazed against willow branches that drooped almost to the sidewalk and he thought about the unpredictability of a historian’s work.

When they reached her house, she asked him to come inside. All the residents were present on Saturday. Besides Taras, Yekaterina Ivanovna Kolpakova was standing in the kitchen: Solovyov had only heard about her up until now. Despite Galina Artemovna (Taras’s mother) poisoning Yekaterina Ivanovna’s husband; despite his cheating on Yekaterina Ivanovna with that very same Kozachenko woman and his murder of Petr Terentyevich, Taras’s father; and despite, finally, Galina Artemovna ending her life as a result of all those events… The relationships among those still alive were completely calm. Their relationships could even be called amicable, to that certain degree possible under communal apartment conditions.

Among Russian people, a vendetta ceases just as suddenly, and without motivation, as it begins. Hostility fades in a chain of uninteresting events, just as an echo fades in a sultry Crimean pine forest and just as graves fade in the tall weeds of Russian cemeteries. Yekaterina and Taras frequently went to Yalta’s cemetery together, which was notable, even by Russian standards. This was not so much a triumph of reconciliation as a matter of something being convenient and perhaps even mutually beneficial for both of them. Yekaterina Ivanovna bought inexpensive begonias for the three graves and Taras brought a cart with a twenty-liter canister of water, something that was in catastrophically short supply at the cemetery. While visiting their relatives ( landsmen, as Yekaterina Ivanovna sometimes jokingly called them), they divided the begonias and the water evenly amongst the graves.

Zoya and Solovyov stayed in the kitchen after greeting the neighbors. To Solovyov’s surprise, his companion not only entered into conversation with the others but also asked him to tell them about the Hermitage—you know, what you were telling me today—after which she went to her room anyway, leaving Solovyov in the middle of the kitchen with his strange story. Taras and Yekaterina Ivanovna stood in the corner, leaning against the general’s cabinet, and were, ludicrously enough, truly prepared to take in Solovyov’s narrative. After stating that the Hermitage, along with the Louvre, is one of the leading museums in the world, Solovyov noted, unseen by his listeners, that Zoya had left her room with a finger to her lips. As Solovyov told of the number of exhibits at the Hermitage (to Yekaterina Ivanovna’s restrained moan), Zoya flattened herself against the wall and sidestepped her way to Taras’s door. Solovyov faltered from the unexpectedness. Zoya made a scary face and—making her hand into a sort of bird’s beak—gestured to the storyteller that he should not stop speaking.

If one were to stand next to each exhibit for thirty seconds (Zoya disappeared into Taras’s room) and be at the Hermitage every day from morning until evening, one would need eight years to see all the exhibits.

‘Eight?’ Yekaterina Ivanovna asked for clarification.

Zoya appeared in Taras’s doorway, noiselessly tossed up her hands, and disappeared into the depths of the room once again.

‘No fewer than eight,’ Solovyov reiterated.

Taras took a bottle of kefir from the refrigerator, shook it, and poured some into a tea bowl with chipped edges. He chose an unscathed section and pressed his puffy lips to it. Taras asked nothing about the Hermitage. He listened silently to Solovyov, licking away his broad white mustache from time to time. And Solovyov, who would never have agreed of his own free will to infiltrate Taras’s room, felt like a genuine plotter, if only because he had to conspire a story with a plot for those standing before him. His descriptions grew more emotional, evoking in his listeners interest mixed with light surprise. The surprise increased when the story suddenly cut off (Zoya had silently closed the door behind her and slipped into her room) and Solovyov vanished to Zoya’s room, saying goodbye along the way. Those who remained, standing, had the sense of something left unsaid.

‘I didn’t find the manuscript,’ said Zoya after Solovyov closed the door behind him. ‘But this turned up in a drawer.’

She twirled a ring of keys on her finger.

‘I’m sure he has the manuscript. We’ll have time to look at everything carefully on Monday, when he goes to work.’

‘Zoya…’

This turned out to be the only objection Solovyov was allowed to utter. Zoya placed her finger with the keys to his lips and peered into the hallway. Once she was certain nobody was left in the kitchen, she stole toward the front door on tiptoe and beckoned to Solovyov. Involuntarily copying Zoya’s motions, he took several steps toward the exit. He stopped between Zoya and the door. Her hand touched the massive hook hanging on an eye, attached to the side of the door that did not open. The hook readily began swinging as it slid along an indentation that had formed over the years.

‘Foucault’s pendulum,’ she whispered right into his ear. ‘I’ll take Monday off.’

Solovyov spent Sunday morning in church. This was the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, which was elegant, its five cupolas towering over Kirov Street (formerly Autskaya Street). As Solovyov ascended the stone staircase, he imagined the general entering the church.

