The Kukotsky Enigma: A Novel

14

THE FOOTPATH NOW WENT UPHILL. WHEN HE REACHED the top of the hill, he saw from above a small, narrow, winding river. In a sandy basin along the riverbank a campfire burned, almost invisible in the sun’s rays, and a smoke-blackened kettle hung over the fire. Near the campfire, with his back turned toward Skinhead, sat a slumped old man with what remained of his gray hair surrounding a shining bald spot. Skinhead approached him and said hello.

“The tea’s ready. The fish is done.” The old man smiled and picked with his stick at the fish lying on a flat rock in the smoldering coals. “It’s ready.”

“Did you catch it in this stream?” Skinhead asked, as he sat down and accepted the hot fish arranged on leaves.

“Some fishermen brought it. I gave up all those pastimes—hunting, fishing—in my youth. To be honest, I also gave up animal-based food then. Out of moral considerations.”

The baked fish was tasty, although bony. It resembled a large ruff or a marine goby, with a spiny dorsal fin. The old man then poured tea from the kettle into two aluminum mugs, pulled out a small package from his canvas bag, and opened it. Inside was a piece of comb honey.

The old man’s face was familiar, but Skinhead could not put a name to it. He turned out to be rather chatty, and talked about his children, his grandchildren, and little Vanya, about whom he had worried so much and for absolutely no reason . . . He lambasted someone named Nikolai Mikhailovich and bewailed his stupidity: “I used to think that stupidity was a misfortune, not a sin. Now I’ve changed my opinion. Stupidity is a great sin because what underlies it is overconfidence, that is, pride.”

With pursed lips the old man sipped the murky but very tasty tea, then set his mug on the flat rock and sighed.

“Of course, I’m in no way exonerated by the vulgar rumors or even by the laudatory adulation we so seek in our youth. The Sevastopol Stories brought me that, went to my head, and fed my overconfidence. It was the basis for my own stupidity, which exceeded all the talents granted me for the taking by the Creator . . . But the stupidity—the stupidity itself was mine alone . . .”

“Why, of course, how didn’t I figure it out right away! That’s why the face is so familiar . . . That face with Socrates’s wrinkles, the little eyes under brushy eyebrows, the broad Russian duckbill nose, and that world-famous beard . . .”

Skinhead egged the old man on, not without a certain craftiness.

“You’re right, you’re right. My wife was raised as a Tolstoyan and spent her entire life quoting you, while I kept kidding her and even teasing her: ‘Lenochka,’ I’d say, ‘that genius of yours was rather stupid . . .’ She would take offense.”

The old man knitted his brows and stroked his beard with his large, flat fingers.

“You said that to her? There weren’t many who understood . . .”

“That was in your time . . . Nowadays a lot of people have figured it out . . .”

The old man coughed and grabbed his sack.

“Let’s take a short walk: I’ll show you my study . . . I, you know, have taken an interest in the natural sciences of late . . . I’m working on some theories . . .”

Skinhead stood up with regret. He was already being beckoned to the shore by that voice he had grown accustomed to minding, but Skinhead understood that he had insulted the old man and to refuse the invitation would have been thoroughly impolite . . .

The little house was hidden away in an old oak grove. It was small, the span of three windows, which were almost entirely hidden behind lilac bushes.

“The buds have already emerged and should blossom in about five days or so,” Skinhead noted. The porch had three steps. There was a bucket in the entranceway. The old man opened the door into a rather large room with bookcases along the walls. There was a microscope on the table. A second table, near the wall, served as a kind of laboratory, with chemistry vessels and reactants of some sort . . . Amazing.

“You’ll be more comfortable here in the armchair, please . . . I’ve been wanting to speak to a learned man, a contemporary scholar, for a long time now. My nobleman’s education, you know . . . I didn’t study the natural sciences in my youth. Goethe, I’ll have you know, received a brilliant education. He knew mineralogy, devised his own theory of color, and had a profound understanding of the natural sciences . . . We, though, did our schooling at home . . . A half-baked education, in a way . . .”

Either the old man was playing the fool or pulling his, Skinhead’s, leg . . . He couldn’t tell . . . Then he pulled out his eyeglass case, extracted from it a pince-nez with a black ribbon, set the pince-nez on the bridge of his nose, and made a stern pronouncement, with even a certain suffering in his voice.

“For fifty years I’ve been pondering these questions. The local inhabitants are beings of a higher sort, of great simplicity of mind, and I am unable to discuss everything with them. What’s more, it’s very difficult—impossible almost—for them to make sense of our earthly tragedies because even though they are not entirely fleshless, their flesh differs from our worldly variety both in structure and chemical composition. Their skin is too thin . . . For me you are a conversation partner long overdue, the kind I have not had for many years . . .”

As the elder spoke, he unrolled some papers curled into a tube and flattened the ends with his hand, then pressed one side of the pile under two heavy tomes and the other under a marble paperweight.