The general came here often during his trips to Yalta. In the winter of 1920, he flew up this staircase like a large bird of prey; the flaps of his military overcoat extended over the steps, his entourage dispersed at his sides. He walked a little more slowly in the summer, as if he were watching a military formation on the platz, but he saw messy columns of paupers who had flowed there from all of boundless Russia, as they did in those days. A military orderly walking a half-step behind him tossed coins to them.

It was stuffy in the church during the summer. Neither an open side door nor a flung-open window lent any coolness. Through them poured Yalta’s damp, sweltering heat, scented with acacias and the sea, and vaguely trembling over the candles’ unmoving flame. Streaks of sunlight pierced the duskiness inside the church, illuminating the large drops of sweat that flew off the priest's nose and chin with his every movement. Even the general, who usually hardly perspired, kept wiping his forehead and neck with a silk handkerchief. In those services, which were anything but simple, Larionov saw a special southern charm that consisted of the fact that, for one thing, at the end of the liturgy he would take a hundred-meter walk along Morskaya Street and find himself on an embankment that glistened in the surf and he would breathe, full-chested, after unfastening the top buttons of his service jacket.

He came here as a very elderly man, too. With a cane, and wearing a canvas jacket with a pocket stretched by a massive case for his glasses. People recognized him, as in days past. As in days past, they stepped aside, making way for him, and took deep bows for the coins he gave them. He walked with the special firmness of one striving to maintain his balance (occasionally he swayed anyway). At times he would stop, place both his hands on his cypress cane, and inspect the toes of his shoes. Sometimes he would sit on a bench in the yard and observe from the shadows, businesslike, as people carried infants into the church, straightening lacy bonnets along the way. Observe how, in the far corner of the church grounds, water from a hose moistened dust and the first drops that fell on the asphalt turned to steam. In those moments, his face lacked all expression and seemed to be falling away. It brought to mind a mask that had been removed, and came to life only with the old man’s barely noticeable chewing.

Looking at the general, it was difficult to grasp whether he noticed everything happening around him or if, according to the words of a poet unfamiliar to him, his eyes were addressing other days. Those who observed the general in those moments (including in the line of duty), confirmed afterwards that they did not consider his gaze to have halted, despite the motionlessness of his face. That gaze might be categorized as unlifelike, unlit, or unearthly, but not at all halted.

Yes, General Larionov’s eyes were addressing other days. Even so, nothing escaped their attention. Through the para-military guise of paupers, vintage 1920, wearing uniform tunics with holes instead of epaulets and through carts that delivered barrels of water to the church (they were rolled from the carts onto the earth along twenty-inch boards), the general’s eyes undeniably saw trolleybuses that drove

noiselessly along the former Autskaya Street behind the church fence, carrying 1970s female worshippers, and saw women taking neatly folded headscarves from their bags in front of the church and hurriedly tying them. They used their thumbs to tuck in strands of hair that came out. Why were there hardly any men there?

When Solovyov showed up at Zoya’s on Monday morning, none of the others were in the apartment. After closing the front door behind him, Zoya lowered the huge hook with a clang. ‘That’s just in case,’ she said.

Solovyov remembered the pail he and Leeza used to set out as a signal but did not mention this memory. He was experiencing excitement of a completely different kind now.

With a calm motion that was somehow even expert, Zoya turned the key in Kozachenko’s door, opened it, and gestured to Solovyov, inviting him inside. Solovyov initially wanted to make the same gesture but then he crossed the threshold after realizing that gallantry was out of place in this situation.

The first thing he saw in the room was the oak cabinet with the two-headed eagles. The elder Kozachenko had knocked his head on one of those heads. The double bed was the center of the drama that had played out. And so Kozachenko the younger had not thrown away the furniture. In the corner, displayed below a decorative Ukrainian towel, was a cross-stitched portrait of poet Taras Shevchenko. To the right of the portrait (and how about that—Solovyov did not even grasp this at first) were two photographs of Zoya. Zoya in the kitchen at the general’s table with a vase of chrysanthemums in the background. Zoya at the beach. The bottom of her bathing suit slightly slipping off a bone covered with taut skin. Solovyov thought the life of a bachelor in the company of photographs like that could not be easy. Even under Shevchenko’s supervision.

‘Is he in love with you?’

Zoya shrugged. Standing at the bureau desk, she pulled out drawer after drawer, looking through the contents. Zoya’s calm in conducting this quiet search surprised Solovyov, who was, at the very least, extraordinarily agitated, even though he was not shaking. Her thumb inspected stacks of paper (blank, as a rule), sliding along the edge of the sheets. The sheets generated a light fan-like sound at the motion, reminiscent of the rustling of a deck of cards being shuffled before a deal. Sometimes there was jingling, sometimes there was clicking. Zoya would lay items on the desk then put them away after she had finished looking through yet another drawer.