“My discovery concerns love. At its cellular, so to speak, chemical, level. I’d like to share with you, Pavel Alekseevich, a few of my thoughts.”

Skinhead had not heard his earthly name for quite some time, and he was amazed less by the content of the solemn speech of this majestic man with his slightly too fussy eyes, than by the sound of his name returned to him . . . A lost connection had been restored . . .

“Love, as I now understand, needs to be examined alongside other natural phenomena, like the force of gravity or the law of chemical affinity discovered by Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev. Or the law—I forgot, what was that Italian’s name?—according to which liquids in various tubes all even out at one level . . .”

“He didn’t attend school . . . Educated at Yasnaya Polyana, that’s what . . .” Pavel Alekseevich chuckled to himself. “Apparently the sixth-grade middle school textbooks made a great impression on him . . .”

“Haec ego fingebam,” proclaimed Lev Nikolaevich, “that carnal love is allowed for human beings! I erred along with all of our so-called Christianity. Everyone suffered, everyone burned in flames owing to a false understanding of love, owing to its division into the carnal and profane versus the intellectualized, philosophical, and lofty, owing to shame over one’s own, innocent, God-given body for which joining with another is innocent, blissful, and good!”

“There’s no doubt about that, Lev Nikolaevich,” Pavel Alekseevich interjected quietly, looking over his shoulder at the graph drawn in red and blue pencil. It contained a crudely depicted ovum and spermatozoon.

“That inclination lies at the foundation of the universe, and the Greeks, and the Hindus, and the Chinese all understood that. We Russians, though, have understood nothing. Only Vasily Vasilievich Rozanov—an essentially odious gentleman—saw the light to an extent. Our upbringing, the diseases of the time, the great lie that has come down to us from the ancient monastic misanthropes have led to our not having achieved love. And a person who has not achieved love of life cannot achieve love of God.” He fell silent and sulked. “Love occurs at the cellular level: that is the essence of my discovery. All laws are concentrated in it—the law of conservation of energy, and the law of conservation of matter. Chemistry, physics, and mathematics. Molecules gravitate toward each other as a function of chemical affinity, which is determined by love. By passion even, if you will. Metal in the presence of oxygen passionately desires to be oxidized. And note the main thing: this chemical love goes as far as self-renunciation! Giving themselves over to each other, each ceases to be itself: metal becomes oxide, and oxygen entirely ceases to be a gas. That is, it yields its natural essence out of love . . . And the elements? The way water aspires to the earth, filling each and every crevice, dissolving into each and every crack in the earth, the waves licking the seashore! Love, in its most perfect form, also denotes denial of the self, of your own being, in the name of that which is the object of your love . . .” The old man wrinkled his dry lips. “I, Pavel Alekseevich, rejected everything that I had written. It was misguided. All of it . . . Now I sit here, and I read, and I think. And I weep, you know . . . I said so many stupid things, I stirred up so many people’s lives, but I never found the words of truth, no . . . I never wrote what was most important about what was most important. I failed to understand anything about love . . .”

“Pardon me, Lev Nikolaevich! What about the story about the young peasant who fell off the roof and died? Wasn’t that about love? Why that’s the best thing I ever read about love in my whole life,” Pavel Alekseevich objected.

Lev Nikolaevich started. “Wait a minute, which story was that? I don’t remember.”

“‘Alyosha the Pot’ it’s called.”

“Yes, yes . . . There was one called that,” Lev Nikolaevich reflected. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I did write one story.”

“What about The Cossacks? Or Hadji-Murat? No, no, I can’t agree with you, Lev Nikolaevich. Isn’t the word itself an element, and doesn’t the same process occur in it as the one you just described? And if our speech is an element—even if not of the highest order, at least you’ll agree, sufficiently highly organized—then you, Lev Nikolaevich, are the master of love and nothing less . . .”

The old man stood up. He was not very tall, bandy-legged, but broad in the shoulders and impressive. He went up to the bookcase: it held his first posthumous collected works in worn paper bindings. Lev Nikolaevich pulled out volume after volume, searching for the story. Then he opened it to the page he needed. Pavel Alekseevich looked tenderly over the old man’s shoulder at the yellowed pages: the same edition had been rescued from Lenochka’s apartment on Trekhprudny.

“So you propose that this is a good story?”

“A masterpiece.” Pavel Alekseevich responded concisely.

“I’ll be sure to reread it. I’d forgotten all about it. Maybe I really did write something worthwhile . . .” he mumbled, glancing through his pince-nez at the yellowed pages.

The sun was already setting. Pavel Alekseevich rose, said good-bye, and promised to come again, if he were able. Lev Nikolaevich, who had invited him for a conversation about the natural sciences, now seemed little interested in his opinion. He was in a rush to reread his old story. Like all elderly people, his own opinion was more important than anyone else’s . . .

The old man walked out onto the porch with Pavel Alekseevich and even kissed him good-bye. Pavel Alekseevich rushed to return to the place where not long ago there had been a riverbank.