Solovyov confined himself to examining Taras’s scanty book selection. The majority of them were devoted to the city of Alupka and the Vorontsov Palace. It was emerging that Taras had a one-track mind. The only book unrelated to the palace was a publication describing various alarm systems.

‘What does he do for work?’

‘He’s a guard at the Vorontsov Palace.’

Zoya looked through piles of linens, plunging her hand deep under each sheet. The linens were shabby. There were holes and frayed spots even on the folds. It inopportunely occurred to Solovyov that they could even be the result of Kolpakov’s activeness. Objects frequently outlive those who have used them. Bed linens with Chekhov’s embroidered initials had been preserved, too. The bed in the museum was still made with them. Although… Maybe these holes were the consequence of the love-struck Taras’s insomnia? Solovyov cast another glance at the photographs.

‘I found it.’

Zoya said that with the same calm that she had been searching, but Solovyov flinched. Was that really possible? Contrary to Solovyov’s absolute lack of faith in success (and he himself did not understand why he had gotten mixed up in all this) there were yellowed sheets of paper, with fine writing, between two flowery duvet covers.

‘It’s my mother’s handwriting.’

Solovyov lifted the top part of the linen pile and Zoya pulled the papers out of the cabinet with a magician’s gesture. This was a victory. Despite the dubious method of achieving it, it remained a victory, and what a victory! In the end, Taras had no rights whatsoever to the manuscript. In the end, his parents had simply stolen this manuscript… Researcher Solovyov’s brief history, which had unfolded primarily in libraries and archives, had made an obvious salto mortale and transformed into a detective story. Never before had the search for scholarly truth seemed so gripping to him. The dramatism of research, something unknown to the world, took on visible forms when it came out into the open. Solovyov stood by the window and held the sheets of paper on his outstretched hand. He was not reading them. He simply inspected Zoya’s mother’s minute handwriting, sensing Zoya’s breathing at his temple. From time to time, little bird-like figures appeared over the handwriting, introducing additions and edits in another hand, one very familiar to Solovyov. Meaning the general had worked on the dictated manuscript later… From somewhere in the very depths of those lines—and Zoya’s hand was squeezing his elbow—Yekaterina Ivanovna’s sad eyes slowly surfaced.

Yekaterina Ivanovna was standing on a little metal bridge that had been built to reach the terrace of the next house (a bed’s headboard served as its railing); she held a grocery bag and was wordlessly watching Solovyov through the window glass.

They left Kozachenko’s room. Zoya locked it with the key and hurried to unhook the front door. Pressing her back to the door of her own room, she listened to Yekaterina Ivanovna’s heavy steps in the entryway, reminding Solovyov in some sense of Princess Tarakanova in her dungeon. Zoya quietly let Solovyov out of the apartment after Yekaterina Ivanovna entered her own room.

Walking downhill along Botkinskaya, the uneasy Solovyov wondered what would happen to Zoya now. His unease was momentary, though, and without it, Solovyov, a person with scruples, could not have surrendered himself to the joy of possessing the manuscript. The small packet of sheets, which were inscribed with a compact, precise script, belonged only to him. It fluttered with each swing of an arm that was beginning to tan, and (this was unbelievable) the packet evoked not the slightest interest among pedestrians.

Solovyov did not feel like going home. It was tough to be alone with his happiness, just as it is tough when someone’s relationship is condemned, illegitimate, and, perhaps, even criminal. People put that out in the open. They rush out in public with it, visiting receptions, clubs, and shows… Solovyov went to the embankment. As he stepped down from its upper sections, he saw a row of seats like those that line stadiums. These grandstands for spectators faced the best show on earth: the sea.

Solovyov delighted in the motion of the waves and himself felt a little like the general. Like the inveterate smoker who lingers before lighting a cigarette (a special type of voluptuousness), Solovyov was in no hurry to begin reading. Rejoicing in his spoils by feel, he stroked the slightly limp edge of the sheets and knocked the packet against his knees to give it an ideally correct appearance.

The general’s memoirs began like this, ‘At the age of ten, my parents sent me to the Second Cadet Corps.’ Ten years old. The description of everything that happened before that had been published by Dupont, who, as we know, assumed that a continuation existed. And so the French researcher’s scholarly intuition permitted her to predict this sweet moment Solovyov was experiencing on the embankment in Yalta. He read sheet after sheet, placing what he had read at the end of the packet. Distancing himself from the first sheet even as he inexorably neared it. Tearing himself away from Akinfeeva’s close lines from time to time, he scanned the horizon and thought about how his reading process was akin to a round-the-world journey whose goal is to return to the starting point.